by Alana Khan
“I want you too, Bayne.”
To add truth to her words, her cool palms slide over my hot flesh to my waist, then rise to burrow into the pelt at my shoulders. I nip down the side of her neck, loving her sharp intake of breath when my fangs graze her skin.
She nips me back. If she was canine, her gentle nip might break my skin. As it is, though, her flat blunt teeth just tell me how much she wants me.
She eagerly pulls my loincloth below my knees, leaving it to me to step out of it because her hands are busy roaming across my ass.
“You’re the sexiest male I’ve ever known,” she says as her palms skim my flesh as if she wants to be certain to touch every spot on my body.
I’m planning what I want to do to her with as much care and precision as my tribe would prepare for an enemy invasion. I debate whether to conquer her slow and tender or hard and fast. Should I build her to the peak of pleasure with my mouth first, or let us come together quickly in the way we’ve been avoiding for days?
“Make love with me, Bayne. I need you,” she says, as her hand slides around my hip and grips my hard cock at the root. “We’ve waited long enough.”
WarDog is close, urging me on, flooding me with baser needs I usually keep at bay. I don’t shift, but it feels like my fangs elongate, making it easier for me to slide their tips along her tender flesh.
Again, I feel a surge of resentment. He had her to himself for three lunars. What we’re about to do is for me, not him. I force him back, Stay there or I will leash you, I threaten. He cowers, whimpers, and obeys. I get a sudden twinge of guilt for treating him like this after he has had to endure ten annums of enslavement, but I quickly tamp it down, force my attention from my interfering canine, and focus on the delectable female before me.
Careful not to prick her skin, I glide my fangs down the column of her neck and across her collar bone. This causes her to lift on her toes with a little shiver.
“Do that again,” her whisper is deep and breathy.
I oblige, shaking my head back and forth across the skin-covered bone. The scent of her arousal blooms on the air. I mimic my actions on her other collarbone and hear her suck in air as if the sheer pleasure surprises her.
I trace my fangs lower, over the gentle rise of her breast, then across the pink crest.
This pulls an appreciative hum from the back of her throat.
My hands are nestled just below her waist in the valley just before the swell of her shapely ass. Moving them lower, I cup her ass cheeks and yank her against me, grinding my cock along her seam, my knees bent so they’re the right height to provide her pleasure.
She mirrors my actions, her hands on my cheeks, ensuring we stay pressed together as she rides me, coating me with the slick evidence of her desire.
It feels like I’ve waited an eternity for this, even though it’s been a mere handful of days since we acknowledged our feelings for each other. We’re both ready, though. WarDog’s urges amplify my own desires. If I don’t keep control of him I might act rougher than Willa wants.
She pulls away enough that I feel cool night air against my skin where her warm skin had been. Grabbing my hand, she attempts a smile, but she’s too deep in the well of passion to pull it off. It’s too serious, too needy to look happy. It’s sexier than that and intensifies my desire.
Dragging me toward the bed, her brown eyes gaze deeply into mine. Her expression speaks of want and need and desperation, and so much more. I respond, my eyes blazing with my own story of affection for her.
She sits on the edge of the bed and pats the spot next to her. I don’t want to join her there, not yet. I want to taste her again. I’ve wondered if her taste is addictive, but decided it’s not the taste, but the feeling of being the one responsible for providing her bliss. I love the sensation of giving her pleasure, the sounds of her moans and heavy breathing.
The canine inside me, a moment ago fully submissive, jumps up and barks, his hackles rising along his spine.
Trouble, he snarls, capturing my attention. I follow the direction of his thoughts and look out through the clear tent.
My blood runs cold as I freeze, my mind flying through every strategy I can use to keep us alive.
“Grab your bow and arrows! Now!” I tell her.
Somewhere in the dim recesses of my mind, I’m proud of our connection. Willa doesn’t pause a modicum, she follows my orders immediately without question.
“Shit!” she sounds panicked.
As soon as she was alerted to the urgency of the situation by the tone of my voice, she became more aware of our surroundings. It isn't hard to miss the dozen creatures that have surrounded the clear globe we thought ensured our comfort. They’re the same as the animal I killed this afternoon. Willa called them tarantu-scorps.
The tent provides protection from the elements, but I could easily slice through it with my fang. Certainly, these creatures, with their deadly pincers could slash it with little effort. I’ve bent and retrieved my bow and hung my quiver on my back. I don’t know why they haven't attacked already. I’m sure it’s imminent.
I tear my eyes from the scene outside the globe to glance at Willa. She’s standing, bow drawn, her quiver over her shoulder.
“Stand back to back with me, Love. I’m better with a bow than you, but you’ll have to help. We’re vastly outnumbered. You only have twelve arrows, make them count.”
We only have twenty-four arrows between us, and who knows how many creatures are out there. My guess is a dozen, but there could be an army of them hiding farther away in the shadows.
The calm continues for only a moment more, then all of them step forward at once. Do they have a hive mind? That will make them even more deadly adversaries. Several of them use their front pincers to horizontally slash the tent material. The now detached top of the structure blows away in the light breeze getting caught in a nearby tree. In that one moment, we’re completely exposed and unprotected.
I feel Willa’s warm back against mine and take a moment to pray she can live through this assault. The best thing I can do to help her is to kill the enemy.
No thoughts fly through my head, my hands take charge—they move faster than I can think. They proceed on their own accord, reaching behind me to grab an arrow, nocking it, and letting fly. It penetrates directly where I was aiming—the beady black eye. An otherworldly shriek pierces the air, and the animal staggers, then falls.
“Aim for the eyes if you can, Love,” I remind her. Because of the way the creatures are built, it’s hard to aim for the heart.
“Right,” her voice is tight. She’s fully concentrating on her task. Good.
I don’t know if the animals have some sense of what their pack is thinking, but a few attack as the rest wait and watch, coming at us in waves. I don’t take my eyes off my foe for a heartbeat, but worry about Willa. I pull my thoughts to the task at hand. I’m not protecting my female if I remain unfocused.
I’ve felled six of them with eight arrows, their hairy corpses litter the bed and floor of the structure. Their comrades keep on coming, stepping over their felled packmates and forging ahead.
Willa and I are well attuned to each other. When I turn, her body naturally follows my motion. When the enemy in front of me has stopped aggressing, I turn us so I can help on her side of the melee.
I’m proud when I see three felled beasts on her side of the clearing. Launching three arrows in swift succession, I kill three more.
“How many left?” I ask when I’ve turned us in our original directions.
“Four arrows, one beast,” she answers, evidently not knowing whether I was asking about arrows or animals.
“Two left on my side,” I tell her.
“Shit!” she says after launching an arrow, then, “Gotcha, bastard!”
Both the creatures in front of me attack at once. The ungainly beasts move swiftly when they want to. I shoot my arrows quickly, but after felling one of the two, my next shot misses its mark.
>
As I pull another arrow from my quiver, I hear the squealing whine of the last beast in the throes of death—Willa killed him with her last arrow.
I hear her panting, feel her torso heaving since our backs are still pressed together. We rotate in a complete circle, both of us wanting to ensure no more of the ugly beasts are creeping up on us in the darkness.
We continue to circle. In the relative calm, we both realize we forgot to call for backup.
She says, “The comms!” as I call into my comm, “Beam us up.”
“Wait!” she says a moment later as she pulls a tunic over her head. “Okay,” she tells them.
I don’t know why I didn’t call for help a moment ago. The heat of battle put the idea of rescue by beaming my particles through the air completely out of my mind.
Soon Willa and I are standing on the Fool’s Errand, panting, bows in hand, backs pressed together.
Willa
My heart is pounding in my chest, my hands, rock steady until a moment ago, are fluttering.
I handled the height of battle like a champ. Now, though, I’m having a complete breakdown. What was I thinking? I forced myself onto that mission. Just because I’m a strong Texas girl and know how to kill a deer with a rifle does not mean I had any business going to a foreign planet with a bow and fucking arrows. Against monsters!
Bayne spun on his heel and is facing me now. He squeezes me in a bear hug, then pulls away to look into my face.
“You’re not okay?” he asks, concern written all over his beautiful face.
“You saved my life. I’m an idiot.”
He presses my face to his chest and strokes my hair. “Not an idiot,” he says. I feel his chest rumble as I hear the warm words. “Stubborn.”
I’m trembling and crying. I try to convince myself it’s the aftermath of the fight, the adrenaline. I don’t want to admit it’s from sheer terror, albeit delayed.
Captain Zar crashes through the transporter room doorway.
“Are you both alright?” his growly voice is deeper than usual.
“Unharmed,” Bayne informs him, then bends to peer into my face. “You are unharmed, right?”
“Yes.” I nod. “Just about to come unglued, that’s all.”
“I want a full report. I know you want some time to gather yourselves, but I need to know what happened.”
I understand. He has no idea if we were attacked by mutant creatures straight out of a 1950s B movie or Daneur Khour himself.
He leads the way to the bridge and we follow. Most of our little family not-so-subtly line the halls to see what’s going on. Several of the women call, “I hope everything’s all right, Willa.” A few offer for me to come see them if I need anything. There’s nothing wrong with me that a long shower and a moment in Bayne’s arms won’t cure.
Once on the bridge, we give report, and by ‘we’ I mean Bayne. He’s sitting in the first mate’s seat, with me on his lap, his arms warmly tucking me against him.
“Take a few hoaras to decompress,” Zar instructs. “We’ll meet in the ludus after dinner to plan our next strategy. I’m proud of you,” he says warmly, “both of you.”
While we were talking, Callista on comms pulled up satellite footage of the carnage at our campsite. It’s barely visible through the thick canopy of trees and fading light. She displays it on every other window on the bullet-shaped bridge. The windows double as screens. I just let my eyelids flicker closed, not wanting to see the taratu-scorps for one more moment, but when I get up to leave, I can’t help but see the tableau on Fairea.
The creatures are even more gross and scary now. Seeing their disgusting dead bodies, legs akimbo, the area littered with blood, makes me shiver in revulsion.
“As I said,” Zar repeats, “you did well. I apologize. I would have never let you go so unprepared had I known, but there was no description of these creatures in the planet’s database. Perhaps Khour has brought them from another planet to dissuade people from entering the forest that surrounds his compound. Or perhaps he gets perverted pleasure in hunting them himself. I should have never let you go. In the future, no one goes back to that planet without lasers.”
Zar bows his head and thumps his chest at Bayne. It’s an honor one gladiator gives another—a sign of the utmost respect. It makes me feel good for Bayne. For so long he was in canine form, fighting in the arena. Now he’s getting recognition for what he did. He deserves it.
Zar turns to me and performs the same actions in my direction, his gaze never leaving mine. Did he just give me the gladiator salute? Me? I’m practically dissolving into a puddle of fear.
“You did well, Willa. You killed many of the creatures. You have the spirit of a warrior.”
“Th-thanks.” It may not be true, but just hearing that I have the spirit of a warrior makes me feel like one.
Perhaps Zar read my thoughts, because he adds, “Courage isn’t the absence of fear. It’s the ability to do what needs to be done despite your fears.”
Wow! No wonder Zar was voted captain, he has wisdom and compassion.
Bayne places his warm palm on the small of my back and escorts me out of the room and back to my cabin. The moment the door closes behind us, he turns me in his arms and hugs me tight.
“I failed you, Willa. I shouldn’t have let you come with me.”
“Please, Bayne. Stop blaming yourself. You tried everything you could short of forbidding me to go, which would have hurt our relationship more than what happened on Fairea just now. Let it go. I feel like I have tarantu-scorp blood all over me and all I want is a shower.”
“You do.”
“What?”
“You do have blood on you. It’s black, so I know it isn’t yours.”
“Ack! Out of my way!” Although I’m ready to barge right through him to get to the bathroom, he sidesteps just in time. If circumstances were different, I’d love for him to join me. We’ve shared a shower several times. It’s great foreplay. Now I just want the black bug blood off me. Immediately!
I turn on the water and step in before it’s warm. Keeping my eyes closed, I let the water pour over me until I assume all the blood has washed down the drain, then I open my eyes and wash. And scrub. And wash some more. At times the pictures of what just happened flash into my mind. Other times I hear the bugs’ high screams of pain as if they were in the shower with me.
Eventually, I wrap what happened into a little box inside my mind and stow it away in the back attic where I keep the really painful memories of my mom during the last part of her illness, and the regret that I’ll never see my dad again. Bye-bye tarantu-scorps. I relegate that to the back of my mind too.
Taking a deep breath, I allow my thoughts to move to more pleasant things. Bayne’s outside this door. He had some blood on him, too.
“Water’s at a premium on a ship, babe,” I call to him. “I think we should conserve and wash together, don’t you?”
He opens the door immediately, he was obviously waiting for my invitation. “Close brushes with death tend to do strange things to people,” he says. “I saw it all the time on Skylose.”
He joins me in the shower, his eyes blazing in passion.
“What type of strange things?” I ask, a sexy smile slashed across my face.
“It’s so hard to explain.”
I watch as the warm water pours down on him and his eyes brighten as he looks at me.
“Let me show you instead.”
His head dips toward me, those plump sexy lips unerringly finding mine. “I worried about you,” he husks into my ear to be heard over the running water.
“It was scary,” I admit.
“I have you now. You’re here in my arms. This is how it should be.”
His golden gaze seems to delve into my soul. I know he was worried about me during the fight, but it’s only now I realize how worried I was about him. If one of those hideous things had killed him today, I don’t know what I would do.
I need to tel
l him! It feels urgent that he know my feelings for him right this minute.
I step next to him so closely it’s a miracle any water can slide between us. Looking up into his beautiful face, I grab his cheeks and force his gaze to mine. “I love you Bayne. I love you and don’t want to lose you.”
He smiles. It’s not a big, beaming, dramatic smile, but the sweetest show of upturned lips that screams how happy my words made him. Then his smile widens, giving me a front-row seat to those sexy fangs.
“I love you too, my Willa. Let me show you how much.”
His lips slant to mine, sheltering me from the pelting water as his mouth takes mine. I love the warmth of him, his spicy taste, the firm softness of his lips. My body and mind have changed their focus from the adrenaline rush of a life-and-death struggle to the raging hormones of desire.