by Roxie Ray
But Michael had never looked at me the way Kloran was looking at me now.
Kloran rose from the bed. He hesitated for a moment, then took a step closer to me.
“That is generous of you, Bree-ah. But I fear my behavior toward you so far has been beyond unacceptable. I know that you have been through hardship.” His eyes lingered on my shoulder. My bad one. The one that was marred with shiny scar tissue and pebbled, uneven skin. “Perhaps greater hardship than I could have ever truly known.”
“I…I’m fine.” I was stammering, stumbling over my words again. I couldn’t help it—not when he was looking at me in the way he was. “Kloran, please, you’re staring.”
He didn’t stop, though. Slowly, he moved across the room. Like a man trying to charm a stray cat to let him scratch beneath her chin…or like a predator stalking his prey. I couldn’t decide which.
“This person who you fear. The one you mentioned earlier. They are the reason you destabilized earlier, when Leonix mentioned your transport home, are they not?”
I should have run. Should have told him to leave my room and never come back again. But when I tried to move my feet, my muscles refused to work with me.
Instead, I nodded.
“My ex-husband,” I whispered. “I’m afraid that when you take me home, he’ll find me…”
Kloran growled. His blue eyes reddened back toward purple again as he reached toward my shoulder, his claws mere inches away from my burn scar. “Your former mate. He did this to you?”
Again, I nodded. “He’s the reason I don’t like it when you yell, too. He used to yell at me. A lot. Right before…”
Another growl. “Right before he hurt you. Yes, I can see that now.” Kloran paused, almost touching me with the sharp, glinting tip of one bone-white claw. “May I touch you, Bree-ah? I am not like this man. I want to show you…” His eyes met mine, midnight blue once more and glinting with seriousness. “I would never hurt you. I would never allow anyone to hurt you, either. You are too precious to me. In ways I do not believe you can even understand. Not yet.”
I should have spat on his face and called him a bastard again. He couldn’t just bellow at me one moment, then come in and ask to touch me the next.
Except, maybe he could. I certainly wanted him to. Now that he was so close to me like this, my bones were doing everything but screaming in need of his touch.
I took his hand and guided his palm to my shoulder, wincing as the heat of his touch made contact with my ruined skin there.
Kloran gasped. “Have I hurt you just now? Bree-ah, I am sorry, I did not realize—”
“No.” I shook my head. “No, it feels…it feels good. I think the heat helps it, and you’re so warm…”
A little smile rose on his lips. “We Lunarians run hotter than you humans, I believe. But you are telling me this feels good?”
I bit my lip and closed my eyes, then nodded again.
“Really good, actually. Better than you can know.”
When I opened my eyes again, he locked me into his gaze. I was completely hypnotized by him. I’d already felt like he could read my mind so many times since I’d come aboard his ship. Maybe I really was in some kind of alien trance.
If I was, it was a good one, though. I didn’t want to fight it. It felt so much better to just give myself over to it. To feel his hand on my skin, the part of me I’d always believed Michael had ruined so badly that no one would ever want to touch me again.
“I think I may have some idea, Bree-ah. Forgive me for saying, but…” He let out a ragged breath, then inhaled like I was wearing some kind of expensive, delicious-smelling perfume. “You are radiating desire for me. It makes my abdomen clench, my muscles ache…”
I finally broke his gaze and let my eyes slide down his body. There, in his pants, was a bulge straining against the fabric that, in a human man, at least, could only mean one thing.
“You want me too.” My voice was barely audible. Not even a whisper now. A breathy hiss. “Don’t you?”
“Mm.” Kloran’s voice rumbled. “I do, Bree-ah. Your body, your curves…” He moved his hand from my shoulder to brush against the top of my towel. “I wish to look at you, Bree-ah.”
My breath caught in my throat. “You’re already looking at me. You’ve been staring at me ever since I came in.”
“No. Not in the way I want to.”
Oh, no. I’d known what he’d meant, of course, but to hear him say it like that…he was so forward. Domineering. But he wasn’t a brute. He wasn’t just taking what he wanted.
He was asking my permission.
Something that Michael had never done.
Slowly, I nodded, then let my towel slip from my hands. His claws captured one end of it before it could slide off my body. With another growl, he tore it away from me and sent it flying across the room, unfurled.
Then, there was nothing between his gaze and my body at all.
“Blood,” he breathed. It sounded like a swear word—the best kind. “These curves of yours…they have been haunting me, Bree-ah. Ever since I first saw you in the auction house, how I’ve longed to feel them against my skin.”
“You can touch me,” I said.
“No.” He turned his head away, his fingers hovering over the top of my breast. “You are trembling, Bree-ah. I have made too many mistakes. You are afraid of me, just like you are afraid of him.”
Again, I took his hand and pulled it to me. “I’m not afraid of you, Kloran. Well…okay, maybe a little. But not like that.” I almost smiled. There was something endearing about watching him try to fight his own desires, even now that he had me willing and standing completely naked in front of him. “Sometimes, humans shake for reasons, um, other than fear.”
Tentatively, Kloran shifted his gaze to my body again. When I glanced down at the bulge in his pants, it was even bigger now. Thicker. And maybe I was imagining it, but I could’ve sworn I saw it throb. Just the thought of his cock throbbing for me made something clench up inside me, too.
“Perhaps you are correct. You do not smell like fear.” He smoothed his palm down my breast, then took the whole of it in his hand and squeezed gently. I stiffened, preparing to feel his claws digging into my skin, but they didn’t. He was careful with them. They only teased at me, tickling and giving me shivers all over again as he breathed me in. “No, you smell like desire, Bree-ah. Is it true? You desire me?”
I let out a sigh. Being touched like this was unlike anything else I’d ever felt. Michael had never been this gentle with me. He’d never been this kind. And the heat that was pooling between my thighs, wet and sticky and just begging to be paid attention to in the same way that Kloran was caressing my breast…
“Buddy, you have no idea.”
“Kloran. Say my name, Bree-ah.”
Normally, it would’ve taken both of my hands to cup just one of my breasts along the underside. But as he squeezed me again, I realize his hands were big enough that he could take nearly all of my breast in his grasp.
“Kloran,” I sighed. “Yes, Kloran. I…I desire you. Happy?”
His lips curled in a wolfish smile.
“Bud-dee, you have no idea.”
He grabbed my hip in his free hand, tugging me toward him sharply. I stumbled against him, but his hold on me was strong. He wouldn’t let me fall.
“These curves are magical, Bree-ah. Your beauty…” He sighed. “It is too great. I cannot possibly find the words.”
“That’s…unusual, where I come from.” I let out a nervous little laugh. I didn’t know how to deal with his compliments. Michael might’ve chosen me to be his wife, but he’d always had me on one diet or another, trying to make me look more like the beautiful, slender women in Sector One. When Kloran called me beautiful, though, I actually believed him. “I don’t exactly look quite so, ah…desirable to the men back home.”
“Then they are imbeciles. Know-nothings. You are exquisite, Bree-ah. I love this especially.” He squeezed m
y hip, the base of his thumb pressing firm against my hip bone and his claws gently dimpling the meat of my ass. “Lunarian women do not look like you either. I love that you give me something to hold onto.”
I believed it. Every word he said as he clutched at me was drenched with honesty. For ten whole years of marriage, I’d been made to feel like I was something disgusting and unwanted. Someone who deserved to be beaten or burned or starved or screamed at—whatever best suited Michael’s mood that day.
Kloran held me in his grasp like I was holy, though. Precious, he’d called me.
And I could tell from the look in his eyes that he meant it, too.
Releasing my hip, Kloran wound his arm around my back and pulled me closer still until my body was flush with his. His claws trailed gently down my back, making me shudder intensely.
“Ah. I do love seeing you do that. Your body, it is such a marvel to me. And my body, it longs for yours so much.”
Kloran pressed his hips against me slowly. He was treating me with such care, it almost didn’t feel real. He seemed like he was on high alert, waiting to sense the slightest sign of distaste for his advances so he could pull away. But I felt his cock press against my belly through his pants, hard and stiff and so thick it made me gasp in surprise.
He wasn’t going to find any distaste in me now. Not for that. If anything, I was wondering what it looked like. For the most part, Kloran just looked like an ultra-exotic type of human. The thick waves of silver hair that rested on his shoulder made him look like a recoloring of some vintage romance hero. His face was a little more lupine, or maybe catlike, but he had human lips and human ears. His body was a human shape, just supersized with a side of extra muscle. I wondered if his cock would be human-esque too. More importantly, I wondered how it might feel if I took it between my hands, or even better, how it might taste if I took it between my lips instead.
Kloran seemed to be of the same mind as I was. He was staring at my lips now, his eyes full of need.
“I wish to taste you, Bree-ah. Will you allow it? I am interested to discover if you taste as sweet as you look.”
My eyes closed and opened slowly. Bedroom eyes, Michael had once called them. At first, I thought that they were just about the only thing he liked about me—until he bought me those blue-tinted contacts, anyway.
“Kiss me, then,” I challenged Kloran, turning my lips up toward his. Maybe that was a dumb move. Hadn’t I just been telling myself how I never wanted to see him again just a few minutes ago? But Kloran made me…horny. It felt dirty to admit it to myself, but there it was. I wanted him. My body was going crazy for him. And after all I’d been through, I felt like I deserved a little worshipping. Just like he’d promised me back when he’d still thought I was a slave. My eyes narrowed, then became a little more teasing. “Or are you going to make me explain to you what a kiss is, too?”
“Oh, no, Bree-ah.” Every time he said my name, something shot off in my brain like fireworks. He lowered his lips down towards mine, and I popped up onto my tiptoes, arching to meet him. His breath burned against my mouth as he spoke again. “I know exactly what a kiss is—and how I wish to kiss you, too.”
His mouth moved to mine with an aching slowness. When they finally smoothed against my own mouth, sucking my lower lip between his, my entire body sang with need for more. His fangs were long and sharp, but when he pressed them down on my lower lip, all I felt was ecstasy, not pain. His tongue flicked out against mine, abrupt and unrelenting. I shivered again as I moved my tongue to meet his, tracing a strange V in his tip that I hadn’t been expecting.
Forked. He had a forked tongue, just as thick as mine but with two tips instead of one. The divot between them was pulsating as I licked against it. He must have had a vein there or something. I could literally feel his heartbeat through it.
His kiss made me shiver even harder. My toes curled as I pushed even further up onto them, desperate to be just a little taller so I could kiss him even more deeply. If someone had told me that just a few days ago, making out with an alien man was exactly what I needed, I wouldn’t have believed them. I would have laughed in their face. But this…this was something that I’d ached for longer than I’d realized.
This is what you imagined kissing Michael would feel like, a little voice in my head reminded me. Well, sans the forked tongue—that, you couldn’t have expected. But otherwise, I knew it was true.
He left me gasping for air when he finally released me from his kiss. There was a smirk on his lips as he drew back. An all-too-sexy one.
“Did you like that, Bree-ah? Did it please you?” he purred down at me. He’d pulled his lips away, but his body was still flush with mine.
“Ah, yeah. Definitely.” I licked my lips. His taste was lingering on them, almost floral and sweet. Like the fancy rose-flavored candies Michael’s mother had kept in her study, the ones that I’d had to stop myself from scarfing down every time he took me over to visit. “Did you…so that was how you wanted to taste me, then? Did you like it?”
His smirk grew even more wicked. “I did. But, actually…” He turned our bodies so the bed was at my back, then gave me a little shove to send me tumbling back onto it. “I was talking about your other set of lips.”
Oh. Oh, fuck.
Maybe I should have told him “no” then. I was pretty sure he would have listened. I wanted it, of course. I was completely soaked for it, even. But…
“No one has ever done that to me before,” I breathed up at him as I propped myself up on my elbows, my knees squeezed together tight.
Kloran arched an eyebrow. “You spoke of a husband before. Surely…”
“No.” I shook my head. “Michael…he said he didn’t want me for that. He never…”
Kloran moved to me, kneeling at the foot of the bed and placing his hands on my knees. He was so tall that he didn’t even have to part my thighs to see over my kneecaps.
“All you must do is ask for it, Bree-ah. I wish to taste your sex, to pleasure you. Do you want that?”
I whimpered. I wanted all kinds of things from Kloran in that moment. I was still drunk on his kiss, and the thought of his hot, slick forked tongue plunging between my folds…it was almost too good to turn down.
But I was a little nervous, too. What if I tasted bad? What if he didn’t like it either? Michael had said women tasted terrible down there, and he’d said it with such conviction, I was inclined to believe him.
“I want it,” I said with a needy shudder. “But—”
Kloran didn’t wait for buts, though. His mouth descended on my body, lips searing against my breasts, my rib cage, my stomach, my hips. He gave a me a little nip at each place he kissed, nips that made my body arch and spasm wantonly.
This was bad. This was wrong. He’d yelled at me, screamed at me, made me so afraid at the roar of his voice that I was surprised I hadn’t fallen apart completely.
But he’d apologized for it. Something else that Michael had never done. And when his lips finally hovered over the dark curls of my pubic hair—something else Michael had always hated and constantly ordered me to shave away—he didn’t recoil.
He growled.
If anything, the sight of that hair only seemed to make him want me even more.
Gently, Kloran pried my knees apart. With only a moment of resistance, I felt my body relax and release, letting him spread my thighs as he wished. When he felt me give into him, his movements became a little rougher. More demanding. He forced my legs open for him, and I knew exactly what he’d find when his fingers moved to the lips of my pussy to spread them as well.
Soaking, dripping wetness, so sticky and hot that I could smell it on myself.
“Bree-ah,” he purred, breathing me in. “So wet. You must be in heat, Bree-ah. Such a delicious scent…”
I opened my mouth to tell him that humans didn’t go into heat. I wasn’t some kind of animal. I could have been ovulating, I guessed, but I’d never really kept track of that. On birt
h control, I hadn’t needed to. On those, I was pretty sure I hadn’t ovulated at all.
But I hadn’t taken my pills since I’d been abducted, and who knew how long I’d been out for before I came to aboard Kloran’s ship. Maybe…he might have been right. I could have been ovulating, or maybe…
Maybe I was just so into him, it didn’t matter one way or another.
From the way Kloran was inhaling my scent, it seemed like he was keen to find out. Kloran sighed against my pussy, breathing a humid breeze over my folds as he curled his fingers around the undersides of my thighs and spread my folds apart with his thumbs.
His tongue flicked against my clit first. Immediately, it was like electricity had been pumped through my entire nervous system. My body spasmed and jolted, causing Kloran to draw back quickly with his brow furrowed in concern.
“Are you all right, Bree-ah? Did I hurt you?”
“N-no,” I panted. A little laugh bubbled up out of my throat. “You didn’t. I promise.”
His eyes narrowed. “Your body moved as if I pained you. If I did so, I am deeply sorry. I only meant to—”
“Kloran, have you ever done this before?” Now it was my turn to narrow my eyes. “If you haven’t, it’s obviously no big deal or anything, but—”
“I…have not,” Kloran admitted slowly. Gently, his orange skin was beginning to turn a shade pinker. He was sort of the color of one of the drinks I’d seen Sector One women drink over brunch—Sex on the Beach, they called it. “I do not wish to shame you, Bree-ah, but there are not many women on Lunaria. What few there are, they generally save themselves for their mates and do not…do not act as we are acting now before they form a legal union.”
“Oh,” I said softly. Was he calling me a slut, I wondered? If he was…well, I wasn’t exactly into it, but I wasn’t exactly out of it, either. That could be something I’d be into, like, down the line, maybe. I certainly enjoyed the way he made my body feel. I almost enjoyed it more knowing that I was his first in any of this. With how forward he’d been with me, I hadn’t even imagined that he’d be, well… a virgin, I guessed. “But you know what you’re doing, obviously. Or else you wouldn’t have…”