by Fiona Jayde
He inhales deeply.
I hold up my hands. “Just, if I were to do that, would you help me find my crew?”
“So you would lay with me? We would fuck?” His voice is terse and angry sounding. I notice he’s being more crude in his description, and for some reason I feel a bit hollow inside.
Yet I press on. I have to.“Yes, but just once. Just one time, and then we’ll go find my friends.”
He grits his teeth, giving me a perfect view of his incisors. “So you would not bond with me. You would fuck me to get me to help you find your Earth companions? You would use sex and my affliction as a means of manipulating me?”
Well, it sounds terrible when you say it that way.
Because it is terrible. It is absolutely horrible. I’m no prostitute, and I haven’t had sex since Carl ripped my heart out over a year ago. Being intimate with someone is no small thing for me, but I have no idea what else to do here. I have nothing to offer this alien other than my body. It’s barbaric, it’s primitive, it’s wholly without emotion, a complete and total business transaction. I’ve never viewed sex in that light before, yet here we are, and here I am, turning sex into a business transaction. I push down my nausea at the thought.
“I get what you’re saying, but I’m not trying to manipulate you here. I’m not the type of person to use sex as a weapon, but I will use it as a bargaining chip if it means saving my friends. I’m being pretty transparent with you and making you zero promises. I will sleep with you once to ease your affliction. In exchange, I expect you to help me navigate the Chassaks’ dark market in search of my friends. I know it’s a risk for you. I understand that, and I’m sorry to ask. You can leave me the moment I locate my crew.”
His horns are slowly unraveling, pointing straight out rather than up, turning a fierce purple color. It’s a little alarming, and I can only guess at what the coloring and position of his horns indicate. I’ve seriously pissed him off.
“And once you find your companions, you would leave this place?”
“Well, yes. We would return to Earth, but at least you will have had some kind of release, right?”
※※※※
Kyllell
I am bare chested in my cave with my female. She is pacing the floor, talking to me about the rules she wants to impose, governing this ridiculous sexual arrangement. My bed is so close. I imagine throwing her down on it. I try to focus on her words, but all I can see in my mind is her body beneath mine, her breasts heaving with arousal, her arms and legs welcoming me.
Yet she really won’t be welcoming me. She has offered her body to me only conditionally. She has not offered me her heart. She has turned our entire relationship into something cold and foreign to me, and I’m ashamed to think that my refusal to help her during our previous conversation has convinced her to whore out her body to me. It feels impure and dirty, and I feel like charksis scum to have given her the impression I want her body and little else.
I also feel ashamed that I did not share with her everything that goes into a bonding. I failed to mention the bite she must receive for her aura to be opened to me. If she is having a difficult enough time with the idea of a bonding, then the idea that I must bite her with my incisors will most assuredly scare her away.
And she hasn’t agreed to anything, just a sexual encounter that will alleviate The Burning for a time.
Yet the idea of being inside her completely, of sharing such intimacy with her is almost too much to refuse despite the way in which it was offered or the conditions governing it. I’m so confused with these warring emotions, this disgust at how she wishes our relationship to really be, and the heady elation of following through with it and making her mine, even if it is just one time. Yet I am still an honorable Elysium Warrior. I would not allow my female to lay with me because she feels she has no other choice.
Would I?
She watches me, clearly wondering what I am thinking. I must clear up this misconception. I must understand exactly what she is saying. “But you would leave,” I say. “You would not bond with me.”
I notice an expression of pain cross her features, almost as if she feels uncertain as to whether she would want to leave me. Is it possible I could convince her with more time?
“That’s true, but remember, I’m leaving either way. You can’t force me to stay. At least this way, you would have a break from The Burning for a little while.”
I walk back and forth in the cavernous bedroom, watching her face as she watches me, hopeful and afraid at the same time. This is wrong. So very wrong. No matter how much I want her, no matter how much it kills me to refuse her, I must not take her on these terms. I cannot accept this.
Finally, I take a deep breath and tell her, “No.”
She seems surprised by my answer, and no wonder, when I have been grabbing at her and panting in her ear from the moment I fished her from the sea. No wonder, when I tasted her last night. No wonder, when I have made it clear that I never want to let her go.
She looks resigned yet slightly relieved, and I know I’ve made the right decision. She is in no way ready to mate me, and I’ll lose her completely if I give in and take what I want most at this very moment. There has to be another way.
“Okay,” she says. “That’s fine.” Shaking her head a little, she seems to clear her thoughts. She squares her shoulders and looks me in the eye. “It’s totally your choice, but it doesn’t change my objective. I’m going to get ready to go.”
I am so frustrated, I feel like smashing something. I grip my hand into a fist and look around for something to hit, but I stop myself before I punch the craggy wall.
She starts to walk past me. As she passes, I catch her scent—her amazingly delicious scent. Before I know it, I am pulling her against me. Her breath catches in her throat, and I can feel her heart pounding with arousal.
“Let me be clear,” I say, leaning close to her ear. “I cannot say yes to your offer because once we mate, there is no way I will ever let you go. You may wish to keep this impersonal, just an arrangement made by two consenting individuals, but I cannot.” My face is so close to hers that I can feel her breath. She whimpers a little, and I know she is getting wet—her body is ready for me, even if her mind is not. It is this physical response from her that let’s me know there is still some chance here. I must figure out how to navigate this correctly. My horns scream in agony—hungry, painful burning.
Despite myself, I lean closer, touching my lips to the sensitive spot beneath her ear. Her sharp intake of breath is all the encouragement I need. I lick her. She gasps, and wraps her arms around my neck. She turns her jaw toward me, pulling my face toward her own. She presses her lips to mine. Her tongue darts out, caressing my mouth. Groaning, I circle her in my arms, crushing her to me. Our tongues war with each other in gorgeous urgency.
My thoughts turn carnal; I imagine myself lifting her against the wall, parting her legs, and burying myself deep inside her. I picture her face in a state of rapturous arousal as I pump into her, pushing ever deeper into her warm folds.
But then she pushes on my chest. As painful as it is, I back up. I look down at her and find her staring at me, her emerald eyes wide with lust. “Say yes to my terms,” she says, her voice hoarse with desire. “Please. I need to find my crew, and you need this release.”
And there it is. The crux of the matter. The reality that this joining will mean life or death for me and next to nothing for her. Not unless she comes to feel for me as strongly as I do for her. I must buy us more time. I must think, but I can hardly do it in her presence with the smell of her arousal overwhelming my senses.
I exhale slowly, hesitant.
She is watching me. She licks her lips and moves closer to me again, kissing my chest. She moves lower, to my stomach.
“Ada,” I say, touching her head, trying to slow her.
But then she moves lower still. I feel her hands tugging on the edge of the cloth I wear around my waist.
&n
bsp; “Ada, wait,” I say, but I do not mean it.
I make no move to stop her. She removes the cloth, and I stand naked. She is on her knees in front of me, her eyes on my hard cock. She looks up at me from the floor. I stare back into her eyes, not knowing what she will do next. Then, holding my gaze, she brings her hand to my stiff rod. Her hand moves up and down its length. I clench my jaw, groaning, and then her lips touch the head. The sensation is like nothing I have ever felt before, and I jerk in response. “Ada, we must stop,” I protest, but she does not listen, and I do not want her to listen. Her lips move over me, and I feel her tongue lick my length. I groan and put my hands against the sides of her head. The feeling is beyond anything I have experienced before, yet an annoying sense of clarity robs me of this moment. I cannot do this. I cannot say yes to her terms because it will mean I am saying yes to her inevitable absence. I will never accept that.
Although my horns are pulsating in time with my hard cock, I step back. I refuse to receive her attentions conditionally. Not like this. “Ada, I cannot.”
She looks confused. “But I can help you this way.”
“No. If we continue this, I will take you. I will throw you on the floor and penetrate you from behind, do you understand? I will make you as wet as I am hard, plunge deep into your cunt, and never let you go.”
Ada looks at me with soft, big eyes. She is still on her knees. I can tell she wants me as much as I want her. Using a resolve I did not know I possessed, I turn my back on her.
I walk out of the room, down the tunnel, past the bathing area and then the living area, and out of the cave to the water’s edge. It sparkles against the light of day, almost mocking me with its resolute cheeriness. I jump into the water and swim as far out as I can go. I let the waves crash against my shoulders. The pounding in my horns is so intense I can hardly see. Around me, there is only the roar of the waves and the blood in my own ears.
She offered herself. I could have taken her right there against the wall of the cave. I could have ripped her clothes off and plunged my fingers into her hot, wet cunt. She would have let me. She would have enjoyed it. I could have pushed her head down, watched her suck my cock until I was ready to explode. I could have picked her up, spread her thighs open, and pushed myself inside her. I can almost feel her around me.
Stopping in the water, I grab my cock and pull, trying to find some release from this torture, but I know it will never work. My body is designed to bring relief only when I have mated. I must sink my cock into my lover’s juices. My own hand can do nothing to help me.
But Ada can.
I groan. She will never know how close I came to throwing her down on the floor of the cave. How close I came to pushing her down onto her hands and knees and licking her before parting her ass cheeks and fucking her from behind. My horns scream at the thought of her taste. If it was hard to bear before, it is even worse now that I know exactly how her body feels beneath me; I know the flavorful tang of her cunt. My arousal, where once dormant, is now a living thing with its own mind—disinterested in my emotions or my fears. It wants only one thing: a thing that Ada has offered me willingly.
But if I take her up on her offer, she will not allow us to bond. She will be happy to separate with me when her mission is complete. This cannot be. Even if we do not bond, even if she refuses to accept the bond, I will never be whole again. Elysium males emotionally connect to our mates within an instant, whether bonded or not. Clearly, this is not the case with humans. Humans take more convincing, and we are not exactly in the most ideal situation for convincing to occur. Not with her crew hanging over our heads.
I dive back under the surface of the waves, feeling the cool water sluice against my painfully hot horns. The only other option is to refuse her body and accept the rest of her proposal. Which means I must up my time frame. I will have to return to the chuktah pod I so recently plundered rather than finding a new one. This will be a very dangerous endeavor. I must retrieve the amount of currency necessary to buy my ship as soon as possible. Once we have the ship secured, we will go in search of her friends.
And then, I will take my mate and her crew and get off this planet.
And somehow, I will use this time to convince her she is mine.
I turn and swim for shore, thinking of her the whole way home.
He took off like a shot after my proposal. I know I shouldn’t be embarrassed. He’s made it clear that he wants me, after all. But I’m surprised to find that not only am I embarrassed to have offered myself up like that, even worse, I’m disappointed. I’m shocked to realize I was looking forward to it. The idea of him wrapped around me—his arms, his mouth, his cock. I can’t help it. I am tempted. I am curious. And if he had said yes, I would have had the perfect excuse to have a taste of sex with an alien. Not just any alien; a giant, gorgeous, green alien who I’m pretty sure will be an amazing bed partner. Even more shocking is the idea that I genuinely like this alien because he didn’t take me up on my offer. He didn’t take advantage of the situation.
He really does have a ton of integrity!
Shit. I seriously like the guy.
Which means sex with him would not be clinical. It would not be a business transaction. It would mean more, which is emotional quicksand for me. I closed the doors on my damaged heart a long time ago, and I’m seriously perturbed by how easily this alien devil has flung those doors wide open.
But he said no, and that’s for the best…the sex part anyway, but now I’m left with no way to convince him to help me find my friends.
I sigh heavily and look up at the bits of blue sparkle attached to the ceiling of the cavern and then set my sights on the coziness of the cave. It wouldn’t be so bad to stay here a couple days if I didn’t have responsibilities. As it stands, I’m the captain, and this is my job. I can either sit here and wallow in some serious self-pity, or I can take action. Squaring my shoulders, I make a mental list of what I need to do before I can leave.
Step one: find my clothes.
※※※※
An hour later, I’m still looking, but there are so many nooks and crannies in this enormous cavern. Did he throw them away? Where the hell are they? The longer he’s gone, the more angry I feel that he just took off like that. Not only was it a super frustrating rejection, with a hell of a lot hanging on the line, but he couldn’t even stay to help me get my shit organized.
I walk to the front of the cave, hoping to see him at the entrance.
I most definitely do not find the alien I’m looking for.
Instead, I walk directly into a Chassak hunting party. Pretty sure they’re hunting, anyway. The assortment of bizarre looking guns and lethal looking steel doesn’t give me the impression they came for a disco party. I stare at them, stunned. They seem less surprised to see me, which scares me even more. It’s like they’ve been searching for me and just happened to know where Kyllell’s oh-so-secret hidey-hole was located.
If I survive this, I plan to give Kyllell an earful.
There are three of them, all with varying heights to their quills. I eye those damn quills with some serious trepidation. Just how many Chassaks can I incapacitate before I get hit with more poison? The one in front has his quills lying flat on his back. Until he sees me, of course, and then they start to rise, as if preparing themselves for launch. It’s the creepiest thing ever.
The one with the tallest quills in the back shouts an order. “Retrieve the female.”
I don’t give them time to carry it out.
Normally, I’m all about fighting rather than fleeing, and I’m a bit of an adrenaline junkie, but even I’m not reckless enough to take on all three of these guys at once. Better to pick them off one-by-one if I can swing it. I turn and run back into the cave. I’m barefoot, and this cave is like a maze, so I don’t have a clear plan, and my feet aren’t exactly insulated against the rocky flooring. I wince as a sharp area of the floor slices my toe, but my adrenaline soon blocks out the pain. The Chassaks ar
en’t far behind me. I look around, desperately searching for a place to run. I choose a short corridor with a sharp turn, hoping they’ll lose track of me at the curve, giving me time to find a proper hiding place.
The Chassaks are calling out orders to each other, sounding like a well-oiled military team.
“My right,” one of them hisses, and then silence falls as I continue running.
It’s weirdly quiet, this nerve-racking chase. I’m trying to be as careful and noiseless as possible, hoping I can find a way to disappear. The Chassaks are quiet too, occasionally speaking to each other in a whispered hiss that faintly echoes. I can hear the dripping of water in the cave as I run for my life.
I dive into a small tunnel, trying to squirm into a hiding spot, when I feel a claw-like hand grip my ankle. At this angle, the only thing I can do is use my other leg to kick backward. I hear a satisfying crunch as I make contact. I’m thinking I broke the guy’s nose since I doubt my kick was powerful enough to break through the armor plating on his chest. It doesn’t seem to slow him down, though. I’m pulling myself forward again when sharp claws dig into my leg and shred my skin as he jerks me back. The pain is instantaneous, giving me tunnel vision for a moment. I’m pretty sure I’m about to be sick.
I break my silence, screaming, “Kyllell!” at the top of my lungs. I fear it’s a futile scream. My future flashes before me. Kyllell will come home and find I’ve disappeared. He’ll assume I left him after his blunt refusal. It doesn’t sit well with me. Well, obviously, being kidnapped by these alien thugs wouldn’t sit well with anyone, but I don’t want Kyllell to assume I up and left without thanking him for everything he’s already done for me.
Without saying goodbye.
He deserves that much from me, at least. He’ll have no idea I was abducted and sold as a slave by snake-porcupines. I’ll live the rest of my life hauling water in a desert, or picking some kind of thorny crop on a far-flung planet outpost. I’ll be taken off the planet by some Chassak leader who will use me to empty alien garbage cans in outer space, or this soldier, whose claws are still shredding the hell out of my leg, will choose to keep me for himself. He seems perfectly happy to grope my ass as he pulls me from my hiding spot.