Zuran spoke to him then, his voice shrieking through the cave-like room. The A’li-uud behind me, a rough-faced male called Yazzi, leaned forward and said quietly, “He wants to know if the sickness poses a risk of spreading to A’li-uud or humans.”
I could’ve answered that. It didn’t. This wasn’t a virus lingering in the air or spewing from body fluids; this was a circumstantial reaction to conditions. The Novai around us now could travel back to Dhal’at with us and curl up in bed with the patients, and they wouldn’t get the sun-sickness either unless they too spent an extended period of time living on the planet rather than on their ships.
Captain Hett made a similar claim, as Yazzi whispered. I tapped Zuran’s arm to get his attention. “I want to know what he can tell me about the dark clusters beneath the skin,” I said.
Zuran interpreted my request to Hett, who responded with, “Historically, our race bore scales on select parts of the body. They were unique to the individual, much like our ridges.” He fluttered a hand over his face to indicate the protrusions across his cheeks and forehead. “It is difficult to identify the clusters you speak of without seeing them, particularly as I have not witnessed a case of sun-sickness, but I believe what you are seeing is a regrowth of the scales.”
“Is there anything in the records about treatment?” I questioned. “Do you know if there’s a cure?”
“Unfortunately, no,” he answered. “This is a condition every Novai will encounter if we ever wish to settle permanently.”
“But the mortality rate is so high…” I protested.
Hett tilted his head. I wished I could see his eyes to figure out his emotions, especially because Zuran’s translations weren’t necessarily conveying Hett’s attitude. “The process is indeed traumatic to the system, but the sun-sickness is a reality for our kind. The strongest will survive and flourish, and the weakest will perish.”
It sounded heartless, but I understood where he was coming from. They clearly didn’t want to continue living indefinitely in space, yet finding a permanent home risked their survival. If that was a risk they were willing to take, I couldn’t fault them. The only part about it that bothered me was that the colonists weren’t told about the sun-sickness before they were sent down to Albaterra, which I felt was an oversight even though the Novain leaders seemed to be under the impression they’d evolved into immunity.
“So, there’s nothing we can do?” I asked, wanting to make sure.
“There is nothing anyone can do,” came Hett’s reply. “They will survive, or they will not.”
I pursed my lips. Clearly, the efforts of the healers and doctors working around Albaterra were futile for all but one reason: to keep the Novai under control until they met their fate or pulled out of it. There was only one question left to be asked.
“What can we expect the survivors to become?”
Captain Hett spread his hands. “They will become whatever nature intends them to be.”
Chapter Sixty-One
Zuran
After spending time in the Novai mother ship, returning to our own was a bit like stepping back into the archaic age. Our command center, while sleek and polished instead of rugged and disorganized, felt disappointingly unequipped. The ship itself had seemed more than spacious enough when we left, but now its corridors and rooms were narrow and confining. It was what I was comfortable with, though, so I was not displeased to board again and watch the plate-shaped Novain vessel fade into the galactic abyss.
“I can’t believe it’s over,” Phoebe said softly.
We were standing against the window while Venan directed the Navigations Officer and the rest of the crew milled about. I glanced from the window to her.
“What is over?”
“The hospital. Our task.” She pressed her fingertip against the glass as if trying to touch one of the billions of stars. “There’s nothing we can do except make sure the Novai don’t kill anyone until they either get better or end up dying themselves. Just like that, we’re back to where we were before all of this.”
I studied her carefully and asked, “Does this upset you?”
She shifted a little uncomfortably and shrugged. Her eyes were slightly downcast, and her chin was puckered as if she was overcome with emotion. “Kind of, yeah,” she answered. I heard sadness in her voice. “I hate not being able to help people who need help. I hate watching people struggle for their lives. And…” She paused and glanced up at me uncertainly through her lashes. “…I didn’t have you before all this.”
“You are worried we will go our separate ways?” I questioned.
“Yeah,” she said in a small voice. “I guess I am.”
I looked at her for a moment, stunned to hear this was her great fear and even more stunned she could think I would want that. Then, I took her hand. “Come with me,” I commanded.
Pulling her away from the window, I wove through the command center and into the corridor. “Where are we going?” she asked. I did not answer. I simply led her down the hallways until we reached the portion of the ship dedicated to bunks. None were in use, so I just chose the first door and guided her inside, closing the door behind us. I turned around to face her. She was watching me uncertainly.
“What are we doing here?” she wondered aloud.
I crossed the space between us until we were mere inches apart. “I need privacy for this,” I murmured.
She stood very still, poised for whatever was to happen next. I did not know if she was worried I was severing our relationship or not, but it was irrelevant. She would not wonder in a moment.
I leaned down and gently pressed my lips to hers, testing her reaction. She responded at once, not just with her lips but her whole body. Her chest flattened against me, her arms coiled around my neck, and her tongue plunged between my teeth. I suckled, relishing her flavor. Immediately, a deep ache rocketed through me from the deepest pit of my belly to my head. There was no denying what I was feeling anymore, no justifying it away or pretending it did not exist. I was not the impenetrable, eternal bachelor I had always imagined myself. Somehow, over the months, Phoebe had become my everything.
“I am going nowhere,” I breathed against her mouth. “I love you.”
She curled her fingers into the roots of my hair, steeled by my proclamation, and gazed up at me without breathing. I could feel her heart throbbing through her chest into mine. “I love you too,” she murmured.
In that second, my world changed.
I swept her up into my arms in a single swoop and buried myself in her. We were not just kissing now; her soul was spilling out of her throat through my lips, and I drank it in until I was drowning from the inside out. She clawed at my cheeks, desperate for more but limited by physical restrictions. I crossed the room to a bunk and dropped onto it, crouching my body over hers.
Her shirt was off in an instant, her bra following immediately after. I flicked my tongue over one of her round, pointed nipples as I fiddled with the clasp on her pants, and then I slid those off too. I was feverish with need, utterly starving, but I sat back on my heels and admired the sight of her nude, vulnerable body for a moment. She was perfect: luscious curves blended into sensual smoothness, shining green eyes peered up at me, an array of pale blonde hair framed a round, heated face. Beauty was displayed before me, and I was willing to leave myself wanting if it meant I could stare at her forever.
“I want to see you, too,” she whispered shyly. Her eyes sloped downward to my hips.
Ordinarily, I would have been pleased to forego my own physical pleasure to send her into the feral screams she made when I suffocated myself between her thighs, but she spoke so innocently, so sweetly, I was unable to deny her. I shuffled out of my own pants, kicking my boots to the side, and stood in front of her for her observance.
For a second, she did not speak. Her eyes grew as round as her cheeks, and her lips parted in surprise. Then, she said softly, “You are—I didn’t expect—whoa.”
I
glanced down at myself. I was already erect for her, throbbing with passion and yearning to experience her in a way I had yet to do.
“You’re going to tear me in two,” she breathed.
I crawled back onto the bed again, positioning myself between her legs. “If you are frightened, we will not do anything,” I told her. Then, I lowered my mouth to the sweet, dripping folds I had consumed as frequently as food in the recent days and began trilling my tongue over her sensitive bead. She responded at once, back arching and nipples hardening. Hearing her delight had become my favorite sound, and it sent a ripple of hot pleasure through me. I slithered my tongue up and down, then circled in the manner I knew drove her wild. Her hand flew down to clutch my scalp, and her hips lifted.
“I’m not frightened,” she gasped through a moan. “I want you.”
Crooking a brow to silently ask her if she was certain, I secured my lips around the button and suckled just as I loved to do on her nipples and tongue. Her moan broadened to a low, pulsing wail.
“Please!” she begged.
I sat up on my knees, took my girth in my hand, and led the tip to her soaking petals. She raised her hips further to greet me. Just as I was about to ask if she was absolutely sure, she jerked her body forward, and I careened inside her like a rocket.
My senses shattered. I had never felt anything so wonderful in my life, warm and soft and tight and slick, but the feeling that filled me was far more powerful than the sensations I experienced. Love in its most sweltering, heady, devouring form took me over, stripping me of every ounce of emotional control I possessed and saturating me in unconditional devotion. And staring up at me through those riveting green orbs was a deep reverence of which I never could have imagined myself worthy.
I thrust, and she groaned. I thrust again, and her back lifted another few inches. Bending forward, I took one of her presented nipples into my mouth and rolled the tip of my tongue around the velvety, thin skin just as I plummeted forward a third time. The moan that cascaded from her lilted into a squeal of overstimulation, but I had only just begun. I rocked my hips and caressed her most sensitive spot with my length, massaging her nipple with my lips, and skimmed a hand between us to flutter a fingertip over the bead I had just been lapping. Her nails stabbed into my flesh.
“My god, Zuran!” she panted. Her syllables faded in and out as she spoke, so absent was her breath, and I could feel her body starting to react solely of its own accord. She was my instrument to play, and I would play until she heard the marching of the gods.
Again and again, I barreled into her. Each pump was faster than the last, deeper than the last, until there was no longer rhythm and we were frenzied. My finger scrawled across her hooded bump, and my tongue skittered over her breast. She gasped for breath and sang a melody of moans into my ears, and I groaned against her nipple. I was close, so close…
Then, she grabbed the back of my neck so hard I was sure the flesh would tear away, and her moans turned to shrieks I had never heard from her mouth before. She bucked beneath me, her body lifting and dropping and lifting and dropping. Her soaking walls clenched around me, and I exploded with her in climax. A tsunami of euphoric pleasure crashed into me. Every second was rife with popping sparks, nerves detonating, and muscles spasming.
When we slowed, I lowered my face into her neck and whispered against her hot, sweat-slickened skin, “I love you.”
Chapter Sixty-Two
Phoebe
P’otes-tat Ulti was a completely different place during the day, much like the Ka-lik’et market walk. Instead of having the same creepy atmosphere as a vampire castle, it looked like somewhere King Arthur would live: rustic and regal and whimsical all at once. The stones glittered in the warm white sunlight, and the windows sent great streaks of pearly reflections across the emerald lawn. The walls didn’t feel confining anymore, either. Set against the vibrant turquoise sky and its lavender clouds, they had an aura of exclusivity instead of isolation. I felt special here today instead of doomed.
Zuran’s mysterious scent continuously wafted past my nostrils with each gentle breeze, and my insides clenched every time I caught a new note within the aroma, be it the zest or the musk or the rich masculinity. I’d become addicted to him. My body craved his mischievous smile and dangerous eyes and affectionate touch so much that I didn’t feel right when he was away and I practically flew when we were together. He was the love of my life, but he was so much more than that. Love didn’t seem like strong enough a word.
We’d been back home in Ka-lik’et for about three weeks. After returning from our visit to the Novai mother ship, we brought our newly-acquired information to the Council and returned to the hospital. For two months, I tended to the transitioning patients and did the best I could to keep them comfortable until they met whatever fate they were destined to have. Unfortunately, of the six Novai in our care, four died shortly after their skin had turned almost completely gray. The two who survived, however, were startlingly rehabilitated. It was common knowledge prior to the onset of the sun-sickness that the Novai were a temperamental race; there had even been cases of Novai attacking humans and A’li-uud in Pentaba around their camp. Our two survivors, however, were more level-headed and even-tempered at the end of their recovery than they’d been before they even started suffering the sickness. Their voices became deep rumbles instead of horrid, ear-piercing screeches, and the clusters Captain Hett predicted to be scales turned out to be exactly that. If someone put the patients beside several Novai crewmembers in space, anyone would’ve assumed they were perhaps a cousin species rather than the same race. It was incredible to see the transformation through to its end, especially when distinctive features began appearing—for example, one survivor’s eyes faded from bright red to vibrant orange while the other’s somehow morphed into a green identical to mine. Amazingly, I came out of the experience more passionate than I’d ever been in the medical field despite having lost two-thirds of our patients, and I returned to the colony infirmary with renewed energy.
“They had better start this soon,” Zuran murmured, leaning over to place his lips near my ear. “I need to get you home.”
I tried to hide the smile threatening to break through and swatted the hand he skimmed up my thigh. One of the few things I wasn’t looking forward to about my return to Ka-lik’et was living in separate quarters from Zuran again. It turned out I didn’t need to worry about that. He moved me into his own personal home the same day we returned.
“Behave,” I hissed. “This is Venan’s day.”
He caught my fingers in his and nipped my lobe with his teeth. “Give me another order,” he said. I could hear the grin in his voice.
“Why?”
“I want as many reasons as I can get to justify what I am going to do to you the second the door closes behind us.”
A shiver of thrill raced up my spine, and he chuckled as I twitched. He was impossible. And I loved him for it.
“You can do whatever you want to me if you’ll just sit quietly and watch your brother’s dreams come true,” I whispered.
True to form, he sat back and closed his mouth, staring fixedly to the front. I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t stop the smile from finally splitting my lips. Only Zuran could be at the Elder City to watch his twin’s Elderhood inauguration while managing to make me squirm with desire. He was so exciting, the eternal bad boy with a heart of gold. I didn’t think I’d ever get enough of him.
If I was being honest with myself, though, I wished they’d hurry up too. The crowd who’d gathered to watch the new Elder’s inauguration—which steeped to somewhere near two hundred—had been seated on the P’otes-tat Ulti lawn for nearly a half hour now, and more than a few were becoming antsy. I’d been very entertained to people-watch, or alien-watch, rather, for the first fifteen minutes, but I’d started to get bored and now I was sitting in a pool of my own arousal. If Venan wasn’t Zuran’s brother, I would’ve just gotten out of there and let Zuran find the ne
xt new spot on my body that made me squeal.
“He is going to be insufferable, you know,” Zuran commented. He leaned close to me again so as not to bother those around us with his remark. “Now that he’s going to be an Elder and all.”
I shot him a knowing look. “What, you’re going to be afraid to make fun of him the way you used to?”
“Of course not!” he exclaimed with mock horror. “Can you imagine? We would have no relationship left!”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“Oh, he will just be so puffed up,” he huffed. He wasn’t truly irritated, but I knew him well enough to know he was going to put some serious thought into developing a new repertoire of jokes and jabs.
I waved a dismissive hand and said sarcastically, “I don’t know how you’re going to manage getting through family dinners!”
He grabbed me so fast I didn’t see it coming and slid me into his lap. The A’li-uud neighboring us cast a variety of looks our way, some amused and others annoyed, but he clearly didn’t care anymore. Zuran needed to be stimulated most of the time, and he’d spent too many consecutive minutes waiting.
“That mouth clearly needs to be occupied,” he said in a low, dangerous voice, touching my lower lip with his finger.
“It does,” I agreed. “It’s been too long since you kissed me.”
He grinned and leaned in, and I met his kiss eagerly. It wasn’t a deep one as we were in public, but it was affectionate and warm and loving. I shivered again, this time with happy satisfaction. When we pulled back, I decided to antagonize him just a bit further to make later that much sweeter. “Can we be respectable guests now?”
The familiar glint flashed in his eyes, but he replaced me onto my own chair again. Before I could right myself to forward-facing, however, he turned my chin toward him and said, “One more thing.”
Zuran: A Paranormal Sci-Fi Alien Romance: Albaterra Mates Book 6 Page 25