Taken to Voraxia

by Elizabeth Stephens

  Her mouth is turned up at the corners in a sign of pleasure — at least, this is a pleasure expression for Voraxians. Does she make it now for me? I want to ask her these things, but too quickly she hides her mouth behind her hand and turns away.

  “Lead the way.”

  “Xhivey,” I repeat, taking her hand and resisting the urge to carry her once more. Being so close and yet, too far, is too becoming too painful. My xora squeezes and I will it into submission as we arrive at Krisxox’s door.

  I bang my fist on its sleek surface once, twice and then a third time and it opens at Krisxox’s muffled command. I wave my Rakukanna inside impatiently.

  She hesitates, then proceeds, shoulder brushing my chest as she comes to an abrupt stop just inside Krisxox’s quarters. I follow her gaze to the sleeping pallets and Krisxox strewn bare across them.

  “What have you done with Svera?” She says, and her voice is deeper, dusky with a hollow challenge.

  “Calm yourself, Rakukanna,” I tell her, “This is Krisxox. He general of my army, responsible for battle strategy as well as training the xcleranx. Voraxia’s most formidable fighter, he has been charged with keeping your traitor contained, and apart from the other males who would wish to mount her or be near to her to determine if she is their Xiveri mate.”

  My Rakukanna is fully tense. Fury radiates from her. This time, I need no ridges to interpret her feelings. “But what about him? He’s still…hard!”

  She points to the xora protruding from his hips and I feel momentary displeasure that she would look upon him there. I calm myself knowing that it is only on behalf of her kinsman. That she does not want Krisxox. And Krisxox is disgusted by humans, as is the despicable Dra’Kesh way.

  “Krisxox mates only with Voraxian and Dra’Kesh females and as you can see, two have just recently vacated his quarters.” Traveling with his females is a concession I would only allow Krisxox. A shameful habit, yet Krisxox is a male who hardly cares for concepts like honor. Duty comes first for him. Loyalty, next. And after that, there is nothing else.

  My Rakukanna rounds on me, eyes blazing. “Then why is he still hard?”

  I tilt my head, inspecting my commander’s protruding xora. It is indeed as firm as she claims it to be. “It is not uncommon. Voraxian headed males with all three descended stones often need release multiple times a solar.”

  “Multiple…” She whispers. Her gaze drops to my bulging xora and it moves, as if at her command. “Are you…am I supposed to…we never said how many times. Our terms. How many times do you expect me to mate with you for what you promised?”

  Her vulgar question draws a lightness to the ridges above Krisxox’s brow. He is disgusted by my hybrid or perhaps by her words or both. Yet I am spared the need to slash him with my claws — or answer my Rakukanna’s perverse question — by the sound of a muted voice murmuring from Krisxox’s wet room.

  “Miari? Is that you?” The traitor says.

  I tense as my Rakukanna turns towards the sound of her slave name, and curse silently that Krisxox has heard it. Were he any other male, I’d steal his ears simply for the knowledge.

  “Svera?” My Rakukanna wades further into the room. She crosses it, gracefully avoiding any of the room’s few objects — or the seed spilled across the floor — and her small fists patter against the back of the door. “Svera, it’s me! Open up.”

  The door slides open and shut, taking my Rakukanna with it. Ignoring Krisxox’s masked stare, I cross the room and cock my ears forward so I can more easily hear the females’ discussion.

  “Are you okay?” My Rakukanna asks.

  There is a meek response and I recognize instantly in her tone that this human female does not possess fire equal to that of my Rakukanna, who quickly finds that the traitor’s wounds have been tended, her broken wrist easily repaired. It would have been the first thing Krisxox did. I placed the female in his care. Though he may abhor other species, it would have been a slight to me to leave her wounded.

  Then the traitor says something strange. “My hair cover ripped when one of the males on the ship attacked me. Krisxox stopped them, but he wouldn’t give me a sheet to cover myself with.”

  My Rakukanna utters a curse that sounds like fawhk. I wonder about this, and also about the significance of the hair covering when my Rakukanna sticks her head out of the wet room. Starting at the sight of me standing so close, she blinks quickly, then pulls her shoulders in beneath her ears.

  “Why didn’t he give her the sheet?”

  “The covering for his sleeping pallet?” I say. She nods. “He does not have a translator. He would not have handed them over without understanding why she needed them.”

  My female huffs. “Well she needs a cloth to tie back her hair.”

  “It can be arranged,” I answer slowly.

  My Rakukanna glares and this time I know she thinks that I have grown too bold. I think the same. But my Rakukanna’s weaknesses are so easy to exploit. Like my own. She will do anything for her traitors. Anything. And the harder my xora grows, the harder it is to find shame in the hot recesses of my need.

  Perhaps, once my first rutting of her is complete, I will again recall the meaning of such concepts as honor and dignity, but for the moment these seem as distant to me as her own fawhk and many of her other human words that don’t translate properly.

  “What do you want?” She whispers.

  Curious, I tilt my head. “What else do you have to offer?”

  Her expression flattens, then hardens. Her mouth pillows disappear again into her mouth and she says in a rush, “We can kiss. During the mating, we can kiss.”

  “Miari!” The sound of the weaker human comes from behind her.

  My Miari — my Rakukanna — does not wince. “Deal?”

  I do not know what this kiss word means, but judging by my Rakukanna’s offering of it, and her own traitor’s reaction, it must be of value to her. Something she will not enjoy, but that she thinks I might.

  Too curious to deny her, I nod once. “Hexa.”

  Without turning, I bark over my shoulder for Krisxox to fetch the required cloth. He does so, but more slowly than I would have expected from any other of my warriors. He has always been disobedient.

  I rip the cloth from his hands, marshaling my anger, and shove it forward. The Rakukanna shuts the door, there is more shuffling, and the traitor is not restrained in her disproval.

  “You can’t, Miari…”

  “I can. It’s done. It was going to happen anyways. We’ve already made an agreement. My willingness for your safety and Kiki’s. I’m going to keep you safe. No matter the price.”

  I feel something wicked shift in my chest, a gelatinous mass that had existed from the moment we made our pact and now won’t stop growing.

  “Miari, you are a virgin. Does he know that?”

  “Yes, he does.”

  “That brute…”

  “Don’t worry about me. It’s actually…the deal we made is actually a good one. He’s going to help all the humans in exchange. He’s going to stop the Hunt.”

  That gives her pause. “But the cost, Miari…”

  “I’m not like you,” she says, emotion seeping into her pitch that makes that sludging mass behind my breast surge high, up into my thoughts, scrambling them. “I’m not Christian, or Jewish, or Muslim. I don’t need to get married or have a declaration of love before I give away my V-card. I don’t have expectations to have a husband and pop out babies. If I have to do any of this, then it might as well be here and now where it can do the most good for the people I care about. This isn’t a big deal.

  “I’ll do it long enough that I can make him happy and get you and Kiki back into the colony. As soon as I give him an heir — if I can give him an heir — then I’m sure he’ll get bored and his whole weird thing between us will fade and he’ll get excited for another girl and forget all about me. Maybe he’ll even be nice and let me go back with y’all to the colony.”

&nb
sp; “But I…”

  “No buts.” The door opens then and my Rakukanna reemerges. The other woman is behind her with Krisxox’s sheet fastened around her hair to conceal it from view, but for a few golden and sand-colored strands that whisper along her hairline. Neither Voraxian women or my own Rakukanna have this soft down, but the humans seem near entirely covered in it.

  “Are you ready?” My female says, gaze flicking up to mine as the wet room entrance slides shut behind her.

  I recognize immediately that my ridges have flared with dark light and cut it off, startling my Rakukanna. Xok. How can I lose focus so quickly around her? But I had. And I am still distracted by her words. Let her go? I knew these humans were of sub-intelligence, but I had not expected this level of ignorance in my own Xiveri mate even after I told her what was required of her. The price she agreed to pay is forever.

  I want to correct her here and now, and I want to ask her a plethora of questions about all of the words she uttered in her conversation with the human that I do not understand — mooslum? mer’rree? popawt? huzb and? lawv? — but I will have to do these things after.

  Because for now my Rakukanna has asked me a question and stares determinedly up at me. And there is only one answer.

  “Hexa.”

  7

  Raku

  She stands on the sleeping pallet. Even slightly raised as it is, she still does not come up to my chin, though it evens the gap between our respective heights. Her eyes are round again, but she does not cower and she does not run. She does not try to fight me. Instead, she places her hands on my bare shoulders.

  Her fingers are so soft they feel wet. Beautiful. Perfect. I want them around my xora, as per our pact, but she is hesitant, moving with a slowness I can barely stand but that I want to. The anticipation makes me wild.

  I yearn for her, yet the restraint I show pushes me even further into pleasure in ways I couldn’t have fathomed. I will not rush this moment. The most important I have ever had. The moment I make this female mine. The moment the Xanaxana claims us respectively, and then unites us as one.

  My robe issues a feathery whisper as it hits the paneled floor and my chest swells as I look into her eyes, the scent of melted sugar strong in my inhaled breaths. I hold the air in my lungs, hoping to savor it, and her blunted fingertips dig into my muscles as she looks at my mouth.

  Suddenly she tips forward and presses her mouth pillows to my own. I start and jerk away from her. She freezes. “Was that wrong?” She says, voice only half audible. “I’ve never done it before…”

  Done what before? I do not understand and rub my mouth, then use that same hand to rub hers. Xok, her sweet mouth pillows are even softer than the rest of her skin, though I hadn’t thought it possible. Mine are of the same texture as the rest of my hide. Hard enough to make me wonder if my skin on hers causes her abrasions. Shamefully, the only thought that I have in response is that it doesn’t matter. She will have to mate with me somehow.

  “You will tell me the name of this act, Rakukanna.”

  She looks away. I pull her back with my knuckle beneath her chin. “A kiss,” she huffs, doing an eye roll that I dislike immediately. With no variant to our eye shade, no Voraxian can master this look, so I have never seen it before this.

  “It’s what we traded for. You…you didn’t know what you were getting when we made the deal?” Her brow crease returns and one of the feathery strips of hair where her ridges should be lifts up towards the top of her head. What are these new expressions? Stop being so distracted. Only distracted isn’t the right word, is it? I am interested.

  I shake my head. “Nox. But I was curious. This act of mouth joining is kiss?” She nods her assent and I gesture her forward. “Proceed.”

  “You…you want me to try again?”

  “I do not know the reaction you seek, but I am curious enough to accept this offering.”

  More than curious. Eager. The thought of coupling my mouth with hers sends strange and alien thrills through me. This is not done on Voraxia — or any other constellation I have thus visited — why would it be? It serves no purpose for the act of breeding and is not even possible given the construction of the breeding harness. Mouths exist for taking in sustenance. Does she intend to try to eat me?

  The thought makes my mouth turn up in the pleasure expression I do not often experience. I have already determined that her little blunted teeth could do no damage to my hide. Thus, in this kiss act, there is no risk. Only the promise of that renewed rush, that piqued exhilaration.

  For the second time, she tilts her weight forward and presses her soft mouth to mine. Her slightly cooler skin warms quickly and I can feel blood heating her mouth pillows from below their too-thin dermis as she repeats this act again and again.

  My skin prickles, rough plates along my chest and arms and thighs lifting up, as they often do when I overheat and need to cool, but after only a few attempts, she pulls away.

  I try to hold her in place, but she stops me. “You…would you…I think you’re supposed to relax your lips.” She licks her mouth cushion and understanding dawns on me.

  Lips. Those are her lips.

  “Could you maybe part them…a little…” She exhales and her warm breath fans over my face. I lean in towards it, my lips slightly ajar as she requested, and when she presses her lips to mine again there is a burst of spice mixed in with the clean, windswept perfume of jujji berries that she wears like a cloud.

  A most intoxicating combination, I find that the smell is both coupled by the exquisite sweetness of her mouth, and compounded by it.

  She nips at my lower lip with her blunt teeth and lathes the bites with her tongue, sending sensations sparking through me. My own ridged tongue darts forth without instruction to taste more of that sweetness and she jolts when our wet tongues collide.

  She attempts to distance us, but my hands quickly snatch the back of her head and mold against her spine and when she whimpers, pleased, I grow lightheaded.

  I surge against her, crushing her mouth, but my Rakukanna surprises me because she does not flinch or remove herself from this act. From this kiss. Instead, she surges forward, meeting me tongue to tongue, lip to lip, breath to breath.

  I’m breathing hard now and when I open my eyes, I see hers are closed. I am pleased by the train of lashes that drip from the edges of her eyes. The high, arrogant Dra’Kesh tilt of her cheekbones. The flat, ridgelessness of her brow. The utter lack of sharpness to her features.

  Her head fits so neatly into my palm and as the kiss deepens I feel my Xanaxana come undone. I cannot wait for her to fist my xora or for me to explore her as I had intended to moments ago. This mating of mouths is too intoxicating.

  A tearing sound fills the room and my Rakukanna flinches when I pull the tatters of my tunic away from her red skin.

  “Beautiful,” I tell her as my gaze does a brief canvas of her body. She tries to turn away but I wrench her against my chest, eager to feel her weighted mounds against my plates.

  I had not realized that female mounds could be so large, or tipped by dark peaks, and I suddenly want to put my mouth on them. Even though I am no babe, I have to know if they taste just as spicy as her mouth does. Just as sweet.

  I wrench my mouth from hers and duck low enough to suckle her mounds. She cries out, just as she did in the freshwater tube when I took hold of her tail, and I grin rapturously against her flesh as I lathe the peaks dotting them, each one in turn. She likes this.

  “Raku…” she whispers and I’ll be damned to the universe’s lowest rung. The sound of my title on her tongue does things to me. I could sink cities for her, hearing her speak to me in such a way. “Please,” she begs and I shiver all over. Nox, not cities. Civilizations.

  She reaches one hand for her breeding folds but I am no simple male. Though I may be unfamiliar as yet with human anatomy, I saw what she liked in the wet room. I felt what made her shatter.

  She moves to press on her own swollen silk,
but I bat away her fingers and drape my palm over her full sex. “This is mine,” I bark and her whole body sways.

  Her knees start to collapse and I sweep them with one arm. I quickly discard my leg coverings and slide onto the pallet above my writhing Rakukanna. The Xanaxana is strong in her and, looking down at her body — knees bending and clenching together, hands fisting the covering on the sleeping pallet, dark peaks on her mounds reaching for the ceiling, and the lips on her face as swollen as those below her waist — I know that she has finally reached it. The Xanaxana has come for her.

  My chest soars with pride and gratitude and I shower this kiss all over my Rakukanna’s face. She grabs the back of my head and wrenches me to her mouth and we share in this act for a few moments, but they are too many because I cannot wait. I need to taste.

  I rake tongue and teeth down her body, wanting every inch of the jujji fruit her skin offers, before I finally reach the heady, musky scent of spices that spews from her folds. I latch on with my lips and spear her with my tongue and xok…she is so hot. Her skin is cool to my touch, but her insides are so warm. How can this be? And how will this feel wrapped around my length?

  I feel awash with incredulity at the thought and the Xanaxana in my stomach begins to beat its fist and more of my dark blue seed stains the white of the sleeping mat beneath us. I need to enter her, but not before I finish lapping up every ounce of the nectar she creates.

  She is thrashing now and I hold down her hips as I bury my face in her wetness. She screams my title loud enough I know all on the ship will hear her. I should care for her honor, but I do not. I want her to scream louder, harder.

  “Hexa,” I growl against her, “call for me, my Rakukanna.”

  “Oh stars,” she pants, the length of each breath coming shorter than the one before it. “Raku, please let me come.”

  I refocus my efforts on the mystical bit of flesh above her folds that seems to unleash an incredible amount of the nectar inside of her.