Bears of Burden: STERLING

by Candace Ayers

  Chapter Six

  “Aubrey,” she heard her name being called through the haze of fog that separated her from full consciousness. She groaned, trying to open her eyes. “Aubrey, wake up.”

  She groaned again, her eyes fluttering open this time. The room was flooded in blue, strobing lights. Thinking the blue was electricity, she shot up into a sitting position, sharp pains shooting through the top of her back. She covered her ears against the sirens that filled the air. Zarek wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close. After a second, she pulled away, looking around the room. They were back in his enclosure, in the shadowy corner now lit by the strobing lights. She shifted around in his arms to survey the damage. Glass covered the center of the floor. There was a whole in the ceiling.

  “It was you,” she whispered. “You saved me.”

  He moved around her to look at her back. “I am sorry for the scratches. My talons aren’t exactly precision points, you know?”

  She stood, walking toward the center of the room.

  “Is it dead?” she asked, referring to the blue creature.

  “Yes.”

  She looked down, ashamed. She wished the beast didn’t have to die. It wasn’t his fault. He shouldn’t have been here. He shouldn’t have been caged. He shouldn’t have been captured at all. She thought of Zarek’s home planet. None of these creatures should have been there. They belong in their own homes, on their own planets, with their own families.

  Zarek watched her as she thought. He approached her, putting his arm around her waist.

  “It is not your fault,” he whispered into her ear. Several of her curls had fallen out of her ponytail. His words made the strands move, tickling her ear, sending chills down her neck, down her arms, down her back. She shivered. She had grown used to his nakedness, but suddenly it was different. She looked away from him, blushing.

  “None of this is your fault,” he said. “I wish…”

  He leaned closer, his warm breath tickling her ear again, her jaw, her neck. He drew back a little, his still smoldering eyes darkening.

  “I wish…” he repeated, leaning in again, brushing his still hot lips over hers. She felt as if her lips would melt into his. She couldn’t help but kiss him back. She couldn’t help but push her lips farther into his. The tingling she had felt turned into a warm fire that spread downward, heating her core. He put the tips of his fingers on her neck, traced back to her ear, around her ear, down her cheek, then back to the side of her neck again. He started to pull away, but she wanted more. She pressed her lips against his again. He groaned, putting his arm around her waist, pulling her closer to him, against his firmly muscled abdomen. He swiped his tongue against her lips parting them, tracing the sides of her tongue with the tip of his, then pulling his tongue out to trace her lips. She sighed. He groaned again, pulling her even closer. Then, he pulled away.

  “I wish…” he repeated hoarsely, turning away.

  She watched him as he faced the door to the aquarium. Then, she saw movement in the control room. Robert was watching them. She wondered how long he had been there. He scanned his ID badge and door opened. Her father entered the anteroom behind Robert. They simply stood in the anteroom, though, even after the blue lights stopped flashing.

  What were they waiting for?

  She soon found out what they were waiting for when the armed men dropped from ropes out of a hole in the ceiling. Once on the ground, the men pointed their guns at Zarek. Zarek held his hands up. Robert and Raymond entered the room. The military men inched closer and closer to Zarek, circling around him.

  “Stop!” Aubrey shouted. None of the men responded to her. They didn’t even look toward her. “Don’t hurt him!”

  Aubrey’s father hurried toward her. He grabbed her by the arm, digging his fingers into her skin.

  “Shut up!” he commanded.

  “But he didn’t do anything but save me!” she cried. “He saved me!”

  “I said, shut up, Aubrey! Shut up!”

  By then, he had dragged his daughter to the door of the control room.

  “Please, don’t let them hurt Zarek!” she cried as he shoved her into the anteroom after Robert. He followed her in. She beat on the glass door as it shut, her father holding her back.

  The men began beating Zarek. She watched as he knelt in front of them. They hit his shoulders, kicked his stomach, slammed the barrels and stocks of their guns against his back. She watched as he slumped to the ground, bleeding and bruised.

  She tried to breathe slowly, like he taught her. If she had any chance, if Zarek had any chance, she would have to calm down enough to tell her father what was going on.

  She took a few more breaths before beginning to explain. “Zarek and his people are a peaceful race. Their world was destroyed. They found an area in New Mexico where they thought they could settle. It’s a desert, just like their home planet. It’s abandoned. No one lives there. His people just wanted a place to settle. They don’t want to hurt anyone. The only reason Zarek escaped this room, the only reason he turned into a dragon and caused so much damage, was to save me from that beast upstairs.”

  “And?” her father glared down at her.

  “And, he saved me, your only daughter, from death,” she repeated, trying to hold her temper in check. A cold, hard truth hit Aubrey in that moment. She finally saw her father for what he was—a repulsive tyrant. She wanted to spit at him.

  “A death that would have been completely your fault,” he stared into her eyes as he said this.

  She couldn’t hold her temper any longer. “He saved your only daughter and you don’t give a shit. I know I’m not perfect. I never have been. I never will be. But, I’m your damned daughter. This man saved my life! You are the president of this company and you have the chance to save his life. If you are any kind of father, any kind of man, you will return his favor and spare his life.”

  She had taken a step closer to him, had looked up into his face, had met his eyes. He stared back for a second before slapping her across the face. As she reeled backward, her father turned toward the military men and Zarek. Zarek, Aubrey noticed, had seen the blow. Zarek’s skin was starting to turn into green scales. His fingers were becoming talons.

  “I knew you were going to blow it,” her father spat on the ground in front of her before scanning his ID and entering Zarek’s enclosure.

  “Enough!” he yelled to the men. “We need to keep him alive. We still need samples.”

  Aubrey saw Zarek start to lunge toward her father. He held himself back, though, forcing himself to breathe, forcing his scales to retreat back into his human form.

  Chapter Seven

  Surprisingly, Aubrey’s father didn’t fire her. He did, however, make sure she was assigned more tasks. She had been volunteering to stay late, but now, she was ordered to stay late. She was in charge of both the day and evening sample-collecting and feeding, as well as the cage-cleaning, a task that was usually performed by low-level interns. She, the leading female biologist in the country, was in charge of cleaning cages. Every day. Every evening. No weekends off. There was one advantage to this situation, though. She got to spend more time with Zarek. In fact, every night since the event, she had been staying past ten o’clock so she could linger in Zarek’s enclosure. Tonight, a week after the incident, was no different.

  “Your wounds are healing quickly,” she observed, looking at the fading bruising on Zarek’s arms and the shrinking gouges on his chest and shoulders. They sat in their usual spot, the shady corner of Zarek’s aquarium, in their usual position, facing each other cross-legged. The enclosure had been repaired. The walls had been reinforced with extra layers of glass.

  “Yours, too,” he said softly.

  Aubrey looked at him quizzically.

  “The ones on your back,” he clarified. “I sense less pain in you every day.”

  “They are healing. You can sense my pain?” she asked. She had often sensed his pain, had even felt it occasional
ly, but she had been too embarrassed to tell him.

  “Yes,” he answered her. “But the real question is, how do you sense my pain?”

  Aubrey sat up straighter. “How did you know?”

  “Parizakians can sense things in others. We can sense physical sensations and emotions. Humans can’t do this, correct?”

  “Correct,” Aubrey answered. “Well, mostly correct. I mean, some humans have more empathy than others, but no, humans can’t sense anything with much intensity.”

  “You sensed my pain when you put the needle in my vein.”

  “Yes…”

  “You saw my stories.”

  “Yes…,” Aubrey answered. “But that’s not normal for a human.”

  “Why does your father treat you so cruelly?” Zarek asked, showing that he sensed more than her physical pain.

  “I don’t know,” Aubrey said, looking down at her hands.

  “Come here,” Zarek held up his arm indicating for her to move beside him. She tentatively did so. She wasn’t afraid of him, but she was afraid of her feelings for him. She was beginning to feel more than lust, and that “more than lust” was also more than impossible. He was an alien creature, and if things worked out, and she hoped for his sake they did, he would be returning to his own people very soon.

  Aubrey sat stiffly, but as Zarek began caressing her arm and nuzzling his head into her hair, she relaxed. She felt her body melting into his.

  “I’ll make a deal,” Zarek said. “If you tell me about your father, I’ll tell you more about my planet.”

  Aubrey smiled. She had grown to love hearing about his planet.

  “Deal,” she said.

  “My Mom died when I was little,” she explained mechanically, using the same words she had used to tell the story to every psychologist she had ever visited. “I lived with my grandparents for a while. They were Brazilian, like my mom. Then, my grandfather died. He had a heart attack. My grandmother was aging, too. She couldn’t take care of me anymore. I moved back to the States to live with my dad. I don’t know why he hates me.”

  “Aubrey,” Zarek put his fingers under her chin, raising her head so he could look into her eyes. She wanted so badly to close the gap between their lips. “Aubrey, tell me something you haven’t told twenty other people.”

  Zarek put his hand over her heart before he continued. “Tell me something that comes from here.”

  Aubrey slowly let out the breath she had been holding. She looked down again. “I think my dad hates me because I’m not worthy to be my mother’s daughter. My mother was beautiful. I can still see her in my mind, her dark hair shining, sparkling as the sunlight streams from the open balcony doors behind her.”

  Aubrey looked up at Zarek, tears in her eyes. “Zarek, she was so beautiful, so, so, beautiful, and I’m—”

  “Just as beautiful,” Zarek cut her off with a whisper. “Aubrey, you are absolutely the most beautiful female I have ever seen.”

  Zarek closed the distance between their lips, kissing away the tears that had made it down to her mouth. Then, he pulled away, kissing her tear trails up to her lower eyelids. He drew her in for a hug, rocking her and holding her for a few moments. Then, she pulled away, wiping at her face with her fingers.

  “Your turn,” she said, trying to smile, “You promised.”

  “Alright,” he said, clearing his throat. “My mother and father found each other early, even for Plarizakians. You see, we are born with mates, in a way. I believe the word is destiny. We each have a mate that is our destiny. There is a connection that we feel when we meet our destined mate. It is undeniable. We can feel our mate’s pain; we can sense their emotions, but it is more than that. When we feel the pain and emotions, we feel it as though the feelings are ours, too. It is like we are that person. Their experiences are our own. It is intense.”

  “But—” Aubrey said, remembering how she had felt Zarek’s pain and experienced his memories as if they were all her own.

  “Allow me to finish,” he said, laying back, pulling her down beside him. She nuzzled into his side. “Most Plarizakian mates meet in their teens, some as late as their twenties, but my parents met when they were four. They were always inseparable. They especially loved playing Claxianica.”

  “What’s—?” Aubrey tried to ask.

  “Shhh,” Zarek shushed her. “It’s a game we play while we’re in dragon form. It’s like juggling and baseball and basketball and acrobatics all in one. Anyway, they would always play this game, but as they grew older, my father’s friends would tease him for playing the game with a girl. No Claxianica team had a girl member then, but my mother was quite good at the game. So good that, other teams started picking up girl members. My dad was always so proud of her. He told us stories about their games all the time.”

  “You said ‘us’,” Aubrey pointed out. “Were you talking about your brother, too?”

  Zarek’s eyes went dark. His voice was deeper. “Yes, my brother. He was nine when the Nefarianics attacked. I tried to save him. I was leading him to the ship. I was trying to help him avoid the Nefarianics, but…I… I couldn’t save him. It was my fault.”

  Aubrey rose enough to lean on her elbow. “Zarek, it wasn’t.”

  Zarek looked down. “It was.”

  “Oh, Zarek,” Aubrey whispered, leaning toward him. She kissed his lips. Then, she kissed along the cut of his jawline, and down his neck. He placed his hand firmly on the back of her neck, pulling her lips back to his and keeping them there.

  “Don’t stop,” he whispered between kisses.

  Aubrey didn’t stop. She pushed her lips harder into his, parting his lips with her tongue. She ran the tip of her tongue along the side of his, withdrawing it to trace his lips again. He leaned over, guiding her head to rest on his other arm, which was still on the ground. He pulled his lips away from her, tracing a path up her jaw to breathe lightly in her ear. He twisted a loose strand of her curly hair around his finger and traced her jugular firmly with his tongue, biting lightly on the base of her neck, sending shivers of pleasure through her.

  “You are so, so beautiful,” he whispered hoarsely, looking up at her. She looked back into his heavy, sensually-darkened eyes.

  “Zarek,” she whispered through lips that felt swollen. “You said mates sense each other as if they are the same.”

  “Yes,” he answered, unbuttoning her dress shirt, pushing the cup of her bra down, and taking her breast in his hand, leaning down to trace the edges of her nipple with his tongue.

  “But when I felt your pain and saw your memories, I felt as if they were mine,” she said.

  “I know,” he said, taking her nipple between his lips. She gasped. Her back arched. She closed her eyes.

  “But, does that mean,” she finally exhaled the words.

  “Shhhh,” he said. She obeyed. She couldn’t speak, anyway. He pulled her shoes off as she sat to take off her top layers of clothing. When she was completely naked, he ran his hands down the length of her sides. His gaze followed his hands, a look of awe in his eyes. As he caressed her ribs, her waist, her full hips, her inner thighs, he looked at her as though she really was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. His kisses followed the center of her torso, down to her belly button, down to her abdomen, down to her hips. He pushed her legs apart, gently caressing her inner thighs with his thumb.

  Aubrey breathed in sharply through her teeth, reaching down to lace her fingers with his free hand as her hips moved up, wanting him. He stroked the fingers of his other hand farther up her thighs. His index finger caressed her lower lips, slick with her desire. Then, his tongue did the same. A molten heat shot through her core as his tongue caressed her small bud of nerve endings. She raised her hips against his tongue, entangling her fingers through his hair.

  Finally, he slid his finger inside her. She released a low moan at the intense spike of pleasure. His tongue continued to circle her clit as his finger slowly caressed her vaginal walls by sliding in and
out. His tongue flicked firmly, and she bucked against him. She couldn’t wait. She had to have him inside her—now. She tugged on his hand, trying to get him to rise. He obeyed, bringing his face near hers, nuzzling into her neck so he could kiss and lick and lightly bite.

  Then, he entered her. His alien member was large, larger than a human male, but felt unbelievable—like nothing she’d experienced before. She cried out in ecstasy from the most intense pleasure she had ever felt.

  “You are so beautiful,” his voice was thick and gruff, sex roughened. His incredibly hard shaft moved with short strokes, deeper and deeper inside her. She grasped his hips, feeling the muscles of his ass tighten and loosen with each stroke. Her hips rose and fell in perfect rhythm.

  “You are so beautiful,” he repeated. Then, he added the word “mate.”

  Aubrey gasped. Had he just said “mate”? Perhaps she wasn’t thinking straight. Her body was taking over her mind. The tingling in her core became waves of pleasure until, finally, the tension broke. Orgasmic waves rushed through Aubrey’s body. She exhaled, her eyes clenched shut, her head back. But the pleasure didn’t stop, Zarek kept moving in and out of her, throbbing inside her, her over-sensitized nerve endings picking up on each movement. Aubrey looked up at Zarek. He looked down at her, their gazes held, his dark hair slick with sweat, his eyes dark with pleasure. Suddenly, she felt his pleasure, too, and as he found his release, she came for the second time.

  Chapter Eight

  Aubrey hurried through her duties the next day. She couldn’t wait to get back down to visit Zarek. Finally, at ten o’clock that night, Aubrey entered the control room that led into Zarek’s enclosure, expecting him to be standing next to the door as he usually was. Zarek, though, was sitting in his shaded corner.

  Aubrey scanned her badge and entered the anteroom, suddenly wondering if Zarek was regretting the events of the previous night. For her, being with Zarek had been the most intensely pleasurable experience of her life, but maybe the experience hadn’t been the same for him.