by Susan Hayes
She slammed the brakes on that line of thinking. Now was no time to remember the past, and whatever this Scorching was, it wasn’t going to last. A few days of hot sex and laughter, and then they would both go back to their regular lives.
He kissed her passionately, his lean, hard body settling into the cradle of her thighs and his cock nestled right against her entrance. She kissed him back, setting her hands on his powerful shoulders. She opened herself to him, one leg bent with her foot flat against the mattress.
They came together, the thick head of his cock sliding into her body at the perfect angle, sending a cascade of sensation sweeping through her.
He murmured something in another language, and once again his eyes flashed a brilliant gold.
“What was that?”
“We are one,” he whispered before kissing her with so much heat she wondered if the sheets were fireproof.
“Yes, we are, and it feels amazing.” She wriggled her hips. “Show me more, spaceman.”
He growled and thrust deeper, then withdrew and did it again. He was bigger than most of her other lovers, stretching her body in delightful ways. She rose up to meet his next thrust, moaning into his mouth as pleasure and pain blended into one breathtaking sensation. They’d barely begun, and she already knew the next two days would include some of the best sex of her life.
They raced each other up the scales of pleasure, both of them doing all they could to push the other to orgasm first. He groaned as she closed her teeth on his lower lip, and she gasped every time he shifted the angle of their bodies to ensure her clit was being caressed with every thrust. She tore her mouth from his to bury her head in the crook of his neck, breathing in his scent as she raked his back with her nails.
He shuddered and groaned her name, his strokes growing more urgent, his pace more unsteady. He pushed himself upward, his arms flexing as he opened space between their bodies. “Touch yourself, now,” he demanded.
She reached between her legs, working her clit between her fingers as he continued to fuck her with wild, eager thrusts. Soon, she was quaking, on the cusp of release.
He roared her name as he drove into her one last time. He erupted inside of her, his cock thickening until the pressure sent her spiralling into yet another orgasm. If the rest of their time together was this good, she’d happily pencil Torel in for more intergalactic hookups every time he came to Earth.
Chapter Four
They stayed together in a tangle of limbs for a long time, and when he finally eased himself off her, it was only to flop down beside her with a contented grunt.
“I second that,” she murmured, nestling into his side. It was another minute before she had the strength to open her eyes and look at him. His eyes were the colour of molten gold, now. “Your eyes look incredible.”
“As do yours.” He stroked his thumb over her cheek. “Do you wish to see for yourself?”
“Wait, what?” Adrenaline surged, erasing her post-coital fugue in an instant. “What about my eyes?”
“Humans mated to Pyrosians often have their eyes change colour, too. That information was to be revealed when Princess Maggie, Lisa, and Gwen arrived at the Gathering.”
“But I’ve seen pictures of the princess and the spokeswoman for the agency, their eyes weren’t gold.”
“Pictures can be altered, and contact lens were used to conceal the truth during live interviews.”
“You people sure have a lot of damned secrets.” She looked around the room for a mirror. “I want to see my eyes. What do they look like?”
He spoke some kind of command in his own language and a few seconds later the wall behind the bed turned into a mirror. She stared at her reflection in disbelief. “My eyes are gold?”
“They are.” Torel moved in behind her, looking into the mirror as well. “You look even more lovely this way.”
“But. Gold.” She waved at her reflection. “That’s going to be a little hard to explain to my parents. They already don’t approve of my life choices, and this little plot-twist isn’t going to help. Hey Mom and Dad, I banged a hot alien and these were a side effect. Surprise!”
He stared at her through the mirror, his expression suddenly stormy. “Why wouldn’t your parents approve of your choices? You are an intelligent, well-spoken, and attractive female. What choice did you make that they didn’t approve of?”
“If we’re going to talk about my parents, I’m going to need booze.”
“Booze?” he queried.
“Uh, liquor? Any kind of alcoholic beverage. Surely your species has that.”
“Ah, I see. Yes, we have alcoholic drinks. But, you really shouldn’t consume any, yet.”
“Why not?” The answer dawned on her a split-second later. “This is about my head injury, right?”
“It is. The medications you’ve been given would be impeded if you drank alcohol. You are not one hundred percent healed and won’t be for another day or so.”
“I find your diagnosis a little suspect. If I’m not healed enough to enjoy a drink, how can I be well enough to be doing the horizontal tango with you?”
This time, he caught her meaning without help. “If we hadn’t mated, we would both be suffering right now. It was a calculated risk, one I didn’t take lightly. If any of my colleagues had disagreed, I would have placed myself in stasis and waited for you to recover. That situation is currently playing out with another male who found his mate in the aftermath of the bombing. She was badly injured, and her recovery has been complicated. Keth had to be placed in stasis for his own protection.”
“Protect him from what, exactly? You said it would get very unpleasant for both of us if we didn’t mate.” She turned from the mirror to look at him directly. “You didn’t tell me everything, did you?”
He wrapped her in his arms and kissed her gently before answering. “If you had refused to mate with me, there were only two outcomes for me. Insanity, or death.”
“You should have told me!” She cradled his face in her hands, trying to understand why he hadn’t said anything.
“If I’d told you, would you have considered saying no?” he asked.
“Of course not!”
“And that is why I didn’t say anything. It had to be your choice.”
She stared at him, dumbfounded. “You’re crazy. It’s just sex, right?”
“It still had to be your decision. I saw what happened the last time we came to Earth. The females did not react well to their lack of choices. In the end, all of them choose to stay with their mates, but it was not an easy transition. Our situation is different, because, as you say, it’s a temporary sexual relationship, but I still wanted you to have a choice.”
“What would have happened to me if I’d said no?”
Torel was quiet for a long moment. “That is a question I can’t answer. You only have a small amount of Pyrosian genes, but it was enough to initiate the Scorching and change your eye colour. I didn’t consider the risk to you.” He bowed his head. “Forgive me.”
She nudged his chin back up so she could look into his eyes. “There’s nothing to forgive. This Scorching thing packs a serious punch. Neither of us has been thinking clearly.” Considering she’d just had sex with an alien from another planet, that might be the understatement of the year.
“This clarity of mind will not last long, either. Before it fades, I want to know why your parents aren’t proud of you.”
“If I can’t have a drink, how about something to eat? We can have a bed picnic while I tell you about my parents, and you can tell me something about yourself, too. We’re going to be together for two more days. I’d like to know more than just your name.”
“Food is a good idea.” He raised his head higher and spoke in his own language again, then lowered his voice and explained. “I just requested the computer send a service droid with a selection of food choices approved for human consumption.”
“How do you know which stuff to approve?” Once the
Scorching was over, Haley was going to sit down with Torel and anyone else she could find and start asking questions. Lots of questions. She was already envisioning a running series of stories about the Pyrosians and their quest for mates. There was so much to tell. It wouldn’t be an attack piece, but something informative, and hopefully interesting. This was going to be how she was going to prove herself to her father.
“I’ll tell you if you lie back down and rest while we wait for our meal.”
“Is this your subtle way of trying to tell me what to do again?”
“I wasn’t trying to be subtle. You need to rest while you can,” he said, gesturing to the bed.
“Bossy Torel is not my favourite. He’s not even in the top two,” she declared, but she settled back on the bed. The truth was, she did feel a little tired. Not that she was going to admit it.
“You don’t have to like him, but I hope you’ll listen to him anyway.” His tone softened as she did as he asked. “What are your top two, then? Or is that who? My language lessons didn’t include speaking about different parts of my own personality.”
“Oh, that’s easy. Growly Torel is my favourite, followed by the version of you that actually makes jokes and laughs. I’m not a fan of super serious Torel, either.”
He stretched out beside her on the bed and covered them both with a portion of the blankets. “I don’t think you’ll be seeing too much of him. For the next two cycles, I have been stripped of all duties but one – taking care of you.”
“Stripped of duty?” She didn’t like the way that sounded. “Why?”
“It’s a rule. No one experiencing the Scorching can be on active duty unless circumstances are dire. I can’t care for my patients properly if I’m only thinking about you.”
She nodded. “Makes sense. I wish some of the doctors on Earth had a similar rule. If Jeff’s doctor hadn’t been going through a nasty divorce, maybe he would have caught the cancer early enough to save him.”
“Jeff?”
Shit. Why did I bring him up? “Jeff was my husband. He died of cancer a few years ago.”
Torel hugged her but released her quickly when she didn’t return the hug. “I’m sorry. That must have been a very difficult time for you.”
“Thank you. It was awful, but I got through it with the help of a dear friend.” She had learned to dread people’s reaction when she told them she was a widow. They never seemed to know what to say. They might babble, or they’d stop talking altogether. The worst were the ones who told her she’d find someone new or that everything happened for a reason. She’d lost someone she loved, watched him suffer and fight for months, and in the end, the grief had nearly killed her. If there was a reason for that, then she wanted to know what the hell it was.
“Your friend, was she the one with you yesterday?”
“One of them, yeah. Aria was here to meet her match. Not that she wanted to be matched. It was an accident. By the way, you guys really need to put an undo button on your app. If you had one, she would have been able to back out gracefully. Not that I think she should have. I mean, what if the guy really was her perfect mate? What if he was okay with her having a baby already?”
Torel’s golden eyes widened. “Your friend has a child? That…we never considered that scenario.”
“She’s got an adorable ten-month-old daughter, which she thinks will be more than enough of a reason for her match to reject her.”
He shook his head. “On the contrary, I suspect most males offered a chance to have not only a mate but also a daughter to care for would be ecstatic.”
“Really? You guys are that keen on kids?” She frowned. “Are you? Keen to have kids, I mean.”
He looked at her in bemusement. “Until a few hours ago, I had not considered even having a mate. Offspring were not something I’d contemplated at all.”
“That’s not an answer.” Before she could press him for a more decisive one, there was an electronic three-note warble. “What was that?”
“Our meal is arriving.” Torel pointed to the wall beside the door. Part of it vanished, and something that looked like a cross between R2D2 and a room service cart wheeled in through the gap. It was laden with covered dishes, bowls of fresh fruit, and several pitchers, some covered in condensation, indicating the contents were chilled.
“Can I get one of those to take home with me? I seem to live on takeout these days.”
“You should take better care of yourself than that. Though I confess, I would probably be in the same situation as you if I didn’t have service droids to purchase, prepare, and serve my meals on schedule. I often get so caught up in my work I forget to eat.”
“Sign me up for service droids. Maybe you can bring me one the next time you visit.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“You know, I’m not the only woman on the planet who doesn’t want the whole committed relationship thing. Maybe you should consider bringing some of your unmatched males to Earth next time you visit. There aren’t enough women on your planet, right? So, they can’t be getting much uh…quality time with a woman until they’re mated. They could even stay on Earth to act like sexy goodwill ambassadors.”
She’d been joking, mostly, but Torel didn’t crack the barest hint of a smile.
“Come on, that was at least a little bit funny, wasn’t it?” Had she hit a taboo subject or something?
Torel rose from the bed to fetch their meals without responding to Haley’s comments. The idea of having ambassadors on Earth was intriguing, but unlikely to come to anything given the way the Gathering had been attacked. Coming to acquire more matched females and conduct trade was one thing, but allowing males to remain on the planet alone would be a serious risk to take. It wasn’t until he turned back with the first tray of food that he realized she was looking at him expectantly. “I’m sorry. I started thinking about your suggestion and failed to reply.”
“Yeah, you did. I was starting to wonder if I’d upset you somehow.” She took the tray from him and started re-arranging the blankets to make a makeshift platform for their food.
“Not at all. It was an interesting idea.” He continued talking while going back for another tray. “The sexual ambassador aspect wouldn’t work, though. Unlike you, we can only reach sexual release with our destined mates.”
Behind him, Haley made an alarming choking noise that had him at her side in seconds.
“What is it? Are you in pain?”
She gave him a wild-eyed look and sputtered again. “Only with your mate? Holy shit, Tor. You’ve never gotten off before? Ever?”
It took him a moment to work out her meaning. “Not until just now, with you.”
“I’m starting to think your Gods have a mean streak. What happened in the days before you had genetic testing and databases? How many of your people went their whole lives never finding a mate or even getting to enjoy sex?” she demanded.
“Not as many as you’d think. In those times, Gatherings were held often, and those who had yet to find their mates would attend as many as possible, often travelling long distances. It’s an imperfect system, but so are the courtship rituals of your world.”
“Well, you’re not wrong about that, but at least we can still have orgasms. I still think your Gods are assholes.”
He chuckled. The Gods had dragged both of them into this mating without consideration for their feelings or plans. “You’re not wrong about that, either, though my mother would scold me if she heard me say so.”
“I bet she wouldn’t. You’re everything a mother could want in a son. Handsome. Successful. Clearly affluent enough to have your own fleet of service droids taking care of you. I bet she’d forgive you just about anything.”
He finished bringing over the food and dishes and then wheeled the droid close to the bed so they could reach the pitchers of liquid. Serving others wasn’t something he did, but there was something about Haley—He pushed the thought aside. It had to be the Scorching. That was
all. These feelings would fade once the mating fever ended. Mates travelled separately all the time. This wouldn’t be any different.
He reclaimed his place at Haley’s side and started uncovering dishes. There was a wide variety, including some of his favourites, both entrees and desserts. “My mother thinks I work too hard and do not give the Gods enough credit, and while she is proud of me, she has made it clear I’m the one she worries about the most. Apparently, she wants more from me than a life of duty and research.”
“Like a mate?” Haley asked around a mouthful of thickly iced brownie.
It was one of the desserts Gwen, Kash’s human mate, had taught the palace kitchen staff to prepare. He hadn’t been surprised to see it had made it to the menu of the Firebrand. “I don’t think she’s concerned about the specifics. She just wants me to enjoy life more. I think that’s what most parents want for their younglings, isn’t it?”
“Not my parents. They think they know exactly what I should be doing, and with who. My mother gave me exactly three months to mourn for Jeff, and then she started pressuring me to find someone new. Preferably one of the men she had selected for me. Wealthy, elite, corporate types, for the most part. All card-carrying members of her social circle, of course. She never approved of Jeff, and she is determined not to let me make the same mistake again.”
She did her best to hide it, but he could hear the pain behind her words. “She called your choice in mates a mistake? Why? Weren’t you happy?”
“I was very happy…and very broke. Jeff was an environmentalist. I met him when I was doing a story about the activists trying to block a major oil pipeline. He was arrested the first time we met. He had so much passion for his cause, and for life in general. He was like no one I’d ever met before. My parents were horrified, and I didn’t care. In fact, it made him even more attractive to me.”
He wanted to hear more, but it also bothered him a little to see her so animated about another male, even one who was no longer among the living. “So he was from a different class than you and your parents. I thought such issues were no longer important to humans, at least, not the ones from your geographic location.”