by Zoey Draven
Every muscle was sculpted and carved to perfection. Every scar somehow enhanced his strength. Every shift of his body was sublime. And Taylor had never been an artist, but suddenly, she wanted to capture and immortalize him.
“You stare as if you have not seen me before, female,” he suddenly murmured. “Yet you have. Many times before.”
Taylor was thrust back into reality and her head swam with the implication of what he was saying.
She knew he could smell her lust and desire, because she was positively drenched with it. And even though she knew she was playing with fire, she murmured, “Turn around, Vikan.”
Her voice sounded like she was an operator on a sex line, but she had to be sure.
And this would be the confirmation that she needed, to know that even though she was going crazy, there was at least an explanation for it, albeit an unbelievable one.
But what else could she believe? Because she had seen him before, just as he said.
When Vikan did as she asked, pivoting on his feet so she could see his long, sculpted backside, the confirmation to all her fears resided in a long, horizontal line that ran along the small of his back.
It was a scar she knew would be there, but she didn’t know how to feel about it. She’d touched it a thousand times in her dream. And if this moment had been a dream, she would’ve approached Vikan, reached out to run the pads of her fingers across it, and then let her fingers run around his hips until they found his aching, hard cock.
She would’ve stroked him until he spilled into her hand.
But this wasn’t a dream. This was real.
“Go in the water,” she told him finally, her voice soft, still eyeing the telling scar. “And don’t turn around until I tell you to.”
For a moment, Taylor thought Vikan might’ve denied her because he didn’t strike her as the kind of male who liked to take orders. Evidently, he didn’t mind hers because he did as she asked.
Slowly, with her heart beating in her throat, she pulled her shirt over her head, letting it drop beside his own clothes, until she stood naked on the banks of the inlet.
Slowly, she descended into the water. Vikan’s back stiffened slightly when he heard the soft, rippling sound, but didn’t turn around.
Not until she said, “Okay.”
When he turned, his eyes were like fire, intense and hot enough to scorch her. She was so nervous, so shaken that she almost didn’t realize how nice the water felt, how refreshing it was after a long morning of travel.
The small inlet wasn’t that deep, considering Vikan was able to stand and touch the bottom. However, Taylor had to tread water as she approached where he stood and she made figure-eights with her hands and legs, hoping that he wouldn’t be able to see her nakedness.
But then she realized it didn’t matter. If what she was beginning to suspect was true, then it truly didn’t matter.
“What were you looking for?” he asked, his voice deep and rich and lovely. The ends of his hair floated around him in the water, darkening it to a deep inky black.
She didn’t see any reason to lie to him. Not now. “Your scar,” she murmured, watching him closely. “The one across your lower back.”
“The one I received from my sire?” he questioned softly.
Taylor swallowed but it felt more like a gulp. “You never told me how you received it,” she said. In her dream, she thought she remembered asking once. But the dream had gotten fuzzy or she’d just been about to wake when he told her. “You got it from your…father?”
“Tev,” he said, much more at ease than Taylor was about her knowing about his scar. But if what he told her was true, that he’d had the gift of foresight his entire life, then it wouldn’t be anything abnormal to him.
“On purpose?” she asked, wondering how in the world a father could injure his son in that way. The scar looked like it had run deep.
“My sire was a war general,” he told her.
“What does that mean?”
“War generals are highly respected in our culture,” he said. “They train young warriors and mold them into the males that keep our race defended and strong. I was proud to have a war general for a sire.”
“But…but he hurt you,” she exclaimed.
“All warriors get injured during training. Half of my scars are from warrior training,” he tried to explain to her even though it was hard for Taylor to grasp. It sounded…intense. Like a Spartan culture. “My sire, however, was harder on me than the others. He did not wish to show preference during training. In order to accomplish this, he had to be more strict.”
“Wasn’t that hard for him?” Taylor asked after a brief moment, looking down into the water, wondering how in the world a father could willingly do that.
“Tev,” he said. “I knew it was hard for him. Our relationship was never the same because he would always be a war general in my mind, no longer a sire.”
Taylor’s heart ached a little in her chest and she treaded closer to him. “What happened to him?”
“He died in battle,” he said. “He was off planet, on Urvenia, fighting for our alliance. He died a warrior’s death, the way he wanted.”
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “It couldn’t have been easy for you.”
She’d known loss as well. She knew it wasn’t easy.
“And your mother?” she asked.
Vikan’s expression slipped a little, his mouth tightening. “She died bringing me into this world. I never knew her, only stories my sire had told me.”
Taylor sucked in a breath. “Vikan…”
“My sire and I hardly ever spoke of her though,” he admitted after another moment. “Sometimes I wish we had. I wish I had asked of her more.”
Taylor had not quite expected them to have this conversation when they’d entered the water, but somehow she found herself saying, “I never knew my mother either. She left when I was just a baby.”
“She died?” he asked, frowning.
“No,” Taylor said. “I think she is still alive. Somewhere. She chose to leave me and my dad.”
“A mother who willingly leaves their offspring?” Vikan said. “That is…unfathomable.”
“Perhaps it is different on Earth,” she murmured, wrapping her arms around her body. She cupped some water in the palm of her hands and splashed her face to cool off. She also used it as a way to buy time. Taylor usually didn’t speak of her family, but somehow she felt safe to do so with Vikan. “She was an addict apparently.”
“An addict?”
“I never asked whether it was alcohol or drugs,” she admitted softly, looking into his eyes, feeling very vulnerable and not entirely liking it. “I couldn’t bear to know. My grandmother told me about her because my dad would never even say her name.”
Vikan shifted in the water.
“Sorry,” she said softly. “It’s not the most comfortable thing to talk about. Just ignore me.”
His lips downturned. “I wish to know about you, luxiva. I wish to know everything.”
“Everything, huh?” she repeated quietly.
“We have time for it still,” he said. “To learn about one another.”
“Only three days,” she reminded him. “Can you really know a person in three days?”
“You have known me a lot longer than three spans, luxiva,” he told her, referring to her dreams, which he called visions. “As for me, I am a quick learner.”
Taylor almost smiled, despite what they’d just been talking about it. “You’re awfully confident in your abilities.”
“I have a right to be,” he murmured, holding her gaze.
Barely suppressing a shiver, Taylor changed the subject to one she’d been thinking about a lot lately. “If you’re able to see the future like you claim, why haven’t you been seeing visions of us?”
Vikan stilled. “My gift does not work that way. It is unpredictable at best and causes a great deal of pain.”
“Go on,” she encouraged
, rapt with attention.
“It is a gift that has been passed down through my mother’s line. Her sire had the same gift, but his strength was in dreamwalking.”
Taylor froze. “Dreamwalking?”
“Tev,” he murmured.
“And…you can do this as well?”
He hesitated just long enough to make Taylor’s heart race. “Tev.”
“Did you…have you entered mine? Is that why I dream about you every night?” she asked, not sure she wanted to know the answer.
Vikan approached her until he was close enough that he could reach out and touch her face. “Once.”
Taylor’s breath hitched. “When?”
But she had a feeling she already knew when.
“When we sat on the shores of Lopitax together,” he answered, confirming her suspicions. It had been the only dream in which he’d rebuffed her sexual advances, when she’d sensed something off.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. But she had to know. “Why did you…why did you deny me? For everything I know about your Instinct, you could have had sex with me and yet you didn’t.”
“Because it was real,” he told her, reaching out to hold her steady, so that she wouldn’t have to tread water. His touch made her skin sensitive. “I was coming to you as myself in the present, not as the male you will come to know.”
Her head swam, but in a strange way, she knew exactly what he was saying.
“I would not take advantage of you that way, female,” he told her softly, bringing the pads of his fingers to caress the top of her cheekbones. His touch was gentle, though his hands were roughened.
“You truly believe that I’ve been seeing visions of our future, don’t you?”
His eyebrows furrowed. “Of course I do. Do you still deny it yourself? Even after everything you know?”
“I…I,” she paused, licking her lips and tasting the strange Luxirian sea. “I don’t know what I believe anymore.”
“What will it take for you to accept this?” he asked. “Accept us?”
“There are too many variables to even think about before there ever can be an ‘us,’ Vikan,” she murmured.
Instead of his expression tightening at her words, he looked…slightly smug. “At least you admit that there could be. I am a driven, stubborn male, luxiva. As long as there is hope, we can overcome any variables there might be.”
Taylor gave an unexpected, nervous laugh before sucking in a breath when his hands drifted across her bare shoulders.
“You’ve been touching me a lot today,” she noted.
“Do you mind it?” he asked, cocking his head to the side, never lifting his touch. She didn’t answer because she didn’t want him to know the truth: that she liked it very much. “We decided to start anew, did we not? Part of that means I will no longer deny my instincts when it comes to you. And Luxirians crave to touch their females.”
For once, Taylor didn’t correct him when he called her his female. She wouldn’t dwell on why she didn’t correct him.
“Do you mind it?” he asked again, true to his word that he was a driven, stubborn male.
Taylor huffed out a breath, knowing he wouldn’t let it go. Perhaps she was learning about him, after all.
His fingers fluttered over the pulse in her neck, so he felt the way her heart sped up. It was…unexpectedly intimate, especially when his eyes sought hers as he did it.
“No,” she whispered. “No, I don’t mind it.”
TWELVE
WHEN THE SUNS began to sink, Vikan found them shelter for the night. Fortunately, they had begun to pass into Loniva territory, on the very far edges of Lopixa. It meant the landscape had started to alter. Since his outpost sat on the very western tip of Luxiria, it meant his land was rocky and filled with steep cliffs that melted into long stretches of shoreline.
The nights were longer in the western lands, which meant they needed to find shelter quickly. And since they were in Loniva, Vikan easily found an empty cave, burrowed in the face of a large, dark cliff, formed by years and years of wind and battering surf.
To reach it, however, they’d had to climb down a worn, steep path to reach the shoreline. It was an arduous hike, but once he saw that the cave was empty of any creatures, he was certain they would be safe and even warm for the night, considering the cave was deep and wide enough to escape the roaring winds and spray from the sea, with plenty space for a fire.
Once they were safely situated inside, his luxiva rested against the floor of the cave for a brief moment. It had been a long day and the only reprieve she’d had was their swim in the inlet earlier that afternoon.
Again, Vikan felt a sense of shame that he’d put his female through this experience. He desperately wished it could have been different, that he could give her warmth and hot meals and soft furs instead of cave floors and small game.
But his female had not complained once. Even when she was sweaty with exertion and breathing heavily from the terrain.
Affection welled up in his chest, sudden and startling. He approached her, dropping down to give her a drink from the water gourds he’d save in his travel sack from the previous night. She took it gratefully and tipped her head back once he made a notch with his claws.
“You humble me, female,” he told her, needing to tell her, pushing back a strand of her hair. He couldn’t stop touching her. And the more he did, the more he craved it, like an addiction. “I put you in this situation foolishly and yet you have shown me how strong and resilient you are.”
Her cheeks flushed an enticing shade of pink, her lips wet from her drink of water. He growled, rapt, as she licked them.
“I just like moving forward,” she told him after a brief pause. “To me, there’s no sense dwelling on the past. It doesn’t accomplish anything so what’s the use?”
Vikan thought that, before Taylor, all he’d done was dwell on the past. He’d been so consumed by it that he’d allowed the past ten rotations to pass him by.
It was ironic, considering he had the gift of foresight. But when had he ever been excited for his future?
Not until now.
He only had two spans left before they reached Lopixa. At the pace they were going, they might even arrive earlier than expected.
“I could learn from you,” he finally murmured, their eyes connecting. She watched him, her eyes lightening with an emotion he couldn’t recognize.
Then, she took another sip of the water gourd before handing it back to him.
“Will you teach me how to make a fire?” she asked.
Vikan struggled with that. She’d already insisted on helping him, but on Luxiria, it was the male’s responsibility to take care of their female, to provide everything for her.
It was an instinct instilled in him since birth.
But his mate was not Luxirian. She was human. Now, he understood why Vaxa’an, at times, had been frustrated by his luxiva’s need to work and to contribute equally to their partnership.
It was different on Luxiria, but his female was proving to be independent and strong-willed. Just like how she’d adapted to Luxiria, he would adapt for her.
“Tev,” he finally murmured after a lengthy pause. “Come.”
He rose from his crouched position in front of her, taking her hand to help her from the ground. With his palm on the small of her back, he led her from the cave after leaving his bag behind.
There, on the shores of Loniva, he was at home. He knew the vegetation, knew what was edible, and what could most easily hold a flame. And eyeing the waves lapping at the shore, he knew what he would catch his female for her meal that night.
So, he showed her all of this. He explained that the long fronds of illix he’d used for her feet coverings could be used as tinder, but only the rough, gritty protective layer. Then, he showed her how to dig into the sand deep enough to find reverax’a, a type of clumped mixture of very old sand and clay that kept a flame burning for two spans. He helped her gather some rocks so they c
ould make an enclosed fire pit and then they returned to the cave.
And once there, even though it took slightly longer, she started her first fire with two of his blades and she seemed so delighted by it that Vikan himself felt her satisfaction.
Glad that she would be warm while he caught their meal, Vikan left her, albeit hesitantly.
Usually, he enjoyed diving in Lopitax. He enjoyed the hushed quiet of being underwater, where even his visions didn’t dare enter. That evening was no different, but he felt a driving need to return to his mate, to be in her presence. So, he made quick work of their meal, managing to ensnare a large grimivala that swam unknowingly by, a few mervi still enclosed in their protective shells, and one bibivax.
When he emerged from the ocean, he was soaking wet, his hair hanging down his back, but proud of his catch. He would feed his female well that night.
He returned to her quickly, his eyes immediately seeking her out once he ventured deeper into the cave where they would nest for the night.
Taylor was watching over the fire, but the moment she saw him, a flash of emotion crossed her features. Relief, he realized, feeling that knowledge settle.
“You are still worried I will leave you, luxiva?” he questioned softly as he stepped towards her, dropping his catch on the ground beside the fire.
The firelight softened her face and made her eyes gleam gold.
“No, not that,” she answered. Her eyes traced the lines of his body and trailed over the droplets of sea water that ran down his torso. Even past the smell of the sea, he scented her interest, her arousal. He had scented it at odd times during the span, which had driven him absolutely mad.
“What then?” he asked, his voice dropping slightly as his Instinct perked up in his chest.
“I was…worried for you,” she admitted, nibbling on her full bottom lip.
“I have lived in the west for many, many rotations, luxiva,” he murmured. “I know these lands well and not much can bring down a Luxirian warrior.”
Taylor blew out a breath, watching him shake out his hair by the fire. The flames sizzled whenever a drop of sea landed into it, briefly turning it blue.