The Alien's Dream

by Zoey Draven

  Her brows furrowed. “In what way?”

  Vikan blew out a breath. “I typically only see visions of nameless Luxirians, whose fates are not tied to my own.”

  “You see the futures of strangers?” she asked.

  “Tev,” he said. “Like I said, quite useless.”

  “Not to them maybe,” she tried. “Have you ever tried to find them?”

  He jerked his head in a nod. “In my younger warrior spans, tev. I liked to see good things in their futures. It comforted me in a way. But the bad…their tragedies, their losses, their accidents, their fragile decisions made…those I did not like.”

  “Like what?”

  He ran an absentminded hand down her back and then said, “When I was fresh from warrior training, one night I saw a vision of a young female. She lived in Lopixa. She was no older than six or seven rotations. She liked to play and walk along the cliffs that stretch just outside the outpost. She liked to watch the light on the sea.” Taylor’s gut clenched, not liking the tone of his voice. “In my vision, I saw her fall from the cliff when she stepped too close.”

  Taylor’s throat closed. “Vikan…”

  “I heard her scream in my mind. I heard the wind screaming past her. I heard this…sickening sound. And then I heard nothing. Just silence.”

  Oh my God.

  “Vaxa’an knew of my gift. We were close during warrior training. He was my friend and even though he was not Prime Leader yet, he helped me journey to Lopixa, though we were not suppose to leave the Golden City at that time. We searched and searched for this female, long enough that I feared it was too late.”

  “Did you find her?” she whispered, hardly daring to move.

  “Tev,” he said. “Because Vaxa’an had accompanied me, there was a celebration the night of our arrival to welcome him, that drew most of the outpost’s population. I searched for the young female while Vaxa’an saw to his duties at the gathering.” Vikan went quiet, his hand still tracing down her back. Softly, he said, “And I found her, along the outskirts, very near to the cliff that I had seen her fall from in my vision.”

  “Was she okay?” she asked, almost afraid to ask.

  “Nix, she was dead,” he told her.

  Taylor gasped. “Oh my God. Vikan…”

  “A pack of xrivalla were drawn close to the borders. The scent of the cooking meat and game from the celebration attracted them. And the guards were at the gathering, so the outskirts were unwatched and unprotected. When I came upon her, there was not much left of her, but I recognized her just the same, like an imprint in my mind.”

  Taylor looked down into her lap, her eyes filling with tears, not just because of the little girl’s fate, but because of the strained emotion she sensed in Vikan’s voice, how deeply it affected him, even still.

  “So you see, it is quite useless,” he said softly. “She had a worse, more painful death, because I tried to interfere with her fate. I was punished, as was she.”

  She turned in his arms and reached forward to touch his cheek. His gray eyes flickered to her, frowning when he saw her tears.

  “It’s not your fault, Vikan,” she whispered. “You only tried to help her.”

  He was silent. Then he said, “I always think of her when I walk that cliff.”

  “You still go there?”

  “Tev. As a reminder, sometimes. But now, I always make sure our borders are safe and patrolled. At all times.”

  “Then maybe you’ve saved others in the process,” she told him, wanting to comfort him. “Others that could have met a fate like hers, but haven’t through your actions.”

  His forehead met her own, his horns tangling in her hair.

  “I can only hope so,” he said. “But I never tried to interfere again, no matter what I saw.”

  “You still see them? Visions?” she asked softly.

  “Tev,” he said. “They’d become worse since…”

  “Nitav,” Taylor guessed when he trailed off.

  “Tev,” he said, pulling back from her forehead to look at her. “And I confess that to dull the pain and keep them controlled, I turned to yikava.”

  She frowned in confusion.

  Then he clarified, “A drug.”

  “Oh,” she whispered, her eyes sliding away from him. She bit her lip, thinking of her mother. Taylor had never touched drugs in her life because of her mother, never wanted to.

  “I will not use it again, luxiva,” he told her. “I vow to you.”

  And Taylor knew that he meant it. “It helped the pain? Did you get headaches?”

  He nodded. “Always. I felt the visions clawing up my throat sometimes, trying to scramble into my mind. The yikava helped numb everything.”

  “I can’t blame you for it, Vikan,” she murmured. Though she wanted no part of drug use, she knew why he’d used them.

  He looked at her and then said, “Around you, I feel no pain.”

  She stilled. “What?”

  “It is like you calm my mind, my body,” he replied, cupping the sides of her head before running his fingers through her hair. “I have not had a vision once since I took you from the command center. And usually, I see many during the span, even with the yikava.”

  Her lips parted.

  And she couldn’t help but think, What happens if I leave him?

  Would he go back to seeing them constantly? Would she condemn him to dealing with that pain all over again?

  Stay in the moment, she reminded herself, trying not to get caught up in the future, just for once.

  “No matter what your decision is,” he murmured, touching her hand with his, “I thank you for that.”

  “For what?” she whispered, unable to resist entwining their fingers together.

  “For making me feel whole, normal, for the first time in my life span.”

  Tears burned the back of her throat. When Vikan had proposed that they pretend that night, pretend that she was his and he was hers and that they had all the time in the world, she hadn’t expected this. She hadn’t expected for him to open up this much to her, to let her in, to touch her with infinite gentleness, and to look at her like she was the only woman in the entire universe.

  And she hadn’t expected the intense maelstrom of emotions swirling around in her chest because of it.

  Taylor wanted to kiss him.

  She wanted to hold him in her arms and feel his skin pressed against her own.

  But not there. Not in their dark, little cave, where he’d just confessed one of his darkest memories. She wanted to kiss him under the open sky, wanted to feel the salty cool breeze across her cheeks, and feel his heat warming her.

  When her gaze strayed past him to the entrance of the cave and saw the bright silver light of the moon and heard the gentle waves of the shores of Lopitax, she knew where she wanted to kiss him for the first time.

  “Can we go for a dip in the sea, Vikan?”

  “Rebax?” he asked, his brow furrowing in confusion.

  “Right now?”

  He studied her, probably trying to figure out why she would ask something so strange.

  “Tev,” he finally said. “As if I could deny you anything.”

  FOURTEEN

  “IT’S SAFE, RIGHT?” his female asked.

  Vikan almost smiled and he reached out to squeeze her hip. “You cannot give up now.”

  They were standing on the edges of the shore. The sky was a dark indigo, a million stars glittering high above, next to Luxiria’s moon.

  “I would never let any creatures harm you, luxiva,” he murmured when she hesitated yet again.

  And Vikan felt a warmth in his chest when she eventually nodded, tossing him a small smile. She trusted him to protect her. That knowledge made him feel higher than any fix of yikava ever could.

  “I will go in first if you’d like,” he murmured, remembering their afternoon at the inlet. How’d she’d made him turn until she entered the water.

  She put a hand on his arm. “N
o, it’s alright.”

  And then, Vikan went still because slowly, as if unsure of herself, his female tugged up the hem of her tunic, before pulling it over her head and off her body.

  The soft, thin material hung limp in her fingers before she let it drop to the sand, baring her body to his eyes for the first time.

  Vikan’s breaths came quickly. His pupils flared until he was sure his eyes looked black, devoid of all color. And a steady growl rose up in his chest, unable to look away from his female.

  She was perfect. Utterly perfect.

  Her pale skin shone in the silver light, revealing full breasts tipped with dusky pink nipples, a narrow waist that led to lush, rounded hips, before ending with long, shapely thighs he imagined wrapped around his body in the aggressive throes of mating.

  His Instinct pushed into the forefront of his mind, making him feel on the edge of madness. But he hung onto that thread of control, not wanting to scare his mate by letting his Instinct make itself known.

  Taylor was giving him this…this rightness. Nothing had ever felt more natural to him than gazing upon his lush mate in this way.

  She didn’t know how close he was to falling on her like a crazed beast. But instead of that, somehow, some way, he slowly untied the laces of his leg coverings before baring himself to her, for the second time that span.

  And just as she’d done that afternoon, her eyes traced his body—her arousal rising up so he could scent her—gliding over his chest and abdomen before resting on his cock. It pulsed for her, more drops of pre-cum shimmering at the broad head.

  Taylor’s tongue swiped out to wet her bottom lip and Vikan groaned.

  “Female,” he rasped. “I only have so much control.”

  His voice sounded nothing like his own, another indicator of how close his Instinct was to the surface.

  “One time,” she murmured, “I’d like to test the limits of that control.”

  It took him a moment to realize she was teasing him.

  He growled. “You already are.”

  Taylor smiled, her blunt white teeth flashing. He liked it when she smiled.

  That smile turned into a shocked gasp when he reached out and snagged her around the waist, hauling her up into his arms. The feel of her skin against his…was unparalleled.

  Even with Nitav, he had never felt his intense connection, this intense need.

  He waited for the guilt to plague him at that realization. But to his surprise, he felt only desire for his luxiva.

  He was purring as he led them both into the Lopitax sea and the sound deepened when Taylor wrapped her arms around his neck to steady herself even further.

  She shrieked when a cresting wave splashed up and hit them both on their bare skin.

  “It’s freezing!” she exclaimed, but then she laughed, pressing closer to his warm body. “Oh my God, whose idea was this?”

  Vikan’s face pulled into an expression he hadn’t made in quite some time at the sound of her genuine, pleasing laugh.

  When Taylor saw it, her lips parted and Vikan swore her eyes softened. “You’re smiling,” she breathed.

  “Am I?”

  “Yes.”

  Just then, a large wave crashed into Vikan’s body, drenching them both. Taylor sputtered, blinking the salty water from her eyes as Vikan trudged on, taking them out to calmer water. When he reached the space where the waves were nothing more than mere ripples and he could no longer touch the bottom of the sea floor, he stopped.

  He was reluctant to let his female go, but he was perilously close to losing control, to breaking the words he’d told her, that they wouldn’t mate that night. That had been before he’d felt her naked flesh against him.

  “Is the water too cold for you?” he wondered, slowly letting her drift away from the circle of his arms.

  Her hair hung in wet tendrils around her face, but her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were bright.

  “No,” she answered, surprising him by drifting back towards him. “I’ll get used to it soon.”

  Vikan gripped her bare hips, growling, when she came to him. His Instinct purred in satisfaction as she wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing their bodies together.

  “Luxiva,” he rasped when he felt her hard nipples brush against his chest.

  “We’re pretending, aren’t we?” she murmured. “We’re pretending that we belong to each other.”

  Vikan’s chest heaved from her words, from the slick feel of her. When she wrapped her legs around his waist, he hissed out a breath, his cock head brushing the bottom of her thighs.

  Pretending.

  In a sense they were, but in so many other ways, they weren’t.

  “We do belong to each other,” he corrected.

  “Do you?” she whispered, her breath drifting over his cheek, she was so close. “Do you only belong to me?”

  Vikan’s jaw ticked at her words, understanding the unspoken question.

  Before he could reply, she shook her head, saying, “Never mind. Tonight is only us, right?”

  Vikan let his shoulders loosen. “Tev, female. Only us.”

  “In that case,” she murmured, her voice carrying softly over the sea water, “I really want to kiss you, Vikan.”

  He stilled. “Tev?”

  Taylor’s gaze flicked down to his lips. “Would that be okay?”

  Vikan swallowed, fearing that if she kissed him in the way he’d seen the other human females kiss their mates, he wouldn’t be able to keep control.

  But how could he deny her?

  Besides, he didn’t want to deny her this.

  And even though she clearly believed they were still ‘pretending,’ Vikan’s only goal was to show her something beyond that, something that would make her rethink her decision to leave. At least for a little while.

  “Tev,” he purred.

  Her hands slid up the back of his neck, to the sensitive flesh there, and he groaned low in his throat. It had been so long since he’d been touched in this way, with soft hands, a gentle caress.

  He could perceive her heat against his lower abdomen. He was maddeningly aware that if she slid a little lower, he would be poised at the entrance of her cunt.

  “You do not know what you do to me, female,” he said, his voice nothing more than a dark rumble.

  Taylor didn’t waste another moment. Her fingers fluttered on his neck briefly and then she pulled him forward.

  When her lips connected with his own, he heard roaring in his ears, heard her small, breathy gasp that sizzled straight down to his cock.

  His female had the softest lips and he growled when she pressed them against him even harder.

  Kissing was not something Luxirian partners did, although, as his mate kissed him, Vikan couldn’t think why not. Sparks of pleasure trailed up his spine and every brush of her fingers, every small movement of her lips caressing his own was sublime.

  When he felt her tongue trail across the seam of his lips, he groaned, allowing her inside.

  And then the kiss became something else entirely.

  A soft moan tumbled from her lips and the sound of sea water trickling met his ears as her arms rose and tightened around him.

  Quickly, he learned to reciprocate and match her kiss, stroking his own tongue deep inside her mouth.

  It was like mating, he thought. It was as close to the act of mating they could get to in that moment. And as he slid his ridged tongue against her own, exploring her taste and warmth, he felt her hips begin to move.

  “Luxiva,” he rasped, his tone bordering on desperation, as he broke away. She moaned, pulling his head back.

  His fingers clenched into her hips, the tips of his claws pricking her skin before he remembered himself. He was torn between holding her hips still or guiding her to grind into his abdomen harder.

  “Vrax,” he cursed, feeling his body begin to grow, his muscles bulging.

  Luxirians drew strength from sexual energy, from arousal and the act of release. T
hey grew stronger from it, literally. And he was beginning to feel those effects. Sex had the ability to triple a Luxirian’s strength. There was a reason why they were the most feared warriors in the Four Quadrants.

  “Vikan,” she moaned between them, her breaths coming out fast. “God, why do you taste so good?”

  Because they were made for each other, he couldn’t help but think. Because no other would ever be more compatible for either of them, ever again.

  Her tantalizing tongue licked and delved and drove him to madness. And when she sucked on it, drawing his tongue between her lips? He felt even more pre-cum push from the tip of his cock, readying his body to mate his female.

  “Don’t stop,” she pleaded, her hips rotating against him, when he was forced to pull back once again.

  “Female,” he growled, his breaths ragged. He was coming undone, that thread of control unraveling. “I am on the edge. I cannot—”

  And then she did the unthinkable. As if of her own instinct, she grabbed his straightened, hard horns, her fists wrapping around their base, and forcefully dragged his lips back to her. She couldn’t possibly know that she might as well have grabbed his cock, that a Luxirian’s horns were as sensitive when aroused.

  Vikan snarled, breaking, and that thin, fraying thread of control snapping.

  He would not mate her, but by the time he was finished with his female, he would know her body as intimately as if he had.

  Taylor moaned, drunk on lust and the intensity of their attraction, and when he tugged her hips down, the head of his cock slipped over the folds of her cunt.

  “Oh my God,” she breathed against him before nibbling on his bottom lip. “Yes, Vikan.”

  He could not do what he wanted to her body in the middle of the Lopitax sea, so he quickly started for shore, somehow able to keep their lips connected the entire way. Her grip tightened on his horns. It was intensely pleasurable and intensely intimate.

  When he reached shore and dragged their bodies from the ocean, her legs tightened around him like a vice, her lush, full breasts bobbing against his chest.

  His mouth watered, needing to suckle them.

  He left their clothes lying on the shore, knowing that, with what he had planned for her, she wouldn’t need her tunic. He would remember to retrieve them in the morning.