by Anna Zaires
Emily was panting now, her pupils dilated as she gazed up at him, and he increased the pressure on that soft internal spot, his thumb simultaneously circling her clit. She cried out, her body jerking against him, and he felt her orgasm begin, her inner walls undulating around his finger in a sinuous, rippling motion.
Unable to wait any longer, Zaron removed his finger and gripped the back of her thighs, lifting her off the floor and opening her legs. Without further preliminaries, he aligned the head of his shaft with her entrance and pushed inside.
As before, the feel of her was heady, intoxicating. She was incredibly tight around his cock, her soft flesh squeezing him, embracing him as he advanced deeper. He could smell the sweet musk of her arousal, hear the rapid beating of her heart, and his eyes fell to her neck, drawn by the pulse throbbing underneath her pale, nearly translucent skin. An ancient, animalistic hunger rose with him, a predatory craving that no amount of genetic manipulation had been able to suppress, and he slowly lowered his head, brushing his lips against the delicate column of her throat. She moaned, her neck arching back, and the craving became unbearable. Using his left hand to hold her up, Zaron gripped Emily’s hair with his right hand, forcing her to keep still. Then, in one sharp motion, he sliced the sharp edges of his upper teeth across her skin and pressed his mouth to the resulting wound.
Blood, hot and coppery, spurted onto his tongue, the flavor rich and uniquely satisfying. Emily cried out at the sudden pain, tensing in his arms, but then he felt the drugging effect of his saliva take effect on her. Her body melted against him, her sex clenching and pulsing around his cock, and he knew she was overcome by the same wave of pleasure that was sweeping over him. Ecstasy, fierce and effervescent, zinged through Zaron’s nerve endings, enhancing his every sense until he felt like he would burst from the overwhelming sensations. Everything was brighter, hotter, more intense, and he felt all rational thought slip away as his body took over, the taste of her blood amplifying his lust to an unbearable degree.
He wasn’t sure how long he fucked her up against that shower wall, or at what point he managed to carry her to bed. All he knew was that they both came over and over again, in a violent orgasmic frenzy that knew no end.
It wasn’t until Emily passed out in his arms that Zaron found the will to stop, his body sated yet clamoring for more.
Chapter Nineteen
Gradually regaining consciousness, Emily became aware of a puzzling array of aches and pains. Every muscle in her body felt sore, as though she’d done some major exercise. When she opened her eyes and shifted slightly on the bed, she realized that the discomfort ran deeper, her sex feeling swollen and tender from overuse.
She was also naked underneath the blanket.
Her heartbeat increasing, Emily frantically sifted through her memories, trying to make sense of it all. She remembered the outing to the lake, followed by her failed attempt to escape—an attempt that had ended in the most unbelievable sex of her life. She also vividly recalled showering with Zaron and the way he had reached for her again, overwhelming her senses and stealing away her will to resist before she’d had a chance to regroup from their first encounter.
At that point, however, things seemed to get fuzzy in her mind. All she could remember was a jumble of never-before-experienced sensations and a pleasure so intense it bordered on agony.
Holy shit. She’d had sex with an alien. An alien who was keeping her imprisoned in his house. Emily couldn’t even begin to process the implications of something like that, so she shoved that thought aside for later analysis.
Frowning, she sat up, staring around the room. She was alone again, with no sign of Zaron. What had happened yesterday? Why did she feel this way?
Slowly climbing out of bed, Emily made her way to the bathroom, suppressing a moan at the deep internal ache between her thighs. She’d never felt this sore after sex, not even after her first time. Looking down, she noticed faint marks and bruises on her skin. Was sex with a male of Zaron’s species different after all? A shudder ran through her at the thought, even as her core warmed at the remembered sensations.
No, don’t think about it now. Forcing her mind off that topic, Emily took care of her basic needs and washed her hands. Just as she was about to step into the shower, she heard someone enter the room.
Turning, she stared at the man who had become her lover. She felt oddly conscious of her nakedness. She had never been particularly shy with her boyfriends, but somehow this was different. Neither Jason nor Tom had ever looked at her the way Zaron was looking at her now: with a deeply possessive hunger that made her sex throb in response. It was a look that made her viscerally aware of her body, of her femininity.
“You’re already up,” he murmured, his eyes gleaming as he came toward her. Dressed in a light blue T-shirt and a pair of snug-fitting jeans that hugged his powerful thighs, he was as stunning as usual, devastating her senses with his presence.
She’d actually had sex with this gorgeous creature.
“Yes, I woke up a little while ago,” Emily managed to reply, her voice slightly hoarse. Clearing her throat, she tried to focus on the mundane. “What time is it?”
“Just after nine in the morning,” Zaron said, a small frown appearing on his face as his gaze ran over her body, lingering on the finger-shaped marks on her thighs. In the next second, he was in front of her, his hands gripping her upper arms as he turned her this way and that, thoroughly inspecting every inch of her skin.
“Hey!” Emily tried to twist away. “What are you doing?” She’d been doing her best to pretend that this was just a regular morning-after so they could avoid any unnecessary awkwardness, but Zaron seemed determined to ruin her efforts.
Ignoring her ineffectual struggles, he released her arms and crouched in front of her, lightly running his hands down her thighs. When he rose to his feet again, the anger on his face almost made her flinch.
“I hurt you,” he said, his voice filled with self-loathing, and she realized that he was upset with himself, not her. “Fuck, Emily, I didn’t realize I’d marked you like this. I knew humans were fragile, but I didn’t think—” He stopped himself from continuing, his chest rising as he took a calming breath. When he spoke again, his tone was marginally softer. “Are you in pain, angel?” he asked, his eyes holding her captive.
Emily felt a hot flush crawl along her hairline. “I’m a bit sore,” she admitted reluctantly. She didn’t want him to think of her as a fragile human. She had always prided herself on being strong and fit; even as a child, she’d enjoyed sports and other physically challenging activities, preferring games of tag to playing with dolls. She wasn’t some frail maiden who needed to be treated with kid gloves. “It’s not a big deal,” she added, seeing the expression on Zaron’s face. “Nothing that a hot shower wouldn’t fix.”
His mouth tightened, but he didn’t say anything. Turning, he left the room, moving so quickly that Emily blinked in surprise.
Shrugging at his inexplicable behavior, she stepped into the shower.
Before the water had a chance to start, Zaron reappeared, carrying a small silvery object shaped like a tube. “Hold still, please,” he instructed, kneeling in front of her.
Bemused, Emily stared as he moved the object over her body, focusing on the areas with visible bruising. There was a red light coming from the little device, a light that felt pleasantly warm on her damaged skin. To her amazement, the marks faded almost immediately, disappearing without a trace.
“Wow,” she breathed, bending her right knee and wiggling her foot. The muscle aches from earlier were gone as well. “Zaron, is this how your healing technology always works?”
He nodded, looking up at her. “Yes. It uses nanocytes, if you are familiar with that concept.”
“Nanocytes? As in, mature nanotechnology?” Emily had read about it while researching a tech startup, and from what she understood, the possibilities of such technology were pretty much limitless. Nanomachines were unbelieva
bly tiny robots that could be programmed to function in a variety of different ways—something that modern science could only theorize about at this point. “Wait a minute… Are you putting these nanocytes into my body?”
“Yes, precisely.” He seemed pleased that she’d grasped it so quickly. “That’s what heals your injuries,” he explained, moving the object toward her pelvis. Before she realized his intentions, he placed his hand between her legs and shined the light directly at her sore opening. There was a brief tingling sensation, and then the internal tenderness was gone.
“Now you can shower,” Zaron said with satisfaction, rising to his feet. Bending his head, he brushed his lips against her mouth in a quick, proprietary kiss, then stepped back. “In fact, you better shower before I get carried away again,” he said huskily and left the room, the wall closing behind him.
Emily showered on auto-pilot, her thoughts jumping in a dozen different directions. She was both fascinated and horrified by the idea of tiny alien machines running around in her body. Was that how he’d healed her before? It made sense. Just as a surgeon could sew together a wound, a nano-sized machine could theoretically fix damage on a cellular level. No, not theoretically, she corrected herself. It could actually do so. The fact that she felt perfectly normal was proof of that.
Stepping out of the shower, Emily let the air currents dry her off, then headed back into the bedroom to get dressed. It was only when she was pulling on her sandals that she realized something.
She still didn’t know what had necessitated the healing in the first place. Her memory of last night was as fuzzy as if she’d been drugged.
Chapter Twenty
“Zaron… What exactly happened last night?”
Munching on a plate of fruit salad across the kitchen table, Emily gave him an inquiring look. With the pale yellow dress she was wearing today, her eyes were more green than blue, reminding Zaron of burit—a moss-like plant on his home planet.
Finishing his own breakfast, he considered her question, wondering how to best answer it. While he didn’t know what the official post-arrival protocol would entail, he suspected the Council would not be eager to reveal the vampiric tendencies of his race right away.
“What do you mean?” he asked, deciding to pretend ignorance for now. Giving Emily a slow smile, he reached across the table and picked up her hand, gently rubbing the inside of her palm with his thumb. “You know what happened, angel. Or would you like a reminder?”
She licked a drop of fruit juice off her lips, staring at him, and his body tightened at the memory of how those lips had felt and tasted. “I remember that we had sex, of course,” she said, pulling her hand out of his grasp. “What I don’t remember is the rest of the day after the shower, or how I ended up that sore. Did you give me something? Like a drug of some kind?”
“No, of course not,” Zaron said, amused by the idea. It wasn’t a drug that had made her memory of their encounter hazy; it was a naturally occurring substance in Krinar saliva, a leftover from the days when his kind hunted the lonar—a primate species whose blood had provided them with key nutrients. Schooling his features into an impassive expression, he asked silkily, “You don’t remember all the orgasms I gave you?”
Emily’s cheeks turned pink, but her gaze didn’t waver from his face. “No, I don’t. Are you telling me we had sex all day and night?”
Zaron nodded, suppressing a smile at the incredulous note in her voice. “Pretty much,” he confirmed. “You finally fell asleep around three in the morning.”
“Three in the morning?” She gaped at him. “But it was not even noon when we went to the lake!”
“I guess my people have more stamina when it comes to sex,” Zaron said, watching her reaction. “We don’t get tired as easily as humans.”
The color in Emily’s face intensified. “If that’s true, then I don’t think we’re particularly compatible,” she said tightly. “You’d be better off with another Krinar.”
“But I don’t want another Krinar.” Zaron reached for her hand again. Capturing her fingers, he leaned forward. “I want you.”
And it was true. He didn’t simply want sex—he wanted Emily. Last night had been one of the most incredible experiences of his life, and he couldn’t wait to have her again. He could see that she still had reservations about being with him, but he had no intention of letting her back away from him.
He had her for another fifteen days, and he planned to spend a good portion of that time buried deep inside her sweet little body.
Emily frowned, trying to tug her hand away. “Look, Zaron, just because we had sex once—okay, several times”—she conceded at the ironic look on his face—“doesn’t mean that this is going to be an ongoing thing. You’re keeping me here against my will, and even if you weren’t, this is just not a good idea. We’re too different. For all I know, with that kind of appetite, you have an entire harem of women back home—”
“I don’t,” Zaron interrupted, his chest squeezing painfully. Releasing her hand, he leaned back, gripped by the familiar icy bleakness. “You have nothing to worry about in that regard, I can assure you.” The words came out unintentionally bitter, and he saw Emily’s eyes widen in surprise.
“You don’t have anybody waiting for you back home?”
“Not in the sense you mean,” Zaron replied, more calmly this time. “My parents and grandparents are on Krina, but I don’t have a ‘girlfriend,’ as you would call it.”
“Why not?” Emily asked, tilting her head to the side. Her gaze roamed quizzically over his features. “Surely you have no problems attracting women. Unless the ones on your planet have different tastes?”
Zaron stared at her, a strange temptation gnawing at him. “No,” he said slowly. “They don’t.” Even by Krinar standards, he was considered an attractive male; he knew that without false modesty. Larita had always joked that his parents had made him too pretty, frequently teasing him about being better-looking than her.
“Then what is it?” Emily persisted, her eyes gleaming with curiosity. “You said you’re six hundred years old. Shouldn’t you have a wife and kids by now?”
“I had a wife,” Zaron said abruptly, giving in to the temptation. “She died eight years ago.” As soon as the words came out of his mouth, he wanted to take them back, but it was too late. The curiosity on Emily’s face disappeared, replaced by shock and that which he hated most: pity.
To his relief, she didn’t start mouthing platitudes. Instead, she asked softly, “Were you together for long?”
“Forty-four of your Earth years.” Just three years short of the Celebration of Forty-Seven—the formal event that would’ve publicized their union and made it permanent in the eyes of the Krinar society.
“I see,” Emily murmured, studying him. “May I ask what happened?”
“It was an accident.” Zaron’s mouth twisted. “Just a stupid, careless accident. Larita was what you would call an astronaut, an explorer of the geology of deep space. When she died, she was on a routine project in a nearby solar system, taking samples from a methane lake on a planet that somewhat resembles your Saturn’s moon Titan—right down to the lack of oxygen in the atmosphere.” He paused, swallowing the hard knot that had formed in his throat. “There was an unexpected volcanic eruption in a nearby area, and Larita’s oxygen tank got damaged by the flying debris. She would’ve been fine—except some of the oxygen leaked out, combining with the methane in the atmosphere.”
He could see the color leaving Emily’s cheeks as she realized where he was heading. “Yes,” he said flatly. “You can probably guess what happened next. Methane is highly flammable when oxygen is present, and with the volcano spewing hot magma, the lake around her became a fiery hell. Neither she nor her two colleagues survived.”
He stopped then, unable to say more as he relived the horror of hearing that the woman he’d loved more than life itself was gone, her body incinerated by an inferno on a far-off world. He hadn’t believed th
e news at first, had tried to deny it for as long as he could. It wasn’t until the remnants of Larita’s suit had been recovered that he’d accepted the truth: that his mate would never return from her routine expedition.
A warm, gentle pressure on his hand brought him out of the dark recollections. Glancing down, Zaron was surprised to find Emily’s slender fingers wrapped around his palm. She had reached across the table of her own initiative, gripping his hand in a gesture of silent support. Lifting his gaze back to her face, he saw that her eyes were glittering with unspilled moisture.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered achingly, and something about the look of genuine sympathy on her face tugged at his insides, chasing away some of the cold, heavy feeling in his stomach. “I’m truly sorry, Zaron. I can’t imagine what it must’ve felt like, to lose someone you loved for so long.”
He drew in a deep breath, letting himself be soothed by the soft timbre of her voice and the feel of her delicate hand squeezing his palm. He didn’t know why he had confided in this human. It wasn’t like him at all. Zaron never voluntarily talked about Larita’s death; even after eight years, the memories were too fresh, too painful, and he wasn’t the type of person to burden others with his problems. Yet for some reason, he’d wanted to tell Emily, to see if she would understand.
She was still looking at him, as if debating something. Then, apparently reaching a decision, she began to speak.
“My parents died when I was four,” she said quietly, and Zaron froze, a chill skittering down his spine. “It was a car accident. They were passing a slow-moving truck on a highway, going about eighty miles an hour, when one of their tires blew. The car flipped several times before coming to a halt on the side of the road. My dad was killed instantly, and my mom passed away in the hospital a few hours later.” Her fingers tightened convulsively around his palm as she added hoarsely, “I was home with a babysitter at the time, you see, and my parents were rushing to get back to me because the movie ended later than they’d expected.”