by C. Y. Croc
The group of men take hold of the subdued trio and march them away.
Another man steps forward from the crowd and stabs his finger in the male shifter’s direction. “Niddoo, what in damnation are you? And-and what does that make your daughter and the grandnips I share with you?”
The shifter sighs heavily and his shoulders visibly drop. He shakes his head slowly and looks down at the floor. “I’m sorry, Galeo. I never meant to hurt you.”
“Are-are my grandnips halfbreeds?”
The shifter suddenly straightens, as if he’s been injected with adrenaline. He looks the male straight in the eye. “Yes, well I suppose they are quarterbreeds. I’m sorry I deceived you, but I’m not sorry that both of our blood runs in our grandnips. There is nothing wrong with species who love each other interbreeding. Love should be cherished, wherever it is found. This clan out of all in this district should know that more than the others. Did you not learn from the prejudice killings that took place here fifteen yanas ago.” He points to Saaxx. “The killing of Saaxxatee’s parents. Her Kimanka father and her Human mother.” I look to Saaxx and my mouth drops open. Human mother? He then points to me. “Killed by this male’s adoptive father and many from this clan!” Saaxx looks at me and her mouth also falls open. “Yet fifteen yanas later, the killer's son and the victim’s daughter fall in love!”
I watch as her eyes begin to fill with tears, but I am in too much shock to grab her into my arms and comfort her. She was the girl who’d been in my nightmares all these years. My father’s clan had killed her family at his order. I know he had been made to come to that decision but that didn’t ease my guilt. Saaxx...my Saaxx’s life had been negatively affected by my family’s actions. Would she ever forgive me? The look of devastation in her eyes tells me no, and I want to die.
The shifter continues. “From today there will be no more prejudice toward interbreeding species!”
Saaxxatee pushes past me as the first tears drop onto her cheeks. I go after her but the shifter calls out to me making me stop in my tracks.
“Texxari Sharnafka! I need to talk to you about your birth parents.”
I turn to face him bewildered. “You know my birth parents?”
He nods. “That is what brought me to these parts over thirty yanas ago. I was sent on a mission by your parents to find you.”
The doors and windows rattle, reminding everyone that the wind season is imminent.
“I’ll come and find you after the wind season!”
He nods and I turn and go after Saaxx. He continues to address the clan. “I think it’s best if we all head to our dwellings. I will see to the supplies of the captive males. Let us meet here after the wind season to discuss their fates!”
I’m out of the building before the crowd starts to disperse, but Saaxx is already out of sight. I scan the area frantically but I can’t see her. Knowing her, she’ll be making her way back to her own dwelling on foot.
I head to where I left my father’s ewit. I think about him and my mother as I walk. I still love them with all of my heart but it doesn’t stop the curiosity of my birth parents already niggling away at me.
When I reach the ewit, I quickly untie its harness and climb up, then steer him in the direction I came from, back towards Saaxx’s home.
The wind has definitely taken a turn for the worst in the short amount of time we’ve been inside the communal building and I’m beginning to fear for Saaxx’s safety. As quick as I can, I follow the trail back that lead me here, but as I look way ahead in front of me Saaxx is nowhere to be seen. But I still continue on the route. I’ve known Saaxx for such a short amount of time but I feel like I’ve known her forever. There’s no way she would have gone anywhere but back home to be with Bupple.
Then just as I’m turning off the trail onto her property I hear her squeals of distress. The land on which her property sits is higher than the town and the winds here are so much stronger than there. They almost blow me from the ewit but I use my mind power to keep me anchored to it.
I spot Saaxx holding onto the roof of one of the byres, an ewit that she must have taken from town not far from her, anchored to the ground by its feet. My heart shoots up in my mouth. Then without warning the strongest gust I’ve encountered so far roars past me and is on top of Saaxx in seconds. Her fingers lose their grip and she sails up into the air like a kite, her screams fading the further away she gets.
I go into panic mode. Will my mind be able to reach her so far away, I’m still learning?
I take a breath and concentrate on her silhouette growing smaller in the distance, my heart is hammering in my chest and my palms are sweating.
You can do this Tex!
I close my eyes and push all of my emotions into my head. The way I’d felt that day at the neighbouring clan’s township. How guilty I’d felt for not trying to stop my fellow clansmen from killing Saaxx’s parents. How helpless I’d felt on Earth in the war I’d contributed to. And then to the look in Saaxx’s eyes when she’d found out I’d been party to the killing of her parents. I needed to get her back—make it all right.
Flinging my eyes open I look into the distance. She’s but a speck in the sky. I will her back to me. I can feel the invisible pull I have on her. Feel the strength of my mind enveloping her, drawing her closer to me. The black dot gets bigger and bigger until I can see her shape again. Arms, legs, head adorned with her crescent-shaped bone. Her features and finally her beautiful violet eyes.
I open my arms and she floats down into them, side-saddle in front of me on top of the ewit. She’s gasping as she flings her arms around my neck.
I cry into her neck.“Saaxx! Saaxx! I thought I’d lost you forever!”
“Thank you!” She takes in deep breaths. “Thank you for saving me Tex. Please, just take me to my dwelling. I need to see if Bupple is okay!”
I dig my heels into the ewit and pull on its harness. It heads towards the house.
“Bupple is fine, I locked him in the house when I came looking for you earlier”
She pulls away and stares into my eyes. “You came looking for me?”
I nod. “Yes as soon as I sorted out Ulsis, my father’s right-hand man, and my parents had explained to me they weren’t my real parents and that they’d purchased me from Taraquets as a baby then I-...”
“...You didn’t know you were a shapeshifter?”
I shake my head. “And my father and I didn’t want to go to your township that day and destroy your family. It was Ulsis inciting the prejudice in our clan. Unbeknown to me at the time, my father had been raising a different species, hidden away right under their noses. If he’d opposed the attack any more than he already had, I think he was scared they would have suspected he was hiding something about his own family.”
I watch the mix of emotions that change in her face, her internal battle to understand my admission.
“Just take me back Tex. I-I can’t deal with this right now. I-I just need time to analyse the last few doons.”
My heart sinks into the pit of my stomach. I nod and look ahead. The wonderful closeness of our bodies now feeling as awkward as hell.
When we reach her house she gasps when she sees the dray overturned from the wind. She jumps down and walks towards the door without a backward glance.
I call after her. “Can I at least come in and check on Bupple?”
She reaches the door and then looks back over her shoulder. “Yes, I think he’d like that.”
I’m off the ewit quicker than if I was standing on a land mine. Saaxx leaves the door open and I follow her inside, inhaling her sweet-scented pheromone trail in her shadow.
I’m aching to grab her, spin her round to face me, take her in my arms and kiss her tantalising red lips but I hang back, two steps behind her.
Bupple is still asleep in the exact same spot that I left him, but he must also smell us too because he sniffs the air in his sleep and then his eyes lazily open.
Saaxx kneels besid
e him. “Bupple! You’re okay. I was so worried. I’m so sorry for leaving you in the dray.” She turns to me. “That last gust of wind must have overturned the dray. You probably saved Bupple’s life as well as mine.”
Bupple sits up and licks Saaxx’s cheek and she giggles. Then he stretches his front legs and then his back ones before standing up and trotting over to me. I squat down and begin to pet him but he wants a taste of me too and reaches up to lick my cheek.
Saaxx is back on her feet with her arms crossed in front of her body. “So you didn’t know you were a shapeshifter?”
The question takes me by surprise. I shake my head. “Not until I changed outside Mimette and Kirty’s house.”
“And how did you forget your niphood and end up on Earth?”
I look into her eyes trying to gauge her feelings. “I think I went into shock when I witnessed your family’s demise. I ended up at a market asking Taraquets of all species to take me away from here. I think I wanted to erase the horror of what my mind had just witnessed” I see a flicker of something in her violet pools. “Then the next thing I knew I was on Earth, my mind a blank page and my body changed into their form. I joined an army and went to war. But instead of running away from the horror, I ran into it. I witnessed more atrocities which further messed with my fragile mind. The next thing I knew, I was in the hands of Taraquets again and then I met a beautiful, strong, courageous female who saw through my madness and tried to help me.”
I see her bottom lip quiver.
“You know, I remember seeing a male nipseak that day. I remember thinking, he has such a kind face, why is he with these awful males attacking my clan.” She puffs out her cheeks and slowly shakes her head. “It was you I saw. You disappeared, but I held the image of your face in my mind to keep my thoughts distracted from the brutal killing of my parents...In a way, you helped me then too. How ironic that we met in similar circumstances all these yanas later. You see, I too blocked the images and memories of that day, and until hincs ago, I’d blocked it all. It was only seeing you awake and unaware of who we were back at Mimette’s and Kirty’s that made Mimette address my situation, otherwise she might have skirted around it for years. So without you, I wouldn’t have remembered my parents.”
I’m feeling so optimistic by the way she’s talking I want to do a song and dance. I begin to plan the year ahead, how I’m going to seduce her. But then without warning, she reaches up and grabs my face and brings my mouth down to meet hers. My insides turn into melted butter.
10
Saaxxatee
It’s no use. After listening to his explanation while trying to maintain eye contact and not let them roam down over his fascinating shirtless Human form, I know he won me over at I think I went into shock when I witnessed your family’s demise. If what he’s said is true, he was an innocent bystander in what happened, and being just a nipseak himself, he shouldn’t have even been there that day. His adopted father might have saved him from the Taraquets, but he lost his son and his son’s niphood innocence that day he took him to make the raid on my clan to kill my parents.
His lips taste even better than I remember, softer even, and they fit and lock into my lips like they were moulded from the same flesh—like they were meant to be together.
I run my hands over his muscular shoulders and bring them around to rest on his chest. I love the feel of his hair underneath my fingertips and to me, it feels more masculine than the biggest crescent horn on any male Kimanka.
His hands are greedy, and roam my body undecided where they want to stop. First, they slide down my arms, then they snake around my waist, before deciding to rest on my ass. He groans my name through his kisses.
“Saaxxatee. Saaxxatee.”
It just adds to my arousal and my cooch turns from a shimmer into a bathing pool. I can smell my own pheromones, my own arousal so they must be driving Tex crazy.
He pulls my hips to his hips and I feel his desire for me has already reached its full potential.
He walks me over to my bed and I hear Bupple make happy clicking sounds and snuggle down onto the bed I made for Tex.
He lowers me down but I don’t feel the bed below me. I open my eyes to see us hovering over it, moving slowly up into the right position before we lower down. Tex is using his mind to make things even better for us and the thought of him doing that makes me even hotter for him.
He kisses down my neck and slides his hands down to rest on my mambas. I tremble under his touch. He squeezes and then lifts up his top that I’m still wearing and then sees I’m also still wearing my own top underneath too.
He growls, “Ah, too many clothes.”
Without him laying a finger on them, both tops pull up over my body and the same invisible force pulls my arms up over my head. The tops whip up and off my arms but when I try to pull them back down they’re stuck.
Tex looks up from kissing circles around one of my mambas with the lopsided smile I love. “Your arms are better up there for a while...it gives me better access to your delicious skin. He licks up my mamba to the bud that sits in the centre and swirls his tongue lazily over it. I moan as it elongates even more. He takes it in his lips and sucks and tingles shoot from it all the way down to my cooch. He wastes no time doing exactly the same to the other side and I squeeze my legs together trying to increase the incredible feeling it’s giving me.
Tex leaves my mambas and kisses a trail down my stomach until he reaches the top of my leg coverings.
“Tut, tut, tut. More clothes.” My foot coverings fly off and land somewhere in the room with a thud. Bupple makes a noise and then goes sniffing to explore what happened. My leg coverings comes off just as quickly and I lie there naked for the first time in front of a male and in the daylight no less.
He sits up and rakes his eyes over my body, taking in every inch of me, his breathing getting faster and more ragged.
“Christ Saaxx, you don’t realise how fucking beautiful you are!”
I gush internally at his comment.
He scoots backward until he’s off the bed and standing. I admire his wide shoulders and V lines on either side of his rippled abdominals that disappear into the waistband of his leg coverings.
He kicks off his boots, tugs off his foot coverings, and pulls down his leg coverings and the cloth he wears to cover his genitals. When he stands I get to see his taja for the first time erect without a hand or cloth covering it. It looks big and scary nestled in his bed of black hair but my cooch pulsates more and more the longer I look at it.
Tex’s eyes are blacker than I’ve seen them before as he sniffs the air, filled with my pheromones. “I want to fuck you so bad Saaxx and claim you as my mate, but I want to pleasure you first.”
My legs open wide by themselves with the same invisible force that still holds my arms above my head.
Tex leans down and kisses my feet, moving at such a slow pace that it’s torture. My cooch is contracting and pulsating expectantly, impatiently, but his pace remains the same. It’s as though he’s teasing me. I hear my moans and groans, but I no longer have control over the sounds I’m making.
When he gets to my inner thighs I’m certain I’ve left a wet patch on the bed beneath me.
He places a hand on either side of my inner thighs and pushes my legs open even wider, gasping in awe at what he sees.
“Oh, fuck. I think I’ve died and gone to heaven!”
His tongue is immediately licking the length of me and makes my head swirl. How could this feel so good with a different species—so right? He goes from one of my cooch holes to another and then to an area at the top of my cooch that sends an electric shock through the whole of my cooch each time it’s touched. But it’s when he inserts a finger into me as he sucks on it that I feel like my whole body is going to explode. My entire body shakes and spasms, and the same feeling that I’d felt before when I was with him takes over me again.
Tex inhales deeply from between my legs and looks up with his lopside
d smile. “You’re so ripe and even more ready for me now.”
The invisible force holding my arms and legs releases them, and my arms flop down to my shoulders boneless.
Tex walks up the bed to me on his hands and knees, his eyes now impossibly blacker than before.
He kisses me passionately. He’s right about me being ripe. The smell of my sex on his face is strong. I can understand how it’s an aphrodisiac to males.
He lies on me with his elbows on either side of my head as he kisses me. I can feel his taja on my stomach. It’s a long hot rod that both scares me and thrills me. I reach for it and curl my hands around its huge head. Tex pulls away from my lips and groans as his eyelids flutter. I stroke my fingers up and down its length, marvelling at its rigidity and the smoothness of its skin.
Then my first thought of Tex as being something other than a Human comes into my mind.
Does he only have one taja as a shapeshifter? Will it feel as soft as this? I look into his dark cavernous pools and run my eyes over his features. What colour will his shifter eyes be? How many eyes will he have? My heart flutters a little excited at the prospect of seeing him properly for the first time. I know whatever he looks like I’ll not be disappointed. I love Tex for who he is not what he looks like.
Tex’s fingers find the spot on my cooch that drives me crazy with desire and runs his finger over it. I shudder beneath him, involuntarily squeezing the head of his taja.
“I can’t wait any longer Saaxx, I need to be inside you.”
I withdraw my hand and he moves his hips into position between my legs. I suck in a breath in anticipation and hold it. I feel the heat as his taja moves into position by my lower hole then a feeling of pressure as he slowly pushes against it. Thankfully his taja slides in with ease and I exhale as I feel him fill me up.