She put her hands on his shoulders and the firm muscles moved beneath her palms. Her hands moved down to his sculpted chest, where she could feel his heartbeat thumping under her fingertips.
Her fingers traveled lower, sliding across his stomach to the top of his waistband.
Drakor moaned and pulled her hips again, grinding her pelvic bone over his rock-hard arousal. A jolt of electricity ricocheted throughout her bloodstream, curling her toes.
Oh God, this spaceship business had to be nonsense. This was clearly a man underneath her, not some freaky space alien. A man whose tongue found the sensitive spot on the curve of her neck, whose hands cupped her bottom as if they were already naked.
Hot tremors spiraled down her legs. To hell with her past, her mistakes, her regrets. She had to be naked with him. Right now. But…didn’t they come here for another reason?
“The story on Mickey’s—” She closed her eyes as his lips suckled the hollow spot at the base of her throat.
His palms cupped her breasts, kneaded them. “It can wait.”
Erin moaned. Oh God, how could he be this good? How could he make her forget everything but him? “Yes,” she murmured. “It can wait.”
“I must tell you that I won’t be able stop this time.” His thick voice echoed through a hazy veil of lust. “Once we start, Erin, I won’t be able to stop.”
He’d better have brought condoms with him, because she sure as hell didn’t want him to stop.
The last time.
This could be the last time he ever felt this way. If they didn’t return home soon, he would never find his true Mharai. But he needed Erin now. Needed her to take him away from the worries and disasters of his family.
Great Sun, he needed the comfort and peace only she could provide.
Drakor slid his tongue along the curve of her shoulder. He knew this spot made her squirm. She moaned and wriggled, her pelvic bone deliciously sliding on his erection and her breasts pressing up against his chest.
Control. He clenched her shorts. He must retain control.
“We should move into the other room.” He whispered the words against her shoulder.
He heard her gulp. “Yes. The bedroom.”
Drakor scooped his hands under her bottom and stood, lifting her with him. She wrapped her legs around his waist and he carried her into the bedroom. He laid them atop her messy blankets and positioned himself on top of her. He wanted no opportunity for her to change her mind.
The light from the streetlamp filtered through the curtained window above the bed. A shadow split her face so that he could see one eye, a little of her nose and her pretty little mouth. She smiled an invitation.
He captured her lips, smelling and tasting the sweet frosting again. His first bite of actual food and it was like Erin herself—one taste and he craved more.
Erin parted her mouth and he plunged his tongue inside. Hot blood roared through his veins, intensity surged in his bones.
Drakor released her mouth and kissed her soft throat. Erin’s hands reached into his hair, her breasts rose toward him. He pulled on her shirt, yanking it free of her shorts and slid a hand over her silky warm skin.
His mouth watering, Drakor lowered his lips to her bare stomach. His arousal strained, ached, begging to be free of these pants. Not yet.
A sweet and intoxicating floral scent lingered on her skin. His tongue, awakened from a lifetime of sleep, sought to taste the flavor. Drakor dipped it into her navel. Erin moaned, clenched his hair.
Ah, a sensitive spot like her neck and he would use it for all its worth. Drakor held her hips so she could not slide away and teased the small bump with rapid flicks of his tongue. She bucked and twisted beneath him, her panting rising to a tortured pitch.
“Oh God, it tickles. Drakor…”
He could die with this heat. Like being outside on Elliac for too long, his body blazed and his throat dried. But he didn’t want to stop. He couldn’t.
Drakor released his hold on her and sat back on his heels. He pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it to the floor.
He trailed his fingers up her white thighs until he reached the button at her short pants. They slipped off her legs to reveal underwear with small flowers. He left them and reached for her shirt, pulling it over her head and out of his way.
Now she lay before him in only her underclothing. Despite the low light in the room he could still marvel at her body. The magnificent shadowed curve of her hip. Her fair breasts, trapped beneath a white-laced bra. At the wet skin now glistening on her stomach.
Drakor swallowed. No turning back now.
He lay along side of her and traced his fingertip from her lips, down her throat, between her breasts, over her navel and inside her underwear. He found the warm folds of her skin and slipped a finger inside. Erin gasped, arched her back.
Restraint slipping, Drakor plundered her lips with his tongue while his fingers stroked dampening heat between her legs. She twisted, tightened, whimpered.
Drakor slid his hand out from her underwear and moved on top of her. He removed her bra and tossed it off the bed. Then, moving quickly, he suckled at her yielding skin. Her small, pale nipples stiffened under the flick of his tongue.
His erection pulsated. He couldn’t hold out too much longer. But he wanted her to ask for it, to be so overwhelmed with passion that she did not ask for the use of the absurd condom.
Drakor slid further down, his tongue leaving a trail on her fair skin. Erin squirmed again when he teased her navel and he swallowed the chuckle in his throat. She bucked under his merciless tickle and he slipped the underwear off her hips.
“Oh, please, Drakor.”
He looked up from his position at her thighs. Her head was back, exposing her throat. Her round breasts slanted sideways, slightly bouncing with each deep breath she took. Outside the window, someone walked in front of the lamp, causing an elongated shadow to travel along her body like the second hand on an old Earth clock.
Drakor closed his eyes, but the sight of her still burned in his view. Helta, he didn’t want to feel this deeply, need her this badly.
She is not like some of the other females on this planet who can mate without giving something of themselves. Erin will be heartbroken when you are gone from here.
Ankra’s words haunted him and he rested his cheek on her leg. He should leave now before it was too late. She was human. An outmoded, suspicious, disbelieving human.
And he needed her. Every inch of her supple, seductive body. Too soon the anniversary of his birth would arrive and he would be left alone. This night with Erin could very well be his last time. Only she could soothe his soul.
“Drakor?” Her desperate voice echoed in the room. “Are you putting it on now?”
She meant the condom. She hadn’t forgotten. Nor was she watching.
“Yes.” He kissed her thigh while he undid the button his shorts and dropped them to the floor. He reached in his pocket, pulled out the envelope and ripped a corner so that she heard the noise. How could he convince her that they didn’t need it?
He didn’t care that Ankra, Father and the Researchers believed a human could impregnate an Elliacian. That didn’t mean an Elliacian could impregnate a human. Besides, she wasn’t his Mharai and this would prove it. Hell, he didn’t even know how to use the thing.
“It’s torn,” he lied.
“Torn?”
“You don’t have another, do you?”
Drakor resumed his tastes of her inner thigh, licking his way up toward the crease of her leg. She was sweet. She was the stars. She was a thousand Elliac suns. He blew softly on the light-colored triangle of hair and Erin gripped the bed coverings.
“Oh God!”
The inferno in his veins exploded at her strangled cry.
Drakor moved himself over her, positioning himself between her legs. He kissed her with a savage intensity and she returned his hunger stroke for stroke. He rubbed the tip of his erection against her wetn
ess, torturing himself more than her.
Erin reached around and grabbed his hips. She let go of his tongue. “Do it,” she cried, “but you have to pull out.”
Pull out? He could barely hold on as it was. He grunted a reply and sank himself inside of her. Her inner body converged on him with the sweetest agony. Somewhere, through a haze of desire, he heard her gasp then moan. Her hips rocked to meet his strokes and for the first time he feared he might end this too soon.
Drakor pushed himself deeper inside of her, the scintillating fire pulling him far away. He closed his eyes and visions of Elliac filled his mind. The haunting beauty of the red and bronze hills and the powerful echoes of the thundering purple skies.
But then the sound of her breathy whimpers filled his ears and he found himself back on Earth. He felt her pick up speed, grip him tighter, until she was moving not just up and back but side to side, as well. And, then, when he thought he could not hold back a minute more, Erin cried out and a hot wave flooded around him.
That was all it took. He thrust himself deeper into her, reaching, straining, connecting intimately with a human he once swore to hate until a pleasure so intense crashed through him that he lost all feeling in his fingers and toes.
Through the heavy veil of desire, Drakor heard her plea for him to pull out. With a tremendous effort, he slid himself out of her while the remainder of his desire shuddered from his body.
Drakor collapsed with his face buried in her neck, barely able to move, unwilling to think. Erin wrapped her arms around his back and kissed his cheek.
“You must tell me how I can repay you.” Her soft voice repeated his words back to him.
But Drakor turned his head away, squeezing his eyes shut.
She couldn’t. Not now. Not ever.
Chapter Twelve
Erin needed to water her plants. Her Peace Lily had drooped over the sides of its pot and several of the Philodendron’s leaves were yellow.
And she needed to go grocery shopping and return a bathing suit she bought last month and stop by the dry cleaners and go to the gym and get a birthday card and…
Oh God, she needed to see Drakor again.
Erin sat down on her bed and smoothed her hand over the blankets. She dropped back and spread her arms wide. Oh, to have him touch her again, to have his lips and fingers tracing circles on her skin. He could have kept her awake until sunrise but he said he was tired. Imagine that, she was willing to have more sex and he wasn’t. It didn’t matter.
She knew he was now putty in her hands. Next time she saw him, they’d have a delicious romp and then he’d tell her all she needed to know.
She should be tired after being up all night, but truth was she couldn’t wait to go somewhere. Bubbles fizzled in her stomach, like drinking a fresh soda straight from the fridge. She felt nervous and excited and slightly lightheaded.
And she couldn’t sit in this apartment another minute. Erin grabbed her bag from the kitchen chair and left for Greg’s house.
“Is Ankra still here?” she asked a few minutes later on his doorstep.
Greg yawned and stretched. “Nah, she had to go back. Said her dad was sick. I drove her back a while ago and then went back to bed.”
He stepped aside and Erin followed him in. Butterflies still danced under her skin but she couldn’t tell her brother about last night. Not only was it too weird, she couldn’t stand his endless teasing.
“So, what’s up?” he said.
“Did you ever find out why Ankra was crying last night?”
He took a few swallows. “No, nothing other than her worrying about her dad. That’s all she’d say.”
Erin slid onto one of the barstools. “Oh.”
“What about you? Did Drakor go back with you? Did he tell you what they talked about downstairs?”
She glanced away from him, trying not to blush. “No. He didn’t seem like he wanted to talk about it.”
Greg cocked a blond eyebrow. “Did he want to talk at all?”
“Okay, that’s enough of that.”
“Oh, come on. I know if he went back to your place in the middle of the night something must have happened.”
She lifted her nose in the air. “He was there the whole night last week and nothing happened.”
Greg shrugged and took the milk out and drank it straight from the container.
“Do you have to do that?” Erin wrinkled her nose. “It’s really nasty.”
He gulped the remainder of the carton and tossed it in the trash. “Hey, that’s why I live alone, okay?”
“Didn’t Ankra want some while she was here all those times?”
Greg scratched his head and leaned against the counter. “Now that you mention it, I don’t recall Ankra ever drinking it.”
“Maybe she doesn’t like milk or is allergic.”
“No. I mean, she never drank anything. Or ate, for that matter. Hell, she never wanted to go out to eat. Kind of weird, huh?”
Erin’s butterflies turned into bees. She swallowed. “I thought you took her to lunch that one day.”
“I did, but she just sat there watching me. When I asked if she was hungry, she just shook her head.”
“I’m sure she had to eat sometime.” Erin tried to calm that investigative bubble wanting to burst. But she could so clearly remember Drakor refusing to eat when he was at her apartment. Refusing to try the frosting until she forced it on him.
No. He wasn’t something from a spaceship. He looked like a man. He felt like a man. Hell, he even screwed like a man. There was some other secret he was hiding. She’d find it. Eventually.
“What’s gotten into you?”
Erin looked up into Greg’s questioning blue eyes. “Nothing. I’m fine.”
He shrugged a shoulder. “Okay. Is that all you came over for?”
“Well…” She tapped her chipped fingernails on the tile countertop and desperately glanced around the room. Why was she here?
Because she couldn’t face the apartment alone. Because she’d just had the best sex of her life and used the guy for her story. She was a tramp. And a damn horny one at that.
“Do you really think you saw a spaceship?”
Drakor stormed out of the house, the welcoming heat enveloping him like a fog. He pushed his way past the young trees and deeper into the woods until he reached the creek.
Anger and helplessness surged in his veins, making his headache worsen. He squatted along the muddy banks and rinsed his hands in the cool water. He couldn’t bear to hear his father throw up again. He couldn’t watch his mother scurry to the kitchen yet again for some human concoction to calm his father’s stomach.
It was that medicine the Researchers gave him. The ones that were supposed to prevent his bones from weakening, prevent his life from deteriorating in sickness. Now his father was dying. And he refused to leave Earth to see if he could be saved on Elliac.
Drakor swirled the bottom of the creek, sending up clouds of dirt and disturbing several tiny fish. He couldn’t do this at home. After an hour in that sun, he’d be in the hospital. No amount of clothing or skin protection could help them. About the only redeeming thing on Earth was its weather.
And Erin.
Drakor walked over to the spot he saw her at last night. Was it only a few hours ago that he found her out here? So much happened in that time.
He fought the urge to find his way back to her. How he longed for the peace and contentment of her arms instead of the worry and anger of his father dying. The memories of himself inside of her haunted him throughout the day. Brundor knew instantly that something transpired while he was gone. And it only served to fuel his brother’s jealousy and hunger.
The sooner they all got off this planet the better for all of them.
Drakor swatted at some insects swarming around his face and moved out of the trees and back toward the house.
Did he hear singing? There it was again. A soft, sweet sound coming from the far corner of the yard. His
eyes scanned the area until he saw Sitora near the swinging tire.
He strode over to her, all the while her angelic voice soothing his torn soul. She held her battered doll in her hands while she tried to push it on the swing. He could see it was difficult for her to hold and swing at the same time but she didn’t give up.
“Hello, Sitora.”
She looked up at him and he could see the redness from the heat covering her cheeks. Her long hair hung limply over her shoulders and for a moment he wished he could pull it up the way Erin sometimes did hers.
Drakor pulled out a corner of his shirt and wiped the sweat from her face. “What are you doing outside?”
She shrugged and swung her doll again. “I don’t like it inside.”
“Why not?”
“Father is sick and Mother and Ankra are crying.”
“I know.” He looked down at the grass at their feet. “I’m sorry. Are you afraid Father will die?”
Sitora didn’t answer him but resumed her song instead. It was a bedtime song from Elliac. He remembered it from his own childhood. He always thought that one day he would sing it to his own children. But that wouldn’t happen now. He would never find his Mharai in time.
Drakor leaned against the tree, his chest squeezing with her off-key words. “Sing another song. Don’t you know something else?”
“Will you push me in the swing?”
He couldn’t do that now. Not with his father dying inside and his future crumbling within his spirit. “I can’t, Sitora. Not now.”
Her dark eyes glared at him. “Erin would.”
His heart clenched. “What?”
“Erin would play with me. She’s the only one who does. When is she coming back?”
Drakor felt his throat closing. He couldn’t let himself think of Erin now. He couldn’t see her again. It hurt him to leave her this morning, more than the agony of before when he could not touch her.
He swallowed and found his voice. “When did she play with you?”
“When you went somewhere with her brother. She played with me in my room. She tickled me.” Sitora held her doll close to her chest. “No one else ever did that.”
The Price of Discovery Page 11