“How awful!” Alli shivered at the thought. “What happens to your concubines, though?” she asked, frowning at Kane. “Do you let them go home—the way you promised to bring me home when my month is up?”
Kane raised an eyebrow.
“If you’re probing to see if I am still planning to take you home at the end of our solar month together, the answer is yes, Allisandra. I fully intend to honor my word to you.”
Alli felt something loosen in her chest. She’d been afraid to bring the subject up herself but she wanted desperately to know that she absolutely would be getting out of here after her allotted time was up. Still, she also wanted to know what Kane did with a girl after he was finished “feeding” on her.
“Thank you,” she said. “That’s good to know. But my question stands—what happens to your other concubines when their month is up? Unless you keep some of them for longer?”
“I never keep a concubine for longer than a month. In fact, I usually only keep them for a week,” Kane said, frowning. “It’s too easy to grow attached when one is feeding off of pleasure, as I am.”
Alli wished he would have agreed to let her go in a week, but she didn’t say it out loud. She wanted to wait and see what else he might say.
“Most of my concubines—in fact, all of them besides yourself—have come from Earth,” he told her.
“Your Earth, you mean,” Alli said flatly. “The world you took over and dominated for your own use.”
“Yes.” Kane shrugged. “I’ve never denied that. But the problem with getting concubines from a subjugated people is that they tend to be dull and lifeless—stunned into submission by brute force at first and then kept quiescent by the constant supply of Calm which they’re given as a supplement every day.”
“Calm?” Alli frowned. “What’s that?”
“A drug,” Kane said frankly. “Given to all the humans on Earth to keep them from rising up against us. But it also makes the females dull and uninteresting.” He shrugged. “And to answer your question, when I am finished feeding from one of them, I give her a choice. She can either return to the Harem, or go into the general population of Earth, and try to find herself a human mate.”
“The Harem?” Alli looked at him disbelievingly. This just got worse and worse! “What is the Harem?” she demanded.
“The complex where all Earth females eligible to become concubines are kept,” Kane answered. “It is where the Kru’ell Ones go when we wish to find a new female to feed from for a time.”
“Your people really are vampires!” Alli was horrified. “Don’t you have any shame at all about what you’ve done to the people of Earth?”
“The people of Earth were killing themselves before we came.” Kane’s deep voice was icy. “They were consumed with wars and race riots and they had nearly killed their planet with out of control carbon emissions and climate change. A very few of them held vast wealth, while billions of others went hungry. We changed all of that.” He made a sweeping motion with one hand. “We terraformed the planet and reduced carbon emissions. We reversed climate change. We brought peace and equality to every corner of the world.”
“By drugging the people!” Alli exclaimed. “I’m sorry, but it doesn’t matter what wonderful things you’ve achieved if you had to take away people’s free will to do it!”
Kane shrugged. “If it helps, I voted against giving the humans Calm. But I was outvoted. The Overlord wanted it and so most of the Council voted with him.”
Alli shook her head.
“I’m just really glad my Earth isn’t like the one your people have ‘annexed’. It would be awful to have to choose between having my emotions fed off of constantly or going to live in a place where nobody has any free will.”
Kane raised an eyebrow at her.
“Come on now, baby—has it really been that bad, having me feed off your pleasure?”
“It’s torture,” Alli whispered. Even now her nipples tingled and her pussy throbbed with need.
Kane had spent an especially long time licking and sucking her nipples and tasting her pussy that morning before he had Stung her and she could still feel his hot mouth on her. Because no matter how much he teased her, he never let her come. Even when he Stung her clit, she wasn’t able to reach the peak—although she would come maddeningly close each time.
The constant stimulation without gratification was really beginning to get to her. It was making her snappish and desperate and frankly, Alli wasn’t sure how much longer she could hold out.
“You don’t have to hold out, baby.” Kane leaned across the table, his eyes gleaming. “Just come to bed with me. I’ll give you everything you need.”
“Including your seed inside me,” Alli said accusingly. “Since you already stated you intend to make me pregnant.”
“Is that what this is about?” Kane frowned. “You still don’t want to acknowledge your deepest desire? The desire to have a child of your own?”
“I don’t…don’t want that,” Alli protested, but again, she couldn’t be sure if she was telling the truth.
Kane’s black and silver eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
“You want it…but you fear it,” he remarked. “You have to get over your fear of what you want, Alli.”
“Maybe…maybe I don’t want to.” Alli put down her napkin and rose from the table. “I’m finished eating. I’d like to go to bed now.”
“By yourself, I take it.” Kane shook his head. “I’ve never had a concubine hold out as long as you, baby. Especially with as much as I’ve been Stinging you. You have enough of my lust-honey in your system to drive ten females wild.”
Alli had nothing to say to that.
“I’m going to bed,” she said shortly. “Good night.”
And she left before she could do something she would regret.
Nineteen
That night Alli had a dream so powerful she woke in tears.
It was still dark when she opened her eyes, a sob rising to her lips and her cheeks wet. It took her a moment to realize she was really awake.
What was it? What did I dream of?
Alli couldn’t remember but the sorrow of the dream, whatever it had been, was still so strong she couldn’t seem to stop crying.
Suddenly someone was there, beside her in bed.
“It’s all right, baby,” a familiar gravelly voice murmured in her ear. “Everything is going to be all right.”
And then Kane was drawing her into his arms and Alli found herself resting her cheek against his broad, bare chest and clinging to him for dear life. It was as though the dream was a treacherous undercurrent in the ocean of sleep which had been trying to drag her under and the big Kru’ell One had thrown her a lifeline. She clung to him, feeling surrounded by safety, never wanting to let go.
“What is it?” she asked brokenly between sobs. “What’s wrong with me, Kane? Why can’t I stop crying? I had a dream—I can’t remember it but it was so sad.”
“Try to relax, baby,” he murmured. “Let me into your mind and I’ll help you find it.”
Though she had been on her guard against him for days, Alli found herself doing as he said. Relaxing against him, she opened her mind, letting down her mental and physical guards and simply melting against him.
She felt Kane giving her a gentle nudge mentally and then images began rising to her mind. She saw herself as a younger woman—just about to enter law school. She was dressed in black and standing by a gravesite—her father’s, she realized. He had died so young—right after she’d gotten her acceptance letter. And Since Alli’s mom had died when she was only seven, her father’s loss left her alone in the world.
The sight of the grave site faded and she saw her younger self trying to forget her loss—losing herself and hiding her grief in wild parties, drunken nights, hedonistic sex. It seemed to numb the pain somehow, seemed to take her mind off the empty void she felt inside.
Alli felt contempt for her younger self but then she
heard Kane whispering,
“No, Allisandra. You mustn’t blame yourself for what you did to ease the pain. You were just trying to survive.”
“Look where ‘just trying to survive’ got me, though,” Alli said harshly.
For the next images which came up showed her same younger self holding a pregnancy test and running one hand through her hair anxiously.
“A baby,” she was muttering as she stared at the positive test. “What in the hell am I going to do with a baby?”
“So your womb did quicken once before,” Kane murmured.
Alli felt grief catch her by the throat and her voice came out tight and squeezed.
“Only once. But…I lost it.”
Images of her younger self clutching her abdomen and crying with a terrible mixture of relief and sorrow filled her head. This was the part of the dream that had affected her so, she realized. This image from her past which was so painful she’d pushed it down and away until she had almost forgotten it herself
“After that, I threw myself into law school,” Alli whispered. “I tried not to think of the baby I lost or wonder what my life would have been like if I’d been able to have it. And I stopped my crazy ways and got serious.”
“You put a lid on your desires—repressed them for years,” Kane rumbled, stroking her hair. “No wonder your yearnings called to me across universes. Your needs are so deep they are like a wound inside you, Allisandra. The need to be loved and to love—the need to bring forth new life…”
“You’ve only been making all those needs worse,” Alli accused him, but there was no real heat in her voice. She was too tired to be angry—too tired to resist anymore, she realized.
“I did exacerbate them,” Kane admitted unrepentantly. “But they were festering inside you, baby. If you hadn’t let them out, you would have been miserable all your life.”
“I’ll still be miserable, according to you,” Alli pointed out. “Since I’m going home to marry a man I don’t even love—one who won’t…won’t give me a baby.”
“I’ll give you one,” Kane promised, his harsh voice unexpectedly gentle. “Though I can’t keep you with me, I can give you what you long for, Allisandra. And I can love you in the way you need to be loved—at least in the time we have left.”
Alli bit her lip.
“I shouldn’t let you…shouldn’t want you to,” she whispered, though she did want him to—desperately. “I shouldn’t cheat on Douglas deliberately.”
“Let me worry about that,” Kane murmured. “Come here, baby.”
He drew her to him and kissed her deeply, his big, warm hands roving over her body as he did so.
Alli let herself get lost in the kiss. The practical little voice was shouting in her head that she shouldn’t do this—that it would go too far. But Alli ignored it. All week the big Kindred had been Stinging her and injecting all her most sensitive areas with his lust-honey and all week she’d been fighting the effects. Finally, she could fight no more.
The dream had shown her that what Kane said about her deepest desires was true. She had pushed them away for years in shame and pain, feeling like the miscarriage she’d suffered had been her own fault because she didn’t want the baby enough. She felt that she didn’t deserve to have another.
Now Kane was asking her to put that shame and fear and despair away and embrace what she truly wanted. It might be wrong in some ways, but it felt so right in others. Alli was tired of being ashamed, tired of wanting what she felt she didn’t deserve. Now she intended to take it.
So when the big Kru’ell One bent to suck her nipples, she thrust her breasts up eagerly. When he spread her legs to taste her pussy, she opened for him willingly and arched her back as he thrust his tongue deep inside her, eagerly lapping away the honey she made.
It wasn’t until he asked her to open herself for his shaft that Alli hesitated.
“Douglas,” she whispered, feeling the shame creep back in. “We’re supposed to be married in less than a month. How can I do this to him? How can I cheat on him like this?”
“You know he won’t give you what you so desperately crave,” Kane rumbled in her ear. “You know he won’t give you a child, Allisandra.”
“That still doesn’t make it right to make love with another man,” Alli protested.
Kane was silent for a moment and she could almost hear him thinking. Then he murmured, “I have an idea. What if we weren’t actually making love and yet I gave you my seed anyway?”
“What? How would that work?” Alli protested. “How could you give me your seed without, er, fucking me?” She had visions of turkey basters in her head but Kane murmured,
“No, Alli—not like that. I would still need to be inside you—deep inside you—to give you my seed.”
“Then that’s cheating,” she pointed out flatly.
“Not if what you truly consider cheating is making love—the act of thrusting a shaft in and out of a willing pussy,” Kane pointed out. “What if I thrust into you and simply held still while I gave you my seed?”
This seemed to be splitting hairs to Alli, but by then her body was on fire. The many times the big Kru’ell One had Stung her directly inside her pussy, had given her womb a thirst for his seed which she sensed couldn’t be quenched any other way. If this was the closest she could get to not-cheating while he filled her with his come, she would have to take it.
“All right,” she whispered at last. “How…how do you want to do it?”
“From behind, I think. That way I can cradle you and stroke you as I fill you” Kane murmured. As he spoke, he turned her so that her back was to his broad chest and he was spooning her much smaller body with his big, muscular frame.
Alli sighed and snuggled back against him, feeling safe and secure—completely surrounded by his warm, spicy scent. He always smelled so good. Did he make his bonding scent for all his concubines, she wondered?
“I have never made my bonding scent for anyone but you, baby,” Kane rumbled in her ear as he stroked and tugged her tight nipples, sending sparks of pleasure straight to her already-wet pussy. “And I’ve never given another concubine my seed either.”
“Why me?” Alli whispered, as he lifted her leg and fit the broad, plum-shaped head of his cock to the entrance of her pussy.
“Because you need it,” Kane murmured in her ear. “And because you’re special to me, baby. So special. Now open for me, open your sweet little pussy and let me slide all the way inside you.”
Alli bit her lip as she tried to be open enough for him to do exactly that. The first time he’d entered her, he had only put the head and a bit of his shaft inside her—now she had to take his entire long, thick cock deep in her pussy to the hilt.
“You’re wet enough to take me, baby,” Kane murmured, clearly hearing her trepidation. “Just relax and let me in. Need to get the head of my cock right against the mouth of your sweet womb so I can fill you up completely.”
Alli moaned softly as she relaxed against him, letting him fill her. She could feel her inner walls stretching but, as Kane had said, she was wet and slippery from the way he had tasted her earlier and the way he was still plucking and teasing her nipples helped too.
At last she felt him thrust all the way home inside her, the head of his shaft giving the mouth of her womb a deep and thorough kiss.
“There it is,” Kane growled softly in her ear. “All the way inside you now, baby. Your soft little pussy is completely filled with my cock. Are you ready to take my seed? Ready to let me fill you up?”
“Y-yes,” Alli whispered breathlessly. “Yes, Kane—do it. Give me your seed!”
She waited to feel the hot spurts inside her…but nothing happened. Kane simply held still inside her, his massive shaft stretching her inner walls to the limit as he pressed deep inside her.
“Um…” Alli turned her head to look up at him and found that he was staring down at her, his mirrored eyes glowing softly in the dark.
“Feels
so good inside you, baby,” he murmured raggedly. “But I can’t come without some stimulation.”
Alli bit her lip. “So you need to thrust inside me after all? Need…need to fuck me?”
Kane shook his head.
“No, I said stimulation—I didn’t say it had to be thrusting. You’re going to stimulate me, baby.” As he spoke, one big hand stole down between her legs and began to stroke Alli’s throbbing clit. “You’re going to come for me,” Kane growled. “Going to come so hard on my cock and milk the seed right out of my shaft into your thirsty little womb. Can you do that for me, Allisandra?”
“Y-yes. I think so.” Alli could barely moan her agreement. Despite all the pleasure he’d given her earlier, Kane had not yet allowed her to come. In fact, she hadn’t come since that first night in the pool—the first time he had given her his seed. Now he was saying he would finally give her a release.
“Yes, baby—going to make you come,” Kane growled in her ear. “Come so hard on my cock while I fill you up.”
As he spoke, he kept circling her swollen, sensitive clit—teasing her, tempting her to come, to finally lose control.
Alli thought later that she had never come so hard in her life. With a wave of overwhelming pleasure, she felt herself finally tip over the edge he’d kept her on all week.
“Oh!” she gasped, arching her back and tilting her pelvis, trying to get even more of the big Kru’ell One’s thick shaft inside her. “Oh, Kane, yes—yes!”
“That’s right, baby,” he murmured, his voice thick with lust as he stroked her throbbing clit. “Gods, I can feel you coming all around me. It’s like your soft little pussy is begging me to fill you up—begging me to fill your womb with life.”
Alli felt it too. As the orgasm rolled through her, she felt her inner muscles contracting, milking the thick cock deep inside her, stimulating Kane until at last, she felt the first hot spurt of his seed at the very end of her channel.
Pregnant, she thought. Oh God, he’s making me pregnant!
But this time the thought held no terror for her—only hope. The big Kru’ell One was giving her want she wanted—what she needed—and at long last, Alli was happy to take it.
Dark and Light: A Kindred Tales DUET Novel. Contains: Saved by the Drake AND Captured by the Kru'ell One Page 22