For the first time, I truly think about what Roxie said, and I wonder -- did the Oracle choose her because we are meant to be together? Because she is the only one I would die for?
The thought, far from giving me pause -- and I am a man who has spent my life dragging my feet on important decisions because the thought of someone relying on me or vice versa was horrifying -- makes me even harder than before. I let out a growl I can’t hold in as I lift her and set her down on the cold slab, driving my tongue further between her lips, rubbing my hand between her legs, my cock straining and aching against my clothing…
She is the one for me, made for me, destined for me, and I don’t care how I know it -- I just do. And I intend to show her, bit by bit, working over her entire perfect body, for as long as she will let me.
Chapter Twenty
Roxie
He sets me down on the bed he had previously slept in, near-comatose, for two days and I try not to think about how I almost lost him.
The thought just makes me need him more, anyway.
Suddenly his fingers are at my waistband, my clothes pooling at the floor, and his gorgeous head is between my thighs. He groans at the sight of me, exposed like that, and it’s really damn sexy to feel worshipped in a situation that might ordinarily make me feel vulnerable.
When his tongue reaches my clit I’m so close already I swear I can just about see stars. The low hum of climax builds in my abdomen as his tongue circles me and his fingers experiment with sliding in and out and circling me while his tongue explores elsewhere.
I cry out as it all gets too much, and he licks and licks at me as my orgasm rattles through me. Almost before it’s done leaving my body, Vyken rests his wrists on either side of my shoulders and presses his cock head against my soaked entrance. He feels the aftershocks on his cock and bites his lip, staring into my eyes.
I feel like he might say it … those words … but he doesn’t. He licks and kisses at my neck while, without guiding with his hands, he thrusts once and buries several inches of thick Mahdfel cock inside me at once. I cry out once again, trying to wrap my legs around his waist and finding he’s too huge. I am so close again, already, and a few more delicious thrusts of his perfect cock and I start to come again. He is so deep that his groin rubs against my throbbing, sensitive clit, and I’m incoherent as I buck my hips and wave after wave rolls off me.
“Fuck, you’re so--” he says through gritted teeth and then unleashes before he can finish his sentence. Together, uninhibited, free, filled with nothing but lust and triumph, we cry each other’s names and come hard, grinding our hips against each other. His come, hot and excessive, drips down my inner thigh as we kiss. A post-sex kiss this time, all tongues and groaning. I eke out the final seconds of my orgasm by gently moving my hips in circles, using his still-hard cock inside me to draw out the hottest, dirtiest scraps of pleasure from my core.
“I…” I gasp, reeling from the best sex I have ever had. It feels like no one has ever had sex that good before. Sex so mindblowing that it feels as if we are the first couple to ever truly experience it. I’m finding it hard to find my words, and that’s unlike me.
“I love you too,” he says, surprising me, and he gathers me up in his strong, warm arms and pulls me close to his chest. We lie there, naked, listening to our hearts beat together. Feeling his cock against my thigh is the most natural, perfect thing in the world. Second only to the feeling of him filling me up.
“I really do,” I mumble, what feels like an hour later. We fall asleep like that, and everything in the world is perfect. Truly. Completely.
Perfect.
Chapter Twenty-One
Vyken
“We come to you, Wrax, to explain ourselves in front of the people of Paxia. We owe you an explanation and you owe us your ear.”
My king’s eyes flash with outrage at being addressed like that, which is not like Wrax at all. He is a fair and level-headed ruler, especially with his serene and clever human mate, Cara, at his side.
“You are a wanted fugitive, Vyken,” he reminds me, and nods at Tyr, who is dressed in full Admiral uniform, sashes and emblems and all, and is staring me out with the most direct death glare I have ever felt trained on my skin -- and I have been fighting wars my entire adult life.
“This is Roxie,” I say. “My mate. I don’t care what the Lottery might say.” I announce it and my human does a funny little curtsey, awkward and confused. I smile, proud to show her off. I notice Cara raise her chin and focus harder now that a human is involved.
I am standing in front of a panel of my peers. They are waiting, unimpressed and with hands trained on weaponry, while I stand in front of the stolen spacecraft and chatter. I wish I could settle this with my blaster gun, to be completely honest, but the only way to end this once and for all is to tell a story.
Luckily, we brought a trustworthy storyteller.
“Your highness, your holiness,” Rsharr says, his voice like a windy forest. He bows to Wrax, and then to Cara. I watch as they bow back, and I can feel laughter bubbling up from deep inside me at the pure shock on everyone’s faces.
The dead are back to life, in front of their very eyes.
Which means that the crime I was punished for? Well, put simply, it clearly never even happened. Not to mention that Prince Rsharr is such an honored guest and treasured ally of the Firosan Mahdfel that Wrax visibly looks mortified at the fact he even has a single blaster gun in the vicinity.
Yes, OK, I feel smug -- it is hard not to.
Rsharr speaks to the ten or fifteen people who ran out to greet me, or to kill me if it came to it, when we alighted on Paxia in Tyr’s beloved spaceship. Unlike when I speak, nobody even dared to breathe an interruption until the Ferathorn leader was completely finished with his tale.
And it sounded so very gallant, brave, and infallible coming from his ancient wooden tongue.
I fight the smirk away, it’s hard not to feel a little childish about being proven so thoroughly right, and turn back to my king, lowering my head respectfully before I speak.
“This is all true,” I say, cutting the stunned silence.
“The Suhlik have mind control,” Wrax says, and I nod. “They may have teamed up with the Sekir.” Cara whispers in his ear and he raises an eyebrow. “Or, yes, it could be the work of the Wal-el, but they have no reason whatsoever to work with the Suhlik. They’d nullify half their Alliance pacts.” He scratches his chin and looks pained. I feel for him, then, and my smugness fades into the past.
“With all respect, my king,” I say low. Wrax and I fought together side by side for years -- I don’t feel too afraid to speak up even now, especially considering what I just laid at his feet. “It’s time to bring the fight to them.”
“They have disrespected the Mahdfel,” Wrax mutters.
“They nearly succeeded in committing another genocide,” Cara speaks up. She is wearing flowing ceremonial robes, and I wonder if she has recently been speaking to the planet, Paxia, about these events. “They nearly succeeded in sowing such discord among our people that we may never have truly recovered in time for battle.” I nod firmly, agreeing with her.
“They nearly killed my fated,” I say before I can stop myself. Rsharr turns to look at me pleasantly for accepting his term, but I shake my head. “My mate. My Roxie.”
Roxie steps to my side in front of the spaceship and holds my hand, confidently. “We haven’t met,” she says, addressing especially Wrax, Cara and Tyr, “but the Suhlik really screwed stuff up, and they’re just getting stronger every day.” Nobody interrupts her so she happily continues to talk -- she is different from me in that way. She completes me. “We can’t keep waiting for them to knock down something we need and then go and put it back together again. We need to accept that they have declared war on the Alliance and we are the only ones who can stop them.”
The Mahdfel surrounding us, the citizens of Paxia, roar in agreement. It starts as a couple of ripples and then incre
ases until they are hooting and punching the air in unison. Wrax and Cara exchange a look, and lean in to talk to each other. Tyr continues to stare at the three of us.
Or past us, to his beloved ship. It’s unclear.
Finally, Wrax turns back to us and raises his thick lilac arms. The Mahdfel cease their roaring and chanting and silence falls.
“We have done you a great dishonor, Vyken,” he says. “And Prince Rsharr, no apologizing will make up for the fact that I left your people for dead. I can only beg you keep an alliance with us.”
“Of course,” Rsharr says, and I almost see the relief on everyone’s faces. But Mahdfel don’t tend to give away their emotions that easily. “The Suhlik must stop their marauding, and we will work together.”
“To begin to make up for this, we will give you a vessel. And a mission of great importance.”
I look over at Roxie, and she looks back at me -- there is no better way for him to prove he has 100% trust in me than to give me a ship, a crew, and a quest.
“You will take a group of our finest fighters here on Paxia, and you will take our latest and best military spacecraft,” Wrax says. “You will comb the galaxy for those who would lay down their lives for this cause, and you will recruit them. Here we will work on technology, on advancement, on protecting our people and our planet. You will do something much more important, Vyken: you will build our army.”
The Mahdfel roar again, their agreement ringing in my ears.
“I will discuss it with my mate,” I reply, not wanting Roxie to feel as though her opinion doesn’t matter. I want to do everything with her now, and her willingness to join me is the only thing that matters. Somebody else can take on this critical mission.
“His mate says ‘hell yeah’,” Roxie cries out from beside me. I squeeze her hand, my chest aglow with pride and excitement.
Before this began, if faced with the prospect of being given a crew to look out for, I would have refused the responsibility. Now? I have died for somebody. I have confidence in my abilities as a leader. And as a man.
“Then I accept,” I say. I see the ghost of a true smile on Cara’s face, though she is trying not to show it. I think she likes what she sees of Roxie so far, and I couldn’t agree more. I could not be prouder of who I returned with.
They accept that we are exhausted, and after wrapping up a few more minor details, and establishing the finest guest quarters for Rsharr to stay in while they talk tactics, I take Roxie to my mountainside apartment in a hovercab. She is clearly in awe of Paxia, and I am so happy.
Maybe I can convince her to stay with me.
With a sinking feeling in my gut, I wait for her to finish showering. I pace up and down on my carpet and she arrives wrapped in a towel, rubbing at her dark hair with another, and smiling that sexy smile up at me. I know exactly what’s going through her mind, but we need to have a conversation first…
She has changed me, a lot.
“What’s up, frowny?” she teases. I dip my head, press my hand on the small of her back, and kiss her before I speak. It’s impossible to resist, with her hair all wet and tousled and the light streaming in through the window.
“We need to talk.”
Her brow twitches and she settles on the arm of my couch. “On Earth that sentence never means anything good,” she says.
“Now that our dire situation is at an end,” I say, “Wrax can contact your people and your punishment will surely be lifted.” I swallow. “But you’ll have to enter the Lottery.”
She shakes her head, disgust on her face. “Vyken,” she tells me, “there’s no way. I could never be with anyone but you now. You’ve … ruined me for other men.”
I am confused. “Is that bad?”
“No,” she says softly. The way she looks at me, with so much love, it makes my heart ache in such a delicious way. “It’s good. I’m yours, is what I’m saying. I won’t do anything to risk what we have. Even if that means staying some kind of a pariah. I don’t care in the slightest. I’m staying by your side.”
“I am going to have to leave for a very long, fairly dangerous journey.”
“Vyken,” she says again, standing to move closer to me. I love the way she says my name. She softens the harshness of the word like no other. “There’s no sexier sentence you could have said than that.”
I let out a small laugh -- I know her sense of humor by now. But I also know she’s serious. She would rather be hurtling through the blackness of the void than be sitting around doing nothing. I understand, because I am exactly the same way.
“If you’re sure,” I say. I no longer fear for her life, because she has made 100% of her own choices since the moment I snatched her off the surface of her planet. I trust her, and for the first time in my life, I trust my own ability to make decisions, too.
“I have never been more sure of anything in my life,” she says, and lifts herself onto her tiptoes to kiss me sweetly.
“Then we will tell the humans you are in our custody,” I suggest, but she shrugs. “Or we will tell them nothing at all. It makes no difference what they think.”
“Just one last thing,” she says, tucking her hair behind her ears and looking around, nervous for perhaps the first time since I met her. “Aren’t you wondering? You know, who your true match is? In the Lottery?”
I smirk, knowing I signed up for the Lottery and did not have a match.
I also know that Roxie was never tested for her DNA anyway.
As far as I know -- and we will never know for sure unless she happens to get pregnant and prove our compatibility, and if she doesn’t it does not mean we aren’t compatible anyway -- she is my one and only. My fated mate. The love of my life.
I know it with certainty, and I trust my decision.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Roxie -- Three Months Later...
I make my way down to the hangar to greet our finished ship -- our new home for the foreseeable future, maybe even the rest of our lives together.
I look up at Vyken, the solid silhouette of his masculine face, and I can’t help but smile. I swear, I’ve been smiling so much for months that my face constantly aches a little. Our lives together. That rings in my head -- and it makes me so happy to even try to comprehend it.
I was all about choice. That was my thing. But just one second was all it took for my life to get twisted around and all choice to be taken from me when I was abducted by my alien.
It turned out that second of a loss of control was the only thing I needed. Now I have everything.
Not only am I mated with one of the most fearsome, sexy, well-hung, gorgeous warriors in the known universe, but we’re a part of a team to recruit allies for the upcoming war we’re taking to the Suhlik, before the Suhlik can take the war to Paxia.
At first I had no idea what I was going to do to contribute. We met the crew recently, and they’re all the best fighters in the solar system, if not the galaxy. The Mahdfel are already one of the strongest, fastest, most intimidating species, but these guys are truly something else. I had no idea why they needed me on board other than that Vyken needed me, and I needed him.
But then Rsharr decided to join, and he (not literally -- this time) sang my praises out of nowhere. It surprised me so much that I almost cried. He told the crew about how I managed to communicate with the Ferathorns even when they spoke their primal language. How I managed to talk them into awakening seconds earlier than they would have without my encouragement … meaning Vyken might actually have died without me.
He referred to me as a communicator. A bridge between the gruff, burly, generally unempathetic, unthinking Mahdfel and the rest of the universe. Because, actually, the stories that are to come aren’t going to be about battling. If songs are sung about our crew, they’ll be about treaties. Agreements. Compromise and getting along.
We’re finding allies, not skewering foes.
And I’ve gone my whole life blending in to new places, new cultures, with new pe
ople.
As well as the six Mahdfel warriors, some of whom honestly look a little frightening, we have Rsharr, of course. He is tapped in to the secrets of the last thirty-thousand years of the universe, bound to the knowledge of the Oracle, so he’s surely going to come in handy. He is also very well-respected, which won’t hurt when it comes to begging for help.
Then there’s a funny little creature of a species called the Merrel, which I hadn’t heard of. His name is Harrison and he doesn’t seem to have any life skills at all, but he’s actually got more engineering know-how than three human experts combined. His help will not go amiss.
In fact, he found something I smuggled onto the ship in secret. Fascinated by the Suhlik technology, Rsharr and I thought that the attackbot might uncover some secrets so we scooped up its dead metal body -- checked for tracking -- and took it back to Wrax. Harrison reprogrammed it, and now we have a metal companion for our journey too. And in fixing the bot up, the Merrel gained some insight into how much the Suhlik know about tech.
Turns out it’s a lot.
But I’m not scared. I’m excited. The whole universe is out there and I’m going to see as much of it as I possibly can.
“Here it is.” Wrax has met us all here and gestures to the far end of the hangar to a shining spaceship. Immediately I feel a tug in my chest -- it’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen, and I don’t normally get attached to machinery…
It already looks like home, and that’s a great sign.
It’s fairly small, looks agile but sturdy and armored where it needs to be. It looks almost like the Spitfire, but every part of it is newer, fancier.
“You must name it, Vyken,” Wrax said. “We have been calling it Spitfire II.”
“What about the FMS Avenger,” one of the Mahdfel crew, a young, fit warrior called Riven asks, clearly excited.
Vyken: (Warriors of Firosa Book 3) Page 9