by Zoey Draven
“Lihvan?” she asked quietly, feeling her nipples pebble beneath his shirt. The room smelled of him, that same minty musk that she’d inhaled off the shirt, except it seemed concentrated. It was making Beks head swim, making it hard for her to think about anything but the alien in front of her.
“This is not a game, female,” he suddenly said, voice deep and thick. “Your scent tells me you wish to mate and that is not to be taken lightly. Not with a male like me.”
Beks shook her head, trying to clear the sudden haze. Her scent? He could smell how turned on she was?
“A male like you?” she questioned. Her voice was throaty, like she’d just smoked a pack of cigarettes.
He never turned his gaze away from her. He pinned her in place, like a predator stalking his prey. “If we mate, I will never let you go. That is the kind of male I am.”
I want that, was her first immediate thought, which disturbed her as much as it thrilled her. What would it be like to be claimed by someone like him? His power, his presence, his gaze made her tingle with awareness and she imagined herself lying back on the bed, slipping off his shirt, and spreading her legs for him. What would he do? Would he take what she freely offered? Would he tug her hips to the edge of the bed and thrust inside of her? Would he be rough or gentle? Would she cum around his cock as he mated her?
That word…mate…it was primitive, raw, and sexy as hell. The air in the room was even thicker and Lihvan’s purring growls were growing louder and louder with each passing moment.
What’s happening to me? she wondered, lips parted, skin flushed. This wasn’t normal, was it?
Maybe she was playing with fire, but Beks had always liked to push boundaries. She liked to push other people, see how they would react.
She told herself that was why she slowly shimmied up his shirt until it was bunched around her hips. She told herself that was why she slowly spread her thighs so he would have a teasing glimpse of her naked pussy.
Lihvan seemed to stop breathing for a second and Beks almost moaned at the expression on his face, one of complete and utter focus as his gaze zeroed in on the throbbing juncture of her thighs.
“We don’t have to have sex to have some fun together,” she murmured softly, brushing a gentle finger over her engorged clit. She gasped, her head falling back, stunned because she thought she might cum just from that one little touch. “I—I feel…” she trailed off in another moan.
Lihvan didn’t move. He was completely still, watching her, as if afraid if he moved an inch, she’d stop. What he didn’t know was that Beks was already too far gone to stop. So, it didn’t surprise her when another gentle swipe of her fingers—just one little touch—set her off into a clenching, spiraling orgasm that made her gasp and moan like the wanton she was.
Afterwards, she met Lihvan’s eyes, her ragged breath filling the room. She was too shocked by her reaction to him to be embarrassed. And the look he was giving her? It looked like he wanted to spring across the room and devour her. It didn’t look like he’d minded her impromptu masturbation session. Not at all.
The purring was growing deafening…and were his horns straightened? Beks eyed them, trepidation making an appearance. Had she gone too far this time? After all, he was an alien…a being with different customs, different interpretations. Even though she felt secure with him, she realized she probably shouldn’t have done that, no matter what she felt when she was near him.
“I…” she trailed off. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”
Except she had meant to do it. Now, she was embarrassed. Kate had always called her impulsive, which might just be another word for reckless. She always acted before thinking, unlike her level-headed best friend that analyzed everything beforehand.
Without saying one word, Lihvan pushed off his spot from the wall and left the room as if it was on fire. Beks stared at the door, which had swooshed closed behind him, and then she let out a shuddering sigh. Slowly, she pushed off the bed on shaking legs, smoothing the shirt back down her thighs, trying not to let shame fill her up and boil over.
She’d always loved sex, but she loved the intimacy of it more, of feeling the weight of a man, of smelling him on her skin, tasting him on her tongue. She’d never been ashamed of it and had always had a healthy sex life. But she didn’t feel so good about what had just happened. She was in way over her head.
Crouching down, she picked up the broken plate that Lihvan had crushed and picked up what remained of the food. She didn’t know where to discard it, so she neatly piled it by the door before her eyes returned to where Lihvan had been standing.
Beks stepped closer, peering harder.
There was a dent in the wall.
Her eyebrows rose as she inspected it. It was roughly the size of the towering, scarred alien that had just fled the room. It took Beks a moment to realize that he’d actually dented the steel wall with his body, from the force of keeping away from her. And right where his hands had been pressed? There were claw marks, as if he’d tried to gouge his nails into it.
Beks ran a shaking hand through her hair, eyeing the scratches.
What in the world had she done this time?
* * *
Lihvan headed straight for the training pits.
His cock was so hard that he feared it might burst the woven seams of his leg coverings, but that was the least of his worries. He needed a distraction. And fighting was exactly what he needed to work out his frustration and aggression.
On the way, he alerted Vikan that he needed a sparring partner. Most of the warriors on the ship were good fighters, but Lihvan wanted to fight against the best on the ship…well, second only to himself.
The training deck was situated on the second level of the vessel. There were some warriors already engaged, utilizing the sunken pits made primarily of hard metal and blood stains. Lihvan chose a secluded pit at the back of the training deck and jumped down, landing in a crouch. Briefly, he looked down at his bare chest, remembering the female’s remark about whether he would bathe. He’d forgotten that he still wore the blood of the Krevorags and he wondered whether that had frightened her or not.
A fresh surge of arousal made him growl. No, she hadn’t been frightened. She’d been…wanting. As he warmed up his muscles, Lihvan tried not to breathe through his nostrils, since he could still smell that sweet, musky scent that was solely her. It made his Instinct prowl inside him, aching to burst free, aching to claim its mate.
He tried not to remember her teasings, tried not to remember the sight of her pink, aroused flesh between her thighs, tried not to remember her breathy moans as she touched herself.
His palms stung from where he’d pressed his claws into his flesh, but he relished the pain, hoping that it would distract him from his arousal.
She had been…magnificent. His female was a sensual creature, unafraid to pursue her pleasure. He’d wanted nothing more than to go to her when she’d been lying across his sleeping platform. He’d wanted nothing more than to part her thighs and spear her with his cock where she ached for him.
Yet he hadn’t. Partly because if he claimed her as his, she would be bound to him forever. If she left, if she went back to Earth, Lihvan knew that he would hunt her mercilessly and bring her back to him. She would never be free of him.
The other reason why he hadn’t gone to her…well, that reason shamed him even more.
Vikan’s voice cut through his thoughts. “You look as if you have been conquered.”
His friend stood at the edge of the pit, studying him from above. The low lighting prevented Lihvan from seeing his features, but he knew Vikan’s face would be pinched with knowing.
“Get down here,” Lihvan bit out.
Vikan studied him for a moment longer, which frustrated Lihvan enough to growl, before his friend jumped the fifteen feet down into the pit with ease. He landed with a solid thump and then straightened.
“I hope that cock is not for me,” Vikan said, voice neutral.
Lihvan glowered and without warning, lashed out with a swipe of his bloodied claws. Vikan dodged and the fight began.
It lasted a while, for which Lihvan was thankful. Fighting was what made sense to him. It was what he was good at, what centered him. He relished the measured breaths, when he should inhale, when he should exhale. He lived for the challenge of dissecting his opponent’s movements, to try and track where they would attack next. To a certain extent, he had learned to like the pain, to savor the scars and lashes and claw marks adorning his flesh because they made him a better warrior, a stronger one.
Near the end, when both warriors were beginning to slow, to defend instead of attack, they called the fight and sank down on the blood splattered ground, backs to the metal wall of their chosen cage.
Their breaths were ragged and Lihvan blinked away the blood that had dripped into his eye. His chest was a smattering of fresh cuts and sliced skin, but he knew they would heal quickly. Vikan didn’t fare any better. Lihvan had gouged him, perhaps a little too deeply, in his side, which would take longer to heal.
Once they recovered and caught their breaths, Vikan eyed him from across the pit. Some of the tension that had been released during the fight trickled back in as Lihvan interpreted that look.
“Just say it,” Lihvan said. “I am too tired to argue.”
“No good will come from this, brother,” Vikan warned. “The female must return to her own planet.”
Instead of directly addressing his concern, Lihvan asked, “Has your Instinct chosen a female for you?”
Earlier in the span, before Lihvan had returned to his quarters, Vikan had hinted that it had.
Vikan averted his gaze. “I am still loyal to Nitav. It does not matter if it had.”
Nitav had been Vikan’s Breeding partner, his chosen mate, even if she had not been his fated one. Lihvan shook his head and said quietly, “Nitav is dead, Vikan. She has journeyed into the blackworld where the Fates watch over her now.”
Vikan’s gaze was level. “My feelings have not followed her into the blackworld. They remain in me still.”
“You deny yourself a future if you keep yourself shrouded in the past, my friend,” Lihvan said slowly.
“There is no future with them, Lihvan,” Vikan said, voice hardening, his gaze like ice.
Lihvan met his stare. He’d been worrying more and more about his friend, who seemed to withdraw into himself more with every passing span.
“Remember that and you will save yourself much grief,” he added. With that, Vikan pushed up from the wall, his wound making his features stretch tight. “I am needed at the command center.”
Lihvan watched Vikan pull himself out of the pit and disappear at the top without another word. Lihvan leaned his head back, thinking over Vikan’s words, wanting to deny them. But he knew he couldn’t.
What Lihvan wanted more than anything, even his Ambassador status, even more than being one of the best warriors on Luxiria, was a mate. A family. Offspring. And not many knew that about him. When Vaxa’an had found his fated mate in a human female, he’d been overcome with a jealousy that surprised him. Ashamed even. He should’ve been happy for his friend because Vaxa’an deserved happiness. Yet, a small part of him was filled with envy.
And now…now when his Instinct had recognized something in Beks, with her soft hair and alluring smile and tantalizing scent, he was to be denied the chance to pursue anything with her, before he even knew her.
It is for the best, he told himself. But even thinking that filled him with dismay and the loss of what could have been.
SIX
Lihvan didn’t return to his quarters after he finished in the training pit. Instead, he bathed in one of the spare quarters and slept there, although it was a restless night. He’d been haunted by erotic dreams of smooth skin and breathy moans, all too aware that the female that had taken hold of his thoughts was a quick stride away.
When he entered the command center after the few hours of sleep he got, he found Vikan still at the controls. His friend looked as if he’d gotten no sleep at all and jerked his head at him in greeting. They didn’t speak about what had happened in the training pits and they wouldn’t.
Lihvan looked at their position on one of their Coms and was surprised to see that they were in Jetutian territory. Which meant that they must travel with vigilance.
“Any signs of Jetutian vessels?”
Vikan’s face was like facev stone, the same stone the Golden City was built from. “None yet.”
But the lines of his body made Lihvan tense. Quietly, he asked, “You think there will be an attack?”
Viking had always been more perceptive to the Fates’ will than any other warrior Lihvan had ever encountered. To heed his instincts would be a benefit to them all.
Vikan’s eyes flashed to him. “I think we should all be on our guard. Something does not feel right. The darkness is too still.”
Lihvan’s gut tightened, his mind flashing to the safety of the females on board.
Vikan seemed to think the same thing because he said, “The only way to keep them safe is to fight well. We cannot send them off in an escape pod, especially in Jetutian territory. The risks are too great and we may never recover them.”
Lihvan looked around the command center. Most of the warriors were resting, but he would rouse them from sleep in the next few moments. He was irritated that Vikan hadn’t thought to do so the moment they passed out of the Second Quadrant and into the reach of their most-hated enemy.
“Get us away from here as soon as you can,” Lihvan said. “We should not have passed this way. It was a mistake.”
Vikan said, “Vaxa’an wanted the females to safety as quickly as we could. I was only following his orders.”
Lihvan grit his jaw, but anger made him say, “If Nitav was on board, you would not have even considered coming this way.”
And then he turned from his friend and went to sound the alarm to wake the rest of the warriors, so that they could prepare for the worst. Preparing for the worst had saved his life in many instances and he wouldn’t gamble with those under his command.
He thought of Beks as he issued the call, debating whether he should put her in with the rest of the females. But he reasoned she would be safer in his quarters.
For a brief moment, he glanced back at Vikan and his muscles tightened. The warrior’s face was scanning the darkness of space, looking, watching. If Vikan felt threatened, then an attack would be imminent.
Not for the first time, Lihvan wondered if Vikan purposefully courted an encounter with the Jetutians. He’d been bent on revenge after the grief of losing Nitav had passed. Lihvan wondered if he’d just found his chance, except it came at the cost of endangering them all.
Just as Lihvan feared, after most of the warriors were awakened, in position and ready for a possible confrontation, one of their Com alarms sounded, indicating an incoming vessel.
The command center exploded into action and Lihvan knew that elsewhere on the vessel, Luxirians were doing the same: preparing.
In the end…it didn’t matter. The smaller vessel they were on was meant for swift travel and was not equipped for offensive attacks. The best weapons they had were themselves, Luxirian warriors…a race feared and sought after by both enemies and allies.
As a Jetutian vessel came into view, at least three times as large as theirs, Lihvan knew that an encounter had been inevitable. They should not have traveled through that part of the galaxy. Their impatience would cost them.
The only question was what the Jetutians wanted for their freedom.
One of the translators at one of the Coms called to Lihvan. “Ambassador, there is a message uploading to our vessel. A request to open a connection.”
Lihvan would risk the lives of Luxirian warriors if he chose to combat them. They were simply outnumbered. And Lihvan had always believed in doing what was rational, not what his Instinct wanted him to do. His Instinct only wanted two thing
s: to mate and to fight. The Fates had gifted him with an analytical mind, which had battled against his Instinct’s will his entire life span, but thus far it had served him well.
Lihvan approached the warrior and read the message for himself. It was in Jetu, but Lihvan, like many Luxirians, were fluent in multiple languages, especially the languages of their enemies.
“Grant it,” Lihvan rumbled.
The warrior obeyed and a moment later, a feed connection crackled to life and Lihvan saw the unmistakable face of Gribrak, the Jetutian equivalent of a Luxirian war general. A war general that Lihvan had encountered more times than he’d wanted to in his life span. The same war general, as luck would have it, that had gifted him with the deep and grotesque scar down his face.
In Jetu, Gribrak greeted him with the cloying rasps and long worded syllables of the grating language.
“Ambassador Lihvan,” Gribrak said, voice tauntingly smug. His glowing blue eyes looked eerie on the small silver screen. “This is most unexpected.”
In Luxirian, since Lihvan refused to speak their language, he replied with, “State your demands.”
“I have just had an interesting message from our Krevorag allies,” Gribrak said, eyes narrowing on Lihvan’s face, “claiming that a group of Luxirians stole their supply of human females.”
“I did not know,” Lihvan said, his voice low and controlled, “that you were nothing more than a messenger for the Krevorags, Gribrak. I would think that their affairs were beneath you.”
Gribrak scowled, not liking what Lihvan implied. “I do not care for the human females. Keep them for your pleasure slaves if you wish. You know what my request will be.”
Lihvan gritted his jaw, even though relief flowed through him. The Jetutians did not seem to realize that Luxirians were biologically compatible with humans, or else Gribrak would have demanded them back, considering their main goal was to completely wipe out their race. At least the females would be safe. At least Beks wouldn’t be in any danger from them.