by Kyle, Celia
She stole a peek at Argan, smiling to herself when she found his eyes closed, head tipped back and neck taut. On her next pass, she flicked her tongue out, gathering a droplet of his arousal, and moaning with the explosive taste. Sweet heat, smoky warmth. A feral pleasure that could only come from his inner dragon. She went back for another taste of that deliciousness, gathering it to her while she could.
Argan flexed his hips and she took that as permission to take even more, to pull his hardness past her lips and tease the crown with her mouth. She took the tip into her mouth, laving the spongy head and swallowing more of his desire.
He let her have her way, exploring him more and more as he remained passive. At least until she made a mistake—moaning when another handful of droplets of his cum coated her tongue. The sound—the vibrations—were enough to snare his focus and break through the pleasurable haze she’d created around them both.
Then a sharp sting in her scalp had her stopping. The feel of Argan’s tight grip pulled on her until she released his hard length from her mouth. She lifted her head and met his stare, the need that filled her mirrored in his stare.
“You are almost too much, shaa kouva.” Need coated Argan’s words.
“You’re one to talk.” A rasp escaped her mouth. “We should get inside if you don’t want to let me finish here.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Lily rose from her crouched position, pushing to her feet and then held her hand out for Argan. Not that she could actually lift him, but he was kind enough to take the hint and oblige with a deep chuckle. He pushed himself up and tugged his clothing back into place while she searched for her bottoms so she could tie them back on. Before she could, a strong pair of arms seized her from behind. She smiled as Argan traced her sides in slow, tempting strokes.
The flush of her pleasure still burned her cheeks and need continued to thrum through her in time with the rapid beat of her heart. It surged with his renewed touches, and getting dressed was the last thing on her mind.
“Should we head to our rooms like this?” She tilted her head back and slightly to the side to meet his hungry gaze. She wiggled her bare ass and nearly moaned when he pressed his cock to rest between her ass cheeks. She loved the heavy feel of him, the hardness that proved his desire for her. She loved it almost as much as the way his fingers wandered down her stomach to her pussy. He touched that hidden part of her and she gasped with the rush of bliss.
Even when she expected the pleasure, the sensations hit her like something new and very, very welcome. He rubbed her clit in small circles for a few moments and chuckled, his breath ghosting over her neck before he peppered her heated flesh with soft kisses.
“It would be a powerful statement.”
“It would make a fashion statement.” But it would also announce what they’d been doing. Then again, the Preor had a heightened sense of smell, so anyone who came across them would know what they’d been doing—with or without her bottoms.
Argan slid his fingers from between her legs and she couldn’t tear her gaze away from him. Not when he brought his fingers to his mouth or when he slipped them between his lips. Lily’s cheeks heated even more, the sight of him tasting her once more making her flush with embarrassment and wanting. He ran a hand over her ass one last time, giving it a firm squeeze before she managed to tie her bottoms back into place.
She knew getting dressed had to happen, of course, but that didn’t do much to quell the spark of sadness she experienced when she covered herself. She liked Argan’s lustful attention. A lot more than she’d anticipated. His eyes never left her, and the Binds fed her more and more of his growing desire that increased as they returned to their original pathway.
After connecting with Argan, everything on Kouvai Nihon seemed simply… more. The way the half-exposed roots of the scrub burst out of the almost white sands. The way the sun shone through to the tops of the trees that swayed with the salty breeze.
Who knew an orgasm from an alien was enough to make her see the world with new eyes? She’d definitely have to see about making this a regular thing. Not that she imagined Argan would have any objection.
They soon neared the massive building—their home away from home for now—and strode up to the nearly invisible glass doors. They slid apart to let them enter, her and Argan’s feet slapping against the shining marble floors. The polished stone shined so well they looked as if they floated across the ground. Argan walked by her side and as soon as they entered, he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and tugged her into his body.
Distracted by their new surroundings, Lily found it hard to sense Argan’s feelings through the Binds. Or was it her own overwhelming happiness that silenced his emotions?
They passed under an artistic chandelier—one that looked as if it was made of liquid gold in long streaks that lit up the lobby from no apparent light source. The soft music that filled the chamber made the experience of crossing the lobby almost surreal.
Once they were inside the large, glass elevator, the car moved and began its ascent. They turned, and Lily stared out at the miles of water that surrounded the platform—the water getting farther away the higher they rose.
“How long until we arrive?” Argan’s voice was low as he leaned forward and peered at the platform below them.
“Not long. Why?”
He silenced her with a touch, cupping her face, tipping her head back, and capturing her lips with his own. She melted into him, a palm on his chest while she stroked his heated skin. She curled her fingers inward and dragged her nails across his broad chest while her head did somersaults. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a long, deliciously drawn out kiss as she would have liked.
A soft ding cut through the sound of their panting breaths and then a soft whoosh announced the doors parting, drawing a groan out of Argan.
“I would prefer we had not yet arrived.” He grunted.
Lily grumbled right along with him. “Me too.”
She’d talk to Penelope about slowing the elevators. By like, a lot. There were so many wonderful things that could happen in an elevator. Especially with a gorgeous Preor male like Argan.
She led the way to their suite and pressed her thumb to the pad near the door. It scanned her thumb and flashed green, the doors sliding apart to grant them entrance.
Of course, when she stepped inside, the first thing to snare her attention wasn’t the relaxing scents of lavender and chamomile lingering in the air. Nor the sleek, pristine décor or the view of the gulf that was more glorious when seen from their rooms instead of the elevator ride up. Nope, it was the soft glow of the comm station across the room from the front entrance.
A small, black device a bit bigger than a basketball, it rested on the desk like an annoying, yapping dog. If the dog only barked every five seconds. The normally soft blue glow around its rim was replaced by a crisp white that slowly pulsed in brightness from one second to the next. On the fifth, it released that annoying ping that reminded her of a puppy. It had an edge just hard enough to stab her skull and make her grit her teeth.
All that meant one thing and one thing only.
Lily groaned. “I’ve got a message.”
She shuffled across the room and stared at the comm station as if it was a rotted corpse instead of a little box of metal and chips. “Why does anyone use voice messages? It just wastes time because I have to play them like three times just to figure out what they were trying to say.” She crossed her arms and glared down at the device. Argan’s heat bathed her back and his wings curled forward, nearly hugging her with the yellow extensions. He also leaned down to peer over her shoulder. She lifted her attention to his face and smirked. “I could just delete the message. Make it a problem for Future Lily to handle.”
Lily never did Future Lily many favors.
“As much as I like the way you process information,” Argan murmured and reached around her with one hand. He cupped her breast and massaged the mound, pinching her hardening nip
ple between two fingers. “It would be best to handle the message now. It will leave less for later. It will give us more time for pleasure without worry.”
She liked the idea of pleasure. She knew exactly what he meant with that thick shaft pulsing between her ass cheeks, and she shivered in anticipation.
“That is a very convincing argument.” She almost moaned but managed to swallow it. Barely. “Too bad I didn’t have you around when I was in school. I might have been a better student and quit ignoring things I didn’t like.”
He chuckled and caressed her, his wings rustling as he explored her ass. He gave it a squeeze and planted a hard kiss on the slim line of her neck. Lily shivered and smirked at him as she stepped out of his embrace. If she was going to deal with the message, she was going to deal with it. Not get distracted by the big, bad alien.
Rather than fiddle with the device and listen to the message with her ears, she reached for the back of the unit and grasped the connection port. A tug had the cord unwinding from the comm station. She slipped her hands beneath the fall of her hair and felt for the port embedded in her skin. The one that led directly to her implants and would allow her to skim the audio recording and absorb it directly into her brain. She slipped the cord right into her port and, once secure, refocused on the comm station. She tapped the device to play the message.
And nothing happened.
She tapped it once more. It couldn’t have died already. The darned thing wasn’t that old and they hadn’t had that many visitors on Kouvai Nihon to wear it out yet.
She furrowed her brow and tipped her head to the side. Sort of. In truth, her head moved but her angle of vision didn’t. Not like it should have altered. Her vision remained static. She tried to move her eyes from side to side and she sensed the movement, but the world around her remained frozen in place.
That was when the panic set in, a bubble growing larger and larger with each passing second.
Lily jerked her head to the side, and finally, her vision changed—but not for the better. The world around her stuttered, the room twitching and jerking like a computer that had trouble buffering a video. What the hell? There had to have been something wrong with the jack. She lifted her arms and reached for her hair except… her arms felt wrong. She didn’t have a better descriptor for the odd sensations.
Everything felt wrong. She opened her mouth and shouted for Argan, but she didn’t hear a sound. Her vision flared so brightly, she could have sworn she was staring at the sun. Pain surged and enveloped her eyes for a few moments before the world snapped to real time as quickly as it’d transformed to a jittery mess.
Just in enough time for her world to shift, her muscles to fall lax and refuse to listen to her demands. In enough time for her to pick up the scent of copper and burnt plastic.
“Lily!” On her side, Argan’s sudden appearance drew her gaze. He barreled down the hallway, his stare horrified as he stooped at her side.
She tried to talk to him, open her mouth and let loose the words crowding her throat, but it wasn’t happening. She needed to know what he saw, but couldn’t. The sight of him flickered and twitched as if she viewed him through a glitching camera. When he spoke, the sound of his voice didn’t match the movement of his lips.
Her body struggled to cry—it was the correct response to the situation—but she became painfully aware that she didn’t move at all. At least, not voluntarily. Then came the convulsions, the jerks and wrenches of her body that she couldn’t control no matter how hard she tried. No commands she gave her own body worked. It was like inverse phantom pain.
Which was when the truth slapped her in the face.
Something had made her implants short out. The ones right near her central nervous system had fried. No sooner had that thought run through her mind than she experienced a white-hot pain that seared her mind before traveling to envelop her body.
That was when she gained some measure of control.
Just enough to scream.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Argan had endured agony in his lifetime—more than most of his kind had ever been forced to endure. Yet it did not compare to the gut-wrenching agony pulling at him as he raced down Penelope’s corridors.
“Move!” His bellow echoed off the ship’s metal walls, reaching the warriors that still crowded his path. He had arrived with Lily in his arms and tears clouding his wild eyes, all the while struggling against his inner beast. The healers soon had her strapped to a portable ryaapir platform that hovered a handful of feet from the grated, metal floor of the ship. Once secured, they hurried toward medical, Healing Master Whelon waiting for Lily’s arrival so he could begin healing Argan’s mate.
Except males still crowded the hallway. He gripped one nearby male by his uniform straps and hauled him nearer so he could shout in the male’s face. “If you do not move I will pull the arms from your chest.”
He did not lie. No matter the consequences and no matter who he faced, he would challenge any who put themselves between his mate and medical. His dragon’s soul drove him, the suddenness of Lily’s collapse sending his heart spiraling, pounding faster than it ever had in the thick of battle.
It had happened in an instant. In one breath they had spent a blissful afternoon together and in the next, it came to a stuttering end. He had experienced a joy greater than he could have ever imagined and he had been mere moments from taking their passion a step further. He would have explored her fully, uncovered every inch of her body and tasted every part of her.
But it was not meant to be. The comm station ruined the pleasure-filled moments before they came to fruition.
Their group turned another corner and warriors leapt out of the way of their procession, none quick enough for Argan. He curled his lip and flashed his fangs at the other males, memorizing faces so he could return and teach them to move when told. He could not heal his mate with his fury, but he could ensure other warriors learned their lesson to follow orders quickly. It would keep his mind off his worry for Lily.
Worry about the cause of her injury.
Worry about whether she would recover.
Had it been a malfunction of the comm station? Or was it something worse that had lashed out and harmed her? Did it truly matter? Regardless of the cause, the fault lay at his feet. He felt it in his heart and he had no reason to deny the truth. If he had only let her delay listening to the comm as she had desired, if only he had been willing to relax and waste hours entwined with her lush body, this could have been avoided. They could be fulfilling every deep and dark fantasy in their minds instead of a panicked race through Penelope’s passages.
As he raced in the wake of the ryaapir unit, he could only recall the emptiness of Lily’s eyes. That vacant look would haunt him for eternity. The sight had shaken him to his core, especially after a day filled with perfection. He had seen the dead in his time, but seeing the transition from full of life to the lack of light so quickly…
No, he could not let his mind linger there. Obsessing would ruin him. Fear and pain already clawed at him—threatening to shatter him entirely—but he would not allow it as long as hope burned in his heart.
She had a pulse when he had been transported onto Penelope and placed her on the ryaapir unit. He would cling to that fact as the healers worked on her because the prospect of losing the one shining gem in his life was too much to consider.
He stormed into medical and nearly knocked one of the healers off his feet, but he did not pause to beg forgiveness. Not when doing so would keep him from Lily’s side.
The moment the ryaapir unit slid into place, platform locks snapped around its base to hold it steady. A flicker of light to his left snared his attention and soon the image of a human fully appeared. One that was eerily similar to Lily’s own appearance. This had to be Penelope’s true shape and there was no missing the alarm on the computer-generated display’s features. Argan would describe it as a mixture of panic, fear, and worry.
“What happen
ed?” Penelope looked to him, but he remained intent on the team swarming Lily. He winced as a forest of wires burst into sight and found home in her flesh, the leads feeding back into the ryaapir unit. He did not miss the one that crept beneath her hair—to embed itself in the port at the base of her skull.
The source of our troubles.
“I do not know.” He answered truthfully and he did not attempt to keep the bitterness from his tone. “We entered our rooms and had a message on the comm station. I went to explore the suite while she dealt with the message. She inserted the port to interface with the comm station and then she cried out. When I returned to her side, she was twitching on the floor.”
“It is likely a simple malfunction…” Penelope murmured. “One moment.” The vision of her moved across the room, the display gliding over the grated ground. To their surprise, she manipulated her shape and insinuated herself between the ryaapir unit and one of the healers. Her hands hovered over the ryaapir unit’s display and tendrils erupted from Penelope’s palms.
Argan tensed—at first—but it was soon apparent that the ship was more than qualified to control the unit. Her movements were quicker—more precise—than anything a healing master could accomplish. She moved with machine-like precision and the moment the initial scan completed, she sank her hand into the display and connected to the ryaapir unit directly.
Penelope’s face went from showing her every thought in her features to utterly blank and emotionless. That lack of emotion unsettled Argan. He could have sworn she appeared concerned only moments ago, so he was unsure whether to take comfort or worry from her actions.
“My initial prognosis was incorrect.” Her voice held no feeling. “I believed a malfunction was the source of her injury, but evidence indicates otherwise.” Argan struggled to follow her words and he was soon subjected to the full weight of Penelope’s stare. “I will clarify. This was an attack. One devised to target Lily specifically.”