“After careful deliberation and meditation, we have determined the Earthling Jeannie Gardner will remain here at Hahz for now.”
Jeannie tried not to appear too happy at the pronouncement. She failed. Notlin narrowed her eyes and slid a glance at the Elders Council. Jeannie couldn’t help but peek too. Yees stared into the distance, thank goodness. Mekay ducked his head, hiding a smile of his own.
Oh no. Had Yees told him or anyone else what she’d seen?
Notlin resumed speaking, and Jeannie put her attention where it belonged. “Jeannie, your wish to remain on Risnar until all your fellow Earthlings are freed is commendable. However, you are not Risnarish. Your place is not here. Therefore, this Assembly reserves the right to send you home at the earliest occasion.”
Jeannie’s surge of joy sputtered. She wanted to stay where she could see Kren every day. Even if she couldn’t live with him, she needed to be close.
As the gathered supporters muttered amongst themselves, Kren leaned close to whisper in her ear. “One battle at a time, my treasure. We’ll figure something out with the time we have.”
She smiled up at him. He had earned her trust and so much more. If he said they’d find a way to remain together, she chose to believe him.
Notlin’s voice rose, quieting the assembled. “You have our vow that we Risnarish will carry the fight to the Monsuda. It is obvious this action is long overdue. There can be no more experimenting on our brothers and sisters, the Earthlings. We cannot allow the Monsuda to destroy our planet or colonize yours. We will stop them.”
Jeannie put her hand over her heart, imitating the Risnarish style. “Thank you, elders. You have my gratitude for everything you have done and will do for my people.”
Notlin dipped her head. “Now on to the matter of your individual and immediate fate.”
For a brief moment, Jeannie thought a smirk touched Notlin’s expression. It was gone so quickly that Jeannie couldn’t be sure it had been there. She held her breath.
Notlin said, “There is still the matter of where you will stay. I know you have your preference, a choice I am assured Kren Zvanhahz shares. After hearing eyewitness testimony, I concur with others that you are not suited to stay with the Risnarish women in their temple.”
Jeannie darted a glance at Yees, certain she had provided Notlin with her eyewitness testimony. Again, the council elder found staring into the distance her best course of action.
Jeannie went hot again. It was like having the President of the United States aware that she’d been dry-humping an alien. Utterly embarrassing.
At least Notlin’s tone was kind. “You are from a society that mixes its males and females at all times. You have more of the attributes of our men than our women, in an emotional sense.” She smiled gently. “This is not meant as an insult, and I hope you do not take it as such.”
“I don’t.” Jeannie chuckled. “I appreciate a little self-reflection, but you ladies are a bit too quiet for me. I need the more physical lifestyle your men lead, even if you find it simplistic.”
“Simplistic? Not at all. Don’t mistake our gender division for aloofness from either side.” Notlin gazed at the assemblyman seated next to her with quiet affection. He returned the look with a nod.
Notlin addressed Jeannie again. “We may live separately and find mixing to be unsettling, but we respect each other. Every woman of Risnar feels that men are a positive force. We acknowledge we cannot pursue our needs without their protection and strength. We each serve the same Spirit in our own special way.
“But enough of that. We need to hear what you wish while you remain on Risnar.”
Stay with Kren or meditate her life away with the women? There was no struggle as far as Jeannie was concerned. “I would be happier living with Kren.”
“As we thought.” Notlin’s brow creased as she regarded Jeannie. “My one concern in the matter is the obvious attraction between the two of you. It will make it difficult when you are to leave.”
Mekay spoke up. “Pardons, Elder Notlin, but can we effect such a judgment so early? Perhaps Spirit intends Jeannie to remain with Kren.”
Notlin tilted her head as she regarded him. “Decision has been passed. Jeannie must return home to Earth as soon as it’s possible to safely send her.”
“But it’s not safe and may not be in the near future. Does the matter change over time? If love enters the picture? If there are signs this is what Spirit wishes?”
“Why Spirit, Elder Mekay?” Notlin asked.
He smiled at Jeannie and Kren. “We know coincidence is only the All-Spirit aligning our fates as its plan dictates. I wonder at this seeming accident that Jeannie wandered to Hahz after escaping the hive. Of all directions she might have gone, why did she come here?”
Yees frowned at him, as did Fetla and a few others. Yet the members of the Assembly either sat still or nodded their heads, their expressions contemplative.
Jeannie refused to entertain the notion that anything besides luck had intervened to have her stumble upon Hahz and Kren. But if belief in Spirit allowed her to remain, she’d go along with it. She crossed her fingers and waited for Notlin’s response.
The head assemblywoman shrugged in the end. “We can only wait and watch the signs. Until then, this Assembly grants Jeannie Gardner of Earth permission to live with Kren Zvanhahz.”
Jeannie’s palm slammed against her chest with so much enthusiasm she thought it might have left a bruise. “Thank you, elders of the Assembly. Thank you with all my heart.”
“Even though you have only one,” Kren laughed. “It is still a lot of gratitude, which I share. Thank you, elders.” He too clapped his hand to his chest before turning to Jeannie. “Let me take you home, my treasured.”
To my real home this time. The home where you live too.
* * *
Kren watched Jeannie walk around his—their—dome. She was where she belonged, an untold number of lightyears from where she had started. After a journey of heartbreak, loneliness, and fear, she was where Spirit had always intended her to be. He felt sure of that.
His hearts thudded with the emotion they could barely hold as he looked at her. Her hair was a gilded sheet that flowed down her back. Her face, filled with wonderment as her lips curled in a soft smile. But why did she inspect everything so closely, picking up small items and putting them down again?
To keep from drowning in his love for her, he fought to bring a sense of casualness to the moment. “I promise no one snuck in here and changed things while you were gone.”
She laughed, and Kren gave up trying to pretend this moment was anything but a miracle. The sound of her joy filled him to bursting with elation.
She told him, “I’m home. I haven’t been home since I was a teenager.”
A bitter ache joined his bliss. She had seen too much hurt. Yet there was nothing but happiness on her face now, and he’d fight every Monsudan personally if it would keep that expression of joy there.
Her countenance didn’t alter, but he heard a moment of hesitation in her tone as she confirmed, “I am home?”
“Forever. No matter what the Assembly says, you belong with me for as long as you want,” he vowed.
“I want forever.”
Had Kren been happy before? Now he was exultant, especially when Jeannie stopped wandering about the dome and went to him. He pulled her into his arms.
She spoke the words that shattered all the loneliness he’d ever known, all the emptiness he’d thought was his lifelong lot.
“I love you.” She smiled up at him. “All that’s left is for you to make me yours and I’ll make you mine.”
Kren was too overcome to speak. Instead, he lifted her and carried her to his bed.
* * *
Jeannie sank into the softness of the mattress, Kren’s weight settling over her. His mouth covere
d hers in a kiss that was both caring and demanding. She dove into the feeling of him exploring, tasting, claiming.
He cupped her breasts in his hands as he continued the kiss, rubbing over her tightening nipples to make her gasp in excitement. They’d barely started, and she was already wet. Now that she no longer felt the need to push him away, she could admit that a part of her had wanted this since that first night in the shower. His hands all over her, his kiss electrifying her body.
He stretched over her, his crotch growing a hard shaft. Jeannie spread her legs for him, arching her hips forward to rub wantonly against the wondrous pressure. His length was hot and stroked against her slit, urging her folds apart. It moved against her clit, sending sparks of need to light her core.
Kren broke the kiss to stare into her eyes. “My treasure. How beautiful you are when you look at me like this. Is this desire all for me?”
“You. Only you.”
Her words brought on the vulnerability that said she was trusting too much in another. She was going beyond naked. She felt raw, with the slightest wrong move capable of ripping her to shreds. She cringed beneath Kren as emotion battered her.
Kren said nothing as she struggled. His expression showed patience as she battled against the foe she thought she’d vanquished. Didn’t she have faith in this man? Hadn’t he proved himself beyond a shadow of a doubt?
He has. Now it’s up to me to take that first step. To come out of the protective cocoon I built around myself. He can do no more.
“I am yours,” she said. “I give you all of me.”
He smiled and kissed the tip of her nose. She basked in the mote of approval. He knew how hard it was for her. He would be patient. As with everything else, he was ready to take care of her.
He tugged her blouse off, leaving her bare from the waist up. He sighed with pleasure at the sight of her half naked before gripping her wrists and setting them over her head.
Without being told, she curled her hands around the railing. Trusting him, as he deserved.
Kren’s breath caught for an instant. When he spoke, his voice was husky with emotion. “Keep your hands there while I enjoy your gorgeous body. Do not remove them unless I tell you to.”
Feeling the comfort of this man who would look after her every need, Jeannie obeyed. Kren sat up to kneel between her legs. He tugged her skirt down, easing one leg up to free it and then the next. She lay splayed beneath him, his for the taking.
Anticipation grew when a striped tail snaked around from behind Kren. It curled around her thigh, just above her knee. Then a second tail came from the other side, grasping the opposite leg. The appendages pulled her open to him, wide enough to offer a slight strain. To signal his mastery. Jeannie moaned.
“We left off here last time,” he said, his hand covering her mound. The heat of his touch made Jeannie squirm, but she kept hold of the headboard. His will was hers.
His fingers played over her, moving within the trembling petals of her sex. The digits slid easily over the slick folds, delving deeper. A thumb appeared to trace slow circles around her clit. She arched with a cry.
“That’s my girl. My little treasure,” Kren whispered, his eyes molten with desire. “You will never know how happy I am to have you here with me.”
“You can’t possibly be as glad as I am,” Jeannie insisted. “Kren, I’m sorry I kept pushing you away.”
“Hush. That’s done now,” he reassured. “We’re together, and that’s how we’re going to stay.”
He bent over to kiss her again. As his tongue swept into her mouth, his fingers dove into her. She cried out to feel him inside her, filling her.
Kren kissed his way down, pausing to suckle delicately on each tight nipple. Jeannie felt as if she melted in his mouth, giving in to everything he wished to do to her. His tongue was crushed velvet against her sensitive flesh, sending pulses of pleasure throughout her body.
He mouthed his way down her abdomen, still driving his fingers in and out of her. His thumb continued to circle her clit, occasionally brushing over the throbbing tip to deliver a thunderclap of excitement through her core. He stroked the cluster of nerves at the front of her sheath, and the friction made heady ecstasy bloom.
Kren worked his way down. He paused a moment to watch her body accept his driving fingers. Something dark, animal, and masculine moved over his expression. It was the look of a man who knew he could claim anything from his woman because she had given all to him.
Jeannie loved to watch him accept this power. She could trust him with it.
He pulled his fingers free, two of them. She trembled as he put them into his mouth with deliberate slowness. Tasting her. Knowing her by all the senses he possessed.
“So sweet,” he said. He crouched down to deliver a searching kiss.
His wet, hot mouth settled on her pussy. For a moment, Jeannie released the headboard, instinctively reaching to bury her fingers in his mane. At the last moment she remembered herself and gripped the rails once more.
Kren’s tongue chased wet trails, lapping with contentment. His brushed-velvet tongue found every crevice, each fold, and claimed it. Once he’d explored her with a thoroughness that left her quaking all over, he shoved his tongue inside her, moaning as he took her. He had her that way until she sobbed his name.
“My love. My treasure,” he answered, his voice trembling.
When he lifted his head to look at her with those starburst eyes, Jeannie thought he might fill her with his cock. She didn’t care if he was gentle and slow or rough and demanding. All that mattered was that they be joined in the most profound way possible.
His gaze held hers. She waited for him to crawl up her body, to cover her with himself, to spear her with his shaft, to make them one. Instead, his face drifted down again.
He seized her clit with his lips, sucking the swollen bit. His tongue dragged over it. Jeannie shrieked as her senses exploded, driving her right to the cusp of orgasm.
He licked again. Pleasure so profound that it registered as pain blasted through her. Jeannie bucked violently, protesting sensation too excruciating. Her hands remained locked around the iron bars, hanging on for dear life.
“I can’t. Please,” she sobbed, shuddering at the verge of annihilation. Despite the desperate words, she pushed against him, grinding, searching for that final spark.
He gave it to her. Once again, he dragged his tongue against her clit.
Jeannie blew apart. Rapture poured through her body, sending streamers of bliss into every limb. Kren kept licking, sending surge after surge of raw power through her senses, obliterating her. Screams pealed from her throat with each shattering burst.
Pulses slowed, bringing her back to sanity. Jeannie discovered she had let go of the headboard. Her arms splayed against the pillows, limp and strengthless in the aftermath. Kren’s face hung over hers, a satisfied smile playing over his lips.
“You are gorgeous when you find completion,” he said.
He acted as if he would tease her endlessly. As his tails unwound from around her legs, Jeannie acted. She grabbed both, rubbing one swaying end over a breast. She took the second one in her mouth, twisting her tongue around the end.
Kren jerked, his eyes widening. The tail she kissed so deeply slid out of her mouth to curl around her wrist and pin it next to her head. The other curled around her breast, tightening so that she shuddered with ecstasy.
He kissed her with brutal passion, filling her mouth with her flavor. His chest rubbed against her breasts. Between her legs, the broad head of the cock he’d grown moved against her entrance. Jeannie opened for him, welcoming his first thrust.
He eased in for the first inch. Jeannie’s breath caught. Still swollen from the recent pleasuring, she felt him with a sensitivity she’d never known with any man. There was a slight ache because he was so thick, but the agreeable pain heigh
tened her desire rather than blunting it.
Kren groaned. “So hot. So wet.”
He slid in more, her wetness making it easy despite his girth. He was doing it, filling her with himself, making them a part of each other. Jeannie welcomed it with everything in her being.
His thick shaft buried deep within, bringing his groin up against her clit to rub. Jeannie gasped. Her free hand grabbed his shoulder, her fingernails digging in. Kren chuckled but didn’t armor his skin against her frenzied grasp. “That’s it. Feel me inside you, Jeannie. Feel me taking you and know it will be this way between us for always.”
Always. Tears stung her eyes at his promise, welling with joy.
He slid back and forth, the friction firing her nerve endings. He was so wide that she was sure she could feel every pore in his striped skin as it thudded inside her.
And though she took all of his length in, she felt something more. As if he grew wider somehow, the base of him thickening. Rubbing her inner hotspot to make her tighten about him, clutching at that heady sensation that was all-consuming fire.
“Kren?”
“I am knotting inside you,” he said. “To stimulate that part of you within where the pressure feels best. And then there is this.”
Jeannie felt a light tugging at her clit, similar to when Kren wrapped his lips around her there. Still sensitive, it took only a moment before ticklish heat stabbed deep into her core.
“Oh. Oh!” she cried.
Kren’s malleable skin surrounded her clit, pulling on it with each thrust. Excitement swirled, a churning sea of bliss as he took her. He surged deeper inside her. He filled her and filled her and filled her again, driving her ever closer to the final cataclysm.
“Look into my eyes,” Kren said. “Look at me as we love. Look at me, Jeannie. Know you are mine forever.”
She stared into those silver eyes with their starburst pupils, and it was more intimate than all the rest they were doing. She could not hide from Kren, but then doing so was in the past. She was naked to him in every way.
“I love you,” she moaned.
“And I love you. Now come for me.”
Not of This World Page 28