Rubbing a hand over the baby’s head, she kissed the delicate skin of her forehead and then held her away to study her. The baby squinted at her and she chuckled at its efforts to adjust its vision to the sudden brightness of the world, the look of wonder on its tiny face.
The babies had her eyes, her chin, and her hair.
She looked up at Ja-rael on a sudden thought. “I just realized something.”
“What?”
“You have two maned lionesses, Ja-rael!”
Epilogue
Kathryn paused in her hoeing and placed a hand on her aching back, arching against it to stretch her cramping muscles. Around her, the other women continued to work the lush garden their little community shared. They were a pitiful lot. Three years earlier the ship that had carried them safely across the known universe from Earth to their new world had ended it’s voyage by crashing into the planet and killing more than half the passengers. Everyone had lost someone. Some entire families had been wiped out.
At first, they had simply been so stunned by the magnitude of the disaster and their personal losses no one had really assessed the true scope of the devastation.
It had begun to sink in upon them when they’d been forced to set aside their grief and plunge immediately into the work of establishing a colony before they lost any more colonists. The dead and dying had drawn predators from the jungle because there hadn’t been enough living left to tend the injured and bury the dead quickly enough. In the end, they hadn’t been able to bury them at all. They’d had to form a mass funeral pyre and burn the bodies to keep the wildlife from carrying off anyone else.
It was when they began to build their first crude shelters that they discovered that, while overall they’d lost little more than half the colonists, the ratio of men to women was far worse. Unfortunately, as bad as it was, it got worse. Over the next three years the men had dwindled until there were only a handful over the age of fifteen and under the age of sixty. They’d lost two entire hunting parties the first year. Six men had left the compound in search of meat, none had come back.
It was pretty hopeless for them now and they couldn’t even really call what they had a colony anymore. They were just survivors and for most of the women, like her, that was all they were ever going to be--survivors. Even if every single male who was capable of producing a family chose a wife, that would still leave nearly thirty women with no male at all, and no hope of a family. Everyone knew it, but no one admitted it out loud.
They’d become so fearful of losing what little they had left that the women had finally assumed the role of hunter and protector--and they’d begun fighting over the men that were left, as undesirable as most of them would’ve been if there’d been an alternative.
Sighing, Kathryn flicked a resentful glance at the men sprawled in the shade of the trees at the edge of the field. Supposedly, they were standing guard. In reality they were doing what they usually did--nothing. As she watched, Brad, the true prima donna of the group because he was the ‘prime’ male, lifted a hand lazily and summoned one of the women working nearby to fetch him a drink.
Grinding her teeth, Kathryn went back to hoeing. She’d been hoeing furiously for all of ten minutes when a strange sensation washed over her. She paused, trying to brace herself on the hoe as a wave of dizziness followed it.
God help her, was she coming down with something?
Heat stroke?
She felt really warm. A strange scent or taste filled her.
Seizure?
She looked up, wondering if she should call for help. As she scanned the field around her her attention was caught by movement at the edge of the field. Terror instantly warred with the other sensations that were growing steadily worse when she saw they were being stalked by predators.
As if he realized he’d been spotted, one of the predators paused. After a moment, he stood up and Kathryn felt her jaw go slack with surprise. It stood on two legs. It was as tall as a man--it was a man--sort of. He was wearing what looked to be a loincloth, a sure sign that this was no animal at all, but an intelligent species.
Their gazes locked across the space that separated them and Kathryn felt an indescribable pull. Scarcely aware of what she was doing, she dropped the hoe and began to walk slowly toward the male, as if he were somehow pulling her with his mind. The closer she got, the more identifiable the sensation became until she realized it was not some strange malady that was affecting her.
She wanted him, desired him so fervently she could barely catch her breath. She paused when she was still several yards away from him, fighting the overwhelming need to touch him, to feel his hands on her, to feel him inside of her.
His face was taut with his own needs. For several moments, neither of them moved so much as a hair’s breadth. Finally, almost as if he feared she would somehow break the spell and flee, he leapt at her, catching her tightly against him. Blackness crowded close in Kathryn’s mind. She fought it, yielding to her need to touch him. He was hard and muscular all over. His skin beneath her palm felt satiny, not slickly smooth like her own, but more like the plush of velvet. Her desire mounted, spiraled completely out of control and she rubbed her cheek along his chest and neck, breathing in the scent that was making her wild with need.
With an almost guttural growl, he disentangled himself from her, pushed her slightly away from him. Kathryn protested, reaching for him again. Before she quite knew what was happening, he’d hoisted her over his shoulder. Turning, he headed for the jungle at a running trot.
Relief flooded her. He was going to find a place for them and he was going to do something about her needs.
She couldn’t wait long, though. She felt like she was going to die if he didn’t do something--quickly. She began stroking the flesh she could reach, his back, the top of his buttocks. He almost tripped when she slipped her hand beneath his loincloth to dig her fingers into his bare buttock.
When he regained his balance, he began running a little faster. Finally, they reached a stream. The banks were covered with a mossy, low growing vegetation. The man half dropped half lay her on the cushiony ground and sprawled on top of her. Kathryn fought him, trying to push him far enough away to remove the thin sarong she wore to cover her nakedness, unwilling to allow any barrier between them. He subsided, leaning away from her in frowning confusion. When she’d removed her sarong, she grabbed the edge of his loincloth, trying to pull it off without untying it when she couldn’t find the tie quickly enough.
He helped her, discarding it to one side. Kathryn stared at his erect cock hungrily for several moments and grabbed it, stuffing it into her mouth and sucking on it greedily.
A jolt went through him at her action He was too stunned at first even to react, though his fingers curled in instinctive fear in her hair. Within moments, he began to shake. Kathryn caressed him harder and faster, urging him to come. Abruptly, he pulled his cock free of her mouth, shoved her back against the moss and mounted her, thrusting his cock deeply inside of her in one swift motion that dragged a groan of deep satisfaction from her. She countered his trust, digging her nails into his back to urge him to thrust harder and deeper. Abruptly her culmination caught her, dragging a scream of ecstatic delight from her. It seemed to echo endlessly through the jungle, altering in tone and pitch, sounding loud and then distant as if the sound were bouncing from tree to tree.
She was still reeling in the aftershocks when she felt his great body begin to shutter and spasm as he found his own release. He melted bonelessly against her as the tension flowed from him, struggling to catch his breath. Kathryn drifted lazily on a cloud of bliss, smiling to herself, unwilling even to consider moving--until she felt his cock swelling uncomfortably inside of her again.
Instantly aroused once more, she arched against him. To her surprise and consternation, he uttered a protest--not that she could understand anything he said, but the tone and timber of his voice was unmistakable. Puzzled, she went still. Apparently satisfied that she’d u
nderstood him, he eased slightly away from her. Holding her hips, he rolled onto his side to relieve her of his weight and began stroking her almost lovingly, murmuring soft words she knew instinctively must be a lover’s praise. Enchanted, she lay perfectly still, listening to the musical sound of his voice.
A thrashing in the brush drew the attention of both of them. The male tensed. A moment later Kathryn felt the tightness in her passage recede and he withdrew from her.
Jumping to his feet, he surveyed the jungle around them carefully, his body tense, as if he was ready to spring into battle at the least sign of a threat. Finally, he relaxed and looked down at her, smiling faintly.
Kathryn smiled back, studying him now with curiosity. Beyond the sense that he was braced and ready to defend her, she saw nothing about him that was the least bit threatening. He was a beautiful creature. Except for his strange eyes and his odd flesh colorations, he might have been mistaken for a human.
He wasn’t human. The loincloth indicated some advancement in civilization, but he undoubtedly hailed from a fairly primitive tribe of people.
He held out his hand to her and when she took it he helped her to her feet and very tenderly dressed her in her sarong once more. When he’d settled his loincloth on his hips, he lifted his head as if listening. After a moment, he called out, then listened again. A few moments later she heard a series of answering calls.
Apparently satisfied, he took her hand and began to lead her through the forest. Doubts surfaced, but Kathryn was far more curious than frightened. It might have been otherwise if not for the strange sensations that had swept over her when she’d first seen him. As it was, she was still more than a little disoriented by the expenditure of passion and she didn’t even think to protest. They’d been walking for perhaps twenty minutes when they reached a clearing where nothing more than waist high vegetation grew. The man stopped there, as if waiting. Mentally shrugging, Kathryn waited, too, wondering what to expect. A few moments later a second male emerged from the jungle leading Maya, who followed him as docilely as she’d followed the male leading her. A second and third pair emerged shortly behind them. Within fifteen minutes Kathryn realized that everyone who’d been working in the fields with her had joined her, and the males, in the clearing.
They simply stared at each other in confusion for several moments. Slowly, it dawned upon Kathryn that the ‘echo’ she’d heard in the forest hadn’t been an echo at all. There wasn’t one woman who wasn’t wearing a sappy, totally satisfied expression, despite the fact that several of them were beginning to look uneasy.
The male she was with laid a hand along her cheek. It was caressing in nature, not threatening and the look in his strange golden eyes was pure promise. He spoke to her, low, his tone gentle and finally released his hold on her. Uncertain of what he’d said, Kathryn merely stayed where she was for several moments. Finally, deciding he had no intention of objecting to her joining her friends, she moved toward the women, who had begun to form an uneasy knot in the center of the ring.
“What’s going on, do you think?” Maya whispered.
Kathryn sighed. “I think I’m in love.”
Maya snickered and slapped her hand playfully. “Be serious.”
“I am serious,” Kathryn said, grinning.
“You think we’re in trouble?” Melinda asked a little nervously.
“Mmm, if that was trouble I’ll have some more.”
Melinda reddened. “Can you be serious?” she demanded.
Kathryn sighed. “Look, I’ve got no more idea of what’s going on than the rest of you, but if you ask me, I think we’ve just been rescued.”
* * * *
Da-vede found it difficult to take his eyes off of his new mate for fear she would simply vanish and he would discover it had all been no more than a wondrous dream. When he saw, though, that she seemed perfectly content to wait for him, he finally dragged his attention from her and glanced at his friend, Trinan. “What do you think?”
Trinan was trying hard to suppress the imbecilic grin that kept curling his lips. He shook his head. “We have searched so long I had become convinced that Ja-rael had lied to us and we would never find the village of the maned lions. I can not believe my good fortune! Is my mate not the most wondrous creature you have ever seen?”
Da-vede agree, although he had eyes for no other than his own mate and no clue of which one Trinan had laid claim to.
Trinan sobered after a moment, looking perplexed. “They are--not at all like our females. Did yours try to bash your head in with a stone when you had finished mating?”
“Yours did?” Da-vede asked in surprise. “Why would she do that?”
Trinan shrugged. “I do not know. I can not understand a word she speaks, but she seemed pleased with me--until we stopped.”
“Perhaps that was it? She wasn’t ready to stop.”
“You think?” Trinan asked unhappily. “I will have to try harder to please her next time.”
Da-vede nodded, but his thoughts were elsewhere. “There were not many males--and we have not paid a bride price.”
Trinan turned to look at him. “You can not be considering going back to do so? Not when we made off with all the women? I’ll admit I was--preoccupied at the time, but they were yelling and jumping up and down furiously as I ran into the woods. They are more likely to try to kill us than to negotiate a bride price.”
Da-vede’s lips tightened. “They can try--I don’t like leaving without paying a bride price. My mate is more valuable to me than life. I do not wish to shame her by not paying.”
“They might demand to have them back instead,” Trinan pointed out. “And I, for one, will not give my mate up!”
Da-vede didn’t like the sound of that. He didn’t mind fighting for the right to take her if it came to that, but he would not give her up if they weren’t satisfied with what he could offer. Finally, reluctantly, he decided that Trinan was right. “Let us move them to a safe place to stay the night. I will go with some of the others and leave the bride price at their village and then we will go home.”
The End
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