by 1
She fought her blush and tugged her hand free. “Thank you, Issul and Zeering. This will be most helpful. Now, I just need to find a place to land us within walking distance to the temple.”
“Why don’t we just land in the city?”
“If the attacks on you were truly assassination attempts, then we need to come in quietly, bringing as little attention to ourselves as possible. Barring that, I will land us right in the centre of the square and I will blast our way into the temple and up to the throne.”
“You will bring as little damage to the population as you can?”
“Of course. These are stunners calibrated for the Reeban specifically.” She patted the unit at her hip.
“What is your plan?”
“We land, take the streaker out and get to the temple as rapidly as possible. Do you know how to drive one?”
He looked behind them to the transport unit lashed in the back of the battered shuttle. “I have never flown anything like that.”
“Do you mind if I fly it then?”
“I am happy to let you take charge of our transport. It will simply be a relief to be back in contact with the surface of Zeering again.”
It was a relief that he wasn’t going to be insulted by her piloting the streaker. In her time in the Alliance, she had run across few males who insisted on driving and the results were never as good as if she had been behind the controls.
The com chirped and she opened the line.
“Incoming shuttle, identify yourself.”
Sebena drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “This is the landing shuttle out of the mining ship Sheppan, Alliance registration one-oh-two-two-five.”
There was a pause and then the voice returned. “What is your business on Zeering?”
“Trading for supplies. The Sheppan suffered an asteroid strike and lost half its food supply. We need proteins and as much vegetation as I can locate.”
“Acknowledged. Please hold your position.”
She nodded and winked at Issul as he sat and watched her playacting.
“Please land at the spaceport. You have zone fifteen for your landing and three days on the surface. I hope you find what you seek.”
“Thank you. A good day to you.” She disconnected the com and found the beacon that they lit for her. She entered the atmosphere and she could feel Issul vibrating with energy and anticipation. With her head down and hands on the controls, she brought them down into the skies of Zeering.
Her landing zone was on the far side of the spaceport, but it was still within reasonable distance to the temple. A flicker on the com panel made her smile. She gestured at Issul to keep quiet. They had planted an open-com virus during the first communication.
She had expected it, many worlds kept close tabs on visitors. Merkil had once come back to the ship fleeing an angry set of Tival parents who had planted a tracker on his ship when he landed. The captain had paid the family for the seduction of their daughters and Merkil had been reprimanded, his pay had been garnished for the remainder of the year.
Sebena landed them neatly on their assigned spot and rapidly unbuckled her harness before the shuttle had even powered down. Issul followed her lead and in seconds, she was wearing her rifle across her back and straddling the streaker.
Issul wrapped his arms around her waist and whispered in her ear, “Ready when you are.”
She struck the cargo release and the entire back of the mining shuttle cracked in half, opening wide to let them out.
Sebena breathed deeply to calm herself and throttled the streaker into high. It levitated on a magnetic field and as she moved the controls, they shot forward. The security team that had been heading toward her shuttle froze as she zipped past them. The streaker was a nickname for a magnetically accelerated personal transport. If it was piloted by someone who knew what he or she was doing, it appeared to be nothing more than a streak of colour as it moved.
Issul’s hold was firm but not crushing. His energy was pulsing through the tight bodysuit that wrapped her from neck to ankle. The dark suit had been Nilia’s suggestion when she heard about the situation Sebena was entering. No sense tangling herself on a baggy mining suit. If she needed to move, she needed to be wearing something more practical. The skin suit was it.
She watched the temple grow as they got closer. Issul’s hold tightened on her waist and ribs.
Security forces were organizing in front of her, so she took the streaker up. Shots were fired from the ground, missing them by inches but heating the air around them.
“That is not friendly.”
Zeering spoke in her ear, “I will provide a distraction.”
Under them, the ground shook, blurring the temple slightly as it rocked under the onslaught of the planet.
Sebena landed the streaker on the flat roof of the temple. Issul immediately let her go and stood to help her from their conveyance.
“I can feel the seat of power calling to me.”
She smiled and was going to speak, but a shadow moved and she lifted one of her stunners, blasting the priest before he could bring his own weapon to aim.
Seeing a Reeban up close, she blinked at the feathers crowning the head and the beaklike nose that sat proudly in the centre of his face. “Okay. Now I know what we are dealing with. Let’s get you where you need to be.”
She drew her other stunner and took point. They knew no one was behind them. There was no other place for the priests to hide on the sunny roof. Armed and on alert, she started down the stairs with Issul at her heels.
The priests blocked her at regular intervals. She almost laughed when one said, “Halt in the name of Zeering.”
He ended up on the floor, but she propped him up nicely. He deserved respect for standing up to for what he believed in.
The journey from the roof of the temple down to the throne room took them half an hour. Issul walked behind her and let her do the work the entire way. She didn’t mind. There was a certain satisfaction in knocking men on their asses at a distance.
The throne room wasn’t guarded. The pulsing power of the navy blue quartz was unmistakable. She knew that power and as Issul walked past her, he was humming with the same rhythm.
Priests suddenly coursed from all doorways and watched the avatar take the steps to the throne.
Sebena knelt and brought her stun rifle around, aiming at anyone who even hinted at raising a weapon.
She guarded the avatar as he took his throne and the moment that he sat, a ripple spread through the walls and floor, a bright wave that passed over the entire world.
The Avatar of Zeering was home.
Chapter Six
When the priests started to kneel, Sebena lowered her weapon and looked at Issul. He was the embodiment of power—his hair moving slightly as energy shifted through him and throughout the room. His eyes were completely navy blue, a sure sign that Zeering was firmly in control.
A Reeban with a gold headpiece came forward. To Sebena’s surprise, he bowed low to Issul.
“Avatar, we have prayed for your safe return.”
“I am aware that this was not always the case, priest. My Avatar has been lost to me for a century and it was one of yours who caused the most painful separation.”
The priest flinched. “My dear Zeering. It is good to hear your voice. We have despaired of hearing you speak in our lifetimes.”
Zeering inclined his head. “My Avatar and I need to renew our bond. Please escort this woman to guest quarters and treat her as you would my wife. She is to retain her weapons.”
“But my lord, weapons are not allowed in the temple.”
“She is to retain her weapons.”
The priest bowed low. “Yes, my lord. She will retain her weapons. We will bring her to the guest quarters in the village.”
“She will remain here in the temple and sleep under my roof. Give her the Avatar’s chamber. She will rest in my bed. Go.”
The priest stood, his navy blue feathers
ruffled. He looked at Sebena and bowed stiffly. “Lady. Please accompany this acolyte to your rooms. We will bring in a female to attend you.”
Her lips twitched in amusement. “Thank you, Priest. I welcome the rest.”
She got to her feet and released her hair from her ponytail, looking at the cotton-candy pink locks that Zeering had crafted for her. The priests looked at her hair and a grudging respect came to their eyes.
She looked to Issul and he gestured with his chin for her to leave him. The moment that she turned to follow the acolyte, a column of energy swallowed him as the power of Zeering bonded into his skin once again.
The acolyte led her up a set of stairs and down a hall. Two huge doors were at the end of the hallway and he reached out to open the doors, swinging them wide. “The Avatar’s quarters, Lady. We have kept them maintained for the last hundred years, waiting for his return.”
She smiled wryly. “And here I heard that the priests had attempted to kill Issul in an effort to install their own Avatar. Too bad no one asked Zeering about it. He can’t occupy a Reeban.”
The acolyte paused while opening the bathroom door. “What?”
“Apparently, your bodies or minds cannot hold him properly. You burn out too fast and every lost Avatar causes Zeering grief. He wanted your people to thrive, not to be lost in the grief of a world who had lost the extension of himself.” She was babbling and she knew it, but there was a pressure on her mind and she had to tell this young male exactly what the problem was between Zeering and his kind.
“Who told you this?”
“Zeering, while he was fully occupying his Avatar. Oh, is that a bathtub?”
The acolyte blinked at the change in topic. “Of course. The Avatar was used to bathing in water and so it was installed when the temple was built centuries ago.”
The young man with the mud brown hair bowed low. “Is there is nothing else for you, Lady?”
“A meal in an hour would be wonderful. For now, I would like to bathe.” She shooed him out and he bowed his way out of the bathing room and out through the two huge doors. He closed the doors behind him and she turned back to the bath with a happy giggle.
The taps were a little awkward, but she managed to turn them on and after a few minutes, the hot water flowed and began to fill the tub.
As she sat and waited, she went through the oils and soaps at the edge of the tub, sniffing until she had picked out her favourites.
The bathing room itself had a separate cabinet for the necessary, a charming sink and a wall of mirrors. It was a huge room and it seemed a shame to waste the Olympic-sized bathtub on herself.
She laughed and stripped out of the bodysuit. Who was she kidding? She was only too happy to jump into the water and enjoy a soak. Real water was in short supply on a mining ship that didn’t deal in ice.
Sebena dipped her toes into the water and with a happy sigh, she slid into the rising level. She turned off the water when it lapped against her breasts and she leaned back with another sigh. Oh, she had missed this.
Her body enjoyed the buoyancy of the water and she revelled in the feeling of her fingers getting pruney under the water.
She slid under the water and soaked her hair, getting the pink stuff nice and wet. With a happy growl, she poured some of the floral soap into her hand and lathered it up.
She soaped her hair and then her body, loving the smell and the relaxed sensation that spilled through her as the scent worked her over.
Laughing at herself, she rinsed off and flicked the drain. There was no time to spend the entire day in a bath, but it had been good while it lasted.
Decidedly woozy, she chalked up her light-headedness to the heat of the water, but when she took a few steps into the cooler air of the bedroom with a towel wrapped around her, she knew something was wrong.
She staggered forward and headed for the door. She only had the towel around her, but she didn’t care. She needed help and she needed it now.
Two young priests saw her and immediately ran to her side. “What is it, Lady?”
“I have been poisoned, bring me to the Avatar.”
“He is communing with Zeering. We are not to disturb him.”
She gave them a dark look. “If he wakes and his mate is dead, he will be a lot less pleased than if you simply interrupt him. Now. Please.”
She collapsed at their feet. The next few images were spotty from her point of view. She was carried, set down, carried again, set down again, she heard arguing and then a familiar voice that washed over her and made her feel warm from the inside out.
A hand of power lifted her and she hovered in the air, her body covered by the wrap she had grabbed in the bathing room.
“She has been poisoned.” Issul’s voice was deadly.
“She mentioned something to that effect, but she smells like Miyaka flowers. It was thought that she had an allergy to them.”
The priest’s voice trembled as he spoke. His tone was too high and his words too fast. He knew something, but in Sebena’s dazed state, she was too distracted to pick it out.
Her body was moved across the room, about four feet in the air. Pain was beginning to radiate from all her nerve endings. Zeering lifted her up the steps toward the throne, the power of the planet once again controlled by Issul’s body.
Sebena felt the surge of energy as she passed through the column of power that Zeering was radiating. He gently placed her across Issul’s lap and her lips quirked in a drowsy, pain-laden smile.
“I am sorry to have interrupted your meditation, Issul.”
“And I am sorry that our first coming together will have to be this way, but the poison that they used is invasive and you do not have much time.”
The towel was burned away in seconds in a blaze of blue fire and she was left naked and draped across his thighs and the arms of the throne. A matching flare covered Issul’s skin and in seconds she was sitting directly on hard thighs and a searing column of heat that caused a flicker in her body even while it began the process of dying.
She used the last of her remaining energy to look him in the eye and the touching concern on his face with his eyes equal parts of gold and blue made her smile. “I am far more interested in survival than dignity, so do what you have to do.”
His gentle smile burned itself into her memory and she relaxed as he began to stroke her skin. Whatever he was about to do was going to change her, and at this moment, she had no objection as long as she lived to reciprocate another day.
Chapter Seven
The light surrounding them became an opaque wall that shut out the curious priesthood and left them in a column of privacy that relieved the tiny bit of tension that Sebena had been harboring. She sighed happily as his hands stroked over her breasts, because everywhere he touched, the pain that was threatening to turn into an acidic shriek faded away.
When he caressed her breasts, she sighed and arched into his hands, feeling the curls of pleasure that were expanding inside her. Zeering was riding Issul’s every touch. The planet’s power was the pleasure that she felt coursing and pooling in her. It made sense it was far easier to acquire an Avatar with pleasure than with pain.
As the pain receded, she lifted one arm to caress Issul’s neck. She used her grip to lever herself upward and when their lips were half an inch apart, he ran his hand between her thighs and parted the lips of her sex in one slow stroke. Two fingers slid into her while he kissed her, the same slow kiss that he had given her on the Sheppan.
When his fingers thrust and retreated, she gasped and she could feel the curve of Issul’s lips against her own. Pleasure spun through her as he continued the slow kiss with the more insistent motions of his hand.
Heat spiked through her with every insertion and retreat of his hand. She felt the passion rise and after she passed the limits she thought she was capable of, harsh cries came from her lips as the tension snapped and her body curled against Issul while she shook in his grip. Her first orgasm instiga
ted by someone else, it was an amazing revelation.
The soft laugh was part Issul and part Zeering as he shifted and lifted her against him. She was kneeling on either side of his hips, her legs pressed to the throne of Zeering. Face to face, she looked into his eyes as he whispered, “My Avatar, my life, my bride.”
Her eyes widened when the arrow-like head of Issul’s cock wedged in her opening. He pressed his hands against her hips and moved his hips so that she took him inside her. Her channel widened to take him, but there was still an ache of discomfort as he filled her in every dimension.
Her channel slicked with desire, making the next movement easier. Sebena’s instinct to move took over and she rose up on her knees before sliding back to rest fully against his thighs.
Issul’s eyes glowed as she rocked and ground against him. He leaned forward and this time, his kiss was not gentle. His teeth bit lightly at her lip and when she opened to him, he explored her mouth with his tongue. He mimicked the rhythm that she had taken up and while she sighed and looped her arms around his neck, he reached one hand between them to rub against the point where they joined, bringing her to another swift orgasm that made her buck against him and a trembling cry was given to him as his due.
He gripped her hips and thrust into her furiously, bringing her up on a spiral of pleasure that had her on the edge of pleasure again in moments.
Issul gripped her head and kissed her savagely as he shouted his release. She felt the jet of cum inside her, but there was a surprise that went along with it. The energy of Zeering burned into her, starting in her womb and radiating through her entire body.
The scream that came to her throat was swallowed by another kiss. Pleasure and pain blurred into one moment of confusion as the planet mapped every inch, every cell, every nerve and made himself at home.
Welcome, Sebena. You are ours now.
What the hell?
You were poisoned.
I know that. Why are you in my head?
Issul is in your body. You don’t seem to mind that.