Moon Struck

by Heather Guerre

  He surged forward, trapping her between his arms. He lowered his face to hers and took her mouth in a heated kiss. His fangs bit into her lower lip, sending a bolt of hot desire straight through her. She gripped his shirt, holding herself upright as he invaded her mouth.

  When he pulled away, both of them were breathing roughly. He reached behind her and did something with the door. She heard the sound of bolts releasing, then the door slid away from under her back.

  “Your home, rourra.”

  Hadiza turned to look. Her first thought was that it didn’t look particularly lived in. The central chamber hosted only a cluttered desk and a few perfunctory pieces of furniture. The walls and the floor were spartan. The air itself lacked an occupied feel, stale and cold.

  But she felt the heat of Errol’s body against her back and gooseflesh raced over her skin. She stood still, breathless, waiting to see what he would do next.

  “Tell me what you think,” he said gruffly.

  “It could be cozier,” she admitted.

  “You can do whatever you want to it. Fill it with whatever you want. It hasn’t really been a home until now.”

  Hadiza nodded, overwhelmed by a flood of different emotions. She’d never had her own home. The idea of furnishing her own place, where she would live with her mate, and her coming child, was almost impossible to believe. But then there was the heat of his body. It was a nearly physical sensation, teasing her with his closeness. His presence drove away all thoughts of furniture and rugs, pulling her back into the immediacy of the moment.

  Finally, he touched her. It was just the gentlest trace of his fingertips, skimming along her arms, but it pulled a quiet whimper from her.

  “Just bringing you into our home does not satisfy the claim,” he said darkly.

  “No?” She turned unsteadily to face him.

  Stark hunger was writ across his hard, gray face. His pupils were blown out, turning his irises to thin, ochre rings.

  Hadiza drew in a shaky breath, took a hesitant step back.

  Before she even set her foot down, Errol pounced. He seized her in his arms and threw her over his shoulder. Hadiza shrieked as he raced down one of the tunnels with her. The colored skylights bathed them in shades of blue and green, and then they emerged into another round room. The bed was a circular pit embedded into the floor, filled with soft, thick cushions.

  Errol slung her off his shoulder and threw the both of them down into the lush mass of bedding. He rolled his big, hard body over hers, pushing his hips between her thighs. Hadiza moaned as he let his weight bear down on her, driving the thick ridge of his erection against the her core.

  His hunger for her was brutal, animalistic, and she loved it. She returned his fervor in kind, ripping the fall of his trousers open and reaching for the heavy, hard length of his cock. He growled as her hand closed on him and he thrust into her grasp.

  “I need to be inside you,” he snarled, shoving away from her so that he could rip her trousers off and fling them across the room.

  She was ready for him, wet and hot and willing. He pressed into her, stretching her wide, filling her body so deeply and completely she could only writhe and pant beneath him. Words were lost to her. Thoughts were lost. She was only physical sensation and need—need for her big, powerful mate.

  He worked his cock into her with powerful thrusts, snarling as the pleasure of it built between them, until they were both frantic and sweating, pleading in their own native languages, twisting together and arching apart. He felt Hadiza’s climax take her as her inner muscles clamped down on his cock. The force of her pleasure pulled him into his own climax, and he struggled to breathe as nearly-painful pleasure wracked his body.

  When he could move again, he pulled out of her sweet flesh. His come and hers mingled on her thighs, a visual marker that satisfied the animal need to claim. He’d filled her with his child, and now he’d claimed her in their home. She was his. His forever.

  “Errol.” Hadiza stirred languidly, shifting to drape her body over his. “What does ‘rourra’ mean?”

  He drew a deep breath, watching her rise and fall with his chest. “I’m not sure I could translate it into the Creole.” He thought for a moment. “‘Beloved’ is not strong enough. ‘My darling,’ perhaps? ‘My love?’” He shook his head, unsatisfied. “Everything,” he said finally. “It means you are everything. You are my soul.”

  Her fingers traced gently through the hair on his chest. “Can I call you rourra?”

  “Our language doesn’t work that way. It wouldn’t make sense for you to call me that. And besides...” he trailed off. He didn’t want to ruin the perfection of the moment.

  “Besides what?” she prompted.

  “The matebond doesn’t affect you the way it affects me,” he answered honestly. “And I don’t care, Hadiza. Whatever affection you have to give me, I will take it, and be happy. Just to have you with me is—”

  “Affection?” she repeated, sounding incredulous. “Errol. Are you suggesting that I repeatedly snuck into a Scaeven prison to have sex with you simply because I feel affection for you?”

  “You’re a generous, good-hearted—”

  Her ineffectual little fist smacked against his chest. “Ibn al perro!” She shoved against him, sitting upright so she could glare down at him. “I am not with you out of the goodness of my heart, you—you—” she descended into a furious stream of Espeurbaa, hands gesturing emphatically.

  Errol felt a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. He bit himself to keep it hidden. That familiar swelling pressure filled his chest as he watched her. He swallowed hard. The smile refused to stay hidden.

  When she’d wound herself back down, she punched him one more time in the arm. “I love you, Errol,” she declared angrily. “I love you, and if try to tell me that this isn’t love and I’m just some kind-hearted little—”

  Errol grabbed her and silenced her with a kiss. He smiled against her lips as she clung to him, kissing him back with a passion that spoke of both love and some residual outrage. After a moment, she softened against him, and then it was just love. He felt it in her kiss and her touch as surely as he could feel her beat of her heart and the rise and fall of her breath. How had he missed it before?

  She pulled back, stroking a soft hand over his jaw. He noted the way his beard had reddened her skin with possessive approval.

  “I love you,” she said, this time gently, plainly.

  “I know, rourra. I love you, too.”

  “If I can’t call you rourra, then I’ll use my own language—y’rouhi.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “It’s hard to translate into the Creole.” She trailed gentle fingers along the side of his neck, over his collarbone. “But it means you are my everything, too.”

  He kissed her, and she kissed him back, touching and tasting nothing but love. They finished undressing each other with slow care, their bodies sliding together with sedate pleasure. This time, there was no purpose, no mission, no danger. They were just together because they could be, because they wanted to be. Their eyes met as he pushed himself into her sweet, welcoming body again, and the love he saw in her gaze staggered him.

  He felt gentle pressure behind his eyes. The soft glow gilded the edges of Hadiza’s beautiful face. She reached up, tenderly holding him as their joined bodies rocked together, until her climax took her. He followed her off the ledge.

  When the convulsive ecstasy released its hold on him, he gathered Hadiza into his arms and lay them both down, face to face.

  “Rourra,” he growled.

  She smiled. “Y’rouhi.”

  Epilogue

  Leo Cluster, NGC 3842

  Scaevos Multi-body System, Varan Moon

  IG Standard Calendar 236.51.03

  The sound of a Scaeven infant’s rasping cries filled the air. Hadiza let out a sigh of relief. It was over. She was numb from the waist down, and the medibots still needed to close up the incisions
, but her child had been delivered, healthy and whole.

  Errol came to kneel beside her, their yowling son cradled in one arm, his free hand stroking Hadiza’s hair back from her face. His eyes glowed softly as he pressed a tender kiss to her forehead.

  “You’re safe,” he said shakily.

  She tilted her chin up, kissing his cheek. “I told you I would be.”

  “Human technology is not—”

  “Scaeven technology has been filleting pregnant women like mackerels,” she reminded him. They’d managed to get approval from the justiciar to import human medical robotics for the birth. As her pregnancy progressed, Errol had become more and more tightly strung. He’d petitioned to have an actual human robotics technician imported with the medical equipment, but that request was denied. In order to reassure him, Hadiza had been obligated to run diagnostic tests on the surgical equipment on a daily basis.

  In the end, the tech had done its job. The medibots made fast work of closing her up. When the skinbonding glue had set on her cesarean incision, Errol eased her son into her arms. The baby’s skin was the same silver-gray as his father’s, but his thick, coarse hair was ebony black—with just the faintest suggestion of a wave to it. His eyes were large, long-lashed, with the typical Scaeven elliptical pupils. The irises were a deep baby blue, but they’d turn some shade of yellow in the coming weeks.

  “Hello my little boy,” Hadiza greeted him in her first language. He quieted in her arms, nestling against the familiar safety of his mother’s body. “Hello, my Hasim,” she whispered.

  “Hasim?” Errol repeated. Naming a son fell to the mother, and according to Scaeven tradition, should not be spoken aloud until the mother first held her son in her arms.

  “Yes.” Hadiza stroked a gentle finger down the slope of her boy’s light gray nose. His big eyes fluttered shut. “Hasim Had-Errol.”

  Errol leaned against the bed, circling Hadiza and Hasim in his big, strong arms. “Rourra,” he said, his voice thick with reverence as he beheld both his mate and his child contained within his embrace.

  They remained that way for long, quiet minutes. Errol reached out to lay a big hand upon his sleeping child. He leaned in to Hadiza. “You’re not going to vanish like Tan-Claro’s mate did, are you?”

  Hadiza could sense the anxiety humming through him. His own mother had resented his very existence, hated her life on Scaevos and the obligations of a Scaeven matebond. Most the human women living on Scaevos were unwilling prisoners. She understood why he couldn’t help but ask.

  But, as much as Hadiza needed to reassure Errol, Aisha’s disappearance was a topic she didn’t want him to examine too closely. Therin Tan-Claro and the rest of Scaevos believed that Aisha had leapt from a cliff and fallen to her death, her body swept away by the river. All of the evidence pointed to that grim conclusion.

  Because Hadiza, Sofie, and Lyra had made certain that it would.

  Pushing away the pang of guilt that came with deceiving him, Hadiza let her head fall against Errol’s shoulder. Speaking the only truth she could be certain of, she told him, “I will never leave you, y’rouhi.”

  Thank you!

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