by Cynthia Sax
He undulated, rubbing his pants-covered cock against her belly, the friction warming her even more. She was on fire from her lips to her pussy to the tips of her toes and she needed more, the fruitless tugging on his tattoo frustrating her.
She released him with a noisy pop and dropped to her knees, unzipping his black pants. He shoved them down to his ankles, as urgent as she was to free his cock.
Gracious. Her eyes widened. The ridge in his pants hadn’t been deceiving. His shaft lay across her palm in all of its manly glory, huge and thick and throbbing.
Lori licked the dab of pre-cum off his tip, his essence as syrupy sweet as the rest of him. “Good.” She smiled up at Trake, her vocabulary reduced to one-syllable words. His black-as-night eyes shone with blue-and-red flames. “House,” she reminded him.
He grunted, his expression dark and menacing, his hands buried in her hair.
She curled her fingers around his base, savoring his girth, and she explored his cock head with her tongue, poking into the slit and teasing the rim. His thighs shook against her shoulders and he mumbled words she didn’t understand, the primitive sounds guttural and abrupt and arousing.
Lori took him into her mouth slowly, steadily, sliding her tongue underneath his shaft, savoring the fullness, Trake’s taste and texture distinctively his. His fingers twisted in her curls, pulling the tendrils tighter and tighter as she devoured him.
His cock head tapped the back of her throat, inches of him left exposed, and she huffed her disappointment, the expelled air rushing around his shaft. Too big. She pulled away and tried again, tilting her head back to take more of him. Can’t fit. She bobbed over him, supplementing the pressure of her mouth with her hand, pumping him to the same rhythm.
His muttering grew louder, urging her faster and faster, and she moved over him, watching his face, focused on pulling more rough words from his grimly set mouth. He rocked forward. She grabbed his clenched ass, digging her fingertips into his skin, trying to control his actions.
A rumble rolled from his lips and his control snapped. He fucked her mouth savagely, pulling her toward him as he drove into her, and she struggled to accommodate him, thrilled by his dominance, his need for her.
“One. One. One.” His voice rose with each thrust.
She held on to his ass with both hands, squeezing his flesh. Her knees ground into the grass. Her mouth ached with the heat of his cock. Her lips pulsed. Never had she felt so alive, so desired, so in the moment.
“One!” He rammed his big cock into her mouth, threw back his head and roared. Warm jets of the sweetest cum squirted down her throat, and the darkness exploded with blue-and-red lights.
She stared, swallowing and swallowing and swallowing, her stomach heated with his essence. The light came from Trake, from the tattoo on his chest. Two long ropes of light, one blue, one red, snapped from the mark, twisting and twining around them, hot and savage and alien.
As she pulled away, releasing his spent cock, the lights retracted, sucked back into his chest. “Trake?” His eyes were clenched close, lines etched around his mouth. “Are you okay?” She staggered to her feet, wiping the grass stains from her black pants. “Did I hurt you?”
His eyelids flew open. “No.” Unrelieved blackness, resembling a starless sky, dominated his eyes, the flames flickering low. “That was…that was…” He flung his hands up, a boyish grin stretching across his scarred face.
Lori smiled smugly back at him, pleased she’d made her alien lover speechless. “I know.” She snuggled into his chest, laying one palm over his bizarre tattoo, its heat reduced, its light dimmed. “It was surprisingly good for me too, considering…”
Trake stroked his female’s hair away from her face, unsticking the tendrils from her moist skin, regret seasoning his joy. “I didn’t pleasure you. I should—”
“You should watch the house and find your brother,” she murmured generously, the scent of his seed on her breath, her body small and soft against his. “You’ll have time to return the favor later.”
Will I? He pulled up his pants and fastened them. The pain from his trapped souls had eased, his temperature returning to near-normal levels.
The vibe from the other Orogone was gone also. “Fuck.” Trake peered up at the darkened house, seeing nothing, no movement and no one inside.
“What is it?” Lori turned, her nose wrinkled, appearing adorably confused.
Trake tugged his jacket on and patted his pocket, feeling the outline of his gun. “He left.” He threaded his fingers through hers, securing her to him, her presence a breach of protocol but necessary for his sanity. “Come.” He strode forward, disgruntled with himself.
“We’re going to the house?” Lori squeaked, jogging beside him, her wonderfully large breasts bouncing against the cotton of her plain black T-shirt. “Why did we wait until now, until after he left?”
“Before he left, going to the house would have been a breach of protocol.” He adjusted his pace to hers. “We can’t interact directly with unfamiliar off-worlders without council permission. Too many of your so-called aliens in one spot might draw unseemly attention.”
“If they all resemble you and Raff, it would,” she muttered under her breath.
“Raff is not for you,” Trake growled, keenly aware of her species’ fickle mating habits.
Her mouth opened.
“Quiet.” He pulled his gun and pressed his ear to the wooden door. Hearing nothing, he twisted the door handle. Unlocked. Trake pushed the door open cautiously and listened. Lori’s breath wafted against his leather jacket. “You wait here.” He closed the door and positioned her in the narrow dark hallway against the wall. “Don’t move.”
She nodded, her blue eyes wide, her fear a visible thing.
“Good girl.” He cupped her beautiful face and skimmed his lips reassuringly over her forehead. Mine to protect.
Trake crept along the hallway, his footsteps silent on the polished black hardwood floor. He glanced in the rooms he passed, his vision adjusting for the limited light. The house was decorated in a style humans labeled minimalist, but Orogones called cluttered. The walls were white and bare. The furniture was dark wood and boxy. Everything was put away with a military-style precision.
The stairs creaked a warning as he climbed to the second floor. He quickly searched four bedrooms and two bathrooms. The undisturbed light layer of dust covering their floors told Trake they hadn’t recently been inhabited.
Big house for one person. He swept his gaze over the large remaining bedroom, and any remaining doubts about the Orogone’s identity vanished. Bren. Although his twin had fled, the lingering energy trail of his souls snapped around Trake’s ankles. Why had he left?
Trake pushed the hurt from his heart and crossed the room to the nightstand closest to the door, those drawer handles sporting more wear. He slid the drawer open and scanned through receipts and letters, looking for clues, for anything to explain why his brother remained on Earth, healthy and unfettered.
A faded photo dropped on the nightstand’s gleaming surface and Trake’s hands shook as he retrieved it. Bren, what did you do? His twin, aged half a century older, smiled, one of his arms encircling the waist of a gray-haired woman and the other around the shoulders of a young man in a black graduation gown. A middle-aged man and woman squeezed into the photograph.
Trake sat with a thump on the bed’s crisp white duvet. A family. He looked up at the spotless ceiling, the ramifications of his brother’s breach of protocol staggering.
A car’s engine hummed at a distance, too far away to be a threat. Trake stuffed the photo into one of his jacket pockets and continued looking through the drawer, searching for more information, needing to gather as much knowledge as possible before making a decision.
He snorted softly. What decision? Protocol is clear, Commander. Report and retrieve. Every piece of mail, the bills, the financial reports, the legal documents, was in one name.
Trake flung the closet doors
open. Men’s shirts and suits filled the space, their colors monochrome and the fabrics unwrinkled.
Clothing for a single man. A single man. The tension in Trake’s shoulders eased. No family and no guilt. I’ll report him in the—
Wood banged against plaster. Lori gasped and Trake rocked back on his heels, terror unlike any he’d ever known surging through his veins.
My One! Trake raced through the house, his heart pounding, thinking only of Lori, of keeping her safe. He descended the stairs three treads at a time, raised his gun and slid the lever to kill.
“Stop right there.” A large male had his arm around Lori’s fragile neck. She clasped the man’s jacket sleeve, her fingernails digging into the leather, her face alarmingly red.
Trake froze on the stairs and his grip tightened on his gun’s handle, his knuckles white. “Hurt her and you die, human,” he growled, glowering at the man through a blue sheen of barely controlled rage. “Slowly. Painfully. Without mercy or consideration of protocol.”
The man swallowed hard, his face familiar, Trake recognizing him as the graduate in the photo, his hair as black as his own. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. I’m looking for my grandfather. What have you done with him?”
Grandfather. “Fuck.” Trake met Lori’s gaze. She had stopped struggling, her expression calm and cool as though she trusted him to keep her safe. I will. Trake inclined his head toward her. No one harms my One.
“Fuck is not a response.” The man shifted behind Lori, moving as soundlessly as an Orogone would. “Answer my question.”
Trake studied the man, sensing nothing off-world about him. Not Orogone. Human. “We’re hunting for him ourselves.” He flipped his jacket to the side and holstered his gun, the weapon not needed against a human.
“Your tattoo.” The man’s mouth dropped open. “He has the same mark—the blue waves around a red ball.” His stranglehold on Lori eased and she gulped air. “What is your connection?”
“We are…related,” Trake gave him the half-truth. “Let her go.” He extended his fingers, loosening his joints. “Or I’ll kill you. And I’d rather not.”
“Kill? No need for killing.” The man released Lori and stepped away from her.
“Trake!” She ran toward him.
Trake met her halfway, embracing her for one long heartbeat, savoring the reassuring feel of her body against his. My One. He swung her around behind him and stood protectively in front of her, blocking the man’s view. Mine to protect. He glared at the impudent pup who’d dared to touch his female.
“Everyone in town knows Lori. I wouldn’t have hurt her.” The man glared back. “It was a bluff. And I didn’t know Grandfather had any other relatives, other than his brother Trakesur.” His gaze met Trake’s. “She called you Trake.”
Trake pinched the bridge of his nose, the deadly implications of his brother’s offense overwhelming him. “We’re going.” He clasped Lori’s hand, her fingers small and delicate against his palm, and he pulled her out the door, into the cool night air.
“He talks about Trakesur all of the time.” The man followed them. “I’m Kane, by the way.” He held out his hand. Trake ignored it, unable to bond with him, knowing what he must do, what he had to do. “He looked up to Trakesur, said his twin brother always had his back, always pulled him out of scrapes.”
Trake winced. How can I pull him out of this scrape? He glanced at the stars. Orogone wasn’t visible, yet it was there, waiting for him. Home.
“Trake, did you hear Kane?” Lori tugged on his hand. “Don’t you want to—”
“No. I don’t.” Trake increased his speed, leaving the man standing alone on the gravel driveway.
Chapter Three
Warmth. Lori curled around the source of the delicious heat. A rough hand caressed her bare legs, sending tremors of sensation over her skin.
A rough hand. She opened her eyes and looked up into Trake’s scarred face. Sweat beaded on his forehead and his cheeks were grooved with stress lines, a storm cloud of oppressive emotion hanging over him.
Trake sat on the edge of the bed, his shoulders rounded and his head lowered. He wore only a crisp pair of white boxer shorts, his magnificent body half naked. He caressed her casually with one hand, and in the other hand he held a photograph, the source, Lori suspected, of his grief.
She sat up, pulled down her oversized shirt to cover her plain cotton panties and propped her chin on his shoulder. Kane and his family smiled up from the graduation-day photo. “You want to talk about it?”
“Not yet,” Trake rumbled.
He thinks I won’t understand. Lori crawled over the sand-colored duvet and extracted a photograph from her purse. She returned to his side, draped her arms around his neck, rubbing her skin against his tattoo, and she handed him her slice of pain.
Trake frowned, the furrows deepening between his black eyebrows. “She resembles you.” He tapped the face of the smiling woman. The stylish brunette had one arm wrapped around the trim waist of a distinguished gray-haired man in a dark suit and the other resting on the shoulders of a beautiful blonde. All three of them looked perfect, exactly how a family should look, happy and healthy and loving.
“She should resemble me.” Lori swirled soothing circles into Trake’s chest muscles. “She’s my mother…was my mother. That’s her new family. I found the photograph in my grandma’s things after…” She took a deep breath and released it, the hurt too fresh. “After the funeral.”
He didn’t say anything, studying the photograph with a scowl on his face. Lori massaged his tanned skin, loosening the knots hidden underneath it.
Her bedroom contained her favorite things, sand and seashells hoarded from friends’ vacations, a weathered lifebuoy her grandmother had found in an antique shop, and now Trake, her handsome warrior, an alien who could perhaps sympathize with her.
“She’s pretty, don’t you think? Her new daughter?” Lori pointed out in her best breezy, I-don’t-care voice. “Blonde and thin and smart too. That’s what the letters said. She went to Florida State to stay close to home, but she could have gone to Harvard, if she wanted to.” Lori stared at the wall, seeing Dan’s freckled face. “She’s everything a mother could want. No one would leave her behind.” Her bitterness escaped, harshening her observations.
“No one could.” Trake tossed both photographs to the carpet and swiveled around to face her. “She wouldn’t survive abandonment.” Flames raged in his dark eyes. “She isn’t as strong as you are.”
“No?” Lori trembled with sexual anticipation.
“No.” He swooped downward, capturing her lips, scattering her doubts, razing her insecurities. She opened to him eagerly, needing his passionate reassurance, the demanding push of his tongue within her mouth proof of his need.
Trake’s forward momentum laid her on her back, his body covering hers, his tattoo burning through her shirt, laying claim to the tender skin beneath it, branding her flesh with his desire. She bent her knees, cradling his hips between her thighs, cotton panties and boxer briefs separating her wet pussy from his hard cock.
“Need more.” He slid his hands under her shirt, pushing the fabric upward. Her stomach fluttered under his aggressive touch, and she sucked in her breath as his fingertips prodded the curve of her breasts. “Soft.” He covered her with his big hands. “Yet hard.” He rolled her nipples under his palms, the coarseness of his calloused skin exquisite.
“Trake.” She moaned and lifted her hips, grinding her mons against his restrained cock, her eyelids drifting closed, her focus on the points of contact, his hands on her breasts, cupping, squeezing, and his long, thick shaft pressing against her pussy lips, the rim of his cock head teasing her clit.
His muscles surrounded her, forming a loving barrier between them and the uncaring world. Lori felt cherished, safe, and needed. He mouthed down her neck, nipping and tugging at her skin. She dug her fingernails into his shoulders, hanging on to him, wishing never to let go.
Trake l
owered to her right breast and she arched, pushing her flesh into his hot mouth. He growled his appreciation, the rumble rolling over her curves, settling low in her pussy.
God. I could come from his lips alone. Lori rocked against Trake, her soaked panties dampening his boxer shorts, the fabric plastered over his cock, while he sucked hungrily, feasting on one breast and then the other, his mouth hot, his lips voracious.
“More.” With a flick of his fingers, Trake tore her panties. Her body clenched hard with need, stimulated by his savage display. He yanked down his boxers and skimmed his shaft along her pussy lips. “Yes,” he groaned, moving over her, fucking her without entry.
“Yes,” she agreed, meeting his gaze. His eyes glowed blue and red, the colors vivid and alive, overwhelming the black. She placed her palm over his tattoo, her fingers spreading over the waves of blue ink. A presence pounded against his skin, the rhythm matching his undulating hips.
“No.” He snatched her hand away. “Not yet.”
Not yet. She grabbed his clenched ass, thrilled by the promise of a future, and she threw herself into the moment, embracing the increasingly powerful tremors rolling over her body, rising up to meet each of his shallow thrusts.
He grunted and she panted, their primitive sounds echoing in the small room. His chest rubbed against her nipples and his cock slid along her pussy, tormenting her throbbing clit. A wet, slick sheen covered their bodies, melding them together, one human, one alien, one woman, one man, joined, yet not quite one.
He ground a slow sensuous circle against her wetness, winding her tighter and tighter. “Trake,” she whimpered, begging for penetration, piercing the skin of his ass cheeks with her fingertips.
“One!” He thrust hard, brutally smacking his shaft against her clit, and he arched, pushing the heels of his hands into her shoulders, flattening her to the mattress.