by Leslie Chase
“My god you feel good,” I whimpered, kissing his chest, down to his abs. My right hand closed around his rock-hard cock and squeezed. Rock hard, it grew at my touch.
He hissed, hands tightening, and I stroked him gently, kissing my way down his body. His cock felt… strange. Not just bigger than I thought possible, the skin felt solid as rock. I might not have many humans to compare him to, but this was something else.
Looking down at it, I gasped. The massive dick between my alien lover’s legs seemed far too big for me, and more than that, the dark blue-purple plates that covered it like armor made it terrifying.
Terrifying in the best possible way, that was. My heart raced at the thought of that armored monster inside me, a groan escaping my throat.
Zarkav made a strange noise, a growling moan that vibrated through the chamber, and his cock swelled in my hands. My fingers barely closed around it as I stroked and, greatly daring, lowered my lips to kiss him.
I didn’t know what to expect, but the sensation was amazing. The rippling scales pulsed and changed color under my tongue, and I tasted something delicious and slippery. Like chocolate almost, but not quite.
Zarkav’s hand slid into my hair, guiding me lower. I kissed every inch of his shaft, the taste stronger and the scales more slippery with each touch. I offered a little prayer of thanks — this amazing man brought his own lube.
My tongue danced around the bulbous head of his cock and Zarkav moaned, throwing back his head. The hand in my hair tightened almost painfully, and a rush of power ran through me. It wasn’t easy to believe I had this effect on a man like Zarkav.
So I did it again, sliding my mouth down on him. My jaw barely opened wide enough to let his cock in, but I managed. Zarkav’s breathing sped up and he pushed me down, a firm but gentle pressure that I had no desire to resist. The delicious, marvelous taste of him filled my mouth, and I sucked eagerly.
With a snarl, he pulled me off him, both of us panting with need. I moaned in disappointment, but Zarkav was far from finished with me. He pressed me down to the stone floor, his tail lashing behind him and colors dancing across his skin as he pinned me. My hands shaking, I struggled to undo my belt as my alien lover’s forked tongue danced across my breasts and teased my hard nipples. Needle-sharp teeth nipped at my skin, scraping me with a pain that was more enjoyable than sore.
A hand grabbed my pants and pulled. Zarkav was impatient now, and the small part of me that still thought at all was glad I’d gotten the fastenings undone. If he ruined this pair, I didn’t have any spares.
Though if that had been the price of being naked for him, I’d have thrown them into a recycler myself. God, I’d never wanted anything more than I wanted Zarkav inside me now.
His deep, strong, sexy voice filled my mind the way I hoped his cock would fill my body. The words meant nothing to me, the only one I recognized was ‘taru-ma.’ I nodded anyway. Whatever he wanted, the only answer I had for him was ‘yes.’
Lifting my hips, Zarkav turned me, putting me where he wanted. With any other man, I’d have objected to being manhandled like that. Zarkav, though? Zarkav could put me wherever the hell he wanted, just so long as he fucked me.
I tried to tell him that, but all that came out was a strangled moan as he positioned his cock against my pussy. That got a wicked laugh from him, and he ran his thumb along my nether lips, feeling how wet and hot and desperate I was.
I ached, painfully empty with him so close. His tongue darted over my neck, his eyes gazed into mine. And his cock pressed against my pussy. All I could manage was a whimper as he held me down and looked into my eyes.
“Damn you, Zarkav,” I whimpered. “Trust you to make me even more desperate.”
He chuckled at that, a sound dark as midnight under a moonless sky. It wasn’t as though he needed to understand my words, my tone said everything he needed to hear.
Mercilessly, slowly, far too slowly, he began to move. No hard, penetrating thrust. No, he kept teasing me, sliding his cock between the folds of my pussy. Where it passed, a tingle followed, my body shivering with need as he enjoyed my frustration.
“Please,” I moaned, hoping I had the right word. Zarkav might not understand but I had to try — the pent-up tension in my body was unbearable, and if he didn’t fuck me soon, I’d explode.
“Tell me,” he growled. “You need?”
I mewled as he pressed himself against me, rubbing slow, teasing circles around my clit. He had no intention of being merciful, and his stubbornness was a match for mine. Back arching, pulse racing, waves of pleasure rolling through me from his touch, I bit my lip hard.
Zarkav growled again, fingers brushing my nipples, then pinching. My body arched, my breath exploded out in a cry, my hands curled into fists.
When he relaxed his grip I was panting desperately. He repeated his question, claws grazing my skin just on the edge of pain.
“Please,” I begged, “please Zarkav.”
“What?” His growl echoed through me, and he slowly slid his cock along my pussy, parting my lips and leaving a tingling delight behind him. I arched again, pressing myself against that wonderful, awful, madness-inducing cock. My resolve broke almost instantly.
“Please fuck me,” I mumbled. His tongue darted out, flicking across my neck, and I shuddered again. Zarkav pressed his cock into me, pushing just far enough to make me squirm and bite my lip.
“Please,” I said again, louder, firmer. I didn’t want him to have any excuse to pretend not to understand. “Please. Fuck. Me.”
No sooner had I finished the last word than Zarkav thrusted, powerful muscles slamming him into me. Holding back the scream of joy proved impossible, and I had to bury my face in his shoulder to muffle myself as he drove deep into me, stretched me, filled me.
He should have been too big, but the magical super-lube coating his cock fixed that. He was the perfect size, fitting me to perfection. What should have been a painful stretch turned into a marvelous sensation as he slowly, so slowly, pulled back and thrust again.
Each thrust faster. Each thrust harder, deeper, more overpowering. I clutched at him, pulled him to me, as waves of pleasure crashed through me, building to a crescendo that left me breathless and shuddering.
Zarkav growled fiercely above me, pressing me into the icy stone, the contrast with his heat a delight. My gasps for air turned into little whimpers as another orgasm built inside me, even more powerful than the first.
The tidal wave of pleasure rose over me, and Zarkav swelled inside me, on the verge of his own climax. His mouth clamped onto my shoulder, sharp teeth digging in and the sensation pushing me over the edge into the oncoming orgasm.
I bucked under him, squeezing him tight, and with a howl he came inside me. My body shook, overwhelmed, and the world dissolved into light. It was just us, me and my alien mate, nothing else existed but us.
The moment seemed to last forever and it was over too soon. The freezing stone under my shoulders, the warmth of Zarkav’s seed flooding me, the beautiful sting his bite left, all faded back into my consciousness together and I clung to him as though he was a life raft in a storm.
Taking me with him, he rolled onto his back, letting me lie against him and take deep breaths to recover. It would be awhile yet before I got enough strength back to speak. In the meantime I wanted nothing more than to snuggle up against the solid, warm bulk of my alien lover. He stroked my hair, his chest rising and falling under me, and I closed my eyes. Just for a moment, I relaxed.
Our situation hadn’t improved, but my mood had.
How long we lay there I don’t know. Perfect and timeless, it might have been an hour, it might have been a year, a decade. My exhausted body needed the rest, and my mind floated in a blissful cloud. But eventually, Zarkav’s hand stroking my hair brought me back to myself.
“That was amazing,” I said, raising my head to look at him. My voice hoarse from screaming with joy, my body shaking and exhausted, bruises stinging everywhere
, and for some reason my forearms hurt. None of that dampened my mood, and I smiled at the sight of his smug face. “Pleased with yourself, are you?”
He has every right to be.
“Yes,” he answered. It took us both a moment to register that he’d answered a question I’d posed in English.
“How did you—“ I pushed myself back and shut up halfway through the question, staring at my arms. Black patterns like the ones on Zarkav’s scales flowed up them, shifting and changing in time with his.
Am I going mad? Seeing things? It was as though Zarkav’s patterns were climbing up onto my skin. I scrambled back, turning my arms and running a finger over the designs. Yep. Still there, still real.
Their appearance shocked Zarkav as much as me. He stared at my arms, his ssav’s patterns shifting quickly. The red-pink markings faded away, and watching the rest, I realized just how similar the marks on our arms looked. Mine might be ink-black where his were colorful, but otherwise they were mirror images.
Shaking off his paralysis, he pounced, grabbed my hands, and examined the markings. I jerked away at his sudden movement, then relaxed. He wasn’t angry or frightened: he was overjoyed.
“You do have a ssav,” he said, colors dancing across his scales. “And we are bound.”
His long tongue flicked out to lick the black marks, though I didn’t know what he thought he could learn from them. It tickled and I sucked in a deep breath as his touch sent sparks of desire through me. God’s sake, Tessa, wasn’t the first time enough?
“What does that mean?” I asked, trying to focus on something other than how close Zarkav stood, and how easy it would be for him to take me again if he chose to. How much I wanted him to do just that.
“You are my taru-ma, and fate bound us together.” Joyous green became the dominant color in his pattern, an infectious joy that brought a smile to my face. “Your ssav matches mine.”
“Slow down there,” I implored him. “What’s a ssav? How come I can understand you?”
“These are my ssav,” he said, indicating the changing colors on his skin. “The patterns show a Zrin’s feelings and thoughts, and they match up with their taru-ma. First static patterns of matching colors, then when the bond is complete it is as we are now. You are the reflection of my soul, and this proves it.”
“Humans don’t have anything like that,” I objected.
“That is why I was not sure. My ssav fixed to match your skin, but you didn’t match to mine, and I did not know what would happen when I claimed you.”
Claimed me? Part of me balked at that. The rest of me told it to shut the hell up. As strange as it sounded, it warmed my soul like nothing else. I felt completed, whole in a way I didn’t have words to describe.
Yes I do, I realized. It’s just not in any human language: ‘taru-ma’ fits perfectly.
It wasn’t that I understood the Zrin language better. I understood Zarkav better. When he spoke, I understood what he intended to say, plucking meaning from his words despite how few of them I understood. The connection made by our ssavs brought us closer in a way that I didn’t understand, but I didn’t need to.
It was enough that it worked.
I took his hand in mine, looked up at him, and smiled. This time he’d understand what I said. “Thank you for rescuing me, Zarkav.”
“I nearly killed you,” he answered, turning to look into the water, his tail trembling.
“When you arrived I was dead already,” I said, squeezing his hand. Kitty Fantastic nuzzled my cheek and purred agreement. “I’d given up hope. No way was I going to surrender to Fanwell, and that meant the guards would…”
I trailed off, swallowing and shivering. Partly from the cold, partly from the memory. I’d looked death in the face and accepted it rather than putting myself at Fanwell’s mercy. Looking back at it, the whole situation seemed unreal.
“Anyway,” I continued, moving past that terrible moment. “Then you appeared, like an avenging angel, and rescued me. Even if I’d died in the escape, you’d have done me a favor. And I didn’t, I’m alive, and we’re together.”
I squeezed his hand and he squeezed back, letting go of some of his tension. With gentle strength he lifted me and held me, arms around my body and my head against his chest. His warmth and solid presence offered protection from all the troubles of the world.
A chill breeze made me shiver and snuggle closer, and I looked around to see where it came from. My dark-adjusted eyes picked up more detail now, and the room came into focus. Water filled most of it, the stone platform we were on rising perhaps two inches above the dark surface. The chilly air circled in a constant breeze with no visible source, carried away down a dozen narrow tunnels. They led out in several directions: up from the ceiling, into each of the four walls, a dozen in total. I’d probably fit down them but would Zarkav? And where did they lead?
Of course he’d fit, idiot, I tsked at myself. I’ve already seen him do it — this is the source of the air-conditioning, it has to be. He crawled down one of those to rescue me.
Seeing how tight a space he’d squeezed through to reach me only made him more heroic in my eyes. How lucky can a girl get?
No visible machinery moved the air or cooled it, but somehow this room chilled the entire temple. That was a hell of a technical achievement, especially if it worked for centuries without maintenance. More awe-inspiring technology amongst the Bronze Age Zrin, more mystery.
“Why here?” I asked, holding Zarkav’s arms.
“My secret hiding place,” Zarkav said. “After my parents died, the temple raised me and I spent my free time exploring. A friend and I found this place together, kept it a secret from the other children. We would hide here when we wanted to duck our chores, or when we needed time alone. None of the adults ever found us, no matter how hard they looked. We are safe.”
“Why didn’t we come here first, then?”
His rumbling laugh shook me. “Taru-ma, we are beneath the temple itself here. Reaching it unseen would have been impossible. But when we started inside the temple? Much easier.”
I leaned back into him, taking comfort from his solid, unflappable self. We needed some kind of plan and right now we didn’t even have a goal.
Echoing through the stone ducts I heard the distant tromp-tromp-tromp of people running, searching. If the priests did know about this place we’d find out soon.
“Do not worry,” Zarkav said quietly, and kissed the back of my neck. “No one has been here since El-Ensha and I visited last.”
I shivered, squirmed, bit my lip. If he wanted to distract me from the searchers above, neck kisses were a fine way to start. But the questions wouldn’t leave my mind.
“How can you be so sure?”
Another rumble of amusement, a firmer kiss to my neck. “Look there, that bottle?”
I looked where he pointed. A dark, bulbous bottle lay beside a vent opening, dusty and empty.
“I took that from the Eldest’s chambers,” Zarkav continued. “Zher-wine, something we only get in trade. El-Ensha dared me to steal something from him, and that’s what I brought back to her.”
I stiffened slightly at the last word, then forced myself to relax. Jealousy is not an attractive trait, and anyway this was long ago. Still, I couldn’t help asking.
“Your girlfriend?”
“No,” he answered, sounding confused. “You need have no fear of her, taru-ma: we are soul-bound, and no one could get between us. Besides, El-Ensha and I grew up together; she is a close friend, but she is like a sister to me.”
The first part didn’t offer much reassurance — what man doesn’t promise that he’ll never stray? But I believed Zarkav. Perhaps it was this soul bond, perhaps the tone he used speaking about his friend convinced me. “You’ll have to introduce us then. I bet she has great stories about you.”
“Oh yes, I’m sure you two will get on wonderfully,” he replied. “I will introduce you as soon as I’ve made it clear to her which stories
she’s not allowed to tell you.”
We laughed together, and I twisted to kiss him. The touch of his lips was electric, sending pulses of fiery want down to my aching, tingling sex. When our lips parted, my entire body shook, and I was ready to take on the world.
For right now, I decided, I’d settle for taking on Zarkav. We’d wasted a lot of time, and now we had a chance to make up for it.
20
Zarkav
Sated in a way I’d never experienced, I lay back on the cool stone. Tessa lay against me, a warm, wonderful pressure. Her head rested on my chest and rose and fell with my breathing. We’d worn each other out these past hours, and she needed her rest.
What did I do in a past life to deserve this wonderful female? Whatever it was, it must have been amazing — the Sky Gods blessed me with a prize beyond price in Tessa’s love.
She murmured something in her sleep, hand stroking across my body as she snuggled closer. I ran my hand through her fine soft hair. Relaxed, my taru-ma looked innocent and vulnerable, and my determination to protect her only increased.
Which turned my thoughts back to our situation. We were safe down here, perhaps forever, but that didn’t make it a good place to stay. Water wouldn’t be a problem, but food would, and soon. If we weakened too much, we’d never make our escape.
With a sigh, I sat up, lifting Tessa with me. She grumbled and squirmed.
“Lemme sleep,” she muttered under her breath.
I smiled at that but shook my head. Regrettably, there was no time to indulge her. We’d need to be moving soon, and we needed a plan first.
“Wake up, little one,” I said, shaking her gently. Her only response was a slow, sleepy shove and more grumbling.
Very well. If my beloved wouldn’t wake for me I had other options. Cradling her soft, sleepy form in my arms I stood and walked to the water’s edge.