The servant interfered, grabbing Tessa to keep her from following the others. Tessa suddenly reacted, curling a fist and sending the limb flying toward the man. It knocked into his jaw and he let her go, crying out in shock.
For the first time in his long life, Ceff was stunned, golden eyes widening in awe. Another couple of his men arrived to restrain her and Tessa was screaming to be released.
“Enough,” Ceff ordered.
His words reached her, but she did not succumb. In fact, she turned to give him a vicious glare and his astonishment grew.
Interesting.
“Take Kao’l to get his face looked at. Take her to my chambers. I’ll deal with her then.”
Tessa suddenly thrashed in their hold, “I don’t care who you think you are, I will never succumb to you, you monster!”
As she was taken away, Ceff couldn’t help but chuckle to himself. He remained still, watching after the door even after she disappeared behind it. He did not have to wait for Yana to appear at his side, dutiful as always.
My Greatest, she is dangerous.
Ceff smiled a little wider. Perhaps, but she does not submit easily.
Yana’s expression grew tense. I do not understand. This is…desirable to you?
Yes.
He was being honest and it was very refreshing.
--
Tessa’s anger did not disappear, but it did fade to a black ire that turned her breathing calm. She wanted nothing more than to seek out the other women, help them in any way at all. But since she punched the servant, she had been forced into a huge bedchamber.
The bed—if she could even call it that—floated in the center of the room, shifting and moving and letting out soft exhales like it was alive or something. The wonder for this planet had long shifted into something hateful. She detested it.
The way everything breathed. It thrived with life and shifted with an energy that made her feel uneasy and alarmed at all times.
Tears burned hot trails through Tessa’s cheeks, her eyes were blotchy now and sore, and she had no choice but to try to contain her anger and fear for her well-being. She had no idea where she was, she was billions of years away from her home… and she wished she was back home.
Back in a place where people looked imperfect in their own beautifully imperfect way, back in a place where she recognized the sky she had slept under.
She wanted to go home.
When she had first been locked in this room, she tried to find something to break, something she could sink her fingers into. But the room was strangely vacant, and continued to thrum with an energy that taunted her with its promises of sleep and safety.
What a hateful place.
She did not know how long it took before the door of the bedchamber peeled open, revealing the only creature she wanted nothing to do with. Her expression darkened and the black ire pumped like sludge through her veins. Still, she could feel her body react beneath the gaze of her captor—her sequester.
“The sun upon your shoulders,” Ceff said cryptically.
Tessa said nothing in return, clenching her fists at her sides and setting her jaw tight.
“Ah, I forget, you have no idea of our customs here.”
Still, Tessa said nothing. Ceff didn’t seem to care for her lack of response, and sauntered in, his robes moving behind him like water.
“How do you greet one another in your planet?”
“I’m not here to make small talk,” Tessa replied curtly.
“I don’t want to speak to you until you tell me what you’ve done with…with my sisters.” She remembered the ruse almost at the last minute. He gave her a small smirk.
“You are rude,” he mentioned like it was a simple fact. Tessa bristled.
“But I do not owe you any answers. You are here, in my presence. You should show more respect.”
“You aren’t my leader, I don’t owe you anything.”
He let out a soft sigh, “I must say, this attitude is quite unappealing. I do not desire my bride to be so demanding of her husband.”
Tessa’s stomach froze, the blood in her veins stopping cold.
“I am not your bride!” She huffed, feeling that familiar surge of panic begin in her chest and threaten to choke her.
“You’ve been chosen,” Ceff explained.
“The very moment you walked into my throne room, I knew that you would be mine. None of the others were as strong as you.”
“Don’t you dare talk about them like they are a game to you!” Tessa shouted.
“We are not animals you can just poach for your entertainment!”
Ceff frowned, “You think I took you from your home for the sake of amusement?”
“Why else would you do something so awful?” She hissed, crossing her arms to hide her shaking.
“You’re a monster, and I would rather die than have you as my husband.”
His expression went blank with shock, the color draining from his cheeks to pool into his chest. It was so weird but he took a moment to gawk at her.
Seeing him, like this reminded her she was talking to an alien not a regular human being. It helped her stay focused despite the constant energy thrumming off of his body.
“You so easily threaten your own life…for the sake of the others?” He asked quietly, as if not believing his own ears.
That was another thing, if it wasn’t for the color of skin and their eyes… they would look like regular humans. His body was so like a human’s, it was disturbing.
“Your kind is so vulgar and violent,” Ceff muttered, shaking his head.
“I understand why your species is still so primitive, and so young. You’ve hardly learned how to walk, haven’t you?”
“My species doesn’t go around kidnapping women to satisfy their disgusting needs.” Tessa hissed.
Ceff’s eyes sharpened suddenly over hers.
“Don’t they?” he countered and Tessa almost retorted but stopped.
“I’ve looked into the history of your species, learned as much as I could before I entertained the idea of bringing ‘women’ here. Your species is violent and vicious. You kill yourselves with shocking ease, and your regard for the life of your planet is horrifying. If anything, I did you a favor taking you from that place. Here, we do not suffer such horrible atrocities like committing war on our own kind. Here, we treat each other with the regard of life before anything else.”
“What about them?” Tessa snarled.
“My sisters? You talk big about how you’re better but you’re sending them to their deaths right now aren’t you?”
Ceff’s eyebrows furrowed, “That again? You speak as if you are actually related, but I’ve looked into your genetic make-up. You all come very vastly from different parts of your world. And according to the information we’ve gathered, those are very distant relations. Cousins, is the word I believe you would use, to describe your relationship.”
“Bastard!” She spat and Ceff raised a brow at her.
“I am done playing games with you,” he said finally and suddenly there was a wave of energy coiling through the air like electricity.
Tessa let out a sharp gasp, before stumbling and nearly falling to her knees. Instead, she was wrapped within a pair of arms and the sensation of pleasure mixing with confusion and extreme physical sensitivity robbed her of her voice.
Ceff leaned over her, digging his gaze into hers as he pressed his body against hers. He was scorching.
“I am giving you a choice.” His voice was so soft and piercing.
“You will accept the position as my mate, and become wed to me on the Night of the Falling Star. And you will become trained as the next Mother of our Realm. Choose wisely. Otherwise, I will wipe out your planet and take it as one of my conquests.”
“N-no…” Tessa groaned, her head lolling back as she was overloaded in her senses.
“Don’t…”
“One more time, Tessa,” she twitched in his arms.
“Choose me.”
Tessa tried to struggle, placed her hands against his chest to push away, but the feeling of his skin against her fingers did away with the last of her restraints. Her body was betraying her in every way possible, demanding to let him do as he pleased with her, but her heart didn’t want to.
She could smell his breath on her nose, strange and foreign yet impossibly alluring.
Choose me…
Tessa was trembling, and before she knew it, her body couldn’t handle it anymore. Her fingers rose and dug into his neck, forcing his head down so that she could taste him on her tongue.
The kiss on her lips was hard and demanding but Tessa could not hold back, she wanted him… otherwise her body would probably fail.
His movement on her skin made mewls of desire course through her skin and when he pulled away, her mouth was begging him to return.
“Is this your choice?”
No. “Yes—yes, yes!” the words fell from her mouth and she was being swept away.
She could not remember if they flew or if they fell but the next thing she knew, she was on her back and she was writhing hard over the plush sensation of the bed. Every touch he carved into her was explosive drag of sexual energy so potent she was shaking violently.
Tessa moaned loud and hard as his fingers drag below to her hips and thighs. When his fingers reached down, he was testing her sex with a few digits. The slightest touch on her folds made her shatter without control.
Tessa came hard, teeth digging so hard on her lip she could taste blood.
“Fascinating,” she heard him say.
“Your species self-lubricates… and what a pungent aroma.” She was still twitching and writhing, breathing coming in hard as her chest rose and fell.
“I wonder what you taste like.”
It was all the warning she got before she felt him shift downward and press his mouth against her entrance. Tessa shouted, her back bowing hard as his tongue dipped against her folds and tasted without holding back.
Another orgasm crashed down over her body not a full minute later and for a moment, Tessa could not remember the following five minutes because when she woke, he was sitting over her with a soft smile on his face.
“You are delicious, Tessa.” He murmured.
Tessa could hardly return a response, blinking lazily as her body registered all the energy and tried to expel it.
“I am tempted to take you here and now.”
Tessa nearly shook her head, she didn’t think she could survive another orgasm, let alone handle it.
To her relief, he did not make a move to claim her. Instead, he spread her out over the bed and pressed a kiss to her neck.
“Rest now,” he said.
“All will be well.”
He disappeared not long after that.
Strange tears of pain and pleasure ebbed slowly from Tessa’s eyes as she drifted; her mind overcame with the events of the day.
Chapter 5
Rusneon did not have days like Earth did. The sun rose from west and set thirty two hours later. The nights were another thirty two hours.
The first thing Tessa noticed was the way the nights were more splendorous than the days. While the colors of the sky were impressive, nothing beat the vibrancy that the stars commanded over the sky during the night time.
Her eyes took in the sights with curiosity that betrayed her, and Tessa tried not to be fascinated at the fact that she was looking at new constellations and parts of space that no human probably knew existed.
She constantly reminded herself of her circumstance as the only human being in this side of the galaxy and thought back to the planet that had harbored her and disappointed her. Her life in Earth had been sad and difficult, but it was a life she had been born into, a life she was still shaping.
Taken from there… Tessa had felt cheated.
Rusneon had strange history, and their science made no sense to her at all. Much of the things the people of the planet said went completely over her head and it wasn’t until some time that she discovered that this species liked to speak to one another telepathically. In fact, those who only spoke were either children, or those who were way past their prime.
Something that shocked her was the complete lack of females. It was completely run by males known as Alphas, and others known as Betas. Alphas were strong and arrogant, and the Betas took orders from them. Yana, as it so happened, was a Beta.
When asked how they reproduced, Yana had explained that their kind had a specific time—every decade or so—they would meet with another species from another planet to procreate. This species where basically women versions of themselves, but because of strained issues among them, they hadn’t been able to procreate with them for several centuries.
Because of this, the Rusneons had been forced to consider procreating with other species. Ceff was the youngest Alpha Greatest to permit such a travel to Earth in order to locate better breeding grounds. The whole conversation disgusted Tessa, and after some time, Yana left her alone.
Finding out that Earth was certainly on the other side of the galaxy made Tessa nearly pass out in shock. She almost completely missed the part when Yana told her that she had been placed in liquid cryostasis the moment she was taken from Earth. The journey from her planet took six Rusneon years.
The equivalent of two hundred Earth years.
Tessa had outlived several generations in the space of one horrible sleep. Suddenly, she wanted nothing more than to have Serena and Shalea by her side. Depressed, Tessa resigned herself to silence and hoped that she would die soon.
The Night of the Falling Star loomed ahead and with each passing day, Tessa found herself wishing something would just end it all.
Tessa was force to learn about the things of the planet, and the food she ate only made her feel strange. Yana had explained it was natural but that after some intensive research of her biology, they felt it safe to find foods that would fit with her.
She had been tempted to starve herself to death, but every time she was in a room with any of them, she couldn’t help but want to do whatever they told her.
Still, Tessa did what she could to go against them, make things difficult. She was angry for being taken like this… she was angry for succumbing to Ceff… she wanted to disappear.
Instead, she only grew more and more confused. Each passing day, Tessa beheld the people, saw how they interacted and how Ceff would walk among them. For such a horrible person, he demonstrated an aptitude to treat his people fairly.
Any issue among the people was brought to him in a Chamber within the immense Citadel Tessa resided within. They never spoke, instead sat in a large circle where they would fall into a strange meditative point. Moments later the dispute would be sorted and Ceff would be speaking warmly to his subjects.
Not once was Tessa treated wrongly by any of the people around, even if they did stare at her a lot. Whenever she was forced to go out, Tessa tried to find it in herself to hate them.
She tried so desperately to believe that Ceff was some kind of evil dictator that enjoyed living a life of evil deeds. Instead, his actions contradicted the words he had breathed into her ear that night, and she couldn’t help but wonder if he was truly as evil as she had met him.
“Worse,” she mused to herself.
“He must be so evil to make people believe he is good… while he hides his true nature.”
It seemed like the logical explanation of his behavior. Yet as the days and the nights bled away, she could not find deceit in his actions.
“Our home is one of peace,” Yana sighed one day, trailing his fingers into Tessa’s hair to create intricate knots from the strands.
“You shouldn’t hate it so much.”
“It’s not my home, Yana…”
Yana then smiled at her and she found that maybe she could find a friend here. But she recoiled hard at the thought.
“It can be, if you let it.”
Her frus
trations exploded one day, two weeks into her stay, when Tessa did attack him.
“I HATE YOU!” She shrieked, her hands digging into the tunic of Ceff’s clothes while his cheek burned bright with the mark of her strike. Ceff’s expression was flat, as if nothing had happened.
Even then, while she was covered in anger and rage, she could still feel her body react in anticipation—wish for him to make a move and make her feel more than anger and rage.
“YOU RUINED EVERYTHING!”
To her surprise, Ceff did not command his subjects to enter the bed chamber and pull her away. He simply grabbed her around her wrists and pushed at her until her back was on the mattress and he was digging his gaze into hers.
“Do you want me to die, Tessa?” He asked, and his voice was so soft.
“After all you’ve done to me…!” She attempted to begin but couldn’t.
“You would rather I treated you like you would expect a man from your kind to treat you, don’t you?”
She froze, eyes wide and tear stained.
Ceff was unsurprised. “You wish that I would be worse than the men that so casually destroy and take from a woman. Tell me, is that what you want? You want me to prove to you that I am a monster?”
She almost wanted him to. Tessa found herself suddenly willing to do whatever it took to expose his true nature, to assert to herself that this creature that took her millions of years away deserved her hatred.
Instead, his touch was soft over her skin as it drew out soft gasps from her lips.
“You threatened to destroy my planet…” Tessa said finally, trembling.
Ceff smiled, “I lied.”
“How would I have possibly known that?!” She snapped, but her legs spread slightly to accommodate his hips against hers.
“How could I have known that you were lying then? What about the others? Were you lying about them too?”
“Do you want the truth?”
No. “Yes!” Tessa exclaimed.
“I returned them to their planet,” Ceff answered, and he was shifting against her. The friction between her legs was almost powerful enough to wipe the answer from her mind but she held strong.
Alien Romance: Rusneon Mates Boxed Set: A Scifi Alien Abduction Romance (Alien Romance, Alien Invasion Romance, BBW) Page 4