She shook her head and followed his alien majesty’s incredibly sexy ass to the king-sized bed then gingerly sat at the foot of it. Stom sat at the top, against the headboard, and stretched out his legs for a million miles on the black quilt. From the look of his erection he was as painfully aware of her as she was of him.
She chuckled, grinning. “Guess this chem has made you all horny too?”
Though he glowered, after a second he shook his head in amusement. He beckoned. “Remember? Cuddle.”
“Fuck. No.” She swallowed. She’d never keep her hands off him like that. Or him off her. “I can’t.”
Squirming was like an advertisement saying she was aroused, but she couldn’t stop squeezing her thighs together and doing a tiny butt wiggle. She frowned at his smirk.
“I’m sorry, Willow. I promise we will just talk, but I need to touch you. Please.”
Who was lying to who here? “Fine.”
She crawled up the bed and wriggled into his side.
For a while they simply stayed like that, together, slowly enfolding into each other, and yes, touching. She’d never had a lover like this – one who felt so right to her in every way. Now that they weren’t making love, he treated her as if she were something precious.
Though they’d agreed not to be overly affectionate, they both quietly explored the other. She smelled his neck, licked a short distance along one of the black stripes on his chest where it tucked beneath his arm, and she reached up to trace the curves and marks of his face. Fascinating. As if he wanted not to scare her, for the most part Stom only stroked her back or her hair, but he watched her and sometimes smiled when she hesitated.
His tug on her hair made her look up.
“I won’t bite.”
“I know. You’re just,” she shut her eyes, “just a bit intimidating. And I don’t…I can’t see what happens to us after this. I’m scared of that.”
“Yes. Me also. Take your time. I have you until the end of the day, only after that, must I return you.”
Even that was a surprise. He had to let her go, soon. Had to. Yet he assumed she was his until then. At this piece of information, relief slid in, as well as foreboding.
Finally she stopped and curled her toes and thought of what to ask. Then she sat up on her heels, like a good schoolgirl about to do a class presentation, and she cleared her throat.
“Okay.” She tsked. Beginning was hard to do. “Can you start? Tell me something.”
“Very well. I’ll try. We’re a conglomeration of starfaring races, and though we try to be good and fair to the lesser races, we also have an enemy called the Bak-lal who would like to take all other intelligent races and make them like they are.”
“Who?”
“The Bak-lal. They have been here, on Earth. We came to see if your race can become starfarers because that’s the only way you can ever defend yourselves against them. And we found they had been here first.”
“Okay.” She thought. “That makes no sense to me.” Her fingernails ended up curled into her thighs. Logically, what the hell was he doing with her? “Why this? Me. What’s this got to do with anything?”
“Our command uses the pets as indicators as to whether you can become starfarers. The same chem tests you to see if you can ever be wormhole travelers.”
“And we can?”
“Yes. If you can be pets, you can.”
The vital question, for her, remained unanswered. “Sooo, it’s decided already. Why me. What about me?”
“You.” He sat forward, feral gleam in his gaze. “You are my reward for battle success. You’re a gift I may earn. A beautiful woman who will become my pet if I so wish to chase you down.”
Struck dumb by his intensity, her mouth open in an O of astonishment, she tried to gather a witty reply. She swallowed past her dry throat. “Am not.”
He burst into laughter. “You’re not? Willow, if you were trying to keep me from thinking about fucking you, that was the wrong way to do it. Sitting like that before me.” He nodded at her body. “I can see your breasts and how they are marked with my color.” Now he angled his left upper arm her way, where his red spiral was carved into his arm. “Like this. You match.”
“Oh.” She compared the two. She did match him. A perfectly exact shade.
Then he pointed at her pussy. “And there.”
“What?” She edged her thighs closer together.
“I can still see you. You’re marked there also, as you should be.”
She looked down and saw how her clit and the very edge of her slit showed. Both were red. “Fuck me dead,” she said, awed.
“Really?” Then he grabbed her legs and flipped her onto her back, swarmed up her, and spread her open using his body. He leaned over her and held her hands to the bed near her waist.
“Stop looking!” This was so embarrassing. Trying to close her legs only drove home to her how impossible that was when he wanted them open. “This will fade, yes?”
“No, even if I do nothing more to you, the marking will stay. According to our laws, you are nine tenths my property. I need but follow through with the last stage of capture. I release you, I capture you, I fuck you one last time. And then, you would be mine. Only Feya honor holds me back.” He searched her eyes as if he could find an answer there.
The power of those words made her ache with want. “Only nine tenths? Ha-ha.”
“Mmm. I’d lick you here except I promised not to. Such a pretty cunt. You’re so tempting, little bitch. All red. All mine.”
Fuck.
No. Don’t think of him licking there. Or of his tongue. Her eyes were probably like saucers. She floundered and blurted, “No calling me bitch, thank you.”
But the all mine and the growly possessiveness in his voice had made her dampen instantly. She’d felt the moisture wetting her lower lips. She prayed he’d not seen anything.
In her mind she saw herself bound in chains and silken scraps, kneeling at Stom’s feet. In his hand was a leash linked to a red collar around her neck, and her mouth was open, already swallowing his cock as he forced it into her.
The fantasy was as solid as rock.
Damn it.
Not me, she tried to tell herself. Then she gasped at the pressure of something blunt nudging between her spread open legs.
The real Stom, here and now, was above her smiling with deliciously nasty intent and his cock was a moment away from being inside her. Just a little more.
“Heyy,” she said softly, hoping he’d keep going.
Still pinning her, but shifting his knees back, he lowered his head, put his tongue on her, then luxuriously licked, from the middle of her slit to her clitoris.
“Ummm. Oh fuck. Unfair.” She exhaled and lowered her eyelids.
On that perfect spot, he did slow arousing circles on her clit with his tongue tip.
“Ohh.” She flopped her head back and groaned, pushing her pussy up at him.
She could tell how he was toying with her there – knew exactly what his amazing tongue did, every dab, every flick, every suck, and was also aware of where his hands fastened her wrists to the bed. The head of his cock had for a fleeting moment pressed into her entrance. She remembered, she wanted him in her, now.
Then he stopped.
“More, or not, little pet? Would you rather I bite you?” Then he carefully took her clit between his teeth. “Hmm?”
“Not that! More of –” She raised her head, half-afraid he meant to bite. He let go, licked her once then bit again. “The other,” she choked out.
“Then stay still. Say ‘yes, Stom’.”
She barely hesitated. “Yes, Stom. Please.”
“Good. I like the please.”
“Mmm.” She writhed on him and his tongue wetly teased her and began to slowly drive her insane.
She’d had lovers who were good at cunnilingus but something about their relationship, their pure attraction and the way he made her be still while he played, elevated what
Stom did to a devastating art. He didn’t seem to care how long he aroused her for.
She came once, and he kept going. No. No, no. By then he’d released her hands. She tried to clutch at his hair to pull him away but he growled. Admonished, she flopped back and found her concentration focusing on what his mouth was doing.
Slowly, her arousal reassembled.
Oh, his fucking glorious mouth.
Pleasure and heat built again, pumping up to that oblivious almost, almost there state, where the angels came down from the heavens, and time stood still.
More, more, please more. Tongue. Mouth. More licking. And he wouldn’t let her go.
Lust, pure mind-altering, muscle-shaking lust, owned her body in an incandescent storm, blasting away her mind in climax. After that, he held her tighter, as if knowing she would struggle, which she did, then he made her come again. Though she strived to wrap her legs around his body and wrench him away, he was too strong. Panting, squealing at his insistent touch, she found herself overcome.
After the third time she begged for him to stop.
Exhausted, through slitted eyelids and the sweat beading on her lashes, she watched him crawl up to her and smile triumphantly.
“Now we are done, sweet pet. Happy?”
She grunted at him and patted his shoulder with a hand that slid off and down his rock-sculpted biceps. “Yes.”
Then he flopped down beside her and snuggled her into him, spooning. His cock prodded at her back.
“You?” she asked.
“Later, girl, I will take you. For now, you’re mine and going nowhere. Rest.”
She should argue that. Normally she would, but she only smiled and let him clasp her hand and kiss her fingers. She drew his to her mouth and kissed them too, though she could smell herself on them. “Thank you, Stom.”
His sigh seemed to merge into his words, as if her hearing had warped. “If you were truly mine forever, I’d make you call me Sir.”
If.
The world cracked a little. He hadn’t said that he wanted her to say it now, it wasn’t that. Right then she’d have done anything for him. Rather it was that with that single if he’d negated all that had come before. Her eyes watered.
The mine had been temporary.
She should have known. She should have been sensible. Well, she had known, but she’d conveniently forgotten for a while. She’d never been going to leave Ally over some temporary alien boyfriend. Even if he’d just won an Olympic medal for oral. The fantasy, though, it had been so good, so all-encompassing and so real.
Feeling suddenly alone, despite his skin on hers, and his lips at her nape, she stared at the empty bed before her and the messed-up sheets.
“There’s more, isn’t there, Stom? We both have more to say.”
Silence.
“Yes.”
In her head she began bringing back her real life. Ally. Leaving the house. Training to be a firefighter. This followed this, followed that. None of her plans had alien lovers in them.
“I can’t ever leave Ally alone. She’s helpless and impossible but I love her. I will always protect her. Do you see? And –” She shook her head, frowning. “I can’t imagine making her go with an alien man, just so I could be with you.” Ick. That seemed terrible, even if she’d been one step away from falling at Stom’s feet.
“That can’t happen anyway. The Preyfinders select women carefully. Only those who…”
“What?” She sensed something important here, had felt his muscles tense. “Tell me. I was selected. Why?”
Still he said nothing.
“What is it?”
Stom sighed. “Very well. You need to make a choice. Though I don’t know what to do, really I don’t. I can’t keep you because I was bond mated. Feya don’t ever have more than one mate. I vowed Nasskia would be my only love after she died and…even taking a pet negates that vow.” He rolled away.
When she turned over, she found him flat on his back, staring at her in misery. “That I can’t stop touching you is unforgivable. I don’t understand my own reactions.”
Time ticked slowly past. “You’re like me, but you shouldn’t be?”
“I think so. Though I’ve never been a pet, so I’m not sure.” Stom gave a cut-off laugh. “You’re a compulsion. Even now.” His gaze wandered over her.
“What a pair we are. Yes. That’s me too. I hate that you’ve done this, but I…” Her forehead wrinkled. She almost loved him. She wished she could ease his pain even, could find a true path through this for them both.
“I wish this wasn’t such a mess, but me, I wouldn’t go with you anyway. Ally is not just my responsibility or a thing I have to do. She’s my cousin, and I’m all she has left. We’ve gone through so much together. Her mother’s death. My parents. Her illness. I will never desert her. Apart from putting her in an institution, there’s only me, or living in a share house with many others with mental problems.” She shuddered. “Even with the best assistants in those, I’ve heard of bad things happening to women.”
“I see. I understand that and respect you for it. Only there is that one detail you asked me to say.” He paused then went on, the words rolling out. “Why you were chosen. You’re dying, Ally. Kasper plans to kill you, but also, you have Aids and not just a plain variety. You’ll die within a few years, even with the best treatment you humans can muster. If I took you, you would be cured.” The sadness in his eyes was terrible in its depth.
“I what? This is crazy. I have Aids?” She almost didn’t hear the rest. Her mind was buzzing, blanking out with too much noise.
“Yes.” He lay back again and wiped his hands down his face. His voice cracked. “Perhaps I can take you with me and afterward, after you’re healed, give you to another. But I doubt it. The laws to do with lesser races are strictly enforced.”
And if he did that, Ally would be alone. Maybe she’d die too. She bit her hand. Oh hell.
I’m dying.
“Willow? Do you want me to try?”
Her answer slurred out. She wasn’t concentrating. “Do what?”
“See if I can take you as a pet, but hand you to another? Once you’re cured. Brask mentioned it might be possible.”
The idea was startling. “Then I could return here?”
“No. If another made you their pet, you would be theirs.” He remained staring at the ceiling, his words as dry as a forest of bones. “Always theirs.”
She sprang off the bed. “Then no. Fuck no. Take me home now, please.”
God he was beautiful.
Stom sat up and came to her, standing there with his fists clenched at his sides. “I mustn’t forget why I brought you here – to convince you to leave before Kasper comes for you.”
“You think he will?” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
“I know he is.”
“I’m going. I am. I will.” When he glared at her, she spat back, “I will! Now, take me back.” Asshole.
The contrast was ripping into her heart – between lust, disgust, and whatever this feeling was that she had for this stupid alien. She hated him, and she wanted to collapse on him and bawl her eyes out.
She’d be strong. She had a few years, he’d said, as long as she avoided Kasper. Somehow she’d find somewhere good to leave Ally. Before she… How? How could she be dying? It wasn’t fair!
Be sensible. Get some blood tests. Make sure it’s true. But she knew, already, that he wasn’t lying.
That had really put a dampener on the day. Inside her heart was cold and she could barely lift her feet as she followed him to another room to get new clothes.
He could have told her those facts the moment he brought her back here, instead of having crazy monkey sex with her. That part, on thinking some more, she forgave him for.
The drive to the house was lonely. Neither of them spoke until they stood outside the car and he was about to go.
“No more burning anything. Leave here tomorrow. Keep that near you.�
�� He nodded at the bag that she held. Once she’d promised she would run from Kasper, he’d returned the gun to her.
“I won’t need it here. The house is safe.”
“Nowhere near Kasper is safe. I have to be on a shuttle tonight to catch the next warp ship. I can’t watch you anymore. I have to officially give up that right.”
“You don’t understand. This house is safe. Nothing bad has ever happened while we’re inside.” She’d been on the brink of telling him why before and his look of misery had tipped the balance. She could reassure him. What would it matter if he knew? Besides, the longer they talked, the longer she could put off him going. “It does something to people who want to harm us. They forget. They just…go away. In like fifteen years I’ve seen boyfriends, crims, do that. Once a whole riot went past and we were like a rock in front of a waterfall. They went around us. Nothing touches this house.”
Slowly his face had cleared. Sadness morphed to puzzlement. “Okay. That’s good.”
“Yes, it is.”
She blinked, feeling that throb in the middle of her forehead grow. What was she doing? He was the best man she’d ever met, and she was letting him slip away just because he was an alien?
Crap. No, it wasn’t that. Not anymore. She didn’t care what he was. It was Ally. Her and Ally were like twins. And it was him and his past. His dead wife stood in the way.
“You be good too.”
Her lips trembled. The awful tension between the here and the now, and what would soon be true, strained at her until she was sure her heart was about to tear into a hundred pieces. “Yes. I will.”
He touched her cheek before getting back in the car. She could still feel the line of his caresses on her skin.
As the car drove away, she stared after it blindly. Tears rolled down her face. The wind stirred her hair.
She was going to miss him so much.
When she went through the door, Ally greeted her with two cupped handfuls of daisies and a scream as she flung her arms around her in a hug. The daisies went flying.
“Where have you been? Willow?”
“Places. Visiting a friend.” She patted the girl’s back and smiled. “Let’s get dinner going.”
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