Dane appeared through the doorway with the A’li-uud, but he shook the boy’s hand from his arm irritably. The moment our eyes met, Dane’s stern, Adonis face melted into an array of emotion, and my belly leaped with a powerful emotion of my own. I wanted to address him, but, as I flicked my gaze back to the elderly alien before me, my anger took over once again.
“The Council recognizes Elder designate De’inde Et’Petrum Montem’tribus,” he said, watching Dane step up onto the platform.
Dane wound his way past Morgan and stood steadily beside me. I felt his hand press into the small of my back, just as it had done before our tryst in my bedroom aboard the ship. Something sparked between my thighs, but I was seething too much to pay it much mind.
“Thank you for joining us tonight,” the A’li-uud continued. “I am Elder Vi’den—”
“Frankly,” I interrupted, practically spitting with anger, “I couldn’t care less about who you are.”
Dane’s hand tightened on my back, and I felt his fingernails digging into me. General Morgan looked at me with unconcealed surprise. I heard mutterings around the circle of Elders, and the one on the left of the A’li-uud called Vi’den spoke up.
“You are before the Council,” he said gravely. His voice was odd, almost bubbly and very difficult to understand. “You will address us with respect.”
“I will address you as you have treated me,” I snapped. “And that, I’m afraid, has been sorely lacking any semblance of respect.”
“Dane, I must ask that you keep your mate—” Vi’den began.
“Excuse me,” I said loudly, my voice rolling over his like a boulder. “First of all, Dane has as little authority over me as you do. Second, I am not his mate. Third, if I was, it wouldn’t be any of your business, and it would certainly be very inappropriate of you to mention it.”
“Quite the spitfire,” a voice murmured behind me. I twisted around to see the speaker and saw an A’li-uud seated beside Duke. He looked to be around Dane’s age, and he was wearing a grin of approval.
Vi’den made a noise in his throat, and I turned back around to look at him again. He had a very patient expression on his face, something I didn’t expect after witnessing the temperament of many other A’li-uud. “Perhaps, Roxanne Rigby, you would be most comfortable addressing the Council at your leisure. I believe we can forego Forum formalities for one evening,” he said calmly.
There were murmurings of disagreement around me, but I said graciously, “Thank you. I’m here to discuss establishing a peace treaty between Earth and Albaterra.”
“Yes,” Vi’den said, steepling his fingers beneath his chin. “General Morgan took it upon himself to request a meeting with us via a Montemban warrior regarding the treaty immediately. Hence why you were brought here rather unceremoniously and unexpectedly.”
I shot Morgan a nasty look, which he returned with one of his own, and said, “The Board of Universal Exploration and Operations has outlined terms we believe will be suitable for both parties, but we are, of course, open to your requests. I have—”
One of the Elders to my right began clacking, speaking A’li-uud. His eyes were pinned on Dane, who clacked back at him with an angry expression on his face.
“We will speak English, please,” Vi’den interrupted them. “It is rude to exclude our guests from pertinent discussion.”
I threw him a grateful look as the Elder who’d addressed Dane said in a harsh, gravelly voice, “I want to know why Dane took it upon himself to bring humans back without consulting the Council.”
“I had no means by which to consult the Council,” Dane replied sharply. “And I had to agree to bring them back, or I would have been unable to return at all.”
“Why?” the Elder asked, cocking his head, giving Dane a challenging glare.
Dane’s hand was now clawing at my back, and I wriggled slightly to loosen his hold. “I was being kept in a cell, presumably to prevent me from harming anyone,” he growled. “The humans would only agree to providing me a ship and allowing our warriors and me a safe return if we permitted the company of twelve human soldiers. And Roxanne.”
His answer was met with silence, but the Elder continued to glare at him. Vi’den motioned to me with one long-fingered hand. “You were saying?”
“Vi’den,” the same gravel-voiced Elder piped up again. “Are we really going to sit here and pretend to consider whatever the human has to offer us? There is nothing she can say that will change our minds, so why are we wasting our time?”
“You are ignorant!” I exploded before Vi’den could respond, rounding on the aggressive Elder. Dane’s arm caught around my waist, but I continued without pause. “You are ignorant and hateful, and you are nothing like the life-revering race you claim to be!”
What had been mutterings before now were blatant cries of outrage. Out of the corner of my eye, however, I could see the attractive A’li-uud beside Duke grinning broadly, leaning back in his chair like he was watching an enjoyable movie. Duke was not shouting as some of his peers were, but his mouth was tight and his eyes were unmoving.
“We will do what we must do to protect our people,” an Elder wearing a feathered hood said boldly.
“You are protecting your people from a non-existent threat,” I shot back at him. “You are making decisions out of fear, not out of logic and reason borne of hard evidence.”
“How can you pass judgment on our decisions?” asked the bubble-voiced Elder next to Vi’den. “Time and time again, the human race has taken preemptive action with catastrophic consequences with the intent of preventing greater and irredeemable catastrophe. Your cities have been bombed, international wars begun, all in the name of defense. The human sense of self-preservation is as assumptive and lethal as anything we plan to do.”
“Not every human is like that,” I said stubbornly. “I’m not.”
Silence fell across the chamber, bathing me as thoroughly as the glow from the torches. Dane’s fingers gripped my side so tightly I could feel imprints forming on my skin, and he was barely breathing. General Morgan stood stupidly in place, scratching his head and looking between each speaker like it was a boxing match.
“Are you proposing we stand by and allow the worst to happen?” Vi’den asked quietly, breaking the silence with his soft voice.
“I don’t know what you think is going to happen, but I’m pretty sure anything that happens will be at your hand,” I replied coolly. “But, to answer your question, no. I’m just asking you not to punish everyone for the evils of some.”
25
Dane
The silence in the chamber was deafening, almost like a loud roaring of nothingness in my ears. I clutched Roxanne’s side, pressing her up against me, and waited for someone to speak with my heart tattooing my ribs.
“Very well,” Vi’den said finally. “We will discuss your proposal and send for you when a decision has been made.”
Roxanne glanced up at me, her eyes wide and confused. “But you didn’t even hear the terms of the treaty,” she said, looking back at Vi’den.
“We do not need to hear terms,” Ma’ris chimed in from his seat beside Vi’den. I had to strain to hear what he said through his bubbling, underwater-sounding voice.
“But—”
“Our warriors have returned to Albaterra,” Vi’den said gently. “If we agree to a truce, you and the others will simply return to Earth and go about your lives. If we do not, we will bring you back for further discussion. It is always in the interest of the Council to preserve life. As you have vivaciously pointed out, we have neglected to uphold that value as of late. We will see that does not happen again.”
Roxanne seemed hesitant to leave as if she wanted to speak more on the matter, but, eventually, she nodded her agreement.
“Then, it is settled,” Vi’den resolved. “De’inde, you will be brought before the Council tomorrow to disclose your version of events from the mission up until this point. For now, we release Roxann
e into your care.”
She stiffened, and I knew she took offense to his wording, but she wisely remained quiet.
“Thank you,” I said considerately, inclining my head in a show of respect. Vi’den inclined his in return, and we were bid from the chamber.
My arms tightened around Roxanne as our feet slammed into the snowy ground. She gasped upon impact, but her breath returned to her much more quickly than the previous times we’d traveled by wind. “I think I’m getting used to that,” she wheezed.
I grabbed her by the wrists and shoved her backward, flattening her back against the cabin door. She stared at me with her mouth open, stunned.
“Do not ever walk away from me again,” I growled.
Then, I crushed my lips to hers.
As her sweet, gentle taste flooded my mouth, I finally allowed myself to face the truth. I was in love. The spunky, sophisticated, beautiful Ambassador had stolen my heart, and I never wanted her to give it back. I’d bucked against the growing feelings I’d felt since I’d met her, determined I should never feel for a human what I could feel for an A’li-uud, but it hadn’t mattered in the end. I belonged to her.
Roxanne’s tongue broke through the surface of my teeth, and she quickly became the aggressor. Her body, which was generally cooler than mine, had become hot and soft with urgent lust, and she seemed to relinquish control to her primitive instincts. She pressed her chest against me, and I remembered the gorgeous sight of her luscious breasts in the darkness of her ship quarters. Immediately, my nether region swelled, and I became as urgent as her.
Sweeping an arm downward, I caught her by the backs of her knees and lifted her into the air, supporting her back with my other arm. She reached down and fumbled with the door until it swung open, and then her hands were on me, framing my face and pulling my mouth toward hers. I kicked the door closed behind us as our lips met again. She moaned against me, filling me with an even greater need, and I growled in response. My teeth sought her lower lip to tug at it sensually as I meandered blindly through the small cabin to the bedroom.
When I laid her on the bed, she looked up at me through long, charcoal lashes. “I won’t,” she whispered.
I pulled back in confusion. “You—”
“I won’t walk away from you again,” she clarified softly.
Staring into her eyes, so green and vivid and absolutely glowing, I felt something inside me become whole. I leaned down and closed the space between our mouths again, and, as I did, I murmured, “I love you.”
A smile broke over her sensual lips, and she reached up to yank my head downward, pulling me into the most passionate kiss we’d shared yet. Our tongues twisted together until I couldn’t tell whose was whose, sliding over one another with slick ease. Her sugary flavor was mind-blowing and sent me into a tailspin of lust.
“I love you too,” she breathed into my mouth.
They were the words I’d never known I wanted to hear and the words I’d never known I needed, and they instantly settled somewhere deep inside my chest and swelled until I was sure I was going to burst. My hands began working on their own accord, reaching for the zipper on her jumpsuit and yanking it downward. Her breasts sprang free, and she moaned into the space where those beautiful words had just been.
I broke the kiss and dove downward. Her nipples were already on end, and I took one between my teeth. Roxanne purred in response, a sound that delighted me with ripples of pleasure, and I rewarded her with a flick of my tongue. Her back arched slightly upward as her fingers sought my hair and curled around my tresses. She used her grip as leverage to urge my head further downward, a silent request I obliged.
“Taste me,” she groaned. “Please.”
I seized her jumpsuit by the hips and wrenched. The gray fabric slid out from beneath her back without a hitch, but it gathered around her waist and stubbornly refused to cooperate further. I hooked my fingers into either side of the suit, snagging her panties at the same time, and started shimmying down. As I did, Roxanne’s body came into view inch by inch, and I became entranced by the beauty before me. Her hips arced out on either side in smooth, perfect curves. Her thighs were soft and thick with hard, tensed muscles beneath her silken flesh. And the folds between her legs were nothing short of idyllic: thin, delicate petals awash in a musk of erotic perfume.
Once she was fully undressed, I gently plucked her legs by the calves and spread them. She was looking down at me with her teeth chewing on her bottom lip and her eyes wide, and she was unable to hide the intense eagerness painting her dazzling features. I grinned saucily. Immediately, she recognized I was playing with her and responded with demanding insistence. Her fingers tightened around my hair and shoved, forcing my head to the apex of her thighs, and she widened her legs further to allow me better access.
My lips wrapped around her small, beadlike clit the same way they had wrapped around her nipple, and I began to suckle. My teeth grazed its surface ever-so-lightly, just enough to feel her shiver with the sensation. Somehow, from this angle, she was even more beautiful than normal. Her cheeks were pink, and her eyes were hooded as she peered down at me. Sheets of flowing black hair cascaded over her shoulders to the sumptuous mounds of sensitive flesh on her chest, and her nipples were peaked to the ceiling with arousal. She was a vision, a dream brought to fruition by sheer will.
Her head tilted back as I flicked my tongue out and danced it across her button, and I heard a low, powerful moan building in the depths of her throat. I wasn’t ready to take her to the brink yet; I still had more I wanted to try. Pausing my suckles for a split second, I pressed the flat of my tongue against her and allowed her small, involuntary gyrations guide my movements. Immediately, the moan broke through her lips and tumbled to my ears, and the love I felt beating for her in my chest seared with renewal.
“Take off your clothes,” she gasped through the moan, her voice quaking uncontrollably. “Come here.”
I didn’t want to obey her command. To taste her, to have mastery over her body in the most intimate of ways, was a gift bestowed upon me greater than any offered by the Elderhood. I wasn’t ready to give that up. The urgency in her tone, however, convinced me to heed her, and I straightened up. I shed my clothes in mere seconds and crawled up the length of her voluptuous figure. When I saw her eyes, however, I froze.
She was staring at my member with an expression I could not determine. It was either awe or horror. I glanced down at it, suddenly embarrassed. “Would you prefer to wait?” I asked gently, not wanting her to feel pressure.
Roxanne shook her head energetically. “No,” she insisted. She reached up and took my length in both her hands and I had to repress a groan of delight. “I’ve just never seen—you’re very big.”
“Is that a problem?” I pressed, concerned. “Will I hurt you?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she sat up slightly and leaned forward. One of her hands slithered between my legs to my scrotum, cupping it in her palm, while the other slid down to the base of my length. Then, with a devious grin on her face, she took me in her mouth.
Never before had I felt anything so intense. My muscles turned to jelly almost at once, and I started to tremble. Her tongue snaked down my shaft and circled around the helmet, flicking and stroking much like my tongue had on her sweet little bead. I was already slick with her saliva, and she used the gloss to glide her lips up and down in smooth, persistent strokes. My mind became fuzzier and fuzzier with each passing second, and I realized I was careening toward a climax at speeds unknown to me ever before. If she hadn’t paused to speak then, I would have lost it completely.
“Touch me,” she breathed, her voice muffled around me.
She returned to sucking and licking as I reached down to her nether region. My thumb found her button again, just like it had onboard the ship, and I started spiraling over the engorged sphere. Perhaps it was the stellar sensations she was creating on my groin, or perhaps it was the power of the intimate tryst we were sharing. Howev
er, as I looked down at her, I swore I could see her heart beating, her blood pumping, her very lifelines working their magic to produce the ethereal creature before me. It was the ritual of unification coming to life in front of my very eyes, and it was with the woman—the human—I loved.
“Oh, God,” she groaned shakily. She pulled her mouth off of me and looked up with desperation. I’d been so caught up in her that I hadn’t realized she was quaking, toeing the line that would break and send her reeling. “Dane, take me!”
She pressed her palms flat against my chest, easing me back until I was positioned between her spread legs again. Her fingers rounded my girth, and she tugged me to her with unintended roughness, eager to get me inside of her. She pressed my head against her pleats. I inhaled sharply, surprised by the warmth of her moisture. Then, she clawed her hand on my buttocks and pushed, sending me into her in one great thrust.
I groaned. She was so tight, so small compared to A’li-uud women, and she was slick with desire. I could feel her pulsing around me, or perhaps I was pulsing within her, or maybe we were both pulsing simultaneously… It was impossible to tell. We had become one, and buoyant joy intermingled with lustful hunger in my soul. Roxanne’s body curled upward in a tall crescent, her fingers grinding into my shoulders for leverage, and her eyes embraced me into her. It was love and need and passion and fulfillment all converging in one moment, surging through us as a single entity and joining us unconditionally.
Dane: A Scifi Alien Romance: Albaterra Mates Book 3 Page 12