Yahn: Paranormal Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Alien Mates Book 4)

by Ashley L. Hunt

  “Take care of yourself,” she whispered in my ear as she hugged me.

  I felt tears prick in my eyes, and I felt a heavy weight of sorrow in my chest even though I didn’t know what was happening. “I love you, Beni.”

  “I love you too, sweet girl,” she said softly. She kissed me delicately on the cheek, and then she let me go. Rex’s father stepped forward and hugged me briefly as well, but he didn’t say a word. It looked like speaking would cause him pain. When he released me, Rex nudged my arm with his knuckles, and I walked out of the house into the sunset.

  We hurried silently down the walk. When we reached the fencepost where I’d sat on my first day here, Rex stopped talking. He turned to me, and his face was grave.

  “What I have to do is against A’li-uud law,” he said without preface. “I don’t know if it will even work, but we have to try.”

  “What are we doing?” I asked nervously.

  He looked out over the landscape as though ensuring nobody was within earshot, despite there not being another tribal home for miles, and then turned back to me and said, “We are going to fly on the winds.”

  “That’s not against the law. You do that to get to the Forum.”

  “It is against the law to take someone with me,” he said. “And I assume the law is especially unkind to taking humans.”

  I swallowed hard. “Does it—will it hurt?”

  “It doesn’t hurt me, but I don’t know what it will do to you,” he replied. He was sincere, but the answer frightened me anyway.

  I gritted my teeth and nodded. He held out his hand to me, and I took it. The feeling of his skin against mine was divine, even in the uncertain and terrifying circumstances, and I recalled the sensation of having his palm pressed against my cheek. I closed my eyes and took in a breath.

  And then I was flying.

  I heard everything and nothing at the same time. It was like having wind rushing in my ears and complete silence all at once. Bird chirps, rustling grass and prairie stallions galloping all seemed to sound repeatedly, but the sounds disappeared the moment I heard them and left me wondering if I even heard anything at all. I could still feel Rex’s hand in mine, but it had no pressure or temperature. It just existed. I was too scared to open my eyes, and even when everything suddenly came to a halt, and I was jolted to a stop, I kept my eyes closed.

  “Come,” Rex murmured. I could feel his body up against mine now, pressed so closely that the heat of his front radiated up and down my back. Slowly, anxiously, I parted my eyelids.

  We were in front of a house constructed of the same things like his parents’, but it was much larger and grandiose in its size and architecture. My jaw actually fell open as I took in the burbling fountain before us, made of something like marble but much more exquisite and standing well over ten feet tall. The house itself was palatial, with massive, extravagant windows and beautiful balconies strung with strange, glittering lights.

  I didn’t have time to take in any more than that, though, before Rex ushered me forward. He was walking quickly but quietly, and I wondered if we were breaking into someone’s home. He silently opened one of the double doors which served as an entrance. They were large enough to have been the doors of an old English abbey.

  It was dark inside, but I was able to see there was a staircase before us so grand that I felt unworthy to step up on it. I didn’t have a choice, though. He grabbed my hand and ran up the steps with me in tow. Once we reached the landing, he looked each and every way—for what, or whom, I didn’t know—before tugging me to the right. We raced down a long, wide corridor with portraits of A’li-uud lining the walls before coming to another set of huge double doors. He opened them, practically shoved me through, and shut them behind us. I heard the click of a lock before he turned to face me.

  “What’s going on?” I asked him again for the first time since in the bedroom at his parents’ home.

  “I’m keeping you safe,” he replied. He grabbed onto an armoire so big I could probably stand inside and twirl and started to pull. It moved an inch, and he yanked again. I hurried to the other side and pushed, and it began to give. I kept quiet until he straightened up again, and I realized we had moved the armoire in front of the doors.

  He wasn’t done, though. He went to a vanity of matching wood and pattern as the armoire and started to shove it toward the doors, too. I didn’t help with this one. Instead, I pushed for answers.

  “What do you mean, keeping me safe?” I asked. “From what?”

  “Pugna’ta saw you,” he grunted, shoving his shoulder up against the vanity as it eased its way across the floor.

  “Who?”

  He huffed as he got the piece of furniture in front of the doors as he wanted and turned to me. “Pugna’ta. She’s one of my warriors, and she saw you today.”

  “Oh,” I said slowly, realizing who he was talking about. “The woman that came to your parents’ house.”

  “Yes,” he said, walking across the room. I realized for the first time since entering that we were in a bedroom of such a size it would likely hold Beni’s entire house and all of the things in it. He sat on the bed and looked at me, and he had such a defeated expression on his face that my heart actually ached. “She and I have a history she’s always trying to rekindle. That’s why she came by. She saw you in the window, and she’s going to the Council to tell them about you.”

  My throat seemed to constrict at the news, but I tried to remain calm as I asked, “Why is that so bad?”

  Rex’s eyes narrowed at me through the darkness. “You don’t understand. There are Elders who will have you killed, or will kill you themselves, the minute they hear about you.”

  “I thought you have to vote on things like that,” I squeaked.

  “There are those who would prefer to do first and pay later,” he said. He got to his feet and walked to me until we were only inches apart. “I won’t let that happen.”

  I looked up at him, shaking slightly with a new and powerful burst of adrenaline. “Where are we?”

  “This is my house,” he said, waving a hand around. “Well, it’s the house of the kingdom’s Tribe Elder. I don’t own it.”

  I nodded in understanding as my mind raced with fears and questions. I could feel his eyes on my face, but I didn’t look up at him until I found the voice to ask my next query. “Couldn’t we just go to the Forum? Together, I mean. I could talk to the other Elders myself.”

  His face, somehow, grew even more serious than it had been since he’d burst into the bedroom at his parents’ house. He said, “Tabitha, you would never get out of there alive. Like I said, there are Elders who would kill you the moment they saw you, and, even if they were able to restrain themselves long enough to hear anything you said, they would kill you after that just because you know so much about our kind and our world.”

  “So what?” I asked. My voice sounded about an octave higher than normal in my gradually rising panic. “Why does it matter if I know anything about A’li-uud or Albaterra or you or anything? What could I possibly do to hurt anyone?”

  He shook his head, and I saw a mournful look take over his face. “It’s not about what threat you pose individually, Tabitha. It’s about what threat you pose as a species.”

  I felt as defeated as he had looked just moments before. He had an answer to every single one of my questions, and no answer was something we could work with. There was a dead end no matter which way I spun it. I felt hopeless, helpless, and tired.

  “Wait,” I said suddenly. “What does this mean for you?”

  “What do you mean?” He asked.

  “Won’t you be in trouble for protecting me? I mean, especially if that girl tells the Council about me and they put a—a hit out on me or something. Wouldn’t you be in trouble for, I don’t know, obstructing justice or something like that?”

  He looked back at me silently, and I felt my head start to swim. I was right. He was facing serious consequences for what he was d
oing for me.

  “The ones who would kill me,” I whispered, terrified to ask the question I was about to ask but even more terrified to hear the answer. “Would they kill you, too?”

  Again, he just looked at me, and it was as if the walls around me were caving in. My heart stopped in my chest, and my breath caught in my throat. Black spots danced in my vision. I couldn’t hear anything except for his breathing.

  “No,” I murmured. My voice started growing louder with each word I spoke. “No. You can’t do this. They can’t do this. I won’t let them!”

  With a cry of distress, I leaped forward. He caught me in the air, and I threw my arms around his neck. Our lips crushed together in a kiss so deep and so passionate that I realized I had never truly been kissed before. I tasted him, tasted the fruit of Albaterra on his lips, and relished the way his tongue intertwined with mine. My legs curled around his waist, and I felt his hands take hold of my rear end, keeping me held aloft. Suddenly, we were moving, but I knew nothing except for him. Our mouths were fused as one, and I felt his soul meeting mine.

  I loved him. I was no longer falling in love with Rex; I loved him, and the very thought of him meeting his end to protect me brought tears to my eyes. They spilled down my cheeks in torrents and made both of our faces slick as we kissed, falling deeper and deeper into one another. I wept against his lips and finally released the fear, the uncertainty, and—above all—the love I’d kept bottled up ever since I’d landed in a fiery heap on Albaterra.

  “I can’t let you do this,” I sobbed, breaking the kiss in my failed efforts to restrain myself from saying the words. I became dimly aware he was carrying me across the room toward the bed. “I can’t let you die for me.”

  “I have no choice,” he said hoarsely. He wasn’t watching where he was walking. He just kept his eyes pinned to me. “Without you, there’s no life to live anyway.”

  I looked back at him, our eyes searching each other, and then I kissed him again with fervor. He kissed me back, his tongue gliding over my lower lip, skimming the path of my teeth, just as we tipped backward onto the bed.

  Chapter Eleven

  Rex

  The Finding

  “The ones who would kill me,” Tabitha whispered. “Would they kill you, too?”

  I stared back at her, unable to form the words to answer her. My ears were pricked for any noise that would give warning of incoming danger. If she hadn’t been looking at me with such desperation, I would have been pacing the room and looking out of each of the windows intermittently. When I didn’t respond, her face crumpled.

  “No. No. You can’t do this. They can’t do this. I won’t let them!”

  She cried out and sprang toward me, and I reached for her. She landed in my arms, and, the next thing I knew, we were kissing. I felt her legs wrap around my waist, but I couldn’t process anything other than her. She tasted exactly as I imagined the heavens would taste if I could pluck one of the lavender clouds from the sky. I was filled with that same sweet, delicate scent of hers I smelled every night as we slept beside each other.

  I carried her to the bed, and we fell onto the mattress clumsily. Her lips were against mine in furious passion and carnivorous lust. I blindly reached for her clothes and ripped them from her. I was so hungry for her I was sure I wouldn’t survive it if I didn’t have her. She reciprocated rolling my pants down my legs, whipping them off and throwing them to the side carelessly. Through the darkness, I could see her eyes widen as they focused on my nether region, and I looked down too. I was erect and ready.

  “Is something wrong?” I whispered.

  She shook her head. “I’ve just never seen—you’re so big.”

  I looked down at myself again, still feeling the powerful urges of lust but now also feeling the impediment of nerves, and asked, “Are humans smaller?”

  “Usually,” she said. She crawled up my body, then, and pressed her lips delicately to mine in a kiss of sweetness rather than urgency. When she pulled back, she said, “I suppose you’ve never been with a human.”

  “No,” I replied softly. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  She kissed me lightly again. “You won’t. I’ll show you.”

  My lust took over again, and I enveloped her lips with my own. She kissed me back with equal vehemence, and I felt her hand drop to my erection. Her fingers cool to the touch as her skin always was, wrapped around my girth and started to stroke so slowly it was almost torture. I groaned into her mouth, and I felt her smile.

  “Patience,” she whispered, lifting her face from mine, easing her way back down my body. When she was level with my groin, she exhaled softly, and I felt the breath caress me. I shivered with desire.

  Her fingers continued to slide up and down my length, and I watched her. Despite the darkness, I had never seen her look so radiant. She was beautiful. Her dark curls hung down in imperfect perfection, framing her face in such a way I couldn’t help but stare. I saw those eyes that had captivated me the moment I had seen her looking up at me at the crash site. They had penetrated me to my very core.

  I was in love with this woman, this human, this Tabitha Bartel. That was the truth of the matter, and I was going to do everything in my power to protect her from the prejudices and fear-founded impulses of my peers.

  She lowered her head down and took me between her lips, and I inhaled sharply. My hips lifted against my will, but she pressed down on my thighs lightly to keep me in place. I had never felt anything quite like it, and I knew it was because it was she who did this to me. Tabitha was my beginning, and she would be my end.

  I felt her tongue caressing my hardness the way it had caressed my tongue when we’d kissed, and it sent me into such a frenzy of desire that I writhed beneath her. I wanted to take her, to be one with her not just emotionally and spiritually but physically as well. However, I let her take control. I wasn’t sure how to be with a human; I didn’t know if human intimacy was the same as with A’li-uud.

  I reached down and stroked her curls. She moaned into me, so I tangled my fingers in her hair and felt the way she pleasured me through my palms. I watched my hands rise and fall repeatedly atop her head in tandem with the rise and fall of my chest as I breathed, and my head rolled back against the pillow. It was, perhaps, the most intense experience of my life, and any experience I had had prior to Tabitha didn’t compare. With each burst of sensation that crashed through me came an even more powerful burst of emotion as the love I felt for her dominated my entire being.

  When she lifted her mouth from me and looked up at me, I returned her gaze. I was breathless, wanting, but I didn’t want to go alone. I wanted her to join me; I needed her to join me. I released her hair and held out my hand to her. She took it. Then, I pulled her back up until we were face-to-face again, and I claimed her mouth with my own.

  She rolled to the side without separating her lips from mine, and I followed until I was on top of her. Her hand dipped down again and sought my manhood. I growled, and she mewled in return. I felt her guiding me, and then I felt myself being pressed up against her most intimate of areas.

  “Go,” she whispered against my mouth. “Slowly.”

  I did as she asked, easing forward so carefully that the movement was almost unnoticeable. Her hand remained in place at my base, and she pushed back against me after a second to indicate she wanted me to withdraw. I obeyed, and, when she gently guided me forward again, she moaned into me. It was the most intoxicating sound I had ever heard, and I engulfed her with a deep, soul-reaching kiss. This time, she didn’t push me back, and I entered her fully.

  Tabitha’s back arched to the ceiling, pressing her breasts into my chest, breaking our kiss. I looked down at her, admiring the beauty of her face in ecstasy. Her mouth was parted very slightly to allow for the shallow breaths she panted to slip through her lips, and her eyes were closed, so her lashes kissed the shelves of her cheekbones. I grazed the tip of my tongue over her lower lip, and she opened her eyes again to meet
my gaze.

  “More,” she murmured heavily.

  Her voice alone was enough to spur me on, but the command was an order I was happy to obey. Our chest rose and fell together, our skin sliding back and forth over one another, and we kept our eyes locked. Her mouth opened a little wider as I took her and panting gave way to moaning. I couldn’t keep myself from dropping my lips to hers, tasting the guttural moans on her tongue. She reached up and clawed at my back, her nails pressing unrelentingly into my skin, and I grunted with the onset of pain. It hurt, but it was the most delicious kind of pain. It was the pain of lust and love and promise and protection and trust and safety and fear and worry and all other things. It brought me to the edge, but I held back.

  “Rex!” She cried, throwing her head back, scratching up to the nape of my neck.

  My name on her lips was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard in my life, and I had to taste it. I lunged forward, plunging my tongue into her mouth, swallowing her passion into myself. Making love to her was an experience I could have never understood before her, something I could have never understood without her. It was not just a meeting of bodies as times past had been; it was the meeting of souls. Her lips, her nails, her skin, her eyes, her entire being held me captive in a never-ending circle of enchanted love. It was a circle that, in all its heresy, was the only thing greater in the universe than the Grand Circle.

  “I love you,” I said. My voice was muffled against her, so I yelled it out. “I love you!”

  “I love you too,” she panted breathlessly.

  The words sent me spiraling into the throes of euphoria, and I felt her join me. We rocketed together through time and space, leaving behind everything that was, greeting all that would be. I knew of nothing but her. As I groaned her name and stared into her angelic face, I knew nothing would ever matter to me again. She was beauty personified, and our love was as visceral as our love-making.