Octavia said her own goodbyes to Zuran, with her words much more sentimental and his much more sarcastic, and then we sought out Phoebe getting some fresh air outside the tent. We repeated our goodbyes, though I was considerably more gentlemanly to her than I had been to my kin, and started walking toward the great walls of Ka-lik’et. Before we drew too near the city, however, I took Octavia’s hand and pulled her in a different direction.
“What are you doing?” she asked, startled. “Why are we going this way?”
“I want to go where we will be alone, and no one will happen across us,” I told her.
She gave me a suspicious look and dug her heels in, which sent streams of sand shooting up on either side of her shoes. “You’re getting fresh again, aren’t you?” she prodded.
Though I liked the idea of “getting fresh” with her, as she called it, I had something else in mind. The party had brought back a lot of reminiscence about the wedding when I had first met Octavia, and it had given me an idea I only thought appropriate for this evening. Rather than answering her question, I continued to pull her along before she relented and started following me voluntarily. Once Ka-lik’et was completely out of view, I came to a halt and turned to face her.
“Now will you tell me what we’re doing out in the middle of nowhere?” she asked, propping her hands onto her hips and jutting her chin forward stubbornly.
“I thought you might like to dance,” I said.
She stared at me for a minute, her eyes darting all across my face like she was hunting for any sign that I was being anything less than serious. “You want to dance,” she repeated. It was not a question.
“Yes, I do,” I said. “With you.”
“There’s no music,” she pointed out. “There was music at the baby shower, but there’s no music here.”
“The breeze is our music.” I closed the gap between us and turned her around, pressing my front to her back and admiring the way her curvaceous backside fit so comfortably in the confines of my hips. “Can you hear it?”
As I reached around her and strummed my fingers lightly over her belly, she breathed, “Yes.”
“Can you feel it?” I asked, dropping my teeth to her ear.
“Yes,” she murmured again.
“Will you dance with me?”
She exhaled slowly, and I heard the guttural lust in her voice as she hummed for a third time, “Yes.”
Chapter Forty
Octavia
His hand skimmed up my side, brushing past my breast and easing my arm upward until my hand curved back to gently cup his head. I shivered as his fingertips grazed my skin to my elbow. They touched so lightly I could have easily mistaken them for a breeze, but every nerve in my body was so suddenly alert and aware of him that I felt the tracing as palpably as a passionate caress. He slid further and further until he reached my wrist. Then, just as I was taken by a second shiver, I was airborne.
My legs shot outward in a desperate attempt to locate ground. Before I could land, however, strong fingers curled around my waist and caught me. I was thrust forward, doubled over, and then wrenched back and staring up at him. Pale, heated eyes laden with lust gazed down at me for a fraction of a breath.
“Let go,” he whispered.
I was flying again. His words echoed in the recesses of my mind, clattering around in search of reason, and understanding dawned upon me. Feel him. Trust him. Live him.
I did. I landed in his arms and wrapped myself around him, calves clenched around his waist and arms flattened against his back. He clamped a hand to the nape of my neck and pulled, and my torso was tilted away, away, away until my hair licked the sand beneath us. In one swift movement, he righted me, and I unsnagged myself from him. He caught my ankle on the withdraw and twisted, and I was thrown to my hands and knees. I rolled to my back with his fingers still clutching my ankle. His other hand materialized to take a wrist, and then I was spinning round and round in midair with my dress pooling out around me and my only anchors his manacle-like grip on my ankle and wrist.
Every part of my body was on fire, not with pain but with adrenaline. I was searing from within, burning alive, and the entire rainbow of emotions was closing in upon me. My eyes stung like I was going to cry, my lips lifted like I was euphoric, my thighs warmed like I was aroused, my heart throbbed like I was terrified. I felt nothing and everything at once as he turned me, threw me, and twisted me to the rhythm of our souls.
A bed of sand met my back with breath-stealing force, and I reached up. He took my hands and pulled, dragging me over the loose granules as easily as a sack of feathers, and then bent and scooped me by my middle. We were spinning again, the wind rushing in my ears and the colors of the midnight desert blending into a mystical palette. He dropped me to my feet, and my knees buckled. I collapsed backward, but hot hands caught me by the back of my neck before my head met the ground. A firm thrust up sent me upright once more only to be jerked to him.
“More,” he breathed. I could hardly hear him with the blood thumping in my ears. “Give me everything.”
Without warning, he lifted me right over his head, and I did exactly as he asked. I released myself of every instinct I had to survive, to preserve my body and protect it from injury. My muscles loosened until they were completely limp, and I lost any balance I’d mustered. I started to roll off his palms behind him. Falling, falling, the golden floor underneath nearing with each passing millisecond, certain to greet me with shattered bones.
His arms came from nowhere, and I was thrown head-over-heels, spiraling through the air. I didn’t react anymore; I simply was. One leg bent while the other straightened, one arm arced above my head while the other dangled lifelessly. I was a puppet to the dance, my strings being pulled without any further interference and only my trust in him to keep me safe. He yanked me from the air to him, and my limbs fastened to his muscled form of their own accord.
He dipped me low, swung me, and pulled me back to him. I watched my body as if I was a third party flail and writhe and angle and jolt, and I was stunned at the utter grace of it all. Our movements were raw, primal and animalistic, but the purity within them could’ve brought me to my knees. Every touch was electric with inherent trust. Every separation was rife with faith we would be reunited. Every manipulation of my body and impact to his was a claiming of the other. It was beauty personified.
Then, as quickly as we started, we stopped. His biceps untightened, and he held me to him softly and gently. I realized I was shaking from head to toe from the powerful amount of adrenaline racing through me and clung to him to try and stabilize myself, but he shook his head and tilted my chin up with the knuckle of his index finger.
“Feel it,” he said.
I closed my eyes and leaned into his chest, savoring the pulsing heat from his skin against my cheek, and I stood there shaking. His lips fell flush against my hairline, and he kissed a sweet trail across my forehead from one temple to the other. My fingers trembled violently as they sought solace in his hair. The short locks prickled my palms and fluttered against the webbing between my digits.
“Good girl,” he whispered.
He was easing me down, inch by inch, until my rear met the night-cooled sand. His arms never released me as he did, and he fell into a kneel beside me. I continued falling backward until I was lying down and looking up at him.
“That was an A’li-uud dance?” I whispered shakily.
“No,” he said, brushing stray hairs from my sweaty face. “That was the A’li-uud dance.”
His legs came together between mine, and he lowered himself on top of me. Our mouths met, hotter than his skin had ever been. My tongue was frantic for his, and I burst through his teeth to find it. He reciprocated with vehemence, suckling and swirling and darting to me, and I tasted nutty richness. My hips lifted to greet his and beg for carnal relief. I heard his breath hitch in his throat.
In a single swipe, the spaghetti straps on my dress were cleared from my shoulders.
His nails raked the peeping swells of my breasts as he grabbed my bodice by the collar and tugged. I groaned and arched my back a bit, and I was freed from the confines of the fabric. Braless, I was left beneath the stars without a thing between my chill-perked nipples and his mouth, and he seized the advantage without a moment’s hesitation.
Capable lips found thin, sensitive skin, and his tongue lapped over the hardened tip. He suctioned slightly, just enough to elicit a mewl of pleasure from me, and then he loosened his hold. He was teasing me. I could feel the hinting smile around my nipple, and it only served to arouse me further. I lifted my hips again, but he dropped a hand to my pelvis and shoved it back to the ground. At the same time, he closed his teeth around the border and dragged them to the point. An enormous shudder ripped through me, and my hips fought against his pressure to jerk upward once more. He flickered his tongue around the peak before lifting his head. He looked more like Zuran than I’d ever seen him with his Cheshire Cat smile.
“I think you forget,” he murmured with sultry tones, “I am Elder. The control belongs to me.”
“That’s fine,” I gasped. “But I want more.”
He darted forward to pluck my lower lip between his teeth, and then shimmied down my body again. This time, he didn’t stop when he reached my chest. I watched his head journey down and down until he was level with the place where I was scalding. Hands danced under the hem of my dress, fingers like spiders skittering along my thighs until reaching the creases that led to the source of my anguish. I squirmed against his touch, but he ignored me. Flicking his wrists, he threw my skirt up over my midsection to reveal the black panties beneath.
His parted lips sank to my covered mound, and I felt sweltering breath through the fabric. He extended his tongue to flatten it against me. Even with my panties still on, it was sensational. I was so aroused I felt ready to explode. He licked gently, stroking his tongue along the core, and I couldn’t stop myself from pleading with him.
“Please!” I groaned.
He chuckled into my underwear. The same fingers that had snaked up my legs now hooked into the sides of the garment and started wriggling them down. I raised my hips yet again, this time to help him remove our only barrier, and the waistband snapped against the back of my thighs after clearing the round plumpness of my rear. He didn’t remove them completely, just shifted them to my ankles, but he pushed my thighs apart until my legs formed a diamond beneath him.
I was bared before him. The vulnerability to him turned me on so much I heard a dull buzzing in the back of my brain, and it took everything I had to stop myself from grabbing him by the hair and shoving his face down to my needy sex. He drank in the sight of me, his eyes moving slowly over every detail of my intimacy, and I saw the hard lines of his jaw twitch.
“Please,” I groaned again, this time quietly and hoarsely.
He obliged me and descended upon me, his mouth closing over my hooded bead just as it had my nipple. The moment his tongue made contact, a spasm took my body, and I bucked. Stars swam before my eyes, not the stars pricking the sky above but dazzling stars of imagination and sensation and passion. He fluttered the very tip of his tongue over the button, and a second spasm seized me. The stars that had blossomed just a breath before started to pop, exploding like fireworks into billions more. When he puckered his lips to tighten his grip and trailed a series of rapid circles, my vision detonated into solid, glowing white, and I broke into a million pieces of orgasmic ecstasy.
The desert was ripped in two by my shrieks, echoes of bliss bouncing back and forth between dunes until they became one long wailing moan. Venan didn’t withdraw as I soared through my climax; he continued stimulating me relentlessly, sucking me dry of every last ounce of pleasure. My hands furled into the sand, and I tried to clutch something, but the granules slithered through my fingers like water, and I was left to claw helplessly at nothing while I shook with more vigor than I had even after we’d finished the dance.
“Oh my god. Oh my god,” I panted, the vibrations finally beginning to wane and my head beginning to clear.
Venan looked up at me. He stilled his tongue and lips, but he didn’t remove himself or sit up. He just looked up at me through his lashes, studying my face as closely as he’d studied my womanhood when it was first revealed. I could feel that my cheeks were already pink from exertion, but they deepened further under his scrutiny.
“What?” I asked with breathless self-consciousness.
He lifted his head now and licked me from his mouth. “I will have to ask you to excuse me for staring so rudely,” he said. The corners of his mouth were playing with a whimsically honest smile. “You have just never looked so beautiful.”
Chapter Forty-One
Venan
The commotion inside the bay was deafening. Metallic clanks and echoed shouts and piercing groans and gnashing hisses burrowed deep into my eardrums and rendered me deaf to the natural sounds of the world. The pungent stench of grease and grime kept my nostrils flared with distaste, and my mouth salivated endlessly in response to the unappealing aroma’s potency. I was on high alert of the movements going on around me because any lack of focus could easily result in a crash with another A’li-uud or a tumble over a discarded part. Bodies whizzed past me like they had engines attached, some so quickly they were hardly more than a blur, and through it all, I strode with collected confidence.
Katil was walking by my side, though he was considerably edgier than I was. His eyes continuously darted in all directions to ensure our path was not due to cross with a harried worker, and more than once he reached across me to stop me in my tracks with the expectation we were about to be struck. When the time it was taking us to cross the bay from one side to the other was beginning to become somewhat ridiculous, I came to a halt of my own volition and looked at him sternly.
“You are more of a danger than an asset when you do that, Katil,” I told him. “I have to watch out for you more than anything else around me.”
“I apologize, Wise One,” he said, still flinging eyes across the space. “I am merely concerned for your safety amongst this chaos.”
“This chaos is nothing I have not before experienced. I spent more years as a warrior than anything else, if you remember,” I reminded him. He bowed his head apologetically, and we resumed walking side-by-side in tandem.
He was not wrong in his analysis of the bay—it was indeed chaotic—but I was pleased to see it in such a state. The A’li-uud flying about around me were those assigned to the mission into space to assist the Novai in locating a new home planet, and they all had taken their assignments seriously. I felt that this was the first example of those I led following under my lead with enthusiasm, and it was gratifying to witness.
Once we reached the eastern end, we sat at a chipped wooden table covered in bits and bobs in various states of disrepair. I shoved them aside while Katil placed the item he had been carrying onto the table’s center, a bulbous silver globe featuring fourteen identical square buttons. He pressed one. A lighted image shot out of the globe’s top, and I was looking at a map of the Andromeda galaxy in midair.
“As you well know, we are here,” he said, pointing to the map. “The Novai have already explored this region”—he flattened his hand and made a swirling motion around the offset right side of the galaxy—“but they have not yet reached the larger and more populated side of Andromeda. It is my personal opinion we start here in our very own galaxy rather than venturing out into deep space aimlessly. But, of course, the decision is yours.”
“Why should the decision be mine?” I questioned with a crooked brow. “You were made captain of this crew, not I.”
Katil looked at me with uncertainty. “Of course, but you are Elder, and it seems only fitting you should have authority over the course of our mission.”
“I appreciate your desire to ensure you do not overstep your bounds, Katil,” I said, “but it is important you understand the gravity of your role as captain. I wil
l not be there to offer you approval for the choices you make. Now would be an excellent time to begin demonstrating your capabilities because I would hate to send you into the galaxy with an entire crew of skilled warriors and not the slightest idea of how to manage them.”
“Yes, Wise One, I understand,” he acknowledged. Then, he seated himself at the table with me. “However, may I speak candidly?”
“Certainly.”
He looked around to ensure there were no loitering eavesdroppers. There were none as everyone was too focused on their individual jobs preparing the ships for a long and unpredictable trip, but he leaned in toward me anyway and lowered his voice. “I think it may be best if you captain this mission. I would be more than happy to step down to the role of Commander-in-Chief.”
I stared at him. I could not have been more surprised if he told me he was actually a human wearing A’li-uud skin.
“I do not understand,” I said. “You wish to vacate your captaincy?”
“No, I am honored to be chosen as captain for this mission,” he quickly assured me. “I am merely saying it may be better for everyone if you take that role.”
The holographic galactic map flickered as I lifted my hand to my chin and accidentally jostled the table with my elbow. “Could you explain yourself, please?”
He looked more uncomfortable than I had ever seen him, even counting the occasion when he happened across Octavia and me in the palace courtyard engaging in romantic affections. If I had to take a guess, I would have estimated at that particular moment he was regretting having brought up the topic at all, but it had indeed been brought up, and I now needed an explanation. My primary concern was sending Katil into space with the rest of the crew incapable of properly captaining them, which would not only be an extreme embarrassment for him but a danger to the entire crew.
Venan: A Paranormal Sci-Fi Alien Romance: Albaterra Mates Book 7 (The End) Page 20