by Rena Marks
He shrugs. “I am picking up extra hunting shifts. Brit has shown interest in Wisdonia, so I cover a day for him every now and then while he courts her.”
“You’re a good friend.” I mean that, Diont is a kind man. Brit is another of my flings. I’m glad he’s dating. I often suspected Wisdonia cared for him.
He shrugs. “He would do the same for me if I were to find someone.”
“I’m sure anyone would do the same for you.”
“Many of us wish more humans had been aboard your ship. I know it is selfish of us.”
“It’s not selfish at all. If more of us knew how awesome Blaedonians were, they’d be scrambling here in droves.”
From across the room, Aschero leaves his dance partner and make his way across the room to me. I watch his elegant glide, and tilt my head for a kiss.
“Hey, beautiful.”
He turns to Diont and nods a greeting.
“Aschero.” Diont greets him with a clasp of hands. “How are you?”
“Never better, my friend.”
“Congratulations to you both.”
“Thank you for being understanding.”
Diont nods wryly. “It was always apparent that Miranda’s feelings were consumed with you. It was meant to be.”
“Is there anyone you’re interested in?” I ask.
“Not right now.” He shrugs. “Someone will come along when the time is right. I’ve accepted it. But you two should watch that others accept it as well.”
He doesn’t name anyone, but we all know who he means. Then he gets up to leave. “I shall go figure out this human dancing. It may serve me to court a female in the future.” He grins, and leaves us with a small wave.
I reach for Ash’s hand, and pull him to sit on the stool between my legs. I’m still on the edge of the table, with my thighs spread on either side of him. I wrap my arms around his strong shoulders. “I love you, Ash,” I whisper into his ear.
I place a kiss on the top of his head, and he wraps my hands with his, holding me against him. I can feel the beat of his heart under my palms.
“I love you as well, my mate.”
We watch the dancing for a few minutes, and I’m very aware of Cio’s watchful eye looking our way more than once. Diont is right. I hope Cio will move on soon.
Sometime during the next song, Aschero rises from the seat. “I would like to dance with you, baby.”
I smile. It’s what I call him.
We make our way to the dance floor, and I hold my arms around his waist. His chin rests on the top of my head, and I feel safe and in love.
The music is beautiful, the dancing is beautiful, and I have the man I love in my arms. His heart thunders beneath my ear, and my arms roam over his back, every now and then falling lower to caress the muscles of his ass.
A bulge begins to form in the front of him. I miss the days of summer when the men wear loincloths. You could reach up under them. Now, during winter, the loins are replaced with soft leather leggings.
“You were right,” he murmurs.
“About what?”
“This dancing is foreplay.”
“Yes. I told you.”
I snuggle closer to him, even though I’m sure there’s not a hair between us. He groans.
“Miranda.”
“I want you,” I murmur.
“There’s only so much dancing foreplay a man can take,” he announces, and picks me up. I wrap my legs around him, and there’s cheering as he carries me from the dance floor.
His skin has a light sheen of sweat on it, and I lick his neck in the hallway. He’s slightly salty.
“You taste delicious,” I whisper. My heartbeat speeds. I crave him. “I’m really horny,” I whisper.
His eyes look heavy-lidded. “I need to take care of that for you.”
“Yes, you do, sexy.” I nip his earlobe. “You really turn me on.”
“I love you, Miranda.”
“I love you, too, Ash.” I do, with my whole heart. Something has been triggered since I’ve awoken, a need. An incessant lust that follows every time I think of him.
He kicks aside the curtain to our cave.
“I can’t wait for summer. I want to go back to the creek. I loved exploring you in the water.” That one was my favorite dream/memory.
“As soon as the weather turns, I’ll take you off for a few days alone. We’ll have to wait until after the moon of rain because this rain season will be cold as the snows melt and run off. But then it is a beautiful season, with the leaves on the trees turning colors.”
“They grow that quickly?”
“They will grow during the moon of rain. After they turn colors this season, they turn to the natural green for the next two seasons.”
“You know what I miss from Earth? A set of stairs.”
“What is stairs?”
“Do you see how tall our ceiling is? Supposing there was an area dug out that you could crawl around in…”
“There are areas like that. We destroy them for the higher ceilings. It helps the smoke from the fires dissipate.”
“Yes, but if there was just a small section, then we could set stairs next to it to get up there. It’s a set of steps, like this.” I arrange the glow rocks that we have on the table. “One is wide on the bottom. Another one is placed right here. The third step sits behind those two, and moves you taller.”
“So each step you take climbs you higher up.”
“Exactly. But then, we have a new position for sex. You see, if they’re wide enough, I lay down here on step two, and you could do me on it.”
“Dual purpose. They will get us up to the ceiling area and we would use them as furniture.”
“Yes. And the ceiling area is called a loft.”
“In the meantime, we must make do with what we have. Right now, we have a table.” He sets my ass on it, and draws my legs up over his shoulders. “You fit perfectly against me.”
He rolls his body like a dancer, and his bulge presses up against the seam of my sex. I moan.
“That’s so hot.” In fact, I’m dripping wet with anticipation.
“It looks hot from my angle.” He’s looking down at my slit and I can feel myself swell with pleasure. He must see the outline of my pussy through my soft leggings. He inserts his thumbs into the top of my leggings, and tugs. I lift my hips to help him, and they roll smoothly down my hips. He releases my legs long enough to whip the leggings down my legs, and then he puts me back into position. He traces over a hipbone with one finger, and then trails it down to my sex. I gasp when he parts my lips.
“Beautiful,” he says thickly. “You’re pink inside. So sexy.”
I lift the bottom of my tunic and fling it up and over. I’m not wearing the strip of leather under that binds my breasts and keeps my stiffened nipples from poking through the soft fabrics.
He groans as I cup my breasts, bringing them together. His erection is stiff and hard now, and the head dances at the entrance to my body. I wriggle slightly.
“Baby,” I pant.
“Mmm?”
“Can you just insert the head a little bit?”
“Like this?”
He pushes through my labia, and they’re so slick they part easily. “That’s incredible,” I moan. “You feel so good inside me. Go deeper.”
He pushes another slight inch.
“Ash,” I gasp. “Oh, baby.”
Lightly he circles my clit with his index finger. Then he gathers some slickness from between us, and stretches it up, stroking my clit. “That’s it. Exactly.”
“I’m going to drive you crazy,” he mutters. “As crazy as you make me.”
I’m already there. I clench my vaginal muscles, trying desperately to get him to delve deeper. With a small maddeningly slow rhythm, he inserts his cock a little deeper and then pulls right back.
“I love to watch your pussy as I play with it,” he says.
“Please, please,” I beg.
His cock prods against
my seam, then slides through my slit. It gathers the slickness there, spreading it around.
His cock feels enormous, and I’m not even sure it’ll fit all the way, but I sure as hell want to try. Good thing I’m a panty-soaker.
He presses his lips tightly and begins to sink slowly into me. My body stretches to accommodate him and he’s large, oh-so-large. It’s fucking amazing, he fills me up and every nerve ending lights up within me.
When he’s fully seated, he begins to move. With a deep breath, he slides out of my body and then strokes back in. I cling to him, and then he’s completely in me all over again, touching the top of me deeper than anyone has a right to. The squirmy rings on his dick are rubbing up against my g-spot deliciously, and they’re shifting around in there like magic.
He pulls out again. I moan.
“More,” I gasp. “Deeper. Faster. Harder.”
He pauses, watching me, the head of his cock poised between my lips.
Finally he thrusts in to the hilt, all the way, and I can feel him so deep he’s touching my cervix. I freeze as every nerve ending stands on edge, waiting for something, pleasure or pain to push me over the elusive peak.
He pulls out and I can feel every delicious bump as he does. The pleasure rings slide from my body, one by one. Then he plunges in again, and as he rubs my clit, I involuntarily clench, my orgasm looming.
“Not yet,” he commands, pulling out.
Then he bends down and my legs shift so my feet are on his shoulders. His mouth licks the tiny bundle of nerves his finger had been teasing. My clit feels like it’s bursting into flame, and I tilt my hips, wanting more of his tongue. He sucks my cunt into his mouth and once again, I teeter on the edge, above to sail over.
He stands again, and positions his cock between my labia. He slides into me again, all the way, and this time, like he can’t help himself, begins fucking me in earnest. He’s grunting and thrusting and my entire body tenses.
Damn if he doesn’t pull out again. I feel the orgasm fading away. But my excitement starts again as he bends, and decides to lick my cunt again. This time he pulls my lips apart and works on dipping his glorious tongue into my hole. I squirm as the hot wetness thrusts in and out.
“I really need to come,” I tell him. “I’m dripping wet and I want you so bad.”
He spreads my legs like scissors and his cock slides into me all the way to the hilt. Then his hips hammer at me in a merciless, driving rhythm. I scream, because it feels so deliciously good. He swells even more, becoming impossibly harder and thicker. Then he throws his head back with a roar and his pelvis grinds against me.
For a second I hover on the fence, and then I hurl into the abyss.
My entire body pulses and spasms in a release so powerful that every muscle in my body trembles in the aftermath. Then I come, screaming my pleasure as he thrusts, whispering soft words in my ear. With every stroke of his cock I’m boneless and weak and quivering. My climax sends him spiraling over the edge too, and he comes deep inside me with a shout, his seed spurting in warm bursts inside my belly. I can feel him pulse inside me. He pulls my hips hard as he comes, digging his fingers into my flesh.
Finally, he releases my legs and collapses on me. My breasts heave under his head as I try to catch my breath.
Eventually he pulls out and carries me to bed, where he tucks us into our favorite positions, my head on his chest.
He sleeps long before me. But eventually, the sound of his heartbeat lulls me to sleep, and soon I dream. This time, I’m aware it’s a dream. Not like before, when I couldn’t tell what was real and what was a memory. No, now I feel it.
This time, I remember as I listen to the sound of Ash’s heartbeat. I’m cuddled up under a fur with Aschero as we watch the night monsters through the invisible wall of the Stargazer vessel. They had arrived on Blaedonia and offered us a way off the planet to anyone who wanted passage back to Earth. But they have told us not to rush in making the decision, instead to enjoy the food they can prepare from their food processors. They have cloaked the ship on the outside so the night predators can prowl freely, without seeing us.
We’re hooting and hollering, and are thoroughly icked out by the ugly creatures on the prowl for food, but instead eat each other.
Ash, my big blue boy-toy, has his large, warm hand on my inner thigh. I wouldn’t mind him going a little higher, but I know I’ve given him way too many liberties and before long he’ll start to get possessive. Just like Michael did. Besides, back at the village I’ve been flirting with a hunter from another hunting crew. Cio.
Ash is first in my heart, but then again, that’s exactly why I need Cio. Behind me, I notice the Stargazer’s mate, Jessie, is alone as she sets more trays of food on the table. I move Aschero’s hand from my thigh. “I’ll be right back,” I say.
He smiles at me, and my heart melts. He really is a gorgeous man.
I sneak back to where Jessie is, and the rest of the tribe is too transfixed on the creature-watching to notice me. “Can I speak with you?” I whisper.
She’s a smart lady. She understands my need for privacy.
“Come back to the kitchen and grab a tray for me.”
We head into the kitchen, and her husband, Neo is there.
“Everything all right?” he asks.
“Yup,” she says cheerfully, kissing him. “Just having a bit of girl time.”
He leaves the kitchen, and she turns to me. “What’s wrong? Do you want to come back to Earth and don’t know how to tell the others?”
I shake my head. “It’s not that easy. Back on Earth, I had a boyfriend. He wasn’t the best, and I was kind of dating him because we were lab partners, but…”—I take a deep breath here, because this is the secret I’m holding—“I want to know what’s happened with him. Did he graduate? Is he married? Did he report me missing? I was with him when I was taken.”
She nods, and goes over to a small computer thing on the wall.
“Cassio,” she says, tapping it.
The image of a blond woman pops up on the screen. She’s gorgeous, wearing a sleek silvery white pantsuit and a nose ring in her delicate nose. “What’s up, buttercup?”
“This is Miranda. She’d like to decide if she’s coming back or not, but wants to know about her boyfriend first. Can you look him up?”
“Sure thing. Give me a name and state.”
“Michael McGill. Pennsylvania,” I say.
She looks down, and types a few commands. Then her face blanks of all emotions. “There’s an article online. It talks about Michael McGill, age twenty-five, found dead, and his girlfriend missing. I’m sorry, Miranda. You’re wanted for murder.”
I take a deep breath, blow it out slowly, and then nod. Jessie thanks her, and then she disconnects.
“Miranda, you can still go home,” she says. “All of the abductions have been covered up. We can bring you back, call you kidnapped, and even find the real murderer.”
I shake my head. “You don’t understand, Jessie. I am the murderer.”
Chapter Nine
I wake up with a start. Oh, God. How could I have forgotten I killed Michael? That’s why I didn’t want to settle down with Ash. That’s why I was dating four men. It wasn’t that I was just a tramp. It’s because I’m a murderer. I can’t have them find out.
The Blaedonians are an honorable race. Now I know why I didn’t return home. What would I have if I returned to Earth? A big fat prison sentence.
My choice was taken away and I’m trapped now. I’m mated with a man who has no idea of who I really am. I don’t want to be around to see the look in his eyes should he find out.
Just then Aschero enters the cave.
“Good morning.”
I smile at him, trying to act as normal as possible.
“I have brought you some food,” he whispers. “So you don’t have to go out until later. It’s nearly light. All the hunters are being dispatched out for fresh meat today.”
“Oh, go
od. Someone will get to Adretta?” My heart is pounding, but I want to act normal.
“Yes. I believe it is Cio who is taking her supplies and allowing her out of the cave for a few hours reprieve. I imagine she is going mad from being cooped up indoors by herself.”
I nod. I can’t even imagine. I know the punishment was necessary, but it’s still hard to watch. A part of me wonders if Drakar dispatched Cio to help Adretta to keep him from Aschero. I certainly hope Cio’s issues clear up quickly. Who would have thought he’d have held on this long after I was mated?
“I love you so much,” Ash whispers, holding me to his blue chest. I inhale the scent from his skin. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost him. Maybe I won’t have to. The only one that knows my secret is me and Jessie, the Stargazer who is deep in space by now.
“I was thinking. Maybe when you get back, we can talk about plans for a baby.”
“Miranda, are you sure?”
I nod. “I want your baby, Ash.”
He holds me close and I can feel the slight tremble in his muscles. We’ve worked so hard for this relationship and I’m ready to plunge in all the way. I’ll bury my secret, and no one will ever know any different.
“Thank you,” he says, and there’s a glisten in his eyes. He kisses my forehead, stokes the fire and touches the glow rock to give me a brighter light. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”
I nod. “Love you.”
After I bathe and eat my breakfast, I head outside to see the sun. It’s glorious and warm, finally. During the night and the long days, the heat emanates from the planet’s core. But the heat from the sun is a different feeling, an energizing feeling. I hold my face up to it.
Suddenly it grows dark. I snap open my eyes to see a bag being drawn over my head. A hand is clamped over my mouth, and I’m picked up effortlessly.
The air is knocked out of me as I’m swung onto what I think is a shoulder. Whoever has me is running, and my abdomen is right on the bony protrusion. Each time I try to gather enough air to scream, it cuts into my diaphragm, choking out my air supply.
And it’s cold, so cold. What if I had gone outside not dressed in my furs? What if I’d have just been in leggings and moccasins? I’d probably be frozen solid by now.