"Running again?" Pyra asked.
Ero put his hands on his hips and glared back at the tremendous warrior, feeling the anger spiking in him again as he saw the teasing flicker in his orange eyes. The orbs that used to be blue were vibrant, nearly glowing orange now that he was mated to Eden and something about them made Ero feel uncomfortable when he looked at them.
"What are you doing here?" he asked accusingly, and immediately felt bad for the tone in his voice.
He didn't understand what the hell was happening to him. He had never been like this and now suddenly he felt like he could tear anyone who got near him limb from limb just for looking at him in a strange way or saying something that he thought might have a negative meaning. Fortunately Pyra didn't seem to notice his aggressive tone, or was choosing to ignore it, because if he had been offended by it and decided to engage Ero in a fight, there was no way the smaller warrior could have overpowered him.
"I have been sent out into the forest to get some sort of fruit that Eden wants."
"You are all the way the hell out here to get some fruit?" Ero asked incredulously.
Pyra nodded and sighed.
"Yeah. Apparently she is having cravings and says that she absolutely has to have this particular fruit and she won't settle for the cooked kind that we already have. She needs it right off of the bush and she needs it right this second."
Pyra said the words in a tone of resignation that said he thought the venture was ridiculous and wasn't thrilled about having to do it, but that he loved Eden so much he would literally go to the ends of the planet for her no matter what it was she asked of him. This was especially true now that Eden was carrying his child. The pregnancy was still not common knowledge among all of the Denynso and those that knew were approaching the situation with caution. Not only was this first birth among the children of the king and queen, but Eden had been a human when she first came to Uoria. She had nearly died at the claws of the Klimnu and the tribe's healer had brought her back to life. In doing so, however, Ciyrs had somehow changed her into a Denynso. The pregnancy was completely unprecedented and no one, not even the elders, had any idea what to expect.
"That sounds like you are having so much fun with this whole experience."
Laughing softly, Pyra shrugged and nodded.
"What am I going to do? You know how women can be."
Ero shook his head, feeling the tingling in his legs and the pent up energy and emotion in his belly that had fueled his hours of running over the last few days. If there was one thing that he definitely didn't know about, it was women. He wasn't mated and no female had ever caught his eye.
"Actually, no. I have no idea how women can be."
He saw Pyra take a step back and give him a once-over that made him feel scrutinized and uncomfortable. A strange growl rumbled in his throat and he had to hold back the compulsion to lunge at Pyra. The larger warrior, the biggest and most fearsome of the species, gave a knowing smile and rubbing his own face with one hand.
"You might not know yet, but from the looks of things I think you will be finding out pretty damn soon."
For a moment Ero didn't understand what Pyra was talking about, then he saw his eyes give a brief glance to the front of his pants. Ero rolled his eyes and reached down to the try to rearrange the raging erection he had been sporting most of the time since the day of the Klimnu attack. It was an uncomfortable reminder of the strange, unfamiliar feelings he had been experiencing and he was embarrassed to have Pyra point it out to him.
"Shut up," he said, managing to tuck his hard-on in a way that made it not look so obvious.
"Don't worry about it, buddy. You should have seen me when I was first around Eden. It was not a pretty sight. Well," he got a mischievous glint in his eyes, "I guess it was for her."
"Thanks for that image," Ero said, "It doesn't make sense, though. I haven't met any new women since Leia, and I know all this is not about her. I don't understand what the hell is going on."
"Don't stress about it," Pyra told him, starting toward the path leading into the forest, "With the attitude you've been throwing around and that situation you've got going on there, you're going to figure it plenty soon enough."
The other warrior's words bouncing around in his head and somehow making him feel even angrier, Ero started running again.
Chapter Three
"What's going on?" I asked, staring out the window again, "We landed forty minutes ago. Why am I still in here?"
The flight attendant paced back and forth in front of her, wringing her hands and throwing occasional glances over her shoulder toward the pilot's cabin. She obviously felt the tension and frustration that I was feeling. I didn't like to be kept waiting, especially when I was waiting to be let out of a tiny space ship chamber I had been in for the last five days.
"I'm not sure," the flight attendant said, barely braving a look in her direction, "The pilot just said that there has been a delay. Apparently your escort hasn't arrived at the landing point yet."
"Why does that matter?" I asked, reorganizing my notebooks and papers in my bag again just to give my hands something to do, "I'm sure I'm smart enough to make my way from a space ship to a meeting hall. This planet can't be so primal that they don't have roads, right?"
The flight attendant looked over at her with a touch of desperation in her eyes.
"Actually, I've never gotten off of the ship during one of these flights. I just stay inside and use the sleeping quarters on the top floor to take a shower, sleep, and change between legs."
"You've never gotten off of the ship on another planet?"
"No."
"Your job is to travel around the universe carrying passengers in between planets and you have never once had the curiosity to step outside and see one of them for yourself? You don't wonder what they might look like or what the people living there are like?"
The flight attendant shook her head, suddenly looking even younger and less remarkable as her eyes welled up in tears.
"I'm too afraid."
"Of what?"
"Of what the other species might be like," she said, dropping her tone slightly, "My grandmother always said that we should stick to our own kind and that humans don't have any business running all over other planets intermingling with other species. She says if we were supposed to be interacting with them, that they would already be on our planet and we wouldn't have to travel to find them."
"How incredibly closed minded of her."
The statement should have offended her, but instead the flight attendant just nodded.
"I haven't even told her that this is what I do for a living. She just knows that I work for the university."
I sighed. I will never understand the level of intolerance and ignorance that was still so pervasive. It was as if people got over one hang up that they had and decide that it was awful to have that viewpoint, only to move on to the next one with the same level of intensity and stubbornness. I rubbed my temples, trying to release some of the tension that was building there.
"Regardless, why am I stuck here until some escort comes? That wasn't part of the itinerary the program gave me."
The flight attendant shrugged again.
"Apparently it's against the law for humans who have just arrived on Uoria to travel from their ship unaccompanied. Everyone who visits has to be escorted to the meeting hall where they will meet the king and queen before they are allowed to stay."
I sighed again.
"So who are these escorts?" I asked, "Other academics? Law enforcement?"
"I think they are warriors."
"Fantastic. So between the leading university research department for interplanetary exploration and cooperation and a group of warriors, they couldn't coordinate one meeting. That bodes terrifically for the future of the success of this program."
I was usually calmer and more pleasant than this, but it seemed space travel was pulling the worst
out of me. Always described by everyone who met me as headstrong and fiercely independent, I have a very low tolerance for anything that I saw as incompetence, which this level of disorganization and improper handling of a situation definitely was in my mind.
Finally the pilot's voice came over the speaker in the chamber, announcing that the escort had arrived and I was welcome to come to the exit door. The flight attendant looked even more relieved than I felt.
"Oh, good. I was getting worried we were going to have to stay here for even longer. Is there anything I can help you with before I go upstairs for my break?"
I shook my head, reaching out to squeeze the girl's hand comfortingly. No matter what the origins of the fears she was experiencing, they were obviously very real and I suddenly felt bad for her. I hated to see a person feel so limited by their own minds that they were unable to face any changes in their normal situation or confront anything that may alter their point of voice because it was too uncomfortable for them.
"No, I'm fine. You go on ahead. Maybe I'll see you on my trip back in a few months."
The attendant smiled and returned the squeeze with her hand.
"Thanks. I'd like that. They'll have your bags for you at the door."
Without saying another word, the flight attendant scurried across the room and disappeared through the hatch that led to the small chamber where the attendants spent much of their time during the flight and where, I presumed, there was a set of stairs or an elevator that would bring her up into the staff sleeping quarters overhead. Taking a final glance around the chamber, I walked toward the front of the chamber and through a sliding door to the exit hatch.
The other flight attendant stood at the door, holding my bags in each hand and looking like he was still seeing the images from his beloved game flashing on the backs of his eyes. I reached for the bags and took firm hold of them by their handles.
"I can get these. Thanks," I said.
The attendant relinquished the bags, but I had only taken one step down from the ship onto the landing platform when I felt hands grab at them again.
"I'll help you," a male voice said and I looked down at the platform to see a man reaching up to hold onto my luggage.
He was certainly attractive, but if this was one of the famed warriors of the Denynso people, I found myself a touch disappointed and a bit confused. I had heard tales of enormous, powerful men so breathtakingly beautiful that women couldn't control themselves around them, which, I will have to admit, is one of the influencing factors for signing up for the program. The man in front of me was lovely, but at only around six feet tall and quite slender, he was decidedly not enormous and looked less fearsome that many of the professors who walked the halls of the university back on Earth. I pulled the bags back toward me.
"No, thank you, I can do it myself."
"I'm happy to help."
I gave a final tug, yanking the bags out of his hands.
"I have them."
I stepped down from the platform and when I straightened in front of him I saw the escort's eyes travel over my body in a way that I didn't really like. His gaze stayed on me for just a bit too long and I couldn't quite interpret the look on his face. It was somewhere between shock and an emotion that I couldn't define. Finally he lifted his eyes to mine.
"You definitely don't look like the other human women that have come here," he said.
I shot him a scathing look.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
The man stammered for a minute, obviously trying to come up with an explanation.
"I just mean your hair. The other women have dark hair, except for Eden, but her hair is more red. Yours is…golden."
I wasn't convinced that that was actually what he was thinking. Leaving him still muttering, I pushed past and started down the steps of the landing platform.
"What's your name?" he called after me and I heard his footsteps follow me down the stairs.
"Zuri Hase. Didn't they tell you?"
"No. I'm not the original escort you were supposed to have."
"Oh," I said, some of the bitterness leaving my voice.
Maybe something bad happened and that's what caused the delay. I didn't want to be mean to him if his schedule for the day was thrown off just as much as mine was.
"I'm Ero," he told her as he caught up to her, "It's nice to meet you."
Chapter Four
What the hell was wrong with him?
The one time in his entire life when he had actually been trusted to do something important, and he was already screwing it up. Pyra was supposed to escort the new professor from the ship just like he had with the other women, but at the last minute he asked Ero to step in for him. Ero didn't know if there was something wrong with Eden and the baby requiring his attention, or if something else happened that took him away from his responsibilities, but he hadn't really cared in the moment. He had just been excited to have been the one that the older and more respected warrior had chosen to take his place.
Not only had he managed to be almost an hour late for the set time that he was supposed to meet her because he tore the lacing on his pants and had to go all the way back to his house to change them so that he didn't greet her with the intense erection that he was still sporting everywhere he went, but he had also offended the woman almost as soon as she stepped out of the ship. He couldn't really help it, though. He was expecting the same type of woman as Eden, Elianna, or Leia. What stepped out of the ship, however, was a shock. Instead of tiny and fragile-looking, Zuri rivaled some of the females of his species in size. She was only a few inches shorter than him and had a body that was lush, full, and curvy. The effect was bewildering. He had become accustomed to the small human women and was startled by someone who looked so different, but at the same time, he was drawn to all of the soft curves and swells. They seemed to have a powerful effect on his body as well, making him twitch and harden even further as the intense, almost animal feelings that built in his chest.
As she took long strides to pull out in front of him so that she walked ahead of him by several feet, Ero got an even fuller view of her body. Wide hips shifted beneath her long, loose skirt, accentuating the deep curve of her waist beneath her tight shirt. Something about her size made him uncomfortable, reminding him of his own size concerns and how small he felt compared to the other warriors. He jogged forward again to catch up with her.
"Tell me about your program," he said.
It came out more as an aggressive, almost violent, demand than an actual request inviting conversation and he saw her look sideways at him.
"What do you want to know about it? Are you going to be a student?"
It sounded like she was teasing him and he didn't like how that taunting made him feel. It was worse than when it came from the warriors. Hearing this woman making fun of him, even as subtle as it was, made a sharp pain go through his chest and he felt defensiveness building through him. Who did she think she was making fun of him?
"No," he said, "I'm a warrior. I have no reason to go to school."
"Oh, really? So you know everything that you need to know and never need to learn anything else?"
Well, shit. This conversation was just going downhill as fast as she could get the words out of his mouth. What was it about this woman that made him completely out of control. She was cute, but definitely not so beautiful that he should be stumbling over his words and humiliating himself every time he opened his mouth. So why was he getting harder every time she talked to him, and why did he want to keep talking to her no matter what came out?
"That's not what I said," he said, "I just…I don't really need to know about Earth."
"So you know about the program. Why did you ask?"
"I know that you're here to teach about Earth. I don't know any more than that."
He was getting more and more frustrated, while also feeling worse every time he spoke and he saw the darkening across
her wide blue eyes. It was a confusing feeling that he was really starting to hate.
"Well, to be completely honest, I don't really know a whole lot more than that, either. I just signed up to be the professor for the exchange program one day before my flight. I didn't really get much of a chance to figure out what I was going to teach."
There was laughter in her voice and he felt some of the tension ease out of his body. She glanced over at him and he noticed that her soft, rounded face really was pretty. Her skin was pale and smooth, not sprinkled with freckles the way that Eden's was, and her golden blond hair framed it as it flowed around her shoulders. Her mouth was wide, with full, soft lips slicked with lipstick that made them shine in a way that was undeniably alluring.
"Why did you want to come?"
He was honestly curious about why she decided to come to the planet to teach. If she had only signed up right before she left to be a part of the program, she obviously hadn't spent much time planning and getting herself invested in the concept of teaching on Uoria. There was a period of silence and Ero was worried for a minute that he had made her angry again and broken the brief moment of pleasantness between them. Finally she sighed, but it wasn't a sigh of exasperation. Instead, it sounded like she was trying to figure it out herself.
"I'm a professor at home, obviously, and I love teaching, so that's the main appeal. I'm excited about getting the chance to teach Earth customs, and I think I’m even more excited about getting to experience some new things."
"Is Uoria very different from Earth?"
She gave a short laugh.
"I've only been out here for about five minutes. I'm not really sure. So far, it doesn't look too far off. Not as many buildings."
They fell silent as they walked. They reached the center of the village and Zuri hesitated, no longer knowing where to go now that she had more options than just going straight ahead. He subtly stepped around her so that she could see him and guided her through the village and to the meeting hall.
Alien Romance Box Set: Uoria Mates Complete Series (Books 1 - 10): A Sci-fi Alien Warrior Invasion Abduction Romance Page 20