Vasili gave Romand a tight lipped glare. "Is Mai all right?" he asked, more than a little worriedly.
"She's fine. Morto is with her now." Xavion looked around and met everyone's eyes. Each of the men fell silent as he did, their gleeful expressions of anticipation disappearing as befit the occasion of judgment.
"You all know why we are here." He swung Kadira into the clearing formed between them. He hit the deck, skidded a couple of feet and lay still, groaning.
"Kadira has broken our laws for too long. I caught him in the act of stealing--fresh blood from my room--from me!" It irked him having to refer to Mai that way, but there were, understandably enough, no laws against killing aliens, even if a fellow Vampyrian did have an attachment and it was critical that he stick to the letter, and wording, of the law.
"By the dictates of our law, he deserves nothing less than death."
At Xavion’s pronouncement, Kadira sat up, glaring balefully at his accuser. "It's nothing but a fucking snack." He rolled away as Xavion kicked angrily at him and managed to avoid the boot Xavion had tried to plant in his belly.
"I am innocent. I did not drink his blood. Just look at that fucking whore and you'll see for yourselves. I did not commit thievery, so you cannot kill me."
That denial jolted everyone in the group. In shocked silence, they looked at Xavion for answers and he could see his own frustration reflected in their gazes.
Not her blood. Damn it! The bastard is right. It isn't her blood, so it doesn't count. Growling in frustration and pure rage, Xavion cursed under his breath. It was only by a supreme effort that he managed to restrain himself from attacking Kadira again and finishing what he’d started in his cabin, particularly when Kadira smiled at him smugly.
Laughing at Xavion’s expression, Kadira dragged himself to his feet. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have business to attend to." He shouldered past Xavion, grinning into his face as he passed.
"Not so fast."
As one, they all turned to Vasili.
"You said you caught him in your room?"
Xavion frowned, but he began to see where Vasili as going. "Yes."
"According to our contracts, no one is allowed to go into the captain's cabin ... Right?"
A slow, gleeful smile spread across Xavion's face as he turned to face Kadira.
"That's right. According to the contract you each signed when you came aboard my ship, no one is allowed in my cabin without my express permission. And I sure as hell didn’t give Kadira permission to go into my cabin and try to kill Mai--my snack."
As dawning spread, Kadira looked around quickly at the others, searching for an ally where he had none. He finally met Xavion's merciless gaze.
"You can't sentence me to death for a minor infraction."
"No, I can't." Xavion hit the air door lock, and it opened with a hiss. Grabbing Kadira, he shoved the man toward it. "According to the contract, however, I have the right to expel you from my ship."
"You can't throw me out here!" Kadira gasped in dawning horror. “That’s a death sentence! Tell him! Tell him he can’t do this!”
"Romand. Vasili." They each nodded. Taking the now struggling Kadira by the arms, they dragged him through the door, lifting him from his feet and tossing tossing toward the back of the air lock and then locked it behind him. The outer door opened into the vacuum of space as Xavion slammed his fist down on the release and Kadira was sucked out, his expression a caricature of horror.
A sense of satisfaction settled over Xavion as he watched Kadira float slowly from sight. Finally, he turned to return to his room, unsurprised when Vasili joined him.
"You know, that was basically a death sentence."
Xavion shrugged. "I didn't kill him."
"Will Mai be all right?"
"I'm about to find out.” He hesitated. Vasili...."
"Don't mention it." Vasili clapped him on the back, grinning. “No one is more relieved than I am to see the last of that bastard.”
Thanks.
Chapter Eight
Mai started at the knock at her door, feeling fear wash over her in a cold tide as it occurred to her that Xavion would not have knocked. Yanking the blood stained sheets around herself to cover her nudity, she fought against the sickness having Kadira’s blood on her induced, tried to fight the sheer terror of knowing someone was on the other side of the door and there was nothing she could do to keep them out.
"Who is it?" she asked shakily.
The door slid open and Morto stepped in, carrying a lantern and squinting from the light.
"It's just me, Mai."
The look he gave her was appraising and Mai wasn’t nearly as reassured by the fact that it was Morto as she might have been at any other time.
"Are you all right?"
Mai nodded, shivering from the shock of her ordeal. I almost got killed today. He would have...My God, there's no telling what he would have done if...
Again, his gaze flickered over her, but he made no attempt to come any closer and Mai relaxed fractionally.
"Xavion took that rat Kadira to court. It shouldn't take him long at all to carry out his sentence and come back. But he didn’t want you to be left alone so I volunteered to make sure you were safe until he could return.”
"What will he do?"
Morto shrugged, more to himself than to her. "Kill him. It's no more than he deserves. A lot less, as a matter of fact. It's a tragedy he can't be killed more than once."
"Oh." Mai looked down at her hands and then away again when she saw the vampire’s blood and skin beneath her nails.
How many others did he kill that way? She thought with an inward shudder. The others who’d been captured when she was?
She was ashamed that she’d given them so little thought. They were strangers to her, but still her kinsmen in the sense that they were all human, all of Earth.
In all honesty, she knew they wouldn’t have given her much thought either. At such a time, it was natural to be more concerned with one’s own life that anyone else’s--and it wasn’t as if she had been in any position to help them.
She still felt horror that it had only just now dawned upon her that she was very likely the only human left on board. From what had been said, Kadira made a habit of stealing from the others, and he might have killed them himself, but there was no way she could dismiss the fact that the other captives been brought to the ship for one reason only--food.
The rosy picture she, and all of the other vampire wannabes had painted, bore no resemblance to harsh reality. Plain and simple, this was a battle for survival of the species--both species.
She fought hard to reconcile her thoughts. The man she knew--the man she had come to love was of the same stock. Morto and Vasili, both of whom she had come to know and call friends, were vampyrians, as well.
They kill people--her people. It was one thing to attack soldiers, armed men, but something else altogether to take a helpless captive. Did they all torture their victims? Was Kadira the exception or the rule? She had done her best not to think about it before, but it was not something she could ignore anymore.
"Mai?"
"Yes?" Mai looked up at him. Is he really a monster? Morto had never given her reason to wonder. She may never have wondered about it at all if not for tonight. He looks so normal....
"Nothing." He turned away from her as though to leave. "It's just ... I never thought Xavion the type to fall for an alien."
"What?" Mai stared hard at his back. Fall...? "What do you mean?"
"Well, isn't it obvious?" He turned to look at her, meeting her gaze frankly. "He's never behaved like this before. He doesn't have a reputation for going through so much for something insignificant, like a snack. Hell, he's never even taken a snack aboard as far as that goes. He's the only one that hasn't. He must think of you as something more than food." He shifted uncomfortably at the look she gave him, shaking his head.
“Don’t look at me like that! I can’t help what I am any more than you can. It’s
just the way it is--except--I think I understand why he looks at you the way does, why he feels--differently about you.
"Anyway, I'm sure you'd like to get cleaned up before he returns. I'll take you to the head."
Her thoughts were chaotic, but the desire to bathe was far stronger than anything else at the moment. The very minute he’d offered, she had felt sick with the need to clean herself immediately. Wrapping the sheet around herself, Mai scrambled from the bed, following so closely behind him that she stepped on his heels several times. When they reached the head, Morto handed her the light and stepped aside.
"I'll be right outside. You have nothing to fear."
Mai gazed up at him for a long moment, realizing that she trusted him in spite of everything. "I know. Thank you, Morto."
Relief flooded her the instant she shed the sheet and the tattered remnants of her clothes. Although having a clean breeze flow over her body did nothing at all to help her feelings, she was at least able to make the breeze a hot one. She stood under it, contemplating. Her life had not turned out anything at all as she had planned or imagined. This was aside from the fact that she had never in her wildest dreams thought she would be abducted by aliens, let alone vampiric aliens.
Morto seems to think Xavion cares about me.
Mai knew now that she had loved him almost from the start. It was more than a mere attraction, more than just what he could do for her. He was everything she had ever wanted in a man. He was sexy and interesting and handsome, and oh so much more.
But does he really care anything at all about me? Did it matter?
It did. It mattered so much she felt like crying. Morto had said that he had never taken a captive before. That meant that, whatever the others might do to the women they abducted, he had never done it.
That didn’t quiet the voice in her mind, though. It cried out that he was the captain. He could have prevented it.
Perhaps he would have except that he had never considered humans anything more than the others had, desirable as food, nothing else.
If we were traveling through space, wouldn't we humans be just as bad?
Historically, humans had been worse than cruel in their dealings with other even with other humans. What would they do to a species that they did not consider on par with themselves?
If she could live among her own kind, knowing all of the horrible things her own people were capable of, had done, were still capable of doing, how could the society Xavion hailed from be harder to accept? She knew she could not blame him for the sins of his people. Knew too that there was nothing to be done to stop a whole race from doing what it had done for millenia. The question was, would it be enough to know that Xavion and his crew would never again harm her own people?
My god, what a bleeding heart I've become! Mai decided it would have to be enough. The question was, would they stop?
Mai's heart leapt into her throat as the door to the head slid open and Xavion swept into the room. She relaxed the moment she saw it was him, rushed over to him without hesitation, flinging herself into his open arms.
* * * *
Now that all of the blood was gone, Xavion could see exactly what damage had been done to Mai's body. If Kadira were still on board, he would have rushed back to him the minute he got a really good look at Mai and beat the bastard into a bloody pulp. Mai's left eye was swollen almost shut. Her poor, beautiful face was bruised all over. Angry purple bruises were splayed across her ribs, her shoulders, her arms, even her legs.
His rage subsided abruptly when he saw doubt in her eyes, fear. He swallowed with an effort, hoping against hope that it was only her fear from the attack, not him that she feared and distrusted. For several moments, she merely stared at him, looking vulnerable and fragile, and then, to his relief she rushed over into his arms when he held them out to her.
Thankfulness welled tightly in his chest as he wrapped his arms around her, holding her tightly against him. "Are you all right?"
"I--I think so...."
"He's gone Mai. Kadira is gone. You'll never have to worry about him again, ever."
She pulled away, looking up into his eyes. "Did you kill him?"
Xavion shook his head. Something about the way she asked made him glad that he could truthfully say he had not.
"I kicked him off my ship."
Mai's look turned quizzical. "Isn't that the same thing?"
"No. I didn't actually touch him." He couldn't touch the man according to their laws, though it rankled that he had not been able to do more than see it done when he would have felt far better pitching Kadira off the ship himself. He would have been sentenced to death himself, though, if anyone on the crew told the home world what I'd done and although he might have counted it well worth it under other circumstance, he’d discovered life meant far more to him now that he had Mai. "I'm not responsible for any lack of oxygen outside my ship."
"I see."
He shook his head, caressing her because he couldn’t seem to stop himself, because he needed to touch her to reassure himself that she was still alive. "Mai, this ship was designed to house seven people comfortably. With Kadira gone, there's a vacancy on my crew. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'd like it ... if you'd join us."
"Really?" Her face brightened momentarily before falling. She shook her head sadly. "I’m human, Xavion. I wouldn't even make it to the next planet on your route. I'd be long dead before you get there."
"That won't be a problem if you’ll be my mate?" he asked, lifting her chin and meeting her gaze.
"Really? I mean, you said no before. You said you didn't think it would work."
Doubt shook him, but the incident with Kadira had brought home some truths he could no longer ignore. He loved Mai, and he’d come to realize that he was going to lose her if he didn’t at least try to take her as his mate. He could of course, simply continue to cling to what he had now, but he not only didn’t want to give Mai up at all, he loved her too much to do nothing and watch her fragile human body deteriorate with age. "You said it would. I'm willing to give it a try, if you are?"
Mai nodded excitedly and he held her close in his arms, feeling the warmth of her body against his own, relishing it. Lifting her and the lantern into his arms, he carried her out the door, down the deserted hall, and into his cabin. The light fell and rolled, throwing dancing shadows across the room, but he ignored it, carrying her to the bed and gently laying her down.
Kneeling on the bed beside her, Xavion looked down at her, caressing her with his gaze. Desire rose as always when he looked at her, but it was tempered by her hurts and the fear he couldn’t entirely push from his mind that he must risk all to have all.
After a moment, he bent over her, lightly kissing her breasts, running his tongue over her taut nipples. Her taste was fresh and sweet and the scent of arousal that arose temptingly from her as he suckled her nipples set his cock to throbbing hard against his tight pants.
Pushing away from her after a moment, he stood, unfastening his pants and pushing them down his hips, then pulling his shirt off and tossing it aside. Slowly, he lowered himself onto the bed once more, dipping his head to lightly brush her lips with his own, savoring the taste of her as she released a gusty, desire laden sigh.
Impatience moved through him, despite his determination to take her gently, careful of her hurts.
Parting her thighs, he settled between them, supporting the bulk of his weight on his arms as he settled lightly against her so that he could feel her bare skin against his, her warmth, the pounding of her heart beat.
The madness closed in around him as she writhed beneath him, as he felt the heat of her cleft along the length of his cock, driving his control further and further from his grasp each time she arched against him.
Unable to resist temptation any longer, he buried his face against her neck, scraping his fangs gently against her skin. She gasped, wrapping her arms tightly around him when he flinched from the sound. Reassured that he hadn’t hur
t her, he shifted his weight onto one arm and allowed himself to explore her soft body, drawing gasps of pleasure from her as he paused to massage one breast before exploring lower, skating his palm along her soft belly and then slipping his hand down between her silky thighs. Parting the fold of flesh, he dipped a finger into her wet sex, and then rubbed against her clit. Lowering his head, he suckled her breast as he delved his finger inside of her again, struggling against the need to replace his finger with his painfully throbbing cock.
He gasped as she ran her finger nails down his back and sucked harder on her breast, a haze of lust moving over him as he slipped his finger in and out of her sex, relishing the wet heat of her desire.
Removing his finger abruptly, he curled his hips until the hard length of his cock strained against the tender flesh of her cleft. Their bodies met, matched, mated as he sank the head of his cock inside her. Together, they gasped at the pleasure of their joining and then he was pressing harder, driving his flesh more deeply even as her sex tightened around it. Pulling almost out, he panted, trying to gain control of himself before continuing.
Leaning his face close to hers, Xavion licked her lips, drawing the bottom one into his mouth. Withdrawing his cock from her completely, he rubbed it against her clit until she was gasping and writhing frantically beneath her and then thrust his cock back into her. Grinding into her tightness, he quickened his tempo. Abruptly, she cried out and he felt her sex squeeze his cock, felt it milk the length of his cock for his seed. He groaned, no longer able to hold it in, and his cock jerked inside of her with his release.
When he’d caught his breath, he pulled out, laying beside her, pulling her into his arms.
"Are you ready now?"
He felt her nod. The truth was, he wasn't really ready himself, but he knew in his heart that this was the best time for it. Gently, he brushed her long hair back, exposing her neck. Leaning down, he bit down on her artery, quickly removing his fangs and covering the spot with his lips. He drew her sweet blood into his mouth, reveling in the taste. She moaned, and his cock hardened, knowing that the pleasure he felt was mutual. He had to force himself to stop moments later, afraid of getting too caught up in the act.
Raiders of Vampyra Page 6