by Gemma Voss
“Shush,” I snap. “Back to food. You like fish?”
“Ella, I—”
“Sushi it is. I know just the place. We’ll finish the park and then head there…”
He grunts, finally accepting that I’m going to ignore his further questioning on the subject of my ex-boyfriends (and whether I have them saved to my phone for booty calls). He slides his arms around me, tucking me against his side as we wind around the park’s short loop. I suppose he’s comforting himself with the reminder that I’m here with him. I can’t help but feel a warm tickle of satisfaction in my chest at his possessiveness. I want to be wanted this badly. I need it. And I’m quickly realizing it’s why I welcomed him into my apartment just that easily. Kila makes me feel seen, like I’m the end-all-be-all, like I’m a no-brainer, like I’m worth every second of his time, like I’m worth being exiled over.
Let’s just say a girl could get used to that.
No matter what happens later, I owe it to myself to give this a chance. Who am I to refuse what the universe has dumped into my lap? It’s time to open myself up to the possibility.
Chapter 14
KILA
When we return to Ella’s apartment, I find I am in a better mood than I ever remember feeling. We walked in the park, talking for hours. She took me to a sushi restaurant, a cuisine consisting of fluffy white rice, seaweed, and every kind of raw fish imaginable.
Every laugh I coax from her is like a drug. Every small smile and mischievous glance she spares in my direction sends my chest soaring with joy. Every sway in her walk and curve of her body calls to my baser instincts. She must feel something even a little bit similar, because she is humming as she locks the door behind her and removes her coat. She’s twirling in a circle and smirking at me. Her eyes are glittering as if she has some secret joke hidden behind her lips.
“You are very cute, you know,” she says, running her hand over the front of my chest. She begins pushing me backwards, forcing me to peddle back in the direction of her bedroom door.
“What kind of human riddle is that? Cute? Me?” I glower down at her, but my feet carry me where she leads. I believe she could push me out the airlock of a ship drifting amid space and I’d go willingly.
She bursts out laughing. “You have no idea the naughty things I could do to you. And that’s pretty cute. You’re clueless.”
My stomach twists. “Ah, you have sexual acts on the mind?”
“You are,” she says, as she stops before me and tugs at the hem of my shirt, “delicious to look at.”
“Delicious,” I repeat, letting her pull away my top. Her eyes dance over my bare chest. “Humans compare bodies to food?”
She tongues me across my chest, even sliding it over my nipple. I could never have imagined that such a thing would feel so wondrous. “Yes,” she says between licks. “Because I wouldn’t hesitate to put all of you in my mouth.”
“All of me?” I choke out, wondering at the implications of her words. She falls to her knees and pulls down my trousers—the loose black human article known as sweatpants. My cock springs free right before her face, and she opens her mouth to it, surprising me straight out of my skin. A strangled cry comes from me, and I am stunned frozen. She feeds my length into the wet warmth of her mouth and flickers her tongue as she goes. A shooting star could crash through this room and I would not move even a hair from this spot. She begins to bob her head over me, licking as she works me in and out of her mouth.
“Great Ka, Ella, this may kill me,” I say. “What a death that would be.”
She hums in amusement with my cock still in her moving mouth, causing a pleasant vibration. Just when I think I might lose my mind, she comes up for air and nudges backwards. The sight of her then is unforgettable. Her lips are reddened from her efforts, her eyes are shiny with lust, and her chin glistens with saliva. The pink tongue peeking out hovers tantalizingly near the tip of my length.
This is happening, I think. This inevitable bond is about to pull us under. I am helpless against my need.
“I want to see you,” I tell her, running my hand through her hair.
She stands and pushes me back against her bed. I take a seat on the edge and watch her. Though I never thought of clothing before, I now find myself thinking of Ella’s clothing all the time. Humans wear a different set of clothing every day, and the variations seem endless. Is it related to their sexual depravity? It must be considering the way I sit and think about the coverings she chooses— why she chose them, how they mold to her, and how she would look removing them.
She wears a dress today, not the black one, but a dark green one made of knitted material. It is growing colder here in the New Jersey. This one clings to her as well, and I am mesmerized as she slowly tucks her fingers beneath the hem and pulls it up and over her head. Beneath it, her breasts sit in black cups strapped up to her shoulders. From waist to toe, she is covered by a tight black legging that is not entirely opaque. I reach out and pull her against me, fascinated by her chest which sits at my eye level.
I push those black straps down from her shoulders and dip my fingers into the cups, needing to feel her. I function fully on instinct, not stopping to think about any of the strange ideas that flood my brain. Her breasts fill my hands and I squeeze them, relishing the weight of them and their softness. They are paler than the rest of her golden tan skin, with perfect dark pink peaks. My mouth is on them in an instant, and I lick at them like I licked at her hot tongue when we kissed each other. She sighs with pleasure, spurring me on. I push the cups down frantically and take one of her nipples into my mouth. A delighted giggle comes from her and she helps me by reaching behind her back and unhooking her covering so it falls away.
“You are like an idol,” I tell her, thinking of the shining stone statues in the Archaic temples.
“I’m not sure what you mean, but I’m guessing it’s good?”
“In Archaic Kar’Kal, the most powerful families worshiped their ancestors like gods and would build temples to honor them and the place of their burial. Inside, you can find statues of their most beloved breeding mates, carved with their breasts on display.”
“Mmm,” she says, as I suckle on her other nipple. “And are they beautiful?”
“Yes, beautiful,” I say. “I have seen them many times, outside the capitol cities, but I thought them symbols of a harmful time. Now, I suppose I can understand. I would build a great stone temple to this sight before me. I would kneel and give gifts before it.”
My words must be useful because she smiles at them. With my mouth still latched to her breast, I trail my fingers down to the leg coverings. They are thin and smooth to the touch. I tuck my fingers beneath the waist band and try to tug the tight things away. They stretch as I pull and then rip like paper. Startled, I stop. She now has a big hole at her hip. I feel like the uncivilized Deviant I’ve become, ruining her things because I am pawing at her desperately.
But Ella just laughs. “Hey, don’t worry. These things are the worst. I’ve ripped my fair share.”
She wiggles her ass as she tugs them down and slithers out of the coverings. Once she is out of them, they have condensed to the size of a black ball, no bigger than Ella’s delicate fist. “Damn pantyhose,” she mutters.
“Ella,” I groan, dropping my head into my hands. “Do you not think me a monster? All I can think of is getting between your thighs. So I tear things apart like an animal. This is what our culture has fought to eradicate…”
She is so ready, so willing to be claimed. She’s showing me pleasures I couldn’t imagine before. Now that I have her here, all I want to do is take her, control her, tear the clothes from her body. And it scares me. To feel something so intense—can it possibly be good? Or will it only lead to destruction?
“Hey, hey,” she whispers and rushes to sit beside me on the bed. “It’s okay. A toddler could rip those. They’re cheap—”
“No, no, it is more than just that,” I say, my stomach ro
iling as I finally let my higher mind stop and ruminate on my actions. “I confess to you that I would build a temple to you and kneel at your feet. Last night, I fought the desire to take advantage of you after my own negligent poisoning of your mind—”
“We already talked about that,” she says, “It wasn’t your fault and you didn’t do anything.”
“But what if I did?” I ask. “I will confess this as well. I told you I listened to you speak with that male in the parking lot. What I didn’t tell you is that when I realized he wanted you for his own mate, I felt a bout of rage then and my hands shook because I could hardly contain it. What else will I do? What would I have done if you had returned his attentions?”
She frowns. “This is all new to you,” she says, softening her voice and rubbing her hand over my back in a soothing manner. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t control your actions. What’s wrong with feeling things? You were jealous… So what? You didn’t do anything. So you may have drugged me accidentally… So what? You carried me to bed and tucked me in safe. Do you think hormones are magic? They can’t control you like a puppet.”
“And what will I do once I have had you?” I clasp her chin in my hands and search her eyes. “You told me you’d like to see me lose control. But have you thought ahead and wondered— if you let me make you mine, will I allow you leave me? Do you think a man who builds temples to his breeding mate will let her go without a fight?”
There it is. The flicker of fear. At least she is sensible enough to feel it, like I do. I don’t know much about human culture still, but I fear she has made herself used to males that beat their chests and demand a female’s attention with force. Males like this James Bond. In the movie, he took the female by the neck and pushed her up against the wall and she kissed him. I felt like I was looking at a mirror of what I want my instinctual self wishes to do to my Ella. But deep down I know that she does not want to be claimed by me like an object. She opens her mouth, but hesitates.
Before she can tell me that everything is fine, as I know she wishes to do, I begin to tell her a story. “One of the last great leaders of Archaic Kar’Kal— Ka’lakka, they were called, the Spirit Chosen… His name was Makiva. The Azza invaders landed in his territory while his family stayed by the shores of the jewel sea. The Azza took the coasts piece by piece to cut off any supplies to the capitol city, eventually ransacking the sea town where Makiva’s mate and young children were. The largest population was in the city, but the Azza had his female. When the time came that Makiva should have waited them out behind his fortifications, he negotiated to retrieve his mate. He betrayed every citizen in his territory, took his mate and the smallest of their children, and abandoned Kar’Kal forever.”
Her tiny hands tighten on my shoulders. She presses me back onto her cloud-like bed. “Kila,” she sighs. “You are not betraying your people by spending time with a woman. If that story is true, then Makiva made his own decision… His cock didn’t make it for him.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and ignore the throbbing of my cock, still hard from the sight of Ella, still damp from the heat of her talented mouth.
“As for me,” she continues, “And the things you say you would do for me or because of your possessive feelings towards me… I don’t believe for a second that you could be capable of doing something so selfish and dangerous to other people. I know I haven’t known you that long, but I don’t see an ounce of that kind of behavior in how you act.”
I must tell her everything. Then, she will understand how selfish and dangerous I truly am, even without a breeding mate to protect. I reach for her hand and she squeezes it gently, eyes full of sympathy for me. Soon, that soft look will be gone, I am sure of it. Soon, it will be replaced by the fear and mistrust I truly deserve. I decide to cherish that illusion by memorizing her face now, and the way she earnestly stares into my eyes, believing I am as good as she is.
“I will provide you the evidence, and then you will see what I mean,” I say.
A confused frown appears on her lips.
“Let me tell you about my first command unit, and what happened during that last mission.”
She nods slowly.
“My command unit was known for achieving very tricky missions. And we were willing to go anywhere. We were one of five vessel deployments to an Azza-controlled mining planet that intelligence told us was manufacturing and shipping weapons in an abandoned mine shaft network. The plan was to attack their base, making it appear to be a grab for control of the planet. Meanwhile, my smaller command unit would infiltrate the weapons manufacturer, steal what they had, and destroy the equipment. We were the only soldiers to be dropped for a ground mission. We were meant to have departed on a shipping vessel arranged by our planet contact, one that wouldn’t even leave until a week after the false attack ‘failed’.”
While she listens intently, she lays her hand against my chest and circles her fingers in a soothing manner.
“As soon as we arrived, it became clear that the intelligence was a lie, and our contact had been caught by a ruse the Azza fabricated to suss out their betrayer. The Kar’Kali generals decided that the atmosphere attack on the base was pointless without the acquisition of new weapons and destruction of the equipment they were told would be there. They ordered a retreat, but we had already been dropped. So they left us behind, with no shipping vessel to smuggle us as promised, and a dead spy.”
Ella looks horrified. “What happened?”
“We tried to hide out in the city until we could find a way out. But the Azza discovered us. They tortured and killed every single soldier, one by one. I just happened to be their final victim. I was the youngest in our unit, at the time. I believe they thought the watching alone would break me. I was eighteen passings old.”
She sucks in breath and grasps my arm. “Kila,” she whispers.
“They were right. I told them everything they wanted to know. When the others were gone, and I didn’t immediately speak… They dragged it out for months. They kept me alone in a room too small to lay or sit up or do anything but curl up on my side. They only removed me to question and torture me with beatings. I was afraid and weak. I wanted to die. And then I broke. I betrayed every contact I knew of. Betrayed my planet, my home. Then, they left me to die in the desert. They laughed at me for my weakness, which I deserved, and then left me in the middle of their desert. But I did not die. There was a storm of bugs, which I ate. I crawled when I could not walk. I passed out and thought I went mad. For some reason, the universe did not wish me dead. On the other side of the desert, I found a city less crowded with the Azza troops. I was so caked in dirt, so thin like a skeleton, that I did not look like a Kar’Kali warrior to the villagers that saw me. I stole a freighter, outfitted it with bombs and an escape pod, and set the freighter to crash on the Azza fort where we had been tortured. I returned to Kar’Kal. And I lied. I told them I managed to escape with my life. I did not tell them the others were tortured or that I gave up our secrets. I lied like coward, and they treated me like a hero.”
Her grip on my forearm is tight enough to dig in marks. Her eyes are leaking water, and she sniffles as though she is sick. “Kila, that is horrible. I am so sorry you’ve been through this. I wish I could take away your pain.”
“I did not tell you to make you sad,” I say, pulling her against me in the hope that it will ease her.
“Why did you tell me?” she asks, muffled from pressing against my bare chest. She lifts her head. “Did you really think that that story would make me hate you? You need to forgive yourself. More than ever, I believe that you deserve some happiness, some emotional closure.”
“Every moment I spend with you is because I want it badly, and life has proven me to be a selfish male,” I confess to her. “I am selfish enough to reveal secrets, lie to my superiors, crawl across a desert even though I had convinced myself I wanted to die. I fueled myself on the anger, and the need for retribution. If I turn away from you, it is only becaus
e I am trying to do the honorable thing, for the first time in my pitiful passings.”
“You survived, Kila. You did what you could to survive. How can you punish yourself for that?”
“Why are your eyes wet? Because you are sad? Please don’t be,” I beg her. “You confuse me… I am telling you I am shamefully selfish and dishonorable. I have been known to allow anger to overcome me. Are these not undesirable traits for a human mate to have? Do you not see that to combine my traits with the power of a mating bond would only breed destruction?”
“No,” she protests, rubbing at her leaking eyes. “I want you to be selfish because I am too. And I want you. I care for you, and I want your body… I need to know what it would be like for us to be together fully. And now more than ever, I want to make you happy, to make you feel good. You’ve been through so much hurt and you deser—”
“Ella,” I groan at her tempting words. “You don’t understand—”
“Don’t tell me what I do and don’t understand!” she shouts, picking her head up and thrusting her chin at me defiantly. She holds herself like a mountain feline ready to strike. “You’re telling me these stories because you’re guilty, and you think they’ll show me just how terrible it would be to give your mind and your body the happiness it is so clearly craving. Well, I’m not at work right now, and I don’t have to be respectful of your culture, so I won’t feel bad saying that what you’ve been taught is bullshit. It’s bullshit! You’ve been manipulated to be a soldier without feelings. They’ve told you that Makiva was a slave to passion, but the truth is that you are the slave, Kila. Makiva was a free man, and with freedom comes the ability to make selfish decisions that may hurt others. It sounds to me like you were made to be a slave to your generals because they’re still afraid of what people like Makiva will do when they are free.”