But most of all, I detect some sadness.
I need to tell her. I need to be honest with her. I owe her that; she has given her life to me, in a way. And she doesn’t even know me. Such was the agreement between our species, as she said.
“I have a trial coming up soon,” I start, a sentence that has no obvious relation to her question and makes her brow twitch in confusion as she looks up at me. Those swirling blue eyes, filled with sharp intelligence and right now filled with emotion as well, make it considerably harder for me to control myself. But I have to tell her the truth. I have decided. And when I make a decision, I try to stick to it.
“His name is Anaxis the Eroder. His client — the defendant, as you would say; the man who is on trial for serious crimes, including treason — his identity is so far unknown to me.”
She frowns. “How can he stand a fair trial if nobody knows who he is? How does that even work?”
Right. She can’t possibly expect to understand our customs so soon. “Each side in a debate has a champion,” I explain, feeling as though I have done this before, but wanting to be sure she understands fully the seriousness of what I am about to tell her. “There is the one who stands accused of a crime, and there are those accusing them of this crime. They do not have to represent themselves, so they can hire a warrior instead. The High Judge knows everyone’s identities, but we fear vigilante justice so tend to keep high-profile defendants secret. Whoever wins the fight in the arena, Paxia has deemed them in the right. The other party submits to their punishment.”
“But you always represent the people,” she says slowly. “So everyone you’ve ever fought is a true criminal who deserves their sentence?”
I chuckle under my breath. “There are some who believe that Paxia has no bearing on whose blade is the sharpest.”
“I’d have to be one of them,” she mutters. “It’s barbaric.”
I shrug. “Well, it’s the only justice system we have in place now that the Catalyst is dead. Nobody can commune with our goddess anymore. That’s how we used to know.”
She opens and shuts her mouth, clearly itching to lecture me. I can’t help but smile at her getting frustrated by our customs. I agree with her, in most ways, but I can’t deny the paycheck I get for every winning match is too sizeable to turn down.
“The Eroder has … been seen asking around for a rare poison we have here called szillik. It’s used to slather onto weaponry. One nick, and the foe drops dead, like a stone.” I say it slowly, allowing every word to truly be understood. “If he is indeed planning on cheating in order to defeat me, then I have no hope. And my sources are certain, and they are reliable.”
“So … you think that you’re going to die in that match?”
I pause, running my tongue over my lower lip. “No. I know it with certainty.”
She brings her hand to her mouth and her eyes glitter, to my great alarm. Is she about to cry? What do I do? I look around wildly for inspiration, but she gathers herself and then she rests her hand on my arm instead. My bicep twitches in response to her touch.
“But if he is accused of cheating, will he get away with that?”
“Perhaps not. But if so, he will have to fight a lesser warrior to prove his innocence. And so will his client.”
Her eyes glaze over for a moment as she takes this all in. “So it’s actually … murder, you think. Not just that the client wants to prove his innocence. They specifically want to take you out.”
“I hadn’t thought it through so much,” I confess. “But it does sound like it, doesn’t it? My point is that I am struggling with making the decision to bind us together when I am sure I am soon to be gone. I hope you understand.”
She looks awed that I don’t look sadder. Her lips have parted slightly in an expression of pure disgust. Not at me, but at the situation in which I have found myself. Warmth jolts through my body again as her other hand lays to rest on my other shoulder.
“Look, Wrax,” she says, “this is a super weird conversation to be having when we’re both completely naked. But … can’t you just resign? Hang up the loincloth and call it a day?” The way she speaks amuses me, and the way she clutches at my shoulders makes me, impossibly, even harder than I was before. I wonder how hard she is working so as not to glance down at my twitching cock; the only thing between us right now except water.
“No,” I growl. “Did you not see the reactions when the Viper surrendered? That’s the worst thing a warrior can do. For many reasons. It spits on the contract they signed when they were hired. It disrespects their foe. It doesn’t allow Paxia to display her will, if you were to believe in that. I’d have to go into hiding for the rest of my life, at best. At worst … well, it wouldn’t be anything preferable to dying with honor in the arena.”
She still looks horrified by what I have told her, and I do feel terrible, but at the same time I feel like a weight has been lifted by sharing the truth with her. It was the right thing to do, even if the burden of this knowledge is upsetting to her.
“There is another reason.” Cara looks right into my eyes as I speak again. “If I show dishonor like that, the people of Firosa may lose their willingness to obey our laws.”
She shrugs one shoulder, her fingers still squeezing me. It’s a comforting touch; a feeling I never particularly thought I would have, or crave. I can see myself sorely missing her touch as soon as she removes her hands.
“I can see that, I suppose.” She glides closer to me, eyebrows raised as if she has had a thought. Now the only thing parting us really is my cock. She is millimeters away from brushing against the sensitive head. I will her to drift closer. Just half an inch closer. I want to feel the heat radiating from her pussy and I want to feel it against my crotch. I am growing tense from arousal, my tattoos pulsing and glowing brighter than I have ever seen before.
“Wrax,” she says, and I try hard to snap my attention from her beautiful, perfect curves to her full lips and inquisitive eyes. “If the Catalyst were to return to this land, would Paxia be on your side?”
I nod. “Whatever this defendant’s identity is, I know in my gut that he committed treason. He helped the Suhlik in exchange for immunity. The fact that our enemies got so close to Paxia means that this person is almost solely responsible for the genocide of the Firosans. If I die, he gets away with this crime. That is unacceptable.”
She screws her eyes shut, and then opens them. “It’s such a flawed system, I can’t even begin to talk about it. The fact that you don’t even know who you’re fighting against? The fact that they are proven to be guilty if you kill this Eroder person?” She shakes her head. “It’s madness, Wrax.”
I agree with her. But my identity depends on my not saying so. Still, I reach down and take her chin between my thumb and forefinger and tilt her head back up to look at me.
Something crackles between us. An electric heat. I know that she can feel it too.
“If you die,” she says, her voice low and bordering on sultry, “what will be your biggest regret?”
“If you had asked me that three days ago, I would have said that it was the idea of not continuing my bloodline. I come from a proud, fierce and strong lineage.”
She catches the first part; nothing gets past Cara. “Three days ago,” she repeats. “But now?”
I lean forward, I can’t help it. She is being flirtatious and impossibly alluring and I’m not sure she even knows how much I want her. My cock bobs in the water and is so close to brushing against her soft skin. She lets out a small breath, and that noise causes me to bite my lip, hard. “Now I would say that it is leaving you, alone, without your lifemate.”
She doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, but her skin gets redder and warmer.
“My mate?” she asks quietly.
“These tattoos.” I watch as Cara takes in the snaking symbols that twist around my limbs. They glow an extraordinary silver like they never have before. “They wouldn’t respond in such a way to someone I wa
s not meant to be with.”
“I don’t know if I believe in things like that,” she whispers. She doesn’t look as though she means it.
“You don’t have to believe for it to exist,” I respond. “You arouse me more than I could ever hope to say. And I don’t know if the translations would do it justice if I could find the words.”
She swallows. “I do?”
A low growl leaves my throat. If I do one thing before I die, and one thing only, I want to prove to Cara what she means to me already, after such a short time. I take a step forward, closing the small gap between us. The length of my steel-hard cock presses against her crotch and she whimpers at the sudden heat, running her hands down the swell of my biceps.
Before I know what I’m doing fully, I have pressed my lips to hers. She groans, her body melting in my arms, and her hips move against my cock whether she intends to or not. Her lips part to allow my tongue to push through and roughly explore her, my passion lighting me on fire. That’s it — now that I have had a taste, I can’t hold back for another second.
I grip her and I kiss her with a passion that I have never known before. Her back arches, sending a waterfall of golden hair rippling around her shoulders. I bite softly on her bottom lip, loving the way it makes her groan, and I kiss her harder, pushing against her body with mine and invading her mouth with my tongue. She gives as good as she gets. My hunch was right: she wants me. Badly.
I pull back, my breath short and my eyes fixed, hard, on hers. I wonder why she has never recoiled from the sight of my one mechanical eye, like I expected her to. On the contrary, she has always seemed rather … drawn to it?
I am still gripping her with my hands, admiring the color contrast between her milky skin and my vibrant light purple. “There is … something I have been researching,” I admit to her.
She looks at me quizzically, and I resist the urge to go too far, too fast. I search her eyes for anything other than lust but there is nothing.
“May I?” I ask, my voice a throaty growl. She barely hesitates before she nods. She trusts me? How peculiar. I will try my hardest not to let that fact hurt her, but I don’t know how well I will do.
We will experience passion, and I will depart with no regrets. She will return to her home planet, having fulfilled the contract technically. A Mahdfel widow. There are worse circumstances we could be pushed into. Not many, granted, but there are worse.
With her name on my lips and thoughts of only her weighing heavy in my chest, I close in, and she accepts me, ready and open for anything.
She is meant to be mine. There is no doubt.
Chapter Eight
Cara
I could have had many guesses as to what Wrax was going to do when he rounded on me like that — golden eye blazing with a fire just for me — but I don’t think I would have guessed correctly.
His impossibly strong arms wrap around my waist and lift me effortlessly to perch on the edge of the pool. He spreads my knees, and I don’t stop him. I don’t want to. My heart has never pounded this hard and this fast before.
And then to my surprise Wrax, the warlord, and strongest battler in Firosa, falls to his knees in front of me.
I sit, feeling exposed and nervous and the most aroused I have ever felt in my life, as he runs his big, warm hands up my inner thighs and suck in a breath as he looks at me. He growls one word, so close to me, and his hot breath sends electric jolts straight up my spine. “Beautiful.”
Before I can gather myself and try to calm my racing pulse, Wrax presses the hot flat of his tongue against my clit, wasting no time, and I suck in a hissing breath at the sudden waves of excitement that ripple through me, straight from my core.
Even though he gets straight to the main event, he still manages to start off slow. Clearly he has researched this, and I wonder whether people in this system just don’t do this. But somewhere along the way, Wrax found out that this is what Earth women like, so he learned about it.
That alone is almost as sexy as the gentle concentric circles this warrior is making against my clit with his tongue.
I shiver and gasp as I wrap my legs around him, trying not to clench my thighs together hard enough to hurt him — though the thought that I could hurt him is laughable, really.
He keeps licking, lapping me up like I am the most delicious thing he has ever tasted, occasionally enclosing my clit with his soft lips. Sucking, and then releasing with a wet pop.
I feel the beginnings of an orgasm swell in my core and I arch my back and pant for air as it crashes over me, relentlessly. Gasping from the intensity of my aftershock, I pull him up, blinded by my own arousal. When he rises to his feet he is grinning cockily, and I pull him closer to me, feeling the heat of his firm body.
I want him inside me more than I’ve ever wanted anything else, but he pauses and stops me, his smile falling into an intense look, and I think I can tell what it means. He doesn’t want to go too far, to consummate our relationship. I think he won’t be able to stop himself from claiming me if we do, and then he’ll feel terrible if he has to leave me.
I understand him, I do. But I want the feeling of him filling me up more than I want anything else right in this moment.
His lips crash against mine again instead and heat floods to my cheeks as his fingers brush through my hair. He is a perfect storm of masculine passion and gentle lovingness, and I can’t get enough. I don’t see myself ever getting enough of him.
To prove that to him, I guide him into the sun-dappled glade, and lower myself so that I am kneeling on the grass in front of him, and he looks down at me quizzically.
“What, you looked up what humans like and you never came across a blow job?” I ask him, teasingly. His brows knot and it is so sweet to see a look of confusion on the proud warrior that I can’t help but laugh. “Let me show you,” I say, and my voice softens to an alarmingly sultry tone.
He seems to like it, though. Finally, I have the confidence to grasp the steely base of his thick, purple cock and I bite my lip as I see him squirm with newfound arousal. I am certain that he has bedded countless women in his time … but he won’t have had sex for at least five years, when the women on this planet left. No wonder he is this hard.
I stroke his shaft up and down. It’s the biggest I’ve ever come across, and I don’t know if I can handle it properly. My breathing is shallow and my heartbeat is rapid. I can’t wait to taste him, but I am nervous as well. I have no reason to be, it seems, because the faster I get, the more his eyelids drift shut and soon his lips are parted and he moans my name almost inaudibly; one of the sexiest things I have ever heard in my life.
Before he can fully adjust to the feeling of my small hand on his huge cock, I lean forward, hair obscuring my face, and take just the tip into my mouth, enclosing it with my lips and feeling it press insistently against the roof of my mouth already. The flavor of his precum takes over my senses instantly: it’s one of the most intensely exciting things I have ever tasted. It doesn’t taste ordinary at all, but instead sweet and heady.
I want more.
I take him further into my mouth. It’s difficult and I find myself struggling to adjust at one point but I relax and take it slow. I can still fit my fists on the rest of him, outside my mouth, grasping at the rest of his shaft that I can’t fit inside. I suck hard and fast, feeling my own arousal begin to flare up again and listening to the sound of his heavy breathing.
“I…” he pants, grasping at my hair, his muscles visibly tensing throughout his mouthwatering body. He doesn’t seem to be able to gather his thoughts, but I know a warning when I hear one. I double down instead of pulling away, and groan when I feel the hot jets of his come against my throat. Sweet and perfect, just like Wrax secretly is. I swallow and lick his shaft up and down while he twitches, finding it hard to tear myself away.
I can’t wait to feel him inside me. I think this before I return to myself, and when I remember our sad reality, he pulls me to my feet and furious
ly kisses me again, up and down my neck, nipping at my collarbone, rewarding me for making him feel like that. He holds me tight and kisses me hard on the lips. I just about melt in his arms.
“You are the most beautiful creature I have ever seen,” he murmurs in my ear, and I shiver at the heat in his voice. I know in my heart that he totally means what he says.
I feel a terrible conflict of emotions. A surge of excitement and trepidation about our future, and then a sideways knock of grief at the idea that he might be right — he could be leaving me soon.
We leave the side of the pool and he lays me on my back on the nearby grass, a beam of sunlight gently warming our damp skin, and he kisses me deeply as he engulfs me with his entire body. I can feel his cock start to harden once again against my thigh and I let out a small noise and grind my hips against his, causing him to release a breath.
But I know he still doesn’t want to do this. I am disappointed but I try not to show it when he rolls onto his side and caresses my skin. It’s not quite the same, but even his touch feels more erotic than most sex I’ve ever had back on Earth. Wrax is truly the most remarkable man I’ve ever met. Strong, sexy, caring. And he’s a match with me.
I watch him as his eyes close, and then he is asleep beside me in a sunbeam. I would have done almost anything to be able to lie on his chest and nap with him, but I have other plans right now. When I’m certain he is out for the count — human or not, men are still men — I get to my feet and make my way out of the bath house, slipping my clothes back on as I go.
I press my finger to my ear, communicating with my translator AI — my little portable robot voice.
“Hey,” I whisper. There is no immediate response. “Aphrodite?”
“Are you … finished?” she asks. I wrinkle my nose. Can she see us? Or just hear us?
“Yes,” I say, and there is another awkward pause.
“You biologicals and your endless desire to procreate,” she huffs. “What did you need?”
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