Korjh's Bride

by Clarissa Lake

  He would wait for Zara, to wake because it only took a few minutes and he wasn’t hungry for food. He was hungry to claim his mate. He just wasn’t sure when that was going to happen. At least now she was there.

  He turned the horse out to pasture and went into his house to Zara’s room.

  She was still asleep. As Korjh watched her sleep, he pushed back a strand of her soft brown hair from her face. He was content to watch her sleep. He remembered his elation when the matchmaking service had sent him her acceptance. He had all but given up on their finding someone for him. Korjh thought he would have to spend the rest of his life alone, isolated in the beautiful home he had built in the hope that she would come.

  After two years he didn’t think it could happen, that the only sex he would get would be at a pleasure station off-world or if he bought a pleasure droid. It was almost better than taking matters into his own hands. Zara came into his life and changed all that. She was warm and caring and had a sense of humor that made him smile and even laugh.

  Before Zara, only his horses did that. Otherwise, there hadn’t been many smiles in his life since he came to Modonne. When he applied to the Narovian Matchmaking Service, Korjh thought maybe they would find him a feline. He had always admired the feline females, but he carried no feline genes. Most felines wanted only meomee or soulmate, something he could never be.

  Once they found Zara and she accepted, he learned everything he could about her world and the part where she lived. He searched every internet source to learn everything about her that the matchmaking service might not have told him. He could find nothing negative about her. He wasn’t sure he understood what made her come to be with him. Surely, among the billions of people on her planet, there was someone who would be her mate.

  Well, yes, she had had a mate once, but he abandoned the relationship when it was no longer convenient. Apparently, he was not the right mate, or he would never have abandoned her. They had rudimentary matching services on Earth, but they were primitive compared to the Narovian service. They matched people by their genetics the same way they found meomee for the felines.

  The matchmaking service had branched out a couple centuries ago as their testing indicated that the same criterion they used to match the felines worked with homo sapiens and a dozen other humanoid species to find compatible mates. They were only limited by the input into their databank. They never found Korjh’s mate until this beautiful Earther had put her DNA into the mix.

  Zara was the most beautiful entity in his world. Korjh found himself smitten with the first video he received. The rude rebuffs from women he met by chance or even introduction discouraged him. The Narovian Matchmaking service was his last hope---his best bet.

  Now she was here, his Zara. From the very first video, she made his cock hard. He had every single one of them stored in his cybernetic memory. He had replayed them over and over in his head as he went about his daily chores. With her voice and image playing in his head he no longer felt lonely. She had come to him to be his mate, his lover, his friend.

  Before he picked Zara up at the starport, Korjh hadn’t been to Sezrop in almost a year. It was the last time he had tried to date a woman. Fianne was new in Modonne, and Korjh had literally run into her in one of the shops. They were mutually attracted, and things went well as they talked over drinks and dinner.

  The conversation turned to what he had done with his life before coming to Modonne. Fianne was giving him all the signs she wanted to have sex with him until he admitted he was a cyborg. She dropped her glass of wine on the table, so it splashed on her dress. She stood up sputtering and cursed him for wasting her time. Not in a million years would she ever fuck a cyborg, like he was somehow unclean and unworthy.

  He had given his legs, part of his hearing, his eyes and a piece of his soul for the Alliance, yet he was unworthy to have a mate? Almost everywhere he had been after he left the Alliance Defense Force, people recoiled in fear from him because of the cybernetic implant at his right temple. It was a narrow strip barely a half inch wide in a half moon shape. When his hair was just a little longer, most people didn’t notice it.

  Korjh showed it to her in the third video he’d sent her.

  She had said, “Oh, you mean you’re a war veteran who got hurt, and they rebuilt you. They did an excellent job, I can hardly tell. I think you are really hot.” Then she smiled and showed him a picture of a veteran whose replacement parts were nowhere near as well integrated as his.

  The primitive replacement arm and leg would serve their purpose, but they were not attractive. Zara said, “if he were my man, I would still love him and be thankful he came back to me alive.”

  Earth had no warrior cyborgs. Surely, Zara didn’t really understand what it meant. His body had been transformed from the inside out. Now his nanites or nanocybots would be part of her too. They would transform her as well. They were in his blood, his saliva, and his semen. There was no way to keep them from her and be physically intimate with her.

  He had explained it all to her including research and technical information. He didn’t want to keep anything from her. The nanites would only make her stronger, more resistant to disease, heal injuries more quickly, and make her age more slowly. They were the same type used to treat illness and injuries from minor to catastrophic.

  “Well, heck,” Zara said, “then I want some of those little buggers. I want as many years with you as possible, Korjh.”

  Korjh smiled at the memory. Four more hours. Zara needed at least four more hours of sleep, maybe a little more considering her journey.

  Stars, he wanted to fuck her so badly! He knew she wanted him; he had scented her arousal. But she was too tired to act on it, and probably not ready for such intimacy yet. He had waited this long, he could wait a little longer for her to come to him.

  Maybe after she woke and had some food, he could at least hold her again and taste her lips.

  When Korjh learned Zara would be his mate, he had uploaded as much information as he could find about sexual practices in her culture. He reviewed everything from Kama Sutra to pornographic videos. Hardly anything he learned surprised him, though some disgusted him. Most of what he learned was common to humanoid sexual practices.

  He had even discussed some of it with her. He knew Zara had a lover in college and it ended long before he was in her life. Zara blushed adorably when she told him some of the things she liked for a lover to do and what she would like to do to please him. They hadn’t yet done anything but a quick kiss, but there was time for that. He still felt the elation he felt when she had finally arrived. She was everything he’d imagined and more.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Zara woke alone in the big bed wondering vaguely where Korjh was. Doubting he was far away, she went into the bathroom to empty her bladder. She wanted a shower, but she wasn’t quite sure how to work it. There were no conventional handles to turn on the water. She went back out into the bedroom as Korjh enter carrying a tray of food.

  They both smiled when they saw each other.

  “Is it warm enough in here for you, sweetheart?” he asked

  “Yes, fine. I was going to take a shower, but I couldn’t figure out how to work it.”

  “It works by voice command, or there is a hidden panel in the tile with manual controls. I programmed it to respond to your voice, and I’ll go through them with you,” he said. “How about breakfast first?”

  “That would be lovely, I’m famished,” she said, “I slept so long I missed lunch, didn’t I.”

  “I was outside,” he said. “I saw no need to wake you for second meal if you didn’t wake on your own. You must have needed the sleep.”

  Zara sat on the edge of the bed with her feet on the floor, and Korjh handed her the tray, taking his plate from it, he pulled up a padded chair from the sitting area and sat across from her.

  “This looks good. Are those scrambled eggs?” she asked.

  “Scrambled tikas eggs, toast, fresh fruit
, and coffee,” he said and took one of the steamy mugs of coffee and set it on the nightstand by the bed.

  Zara caught a whiff of coffee as he took his mug.

  “You got coffee for me?” she said wondrously.

  “It wasn’t hard. Agriculturists imported it on Narova from Earth and started growing it there. I imported this and also started growing coffee here in my climate controlled greenhouse.”

  “Oh, Korjh, that’s so sweet,” she said softly and took a sip. “It’s good.”

  “I would do anything to make you happy, Zara,” Korjh told her as he looked at her intently. I will protect you with my life.

  “Well, I’m happy to be here with you,” she said with a smile.

  “Me too, sweetheart.” He leaned over carefully so he would spill his plate and kissed her cheek. “After we eat, I will show you how to work the shower.”

  “The sun has almost set, so it’s too late to take the horses out, but we can watch something on the holo-viewer. I have some recordings translated into English,” he said.

  “I’d like that,” she told him.

  When they finished eating, Korjh showed her how all the bathroom fixtures worked and left her to take her shower and change. While she was sleeping, the housekeeping droid had unpacked her clothes and either hung them in the walk-in closet or put them on the shelves. All her clothes barely filled a quarter of it.

  He watched as she went into the closet to get clean clothes to put on after her shower. “In a day or two, I would like to take you to Sezrop. I want to set you up for a language biochip so you can speak Gal-common and understand it. We can get anything you need while we are in Sezrop.”

  Zara came out of the closet with a casual outfit to take into the bathroom with her. “An implant?” She looked at him with a slight frown. It sounded a little scary.

  “Don’t worry, it’s a simple process. They’ll just swab some cells out of your mouth and put the entire program on several of them then inject them back into your neck,” he explained. “Just a tiny little stick. They even apply a painkiller to your skin where the needle goes in.”

  “Oh, that’s not bad.”

  “It was even easier for me. They just loaded your language into my cybernetic memory bank.” He got up from his chair and went to her before she went to take her shower. Zara looked up at him as he came to stand close in front of her. “I haven’t kissed my bride, yet.”

  Korjh took her face in his hands and tilted her head upward and bend his head to cover her lips with his in a gentle lingering kiss, just brushing her lips with his tongue. He deliberately held his body from hers as he kissed her because he didn’t want to lose control and frighten her.

  As soon as his mouth touched hers, he went instantly hard. Her lips were soft and pliant as they moved against his. She made a sweet little sound in her throat as he kissed her and swayed slightly toward him. He had to stop himself from pulling her into his arms, pressing her body against his, and staking his claim with deep passionate kisses until she was too aroused to resist making love to him.

  Just a kiss wasn’t nearly enough, and it took a great deal of willpower to lift his mouth from hers and let her go. “Welcome home, wife,” he murmured and smiled at her as she looked a little disoriented.

  “Thank you, Korjh,” she said with a shy smile, clearly moved by their kiss. “I’m glad to be here.”

  Suddenly, Zara didn’t really want to take a shower anymore. She wanted to be in his arms and have a lot more of what his gentle kiss had promised. He was holding back probably to give her time to feel comfortable with him. She wasn’t so sure she wanted him to anymore. Her body was telling her it wanted way more than a sweet kiss.

  “I’ll go take my shower and then maybe you should show me around this place,” Zara said as she was moving toward the bathroom door.

  “I will be glad to sweetheart. Just come on down the hall to the lounge area when you finish.” He held his hands discreetly in front of his pants where his cock was pressing against the fabric. Then he turned around quickly and left the room.

  Zara finished her shower and washed her hair in about ten minutes, then enjoyed the warm air body and hairdryer. She dressed in a comfortable pair of pull on pants and a tunic top that flattered her curves. Since they weren’t going outside, she slid her feet into a comfortable pair of thong sandals.

  Korjh was sitting on a large stuffed sofa looking at something on a handheld tablet when she shuffled into the room. His face lit with a warm smile as soon as he saw her. He set his tablet on the table beside the sofa and stood.

  “You look refreshed,” he said and offered his hand. “I’ll show you our home so you will know where to find things.”

  Even though he had given her a complete video tour during their correspondence, it didn’t compare with actually being there. The home he had built was huge. There were five bedrooms including the master bedroom which was bigger than Zara’s whole apartment on Earth. There were two bedrooms on each side of the hall with a third room on the left that was an elaborate communications room.

  For planetwide communications, they had small devices that looked like cell phones but utilized satellites for calls all over the planet. Korjh also had an interstellar setup which he had used to keep in touch with Zara before she came to Modonne and during her journey. Korjh explained briefly how it worked, but Zara wasn’t sure she understood the physics of it.

  At the back of the Com-room, there was a secret door that Korjh showed her how to access by pressing her thumb on a hidden panel. She was the only other person that could open it. It was his weapon’s stash. He picked one laser-blaster-stunner that would comfortably fit her hands and showed her how it worked.

  His family had no weapons when the Drayid’s came to his world and killed them. That wasn’t going to happen here. Korjh took her out into the desert to practice until she could hit a stationary target a couple days later. There were no restrictions on weapons on Modonne unless they were used for illegal acts. But the crime rate on Modonne was almost nil. The Drayid had attacked Earth. The Alliance had driven them back, but it didn’t hurt to be prepared. After he had shown her the secret room, he went on to show the rest of the house.

  The long hall from the bedrooms led to a large room divided into two sitting areas, one with 3D viewer mounted on the wall and the other more of a conversation pit. Additionally, were a couple other nooks with built-in seats that made Zara think of reading nooks.

  To the right was the kitchen dining area complete with a food processor array as well as a conventional cooking top and oven. Korjh had installed it because Zara said she liked to cook the Earth way. He didn’t mind if she ever did, he wanted her to have it available if she did. The bot would take care of all clean up either way.

  There were a table and chairs in the kitchen and a formal dining section to the right of the kitchen. A doorway in the sitting room led to a larger room with a sitting area, gaming and exercise equipment there were other rooms off that one including a full bath with a shower, then another room with an inground pool under multiple skylights.

  Off the pool room was a raw cavern where the home could be expanded or used as it was because the walls were solid rock. The floors throughout the dwelling were made of light-colored granite with colored specks, sealed and polished to shine.

  “Korjh, this place is huge! The decorating is wonderful, too,” Zara told him, genuinely impressed. The furniture was ultra-modern with obviously alien influence and understated.

  “I hoped you would like it.” He put an arm around her shoulders. “I built it, hoping one day to have a family to fill it.”

  “I like that idea, but not for a while yet,” she told him. “Like we said, we need time to be a couple before babies complicate things.”

  “Do you really want children?” he asked with a slight frown. “Or did you just say that because I do.”

  “I do want children very much,” she assured him. “I’d like to start working on that
in about a year. That will give us time to be a couple and practice how-to---before we start making babies.”

  “I like that idea.” He gave her an affectionate squeeze.

  Once he finished showing her around, they went back to the sitting area by the holo-viewer and watched some holo-programs that were like television programs in 3D with no glasses necessary.

  They sat together on the sofa close together, and Korjh put his arm around her. But made no moves to do anything more. Zara had mixed feelings about that. Part of her wanted to have her way with him, and part of her was just a little apprehensive about unleashing the beast so to speak.

  A few hours later Korjh left her off at her bedroom with a quick kiss. Then went into the master alone. As Zara watched the door close behind him, she wished she was bold enough to go after him. Every time they touched her body clamored for more. Then again, she was still feeling tired. Zara has a feeling she had better rest up for their first intimate encounter.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The next morning, they had breakfast together in the kitchen. After they finished, Korjh said, “I thought I would take you out to see the farm and introduce you to the horse I trained for you.”

  Zara nodded. “What should I wear for going outside? I have jeans and shirts and lighter slacks.”

  “Probably the jeans. I thought maybe you would like to take a horseback ride around the farm,” he suggested.

  “I would love that, but I’m not all that experienced,” she said. “Is the one you trained for me a nice quiet one that will put up with a rookie rider.”

  “Dema, will,” he said immediately. “Don’t let her size scare you. These horses come from Narovian stock. They have tinkered with the genetics, and they average about six feet at the withers. But they are as gentle as a pet pony.”

  “Then, it’s a good thing I have you to help me up.”

  “I also have a nice padded saddle for you lovely backside.”