Authors: Marla Therron
His shout and orgasm came instantly—body slamming so firm to her that his hips clapped into her inner thighs. His whole body tensed—and the otoya cinched her tightly to him so that he speared her deeply and she couldn’t have escaped if she’d wanted to.
There would be no “pulling out”—those otoya insured that when his cock spurted into her over and over, every little bit emptied directly into her waiting body.
And the sensation of him coming into her made her cry out as she hurtled over the edge. She rocked, the otoya at her wrists and pelvis enough to bar her any other motion.
With every wave of bliss that crashed over her, she arched, or whimpered, or gyrated into him. She wrapped her ankles around him, savoring the thick feel of him within her and how every spasm from his erection reverberated through her as an aftershock to her orgasm.
Gradually, Rae became aware that she was panting, curled into him, and that he was biting her neck. It was not a hard bite, but a firm and possessive one.
He released her, and she felt sure there were still faint impressions from his teeth. He sweetly licked that spot, as though to soothe it, a weirdly comforting gesture.
“N—not so bad,” she stammered, heart pounding in her ears and body slaked and raw. She was certain she couldn’t stand or walk.
“Maybe untie me, though.” Her circulation was good, but her arms tingled from being held in the air too long.
The otoya released her arms, but kept them bound at the hips.
“What now?” she asked.
“Bedroom,” he growled. He was still hard inside of her, she realized.
Licking her dry lips, Rae asked quietly, “Do Ythirian males not have a refractory period?”
He kissed her tenderly. “What is that?”
“A point of… you know… softness down there, after orgasm. Where he can’t have sex again for a while.”
He laughed, seeming to delight in the idea of something so silly. “I’m not done with you yet.” He hefted her against him, holding her up, her body still tied to his in ways that made every wriggle turn her on more.
Oh wow. I can barely move and he still wants more.
“How long do you plan to keep doing this?”
His wolfish grin made her insides tighten deliciously. “Until you beg me to stop.”
Chapter Eleven
She did, in fact, beg him to stop sometime after her third orgasm. The second had just been him atop her, vigorous and endless, until mere persistence had sent her over the edge a second time.
The third, more tender, had involved a steamy shower, her in his lap, and his fingers and later mouth doing their best to learn the subtle differences in human anatomy.
He’d been a quick study.
She’d been too tired to reciprocate in the shower, merely a pliant, sexually hungry and exceptionally sleepy object for his ministrations, but after finishing, he’d dried her and put her in the bed, bringing some of that cake he’d cooked.
It was sweet and light, the ideal complement to an evening of hard lovemaking that had left her body pleasantly buzzing.
It was in the midst of his second application of medicine to her mostly-healed feet that sleep claimed her, swallowing her into a dreamless void.
She sensed his nearby warmth in her sleep. Because their bedroom was just slightly cool, she curled instinctually into his body heat, waking later in the warm fortress of his arms.
She spun to face him, enjoying the way his arms closed tighter while he slept, as though afraid something precious would escape him.
The alien prime seemed harmless in his sleep. It softened the hard lines of his face.
His chest rose and fell at a steady rhythm, and she stroked his nova marking, eliciting from him a relaxed sigh. Rae had to squelch an affectionate smile with a reminder:
Less than six days until we leave, Rae. Don’t get attached.
Still. She had trouble remembering the brute that kidnapped her and inspired so much terror. The fear she felt now was different—more akin to what she felt for violent weather and forces of nature. It was a sense of quiet awe and thankfulness that she was sheltered from his power.
She was left wondering what sheltered her more: the fact she could leave, or the way his savagery transformed into something protective every time he touched her.
She’d still leave him, though. This was not her home. It just surprised her that leaving hurt to think about.
Gazing out the windows, the bright rings and starlight lit the meadow in pale blue colors. That tripartite waterfall caught her gaze once again, and just as before an intense frisson electrified her.
Garr’s hand stroked her face. “You’re beautiful in this light.”
He was awake now, transfixed on the sight of her in the celestial light. His fingertips rode against her skin like silk carried on a breeze, touching her neck and her arm in ways that made her eyes shut, her body bending in response.
He cupped her breast last, and she opened her eyes to one of those boyish, happy smiles of satisfaction at holding her tit.
Men are the same across the galaxy.
She was more amused than anything.
“What keeps you awake?” he asked. Sleep made his voice deeper and more feline.
“The waterfall, I guess. I get a weird shiver every time I look at it.”
“Then we’ll go there tomorrow.” He dragged her into otoya sheets that reflexively cocooned them together.
“Why’s that?” she asked, wrapping her thighs around one of his legs and liking the security of being tangled with him.
“That shiver is a message from Kaython, who is in your blood. Her signal that she wants you there. And if she does, then so do I.” He turned her, sheets adjusting so that now she was spooned comfortably into him.
He nuzzled the back of her scalp, warm breath on her neck.
Ooh. This is good too.
Relaxing, she felt sleepy again.
“You did promise me a show.” But for a while she lay staring out the window, realizing somewhere deep down that she was troubled.
Ythir was beautiful. Garr was… actually not so bad. He might even have meant more to her than a really handsome lover. She worried at her lip as she realized, when she hadn’t been looking, a piece of her heart had attached itself to this planet.
Maybe leaving wouldn’t be so easy after all.
***
Garr disappeared the next morning, off to do whatever primes did at dawn. Did they exercise? Answer urgent emails? She had no idea.
Stretching her aching muscles back into a semblance of working order, Rae collapsed back into the sheets and silently wished Garr hadn’t been so gung-ho about the waterfall. She wanted to stay in bed, recover, and maybe see if Garr would join her there.
Sylla whispered quietly into the room and laid out fresh garments. Even more than usual, she avoided eye contact and there was something in the quick snap of her gestures that made her seem upset.
Realizing what it might be, Rae touched her hair lightly.
Yup. That is some crazy sex hair.
Frowning, Rae broached the subject carefully: “Are you mad?”
“Why would I be mad?” Sylla snapped. She paused after hearing her own curt reply, but then went back to folding Rae’s non-otoya garments from back home.
“You’re mad that Garr and I did it,” Rae said. The phrase “made love” was too much a euphemism, while “had sex” seemed too clinical for what had happened the other night.
As if touched with a red-hot brand, Sylla squared both shoulders and tilted her jaw into the air. For once, there was fire in the silent girl’s eyes. “Did he claim you in the traditional way?”
Rae’s ears burned in response. “I really don’t know the—”
“Did he release inside you!”
The conversation now officially irritated Rae. She flushed in spite of it, and from her flush, she knew the tiny dryad would know it happened precisely that way.
“Then you’re his mate,” Sylla said. She lowered her eyes and sighed. “Forever.”
Rae sat up abruptly. “Wait, why?” Her hands shot reflexively to her stomach. Was there any way in hell an alien could just knock her up? That was absurd to the extreme.
He’d talked about Kaython “finding a way,” but if Kaython had been renovating her reproductive system, Rae would need to bend the domé’s ear on the matter. That was uncool.
Sylla locked stares with her. “Primes mate for life. If he claimed you in the traditional way, he may never seek another. He’ll be a castoff when you leave.” Sylla turned up her nose and marched from the room in a huff.
That should have made Rae feel relieved. She wasn’t potentially knocked up—this was the Ythirian version of matrimony, which Rae could end just by going home.
Yet it didn’t feel better one bit. Instead, her anger swelled. Maybe it should have been directed at an overbearing Ythirian culture, but instead, she fastened it squarely on a different target: Garr.
***
“You should have told me!” Rae marched straight for Garr when he appeared with more sweet cake and fruit for breakfast. She jabbed a finger at his face, less than six inches from his nose.
“You didn’t tell me that sex was a mate-for-life deal with Ythirians, you incredible, arrogant jackass!” She instantly regretted the finger point: the only time Reese had ever gotten physical with her had been in a screaming argument.
After she did this finger point at him, he’d pushed her into a wall and pinned her there. It had been their last argument before the break-up.
Garr considered her finger with hard eyes, both angry and offended. His arms stayed at his sides, and his voice was entirely in check. “Calm down.”
Nothing made Rae angrier than being told to calm down. “No!” Taking a breath, though, she managed to lower her finger, which trembled from outrage. “Sylla told me that you mated me for life last night. Is she lying?”
“She’s not.” Garr shrugged. “You’re not bound to me, though.”
“I don’t understand.”
“When a male releases into a female, in Ythirian culture, it means that he is bound to her. He promises to have no other. If the female has not been properly claimed in a challenge—or if she has found another suitor to challenge the male—she can still escape this bond. It is the man who is bound to her; she’s not bound to him until she acquiesces to him.”
Rae crossed her arms over her chest. “And I didn’t acquiesce last night?” She felt like she’d “acquiesced” around the second orgasm, when she’d bitten his ear and begged for more.
“You don’t understand our rituals.” He was amused, and that infuriated her. “The female accepts her role when she submits. As when I washed your hair, or released inside you, our rituals are physical acts.”
“So… what’s the gesture of submission?” Better to know so that she wouldn’t accidently marry herself off to the lummox.
Garr slipped into her personal space, hands to her hips. “She goes to all fours and offers herself to him. She asks him to claim her. And when he does, she is his forever.”
She should have been too angry to be turned on. Somehow, the explanation made her both at once: horny and righteously ticked off. That was a sexual position Rae had always felt too self-conscious to try—it was wholly submissive, presenting herself as though bowing for a man. She’d never done it with Reese.
He’d wanted it, but it had felt wrong, because she’d sensed he wanted it for the wrong reasons. Maybe that was because all Reese had ever wanted was to control her, and giving herself to him in such a vulnerable pose put too much power in his hands.
“So you aren’t bound to me yet,” Garr concluded. “I am merely bound to you.”
That still wasn’t right. “This isn’t a silly game, Garr. You can’t have anyone but me now.”
“I would like no other.”
“But, I mean—come on! You’re putting this all on me. This can’t just be a wild fling with a human woman anymore.”
“Why would I want that? Anything less than all of you is not enough.” He stroked her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “I fear nothing, because we are destined to be together.”
That was it. The total, confident sureness that Kaython had hooked them up. “I’m not going to be emotionally blackmailed,” Rae informed in her coolest voice. “I’m leaving at the end of the week. Just like you promised I could.”
She anticipated anger—or for him to renege on their deal. Those were the things she had dealt with in past relationships, after all. Instead, Garr did something worse. He chuckled and headed for the door. “Eat. We’ll hike to the waterfall.”
“You’re not listening!”
“I listened,” he said on his way out the door. “But you’re going to be my mate. I don’t want another, I’ve made my decision, and I will wait for you to change your mind.”
If he hadn’t left, she might have thrown a chair.
***
Rae jogged to catch up with Garr after breakfast and they hiked in silence, the trek less than a mile. He carried an otoya bag that clinked with climbing gear.
Rae had been bouldering and rock climbing while at dig sites, but really wasn’t looking forward to the exertion after a night of vigorous lovemaking. The soreness had faded to a dull ache, and her energy bounced back from breakfast, but she’d have rather spent the day indoors and away from Garr.
“Just so you know, my decision’s already made, and it’s final,” she said curtly. “I’m going home at the end of the week. You don’t get to pry me from my parents and brother just because you’re fun in the sack.”
He shrugged. “I will bargain with Lyr for access to the portals. We’ll return to your planet twice every Earth cycle, as is tradition for Ythirian mates when they leave their lineal homestead. The journey will be treacherous, but I will protect you.”
Her mouth hung open. It didn’t matter that his plan to visit for Christmas sort of worked. It was the wholly arrogant way he made the plans without her input that irked her.
Like a king pleasing his subject.
“What about my work?”
“Do it here.”
“I didn’t see an electron microscope on my way in.”
“Kaython will provide.”
“Kaython is your answer to everything!”
“Yes.” He was unbothered by the critique.
“How about my friends?”
“We visit them during our trips to Earth. You will introduce me, and I will meet their mates and best them in physical challenges until they are forced to accept me in their ranks.” His eyes had lit up with the idea of it.
Oh my God, he’s going to play Xbox with Elaine’s boyfriend.
She scanned Garr and sighed.
He’s right, he’ll probably win.
She threw her hands in the air. “What do we tell them, hm? ‘I’ve moved to another planet, guys. Text me whenever.’ ”
“I’ll make them understand. There are several unmated males in my tribe. If you want a friend brought to Ythir, Onnar is a strong beta. He’s had bad luck in the challenges, but on Earth, he might do better.”
She gaped at him. Was he suggesting they hook up Marcy and one of his alien thugs? She went to retort, but then realized the truth: if Onnar were anything like Garr, Marcy would probably be asking what the weather was like on Ythir and how many bags to pack. “It’s not happening,” she growled. “I’m not staying on Ythir. You guys don’t even have Tivo.”