Authors: Marla Therron
Chapter Fourteen
It was hard to wake from the cottony, anesthetic sleep caused by her drugged tea. Each time Rae pushed to the surface, Garr was there. He would give her water, insist she was safe, and she’d slip back into an unnatural slumber.
When she finally woke, her mouth was desiccated and her bladder full. Garr helped her to the bathroom and by the time he returned her to bed, her stomach had roused and she was famished.
Her protector brought food, and Rae’s hands shook so badly that he took hold to steady them, helping her manipulate the honeyed cake to her lips.
He brought her the stew leftover from that meal he’d prepared their first night in the tree house, blowing savory steam from each bite before feeding it to her. The rich broth put some strength back into her rubbery body and dulled the ache in her head.
Garr explained that he’d almost immediately run into Vaya returning from Kaython’s Mouth with news that the creature had been generated in one of the old seeding chambers.
At seeing provisions she’d returned with, he’d known she had actually taken the journey and therefore wasn’t lying. It was then they both realized the likely culprit was the Ythirian they had thought was Sylla—that she’d planted the grave berries while doing Rae’s laundry.
“So we returned,” Garr reported.
“Just in time.” Rae still couldn’t believe how close she’d come to dying.
“Had Vaya not traveled without rest, I fear Yahlalla’s deception may have worked.” He stared out the window at the waterfall. “I thought to protect you. But your world—it’s safer than mine, isn’t it?”
Rae sighed and reached for Garr’s arm, touching him to gather his attention before speaking. “My world can be dangerous too.” The dig sites had not always been in the safest regions.
“This whole plan was folly on my part.” He eased from her touch. “I see now that Kaython needed you to solve the mystery of Yahlalla’s genetic tampering. That is the real reason you were brought here. I was arrogant to assume it was for my own benefit.”
“What—what happened to Yahlalla?”
“She will undergo an inquiry to determine whether she murdered Sylla domé Tanu. If she did, we will give her over to their tribe. If not, she will be stripped of her genetic gifts and returned to her family, where she will be placed under house arrest for six cycles.”
He added: “A cycle is about ten of your Earth years.”
“Then what about me?” Rae asked.
Garr’s face fell and he glanced down at his hands. “I will return you to Earth once Lyr permits it. She has… not been forthcoming with our requests to cross her borders.
Perhaps, she blames us for Yahlalla’s activities in her territory. Lyr can be fickle and slow to forgive. I am sorry, but we will find a way.”
Rae managed a grin. “She likes me better than you. Maybe if we talk, just us girls.”
His eyes softened. “Yes. You are easy to like.”
Clearing her throat, Rae considered him and then the waterfall that was the centerpiece of the bedroom’s view. The frisson she’d felt before came back, as though her connection to this place had grown.
She interpreted it as an invitation from Kaython to remain, and even to use the genetics lab if she liked.
And what excuse did Rae actually have to return to Earth? Once Lyr allowed them, Garr could take her to visit her family; no work she did at home could compare to the discoveries lying buried on this alien world. And there were even Earth-based genetic profiles she could examine.
Biodiversity had always been Rae’s true calling, the planetary resource she cared about above all else.
If she could resurrect the Tasmanian tiger or grow and study the mega-fauna destroyed during the K-T winnowing, she owed it to her own world to try.
It was the Ythirian culture—not its people, not its dangerous wildlife, but its culture—that gave her pause. While she had allies in Garr and Vaya, Rae feared the gradual curtailment of her freedom if she chose to stay.
And yet, when she looked at Garr and honestly considered life without him, it pinched her somewhere deep. Her heart warmed at the sight of his broad, guileless features, and she liked how worry knit his brow when he observed her—no doubt assessing any lingering damage from the drug Yahlalla had dosed her with.
Always concerned. Always the protector.
There were things about their culture to like.
Ythir was dangerous. It wanted Rae to behave in a docile, submissive manner. Yet it was considerably less dangerous if she could trust Garr to protect her from that too. Trust, then, was the thing that made her nervous.
Scientists were not big on trust, and perhaps Rae was too much a skeptic. But then, if she could get Garr to relent on some of his traditions, perhaps she could take that as evidence he would always protect her interests.
As it happened, Rae had precisely an experiment in mind to collect this evidence—and it would be one they would both enjoy.
Flexing her fingers into fists and then extending each digit to make sure her manual dexterity was back, Rae took a long drink from the fruit juice Garr had brought.
She felt much more like herself and considered her lover. Sliding onto her knees, she raised her whole body until she was almost nose-to-nose with him.
He blinked in surprise. “You feel better?”
Nodding, she wrapped her fingers through his otoya vest, silky fibers making her shiver. Looking into his shiny black eyes, she could make out hints of where his pupils were, because of slight gradations in the darkness visible only when she was close. “You don’t want me to go back to Earth.”
“I want what is best for you,” he said evenly.
“I want what’s best for us both,” she emphasized.
“Us?”
“Yes. If you want a human woman,” she whispered into his ear, so close his breath tickled her throat, “you’re going to have to get used to the idea of an ‘us.’ ”
“More talk of belonging to one another?” He sounded unsure.
“Precisely.” She brushed her nose against one of the markings that traveled up his throat, and his breath caught.
“When Yahlalla was threatening me, I was afraid to die—but also afraid for you.”
“Why me?”
“Because she’d have killed you eventually. She wanted you so bad she’d have destroyed you for fear of someone else being yours.”
Kissing the hard line of his jaw, Rae could feel the faint traces of stubble from a recent shave. His bronzed skin smelled clean, and she tasted him with a kiss, as he’d tasted her skin so many times before.
She liked it; could certainly get used to his primal mode of lovemaking.
“Rae.” His eyes shut, body going still. “We cannot do this. I—this world—it’s dangerous.”
“Then stop me,” she teased, brushing her bottom lip over the dark circle beneath his ear, as she had before. He shuddered, and just when he started to, she heightened it by circling two fingers over the nova marking on his chest.
He let out a low, raw groan that filled her belly with excited flutters—a hungry sound that reached into the carnal parts of her imagination and filled it with phantoms of him claiming her on all fours in that overpowering, half-feral way.
“You’re obviously not going to stop me,” she whispered, opening his vest and trailing kisses down the dark lines.
She looked up into his eyes, teasing her lips over the nova marking. “If you aren’t going to stop me, the least you could do is touch me back.”
Garr needed no further encouragement, hands threading through her otoya night shirt. The fabric turned fluid and he pulled it from her—not off and over her head, no, he merely bunched his fist, pulled away, and it half flowed and half ripped, leaving her nude.
He clasped one hand around her back, the other firmly cupping her buttock. He hoisted her into his lap and, once she straddled him, his kisses fell to her breasts, feasting on her in a way that was all heat, tongue, and possessive growls.
Rae sank her fingers into his short, charcoal-colored hair and urged his mouth to her nipple. “That’s it,” she encouraged as he enveloped it. “Just where I want you. Keep doing that.” She looked down at his shiny-eyed stare and grinned.
***
His clever, human mate now atop him, Garr sighed as her delicate fingers tugged his hair, the urgency in the way she pulled his mouth to her breasts turning him on.
He tasted her, adoring her almost sweet flavor—he’d never expected or thought it possible for a female’s skin to taste nearly sweet. Was it a property of humans, or an ephemeral trick of his mind based in how much he wanted her?
And when he glanced up, those alien eyes blazed back at him with their blue-green intensity, locked on him. Her sultry voice made demands of him—of a prime—and she showed no shame in the way she rocked her hips, applying a pressure and friction to his swelling cock.
This was not how females were supposed to behave, and he’d never imagined wanting it before. Now, though, he couldn’t imagine wanting anything else. The challenge in her gaze incited him, made him want to claim her.
He dropped onto his back so that she was over him, and when she leaned forward the placement of her hands on his chest pushed her breasts together. Was that on purpose? Did she know how that exploded his want?
He cupped those presented breasts and groaned at how good her stiff nipples felt brushing into the palms of his hands, how he could feel her heat pushing into his erection through the thin otoya fabric separating them.
It was time. He’d let her play at being in charge too long already. Taking hold of her knee, he started to spin her onto her back.
“No,” she ordered, her hands locked onto his shoulder.
“No?” This was blasphemy. She could beseech her male, certainly, but not give orders. Especially not her prime.
She leaned down until her nipples scraped against his chest, pinching his otoya between two fingers. “I’m yours.”
Yes.
Kissing his throat, she built his pleasure with the motion of her hips, his erection aching against his breeches and in desperate need of feeling their skin pushed flush. “I’m yours, and you’re also mine.”
This game again. But by all the domé of the sphere, he wanted to play it. “How so?” he challenged.
“Give me control of your otoya so I can strip it off you.”
She wanted to undress
him
. Wildly inappropriate, but… he had a soft spot for this clever human creature, and so he nodded. “If you desire it, taliyar.”
Rae leaned back, settling onto his lap. She did not correct or chastise him for using that moniker. Instead, she circled her fingers through the fabric of his vest and he passed her control of the fabric with a mental command.
“If I’m your taliyar,” she said, “that makes you my prime?”
“Yes,” he breathed. The sound of her saying it was more erotic than anything he’d ever heard a female whisper.
“Then lay back, Prime Garr.”
Another shudder, her words filling him with the urgent desire to be inside her.
She took his hands and lifted them to her breasts, holding them cupped over her. Then she reached to his vest, stroked it, and commanded it.
The liquid clothing sleeked off his skin, and bunched abruptly around his wrists, binding them together. “Lay back, because now it’s time
I
claimed you.”
***
Rae held no illusions that Garr could bust the otoya binding on his wrists if he desired. However, in spite of his shock, he relented and seemed to let her do it. “What are you talking about?” he asked.
Taking his hands and peeling them from her chest, she ushered them over his head, leaning down with the motion to kiss him. She sighed at the taste of his mouth, drawing back to look down into his eyes.
“I love the alpha male who can do those insane things to my body, Garr. And I love the honorable creature who was willing to surrender his desires to send me home and keep me safe.”
He stared up at her, uncertain where she was going with this.
“But you need to understand.” She reached down to touch his jaw, using that motion to keep his eyes on her.
“I am not your property. I’m your mate. If you get to take care of me, I get to take care of you.” She smoothed her hands over the warm contours of his chest, savoring the power that was beneath her and between her thighs.
“But males—”
“—take care of the females.” She grinned. “However, I’m about to take care of you.”
It was the moment she’d worked toward from the start. How deep did his coded rules go? What was stronger in Garr, his desire to follow his culture or to please Rae?
The prime beneath her wanted to mold her into a shape appropriate for his world; but could Rae convince this proud creature that he didn’t have to do that?
Garr relented with a nod. “If it pleases you. Show me.”
She slid down his body, kissing his chest and his taut abdomen. He watched her every motion, and she even put on a little show for him, pulling her hair to one side so that he could see her smile when she kissed the lovely ridges of his hips.