* * * *
"Our nutritional requirements are probably a little different than yours," Kate said once she'd shown Ronan, Dax, and Jarek the workings of their kitchenette in their cabin and explained what each fixture did and how it worked. "We don't … uh … forage for food … uh … anymore. People used to, but that was a long, long time ago. We have plants that grow everything and other plants that package everything and then, once we get it from a store, we have to prepare it. A balanced diet is a healthy diet! And for us that means a serving of protein, vegetables, dairy and fiber. Fiber is really important since everything is so processed."
"Fi … ber?" Jarek asked curiously. "What dis? Why im … port?"
Kate felt her face reddening. He would focus on that! She cleared her throat. "Important for digestion and it's … uh … well, fiber. Something hard to digest. Actually, impossible-that's why it's good for you-well, us."
"What dat odder stuff?" Ronan asked.
"Meat … uh … animal flesh and plants and the dairy comes from milk. We're omnivores. That means we have to have some of both to be healthy. We could get by on one or the other for short periods of time, but to be healthy we need both."
Ronan frowned. She thought he was trying to figure out what milk was, but he surprised her. "Dat not animal," he said, nudging his chin toward the package of meat she was holding.
"Of course it is!" Kate said briskly. "It's just processed meat. That's why it doesn't look familiar. Well, factory cultivated. It isn't actually an animal. We don't raise farm animals anymore. They take up too much room, breathe too much air, and produce too much …uh … methane … and this is better anyway. Just enough fat to be healthy and none of the bad stuff."
"What mean digest?" Dax demanded.
Kate cleared her throat. "When the body processes the food?"
Jarek, she saw, was frowning thoughtfully. "Why eat food no process? No make sense. Just go out again."
"Yes, well, it helps us process the other stuff," Kate said briskly, hoping to divert any more questions by directing their attention to the food preparations. "All of the packages tell you how to prepare the food."
Ronan took the package she was holding and looked it over in frowning concentration. Any hope she'd had that they had somehow managed to learn to read vanished. He tapped at the instructions with one index finger. "Dis spek? How make talk?"
Dismay flickered through her. "It doesn't actually …. Never mind! Why don't the three of you just study the package and memorize what it looks like? Then I'll show you how to prepare the meal and we'll go from there?"
Ronan looked the package he was holding over cursorily and passed it to Dax who passed it to Jarek.
"Oh come on! I said memorize! You aren't going to be able to tell this package from the others!"
Ronan sent her an unreadable look. "Will."
"That fast?"
"Yes."
"Fine! You can show me." She snatched the package from Jarek and presented her back, blocking their view while she shuffled the package with the others inside the food locker. Then she stepped back. "You first,"
she said, crooking her finger at Ronan.
He sent her a sardonic look, stepped forward and picked up the package.
"You saw me! Or you read my mind."
His lips flattened into a thin line. "Memorize-You say no read mind. I no do dat."
Kate was still skeptical. Either they were reading her mind or they had photographic memories, though.
She tried shuffling the packages with each one and each of them picked the package out unerringly and within moments.
Shrugging it off with the reflection that they were the ones that were going to suffer if they were
'cheating', she focused on preparing the meal.
She discovered after a few days, though, that they actually did seem to retain anything they saw once.
They watched each meal she prepared, but no matter how complicated it was, they could repeat the process without any trouble at all.
It was admirable in a way.
In another way it was downright unnerving.
* * * *
"What in the world …?"
Dax sent her a wary look from the floor in front of her cabin door where he'd obviously been sitting for a while.
She thought it was Dax.
Recovering, she leaned out the door and looked both ways down the corridor and then motioned him inside. "Dax?"
He morphed into the form she was familiar with.
She was never going to get used to that!
And it occurred to her that there was nothing to stop any of them from taking any form they wanted to!
"You are Dax?"
He frowned. "No look like?"
Kate frowned back at him. "That isn't an answer! And how am I supposed to know when you guys can and do change the way you look to anything you want to look like …?" The comment redirected her mind.
"You can do that, right? I mean, make yourself look like anything at all?"
He seemed to hesitate. "Muss be same size."
As brief as it was, she thought that hesitation was significant. She noticed he hadn't actually answered either question. He moved closer, however, while she was distracted by her thoughts. She flinched all over when he embraced her, nuzzling his face along the side of her neck. Her breasts tingled as her nipples hardened with the warmth that instantly flooded her.
"You fuck me, yes? No hurt baby?"
Kate stiffened and then released an irritated huff of breath.
Dax leaned away from her to study her face. "No say right?"
She had to give him points for being swift on the uptake!
She shook her head, more at herself than him. No matter that she knew he wasn't even human and could certainly not have any understanding of romance-human males weren't that damned good at it themselves!-she still couldn't help but be disappointed. Worse, she could tell him the right words to say and she didn't doubt that he'd remember and use the right ones the next time, but it meant even less than a human male telling a woman what she wanted to hear just so he could get in her pants! He wouldn't understand that! She seriously doubted he was capable of feeling any of the human emotions, or what everyone thought of as purely human emotion.
They were far more in touch with their animal side than humans were, far less tame, and thus far less likely to feel more than animal urges. In a way, she supposed that taste of wildness might be at least part of their appeal. She would never have thought such a thing would appeal to her, but it certainly didn't turn her off!
"It hurt baby?" he persisted. "Dis what wrong?"
Kate sighed again. She at least needed to make an effort to teach them some of the finer points of social behavior or they didn't have a chance in hell of getting along. She could just imagine their reception if they made a habit of asking any female that appealed to them if they wanted to fuck!
It was her fault anyway! She should've corrected them to begin with! "It's offensive to ask like that," she said a little irritably. "A woman at least wants the pretense that a guy cares something about her … even when she knows better."
You are my mate. I care. You cannot tell that I want to mate with you?
"You're never going to get good enough with your English to pass if you keep reverting to telepathy!"
He frowned. "Hard."
Amusement flickered through Kate in spite of her irritation. She knew he was talking about how hard it was for him to communicate with her in her language-and she really did empathize with his difficulties-but she couldn't resist 'misinterpreting' the comment. "So I noticed," she said dryly, giving in to the impulse to cup his erection and stroke it.
His hands tightened on her. "Feel goot, Kat. No feel goot to Kat? Dis why no want?"
She was a total sucker! She knew his earnest questions had a lot more to do with what he wanted than any anxiety that she wasn't pleased with him, but she decided he'd been convincing enough.
Besides, she was horny. As much as she hated to admit it even to herself she hadn't just gotten used to having the guys around in the time she'd spent with them. She'd enjoyed every minute of the things they'd done with her.
What possible difference could it make now if she couldn't resist the urge to be intimate with them?
She'd already succumbed to Ronan's persuasion. Granted, she'd been trying to convince herself ever since that it was just a minor lapse and that she could still recover her distance, but she knew better. She'd known better when she fell right into bed with Ronan!
She was already pregnant. He couldn't get her more pregnant-hopefully! He wasn't going to get the idea that he was her mate because he was already convinced of that!
She pulled away from him resolutely. He didn't make any attempt to stop her and that settled it in her mind. Whatever he was, he wasn't inclined to force his will on her. Taking his hand, she led him across the room to her bunk and then released her hold and removed her clothing.
He watched her keenly. That made for a few awkward moments because it flickered through her mind to wonder what she looked like to him.
Of course, he'd never seen a woman of his own clan, but did that mean he actually found her desirable?
Or was she only desirable because she had a warm, wet hole he wanted to get in to?
He distracted her from her unpleasant thoughts by reaching for her. She was almost surprised when he didn't snatch her off her feet, toss her onto the bunk and start rutting.
She didn't think she would've been surprised or particularly alarmed if he had.
The plain fact was, she had no idea what to expect from any of them … except surprise.
She'd spent almost a week with Dax and the others, pretending she had no idea that they were the Sirians and treating them like Earth lovers. She'd spent the past several days since she'd finally gotten them out of jail trying to figure them out and trying to acquaint them with Earth/human customs. And they still regularly blew her mind because their minds were so different.
He redirected her attention by coasting his cupped palms lightly along her arms and shoulders. The fine hairs all over her body reacted instantly by standing erect, creating a prickling sensation that sent a light shiver through her. Blood rushed into surface capillaries, warming her skin. It engorged her nipples, making them harden and stand erect and throbbing for a touch.
Drawn by her reaction, he cupped her breasts, massaging them with his hands as he squeezed them lightly, lifting them. After a moment, he shifted his focus to the tips, pinching them as if testing the hardness and then rolling them between his thumb and forefinger. Sensation arrowed from the tips of her breasts straight to her sex and the muscles along her channel clenched and relaxed, forcing heated moisture into the passage.
He dragged in a shaky breath and met her gaze for a long moment.
Releasing her breasts, Dax pulled her down onto her bunk with him, settling on his side and directing her with his hands onto her back. Bending one arm, he propped on it and studied her body as he examined her flesh with his hands and fingertips, touching, lightly stroking, kneading.
She watched his face, allowing his exploration, wondering what was going through his mind. Was it purely curiosity? Or was it arousing him as much as it was her? Or was it a little of both?
How different was she, truly, from his people? If she could see his true form, would she be terrified?
Repulsed?
How different could they be from one another if he found her desirable?
Or was the Sirian male like their Earthly counterparts? Aroused by their own needs and able to copulate when that need was high, regardless of the female, by simply focusing on their need rather than their partner?
Was she any different when all was said and done? Despite her doubts, his touch created warming currents that drifted through her and seemed to collect and increase the longer he simulated her nerve endings with his touch until she found herself wanting to urge him to do more.
As if he read her thoughts, he ceased to caress her with his hand and leaned closer, teasing her with the movements of his lips along her skin.
Had he captured her thoughts, she wondered as she felt herself sinking more deeply under the spell of mounting pleasure?
She discovered she didn't really care when his questing mouth found the tip of one breast and his lips closed around it. Her breath left her in a gasping rush. Her eyes slammed shut to embrace the exquisite sensation bombarding her.
He released her nipple at the sound and lifted his head. She sensed his gaze on her face and struggled to lift her eyelids. Even as they parted, she watched the descent of his dark head once more through her lashes, watched his mouth close around the tip once more and then his cheeks sink inward as he sucked on it.
The heated current that flowed through her was more pronounced that time. She squeezed her eyes closed again and lifted a hand to cup his head to her breast, silently urging him to give her more. Her mind clouded with the surge of pleasure drugs into her system. She held her breath, focused completely on the curl of his tongue around her nipple and the tugging sensation as he drew on it with the suction of his mouth. The muscles low in her belly fluttered madly in response. Her clit, as engorged and sensitized by now as her nipples, began to ache with the pulsing rhythm of her heart.
As he shifted his attention from one nipple to the other, she searched blindly for his hand, tugging on his arm until she could guide his hand to her clit. He broke off, watching as she cupped his hand over her mound and guided his movements until she found the rhythm that produced the hardest jolts of almost electric current from her clitoris and into her womb.
Apparently satisfied after a few moments that he'd mastered the rhythm she wanted, he took her nipple into his mouth again and sucked it as he had the first.
He'd certainly mastered it! For a few minutes Kate luxuriated in the twin stimulations, her breath hitching in her chest each time a fresh wave clashed inside of her like colliding cymbals. Abruptly, it wasn't enough, and it was too much at the same time. Her body leapt from satisfaction in the acute pleasure to impatience for more, from passive enjoyment to the certainty that she was going to come if he continued.
The hollowness in her lower belly began to beg to be filled. The certainty filled her that disappointment was going to leaven her pleasure if he wasn't inside of her when she came.
"Dax!" she gasped.
He ceased his play and lifted his head.
He didn't know what she wanted!
She surged toward him, pushing him onto his back with her weight and straddled his hips. Lifting up onto her knees, she searched for his cock a little frantically, grasped it and guided it to the mouth of her sex. The muscles there seemed to clench in an effort to swallow his flesh, ached with the need to feel it.
Despite the copious moisture she'd produced, it was a struggle for a few moments to engulf his rigid flesh. He seemed disconcerted, briefly, that she'd opted to mount him, but he steadied her by gripping her hips with his hands as she teetered above him.
She lifted and settled again until she'd managed to sheathe him completely, until she could feel the roughness of his pubic hair brushing her throbbing clit. A low groan of pleasure escaped her as she ground herself against him.
She didn't want to move. The feel of his thick flesh deep inside of her and the brush of his hair against her clit sent her spiraling closer to climax and she focused on attaining it, rotating her hips and grinding against him. With each movement of her hips, she felt her goal almost within her grasp. She lifted slightly away from him and ground her hips tightly against his belly again and again, over and over, gasping, holding her breath each time she felt tremors that warned of explosion.
Abruptly, she was seized by the convulsions she craved. She sucked in a sharp breath and released a long, low, almost animalistic groan as her body quaked. Dax's hands tightened on her hips almost bruisingly as the muscles along her channel convulsed. She was too mindless with the waves of rapture clashing inside of her to have much awareness of anything else, her muscles beyond her ability to command to assist him as he began to lift her and settle her rhythmically in search of his own release. She struggled to obey the command of his hands anyway, awkwardly rising and falling so that her body stroked his cock.
He arched abruptly, lifting her, and then holding her as he thrust upward into her in a frantic, pounding rhythm. He began to come as her own climax reached a crescendo and began to abate. As weak as water in the aftermath, struggling between consciousness and unconsciousness, she wilted against him when he finally drove deeply inside of her and held her pelvis tightly against his as he pumped the last of his seed into her.
A different sort of pleasure invaded her as she lay against his chest, feeling the rise and fall of his ragged breaths, listening to the pounding rhythm of his heart. There was something deeply satisfying about knowing she'd given pleasure and not simply received it. It was almost more fulfilling to know he'd found pleasure in her than achieving her own climax. It was certainly as gratifying.
He curled his arms tightly around her and her satisfaction deepened-briefly-with the display of affection.