The Spawning (28 page)

He fought the acid burn in his balls to release his seed. Struggling to ignore it, he felt sweat from the strain pop from his pores as he cupped his hips over and over to delve THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 124

a little deeper and a little deeper still. When he’d almost despaired of sheathing himself entirely, he felt the tight grip of her muscles on his cock ease slightly, felt her lubrication allowing him to glide into her fully at last. He nearly lost his seed the instant he felt his cock head butt her womb.

Sucking in a harsh breath that was a mixture of relief and desperation, he began to move in a cadence he hoped would bring her to crisis once more. She surprised him.

He’d barely attained a smooth rhythm when she stiffened, arched against him and began to utter the cries he knew meant she was coming. The realization alone was enough to snatch his precarious hold on his control from him. The milking motion of her channel around him completed his descent into madness.

His body jerked and seized, forcing his seed into her spasming womb, the force of the convulsions punching the breath from him in hard grunts. Relieved when it finally stopped, he slumped heavily against her, trying to catch his breath.

* * * *

Sated, completely, utterly, gloriously limp from the magnitude of her climax—the second in quick succession—Miranda made no attempt to move. She wasn’t sure she could, but she was sure she didn’t want to. The bed beneath her
felt
like a bed—a real bed—and she wasn’t entirely sure that wasn’t almost more wonderful than the feel of the hard man inside of her and on top of her, pressing her deeply into its softness.

Actually, she was sure. The hard man was far more pleasurable.

But the mattress felt divine, too.

He began to move again after a few moments, slowly sawing along her channel

until she felt his flesh grow hard inside of her again. A flicker of doubt went through her, but the transition from uncertainty to welcome was so swift she hardly noticed. Warmth surged inside of her, the warmth of gladness not passion, but still a warm reception to Khan.

The certainty filled her that she didn’t care whether or not she came again. The deep connection of their bodies was pleasure enough in itself, comforting, infinitely desirable for that alone. The pleasure she sensed he derived from stroking his flesh intimately against hers was as captivating.

She dragged her feet up the bed, planting her soles firmly against the surface and lifting to meet his languid thrusts. Instantly, ripples of desirous pleasure took priority.

Her focus shifted as the warmth grew more pronounced. The recognizable tension toward release began to grow a little more prominent with each thrust and retreat as he changed the tempo, became more focused himself on the pursuit of ultimate pleasure.

The shockwaves that rippled through her grew more and more marked, closer and

closer together. She lifted her eyelids with an effort, studying the bunching, flexing muscles of his chest and arms above her, lifting her arms to stroke them over his flesh with a profound sense of wonder and joy she couldn’t quite put a name to. Her touch lifted goosebumps on his flesh, made him quiver. Her throat closed with a mixture of unidentifiable emotions.

Gliding her hands down his chest and belly, she settled them finally on his taut buttocks, gripping them, urging him to drive his thick flesh deeper inside of her, faster.

He uttered her name on a long, drawn out groan that made her flesh prickle, her heart hammer faster, sent a hard wave of pleasure through her. It pitched her over the edge.

She sucked in a quick breath as she felt her body begin to quake, groaning in pleasurable THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 125

agony as she released it. The sound, or the tightening of her body in spasms of release, triggered his own. He surged deeply, burrowed his face against the bedding and slipped his hands beneath her, clenching his fingers tightly into her buttocks as he shook and jerked with his own climax.

He slumped so heavily against her when the convulsions ceased that she felt the air slowly squeezed from her lungs.

Either he heard the grunt or he felt her body collapsing beneath his weight. He jerked upward instantly, pitched over onto his side, and dragged her with him. Shivering slightly as the heat left her body, she snuggled tightly against him. He coiled around her, sharing his warmth, and she drifted lazily toward unconscious, lulled by his warmth and the beat of his heart beneath her cheek.

She knew she slept for a while just as surely as she knew it wasn’t nearly enough when he roused her with feverish need, stroking and kissing her with a hunger that denied the appeasement she’d given him only hours before. She responded readily, not with any great need of her own but with a fervent wish to give pleasure.

Her willingness didn’t seem to be enough. He teased her until he brought her to the fever again, driving into her until her body answered his call and exploded with pleasure before he allowed her to sink into oblivion for a brief time and called to her again, and then again until she lost count of the times he expended himself on her and wrung pleasure from her.

* * * *

Khan woke to a sense of well-being unlike anything he could summon to his memory. For some time he lay reveling in it, enjoying the rare sense of complete relaxation. As his mind sought the source of the total absence of tension, however, apprehension descended on him with a vengeance. Opening his eyes, Khan stared blearily at Miranda’s sleeping face completely without comprehension for a handful of seconds.

The lack of tension, he realized as his mind filled with carnal images, was from the absence of the spawning urge.

A cold sweat swept over him. Bile rose in his throat and he swallowed sickly

against it.

The last clear thought he could remember was charging after the men when they’d broken ranks, fought off the men trying to reason with them, and charged toward the compound. From the moment the two groups collided and began battling it out it had ceased, he realized now, to be an effort to protect the women and become a battle for supremacy to mate.

Miranda had called to him, distracting him. He remembered that. He had no idea what she’d called out. All that remained clear in his mind was the realization that she was in danger because the men were pounding against the wall with combined sonic blasts that were crumbling the foundation, and the abrupt certainty that she was summoning him.

Doubts had still swarmed in his mind until she’d met his purposeful gaze

unflinchingly, held it for so long he knew it was promise and then turned to allow him to give chase, to conquer.

He didn’t
know
that, though, he thought a little sickly. He’d just thought he knew it because his mind had been burning with the fever and he’d accepted behavior he was THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 126

familiar with, believed that it meant the same thing—take me. I’m yours.

The only thing about the Earth women he
was
certain about was that their mating customs weren’t at all the same as that of the Hirachi!

Because
they
weren’t the same!

He’d promised himself that he would protect her—from everyone, including

himself, but there was no doubt in his mind that the spawning fever was gone because he’d thoroughly expended it.

He could smell their intermingled scents, the musky fragrance of spent passion.

He’d pumped his seed into her body relentlessly until he couldn’t summon more.

Conflicting desires struck, the urge to cover her body again and join his flesh with hers and an equal desperation to get as far from her as he could because he couldn’t bear to look at her, knowing what he’d done.

She might
die
because he hadn’t been able to control himself.

It was nothing short of a blessing of the gods that he hadn’t killed her in his mindless pursuit to impregnate her!

The insane, guilty urge flooded his mind for several moments to try to find some way to retrieve his seed, to remove it before it was too late, but he knew it was already too late.

Sneaking from the bed as quietly as he could to keep from waking her and facing what he’d done before he absolutely had to, he left his chamber for the facilities, hovering over the waste bowl for a little while and struggling with the urge to puke. His stomach merely tormented him, however, and, giving up, he stepped into the bathing cubicle, trying to scrub the stale scent of sex off.

He didn’t feel any better when he’d finished. After pacing for a short while, he finally pulled his breeches on and dropped into the pool. The losers in the battle to mate were congregated in the nursery as he’d known they would be. Miranda’s lovers met him with the hostility he’d expected, but he felt none of the triumph he should have, would ordinarily have felt.

“You are finally done?” Teron growled.

Khan settled heavily in the midst of the men, trying to figure out how he felt beyond terrified of the consequences of his actions. “Yes,” he said finally, tiredly.

Gerek looked for several moments as if he’d lose his grip on his temper. “You broke off the gods damned contest!” he snarled finally. “We had settled nothing!”

Khan’s lips tightened. “She accepted me!” he growled back, his own anger

surging to the forefront. “You know it doesn’t make a gods damned difference who comes out the victor! The maiden chooses, gods damn it! It was
her
right to decide who she wanted to father her child!”

Adar, Gerek, and Teron glared at him for a while, but finally seemed to tamp their anger.

“She is mine next spawning!” Teron muttered after several minutes of

uncomfortable silence. “I am the eldest and I have not spawned, gods damn it!”

Khan, Gerek, and Adar all glared at him furiously.

“I do not see how you think that means that your need is greater than anyone

else’s!” Adar said indignantly. “
None
of us have spawned!”

“That means you are
least
likely to find favor!” Gerek said tightly. “Not more likely. You are not likely to spawn anything but females … now! She will want sons!”

THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 127

“How do you know what she will want?” Teron growled. “She is not a Hirachi

woman! Mayhap
they
prefer females! She will want a daughter to help her, to carry on her line. Sons are for their fathers!”

Khan studied him a little hopefully. “You think she will weather the birthing without much trouble?” he asked a little hoarsely.

Teron turned to look at him, staring at him blankly for many moments before the color slowly leeched from his face. He swallowed convulsively a few times. “I will have to help her birth it. There are no women.” Shooting to his feet abruptly, he charged toward the pool, dropped to his knees, and threw up the contents of his stomach.

Khan felt a wave of dizziness wash over him, felt his belly clench. Springing up, he raced to the pool, and puked, as well.

It seemed to be contagious. Within a short time fully half the men in the nursery were prostrate around the pool, or on their hands and knees, emptying their stomachs.

Khan collapsed weakly onto his side when he finally stopped gagging. Rolling to his back a few moments later, he stared up at the ceiling, struggling to ignore the sounds and smell of retching and tame his roiling stomach. “It will take an hour for enough water to recycle to freshen the fucking pool again,” he muttered to no one in particular.

Teron pushed himself to feet and stood over Khan, wavering a little weakly, but glaring at him furiously. “I do not know why you are sick to your stomach!
I
am the healer. It is
I
who will have to attend
twenty
flower women trying to disgorge babes fully half their size, gods damn it! It is
I
who will have to deal with it!”

“We will
all
have to deal with it!” Khan snapped furiously, dropping his arm across his eyes as he struggled with the urge to weep like a child. “I have impregnated our little Miranda!”

“And I am sorely tempted to unman you for it and choke you with it!” Teron

snarled.

* * * *

Every muscle on Miranda’s body protested when she stretched, but it was a pleasant soreness. Smiling as she felt around blindly for Khan, she opened her eyes when she didn’t find him and glanced around the room.

It was almost as delightful to find herself inside a
real
, honest to god room, as to realize why she felt so thoroughly satisfied … and so rested, she mentally added with amusement. Feeling anticipation thread her veins, she got out of the bed and padded to the door to peer out. A little disconcerted when she didn’t see any sign of Khan, she finally shrugged off the niggling of doubt that surfaced and began to explore, moving first to the cushions she’d noticed when she’d arrived. A faint rustle emerged from them as she squeezed the first she came to, but she discovered, although it was firm, it was still the softest thing she’d felt since she left Earth—except his bed, which felt pretty much the same and must be filled with whatever filled the pillow.

The casing felt a little strange—almost slick like plastic, but when she lifted it to study it, she saw it was woven. Shaking her head when she still couldn’t figure out what it was made from, she set the pillow down again and looked around. There was another door, she saw, on the same wall that fronted his bedroom, but this one was more narrow than the opening to his bedroom. Moving toward it, she peered inside and studied the room a little blankly, trying to figure out its function. There were counters, even a small table and chair, rather like a kitchen, but she didn’t see anything that looked like the THE SPAWNING Kaitlyn O’Connor 128

appliances familiar to her. The counters appeared to be a solid block, she saw when she’d stepped inside for a better look. She discovered, though, when she’d looked closely that there were recessed notches here and there that fit her grip and when she’d pulled on them, she saw they opened.