“Get it under control,” I tell him, tugging my pants off the rest of the way.

“I am trying,” he says, his body tense. “It is very hard, considering the succulent fragrance of your cunt, now perfuming the air. Your skin is very soft.”

“My what?!”

“Is that not the right word?” His breath gusts against my neck, hot, so hot compared to how cold my flesh is.

“It’s not polite to talk about it,” I say. His heat seeps into me, and it is absolutely delicious after taking off my soaked clothes.

“It is not polite to talk about how I want to taste the sweet nectar between your legs as I bring you to the peak of your pleasure?”

“Yep.” I nod emphatically. “That would be very impolite.” A jolt of desire shocks through me at the thought, and I squeeze my eyes shut—like that’s going to stop it. Like that’s going to stop the feeling of his hard, muscled body caging mine in. Like it’s going to blot out the feeling of his massive cock, nudging at the thin fabric of the underwear on my hip.

“But I can smell your desire,” he says, groaning again.

It’s embarrassing. “Please stop smelling it.” File that under things I never anticipated uttering in my life.

“I cannot hold my breath,” he says.

“Breathe through your mouth,” I snap. I need him to talk about something else, anything else. I squirm against him, somehow turned on. I should not be turned on.

But my body is absolutely down with it.

I open my eyes. Snails. I should think about snails. Over his shoulder, snails climb the wall of the hollow tree we’re resting in. Who sleeps in a tree? We’re like a pair of fairytale princesses, complete with magic snails that are making art on the—my eyes narrow at the shape of the slime trail.

“Does that look like…” My lips clamp shut.

Draz turns to glance over his shoulder. “It does rather look like a cock. If you like, you can compare mine to it, and see how it measures up.”

I groan, and he lets out a small laugh, the motion sending a shiver down my spine. Not of cold—his body is burning that off pretty well—but of desire. He laughs again, and I realize he was joking. I’m sitting on a dangerous alien’s lap, his hard dick poking my hip, and he’s making jokes about snails leaving glowing phallic graffiti on the inside of a tree.

It’s so ridiculous that I can’t help letting out a small laugh as well, and then we’re both laughing hysterically, Draz’s huge shoulders shaking with it.

After a minute, the manic giggles die away, and we’re left with the raging storm outside and the sound of my heart pounding in my ears.

OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER EIGHT

OceanofPDF.com

DRAZ

Her laughter dies. She stares up at me with her oddly beautiful human eyes, the white ring blueish in the light from the snails. The perfume of her arousal continues to sweeten the air, and I wonder at it. Suevan females only become aroused when they are ready to take a mate.

But my wife, my Ni-Kee, insists she does not want to mate, even though her body tells me it is ready.

“Why do you look at me like that?” I ask softly.

Hair plastered to her head from the rain, Ni-Kee seems even tinier now. She shifts again, and I try not to notice how soft and full the curve of her ass is, how powerful the muscle underneath, despite her relatively small stature.

“You surprise me.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“No,” she says softly. “It’s not a bad thing.”

I want to preen. I want to flip her to her back and surprise her with what I can do with my tongue. Instead, I wait, hoping she takes the lead. Hoping she tells me more of what she is thinking.

Her shaking slowly subsides, the sound of her teeth clattering together replaced by deep breathing.

My little mate is asleep.

I hold her close, gratified she can at least trust me to hold her and watch over her. Her hair is soaked, and I run my fingers through it. It’s much finer than mine, so coarse that the rain practically runs right off it. If I do not comb through it, I am sure it will snarl and tangle and be uncomfortable.

I refuse to allow my mate to be uncomfortable.

So I move slowly, so carefully, detangling the wet mess of it with my talons. The rainstorm rages on overhead, the snails’ light winking out the further they travel from our bodies. I take my time, braiding it back in the Suevan way. It will stay out of her eyes like this, and when she undoes her braid, it will not be tangled. A loud peal of thunder crashes overhead, and she stirs in her sleep, muttering something about can-dee, before flopping towards me.

My breath catches in my throat.

Her cheeks are flushed, and I am relieved to see the color has fully returned to her spotted skin. The spots are endlessly intriguing, sprinkled over the high bridge of her nose and across those cheeks. They remind me of the asteroid belt that orbits Sueva, visible on the rare clear nights.

The asteroids are the first thing that Suevans use to navigate when learning to steer the space-to-land craft. I spent many nights as a boy and a young man memorizing the locations of certain asteroids so that I could become the best. So that I could find my way home.

I stare at the little brown dots dusting her beautiful face, and my heart squeezes.

I would memorize these, too. Because this woman, this human, she will be my home.

And yet, what kind of foundation have I built for us?

She is as alien to me as I am to her, with her smooth skin and fine hair, and strange round eyes. The people of Earth sent her to us unwillingly, ignorant of her purpose here, and without the translator in place, she could not have known what was happening.

And without being tied to the Suevan people, she would not have been allowed to access our sacred language.

I cannot imagine sending eight valuable warriors into this situation. I cannot fathom sending any of my people into a marriage and keeping them in the dark about it.

It is reprehensible.

It is a violation.

I turn it over in my head, trying to untangle it.

We might be mated, but no matter how much I want this woman, how much I need my Ni-Kee, I must woo her. Court her, in the old ways. Show her that I will be a good mate.

No.

I will be the best mate.

A plan begins to take shape in my head, and I smile to myself as I watch the beauty in my arms breathe deeply in sleep. I could court her. Prove to her that I am a good mate by bringing her food and caring for her, protecting her, tending to her every need, in the traditional way.

Yes. I will win her trust in this manner. Her love. Her body.

Perhaps it will take longer than I expect to reach Edrobaz, high in the mountain jungle. Perhaps it will be slightly more dangerous than our traditional courtship rituals, what with the separatists hunting us. I bare my fangs, arms tensing slightly. This human female has captured me as surely as a hunter and a jex.

This is a desperate plan, and a small, rational part of my brain acknowledges that, for I am desperate for the delicate warrior woman in my arms.

But when we arrive to Edrobaz, Ni-Kee will be mine, body and soul.

I wake hours later. The snails pulse gently against the inner walls of the tree, their intermittent glow a sign of approaching dawn.

The previous days’ events roll through my mind, and my eyes fly open. My mate. Danger from the separatists. The first fingers of dawn reach through the crack in the tree, caressing Ni-Kee’s skin. Her eyes flicker under their lids, and she murmurs something in her sleep, throwing a bare, muscular arm over her eyes.

My tail lashes behind me.