Chapter Fifteen
A band of sunlight found its way through a gap in the curtains and into Kate’s eyes. The last thing she remembered was A’tai carrying her into the ocean. She must have slept through the entire night. Her entire body felt limp and relaxed. She tried to give a satisfied stretch and discovered that she was locked in A’tai’s embrace. He hadn’t changed into his land form, and his limbs were curved around and between her legs and curled around her breasts. As soon as she tried to move, his grip tightened, then relaxed. He rolled her over on her back and smiled down at her.
“Good morning, my Kate.”
“Good morning. I’m sorry I fell asleep on you.”
“I believe my moa is to blame.” His eyes glinted with satisfaction, and she could already see the gold beginning to tint his skin.
“I suspect you’re right.” She gasped as a velvety sucker brushed across her nipple, triggering an immediate surge of arousal. “It does seem to be insatiable.”
He bent his mouth to her neck, kissing his way down the sensitive skin. “Only because you are so delicious.”
“Mmm.” Her thoughts disappeared in a pleasured daze.
He reached her breasts, his mouth closing over the taut peak of her nipple, shockingly hot and wet. His tongue played with the sensitive tip, working it until it felt swollen and distended. She tried to arch against his mouth, and then he had captured her hands and was pulling her legs apart.
A distant thought penetrated the fog of pleasure.
“Wait.”
He stopped immediately. “Yes, amali?”
“Do you always have to have sex like this?”
“I don’t understand. It is the mating position.”
“Why do you always hold my hands and legs?”
“Do you not enjoy it?”
A shiver skated over her skin as she remembered the previous day. “I enjoy it very much, but that’s not what I asked.”
“A female will fight if she’s not restrained. She could injure herself or her mate. The mating position ensures that she will be adequately pleasured.”
“Really? Your females always fight?”
“You forget, I have no experience.” He tilted his head, a thoughtful expression crossing his face. “But perhaps not. I am not sure if it is driven by biology or by custom.”
“I’m not going to fight you,” she assured him.
“But you do not wish to mate?”
“I want to very much, but I also want to explore you. Can you let me do that?”
“If that is what you desire.” Despite his agreement, she could see the tension in his body.
“I think you’ll enjoy it. If you don’t, just tell me to stop. Now roll over on your back.”
For a moment she thought he’d refuse, but he eventually did as she requested. All of the gold had disappeared from his skin. She paused to admire him—his strong, muscular upper body, the thick, graceful limbs splayed across the sheets.
She let her hand wander across his broad chest, circling the small points of his nipples. As she did, she caught a hint of gold. Interesting. It appeared that his nipples were also sensitive. She bent her head and sucked one into her mouth. His body arched as he gave an audible gasp.
“Kate!”
She gave him a smug smile as she sat back on her heels. “I told you you’d like it.”
“I have never… I didn’t know…”
“Let’s see what else you didn’t know.”
She teased the other nipple, then slowly kissed her way down his stomach. His limbs thrashed restlessly, but he didn’t attempt to restrain her. She slid her hand carefully between them and felt a long, hard ridge with a definite bulge beneath it. He groaned as she traced the length of it.
“Am I hurting you?”
“Sisters, no.”
She stroked it again, and it flowered open as his mating arm emerged. Her mouth dropped open. She wasn’t quite sure what she had expected. Her memories consisted mostly of size and pressure and an amazing curling movement. But his moa was shockingly different from a human penis. A thick base covered with tiny suckers opened into a wide, flat shaft with a pointed tip. Her hand looked small in comparison. There was no way that could have fit inside her.
The surface of his moa was a deep, rich teal, glistening faintly and she touched it with a cautious finger. At her touch, he groaned again and the sides of his shaft rolled inwards to form a long thick cylinder. Ah. He was still intimidatingly large, but the shape was much more compatible with her own body.
She didn’t bother to ask if she was hurting him. From the gold washing over his skin, he was most definitely not in pain. She stroked him again, and this time his moa curled around her finger in a powerful grip.
“Can you control the shape?” she asked, as she slid her finger in and out.
“To an extent.” He sounded dazed, and she smiled.
“Try and keep it curled like that. I want to try something.”
“What do you—oh, fuck!”
His question ended in a strangled moan as she closed her mouth over the tip of his moa. Even furled into a tight cylinder, it was too big for her to take more than an inch or two, but she did her best. She’d never dreamed she would want to do this for any man, but she wanted to please A’tai. As she felt his body tense and heard him moan with pleasure, her own excitement built to match his. She stroked her tongue down the center of the cylinder and he let out a hoarse cry.
A second later, she was on her back, her hands and legs held tightly in his grasp as he plunged into her, his seed exploding in a heated rush as her own orgasm washed over her and left her shuddering beneath him.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured a short time later, after her pulse had slowed and her breathing returned to normal.
“Why are you sorry?”
“I was not supposed to take you in the mating position.”
“I didn’t object,” she said softly. “And we can always try it again.”
He shuddered and she felt him start to expand again, but she pushed gently against his chest. “Later. Right now, I have work to do.”
His body stiffened, and she wondered if he would refuse to let her go. But he pulled out of her channel without protest and went to run her a bath.
The rest of the day did not go nearly so well. Although A’tai reluctantly sent her off with Toaga, by the time she returned, he was aggressively unhappy. He snapped at everyone except her, and as soon as she had eaten, he dragged her back to their rooms to make love to her until she was a limp, quivering—and extremely satisfied—mess.
She had missed him as well, more than she had expected, so when he proposed accompanying her the following day, she didn’t object. Unfortunately, that was even worse. He shadowed her every move, and growled at Pulata each time he came near her. Once again he dragged her off as soon as they returned home.
On the third day, she decided it would be better for everyone if she spent a day at the house instead. But she couldn’t help worrying about the status of her experiments, and after wandering around restlessly, she went to join Simea in the kitchen, hoping to make herself useful. Instead, she found herself snapping at the older female.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, as soon as she realized what she had done.
Simea shook her head. “The two of you are going to be the death of me. Go find A’tai and work this out.”
Much calmer because she was staying home, he had excused himself after breakfast and gone to his study. She expected him to be working at some kind of royal business, but when she joined him, he was examining an old scroll through a magnifying lens.
“This is really quite fascinating,” he said, then frowned. “I thought you were going to spend the morning with Simea.”
“Yeah, that didn’t work out.”
“Do you need me?” His skin flickered gold, but she backed away.
“I think I need some time to recover first. You’ve been rather… enthusiastic for the past tw
o days.”
“Have I injured you?”
He looked so horrified that her annoyance vanished.
“Not at all. But I can’t spend all of my time in bed.”
“I didn’t intend to leave this room.”
She laughed. “You know what I mean. Don’t worry about me. I’m just anxious about the results of that last experiment and it’s making me grumpy.”
His conflicting feelings were clearly written on his face, but he said stiffly. “I could accompany you to the lab.”
“I think we both know that won’t end well.” She sighed and wandered around the room, examining the spines of all the books she couldn’t read. “All that work to get my doctorate and now I can’t even read a simple children’s book.”
“I am not sure that word translates correctly. You are a physician?”
“No. It means I have a higher level degree. Mine is in biochemistry with a focus on marine environments.”
He looked startled. “I suspected you might be a scholar, but I didn’t realize the extent of your knowledge. That explains a lot.”
“Why did you think I knew so much about the production of algae?” She did her best not to feel insulted, but she couldn’t completely suppress her irritation.
“You said you were a lab assistant. I simply assumed your natural intelligence and curiosity had led you to learn more.” He gave her a sympathetic smile. “Believe me, I understand how frustrating it is not to be able to complete your research. I have been trying to complete this paper on Namoan trade routes for three months now.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You’re writing a paper?”
“Now you seem surprised,” he said dryly.
“I thought you were busy being a prince,” she said weakly. Apparently she was just as guilty of leaping to conclusions. Even though he was clearly intelligent, she had assumed that such a vibrantly physical male wouldn’t bother with intellectual pursuits.
He rubbed his neck thoughtfully. “Do you need to be at the farm to complete your work?”
“Not necessarily, but that’s where the lab is located.”
“Ah. If that’s the only issue, then it is easily remedied.” He picked up a communication device and began issuing a series of orders while she stared at him.
“Did you just tell someone to build me a lab?” she asked when he finished his call.
“Yes. Fortunately, we can repurpose one of the existing outbuildings so it will be ready by tomorrow afternoon.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. I should have thought of it before. You will be able to continue your work, but you will still be close by.”
She shook her head, then moved around the desk and seated herself on his lap. He was in land form, but one of his limbs immediately unfurled and wrapped around her leg.
“Thank you, A’tai.”
“You are very welcome, my amali.”
She expected him to kiss her, but instead he studied her face.
“Perhaps we should spend the time between now and tomorrow finding out what else we don’t know about each other.”
“I haven’t led a very exciting life. I’m just an ordinary human.”
“You are very far from ordinary,” he said firmly. “Tell me about the place where you were born.”
“A small town in the middle of nowhere. I got out of there as soon as I could and never went back. What about you?”
“I was born here on the island.” His lips twisted. “Unintentionally. Apparently, I came early and my mother was unable to make it back to the palace for a full, ceremonial birth. It was the first time I disappointed her.”
“I don’t believe you are a disappointment.”
“I suspect she would disagree,” he said dryly, then shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. We do not communicate well, but she is very much a part of running the House. I couldn’t do it without her,” he added slowly.
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“No.” He hesitated. “Her physician once told me she was unable to have more children, but I was never quite sure.”
He shook his head as if dismissing the problem and turned back to her. “Do you have any siblings?”
“I was one of three girls. My older sister was beautiful and popular and pregnant at seventeen. She married her high school boyfriend, and the last time I saw her, she was working on baby number four.” A baby I’ll never get to see, she thought sadly. But then again, she had barely seen the other three. She dutifully sent gift cards at Christmas and on their birthdays, but she rarely visited them. It hadn’t helped that she disliked Louisa’s husband Paul almost as much as he disliked her. “But she seems happy enough.”
“And your younger sister?”
“She died young from an incurable disease. It’s one of the reasons I studied so hard. I wanted to be a doctor—until I got to pre-med and realized that I was the wrong person to be around sick people. I decided to look for other ways to make a difference.”
“What about your parents?”
“My mother died when my younger sister was born. My father was a bully who thought that higher education just made people think they were better than they were. We did not get along.” And wasn’t that an understatement.
He gave her a rueful smile. “I’m not entirely sure my mother would disagree. She wanted me to have an education, of course, at the right schools, but any type of advanced degree was quite unnecessary.”
“Why are our relationships with our parents so complicated?”
“I don’t know. I intend to make sure my children know that they are loved.”
The realization struck her with blinding suddenness. She wouldn’t be able to give him children. Their species were too different to be compatible. Her chest suddenly ached. She hadn’t realized until this moment how much she would have liked to have had a family with him. If he wanted to have children, he would have to choose a Mafanan female—and then what would become of her?
“Amali? Kate, is something wrong?”
“No, I was just thinking.”
“That is always dangerous,” he said gravely, but his beautiful golden eyes were smiling.
Didn’t he realize there was no future for them?
She forced a smile, then deliberately arched her back, thrusting her breasts against the tight fabric of her gown. His eyes heated and gold flickered across his skin. She let her hand slide down between them, slipping between his limbs until she felt the hard ridge of his moa. Her fingers traced the opening of his sheath as he groaned.
“You said you needed to recover.”
“I’m feeling much better.”
“But we were getting to know each other,” he protested weakly, but his eyes were fixed on her movements.
“And we still are. In intimate detail.”
His sheath opened, and the heavy length of his engorged moa filled her hand. He growled, and then the papers on top of his desk went flying as he bent her across the surface.
She was right. She had completely recovered.
Chapter Sixteen
A week later, A’tai watched in satisfaction as Kate disappeared into her lab. This was a much better solution than allowing her to work at the farm lab. Although she continued to go there—and Pulata visited her here—the visits were short enough to be no more than a minor annoyance.
Their days had fallen into an easy rhythm. They spent the mornings working, then had lunch with Simea and Toaga. The afternoons were spent together, talking and discovering each other. He had told her more about himself than he had ever revealed to anyone. She seemed to be equally as transparent, and yet he had the feeling that something was bothering her.
His satisfaction faded as he considered the problem. Was it because they had still not received any word of her friends? His agent was searching—and had offered a hefty reward—but had not heard even a rumor of a species similar to hers on Mafana.
Or was it her work? He knew that she was
not progressing as quickly as she had hoped, but she was experienced enough to know that answers did not appear overnight.
What if it was him? No matter how eagerly she welcomed him into her body, or how sweetly she curled against him as she slept, he had the uneasy suspicion that she was withholding part of herself from him.
Instead of heading for his study as he planned, he went to the kitchen instead.
“Do you think something is bothering Kate?” he demanded.
Simea raised an eyebrow. “Good morning to you as well.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just worried about her.”
“Hmph.” She bent back over the dough she was rolling out. “Why do you think something is wrong? She seems to have accepted her status happily enough.”
“Her status?”
“You know, House slave.”
“She is not a slave, and you know it,” he said angrily. “She is a free female.”
“Is she?” Simea studied him thoughtfully. “She is not Mafanan, which means she has few rights under our laws. She has no credits, no property, nothing of her own. Freedom means very little without those things.”
“She doesn’t need any of that. I will provide everything that she needs. That she wants.”
“So she is at your mercy? That doesn’t sound much better than slavery to me.”
He gave her a horrified look, and she sighed. “You’re a good boy, A’tai, but you’ve grown up surrounded by wealth and privilege. You’ve no idea what it is like to be at the mercy of others. Your family was very good to me, but I always knew I could be turned away at any moment.”
“We would never—”
“Perhaps not,” she admitted. “But the possibility was there. My family was very poor, and I saved every penny I earned until I was sure that I could support them. And then I saved more in case the storms came.”
Kate and the Kraken: A SciFi Alien Romance (Alien Abduction Book 11) Page 10
