Shifting them to their side, Veral curled around her, satisfaction thrumming through him at the fresh scenting on his mate. His vibrissae curled over her skin possessively, assuring him that she was sated. It was a small comfort, but he would take it. His vibrissae coiled around her shoulders in a protective shroud, covering her breasts in swathes of dark, twisting tendrils. Even still, it was not enough to settle his unease.
Terri’s fingers came up and stroked along the vibrissae in a light, soothing motion. “Feel better now?”
“No,” he grumbled.
“What can I do to help make it better?” she teased.
“You can give your consent for me to jettison them all out of the airlock,” he hissed.
Her body shook against his, the brush of it stirring him all over again despite having sated himself moments earlier within her tight, hot cunt. The fact that she was laughing did nothing at all to cool his passion. Terri pushed away just enough to turn in his arms to face him. She eyed him as she continued to stroke his vibrissae.
“Have they done something that bad?”
“No,” he growled. That was the point. He didn’t want them to attempt to.
Terri sighed and tucked her body in closer against him in a manner that he found soothing. It had not taken his mate long to find the best ways to calm him. Her voice was low and gentle as she continued to speak.
“I know they frustrate you, and impede on your space, but we’re halfway to Janilik. Let’s not kill our guests when we’re so close to finishing,” she said.
“That male walks on my ship as if it is within his command,” he protested.
“I hate to point out that you do that everywhere,” she said, laughter evident in her voice.
He narrowed his eyes on his mate but purred contentedly, a reluctant smile pulling at his mouth. His mate was not wrong. Argurma were raised to see all the universe as potentially theirs by the strength of their discipline and the might of their cybernetically enhanced bodies. They held back from expanding through the cosmos due to a distaste for other species and a desire to remain insular within their own quadrant of space.
Unable to deny her observation, he grunted, his arms tightening around her small body. Her limbs and body had thickened to a healthier state after a few standard lunar cycles passed. She was still tiny compared to his species and most others out there, but no matter how large or small she was, it did not matter. She was entirely his. He needed nothing else. That said, the ship was hers—and he was tired of these males encroaching on his mate’s space.
“You should permit me to jettison them. It will give me some pleasure to be free of them and allow my mate to walk her own ship in peace.”
“My ship?” she asked, eyebrows raised.
He chuffed at her surprised expression. “I have told you. Argurma females are the right of lineage and the property owners. Upon our mating, all my belongings become yours, except those which are most personal and necessary for my wellbeing as a warrior.”
She shifted against him excitedly. “That means I can name her.”
He frowned down at Terri. “Name the ship? It does not need a name. It is a serial number. That is adequate identification for a starship.”
Terri rolled her eyes at him. “That’s boring, and I can never remember that random spew of numbers. Don’t worry. Leave it to me. I’ll think of something good.”
She lay there beside him, tapping her fingertip to her chin as she began listing absurd names, each one more terrible than the last.
“How can you not like The Screaming Lady?” she protested after the tenth suggestion, her fingers tracing the scales on his chest. “We both know that when we don’t have company, there’s a lot of screaming that goes on in here. It would be a very good name.”
Veral did not miss the sexual reference and curled his fingers around her questing hand. “No. As much truth as your observation contains, the name is undignified.”
“So you want a dignified name, then?”
“I do.”
“Okay. I’ll give it some thought,” she said with a long-suffering sigh that made his lips quirk.
“Now that is settled, about the airlock—”
“No!” Terri laughed as she smacked him ineffectively with a pillow.
Snarling, Veral curled over his mate, pressing her small body into the bedding. His muscles trembled, eager to attempt to convince her otherwise. As his civix slid into her hot clutch, he groaned. He rocked into her with abandon, her soft sighs and moans mixing with his growls until they both shouted their completion again and again.
Though her answer did not change, they both enjoyed his attempts to alter them. He looked forward to trying to convince her many more times over the next eighteen standard hours.
4
Made of a thick, durable material used by Argurma when they had to move across vast deserts on their homeworld, the shafna was always uncomfortable. Although Veral hadn’t been home in years, the first time he had Terri wear it, he had been pleased that he kept the enormous hooded overcoat. She could have done without it, but since it allowed her to leave their room despite the company on board, she couldn’t hate it too much. Especially not with the bright gems that their passengers had been carrying, samples of a larger collection being gifted to the Grez’na prince for his betrothal—whatever the hell that was. The word was used in some of the older books from Earth, but she didn’t know what it meant. All the same, having to wear it when she wanted to leave their quarters was a good enough deterrent to keep her away from the strangers.
Until now.
Three days in their cabin and Terri felt like she was on the verge of going mad staring at the same four walls. During the day, Krono kept her company, curled up at the foot of the bed, only to be released to prowl the corridors so that Veral could slide into bed next to her at night. At first, she had worried that one of the Blaithari would be hurt by the protective dorashnal. When she voiced her concerns to Veral, he had smirked without sympathy but assured her that their guests knew not to leave their quarters during the night cycle. He even set an alarm that went out over the ship every night at the start of the cycle so that everyone knew to return to their cabins.
Not that Krono was entirely cooperative about the matter, as accustomed as he was to being with them at all times. He was eager to scout through the ship when Veral first returned to the room, but they were both woken at ungodly hours as the animal attempted to break back into the room, not once but multiple times. The sounds were both monstrous and pitiful, but after a while, when Veral made it clear he wasn’t letting the dorashnal in, Krono trailed off to find something else to occupy himself with until morning.
Though she felt bad for Krono, Terri appreciated that Veral didn’t just hover on the flight deck the entire time as she half-expected him to do. It was a huge concession when she knew that the presence of the strangers on the ship drove his protective instincts wild.
She understood, but enough was enough. She couldn’t spend another moment trapped in the room all day. She needed to get out, and besides—she’d been craving! There hadn’t been any cravings in the initial months of her pregnancy, but she had been struck by such an intense need for something that, when it didn’t go away, she had to search it out.
She was so damned hungry!
Terri knew he wouldn’t approve of her slipping out during midday, but she was still following his rules. She tugged the hood on and smiled down at Krono, who stared up at her, his mouth gaping in an expectant dorashnal grin, his vibrissae relaxed against his neck as he watched her for any cues.
“Shall we go play with the replicator, Krono?” she asked her companion.
His mouth gaped wider, and he whined with excitement. He was fully on board.
Humming under her breath, Terri headed for the galley. Slipping inside, she stilled as she watched the two pink Blaithari standing with their heads bent in close, whispering as they filled their trays and a third. Their nostrils sudd
enly flared and both heads came up and turned toward her, gold eyes gleaming.
Terri felt a jump in her belly at the intense way they were staring at her. She would have run right back out of the room if she hadn’t reminded herself that she was wearing robes. Of course they would be curious. Veral had informed her that he circulated a story among them that she was horribly scarred from a cargo fire so that they wouldn’t be suspicious if they happened to see her. Still, it did little to settle her nerves as she gave them a polite nod to acknowledge their presence before scampering by them.
Both males immediately backed away, their eyes darting down to Krono, who stared at them, his ears turned alertly in their direction.
Watching them out of the corner of her eye, she frowned at how massive the aliens were. From Veral’s description, she was expecting small, slender males, not ones who were—despite being close to the height of an average human male—packed solid with muscle. Granted, they likely looked small and unthreatening to a male Veral’s size.
They were clothed in beautiful swathes of fabric, but as they slipped by her, she couldn’t hold back the shiver of dread that ran through her. They looked at her just a little too carefully, a little too long for her comfort.
She turned her gaze back down to Krono to find him still staring at the empty doorway, his vibrissae whipping around him. His head angled up to stare back at her, and she let out a small sigh. Dropping her hand to the top of his head, she scratched him behind the ears and smiled.
“Just nerves, that’s all,” she whispered. “Now let’s get something to eat.”
Terri stared at the food replicator, uncertain of what she wanted. She grimaced at some of the selections as she scanned through the holo-menu. Agami worms, steamed tirichi—a large beetle-like insect—in a mendak egg sauce. She gagged as she bypassed a large selection of Argurma delicacies. No insects… Hell no. She may have been hard up enough on Earth to survive on a regular diet of reptiles, but she couldn’t stomach eating insects.
Finally, she came to the wrapped scourra and sighed gratefully. Scourra was a livestock animal that tasted a lot like what she imagined beef once did. She didn’t know for sure, outside of a few questionable old cans of beef stew, but it was close. There was also a kind of noodle made of some sort vegetable smothered in a rich, spicy, nutty sauce. She licked her lips, making a few more selections as she scrolled through. There was no way in hell she was going to be able to eat all that… Maybe. It just all sounded so good, and she wanted all of it. Her pregnancy seemed to make the sharp bite of hunger felt more keenly.
Plates full of replicated food, and even a bowl of peeled slices of the foul axna fruit at her elbow, filled the small table in the galley. She eyed the spread as her stomach rumbled again. It felt like she had a huge hole where her stomach was. Perhaps pregnancy cravings weren’t going to be so bad. If only she could figure out just what it was that she was wanting.
Sitting at the table, she dutifully choked down the slices of axna and then dug in, the spices incredible as she plopped every morsel in her mouth. The nutty noodles and some strange fatty meat in a sauce that tasted something like the wild chilis she would occasionally find around Phoenix made her wiggle in her seat with joy as she stuffed her stomach. But what really satisfied her craving were the crispy-sweet nuggets. She wasn’t sure what they were, but they were both spicy and sweet all at once, and she loved them. When she bit into them, they oozed a sticky sweetness that made her tongue curl with delight.
“Anastha, you should have commed me if you hungered,” Veral growled.
Terri looked up and met her mate’s glittering gaze with a grin.
“Last time I ‘hungered’ when it was day cycle, you told me very specifically that you were not leaving the males run of the ship to satisfy our urges. So I decided to take care of it myself,” she replied as she glanced down his broad, muscular body, licking the bit of sauce clinging to her lips a little suggestively.
Veral growled again, his eyes narrowing on her, the tiny circuitry under his skin flaring brighter with the all too familiar spark that ran through him.
“You know exactly of which hunger I speak. This hunger I could have seen to without concern. You should have commed me and told me what you needed. I would have brought it to our quarters.”
Terri shrugged and mopped up a bit of sauce with a fragrant hard bread that, like the noodles, had a bit of a nutty taste. Not that she was one to judge. The only nuts she ever ate were some really stale peanuts she found as a kid while digging through a collapsed section of what had once been a grocery store. The taste was vaguely similar.
“I didn’t know what I wanted. I think this is the pregnancy cravings all the books I’ve been reading talked about.”
“Cravings?” Veral paused, his head cocking as his eyes ran over her.
She nodded her head. “Yep. There’s a book in that huge collection you downloaded into our system called What to Expect When You are Expecting. I figured a lot of it would probably be as useless as a fishing pole in a sea of sand since this baby is half-Argurma, but it did talk about some of the things I would experience as a mom, like morning sickness—thank fuck I’ve managed to pass on that so far—and food cravings. I really wanted to eat something, but I had no idea what. So here I am. These, by the way, are just the thing.”
She tossed a handful of the sweet crisps into her mouth and groaned aloud at the taste once more lighting up her tongue.
Veral’s eyes flashed with humor, his lips quirking. “You enjoy vansik?”
The way he said it had her pausing, the sweet morsel at the edge of her lips as she looked at his suspiciously. He knew her food phobias and found them highly entertaining. That he was amused about her pleasure when it came to eating vansik wasn’t a good sign.
“If you’re about to tell me something disgusting, keep it to yourself. This is one of those times where I don’t want to know and will kill you if you ruin this for me.”
He shrugged, his vibrissae twitching over his shoulders as he watched her place the vansik on her tongue and slurp into her mouth. “I just thought my anastha had an aversion to eating insects. No insects, no bodily organs, nothing made of boiled or fried blood… you have an unreasonable list.”
Terri felt her face pale as the sweet innards dripped over her tongue. “Insect?”
“You did not wish to know, so I will not tell you,” he said as he sat beside her and began to snatch food up with his claws.
She glared at him and shoved several more vansik in her mouth. Fuck him. They tasted good.
“I don’t give a fuck. They’re good.”
“I am glad you think so,” he replied mellowly. “They are an acquired taste on Argurumal. Some like the sweetness, but few can get past that they are round parasites that live in large colonies in the liver of the igwinpek—sandshark, I believe you would call it. It is similar to the shark in your planet’s wildlife catalogs except that it dwells in the sand dunes and has two powerful legs for when it needs to surface above the sand. The vansik bloat themselves on the heavy sugars in the igwinpek’s blood. When they are cooked over intense heat, the sugar-rich organs liquify.”
His eyes fastened on her as he finished his explanation. She knew he was getting some satisfaction from the entire situation considering how many times she gagged and made rude comments about his love of tirichi. But that was different. That literally looked like an enormous beetle laid out, half-circled in on itself and covered in sauce. The smell of dead bug had been just enough to make her want to hurl. The vansik didn’t look or smell like anything she recognized. As long as she didn’t think about it, she would be fine.
Stubbornly, she lifted a handful and threw them into her mouth, letting the sweet round bits burst as she chewed them. Veral chuffed with humor and leaned forward, his two slender tongues snaking out to swipe a drop of sweetness from the corner of her mouth. She flinched, heat flaring to life in her belly as he regarded her, his face inches from her.
With that, his mandibles spread wide enough to just graze the sides of her cheeks as his mouth claimed hers. The press of his hot lips sparked something within her. His tongue swept into her mouth, drawing along her tongue and licking at the insides of her mouth until she squirmed with pleasure. He froze, his muscles tightening and his tongue retreating as the sound of a blaster priming filled the air.
“As much as I hate to break up this sweet moment—on your knees, Argurma,” a voice said coldly.
Terri looked up, and she too froze. The Blaithari were no longer in fine robes, their hair gathered into crude knots rather than fussy styles that Veral described. All three males held blasters pointed directly at them. A rattling growl hissed out from between Veral’s lips, increasing in volume as he turned toward them, his inky vibrissae whipping around his dark silver face. Despite his obvious anger, he dropped to his knees, his muscles straining with tension.
The male at the fore, who could only be Egbor, nodded toward her. “Retrieve his mate and bring her over here. She is the tool with which we will control him.”
Terri balked as one of the males drew up beside her. Krono snarled and the male promptly shot the dorashnal, dropping him to the floor. A scream tore from her throat, and her mate whipped around, but stilled when the male set his plasma pistol at the side of her head.
“Do not do anything stupid,” Egbor snorted. “The animal is currently stunned so that it can be safely caged. I would rather not kill until I am required to make my point. It is a messy business… and besides, the animal can be sold for a considerable amount of credits. Bring her here, Irgnar.”
The growl grew more vicious, which prompted Egbor to smile down at him. “Do not worry. I will not be touching your mate, not unless I have to. This is far more effective of an arrangement. You do what you are told, and your mate suffers no harm.”
Pirate's Gold (Argurma Salvager Book 2) Page 4
