Kragyn (Farseek Warrior Series Book 1)
Page 5
“You mean courting?”
“Yes. I’ve already had sex with you more times than I’ve had the whole rest of my life.”
“That kind of courting is just not practical under the circumstances. It was important to mark you with my scent so the other males would know you are mine.”
“I’m not even sure how I feel about you, and I want to be naked with you inside me.”
“Because on some level you know we are solmatu. I care for you because I know that beyond a doubt. I trust that in time you will care for me as well. Do you regret sharing the mating pledge?”
Reanne looked at him and frowned, shaking her head. She reached out and touched his arm. “No, I don’t,” she said, realizing it was true. “I meant it.”
“Then what is it solmatu?”
She frowned and thought for a moment. “I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you. I guess it makes me feel vulnerable.”
“We are all vulnerable on this miserable world. That we have each other is probably the one thing that will make it bearable.” He pushed her hair back behind her ear and cupped his hand to her cheek. “Give us time, solmatu. Our bonding has only begun.”
Reanne nodded and gave him a slight smile. Did he really have no idea how smoking hot he was? She was positive a guy like him on Earth wouldn’t give her a second look. He looked at her like she was irresistible.
Maybe because the guys she knew all treated her like she was one of them. She had started working in her father’s auto repair shop when she was twelve. Guys in the neighborhood would hang out there as they began to get their own cars. Reanne’s dad would give them advice about maintenance and repairs. Sometimes, Reanne would offer to help them at their home garages.
She was friends with a lot of guys, but she didn’t date them. If they noticed that she was actually pretty with attractive curves, they didn’t share their observations. She’d had a crush on the new guy at the auto parts store. They had been flirting back and forth for a few weeks, and he finally asked her for a date the day before she was abducted.
He was nowhere near as attractive as Kragyn, who could make her wet for him with a look. …because he was solmatu. He believed in their connection enough to share the mating pledge.
As they went back to eating in companionable silence, Reanne conceded to herself that she couldn’t compare the situation now with dating mores in her small town back on Earth. With the ratio of men to women about three to one, hooking up with a tough male who could protect her was her best chance of surviving.
She couldn’t have found a better partner and protector than this warrior who believed she was his soulmate. She was overthinking the situation. She liked him, and she wanted him. She would go with that.
When they finished eating a few minutes later, Kragyn got out a small plastic shipping container with a lid to store the rest of the meat. Then he took a larger box and headed toward the water back by the latrine. There he used the same soap they had bathed with and a cloth to wash the three pans. He handed the soapy pan and plates to Reanne and took the soapy water to empty into the latrine. Then he used a plastic cup to pour fresh water over each item to rinse away the soap, emptied the water and returned the items to the box wet.
Setting the box by the food shelf, he said, “we’ll put them in the sun to dry in the morning.”
“Where did you get all those boxes?” Reanne wondered. He had a stack of them against the wall.
“The supplies they bring us are packed in them.”
Kragyn came back the few steps to stand in front of her, rested his hands at her waist and drew her against him. Reanne slid her arms around him and looked up at him. His eyes were dark with passion as he framed her face with his hands and lowered his mouth to her parted lips sliding his tongue inside. He took his time to kiss her thoroughly and deeply.
Reanne arched her breasts against his hard chest as her nipples tightened and her pussy clenched in response. She was starting to realize, there was no holding back from this man when he could do that to her with a kiss. His erection pressing against her belly told her that his response was equally as intense as hers.
They only stopped kissing long enough to pull one piece or another of clothing off. When they were naked, they sank down onto the pallet together. Her need was so great that she urged him to enter her without further foreplay. She cooed blissfully as he settled inside her and lowered his weight against her.
“Solmatu,” she whispered, nibbling his earlobe. “My solmatu.”
“Yes, I am,” he murmured back and kissed her again. It was a long time before they finally slept in each other’s arms.
Chapter Nine
Kragyn woke early with the need to empty his bladder and gently extricated himself from Reanne, trying not to wake her. He paused briefly to look at her. Her shoulder length hair was tousled by sleep and their passionate lovemaking in the night. His cock stirred at the memory, but he didn’t linger. He found his boots and slid his feet onto the soles, and they encased his feet automatically.
Soon he was back at her side toeing off his boots and easing himself back under the thin cover on the pallet they now shared.
Each time they made love, Kragyn felt the bond between them grow stronger. Cuddling against her spoon fashion, he smiled to himself as he closed his eyes. In the wake of one round of sex, she had asked, “What species are you, Kragyn?”
“Uatu, the people,” he told her.
“What kind of people? Like, I am considered homo sapien, human.”
“Other than coloring, I guess that we are the same species. Genetically compatible, or we would not be solmatu.”
“That makes sense. You certainly look human. Even people on Earth have varied coloring.” She looked at him appreciatively. Even though he looked human in every other way, his skin was pale lavender and his hair a dark maroon color. The thing she had noticed first had been his teal colored eyes framed by thick maroon lashes under masculine maroon brows. No matter what his color, he was a very handsome man.
“Many worlds in these sectors are home to humans, as you call us. Spans ago, legends say beings of our race from another galaxy came to this one and seeded habitable worlds with our kind.”
“We have legends like that as well, but no one has ever found definitive proof. What they did find just hints at such events.” Reanne shrugged.
It had been a long time since he had thought of such things. Most Uatu people shared his skin coloring but had more brightly colored hair. He had never seen a female with such pale, almost white skin, skin that was so silky and smooth under his fingers.
His cock was hard, nestled between the cheeks of her ass. He willed it into submission by thinking of other things, anything but how it felt to be sheathed in her warmth. Eventually, he drifted back to sleep with one hand clutching her soft, round breast, reminding himself that they had things to do before he took her to the village and the pit.
Kragyn didn’t know how long he had slept when he was awakened by Reanne extricating herself from his embrace to go relieve herself. Like he had, she didn’t bother with clothes. She only paused long enough to slip on her boots before she hurried back deeper into the cave. He groaned as he watched the natural sway of her hips on her retreating form. He was hard again, already.
Before he found Reanne, he had gone months, sometimes years between copulating with a live being. Mostly he took matters into his own hand when he had the urge for release. Those times were usually when he would dream of finding solmatu. In those dreams, she was nondescript, more a sensory experience in female form without substance.
Like his fellow warriors, he knew that finding solmatu while they were at war was unlikely. None of the females on Dreadnaught Four were for him. Most of them were already mated anyway. There had been one who’d shared sex with him occasionally, but she wasn’t for him even though he pretended so he could perform.
He had never shared his seed with anyone until Reanne. That was only for solmatu.
He couldn’t think of anything in his whole life that felt better than fucking Reanne. He knew as she walked away, he would get nothing done until he had her again.
He lay on his back staring at the softly glowing rocks in the ceiling of the cave. They were a remnant from the mining days, installed there to provide natural light inside the cave without an additional power source. He heard rather than saw her approach until she came to stand over him with her feet on both sides of his hips.
“You are insatiable.” She chuckled looking down at his cock which was standing straight up, pointing at her pussy. “Well, I guess I can help you with that.” She lowered herself to the pallet on her hands and knees over him.
“You are so fucking hot, it’s unbelievable,” Reanne said as they lay together afterward.
“Hot?”
“As in sexy.”
“We are hot together.” He grinned and kissed her.
“These pheromone things are making me just as horny as you. I was dreaming about fucking you when I woke up.” She paused to kiss his neck. “How long am I gonna want to jump you every time I look at you.”
“Many long spans, I hope.” He couldn’t help smiling at the thought. “Is it really so bad?”
She raised up so she could see his face and she was smiling at him as well. “Bad? Not bad. I’ve just never felt like this. I’ve been horny almost the whole time since I first took your hand. It was all over when you kissed me.”
“Yes, for me, too. Once I kissed you, my need to claim you was overwhelming. It is not unheard of for newly mated solmatu to mate two to three times a day during the first few spans following their first joining.”
“What is a span?” she asked. Kragyn had used the term a few times, but she just thought to ask him.
“It’s how we measure time. A rotation span is sunrise to sunrise. A span is ten rotations. Forty spans are one orbit of our world around its sun.”
“Do you divide a day or rotation into smaller increments?”
“We do. One rotation is divided into ten centi-rotes or rotations. One-hundred milli-rotes is one centi-rote,” he explained.
“My translator doesn’t get it,” she said. “It sounds similar to how my world measures time, but they throw in the moon phases as a further measure. But I sort of get it. Your divisions are different than ours. We have minutes, hours, days, months, years.”
“It does sound similar.”
Reanne slowly rolled away from him. “I need a bath.”
She got up and headed for the bathing pool.
Kragyn, sighed as he watched her walk away. Then he got up to follow her.
Reanne was standing in the bathing pool rubbing soapy hands over her body and between her legs.
“Do you need any help?” He toed off his boots and climbed over the side of the pool wall.
“Uh, no. I think I can handle this myself.” She backed away from him, giving him a playfully warning look. “Remember when you helped me yesterday?”
He couldn’t help smirking at her as he remembered all too well. “But I want my scent on you when we go to the pit.”
“I’m sure that won’t be a problem. I want to get dressed and have something to eat.” She pressed her hand on his chest directly over his heart when he stepped closer and gave her a feigned look of hurt at her rebuff.”
“All right.” He sighed. “Then we will start your training.”
Chapter Ten
“Again,” Kragyn said when Reanne failed to break his hold on her using the technique he had instructed.
“You’re just too strong,” she protested in frustration.
“If you follow my instructions, you will have the leverage to break my hold.” He paused taking a breath. “Okay, let’s go through it step by step. This time I won’t be holding you tightly. It will just be a practice run for you to get the moves down.”
He put his arms around her from behind loosely. “Grip my wrists like I showed you.” He waited while she complied. “Push, duck, twist, escape. Good, let's go again. This is not something you learn in one or two tries. You learn it by doing it over and over until you just do it without concentrating on each step.”
Reanne nodded and took a calming breath. “I can do this. I will do this,” she promised.
They did it over and over, at least, a dozen times before he surprised her by grabbing her in earnest. This time Reanne reacted just as he’d been training her. She surprised him with her dynamic movements and caused him to yelp in pain as she twisted out of his grasp.
“Oh no, Kragyn. Did I hurt you?”
“No, you did just fine.” He grinned at her and scooped her up into a hug, lifting her off her feet. “Tomorrow, we’ll add another move and review this one. Don’t let yourself get frustrated, sweet one. We began our training as children.” He let her down, so her feet were back on the ground. “It comes easier when we’re young, but I know you can learn it.” He paused to press his lips to her forehead. “I need to know that you will be safe even if I can’t be there to protect you, mainly when I am fighting in the pit.”
“You are still going to do that?” Reanne frowned.
“I am well trained. I can usually hold my own in a fight. As long as I continue to do that, the safer you will be. Anyone at any time could challenge me for you.”
“Like I’m property?”
“Reanne, you have to know that is not how I see you. We are solmatu. I belong to you as much as you belong to me. That doesn’t mean some of these barbarians will see it that way.”
“That is how I see it as well, solmatu.”
Kragyn held her a little longer and kissed her lips briefly. “Let’s have some food and relax for a while before we go to the village.”
“What about this?” She slid her hand between them and rubbed over his erection that had been pressing against her belly. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”
He brushed her hand away. “It just happens when you’re pressed up against me. But that doesn’t mean I have to act on it.” He took her hand and kissed it, then pressed it against his chest. “Not this soon before a fight. I can still take care of you, solmatu.”
“Not necessary,” she said. “If you must wait, then so will I.” She slid her arms around his waist and hugged him.”
“We can have the rest of the slither I caught today with some dried vegetables.”
“That was pretty good, and it did taste like chicken.” She pulled slowly from his embrace and went to her backpack. She hadn’t even opened it since she had come to the mine cave with Kragyn.
“It’s the standard issue. It’s mostly food, a change of clothes and some plastic blankets,” Kragyn said.
“I’ll just take it out and put it with the other food on the shelf.”
While Kragyn took out the packets of food and drink mix for their meal, Reanne arranged hers on the pantry shelf with like packages. She couldn’t read any of the languages because her translator only worked with the spoken word.
They went back to sit on the pallet to eat since the rough-hewn wooden bench against the wall was barely big enough for two people to sit. It was just as easy to sit cross-legged on the pallet with their metal plates on their laps.
The pallet consisted of a kind of woven straw rug over some soft cottony padding with a long cloth pillow stuffed with seed hulls. The hulls crackled softly when they puffed up the pillow before they laid their heads on it. It was long enough for both of them to use as they slept side by side.
Soon after they finished eating, that’s precisely what they did. Reanne woke about three hours later to Kragyn’s kisses and caresses. She groaned as she opened her eyes and stretched. He barely had to touch her to make her crave him.
“It’s time to go,” he said. “The matches don’t start until after dark because it’s too hot during the day.”
Reanne nodded and slowly got to her feet. “I just have to pee before we leave. I probably don’t want to go looking for a place around the pit.”
Kragyn nodded. “Certainly not by yourself.” He followed her and took his turn before they left. Both of them wore their long knives sheathed in the belts slung low on their hips. Kragyn led her by the hand because she didn’t know the way and because he liked the feel of her hand in his.
Soon they were outside in the dark under a night sky thick with stars. She had never seen anything like it on Earth. Kragyn told her it was because at night Julconi faced toward the center of the galaxy instead of just an arm.
“Do you think this is the same galaxy as Earth?” she asked.
“I am pretty sure it is. We have not yet met any species capable of traveling between galaxies. There is still plenty in this galaxy that we have never seen, nor will we ever.”
“I certainly believe that,” she told him.
It was a half hour walk into the village from Kragyn’s cave. The round-about route had so far discouraged any of the village thugs from wandering out to his home.
While there was no central power in the village, the packed earthen streets were lined with poles topped by the same kind of crystals that provided light in the cave. The building housing the fighting pit was powered by solar panels that charged a bank of batteries housed in a metal shed attached to it.
When they got there, they went around to the back entrance used by the fighters. Kragyn stopped there to do the warmup exercises that he always did before the matches. After he finished, he entered the building to see who his opponents for the night would be.
A couple new fighters were waiting when he and Reanne strolled in. No matches were in progress yet. So far only four fighters were present including Kragyn.
Although they called it a pit, it was not actually a hole in the ground. It contained a floor pad encircled by a metal fence with tiered bleachers outside of the fence. Opposite the fighter’s entrance was a long wooden bar made of planks with wooden bar stools. There were already several humanoids there with females.