by V. K. Ludwig
“Why do you live on Solgad instead of Earth?” I asked. “If you’re his son, aren’t you supposed to become Warden when he dies?”
Without warning, he grabbed my waist and lifted me onto Uruz’ back. “It’s so complicated you could write a book about it. To make a long story short, the Warlords of Solgad didn’t want me to leave. Figured it would benefit them politically to raise a future Empire leader among them as their ward, which I will be for a few more sun cycles. You know, ground me deeper into our culture. Make sure that I’ll act in the interest of both nations once the time comes.”
My legs tensed, and I dug my fingers deeper into the wool of the saddle each time Uruz shifted underneath me. “Is it true they’re planning to marry women from Earth to Warlords?”
“Once I’m no longer their ward, yes.” He quickly swung himself up behind me, clearly eager to change the subject. “I’ll hold you until you get used to his movements. The last thing we need is you falling off, or Warlord Razgar will put me on guard duty by the gates of Noja for three solar cycles straight.”
The way he wrapped his arm around my middle, his clasp firm but his fingertips gentle on my hips, put a tingle into my belly. It intensified when he pulled my back flush against his naked chest, nothing between us but my tunic, his leather harness, and that scent of minerals that followed him around.
“Ease into his movements,” he whispered as if to soothe my fear, but the way it brushed along the shell of my ear only quickened my pulse. “Uruz is perfectly content staying at a walk, and he won’t get any faster unless I don’t leave him another choice.”
His gait jostled me around for the first couple of steps as we rode away from the tree and toward the wide-open plains. They stretched all the way to the horizon, and drought cracks webbed across what had to be a valley lined by wind worn rock walls to our left and right.
After a while, my pelvis easily followed the gait. We rode in silence for quite some time. Not the awkward kind, but one where neither of us needed to say anything while we both enjoyed the plains. How the scent of warm dirt wafted around my nose. The occasional gust that dried the fine sweat at the nape of my neck. The orange and purple feathers of large birds that nested within the outcroppings that surrounded us.
“I had no idea Solgad is this beautiful,” I said. “Most people say it’s nothing but a ball of ash. Which it is but… only until you look closer. What’s that smell? Flowers?”
His fingers trailed down my arm until he clasped my hand, lifting it toward a rolling foothill dotted with what looked like bundles of thin, white bones. “Ash Rose. Smells like mango. Kills you within seconds if your skin makes contact with it.”
“That’s good to know.” I glanced back at him, and my fingers itched to stroke through that windswept hair he carried open once more. “Are you taking me anywhere specific?”
He stared down at me, wetting his lips. “To the plateau and back, unless you want to keep going. I rolled up a nabu so we can nest anywhere.”
“Your teeth are different.” Each one sharp and pointed, like my canines, if not as pronounced.
“Not nearly as big as those of most other Jal’zar,” he said and peeled his lips back as if he’d half expected I’d otherwise do it for him for examination.
I reached across my shoulder, and stoked my thumb over his bottom lip. “Bet it hurts regardless when you—” There was that sound again. “Why do you smack your tongue like that?”
A thick swallow went down his throat, and everything on him, even his lungs, stilled. Tension spread across his jawline, and his pupils dilated, darkening his eyes, replacing the purple rim that remained with… lust.
“To taste the sweetness of your heat on my tongue,” he rasped, and the sudden roughness of his voice felt like nails gently stroking over my skin. “One of the first signs of a male slipping toward a rut.”
That warning shouldn’t tingle my inner thighs the way it did. “You said you wouldn’t act on your instincts.”
“They’re called instincts for a reason.” His fingers curled against my hip and gripped me tightly. “But I wouldn’t do it willingly.”
Whether it was curiosity, or longing, or pure stupidity, I continued stroking over his lips, encouraging them to follow the movement. “Why not?”
He gripped my wrist and lowered my hand to my lap. “There’s nothing gentle about a rutting Jal’zar, Lia. Run from one, and he’ll give chase. He’ll hunt you down, pin you to the ground, tear your clothes, and fuck you until his mind clears.”
My entire skin pebbled.
I’d never been one for gentle.
The thought of Zerim losing his control excited me. I turned acutely aware of how his cock throbbed against the side of my ass with how I sat twisted in the saddle. My heart pounded to the rapid smacks of his tongue, and I had the urge to run from him right there — not out of danger but desire.
“How many times have you fallen into a rut?” I asked.
“Not once. No female has ever excited me enough for it.” He clasped my chin, bringing my gaze to meet his. “You just might, so don’t provoke me, no matter how—”
Zerim first flinched then tensed.
His entire body stiffened behind me, and the leather reins groaned in his fist. Head tilting back, eyes fluttering shut, he sucked in a long, deep inhale.
When his head snapped forward again, his eyes widened, and he said, “We have to get out of here.”
Eight
Zerim
Flickers of magnetic impulses altered the very air around us, gnawing on my skin, prickling my nerve endings, chasing one shudder after another across my body. Not once had Mekara warned me of Solgad’s wrath, but I’d witnessed the signs on Mother many times.
“We’ll ride back for our tree,” I said and turned Uruz around. “Something’s brewing out here and we need to get the fuck out before it starts.”
Dainty fingers dug into that arm I held around Lia’s belly. “Oh my God, please tell me it’s not solar flares.”
“Can’t say for sure.” Because Mekara had never cautioned me before. “Grip the wool of the saddle and sit tight.”
Pulling her as closely against me as possible, I kicked my heels into Uruz’ sides. Of course he snarled and continued at a walk, and not even a quick one. Damn that lazy bastard of a mount.
I tightened the right rein until he had no other choice but to bend his neck, then dug my heels between his ribs. “Come on now, you—”
A roar rolled through the air.
Every single muscle in my body snapped tight as I turned and glanced back. Sharp and cutting, sudden gusts of wind blew ash into my eyes. It blurred my vision, distorting those greenish-black plumes that chased across the plains…
… and straight at us.
“Njekesh!” I shouted in Jalut, torrent. “Move. Now!”
Lia’s head crashed against my chest with how Uruz angled his haunches before he thrust us straight into a sprint. She grappled at the saddle and squealed each time she bounced or shifted, the female dangerously unsteady no matter how I tried to hold her in place.
I stirred Uruz across the plains, skirting boulders and shrubs alike. “Relax your muscles, Lia.”
She said something, but the thud-thud-thudding of raindrops as thick as vasani berries drowned out her voice. They pelted down on us, some painfully so, and I rounded my spine in a poor attempt to shield her. They swirled up billows of dust and ash, giving the air an earthy, pleasant scent that might have fooled someone into ignoring the danger.
Already the soil turned slick underneath us, and Uruz struggled for footing as limbs randomly skidded, putting bumps into his gait that almost thrust Lia out of the saddle. There was no way we would make it back to our tree.
Solgad darkened as the torrent caught up with us full-force, and my stomach hardened. I couldn’t blink the rain from my eyes fast enough, and Lia trembled, drenched as she was. I needed to get us into another tree.
I scanned the plateau to t
he left, where streams of water sloshed down winding ravines. Beside it, a young mother tree stood somewhat crooked but with thick foliage. Not ideal with the water runoff, but our only and therefore best option.
Uruz stumbled and skidded toward it, his ears flattened against his scalp. That could have been his dislike for rain. It had better be, because a leap of ushtis hunkering down nearby would offer another explanation.
I dismounted, then reached my hand for Lia to help her down. “One second.”
Once I removed Uruz’ saddle and bridle, I clasped it underneath my arm, and led Lia toward the tree. I dropped it all by the foot of the trunk, and undid the nabu that sat strapped against the saddle.
Lia tugged on my shoulder. “What about Uruz?”
“He’ll be alright,” I said, and tossed the nabu onto a set of branches above us before I squatted down. “Hop onto my back like always.”
Steps careful, I inched us higher along the trunk, fingers searching for the best grip on the bark. Getting Lia into a tree hadn’t been easy the first time, and certainly not now that the humidity turned the moss between the furrows of the trunk slick. Without a tailclaw to dig into the bark and help me support her weight, moments like this made Warlord Razgar’s voice echo inside my head.
You are no Jal’zar.
But I still managed us onto a thick branch where I lowered her down. “Stay there. Don’t move.”
After I fished the nabu from twigs, I quickly spun it between two branches, right underneath a canopy of thick leaves. All around us, the storm howled and roared, but not a single drop of rain made it through the lush canopy.
I balanced back toward Lia and took her hand, guiding her slowly toward the nabu. “You climb in first while I keep it steady.”
Blonde strands clung to her pinkish cheeks, the way she shivered making her look so vulnerable I wanted to wrap myself around her and hum the moment she lied down. “That was scary.”
Tail wrapped around the next higher branch, I lowered myself into the nabu as gently as possible as not to make it sway. “Without Mekara’s warning, the torrent would have caught us in the valley, potentially drowning us underneath sludge.”
“You’re getting better and better at this shaman stuff, huh?”
Almost as if Lia was somehow the source of it all. “This was the first time Mekara warned me.”
“Your goddess has good timing.”
“It was irresponsible of me to take you away from the tree, and I’m sorry.”
“You’re always doing this, aren’t you?” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Talking yourself down? You tried to do something nice.”
“I endangered you.”
“And then you saved me. Again.” After a solar cycle with Warlord Razgar, her words caressed my soul. “Shit happens, Zerim. Once I get back home, nobody will believe the stories I’ll have to tell about Solgad.”
“You won’t tell any stories if you die of a cold, soaked as you are.” I rolled onto my side to face her, leaving nothing but a sliver of air between our bodies. “Temperatures will drop rapidly in this area.”
What I didn’t mention was how they would rise again soon after, evaporating the puddles of rain at such speed it would turn this planet into a steam bath. One saturated with the sweetness of her heat which, at least right now, had been washed-off by the rain enough my cock was semi-flaccid.
Until she closed the gap between us.
My skin pebbled as the wet cotton of her tunic pressed against my bare chest. The warmth of her breasts quickly replaced the sensation, intensifying the remnants of her intoxicating scent, letting my cock once more swell against the constraints of leather.
She stared at me with those keen eyes of hers, saying, “I’m cold.”
My chest rumbled with a hum I hadn’t asked for, protective instincts raging beneath the comfort it offered. I wrapped my arm around her and pressed my entire body not against but into her, devastating any and all space between us just like this female devastated my restraint.
Lia folded an arm underneath her head, shivering less and less the longer I held her. “How did it feel when it happened? The warning? You tensed, you know, and your eyes almost rolled into the back of your skull before they closed.”
“Like a tingle that exploded across my entire body all at once,” I said, trailing my fingertips over the damp skin of her arm. “Hot and cold at the same time. Not sure if it’s supposed to be like this.”
“First vision. First warning.” There was a pause long enough her eyes wandered to my mouth for a fraction of that before they found mine again. “Lots of firsts, huh?”
Each one as overwhelming as the next.
As was how her heat affected me, luring me to the edge of control like no other female ever had. I’d told her that I wouldn’t act on my instincts. Problem was, I sensed so many other things aside from her heat that made me want to rut and claim her.
Not that I could.
Zovazay, what Jal’zar called the soulbond established between mates, required a sting of the male’s tailclaw between the female’s ribs to the sound of his hum. Even if such a bond could be established between a Jal’zar male and a woman, I had no tailclaw. I had no way to bind her soul to mine. According to all those tests they’d put me through as a child, neither could I seed an Earth woman. Would never give Lia children.
Lia frowned. “What’s on your mind?”
“Nothing,” I said, because mentioning a soulbond and children to a woman I’d known for less than two suns sounded insane even to me. “Just, um, enjoying this moment.”
And I’d meant that.
Warlord Razgar could say whatever he wanted, I was closer to his kind than hers, and yet she accepted me so fully, horns, tails, fangs, and all. My people called me strange. Lia enjoyed my strangeness. And I enjoyed having her in my arms while the earthy scent of rain encapsulated us in this moment.
When a shudder wrecked through her that shook the nabu, she pressed herself closer against me. It ripped a groan from the back of my throat, not one of pleasure but pain with how her pubic bone pressed against a knot so swollen I dripped seed into my leathers.
“I hurt you,” she said, slightly easing away from me. “Can I ask you something?”
“You want to know what you saw in the yoni.”
She nodded. As expected.
I inhaled as deeply as my lungs let me before I said, “Jal’zar males have a knot on their shaft. When we’re aroused, it fills with seed, sometimes to a degree it hurts and leaks unless—”
“You stroke it out of your cock the way you did in the yoni. At first, I figured you were jerking off, but your movements were different.”
She sure knew how to make me feel twelve all over again, when Mother caught me sneaking up on Jal’zar females while they bathed. Had Lia ever been with a male before? Probably.
I wasn’t an expert, but I doubted virgins inquired about alien cocks without blushing. Or use the words jerking off without a hitch in their breath.
But they certainly didn’t look said alien straight in the face and asked things like, “Would you show me?”
My heart stumbled over its next beat, but it hit every rib once when she lifted an expectant brow at me. I didn’t want to push my leathers down and show her my swollen, aching cock. I wanted her to take me out and show me what it was like to sink myself into a female.
Something tugged on my loincloth, but it took my brain a moment to realize it was me. I undid the leather straps on one side and shifted slightly more onto my back. My cock did the rest from there, popping out and slapping against my stomach. To make it extra dramatic, a rope of seed splattered across my chest holster when knot hit muscle.
Lia propped herself onto her elbow, angling her head this way and that. The longer she stared the more my pulse quickened, but it galloped inside my veins when her gaze returned and caught on my lips. If I kissed her, would she bite me?
I didn’t want to risk it and cupped her cheek. “Can I k
iss you?”
One moment, a smile curled her lips.
The very next, it disappeared as she brushed those lips over mine, tentatively at first, then more vigorous. I suckled on them, teased them to part for me, then stroked my tongue toward that lingering sweetness of berries.
I couldn’t stop myself from rocking my cock against her hip, moaning each time the pressure of my knot first intensified then eased. A burning sensation flooded my veins. Heated blood simmered beneath my skin, overwhelming me with this brutal urge to rip her pants down, turn her onto her belly, and push knot-deep into her cunt.
And what if I rutted her?
There would be no sting, no bond, no child.
Not a single consequence.
“Zerim,” she whispered and spread her legs, inviting me between them, rolling against me in search of friction, in need of pleasure. “You’re smacking your tongue.”
Because I was at the edge of a rut.
I was sure of it.
The scalding, violent rush of blood dizzied my mind. Instincts took over, and fucking her became the only thought on my mind, everything else nothing but dark fog that made no sense.
Inside.
I needed to get inside her so I could rut her, sting her, claim her, hum for her, and seed her with my child. And just as something reeled at the back of my mind, like a flicker of comprehension the rut hadn’t drowned out, my tail lunged out as if on reflex.
The end smacked against Lia’s side not once, not twice, but three times, right where a better male would have stabbed his claw between her ribs to create a soulbond. To make her his. Forever.
But not me.
The end of my tail, useless as it was, simply bounced off. Each dull shk-shk-shk against drenched cotton curbed my rut, until only sobering and chest-curling embarrassment remained. I wanted Lia as my bonded mate, my kunazay.
She could never be that.
Because I couldn’t make it so.
Lia cupped my cheek and brought my eyes to meet hers, the confusion I found there making this so much worse. “What’s wrong?”
