Katharine only took five steps before she halted again. Breccon ran into her, his forceful jolt almost knocking her off of her feet. She craned her neck into the dense blanket of treetop high above her, narrowing her eyes.
“What is that?”
“What is what?” Breccon asked, following her eye line.
“That noise...” Loud as trumpets and delicate as wind chimes, a kind of birdsong now filled the air. It started off slow and quiet, but with every second they stood there, it grew in intensity until it was all they heard. It stirred Katharine at a base level, as if the musical vibrations themselves were moving her beating heart. “What is that?”
Without another word, Breccon started for the base of the nearest tree, hauling himself up on the first branch with a strength and grace that made Katharine want to undress for him right then and right there. She only just managed to restrain herself.
“Follow me.”
There was no way her arms would pull her up the Trishnikaar trees. She didn’t think he’d need reminding of her fragile, human state, but he seemed insistent.
“I can’t—”
Worry vanished when Breccon, still perched precariously on a particularly sturdy limb, reached down for her. It was a lifeline, an offer to help. He wouldn’t leave her behind. He wouldn’t let her struggle. It was small, silent actions like this that made Katharine feel his love from the inside. She knew she loved him, of course, but these moments ingrained that truth in her bones. She carried it with her. His love was a piece of her that grew and blossomed every day.
“Trust me.”
She couldn’t say no to that. She’d trusted him to carry her across the stars. Surely she trusted him enough to help her climb a tree. Besides, B-17s flew higher than the top of these trees, and she trusted her American flyboys far less than Breccon. There was nothing for it but to take his hand and follow him towards the sky.
* * *
Breccon recognized their song as soon as he heard them. During his travels away from Rune-Yon, he heard the tune in his sleep; they hummed in the back of his mind during his long nights chained up in that human cell. It was the song of his planet, his people. It was a distraction from their journey, he knew, but if they failed their task and they never saw each other again, he at least wanted to have the memory of sharing this with her.
When they finally broke through the crown of leaves and into the breathable sky, Breccon immediately scanned the treetops for the nest. The birds always nested up here, and they served as makeshift viewing boxes for the musical show. He spotted it nestled in the next tree, but Katharine gasped when she poked her head out, finally getting the grand, unobstructed view of the forests of Rune-Yon and the hovering flock of brightly colored birds.
“Mnuero birds!” she exclaimed with the delighted wonder of a child. Breccon paused.
“How did you know that?”
Surely no one told her about Mnuero birds during her time in quarantine.
“You told me about them once.” Then, with an air of embarrassment, she shrugged and mumbled, “You gave a very good description, that’s all.”
“Do you remember the song?” With a tug on her hand, he helped her into the nearby nest. Mneuro birds always nested in flocks, so it was more than big enough for the pair of them.
“Something about laughter and blood.” She chuckled, shaking her head. “All of your songs are about blood.”
They settled into the soft padding. Katharine rested her weight against Breccon as she stared out at the swirling flock. No one was sure quite why, but they often sang a harmonious song while dancing in intricate flight patterns. It was for this reason that the Tallel found them so fascinating and beautiful. They did not participate in the brutality of war or sacrifice; they were merely beautiful. The song they hooted became so famous that his people made it one of their own, adding their own words. With Katharine nestled into his chest, Breccon matched the rise and fall of her breathing before singing the tune in her ear.
He never thought he’d sing it for anyone. He fancied himself a man of the people, devoted forever to his duty. All that changed on his journey to Earth. All that changed when he saw Katharine’s kind face, when he felt her burning touch. On their journey from Earth, she’d sung him countless human love songs. Now, it was his turn. He wanted nothing more than to share one with her.
“We walk from the battle, sick from the kill.
I loved you in the field and I love you still.
Put your sword down, let your hair be free.
Come lie down beside and laugh with me.”
“Blood and laughter,” Katharine teased.
Breccon endeavored to explain its true meaning to her. It wasn’t about war. It was about peace with one’s love. It was a love song, or as close to one as the Tallel ever got.
“It’s about...” But he never got the chance to finish. With the suns setting beyond the horizon, darkness tinted everything. And Breccon saw, for the first time, that Katharine’s amulet had begun to react. “You’re glowing.”
Katharine turned to face him.
“You too.” She brushed the warmed stone with her fingers. “What do you think it means?”
She hadn’t even asked the question before Breccon was on his feet, his sword extended out at a million invisible enemies. The amulets meant a trial. And a trial meant danger. There was danger nearby. There had to be. He would defend her to the death.
“We have to—”
But there were no enemies. No invaders to slay. The skies remained a dazzling array of colors and the birds continued their warbling. There was nothing but Katharine’s small fingers on his shoulders, withdrawing his fear as if by magic. His heavy breathing slowed. His raised nuuja blade returned to his side. He remained stiff.
“Not everything is a war, Breccon. Sometimes...” Her fingers trailed along his exposed collarbone as she walked to stand in front of him. “You just have to listen to the song.”
It wasn’t possible that one of their trials would be so simple. Just sit and listen to some bird song? It made no sense. Theirs was meant to be a triumph of blood and battle, not softness and levity.
Katharine must have sensed his distress. An almost exasperated sigh caught her teeth as she reached up to press her lips to his. His body reacted. How could it not? Here, the most beautiful creature on at least two planets was kissing him. He clutched her hips, ready to impart his fierce passion in a white-knuckle grip. She pulled away and gave him as stern a stare as he had ever seen her give.
“No. Slow. Enjoy.”
It would take all the restraint he had, but Breccon wanted to obey her. Their amulets lit, the material encased inside the center stone swirling, almost in encouragement.
“Lie down, then,” he whispered.
Katharine did as she was told, but modestly kept her legs together, hiding herself from him. That wouldn’t do. Joining her on the soft nest floor, Breccon hovered above her, sliding one knee between her legs, spreading them just enough to make her shake.
“I’ll enjoy you,” he breathed in her ear, brushing aside a lock of hair resting on her shoulder. His cock hardened at her wide eyes. Oh, yes. He would enjoy her very much. What had been rushed and frantic yesterday would be smooth and careful today.
A kiss on her jaw. A kiss on her cheek. A line of kisses down to the opening of her Rune-Yonian robes, where her breasts swelled and waited for his attention. Below him, her hips tried to grind against him. He rewarded her, pressing his knee against her mound.
She moaned. It only got louder when he peeled away her robes to reveal her beauty to the world. She lay before him with no shame and no covering, ready and ripe for his ministrations. His cock throbbed now, but he wouldn’t attend to it. Katharine had to come first, in every sense of the word. He continued his trail of kisses. The neck. That spot on her collarbone that made her melt.
Her chest. Then, he took her nipple into his mouth. Gently at first, he worshipped one until it was hard and she panted for attention on her other. Back and forth he went until she ground against him, begging for more.
He would reward her, of course. But she told him to enjoy. And he would enjoy. The kisses continued. Four on her stomach. Two on her thighs. He looked up at her over her mound as he readied his lips between her inner thighs. Gods, she was beautiful from this angle, all curves and sweat, all need and longing.
If he could bottle the guttural groan she emitted when he took her clit into his mouth, he could have sold it as a natural cure for male dysfunction. His balls tightened and his cock screamed for release. Just touch yourself and come, it urged him, pressuring him to abandon his goal, a pressure he couldn’t answer.
Her hardened, swollen clit was impossibly warm. It was her fingers threading through his hair, pressing him down harder upon her that made him almost burst without ever touching himself. He listened to her heated pants, taking her directions. Softer. Faster. More. More. More. More. Until she was rocking her hips against his face and rising higher and higher.
And as Katharine climaxed, her cries married with the song of the Mnuero birds. To Breccon, the sound finally completed the song.
When she came down from the high and her thighs relaxed around him, Breccon came up for air, unable to keep himself from licking the last of her from his lips. He’d been able to hold himself off, but now he’d take what was his. Something about Katharine brought out the beast in him. She was a statue of strength, a pillar of perfection, but the moment he touched her she shattered and made him feel more powerful than a lifetime full of battle victories.
Katharine released the tension in her satisfied body for only the briefest moment before Breccon’s touch snapped her back to life. With just the tip of his nose, he traced a line from her center straight up to her lips, reveling in the goose bumps he left behind on her warm skin. He cradled himself above her, his hard member straining to press behind her walls and enter her, to take her completely. The smell of her wetness still lingered, intoxicating him and driving him wild with the need to consume her. She opened her eyes; he saw the feeling was mutual. She wanted to be taken just as much as he wanted to take her. They needed no words. Just the tension of her fingernails digging into his arms was enough to pull him inside.
He entered her and the birdsong disappeared. There was nothing for him but the tightening walls of Katharine’s pussy. She welcomed his every thrust with wet warmth and small mews as the pressure between them increased. Breccon wondered how two people so different could be so perfectly formed to fit one another, how his hands seemed crafted to thumb her hard nipples or how his legs framed her hips like the stars framed the moon.
His thrusts grew shorter, unwilling to withdraw himself from her tight cunt for longer than necessary. Even a second was too long to be without her. Her gasps came with every puncture now, with every movement of his muscles and he raised himself up so he could see her face fully, but her eyes remained firmly closed, shutting her away behind long lashes.
Damn careful timing. Damn holding back. He wanted this woman to feel his love for her in the way he moved; he wanted his every breath to scream for her attention. Heart racing, he picked up his pace, no longer fighting the desperation in his motion or the heat clawing at the base of his stomach.
“See me, Katharine,” he breathed. Her eyes shot open, apparently shocked by the command. Her wide eyes caught him by surprise, sending the final shot of completion through him. In her eyes, he saw everything he wanted to be. Breccon could have sworn he saw a flicker of love there, a flicker of true love that he could not deny.
How could he resist filling her, screaming as the orgasm rattled him to the very core of his being?
Rocking his hips as the orgasm ended, Katharine’s small hand squeezed his arm once more. Breccon caught his breath. Recovering from making love to Katharine always took monumental effort. Half of him wanted to pin her down for round two while the other half wanted to fall asleep with his arms locked around her and regain his strength. For now, he settled for settling in at her side and pulling her in close.
“Did you enjoy me then?” Katharine asked as Breccon placed a firm kiss on top of her head. She’d done the same thing to him countless times and though it was a human gesture, Breccon couldn’t help but revel in its simplicity. A kiss on the forehead said, “I love you enough to kiss you, and I love you enough to not want anything else in return. Just the pleasure of knowing you’re here is enough for me.”
“Yes.” Breccon kissed her again. He needed her to know all of the love he couldn’t bear to speak out loud. She didn’t need to see his doubt about her intentions. They just needed to make it to the temple, even if the not knowing broke his heart. “Yes, I enjoyed you very much.”
Chapter Three
According to Breccon, one of the most beautiful things about Rune-Yon was that it hardly ever rained. Well, to be more precise, it hardly ever poured. The forests were usually misty and occasionally the beaches got some clouds and rain, but torrential downpours were never the norm. They were the exception.
Today, as it turned out, was an exceptional day. Having abandoned the nest after their lovemaking and set up camp on the forest floor, they woke to skin-stinging rain. It pelted them, seeming to come from every direction, an all-out assault on their bodies. Breccon warned Katharine of enemies in the Trishnikaar forest, but she never expected one of those enemies to be something as simple as a rainstorm.
“How long do they usually last?” she shouted over the roar of thunder as they pressed on. The mud was deep. She dug her way through it. Not even thick mud or punishing rain could keep her from the Temple of Kaal-Nokt.
“A few hours, at least.”
They’d only been walking for an hour. Katharine’s enthusiasm and positivity plummeted. A few hours? She was miserable from the short time they’d been enduring this. It was easy to say nothing could stop her until she knew her misery wouldn’t end for a long while. Part of her considered begging him to stop. He would understand. They could find shade under some low-hanging tree or cave and continue their sexual escapades of the night before, even. It would surely be more fun than trotting around in the mud. She refrained. Breccon was a warrior. He saw her as one, too. The last thing she wanted was for him to see her as a weak thing who couldn’t hack it. She reminded herself that she’d endured much, much worse during the war, and she didn’t even have the promise of true love waiting for her at the end as she did now.
“Are you getting along?” Breccon asked.
“Yes,” Katharine nodded, wrapping her arms around her stomach for warmth, “but it’s hard.”
True love wasn’t easy, she reminded herself. True love was hard. It was work. If she couldn’t survive a rainy afternoon, how could she possibly hope to hack it with a life partner? Breccon, clearly used to the hardships of a storm such as this one, remained hearty.
“What if I tell you a story? It will take your mind off things,” he assured her.
“Not another battle tale, please, I can’t take any more stories where the happy ending is someone getting their guts ripped out with a sword.”
He cleared his throat, clearly caught with a war story on the tip of his tongue. For a moment he was silent with contemplation, then he offered another solution:
“A love story, then.”
At least a love story wouldn’t make her imagine blood pouring out of open wounds. But, knowing the Tallel as she did, Katharine wondered if even their love stories included viscera.
“Anything to distract from the rain,” she conceded.
Katharine struggled to keep her eyes open against the piercing, stinging rain. It didn’t matter. Breccon guided her, leading her forward with one hand on her back. It was the one warm spot on her entire body, the one place of contact where she didn’t feel
as if she’d frozen over. How he managed to stay so warm during the storm, she couldn’t possibly imagine. Maybe, once she was given the chance to properly study the Rune-Yonian body scientifically, she’d understand how it worked. For now, she had only to be grateful for it.
“How do you humans start your stories again?”
“Once upon a time.”
“Ah. Yes. Once upon a time...”
The words sounded wooden in his throat. Had Katharine been in any kind of better mood, she might have laughed at it and appreciated the effort. For now, she pressed onward through the standing mud with attentive ears and tired everything else.
“There are wild plain lands between the tribes of the Yicardis and the Tallel...”
Thus began Breccon’s story. Story was the wrong word for it. Tale would have been more precise. Epic would have been more so. Unlike the story of Kaal-Nokt, this wasn’t a story that could be summed up as a bedtime story. It was full of intrigue and desire, passions and betrayal. When a warrior queen found one of the Yicardi soldiers dying near the Tallel border, she rescued him, taking him into her house. Only, neither the Tallel nor the Yicardi liked that, so the warrior and the Yicardi ran off into the woods together, which set off a lifetime of battles and keep-away, fighting and sex. Katharine struggled to keep up with the complex names and lands and houses that made up the intricate tale, but there was one thing that became increasingly clear:
“Why are you at war?” she asked, brow furrowed.
“Why were you?”
“That’s not an answer.”
Breccon stared ahead. From his stoic expression, it seemed this was not the first time he’d heard this question. Perhaps he’d even asked it himself when he was a boy.
“We have always been at war.”
“It’s just that your people seem to fall in love a lot. In the stories, anyway.”
“I want peace. That’s why I went to Earth to find you.”
“Then you can’t keep being at war.”
His Human Bride Page 3
