by Maia Starr
“There will be impact!” Zaine yelled. “Lay on your back and go as limp as you can! Put your hands under your head!”
It was a bit different than the safety protocol I’d learned, but I realized suddenly that he was attempting to protect not only me, but our child as well. I would have felt sentimental about it, but another blast made me cry out in terror.
“Peace to you, Yula,” Zaine said, his voice as calm as I had ever heard it. “We are going to be all right. I have this under control.”
A sudden explosion shook the ship, and I was certain that we had been struck down. A huge red flash filled the room, and I squeezed my eyes closed. If I had known this was going to happen, that I would die in the ship attempting an escape, would I have chosen instead to stay in the prison?
No, I decided, suddenly daring to open my eyes. I would go down in the hail of gunfire and smoke, knowing that, at the very least, I had done my best.
My eyes caught Zaine’s from across the room, and he smiled sincerely at me. I realized that we hadn’t exploded and died at all. In fact, when I looked out the window of the ship, another ship was heading down to the desolate fields below. A small soldier was in the distance, dangling from a parachute and undoubtedly glaring at us as we hurtled toward the ground.
Zaine managed to steer us deep into a wooded area, a place that was surprising to find. Everywhere I had ever seen had been desolate and war-torn. But it seemed that the Verians and humans had an unspoken pact that the forest here was not to be touched.
“Almost there, Yula,” Zaine said, lowering the craft as gently as he could into a small opening in the forest. When we finally stopped moving, I let out the breath I had been holding since we had hit the turbulence. “We’re all right now.”
Zaine stood from his seat and strode toward me, his tall, muscular body seeming almost magical now that I was nearly delirious with the pleasure of our narrow escape to Earth.
He held his hand down to me and helped me to my feet. My legs were shaking badly, and he allowed me to support myself against him as we moved through the ship and out the escape hatch. The normal door had been destroyed by the gunfire.
“So, Yula, what do you want to do now that you’re home?” Zaine asked, smiling at me.
I held his hand tightly and smiled up into his face. “Make love to you,” I replied. Zaine’s eyes widened in surprise, and I laughed as I led the way through the forest.
“We should make camp first,” he said, but a broad smile was lighting his face. “And then I pleasure you in ways you never even imagined.”
***
The forest was unbelievably quiet at night. We had walked as long as we could before Zaine stopped and picked out the perfect place for us to rest.
“We’re going to find the communes,” he confided in me. “Rumor has it that there are places out here where Verians and humans alike live in harmony. Wounded Verian soldiers who had been cared for by humans and vice versa. People who want nothing more than the war to end so peace may thrive.”
I had never heard of such a thing existing on Earth, but it made sense to me why the soldiers would want to hide it. The very idea of it was radical, and could change the way we viewed the alien race we were at odds with.
“Do you know where they are?” I asked, surprised.
“No,” Zaine admitted. “But I am willing to look until we find them, and protect you until we do. That I swear.”
My heart warmed as Zaine moved close to me, and held me as we gazed into the fire. His hands were gentle and strong as he allowed his long fingers to caress me, and I shuddered beneath his touch.
“I thought I would never see you again,” I whispered, my voice cracking. The idea had kept me up all hours of the night, until I had been abducted by Karan and forced to think of nothing but my own pain. “I’m so glad that you’re here with me.”
“It’s all thanks to him,” Zaine said, placing one hand firmly against the small mound of my abdomen. I felt a stirring inside of me and gasped.
“Him?”
“Yes,” Zaine said softly. “We are linked by the bond of life. My strength is his, and vice versa. It is this way with all of the hybrid born children. It is the only way to persevere against the disease.”
“What disease?” I asked, frowning.
Zaine shook his head. “These unpleasant truths can wait. I have been waiting for far too long to be inside of you again.”
The sexy rumble of his voice against my ear sent a thrill coursing through me, and Zaine was suddenly on top of me, kissing my face gingerly as our bodies became entwined on the small bed he had made us of grass, leaves, and his shirt.
I shuddered on the ground as his erection made itself known, and he stripped me delicately before pressing his sensual lips against my breasts. I cried out in pleasure as his tongue found the hard mound of my nipple, and closed my eyes as the ecstasy of the act consumed me.
Soon, we were naked together, and I allowed my hands to explore Zaine’s perfectly chiseled body. He was beautiful, in so many ways, and now, I knew, he was mine.
I gasped as his hot lips reached my earlobe and sent a hot shiver down my spine, igniting my loins with a sensual thrill that I couldn’t help but buck my hips as a result of. Zaine grinned at me and responded in kind by thrusting his hips powerfully against me, unleashing a flood of desire within my body.
I could feel myself being slowly pried apart by his rock-hard muscle, and shuddered in delight as Zaine slowly entered me, his member immediately swelling once it was fully enveloped by my body. I closed my eyes and allowed myself to fully feel the effect of his body filling me up, and we were still for a moment as pleasure rocked our bodies.
Then, without warning, Zaine began to roll his hips languidly against me, massaging the bundle of nerves in my middle until I was out of breath and gasping as the pleasure consumed me. He showed no signs of stopping, and I found myself surrendering to the rapture that Zaine introduced to my body.
“Are you all right, Yula? And the child?”
I nodded, gasping as another wave of ecstasy electrified me, and Zaine grinned.
“You like that, eh?”
I grinned sheepishly at him, and Zaine made a point to continue the motion for as long as he could keep it up, slow and steady until I was close to screaming with the pressure of my anticipated release.
A sudden explosion of power erupted from his hips, and I found myself shocked again and again by the electric thrusts of Zaine’s impressive member. I could feel my body tightening around him as he thrust in again and again, until I could no longer help the contractions that were tightening around him.
He grew rigid, and our eyes met. I knew immediately that we were going to reach the epitome of our pleasure together. I braced myself, ready for it, and Zaine growled sensually into my ear, rocking my body with another torrent of sheer power.
I felt myself suddenly filled with an explosive testament to his desire, and cried out loud as my orgasm lifted me to new, Earth-shattering heights. I gasped as Zaine thrust inside of me, again and again, until our bodies had finally had enough of the act.
He collapsed beside me and smiled, stroking my hair away from my face.
“All is well, Yula,” he said, kissing my sleepy eyes one at a time, and then covering my mouth with his in a sensual good-night kiss. “We will raise our child in peace.”
Epilogue
Regan Lawrence
I was much more pregnant by the time we had wandered far enough through the protected forests that we saw a sign of life. At first, Zaine had been cautious, forbidding me from following my nose to the smell of the campfire. He left me behind, promising to return with the news, whether good or bad.
Of course, I refused to just take him at his word and followed stealthily behind. If this was our chance to find a new settlement, I wasn’t going to miss it.
“Yula!” Zaine shouted happily. I still couldn’t see what he was looking at, and he was both surprised and also ob
viously not surprised when I popped out from hiding to join him just seconds after he called.
“Look!” he said, pointing to a clearing that opened out in front of us.
I gasped, dropping my hand to my swollen stomach. This was it. It had to be.
A Verian woman was walking toward us, her eyes narrow as she attempted to figure out whether we were friend or foe. Her child, an obvious hybrid, followed along after her, as a human man held its hand lovingly.
“Be careful, honey,” he said to her, squinting into the brush. Nobody could see us yet, but they had heard Zaine’s exclamation.
“Peace to you,” I said suddenly, pushing in front of Zaine and holding my hands up in the air. “We’ve come seeking shelter…a place to raise our child.”
The Verian woman looked at me at first in surprise, and then in genuine glee.
“Have you?” she asked, a wide smile creasing her face. She stepped forward and embraced me suddenly, an act that left me dumbfounded. The Verians were very much not huggers. This was certainly a blending of culture.
“Zaine, come,” I said shakily, taking a look at our surroundings. There were several huts in the clearing, some of them styled in the Verian architecture, others in a more obviously human way. But they were arranged in a circle, and in between was a large fire pit where humans and Verians of all ages were sitting together, staring at us curiously.
Zaine made his way to me, his face clearly telling me it was not okay to rush into danger that way, but when the human man came out to shake his hand, he smiled broadly, and all traces of his agitation melted away.
“Welcome to you!” the human man said.
“Come,” the Verian woman said, leading us to the fire. “We were just sitting down for a meal. You must be starved.”
In truth, Zaine had done a great job of providing us with food along the way, but I was starving for something: the company of other humans.
We followed the couple to the fire and sat down hand in hand, both of us feeling happier than we ever had before.
“Here you are,” the Verian woman said, handing us each a plate of food.
“Welcome to you!” the group chorused.
“Thank you!”
I grinned at Zaine, and he held me close, his eyes full of love. We were home.
The End
Verian Mates(Complete BOX SET(1-4)
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Savage Alien(Preview)
By Stella Sky
Chapter One
Sidney
I’m a good listener. So when Karen started screaming, “Run, run, run,” I took off like a bat out of hell.
I didn’t even turn around to see if she was alright.
Instead, I listened to the sounds that were echoing behind me, a ‘THWOOP THWOOP THWOOP’ siren that reverberated through the ground. The sound of the creatures. The aliens.
I hadn’t seen streetlights in so long that they were almost blinding as I ran down the dampened streets of the abandoned city. Snow bit against the ground under the beams of light and quickly dissolved as it hit the pavement.
The backstreets of my old neighborhoods twisted in sudden darkness like a maze. If I could make it to my old house, I would be able to escape through the woodlands behind my backyard. Back to safety.
The vibrations of the aliens who were no doubt still chasing me grew stronger. So strong that I thought I might lose my footing, but then I saw it. My old front door. If I had a moment for my brain to catch up with my sight, I might have cried then. But I just wanted to get into my backyard and hide.
I raced past the old wrought iron fence, a rotting black, and found myself in the middle of the wet back lawn, still covered with heavy rotted fallen leaves, freshly snowed on.
My breath was barreling out of me as I knelt down and pressed my back up against the shed, shaking against the wriggly metal. I heard a loud scream in the distance; down the road maybe. Something foreign. One of them.
I felt my teeth chatter violently and gripped my sidearm, waiting for the beast to come at me.
Make my day, bitch, I thought. But nothing happened.
Then suddenly ice-cold fingers were on my arm, and I flinched back, falling hard against the shed siding.
“Baxley, shit!” I swore and pushed my commander away from me; his black curls and stiff beard looking shiny under the motion-activated lights.
“Where’s Karen?” he said, his gravelly voice difficult to understand when he spoke in a whisper as he did then.
Karen, our lead scientist, was taken by them eight days ago. We being a small group of survivors. The revolutionists who hid and managed to keep out of sight long enough for the aliens to leave us alive; leave us alone, believing there was nothing left of our people. No one left to kill.
And then one day, Karen was gone, and everything changed. Twenty years of hiding all thrown to shit because she had a hunch to test.
Baxley and I went on a mission to get her back, but she didn’t welcome our rescue. Turns out she liked her cage.
“Not here,” I snapped back, pushing Baxley away from me.
“You left her?” the middle-aged man snapped at me, pulling me up and leading me instinctively toward the woods.
“Hey, she told me to run.”
“Yeah,” he said dismissively, raising and lowering his brows quickly. “Way to follow orders.”
I matched his expression and quickened my pace so that I walked next to him. “Hey, that’s what I thought.”
My commander rolled his eyes and held his gun close. “So, what? We just leavin’ her back there? With them?”
I shrugged, pre-annoyed. “She seemed pretty happy to me.”
We made our way into the thicket: a dense wood that sprawled on for miles. It was in here that we were first able to lose the creatures: shake them from us long enough to catch a breath. But that was a long time ago.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked quickly.
“Just what I said.”
Baxley sighed. “Will you stop bein’ snippy and give me a straight answer, for once? You’re the biggest pain in my ass.”
“You love it,” I teased. “B, we have to talk.”
“What, you breakin’ up with me, kid?”
I smiled his way, but neither of us picked up on the conversation offer. We had an odd relationship. Not only for commander and soldier, but for me being twenty-two and Baxley a cool fifty-five.
At first, I thought of him like a… not father. But like a plucky uncle. One that always had great stories and seemed to run into the zaniest people. But by the time I turned seventeen, I began having different feelings toward him. I went through a crisis then. An, ‘if this is all there is, why not?’ phase where I rebelled.
I rebelled within a rebellion, and it looked a whole lot like me sneaking into Baxley’s trailer—that’s where we hide, by the way: an abandoned trailer park on the outskirts of town—and kissing him deeply even as he protested.
Out of either instinct or routine, we both crouched for cover, hearing a distant hum that neither of us could identify as being close or far away.
Baxley drew his gun and traced it along the dark thicket, and I followed suit. We stayed deathly silent then until the hum disappeared for certain.
“When I said Karen looked happy,” I began again, “I meant… she was kissing that thing.”
“Rape?” Baxley asked in a furious whisper, his brows drawing together in confusion.
“He didn’t have her sprawled out on the sidewalk,” I offered in a tone that might as well have been a shrug.
“You know what I mean,” he warned.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
Karen had a theory about the aliens, these Vithohn, that I found disturbing. I’d spent nearly my whole life fighting them. Learning to trap them. Taking cues from Baxley on how to handle myself in a militia. My fa
ther was part of Baxley’s militia, and when he died, Baxley took me under his wing. I was cocking guns since I was eight.
To me, the aliens were the ultimate enemy.
But Karen… she had different ideas about them. About ways to control them: change them.
“I’m not leavin’ her,” Baxley said suddenly, stoic.
“Then you’re risking your own life, not mine,” I argued, traipsing further into the wilds. “I’m not going back there.”
“She’s our second in command,” he snapped.
“And you’re first in command, so deal!”
Baxley didn’t like being our commander; he didn’t like others thinking he was in a position of authority. It was all a moot point, anyhow, since everyone revered and respected him. Everyone went to him when we needed someone to tell us how to survive.
“Fine,” the dark-haired man seethed through gritted teeth. “Then as commander, I say we’re going back!”
“B, trust me, she wants to be there.”
Baxley’s eyes darted back and forth from mine in a fury, and he grabbed my arm: the second time he’d ever been aggressive with me. The first time was when I kissed him that first time; he’d shoved me back and grabbed me by the shoulders, shaking me. Then he kissed me again, just to be sure it was wrong.
Before he had the chance to scold me, a crashing came down hard in the distance; tree branches thudded to the ground in a sure signal that we’d been spotted.
I waited to see what Baxley’s play would be: steely silence and an excellent hiding place or pure panic and run. He chose the latter.
We took off, shooting in opposite directions as the Vithohn let out a terrifying shriek. Baxley had just enough time to make eye contact with me to let me know I would be used as bait this time.
The air went warm; even in the cold, the alien’s diamond textured, snake-like skin drew a heat to the surrounding area and I knew he was close.
I dug my spiked boot into the ground and spun on it, running left, breathing in the sharp winter air and feeling it hit my lungs like daggers.
