by Lisa Lace
“I just saw your shoulder. I can’t believe I did that. I’m sorry.” I reached up to touch the red semicircle. I knew the marks were from my teeth, and I was appalled.
“It’s nothing. I think you marked me. Like an animal, you know?”
My eyes widened. “I don’t usually do anything like that.” I felt my face begin to get hot.
“Maybe you’ve never met the right guy before. I must bring out the beast in you.”
He pinched my nipple, making me squeal with pain and experience a sharp spike of lust. At my gasp, he lifted one eyebrow at me in invitation.
Without waiting for a response, Odin bent down and captured my lips. I lost myself in his heat. His large body overwhelmed me and his passionate kisses erased all thoughts of sexual health and my unladylike behavior from my mind. Abruptly, he turned me away from him and pressed his chest to my back. I could feel his erection against me, making me wet. His hand eased around, settling over my clit and he touched me until I was ready to come.
“Have you ever fucked in the shower, Beth?” he whispered into my ear, making me tremble in his arms. I shook my head as he gently pushed my head down until I was forced to bend over. I grabbed the ledge filled with shampoo and soap.
In a moment, he entered me from behind. This time, he wasn’t going slowly. He gave a sharp thrust that penetrated me completely, and I cried out. His hands came around to cup my breasts, and he groaned. Pulling out, he started to drive into me. I felt my climax starting immediately.
“Oh fuck,” I moaned.
“Are you okay?” Odin slowed down to a stop.
“Keep going,” I commanded. Odin began to move again. He dropped one hand and started touching my clit in tiny circles. The stimulation of my already tender flesh made me crazy.
“Go faster, big guy,” I gasped. He thrust into me so hard and fast that our skin made a smacking sound as he hit my ass.
“Beth, I can’t...”
I felt him stiffen and come inside of me. One of his hands teased my nipple, giving me the stimulation I needed to send me over the edge. My body shuddered, and I clenched around him. Odin pulled me against him and held me tightly as I came hard for the third time that night. I hadn’t known three times in one night was possible.
Odin gently rinsed us both and wrapped me in a big towel. Back on the bed, he dried me off, which almost got things started again between us. But we were tired. Soon we were curled up together, suspended in the middle of the room, floating on air.
ODIN
I usually woke up the morning after filled with regret, but it was different this time. I had the most incredible sex in my life last night with Beth. As I looked down at her sleeping peacefully in my bed, I wondered if things would have been different if I didn’t have to leave her and marry someone else this morning.
It was easy for me to extract myself from her embrace carefully. I had crept away from other women many times before, but when I kissed her softly on the cheek, there was an unusual feeling my chest that I didn’t like. It felt bizarre, like a combination of pain, longing, and wrongness all rolled up into one annoying distraction. I did my best to ignore it. Everything was all set, and my career was on the line. There was no way for me to change things already in motion.
I was determined to get out of here before Beth woke up. I didn’t want to say and see her eyes as I kissed her goodbye. I had a feeling that I wouldn’t be the only one who regretted that we had to part.
There was a ready excuse for me to leave the premises - I was supposed to prepare for the wedding at a hotel. On Dorsh, the wedding preparations for the groom were as elaborate as those for the bride, and I had hired a team to get both of us ready. We were going to be sequestered in different locations. Just like on Earth, it was bad luck to see each other before the ceremony began.
In a few minutes, I left my apartment and headed down the street, trying to forget about the brown-haired beauty I was leaving behind. Ignoring last night would be hard. Already, my feet were leaden, and my chest felt like it was filled with stone.
I grabbed some breakfast and then headed to the hotel. As soon as I arrived, I went into the bathroom and turned off the holographic disguise. It was a relief to free myself from the lie. As I stared at my real face in the mirror, I saw the telltale signs of a sleepless night. I smiled at my reflection as I thought about Beth. She had been a good final fling before the ceremony today.
The preparations took a few hours, which kept my mind off of the feelings of sorrow and regret that were getting stronger every minute. Before I knew it, I was heading for the top of the mountain.
As I approached the wedding site, I saw that my bride was already there as well as the priest and two witnesses. Loki had asked for a blind match because he thought I might obsess too much and get cold feet if I knew the identity of the woman beforehand. The wedding was going to be a simple ceremony compared to some of the six-hour elaborate rituals insisted upon by the traditionalists. This one would only take about two hours.
Everyone was already in place waiting for me. All I had to do was step into my spot. The bride wore a veil so thick that I couldn’t see her face. The only part of her head which was visible was her eyes. She was wearing the traditional wedding clothes for a Dorshan bride.
“Hello everyone!” I could try to appear cheerful, at least. “Are we all ready?”
The priest began the pre-ceremony ritual. “Lift your bride onto the altar,” he said.
I quickly lifted the small woman until she sat on the platform.
“Embrace her,” he instructed.
She moved her legs apart, the four panels of her long skirt dropping away and revealing leggings underneath. I stepped between her legs and wrapped my arms around the woman to hold her. A stray idea wandered into my mind as I momentarily wished the woman was someone that I knew. But the idea was childish. It was time for me to grow up.
We held each other, but even though I couldn’t see her face, I sensed the reluctance in her body as well as in me. It was a difficult way to start a marriage.
I held my breath for the next part of the ceremony. “Peruse your bride,” the priest murmured. It was a horrible phrase, but it was part of the sequence of events. This was a point where the groom could still reject the woman if he decided she was wanting.
Despite the awkwardness of the situation, I was curious to lift the veil and see the appearance of the person standing next to me. I began the arduous process of unwinding the yards of gauze covering the woman’s head. When I finally got to the thinnest layers, I felt a shot of excitement burn through me. What would she be like?
As I loosened the last bit of the veil, I froze, unable to believe my eyes. It was someone that I knew, after all. She had brown hair done up in a bun, and someone had carefully applied make-up to her face. She looked different, but not that different.
Beth stared back at me with confusion in her eyes.
Chapter Eight
BETH
My future husband pulled away from my veil and froze as if he had seen a ghost. To be honest, I was taken aback myself. When he removed the thick material covering my face, the man standing before me was Odin Sobota, the paraball god. The guy I had a crush on for years, and the one I had embarrassed myself in front of not long ago.
I felt myself blushing involuntarily. Had Odin remembered me? Would I stand out in a night filled with his adoring fans? It would explain why he was stunned, at least. Maybe he couldn’t believe the rude, pushy line jumper was going to be his bride. The feeling of humiliation rushed over me again, and I found it hard to think about anything else.
It might be worse if he didn’t remember me. Maybe there was something even more embarrassing happening to me right now. I put my hand on my face, wondering if I had something on my nose. Maybe hiking up the mountain had made me dusty.
He still wasn’t moving. The priest had prompted him to speak. I don’t know what Odin was supposed to do. I wasn’t listening. But he wasn’t s
aying anything. He just stared at me like he couldn’t believe his eyes.
Was something wrong? It would be just my luck if I had made a mistake that wasn’t obvious to an Earthling but was a major faux pas here on Dorsh.
The marriage rites were ridiculous on this planet. I had spent hours in the hotel room with a team of women sent to get me ready. The female Dorshans kept fussing with my hair and my dress because there was a ritual for this and a ritual for that. It was all enough to make anyone go crazy.
The worst thing was that the wedding was at the peak of a mountain. Normally, I would be okay with the outdoors, but there was no transportation to the top. It was bad luck to use a vehicle to go to the ceremony so we had to walk. The one bright spot of the wedding ritual was that it was only two hours long and apparently a shorter version than usual.
I had been trying not to cry for the entire time, trying not to think about one-night stand Odin every second, and forcing myself to remember why I chose to use Celestial Mates in the first place. I had even thought about breaking the contract and going to find him. I didn’t have much information about him, and he was probably long gone.
It was for the best that one-night stand Odin left me without saying goodbye. I probably would have lost control of myself if we had parted face-to-face after the night we shared together. It would have made me more of a wreck than I already was.
But I still felt sad and betrayed. And brokenhearted.
How could one night with someone leave me in such a mess? After a morning of self-analysis, the only answer I could come to was that I had fallen in love with Odin last night.
Now I had to marry another man with the same name, who was looking at me like I had done everything wrong. I couldn’t stand it.
“What?” I hissed. “Do you have a problem with something?”
He blinked as if he were coming back from some place far away. “No. I’m okay,” he whispered back.
“Well, snap out of it, then. The priest told you to speak.” He seemed taken aback by the venom in my words and, to be honest, I was a little surprised by my reaction as well. It wasn’t his fault that I had put myself in this position. I should never have left my room yesterday. I had been a fool. I had fallen in love last night, and now here I was the next morning, marrying someone else.
He had his hands on my hips and I hated them there. Because I wished they were the hands of a different man.
The priest said some words, Odin repeated them back to me, and the ceremony seemed to go on forever. We walked around the altar one way and reversed direction. I lay on the altar and offered myself to Odin, which felt a little weird. We exchanged rings, necklaces, and anklets.
Eventually, we made an offering to the priest in front of the witnesses and God or the gods, I didn’t know which. We had to taste the offering first to make sure it was good, which involved us both biting the ritual fruit.
It continued so long that I thought I might scream. I didn’t want to be here. I could be in bed instead, snuggling with one-night-stand Odin. And if I couldn’t be with him, then I wanted to be by myself so I had a chance to cry.
My husband and I signed documents as the sun went down. The priest said something implying he would make the paperwork official as soon as the marriage finished. But I wasn’t paying much attention to what he was saying, to tell you the truth. I was lost in misery. The witnesses and the priest disappeared down the path, leaving me on the mountain with only my brand-new husband for company.
The sun dropped below the horizon, casting shadows on the landscape. I stared listlessly at the ground.
Odin, the star athlete, decided to speak for the first time, calling my name. His voice and eyes looked familiar from our previous meeting.
“That’s me.” I wasn’t even making a pretense of being happy.
“The wedding isn’t over yet.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. That was the longest ceremony I’ve ever seen. We signed, and the priest said everything was complete.”
“That wasn’t what he said at all. There is a final ritual for us that takes place on the altar.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “Please describe the ritual.” I felt wary.
“We have to consummate the union. You have to participate in any required rituals to make the marriage legally binding. Unfortunately, on this planet, one of the laws is that unions are not official without consummation.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“Then everything is over. I’ll be happy to arrange a ticket home for you.” He looked so disappointed and sad that I felt like I had done something wrong. I was the one who had wanted to be married and have a family. It wasn’t this guy’s fault that I had been stupid enough to have a one-night stand that made me question my decisions. “I’m sorry you aren’t happy about the marriage.”
He looked more than sorry. He looked miserable.
“It’s not your fault. I just did something stupid last night. I’m regretting it this morning.”
“Oh. Something stupid?”
“Yeah, it was just a big mistake. I feel terrible, and I’m taking it out on you. I want to get married, okay? Let’s just do whatever we have to do.”
“You have to get up on the altar again, and we have to...”
“I know what consummate means.” My words sounded harsher than I intended them to be. “Let’s just get it over with.”
I went with him to the altar. He looked upset that I was reluctant to fuck him, but what did he expect? I barely knew him, but I was familiar with his type. He was an asshole athlete who thought he was God’s gift to women. Maybe he thought all women naturally wanted to sleep with him.
He gently lifted me onto the altar and stood between my legs as he had at the beginning of the ceremony, pressing his lips to mine. I let him kiss me, but didn’t kiss him back. He pulled back, studying me. Then he kissed my neck and whispered into my ear.
“I want you to enjoy yourself. If you need to pretend I’m someone else, I don’t mind.” I shivered involuntarily from his breath in my ear.
It upset me that I was responding to him at all and I resolved to pretend he was Odin from last night. It would make me feel better about everything.
He bent over and kissed me. I imagined it was a kiss from before. And suddenly I was swept away by the feeling that it was Odin’s lips and scent and body pressed against me. The kiss went continued, and I lost myself.
“That was better. Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.” He kissed me again. His hands went to my dress and began undoing individual buttons and fastenings until I felt the cold air on my breasts. When I stopped kissing him to see what I looked like, the entire front of the dress had vanished, and I was practically naked in front of a stranger.
“The clothes are made this way for a reason,” he said.
The explanation didn’t make me feel any less exposed.
“Close your eyes. Pretend I’m someone else if you have to.”
I felt his hands removing the rest of my garments. His hot mouth was on the cold skin of my breast. I gasped when his lips closed over my nipple, and his hand touched my clit exactly the way I liked it to be touched - lightly.
It was as if he knew my body and what I wanted. Before I knew it, I was about to come. I kept my eyes closed, pretending it was my Odin touching me instead of a stranger feeling me up on an altar.
“You’re beautiful.” The way he said it sounded familiar. It was exactly the way one-night-stand Odin had talked to me last night. I couldn’t believe he dared to say the same thing. It felt wrong.
Before I could finish my thought, he slid into me. I closed my eyes and brought myself back in time, remembering how it had felt when Odin from the bar fucked me for the last time in the early morning.
If I concentrated enough, it almost felt like it was the same guy making love to me. I lost myself in my imagination, wrapping my arms and legs around him as he pounded into me. I came, crying out while he pressed hi
s hips forcefully into me, pushing my butt against the stone. He emptied himself into me with a groan.
We were both breathing heavily. I kept my eyes closed as Odin did my dress up again. I wondered why I was having such a reaction to him when I was in love with another man. Did that make me shallow? I had enjoyed fucking him. Maybe I would pretend he was someone else if I had to fuck him again. He was my husband, and I was supposed to have sex with him.
He was finished fixing my dress. “Beth?” he said tentatively. “You can open your eyes now.”
“Thank you.” He nodded. My voice was trembling, and I took a deep breath before I spoke again. “Are we all done here, then?”
“That’s it. We go directly to the priest so he can confirm consummation, and the marriage will be complete.”
“What kind of tests does he need to do?” I felt wary again.
“Don’t worry. It’s just a scan. Nothing invasive.”
“Good.” The surprise sex had been intrusive enough. Invasive, but yet strangely satisfying. He got a sad look in his eyes as if he knew what I was thinking. My heart sank. If my thoughts weren’t my own in this marriage, what would be? “What happens next?” I asked.
“A bubble is going to take us to our honeymoon.”
I felt my eyes fill with tears and turned away quickly so I wouldn’t be humiliated. I had done the same thing with one-night-stand Odin, and I didn’t want to taint the memory. With Mr. Paraball, I had a feeling it wouldn’t be the same at all.
“That sounds great.” I put on a fake smile and swallowed my tears.
.
Chapter Nine
ODIN
After enduring the hour-long hovercraft ride in silence next to an angry woman, I felt like I was going out of my mind. The walk from the hovercraft to the hotel rooms took forever. The rooms looked comfortable, spherical-shaped, and relaxing. The problem was the company.
I made up an excuse to go out and get a breath of fresh air, telling Beth I would return within the hour. Her only response was a grunt of acknowledgment. It slightly stung that she didn’t care if I left or stayed. I had to get away and take some time to think about things.
