by Ines Johnson
He reminded her so much of the brother that she loved. He was the reason that Yehfe and Beulah had come together. She didn’t know this man, but she felt a connection to him. Pakua would be her family, after all.
“Let me help you.” Her voice was less than a whisper.
“I do not want your help,” he spat.
Beulah pulled away from his rejection, but he would not let her go. “If you don’t want my help, then please release me.”
“I want nothing more than to release you.”
Pakua’s grip tightened on her wrist. She wasn’t sure if it was her imagination, but it appeared he’d cut the inch of distance between them by half. If she tilted her head she would brush his bottom lip. She gave another tug of her wrist.
His grip didn’t allow her to budge. He opened her hand, placing his thumb against her palm. He made circles in the center of her palm. Beulah’s breath kicked up as the movement arrowed straight to her core.
“What are you doing?” she panted.
He stared at her palm, transfixed. “I do not know. But it feels good. Like bliss.”
She felt a sense of calm and peace wash over her at his motions. She had the urge to lay in his arms and sleep. He leaned down into her hand. His eyes fluttered closed as he placed her fingertips on his forehead. His nose rested against her palm and he inhaled deeply.
With his other hand, Pakua pulled at her right thigh. Beulah gave it to him. Up and over his hips she went until she was straddled over his lap. The fabric of her skirts bunched at her thighs. She swiveled her hips until the fabric gave and she was seated comfortably over him. Her womb hovering over his groin.
Pakua sighed into her hand. She felt his eyelids flutter. He inhaled the scent of her palm, and with his exhale it was as though a door opened. She saw into him, saw the pain he held, the fear.
She kissed the top of his head. Then brought his head to her chest. It felt like the most natural thing in the world.
“Don’t be afraid,” she soothed. “You’re not alone.”
Pakua’s breath caught. His eyes opened. Lightening quick he rolled out from under her, leaving Beulah sprawled on the floor. Her skirts tangled around her legs as she tried to cover and close her limbs.
She couldn’t believe what she’d just done. She’d sat in the lap of a complete stranger. She’d placed his head on her breasts and hovered over his manhood like a wanton.
Pakua rose on unsteady legs and gave her his back. He was just as broad as Yehfe. Though she and Yehfe had been intimate, she had not seen Yehfe unclothed. Beulah couldn’t take her eyes off the planes and angles of the muscles at Pakua’s back.
He looked down at his wound and then back at her. His large eyes locked on hers. They appeared to darken and shutter closed.
“I have no interest in you.” His words were a slap in her face.
Beulah stood, her own legs unsteady. Pakua watched her wobble. His hand flexed as though he was prepared to catch her if she fell.
Beulah didn’t fall. She stood tall.
“Take my brother’s life if that is your intent,” he said. “That is what you women do. You bind us to you. We live for you and we die for you. We are at your mercy. But I will have no part of you. I will not have that life. Stay away from me.”
Beulah’s legs shook and almost gave out as she backed out the door.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Pakua looked down at the wound. It was returned to its well-state. The garish color had faded and was nearly back to his normal dark purple. The angry gash was still visible but lightened. He felt not an ounce of pain.
Pakua turned and punched a pillar used for sparring. The pillar cracked and flew across the room. It impacted the wall of the ship and splintered into more pieces.
The pain was instant. He stared at the liquid pools of red that dotted his knuckles. He let the blood drip down onto the floor as he walked out of the room.
What had possessed him to take the woman unto himself?
He knew what possessed him. It was his damn genetic makeup. Even now, he felt the golden threads of the bond weaving its way through his veins, tapping into each of his chakras, and clouding his judgment.
If he could tap into the Nil, that place of oblivion, perhaps he could break the bond? But what he’d felt when she was in his arms went beyond the oblivion of the Nil. He’d felt everything and nothing all at once.
He’d become formless and whole with her in his arms. Had he..? Was that..? Nirvana? Could it be that that level of existence superseded the Nil?
“Is she gone?”
Pakua blinked and focused on the doorway. Nse poked his brown head inside. His large eyes looked around the space. Then his small body made its way in.
The youngling bowed formally to Pakua. Then he stood still in the center of the room. His hands fidgeted. It was completely uncharacteristic of the young Yin.
Pakua remembered that when the woman came into the room she had called out Nse’s name. “They are looking for you,” he said to the youngling.
“No, they are not,” Nse shook his head. “I would sense them. I see them clearly. They are playing. They are not concerned about me.”
Pakua saw that the youngling meant his brother and the human child. “The woman is looking for you. The mother.”
“Her name is Beulah. I suspect you know that already. You can see her clearly since she is your mate.”
“She is not my mate.”
But Nse wasn’t focused on Pakua. The young male slumped down into an ill-shaped sitting lotus. “I never asked for a mate.”
The boy’s voice was the whine of a child that did not get a plaything that he wanted. It was completely uncharacteristic of an Eloh. And Pakua understood him completely. He folded himself down next to the boy.
“You are too young to mate,” Pakua said.
Nse turned to him. Wise eyes set in his young face. “It is inevitable. Is it not? She has written on my soul without my permission. There is nothing I can do about it. When she leaves, I will become like him.”
Nse didn’t have to qualify who he meant. Pakua shared the same fear. Both of their Yin fathers had been marred and set out on a path of destruction.
When Pakua had struck out against Ngai, he wasn’t certain if he’d meant to kill the male. He’d tried to get the little girl out of harm’s way. Nse had stepped in after his father had first tried to harm the girl and then had delivered damage to Pakua. Pakua was certain that if the places were reversed, and both the girl and Nse were harmed, he would have aimed to kill.
“I would do it again,” Nse said. “I would kill anything that threatened her. I would threaten anything that upset her. I am at her mercy. And she does not want me.”
The youngling looked to Pakua for a response, but Pakua couldn’t respond. He was trapped in a tidal of feelings. There were his brother’s feelings of despair at what his choices meant for Pakua. There were Beulah’s feelings of shame at her desire for both males and the rejection he’d cast on her.
“What will become of us when they leave?” Nse asked.
Pakua jerked his attention to the boy. “Leave?”
“We are returning them to their home planet. We are nearly there.”
Down below, the wound at Pakua’s hip woke up. It began to throb. But the dull ache had nothing on the torment that raged in his hearts.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Why do you run from it?” Hsing asked.
Pakua set the ship on autopilot and pushed away from the console. “You ran from it at first.”
“I did not run from Shanti.” Hsing shook his head, his eyes going hazy with memories. “There are a lot of emotions, a lot of feelings. I thought it would make me weak, but I was wrong. The bond has made me stronger. She makes us both stronger.”
Pakua was reluctant to agree with that. The wound at his side was healed. His spirit was light. He felt he could fly the ship on his back. “If I give in to this, and something happens to her, I would b
reak.”
“We all have experienced loss, Pakua. But we have all come out the other end stronger than we were before. We did not break. In fact, we’ve learned to bend. Bending a woman is an interesting experience. I highly recommend it.”
Hsing’s brows quirked up, like an animal scenting easy prey. Shanti entered the control room, followed by Chen. Hsing’s eyes lit with desire. Chen’s eyes sparkled with patient restraint.
Pakua wisely decided to excuse himself from duty. But outside of the control room, he could find no haven.
Inside the sparring room, Niao and the little human girl piled mats into a fortress. Or a castle, as the girl called it. Nse sulked inside the doorway not joining in, but neither able to walk away from the two.
Beulah’s sister, whose hair was the color of starlight, stormed down another hallway. She startled when she saw Pakua. Her eyes narrowed at him in menace and then she reversed course and headed in a different direction. Shiung followed her at a distance. The red Eloh avoided Pakua’s questioning gaze. A moment later, his darker brother Teng followed.
Pakua made his way down to the energy mines. No one would be there and he’d get some peace. Now that the mines were restored, thanks to Shanti’s algae plant, the Eloheem didn’t have to mind it.
When the Marred One’s had attacked before, they had damaged the ship’s self-sustaining energy source. The Eloheem had had to manually pull the negative energy from the pool using their chi. It had been back-breaking work.
Pakua was almost sorry it didn’t need to be done. He needed something to take his mind off of his predicament. Even now, his body craved her soft touch. He hungered for her sweet breath. He thirsted for the connection that existed between them.
But this was all that he could do; put distance between them until they returned her to her homeworld. The thought of never seeing her again, never having the chance to pull her closer and let her take him to that state of existence made him feel physically ill.
Pakua reached down at the wound at his hip. It was angry once more. He would have to manage it on his own. If he could get back to the Nil, he could pull that oblivion around himself and he would no longer care that he ached.
He sensed that would not be happening any time soon. He felt her before he was at the door. He tried to turn away but the pull of her was too strong.
She sat at the pool of energy. Her back was to him. Her long dark hair, which had always been coiled around her crown every time he’d seen her, was loose and around her shoulders. It obstructed his view of her face. He wanted to chop it all off.
Her fingers hovered over the golden mist of the mines. The pool of light reflected in her dark eyes. Her eyes were rimmed with red -as though she’d been crying. Her shoulders shook.
The heaviness hit Pakua in both of his hearts. Her misery knocked out the pain of the wound at his hip and he raced to her. Without thought, he grabbed her shoulders.
“Where are you hurt?”
She startled, but he didn’t relinquish his hold on her. “What? I’m not hurt. Let me go.”
Pakua stared at her, confused. The tears in her eyes formed a vice around one of his hearts. The agony on her face clenched the second. He ached to soothe her.
“Let me go,” she repeated.
“I can not. Not while you are in pain.”
She looked down. Pakua didn’t know how to regain her gaze. It felt necessary to do so. As necessary as breathing.
“It’s not physical pain,” she said. “My sister called me a whore.”
“I do not understand this term.”
Still, her gaze would not meet his. “It’s a woman who sleeps with more than one man. What do you call that in your culture?”
“Mother.”
She blinked, but Pakua had her gaze back. Her tear flow ceased. Her shoulders steadied.
He felt supremely satisfied that he’d brought her to plane of awareness. And now for her hair. He brushed it out of her face, back over her shoulders. He twisted it in a knot and held it in his grasp.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I prefer your hair up. So that I may look upon the angles of your shoulders. And so that I may have access to this spot here on your neck.”
He moved in. She backed away. But she couldn’t go far. He still had her hair and he had no intention of letting go.
“I have to go,” she said.
The thought of her leaving reignited the ache. He pulled her closer. “If you leave, my brother will become lost.”
“I’m not leaving Yehfe.”
Pakua felt a tearing in his soul. For so many revolutions he’d sought oblivion, to lose his connection to any and all things. Was he finally receiving his wish? Was his brother leaving him and taking their mate with him?
“I’m staying here,” she said. “With him.”
Pakua’s hearts swelled. It didn’t matter that she did not include him in her statement. She was staying. He would not have to expend the energy to hold her. He pulled her into his lap, straddling her legs on either side of him. He struggled to keep his eyes open. He felt himself slipping into the Stream.
“Why does this keep happening between us?” Her arms found their way around his neck. “You don’t like me. You don’t want me.”
He chuckled at the words. “My desires do not matter. We are bound to be together whether I want it or not.”
“That’s not fair. You shouldn’t be forced to be with someone you don’t love.”
“That is a human sentiment. Duty is more powerful than love.”
She shook her head. “I’m not going to force you to be with me. I tried that with my husband and it did not work out.”
Pakua did not like her mentioning the other male. Especially not when her face crinkled at his name. He pulled the seat of her over him until she was right on his rod. His petals unfurled.
“Can’t we break the bond?” she asked. “The one between us. I got a divorce from my human husband. Can’t we do the same?”
Pakua’s fingers encircled her wrists. He pulled her energy closer to him. He was becoming formless, touching the Oneness.
“I just want to be with Yehfe. Men haven’t been kind to me in my life. Finally, I find one who just wants to make me happy. Can you imagine that? Someone who lives for your happiness?”
Pakua grit his teeth.
“I want to do everything in my power to make him happy, but I don’t think I can. He wants children and I can’t…”
“Without me. You can not conceive without me.”
She inhaled and lifted her hips away from him, as though she were preparing to leave. But with her exhale, she sank back into him. “Let me go.”
“No,” he said, reveling as the heat between her thighs spread. “We can fix that if you would like.”
She frowned, and then her eyes turned frightened. The energy around them changed. She tried to tug away from him.
Pakua gentled his hand. “I am sorry. I do not want to upset you. Please do not be frightened. Please be calm.”
“If you don’t want to frighten me then let me go.”
“Please,” he repeated the word a few more times. “I can not. Not yet. I just need a little more.”
“A little more what?”
“Of your essence?”
“You mean my energy? Because of your wound.”
Pakua nodded.
“Well, of course.”
She opened her hands and placed one on his wound. The healed flesh was covered by his robes, so she could not see that the angry marks were singing a different tune, a happy, joyous tune that his body had never known before.
Without trying, Pakua rose into the Oneness. He pushed past the boundaries of the Nil. He was close to touching something else, something more. Something so perfect it brought tears to his eyes.
Pakua gasped in a choked breath at the impact of it.
Beulah yanked her hand away. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
He grabbed her hand and put it back. “It does not hurt. It is exactly what I need.”
He brought her body closer to him. He felt the hard points of her breasts touch his chest. His loins stirred.
“Please?” he said.
Her mouth was open. Puffs of her sweet breath hit his nose. She smelled like the feel of the level of existence he could almost touch. He leaned into her.
“Please?”
He tilted her head back. Her lips trembled.
“Please?”
Pakua took a deep inhale and nearly passed out. His head dipped to hers. At first slowly, like a stalking land mammal. And then, with his quarry cornered, he pounced on her lips.
Chapter Twenty-Six
She only meant to touch him, to tend to his wound. Somehow her lips were locked on his. Pakua didn’t sip at her like his brother did. No, Pakua tried to swallow her whole.
He suckled first her bottom lip, then her top lip, then both her lips together. His teeth scraped at the seam of her mouth, demanding entry. He didn’t knock. He didn’t have to. Her defenses crumbled under his assault and he stole inside.
Beulah was no match for the secret weapon that was Pakua’s tongue. She dodged to her left. He licked the underside of her tongue. She slammed her tongue down. He licked her teeth.
She could only ever remember feeling hot and cold sensations with her teeth. Having a dark, purple alien licking at the spot where the roof of her mouth met her teeth was the most sensual thing Beulah had ever experienced in her life. Which wasn’t saying much. Any sensuality she’d experienced had either been at the hand of Pakua or his brother.
His brother.
Yehfe.
Beulah loved Yehfe, not Pakua. She was going to make a life with her gentle alien. Not his brutish brother.
This was cheating. Not only was she a whore, she was a cheat. She shoved at Pakua’s chest. But he was a hot, throbbing wall of immovable steel.
