Taken to Nobu: A SciFi Alien Romance (Xiveri Mates Book II)

by Elizabeth Stephens

  “Fuck me,” I say, and I mean it with every fiber of my being.

  5

  Kinan

  “No,” she says, pulling me down to the snow and ice when I attempt to lift her. “Fuck me.”

  My xora steels, my thoughts blur into nothing, my stomach lurches into my chest. Pain tears its way through me and it is only painful because it is so desperate. Finding myself buried beneath layers of reckless inhibition, I wrench back. “My Xhea, you do not mean these words. I felt your tremors. Tasted your terror…”

  “You tasted nothing,” she rasps, her voice full of a hate whose provenance I cannot fathom. I am her Xiveri mate. And like a Xiveri mate, she clings to me even when her words say something else.

  I shake my head. Another burst of wind brings with it threats of the impending storm. The first frost of the season will be sharp and cutting. I cannot have her sensitive human flesh exposed to it. “You are wrong. I tasted you.”

  Her eyes, squinting against the frost, widen slightly. She lifts a hand to shield against the wind, but I switch my body around hers, blocking her from the worst of it.

  “And I will tell you what you taste like.”

  Her lower mouth pillow trembles. She shakes her head, but I can feel her arousal floating through the air, the scent of it impossibly potent and impossible to ignore. It burns down my throat as I swallow. “You tasted like sweet water…and I am thirsty.”

  With no warning issued, I grab her legs below the knees and wrench her body back so that she falls prone beneath me, her knees spread wide. So inviting. I ache to tear through her coverings and take her in fully, just as fully as I ache for her to take me. But she is still frightened. And I do not know why. But I know that I can still help her.

  “I can help calm the pain of the mating call, if you give me this permission.”

  “Yes! Fuck. Please. Fuck me…” Her vulgar words displease me, but I must assume this is the fault of the Xanaxana. It can make even the most stoic of beings desperate, and I am sure that my Xiveri mate would be a stoic creature.

  I make the pleasure expression as I cup her mound through her clothing and watch her head fall back on a moan. “Oh stars, please help me…”

  I feel the need calling to me and I imagine that for her slight figure, it must be even more torturous. “I will help you. But only on one condition…”

  “Fuck…oh fuck, what?” Her head tosses back, her eyes still squeeze.

  Gently, I whisper, “You will need to look at me.”

  She doesn’t speak for a long, shaky moment, but when she finally releases the tension of her mouth, opens her lips and her eyes in the same beat and looks down the length of her body at me, she catches her breath. It is as if she sees me for the first time and I cannot help but inhale, hoping to appear naught but strength before her. I roll my shoulders back and massage her core with the heel of my palm.

  “Do not look away.”

  Water comes to her eyes then and I am made curious by it, but not curious enough to stop and root out its meaning. It is enough for now that she looks at me, even if I can still feel the tremors running along the insides of her thighs and the tension radiating throughout the rest of her body. Even if she still carries this strange fear with her that is just as alien to me as she is, she faces it for the sake of the Xanaxana.

  My hands reach for her covering and I do not have patience for the ties fastened on either end. I tear straight through them and her whole body jerks, but she still does not break my gaze. I offer her my pleasure expression, an expression I have not made in some time.

  “You are brave, my warrior.” I wrench her hips up to meet my mouth, inhaling the scent I find there. So strong, my eyes nearly roll back into my skull — would have, had I not vowed to her not to break the connection. “My Xhea.”

  She opens her mouth, but when no words come, I plunge forward, mouth catching her core and devouring it. She moans so loudly it shakes her whole body. She also closes her eyes. I wrench back, immediately severing the connection between us even though it pains me. Her eyes flutter open and she squeezes her fists, reaching for me.

  “Why…please…why did you stop?”

  “You looked away.”

  She clenches her teeth, but nods and I feel the pleasure expression on my mouth again at the unreasonable nature of this pact we have bartered. But I don’t care or question it. I lean in once more, this time licking a line from her rear sex up through her folds to a mysterious nub that sits at their crest.

  Her hips buck hard enough for my hold to slip. Voraxian females are not so responsive as this and I am surprised by her, as I seem to be perpetually. I concentrate on this nub and her groans grow louder, deeper, and more desperate. Feeling powerful to reduce my warrior queen to this, I lathe her full sex with the ridges lining my tongue, tasting her insides. In a fit of urgency, I blunt one of my claws between my teeth and mercilessly plunge the length of my finger inside of her core. She is tight. A feeling of uncertainty sweeps over me, even as I drink from her miaba ocean. Will I harm her when I seek to enter her?

  “Oh stars…oh stars…” She is writhing madly now and my pumping becomes more frantic. The ridges of my tongue flick at her nub, my finger slides deeper into her, reaching a desperately tight wall, and I feel her suddenly, all at once, clench. Her core can tighten even more? I cannot believe it. She is the tightest thing I could have ever imagined and yet, here she is shuddering and moaning and gripping and pushing and kicking as spasms warp and twist her slight form.

  Covered in mud, screaming into the frost, she is pure fire. Heat. Warmth. Mine. An honor to worship.

  A gush of liquid floods her sex. It crashes around my finger and coats my mouth and chin. It drips onto my hides, onto my neck. I pull back and stare at the dark brown of her beautiful body and with my blunted fingers, I open her lower lips. Just as shocking, she is pink here too, an even brighter color than that which lines the insides of her mouth. Her core pulses with its own heart, and the sight has my own heart stuttering a beat.

  Her hips spasm and she jerks back when I lathe her nub once more. “Oh no, please. It’s so sensitive.” Her eyelids flutter and she meets my gaze and I cannot help the pleasure expression from taking over me. My Xanaxana is more at peace than it once was, even though it was she and not I who found some small measure of release.

  I reach forward and she is slow to react, as if she is swimming through the mire once more. She does not move away from me in time and I touch her face. “You are cold,” I say, concerned.

  She shakes her head and bats my arm away. “I don’t care.” Her breathing is heavy. Off. “I just want more.” She licks her lips and spreads her thighs wider. “I need you to fuck me. It hurts. Everything still hurts.”

  I nod at her. “Hexa, the Xanaxana is strong.”

  “Then please, just do it. I know that’s what you brought me here for. It hurts.” I understand her meaning, even if I do not understand her words.

  I swallow, for the thought of what she has asked of me leaves me dangerously close to trembling. “Lie back.”

  She does, body flopping down as if it has no elasticity. She tries to turn her face from me again, but with my finger — blunted and still covered in her juices — I tilt her face up. I lower her hips to the ice and cover her body with mine. Releasing my xora, I position it at her entrance, her wet heat scoring me like a candle pressed directly against flesh.

  I cradle her face in one of my hands and hold her hand in my other. I twine our fingers. I stare deeply into her glossy, haunting eyes. And yet…I find myself unable to proceed. I do not know enough about her anatomy and I need to know…

  “Will I tear you?”

  She whimpers but does not answer me. I know she knows what I mean.

  “You will answer my question.”

  “Why do you care?”

  Shock. What could she mean by this? I do not know. And so I harden my grip around her. “Answer me.”

  She blinks quickly, brea
th puffing in white clouds between us. I fight the urge to taste it, to taste her mouth. The pillows she has there call to me on a primitive level, the sensation akin to the urge to rut. I do not understand it.

  “No. You won’t tear me.” Her voice croaks quietly, lodged as if from disuse or extreme emotion. That is when I notice that she is not fighting. Quite the opposite. Her small, five-fingered hands are holding me back.

  “Are you certain? I have read that untried females often feel pain.”

  She shakes her head, and a single droplet of water escapes her gaze and winds its way over the curve of her cheek. “I am not untried.”

  I do not feel disappointment, but rather, a seed of doubt. She is so strong. Worthy of an Okkari. But am I worthy of her? I have not mated before this, but I hope to honor her. I nod once, firmly and assuredly on the outside, while inside I can hope only that she is right and that she will feel pleasure from this and no pain and if there must be pain, then only for an instant.

  Just before I press forward, I hold for one final moment so that I may hold it in my memories for all of time, crystalized. I wish to forget nothing. From the smell of the mud freezing in her hair to the snow crystals balancing on the tips of her curling eyelashes.

  I then speak the ancient words and I do so slowly, knowing that she can understand them but that she will not understand their significance. She cannot. Not yet. “I cover your flesh with my flesh. I cover your heart with my hearts. With this union, you are claimed. To serve as Voraxia’s Va’Rakukanna. To serve as Nobu’s Xhea. To be my Xiveri mate. With this union, I am yours. To be your Okkari, to be your sword, to be the sire to our unborn kits, but to be your servant above all else.”

  “Are you ready, my Xhea?”

  She nods jerkily. “Yes.”

  “Do not break my gaze.”

  So softly I almost cannot hear her, she replies, “I won’t.”

  With nothing else between us, I press my hips forward to meet hers. My xora shifts past the first of her folds, driving deeper…and deeper until I can proceed no further. Something is blocking my forward progress and as soon as I reach it and test its elasticity, my Xhea gasps, surges back over the ice and grabs my shoulder with her free hand. Fear passes across her face and it is so violent, I feel my hackles rising, as if there is an opponent before me I could slay.

  Steeling myself, I take a deep breath and press one hand to her forehead to calm her while the other continues to grip her trembling fingers. She said she was not untried. Why would she lie about this? And then I remember… “It must be the merillian. It healed you inside and out. Your barrier will have grown back, so I must break it if we are to continue. You will tell me if you wish for me to continue or stop.”

  She doesn’t say anything, just watches me with an expression I cannot put name to. I feel frustrated in these humans’ lack of ridges, but there will be time for questions and understanding later. For now, I struggle to hold true to my words. I struggle not to slam into her and break her apart.

  “I’m a…virgin again?” She stutters.

  “Hexa, you are untried. As am I,” I tell her, though I do not know why. “This will be a first for both of us.”

  Her eyes close for longer than a standard blink, and I feel something small burst in my chest at the realization that her eyelids do not close left to right, as mine do. So alien. How could I have ever wanted anything other than her? “I want you to continue,” she says in a small, pinched voice.

  I exhale, relieved. Exhilarated. Frightened in my own right. “Xhivey, my Xhea. I will break it now.”

  I push forward as gently as I can, but realize quickly this causes her more pain. Her eyes close but I command her to open them, and as she does, I thrust forward, impaling her cleanly. I feel the barrier break as my xora slides home and bellow out a moan. Gasping and whimpering, she grips my upper arms in her hands and I hate that I cannot feel her hands on my bare flesh.

  I hold her steady as she squirms, trying to get comfortable. I press my forehead to hers and exhale heavily. “You are safe. It is over. From now, there is only pleasure.”

  Her voice catches. More gloss builds in her eyes as she watches me. And as she watches me, her hands come down onto my shoulders. Her touch turns tender and with that encouragement, I feel a multitude of colors blast over my ridges. I thrust again, moving as gently as I can, even if this defies all of my instincts to mount and rut and breed so savagely.

  Moving gently in and out of her gripping, desperate heat, I feel supernovas explode behind my eyelids on each thrust. Yet our gazes never break, even as I see starlight. Even as she gasps and her back arches.

  I feel as if we have only just begun and yet her mouth opens on an inhale, distending, her hips jerk up, she fists the hides covering me and bites her bottom mouth pillow so hard I fear she will break skin, even with her blunted teeth. And then I feel the pressure. Her core squeezing my xora to the point of pain, making me realize with elation and with horror that the battle is not yet complete. It is a full-out war not to find my release right after hers — one that I lose.

  I cover her body with mine, circling her shoulders with one of my arms so we cannot get closer. I stare into her eyes and feel her thighs tighten around my hips. My xora is bathed in the rush of her wetness and my Xanaxana explodes through me in relief just as my seed explodes into her, pumping into her core, filling her. I black out as I transcend this plane and enter another and when I come down I feel my weight settle onto my Xiveri mate below the waist, while my arms continue to support my torso.

  I glance down at her face and see that she wears a shocked expression, yet one corner of her mouth is tilted up for a moment before the moment fades. I touch her cheek, watch her shiver, remember where we are and feel the chill of the outside air. Without waiting for her to react, I pull my stiff xora from her wetness and rip the coverings away from her body so I can tuck her cleanly into my suit. She is cold, and I am warm. It has nothing to do with my needing to feel her close against me. Nothing at all.

  When she does not fight me and she does not protest, the Xanaxana rumbles in my chest, satisfied that this human mating tradition is clearly now complete. I cannot help but be pleased to have honored her as I gather her muddied hides and drape them over my front to provide her with extra covering, and take my human prize down the mountain to the village where my people — where our people — wait, eager to meet their Xhea.

  6

  Kiki

  Shock. It must be shock. That’s the only explanation I have as to why I’m no longer fighting. Why I’m not even running. Why I’m just…waiting.

  I feel less like a human and more like a puddle, sunken into the white floor. Everything here is white. Why is it so damn white? As blank as the thoughts firing inside of me. I’ve got nothing. Nothing but a desperation not to feel like this. I’m so hot I hurt. I hurt bad, and it has nothing to do with the cuts on my arms or the swelling bruise on my face that makes it hard to see out of my right eye and it has everything to do with the unsteady lurch of my stomach when I hear the door whoosh open behind me.

  There he is. The male who carried me down the mountain. The one who tucked me into his clothes, his enormous dick dripping with my orgasm and his own pressed against my stomach. The one who took me down into a valley of white so that we stood amidst so many glass homes that looked as if they were cut into the surrounding mountainside, and meticulously arranged.

  There, we were swarmed by more of them. Aliens. My enemy — each and every one. So many jewel-toned faces staring in at me, and I hated the slash of fear that cut across my chest like a blade and the way I’d clung to the one the others called Okkari. I hated clinging to him the most. Because it felt way too much like need. Like safety.

  Trying to fight my panic, I’d bared my teeth and met each of their gazes wild-eyed to let them know I’m not afraid even if I am petrified and that I don’t think anything about them but the hatred I feel coursing through my blood like a sickness. I wanted
them to know I hated them and so that’s how I hoped I looked, but…they didn’t seem to care. For all my attempts at savagery, they just stared at me in awe.

  Because the big purple male had unwrapped some of the bindings holding me to him, exposing my chapped and battered skin to the elements down to the neck. He’d pulled my hair, thick with mud and frost, away from my face and though he hadn’t spoken to me, he spoke of me, regaling those gathered with the tale of his Run on the Mountain as if it were ancient lore, instead of just ended.

  His voice had been deep when he spoke of my cleverness, telling them how I’d marked the other women, cloaking my scent. He told them how I’d bested him.

  How I’d. Bested. Him.

  He told them that he hadn’t been the first warrior to find me, but when he did, I’d stopped and turned to face him and I’d challenged him with my words, daring his approach. The congregation that pressed in on us from all sides gasped at that.

  He even told them…he even told them of…when my…when my insides… He even told them about my pussy clenching around his dick — the treacherous, evil bitch — robbing him of what he called his zah-nah-zah-nah first mating. There had been murmured whispers, sounds of adulation, of admiration. Murmured words that, despite how hard I try to deny it, had been wreathed in respect.

  My chest clenches. I haven’t ever been talked about…not like that. Because when he spoke to the people around him, he didn’t tell them about my beauty. He told them about my might. Warrior, what do you need…

  And then the purple brute carried me off to his house where I sit now, fully naked except for the ruined white fur I’ve got clutched around me, covered in filth that’s mostly pink. My muscles are soup, but they’re also clenching in little spasms, lightning pulses that are telling me something that can’t possibly be true. Need. I need him again. But I’d rather cut myself down first.