He met her gaze. Something flickered through the wildfire in his eyes. He swallowed convulsively and transferred his attention to her hands as if willing her to release her frantic grip. As if his gaze alone was enough to control her, she found her fingers uncurling almost with a will of their own. He curled his hands around her wrists, manacling them as he pushed her top up. For several, long moments, he merely stared at her breasts. Finally, swallowing convulsively, he flicked a look at her face. “Chelsey—baby—you’re so beautiful,” he murmured hoarsely, leaning down to pluck at first one and then the other with no more than his lips.
Chelsey felt her breath catch in her throat as she watched him. Her eyes slid closed as warmth wafted through her and heat when he ceased to pluck at them and took one nipple into his mouth, sucking it. Currents like electricity jolted through her, arrowing downward to her lower belly. Her womb contracted and she felt heated moisture flood her channel as he alternately sucked and teased her nipple with the tip of his tongue.
A mindless sort of fever enveloped her. Before many moments passed, she began to feel a restlessness take hold. It eased its grip on her slightly when he released the nipple he’d been teasing and then seized her in a tighter grip when he transferred his attention to the other. The jolt that went through her that time was harder, seemed to knock the air from her lungs. She twisted, wrestled for possession of her hands, but when he released them, she couldn’t think what to do with them beyond gripping him tightly and trying to keep from floating away.
He shifted upward again abruptly, covering her mouth with his as he reached between them and began tugging at the waistband of her jeans. For a moment, she thought it would defeat his determination and then she heard the snap pop, felt the release of the zipper. He shoved his hand into the opening with an eagerness she didn’t doubt, cupping her mound briefly with his fingers and then parting her nether lips with one and stroking her cleft.
A shudder ran through him when he found the moisture dampening her panties. He withdrew his hand abruptly, grasping her jeans and virtually tearing them and her panties from her in a series of hard jerks. He broke the kiss when the fabric resisted. Going up on his knees, he caught both sides and dragged her jeans and panties off, throwing them to one side and diving over her again. She flinched instinctively, but he caught his weight with his hands, shifted to one shoulder and lifted one of her legs to make room for himself between them.
Through a heated, disorienting fog, she heard him murmuring his need.
“Gezis, mabay! You’re so wet for me. I can’t wait. Jod! I need to be inside you.”
She felt the muscles along her channel clench in response, felt the rise of her own need in the moisture that wept from the walls of her sex for his possession. He lunged against her and she felt his cock, still encased in his briefs, press bruisingly against her nether lips. He lifted away, shoved his briefs down and caught his cock, dragging it along her cleft until it met the mouth of her sex. When he lunged again, she felt her flesh straining to engulf him. He penetrated her by agonizing degrees, surging a little deeper, allowing the muscles to repel him as they tried to grip his flesh, and then surging again until her moisture had so thoroughly coated his cock that his next lunge succeeded in slipping past the resisting muscles by virtue of being too slick to resist. She moaned as he buried himself deeply, arching instinctively to receive. He released a harsh, pent up breath.
“Majin, mabay. Gezis!” he panted, shuddering with the effort to regain control, and then growled, “I can’t hold it. Fuck! I can’t hold it!”
Chelsey felt her heart surge and the muscles along her channel flutter in response. She squeezed her eyes tightly as he withdrew and slowly entered her again, sawing slowly for several moments while he fought for control and then lost it as he burrowed deeply and held himself perfectly still for a handful of moments. When he withdrew again, there was barely a pause before he thrust, and then he set a rhythm that drove her before him so rapidly toward her peak that it caught her almost completely unaware. Her entire body tensed like a bow drawn tight for a handful of thundering heartbeats and then convulsed as waves of ecstasy pounded through her. She tightened her grip on his shoulders as the spasms wracked her, uttering mindless sounds of rapture, completely oblivious to the agonized grunts forced from him as he found his own release until she began to drift lazily in the aftermath. Shuddering all over, he ground his pelvis against hers a final time, jerking as his body expelled the last of his seed.
Far more drunk from the rapture that had exploded inside her than she was from the liquor she’d been nursing for hours, Chelsey floated in a blissful haze, aware of little else beyond his welcome weight on top of her. Slowly, the euphoria abandoned her, dissipating by degrees until she became aware of her flesh cooling, discomfort, the strangeness of her surroundings … the unfamiliar male form pressing her into the bed.
He seemed to sense the tension as it mounted inside her. He tensed, as well, and still he made no attempt to relieve her of his weight, no move to pull his flaccid member from her. She was relieved for a handful of moments when he finally arched his hips and withdrew—until she felt warm fluids trickle along her cleft.
Her heart spasmed in sudden dread. She’d had unprotected sex—with an exotic dancer! Her mind instantly flooded with the potential for disaster and the absolute certainty that no man that looked like he did, particularly in his line of work, would have a shortage of bed partners.
“You didn’t use a condom?” she gasped.
He stiffened, lifted his head slowly to look at her. His expression tightened at the look on her face. “I didn’t hear any objections,” he said tightly after staring at her speculatively for a long moment.
Chelsey swallowed a little sickly, struggling with the urge to claim innocence by virtue of having had way too much to drink. She found she couldn’t voice it because she knew she hadn’t been nearly drunk enough for that to be a reasonable excuse, but she might as well have. He seemed to read it in her expression.
“A little too much to drink, teacher?” he drawled, rolling off of her abruptly.
Chelsey stared at him in dismay for a moment, almost more unnerved that he knew she was a teacher than she had been about her discovery. “I have to go,” she said abruptly, rolling away from him and looking around a little frantically for her clothes.
“You should hurry,” he said tightly. “We’ve been gone long enough they’re bound to be speculating that you’ve been fucking the hired entertainment.”
Chelsey felt the blood leave her face. It wasn’t entirely in reaction to his insight, however. There was something about the accusing note in his voice that made her feel guilty, as if she should apologize for behaving as if he’d soiled her. She realized she had … because she abruptly felt soiled when it hadn’t felt like that at all moments before. In point of fact, she’d felt … almost worshipped by his touch. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just ….”
He dropped to his back, staring at the ceiling angrily. “Don’t let me hold you up,” he said tightly. “I’m done. Nice ride, teacher.”
Chelsey abruptly felt the urge to cry. Sniffing at the sting of tears, ignoring the stickiness the best she could, she dove into her clothing and straightened them with shaking hands.
“You should do something with the hair,” he said coldly. “You look like a woman that’s been well fucked.”
She threw him a hurt look, meeting his gaze for a split second, and then hurried toward the door, smoothing her hair with her hands.
“Chelsey!” he said harshly as she reached the door.
She glanced at him blindly.
“I made love to you. Jod damn it, baby!” he growled just as she darted out the door and slammed it behind her.
He stared at the door, struggling with the urge to leap from the bed and chase her down and finally dismissed it angrily. “Shit! Hil o Gezis l’ Majin! Gods damn it to hell! That was a mating dance ….”
Chapter Three
It wasn’t until Garryk reached his apartment and slung his bag against the wall furiously that it dawned on him just how badly he’d fucked up. Scrubbing a hand over his face, he glanced around the tiny studio apartment he called home with the eyes of a stranger and saw how it must look to anyone else—like the slum den it was, the sort of place nobody but a street person could consider a step up in the world.
It served its purpose, he thought angrily. It kept him focused on the prize—the future. It kept him off the streets where he ran the risk of being picked up by the authorities and questioned. It was as cheap as it looked and easy on his wallet—which was the only thing that mattered to him when he was saving every dime for the prize he’d come for, the future. It was a place to sleep and keep his few belongings and he was rarely in it for more than that.
He swallowed a little sickly.
Chelsey was the prize, he realized abruptly.
She didn’t just represent everything he’d always wanted and knew to be out of his reach. She was what he wanted, what he’d always wanted with an intensity that bordered desperation from the time he’d first been assigned here, had first set eyes on her.
Striding toward the small refrigerator under the short counter that passed as a kitchen, he bent down to examine the contents, hesitated, and grabbed a beer. Popping the cap off, he took a long drought from the bottle and turned, propping his hip against the counter and staring at nothing in particular while he let his thoughts wander at will.
She’d changed. That wasn’t surprising when it had been damned near ten years, he didn’t suppose, their time, but the changes weren’t physical. She looked every bit as beautiful as he remembered, maybe more so, because as hard as he’d tried to hang on to her image in his mind, time and distance had dimmed it.
He shook his head, dismissing that as the source of his sense of anxiety. He’d spent a lot of time fantasizing about Chelsey, but he didn’t believe he’d ever deluded himself into falling for a woman who didn’t actually exist. He’d spent enough time watching her interact with the people around her that he knew her.
Had known her.
She was different … more vulnerable … wounded.
Anger surged through him as he abruptly recalled what her sister had told him when she’d hired him and he realized the bastard that had married her had dulled the light in her eyes, killed the playfulness he remembered and the openness. He should hunt the son-of-a-bitch down and beat the fatal shit out of him, he thought furiously.
He considered it with some relish for a time and finally, reluctantly, dismissed it. It wouldn’t do Chelsey any good—not now—maybe if he could’ve gotten his hands on the bastard before—but the damage was done now. Besides, what good would he be to her sitting in jail?
Or worse.
And it could get much, much worse than that.
Jail meant background checks and he wasn’t confident his would hold up to very intense scrutiny.
Not considering everything that had changed since the last time he’d been here.
The thought redirected his mind to his total fuck up, unfortunately. Tipping the bottle up, he tried to chase the tightness from his chest with a bubble of false tranquility. His chest was still tight with churning emotions when he’d swallowed the drought, though, and he doubted the rest of the six pack in his fridge would do the trick—even if he could afford it.
Which he couldn’t.
Sobriety was a must in his situation—when it could mean his life if he wasn’t totally clear minded at all times.
And then there was the job—the career that was a big part of his strategy. If he got called in and he was only mildly lit there went the future he’d planned!
Finishing off his beer, he dropped the empty bottle in the recycle bin and headed toward his bunk, stripping off his clothes as he went. He needed a shower, but he was dead tired and beyond that, he could smell her scent on his skin. Dropping naked on the bunk flat of his back, he draped an arm across his eyes, sucking in a deep breath to capture her lingering scent and enjoying the way it stirred his blood.
“Stupid, mindless fuck,” he muttered as the images he’d been relishing faded and far less pleasant memories filled his mind. “No control. None!”
He’d been so certain he understood these people, that he’d learned their ways well enough that he could pass—even if he allowed the intimacy necessary to convince the woman of his desires to accept him as a mate ….
Everything, it seemed, had conspired against him, leaving him wide open and helpless to grasp any semblance of control to start with. If he’d been prepared, known beforehand that he would run into her after so many years, he might have had some hope of not making a complete fucking ass out of himself, but he hadn’t been. It had come as a complete and total, stunning surprise to discover it was Chelsey he’d been hired to entertain and his mind had turned to pure mush. The hope/fantasy had instantly gripped his mind that she’d asked for him. He didn’t think he’d really believed it any of the time. He hadn’t seen so much as a flicker of recognition in her eyes, but he’d fucking wanted to believe it. And if that hadn’t been enough to focus his mind completely on getting his hands on her at long last and doing all the things he’d wanted to, the realization that she was drinking and vulnerable because of that had certainly fired his blood.
He wasn’t proud of it, but he also hadn’t been in any frame of mind to look a gift horse in the mouth—not when he’d wanted her so bad he could taste it for years. Not even his pride had protected him one iota.
She’d wanted him, though. She might not have known who he was, but he’d damned well been with enough women to know desire when he saw it, to feel it in a woman’s touch and recognize the breathless little sounds of pleasure they made when they enjoyed his touch.
It rankled that she hadn’t known him. It made him vaguely ill to realize that he hadn’t cared, still didn’t, had in fact been relieved that she hadn’t—because she sure as hell wouldn’t have let him touch her if she had!
No doubt, in her mind, he would always be the troubled, ‘problem’ kid who used to sit through her class imagining what it would be like to fuck her until she screamed his name. He’d never doubted she knew exactly what was going through his mind either, because although she never said anything, she would blush when she noticed him looking at her. It had amused him to watch the effect he had on her, given him a sense of power when he saw how flustered she was.
It almost made up for the way she’d made him feel when she’d tried to convince him to go to counseling for the ‘abuse’—the background his superiors had cooked up for him. She’d told him he was too smart to throw his life away and end up like his old man—a useless drunk that spent as much time in jail as out of it. Not that she’d said that, but she’d said enough that he wasn’t in any doubt she knew about the history that had been invented as his cover and that had been a painful pill to swallow, the shame of discovering the woman he worshipped like a goddess only saw him as a dirt poor, white trash boy destined for prison.
He hadn’t been so far gone, though, that he’d even considered telling her the truth.
Possibly because he was pretty sure she’d believe the invented past before she’d believe the real truth—which, very likely, she wouldn’t have believed at all.
And if she had, she would’ve considered him more of a monster than she did already.
He’d been so furious after that lecture, he’d gone out of his way to prove that she was right about him—which was probably the stupidest thing he’d ever done.
Or maybe not.
He’d managed to put her out of his mind long enough to complete the study he’d been sent to make and put together his report in a more or less timely manner.
He’d managed to avoid far more serious repercussions that anything the local authorities might mete out to a juvenile delinquent.
It had been hellish, though. For a while he hadn’t been able to get past the fact that he
’d screwed around and deprived himself of the possibility of even worshipping from afar. It might’ve been sheer torment to know that he was never going to come close to having her, but he’d wanted to keep his fantasies.
After a while, he’d managed to convince himself he was well away from temptation.
Mating was forbidden.
He would’ve done something truly stupid if given the opportunity.
Because, unfortunately, he hadn’t been on this world long at all before he’d discovered it was totally unsuitable as a colony and it wasn’t likely he’d be moving in permanently. Earth people were facing pretty much the same problems they were—overpopulation and dwindling resources.
He couldn’t stay and he couldn’t take her with him.
And then they’d discovered new worlds capable of sustaining healthy colonies and they’d removed the ban on mating—were allowing them to breed … so long as they kept the birth rate down.
He was only coming to this world to find a mate because theirs was a compatible species and a fresh gene pool.
He was only going to this country because the culture was so similar to his own that he saw a higher likelihood of finding a compatible partner.
He was only going to this city because he’d established an identity for himself here when he’d been sent to scout this world.
He wasn’t looking for anyone in particular.
He just needed to accumulate enough of their currency to attract a mate he found pleasing.
In that respect the culture was no different from every other culture he was familiar with.
He had to prove he was capable of taking care of his mate and any issue of their union. In a more primitive society, that meant being a good fighter and a good hunter.
The more advanced they were, the more the focus shifted toward energy and mental capabilities and away from the physical superiority.
The Visitor: Alien Hunger Special Edition Page 3
