Stolen and Seduced

by Christine Pope

  “Yes. And you are my mate.”

  Jalek

  I wasn’t entirely certain how to read my mate’s facial expressions yet, but somehow I didn’t think her wide brown eyes and circular mouth shape denoted joy.

  What had I done wrong?

  Perhaps her people didn’t recognize their mates as easily as mine did.

  “I can show you our DNA scans,” I offered. “We’re a perfect match.”

  She didn’t reply, instead huddling into herself even more.

  “Are you cold?” I asked.

  She nodded her head. “Yes.”

  I filed away the motion as an affirmative signal. I’d heard that sometimes mates from different planets had difficulty communicating, and I was determined to overcome that problem as soon as possible.

  I pulled a blanket out from a storage unit in the wall and moved to wrap it around her. The closer I got to her, the more her scent drew me, her distinctly feminine scent overlaid with something like sweet calavon spices.

  Mine, my beast insisted again. My entire body agreed.

  “Can you not tell we’re meant to be together?” I asked quietly, reaching out to touch the skin of her neck with one finger.

  She jerked away. “We don’t even know each other.”

  With a frown, I pulled back. “On my planet, that is not an issue. When we meet our mates, we simply know. It’s instinctive.”

  She snorted in something that might have been humor—or maybe derision. I would have to observe more to decide. “Yeah, well, on my planet, we don’t.”

  I raised a block from the floor panels to sit across from her. “Are you not drawn to me?”

  Her eyes turned wary. That look I recognized. I’d seen it from prey as I hunted in my animal form. “That doesn’t matter,” she said.

  “Of course it does. It’s the first step in finding a mate.”

  “Even if I’m drawn to you, it doesn’t mean we’re …mates.” She all but spit out the last word. “I’ve been drawn to plenty of men in my life, and I didn’t end up marrying any of them.” She paused. “Unless you just mean sex?”

  “Not only sex, no. Though that’s the next step, of course.”

  Burying her face in her hands, she shook her head. “Of course it is.” She pulled her face up again. “Oh, no. Is this the part where I get probed? Is that where all those stories come from?”

  “I’m not sure what stories you’re referring to. But I would very much like to probe you. With your permission, of course.” Anxiety swirled through my stomach as I waited for her answer.

  Again, she made that snorting noise.

  That was no answer.

  I had to show her what I meant, let her feel our connection to one another. Otherwise, I was certain she would soon demand I return her to her wastehole of a planet. I couldn’t allow that to happen. She was the reason my beast had returned to me, and already I knew I couldn’t live without her.

  I held out both my hands to her, palms up. “Will you place one of your hands against mine?” I asked, keeping my voice low so as not to frighten her. “I promise I will not move my hands without your permission.”

  She stared at me for a long moment, then muttered, “Oh, what the hell.” The phrase didn’t translate, so I suspected it was some kind of curse in her language.

  Her eyes remained wary, but she reached out with one hand, holding her blanket around her with the other. I fought to stay perfectly still as she gently placed her tiny fingers in my hands.

  “I’m going to close my hands around yours,” I warned her, not moving until she had given that affirmative nod of her head. Then I folded her hand in mine and allowed the mating bond to fill my entire body, coursing through me until it overflowed and surrounded me.

  The moment it flowed into her she gasped, her eyes opening wide. “What…what is that?”

  “That is how I feel about you.”

  Lucy

  I couldn’t decide whether to jerk my hand out of Jalek’s or throw the rest of myself at him.

  When he touched me, a jolt of electricity shuddered through my entire body, leaving every centimeter of my skin prickling with an awareness of him, as if all the cells inside me were straining, reaching out to him.

  If this was how he felt about me, I didn’t know how he had remained so calm—so polite and so distant—the whole time we had been alone together.

  I glanced from his hands to his eyes, certain that the wonder I felt filled my gaze.

  Still, he simply held my hand lightly grasped between his own. And somehow, I knew if I pulled away, he would let me go, even though he was enormous and strong and could, if he chose, overpower me, and force me to stay.

  There was power in that knowledge. If I wanted, I could walk away from him, and he wouldn’t try to stop me. I wasn’t certain how I knew it, but I was as sure of it as I was anything.

  After running away from a stalker ex-boyfriend, the knowledge was exhilarating.

  Jalek watched as all these thoughts flickered through my mind, and then gently transferred his hold to lift one and move it toward me slowly. “May I touch you?” he asked, gesturing toward my face.

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak, but almost desperate for him to continue.

  He traced my cheek with his index finger, trailing invisible sparks behind. “That is the mate-bond,” he whispered. “Reminding us that we belong together. Promising that our union will be joyful.”

  Closing my eyes, I leaned toward him, tilting my head into his touch. “I have a life here.” My objection was half-hearted, at best. “The kids at the youth center need me.”

  “My entire planet needs you,” Jalek countered. “I need you. And you could build a life with me.”

  I shook my head. It wasn’t enough. I couldn’t just take off to another planet with some alien shapeshifter guy I just met. That was insane.

  Everything about this is insane.

  I sat up and pulled my hand away from Jalek’s. As I had known he would, he let me pull away, the only sign of his reluctance a last, lingering touch of his fingertips to mine. An expression of sorrow crossed his face, so intense it made me want to cry for him.

  “I have a proposal,” Jalek said after a moment.

  “I thought that’s kind of what you’ve been doing.”

  His brow creased in confusion, then cleared. “Ah. A play on words. Sorry. The translator can be a little slow with humor. That comes with time.”

  Time we wouldn’t have. He didn’t say it aloud, but I practically heard it echoing in the air around us.

  “What’s your proposal?”

  “Let us make love. Just once. Allow me to know what it is like to truly be with my fated mate. And then, should you wish to return to your life, I will take you anywhere you want to go.”

  Make love. Such an old-fashioned phrase.

  Wrapping my arms around myself, I rubbed my hands up and over my shoulders. The scar tissue covering my recent one felt odd under my fingers.

  I’d never been a one-night-stand kind of girl. I didn’t hang out in bars and pick up men.

  Then again, Jalek wasn’t an ordinary man. And when he left, he’d be going far away.

  Too far for me to ever even contact him again.

  I glanced at him, sitting so totally comfortably—and oh-so-naked—on the metal block he’d raised from the panels in the floor. His pink patterned skin darkened to purple in some places, and every part of me wanted to trace those patterns, to see if his skin was as soft as his fur had been when I’d touched him in his animal form.

  I would never have another chance like this. I mean really, when would I ever have the opportunity to have sex with a gorgeous, shapeshifting alien again?

  My stomach twisted with something between anxiety and desire as I whispered my agreement. “Yes.”

  Jalek

  With one word, Lucy made my world complete—at least for the moment. I had bought enough time to show her how amazing we were together.

>   And if that didn’t convince her to come with me…I would think of something else.

  For now, I needed to concentrate on her.

  “Come with me,” I said, standing and holding my hand out to her. She gave me a skeptical glance but placed her hand lightly in mine. Again, the mate-bond zinged through us, and a wave of pure anticipatory lust shivered through me. “Let me show you my quarters.”

  The scoutship was small, designed for no more than two or three occupants, so I didn’t have far to lead her. My quarters were spare. Once I pulled it out from its wall storage space, the bed took up most of the space, and it was made for one. But I was comparatively small among the males of my species, so there was enough room for both of us.

  Not that I planned to let her get very far from me. We stood at the foot of the bed and I turned to face her, pulling her up against me.

  Slowly, deliberately, I lowered my mouth to claim hers. Her lips tasted as sweet as she smelled, and I gently probed at her lips with my tongue until she opened it to admit me. She reached up to twine her arms around my neck, and the blanket she had wrapped around her slithered to the ground, unheeded by either of us.

  Her hot lips burned against my mouth, even as my tongue flicked into her, seeking out the most sensitive spots so she shivered against me.

  My cock hardened fully, the mating spikes expanding out to either side.

  Slipping my hands down her back, I reached the top of her thighs and lifted her. She wrapped her legs around me, the hot thickness of me pressing against that most intimate core of her. She whimpered, pulling her legs tighter around me and crossing them behind my waist.

  I turned to place her on the bed and knelt in front of her, determined to show her as much pleasure as I possibly could. Then I knelt in front of her, using my hands to press her inner thighs farther and farther apart as I slid my shoulders under her legs and pulled her toward me, her hips hot in my hands, the mate-bond coursing between us.

  I inched closer and closer until I could feel the heat of her burning against my face, smell the sweet feminine scent of her calling me to her. Gently, I flicked my tongue against her clit.

  She moaned, letting her head fall back. “Please,” she whispered.

  My lips brushed against her every time I spoke. “Like this?”

  “More.” Her whisper dropped even lower, her hot wetness glistening in front of me.

  I couldn’t bring myself to tease her any longer. If we were only to have this one time, I wouldn’t waste any of it. I ran my tongue in circles around her clit, stopping only long enough to pull it into my mouth and suck.

  Slicking my tongue back and forth, faster and faster, I used a hand to slide first one finger inside her, and then another, preparing her for the moment when we would join fully.

  As she bucked and moaned, the heated glow growing inside her echoing through the mate-bond as she grew slicker and I moved my fingers faster, twirling them to mimic the mating spikes.

  I felt her orgasm building in a way I had never experienced, almost as if it were my own, and my cock grew even harder than I would have imagined possible.

  When she shattered against me, holding my head in her hands and shouting my name, I felt the warm cascade of it against me and inside me, and I knew I never wanted to let her go.

  Lucy

  When I finally caught my breath, I sat up and grasped Jalek’s hands to pull him up. “Your turn,” I said softly.

  As he stood, I froze. His enormous cock jutted out, the hot-pink skin stretched across it tightly. But more than the size of it, I was stunned to find fleshy protrusions coming out of all sides, almost like spikes. When I reached out to touch one, though, it yielded, and the end wasn’t sharp at all.

  Jalek moaned as I continued to examine him with my fingers.

  “What are these?” I asked, leaning forward and sliding my tongue along one.

  “Mating spikes,” Jalek ground out.

  “They seem particularly sensitive.”

  “Oh, gods. They are.”

  There was no way I was going to get all of him in my mouth. So instead, I took my time licking the top of his cock, enjoying the way it jerked at the touch of my mouth. And then I sucked the spikes one by one, as if I were giving eight additional blowjobs.

  By the time I finished the last one, his entire cock throbbed visibly.

  “Please,” he whispered, echoing my earlier plea.

  I knew I should insist he wear protection. But no condom I’d ever seen would fit over those spikes.

  “I don’t want to get pregnant,” I said, trying to sound as pragmatic as possible.

  Jalek leaned in close and sniffed me. “You’re not fertile at the moment.”

  “You can tell that?”

  He grinned. “All my kind can.”

  “What about… like, sexually transmitted diseases?”

  Jalek’s offended expression made me giggle. “My medbay would never allow me to go on a mate-scouting mission without being checked—and cured. Not that I’ve ever had such a thing.” He gave me a sidelong look. “And you’ve just been cleared by my own ship’s medical system.”

  I leaned forward and wrapped my lips around the head of his enormous cock, running my tongue lightly around the edges where the head met the shaft. When I pulled away, Jalek was watching me with a predatory gleam in his eyes.

  “I don’t know if you’ll fit inside me,” I fretted, and the amazing alien beast I had agreed to have sex with simply laughed.

  “I will,” he promised, and lifted me up to stretch us both out on the bed.

  Careful to hold me lightly enough so I knew I could get away had I wanted to, but tightly enough to remind me of his strength, Jalek positioned himself between my legs. I shuddered in anticipation as the entire length of him pressed against me, searing into my bare skin as he slid his cock along my slick opening.

  He pushed against me a little harder, and I was so wet that the head of his cock slipped inside me easily. I whimpered at the glorious stretching sensation as he pushed farther into me, the mating spikes pushing down to allow him entry.

  When he was fully inside, he paused, shuddering. He filled me so completely that I had to push against him, aching for more. He paused for a moment, and I could feel his cock throbbing inside me. It made me want to rock back and forth against him, even as it also made me want to make sure he never came so that he would never have to leave. So this would never end.

  Then he began moving slowly in and out, the mating spikes gently scraping against my inner walls, folding in as he entered and splaying out as he pulled away, setting up a stretch and pull that vibrated inside me. My eyes rolled back in my head at the sensation and he sped up until he was slamming himself into me thrust after thrust and I moved to meet every plunging shove.

  He pulsed inside me as he started to come, and I followed him over the edge, his pleasure swirling through the mate-bond and enhancing my own, my orgasm flashing through my body in wave after wave, chasing his, until we collapsed in one another’s arms.

  “That was amazing,” I managed to say sometime later as I rested with my head on his chest, playing with the patterned hair there—something between human chest hair and animal fur, soft and crisp and utterly perfect.

  “It was,” he agreed, running his hand through my hair as if he found it every bit as amazing as I found him.

  For the first time since I’d left Texas to run from my ex, I felt safe. Secure.

  Wanted.

  Adored.

  A single thought swam through my mind, and I froze.

  How could I possibly let him leave me behind?

  But I couldn’t go with him. Could I?

  As if he were reading my mind, Jalek spoke. “I have another proposal to make…”

  Jalek

  I waited for Lucy to respond, worried that she would demand I take her back to her home now that we had been together.

  But I couldn’t simply let her walk away from me. Not now that I’d
found her. The mate-bond was stronger than I had ever imagined it could be. Sex with Lucy was mind-shattering. I had felt everything she felt, experienced her emotions as if they were my own.

  That planet of hers was dangerous. Hadn’t the attack I saved her from proven that?

  My beast snarled within me, daring me to try to allow her to leave us.

  “What kind of proposal?” Lucy asked, running her tiny hand up and down my chest.

  I inhaled deeply, gathering all the powers of persuasion at my disposal, and sending my need to keep her safe by my side out through our mate-bond, hoping she could feel how much this mattered to me.

  “Come back to my home planet with me. Meet my people. Stay with me—” She drew in a breath as if to speak, but I kept talking, stalling anything she might say. “For a while. We can put a time-limit on it. I will bring you back home at any point if you decide you hate it.” My voice dropped. “If you decided you couldn’t live with me.”

  Lucy sat up slowly, pulling the blanket she’d worn earlier from the floor and wrapping it around herself. She lifted her silky, golden hair from under the blanket, letting it cascade down her back.

  How could I ever let her go?

  But if she decided not to go with me now, or if she left me later, I would have to allow it.

  We follow, my beast informed me.

  Yes, I agreed silently. We would watch over her, no matter what she decided. But she could never know.

  She had felt the mate-bond, too. I was sure of it. But I didn’t know if humans had the same response to it that my kind did. Maybe she could simply walk away from a connection like that.

  “What happened after we left?” she asked abruptly. “To the men you attacked back on Earth?”

  “They were still alive when we left.” Maybe that wasn’t what she wanted to hear. “I could go down and finish them,” I offered.