Stolen and Seduced

by Christine Pope

  “Relax,” he told her, “we have forever.” And he was right, and she knew it, and it didn’t calm the urgency with which she desired him. He pressed his second tip into her, and once he finally bottomed out inside of her, he held it for a long moment.

  She wriggled underneath him. “Please,” she said, “keep going.”

  He smiled at her, pulling almost all the way out, then thrusting back in.

  She’d been right: his extra tip functioned almost exactly like the knobs on human sex toys. Alien anatomy was onto something, that was for sure. It rubbed against her g-spot perfectly, making her wriggle and moan underneath him, and she moved her hips against him in ecstasy.

  “Mine,” he said, almost as a whisper. It caught her off-guard coming from his alien lips; it caught her more off-guard that she was so into it. She’d been with men into that bedroom domineering before, but it had always seemed a little... theatrical. Like they were trying to convince themselves of something. When F’ght’r said it, it had a resonance of truth, so for once, instead of playing along with his fantasy, it actually turned her on.

  As he thrust in and out, her climax built and she came around his shaft, hard. He followed suit, his shaft getting larger within her as he thrust with his orgasm. And, when he pulled out, he manifested a cloth from somewhere she did not see to wipe her off, then him, before laying beside her.

  He ran fingers through her hair, looking at her with a level of wonder she had a hard time remembering whether any human man had before. “Mine,” he said again, this time with a tone that seemed like he was figuring something out. Or perhaps like he had figured something out already.

  She furrowed her brows as she appraised him. “I don’t understand what you mean when you say that,” she said.

  “I thought...” he trailed off. He looked panicked, like he realized he had misunderstood something major and it was all coming down on him now. “Did you not agree to be my mate?”

  She blinked at him. “Your what?”

  “My...” He took a deep breath before continuing his sentence. “I’m sorry. I should have talked to you first. My kind... we mate for life.”

  “For life?!” Nova was nearly ready for a meltdown. Abstractly, if you had asked her if she would have been receptive to such a scenario, she probably would have told you she absolutely was. But now that she felt herself thrust into the middle of it? Well, it was damn near overwhelming. “You mean we’re mated for life?! You and me?”

  He opened and closed his mouth several times before responding. “No,” he said. “Well, not quite. Well, not if you don’t want to be. I won’t force you. I wouldn’t. The mating bond is sacred.”

  “So it’s up to me? And if I say no, you can just look for a different woman who will say yes?”

  “Well, no,” he started.

  “What do you mean ‘no’?” She side-eyed him. Was this another joke?

  She wasn’t sure whether aliens could cry, but he looked like he was about to, and she did her best to calm down as much as she could. It would be exactly like her to offend an alien on accident.

  “Well, see we... we’re biologically mated for life. It’s not a social construct the way it is for a lot of humans. So now that I’ve… been with you,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “I’m connected to you forever. Sort of. You can always choose not to, I just won’t be able to mate with anyone else. If you choose not to, I mean. Or even if you choose to.”

  She blinked. “So you’re telling me that we’re either mated for life or you’ll forever be alone?”

  “Not alone,” he said hastily. “I have my adventuring party. And the rest of my family. But I will be without a mate, yes.”

  She didn’t want to do that to him, that was for damn sure. She also didn’t want to leave him to a lifetime of eternal solitude. He seemed like a nice enough guy, for an alien. Probably especially because he was an alien, really, she realized after she’d thought about it.

  “I don’t want you to be without a mate forever,” she hedged.

  He smiled, sadly. “It would be my fault,” he said, finally. “I... did not think about the difference in our biology enough before I allowed myself to indulge in my desire for you.”

  “We... definitely could have stood to talk more beforehand,” she said. “On both our parts.”

  He nodded, looking down in a way that seemed extremely sad.

  “What...” she began, “...what would it mean for us to be mated?”

  He looked back up at her, his eyes lighting up with something like hope. “it would mean we would be each other’s forever. Or, at least, in this case, I’d be yours forever. I imagine it doesn’t need to go both ways since your kind doesn’t do the same bond. But I would be yours forever. I would always do my best to make sure you were happy and taken care of and safe.”

  “But what if you met a nice alien woman and wanted to have children with her? I assume we can’t have kids. I don’t even know if I want kids, to be honest. Shouldn’t we have discussed that beforehand too?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think I’d be able to have established a mating bond with you if we weren’t able to have kids together. And, no, I can’t fall in love with another woman. I probably couldn’t even be attracted to one. I’m yours, forever. Or as long as you want me to be,” he backtracked.

  He was trying so hard. It was endearing.

  “Look,” he said, “I don’t... please... I won’t hold it against you. I mean, I won’t be angry with you if you go back to earth or if you decide you don’t want me. But please try? Please consider it? Please consider me?”

  “I feel it too,” she whispered as she watched him stumble over his word selection. “It’s not the same, I don’t think. But I feel a connection between us unlike I’ve felt before. Not with any human man, that’s for sure, anyway,” she said.

  His huge shoulders dropped in something like relief. She blinked, and he was beside her on the bed, running his fingers through her hair with one hand, his other clear around her torso to hold her close to him.

  “You mean that?” he asked.

  “I do.”

  “F’ght’r, we need to plan our next mission,” R’gu’s voice called through the door.

  “One moment, please,” F’ght’r responded, holding Nova like he might never let her go.

  “Shouldn’t you, like, go see what all the fuss out there is about?” she asked. “I’ll still be here after you have your meeting.”

  He shook his head. “You misunderstand. I was sent in here to wake you up so that you could come along to the planning session. I simply got... distracted by you.”

  She blinked at him. “‘Distracted’? You call that ‘distracted‘?”

  “I’m sorry. Was that wrong to say? It was definitely a distraction from what I was supposed to be doing. A welcome, wonderful, life-changing distraction. But a distraction.”

  She laughed and shook her head. “No. No, it’s fine, I suppose you’re right. But you’re sure you need me at this meeting? I don’t know the first thing about planning the escapades you all go on. I’m still pretty sure I’m not the one you should have abducted for this mission.”

  “No, you’re definitely the right one. I know I’ll be able to handle any challenge that comes at me with you playing your beautiful music in encouragement.”

  “You’re ridiculous.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “No,” she said. “Not exactly.”

  “Good,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to upset you.”

  And that was the difference between him and human men, wasn’t it? She believed him when he said this. Human men said it to avoid things; they didn’t want to upset her, mostly because she’d learned the best way to get them to treat her with basic respect was to inconvenience them when they didn’t. But the alien man in front of her? No, he did his absolute best to make sure she never felt like she had to assert herself.

  He was apologizing a little more than he needed to
, that was for sure, but that was a welcome change from human men who rarely apologized even when they actually should, so he definitely had that going for him.

  When they walked into the main room, the other three aliens froze in place. Well, R’gu and Clyrick did, at least; Wyzard stared into the abyss, as was his norm, in a way that Nova figured meant he had somehow already focused ahead on their task to come rather than worrying overmuch about what Nova and F’ght’r had or had not done behind the door.

  “I don’t suppose you thought this through,” R’gu began.

  Clyrick held up his hand. “It is not our place to tell F’ght’r who he should or should not mate with,” Clyrick said.

  “I wasn’t telling him who he should mate with. I was telling him he should think his actions through. There’s a difference.”

  It was Wyzard who held up his hand this time. “Silence,” he said, and when he spoke they listened. “This is the way it was always destined to be, and it is too late to argue the specifics of how we got here. It is in our best interests to put on our focus on where we’re going next now.”

  R’gu rolled his eyes but did not argue, seeming to know better by now. Clyrick nodded in sage agreement. F’ght’r pulled Nova more tightly to him, then spoke.

  “And where might that be?” he asked.

  “Planet 2251 will be destroyed,” Wyzard said, drawing his fingers over something like a large expanse of wall that turned out to be a screen. On it, something Nova could only assume was a map of galaxies emerged before them. He glanced toward Nova—or, at least, moved his head toward her in a way that seemed to simulate a glance—before continuing, in a way that as far as she could tell signified he was explaining in more detail for her sake. “Planet 2251 runs on a power cube. It was never meant to be hospitable, but the Bhuslies were forced to set up a refuge and was desperate. Their power cube is now running out and the others are being held hostage.”

  “So what’s in it for us?” R’gu asked.

  “We get to be valiant heroes?” F’ght’r said.

  R’gu shrugged. “We’re already ‘valiant heroes.’ Pretty sure our time spent elsewhere solidified that. I’m talking specifics. Gold? Titles? Could we finally return to Base Planet?”

  “Perhaps I should remind you that there’s only one of us not allowed on Base Planet,” Clyrick said, though more amused than scoldingly. “They tend to not be overly fond of pickpockets there.”

  “I only pickpocketed in the first place because we needed coin to save the city. ‘The ends justify the means’ or something? Isn’t that how you humans say it?” he gestured to Nova.

  She threw up her hands. “I’m not getting into the middle of this. I wasn’t there. And I don’t know your laws. Also, weren’t you just saying that I shouldn’t have mated with F’ght’r-”

  “Aha! So you did mate with him! I thought as much with that corny smile on his face.”

  Nova glanced at F’ght’r, who tried to wipe the smile off his face as quickly as he could when the other alien pointed it out.

  “You’ve, uh, gotta be careful with him,” F’ght’r said, “he lays traps like that all the time.”

  “I suppose I’ll learn,” Nova said with a smile. “We have a long road ahead of us, don’t we?”

  “We do,” he agreed. “And this is only the beginning.”

  The End

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  About the Author

  Edeline Wrigh is an eccentric storyteller with a penchant for swearing, drinking too much caffeine, and spending more time with cats than people. She writes fantasy, romance, and love stories without happy endings from her house in the Midwest. When she's not putting words on paper, she's busy up leveling her martial arts game or taking in stories in any way she can.

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  Read More of Edeline’s Books

  Betwixt Realms Series (Lesbian Harem Paranormal Romance)

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  Lexi Velvet

  Erac

  "What do you mean, our father is dead?" Erac E’Jaleat glared at the communication device as if he could send his anger across the light-years to his brother Delrin.

  "He died honorably, my brother," Delrin intoned, his voice echoing with a sorrow Erac didn't believe the other man actually felt.

  "What does that mean?" he demanded.

  A flicker of irritation crossed Delrin's face. "It means he died on a bride run, doing what he loved most."

  But never finding brides for us, brother, Erac thought, then shoved the sarcastic voice in his head under a blanket of what he was sure would in time become grief. But not yet. For now, all he felt was irritation that Delrin was closer to their home planet than he was. "Will there be a final ceremony to honor him?"

  Now Delrin was the one who sounded annoyed. "Of course. As soon as you get home. Your mother," he added, almost spitting the words out, "is waiting for your return to hold the ceremony."

  His mother. Thank the Sun Goddess for the woman who'd birthed him—the third of Joleat's wives, and the one who'd held the most sway with the difficult man who had fathered Erac and Delrin.

  Delrin's own mother had died three cycles earlier, leaving Erac's mother Cyn in charge of the household.

  Good thing, too, or Delrin might have swooped in and taken over the family business already.

  "I'll see you soon, brother," Erac finally said. "Setting coordinates now."

  The final ceremony had been lovely, Erac had to admit. Cyn's decision to hold the body-burning in the home valley and then travel to the nearest space station to shoot the ashes into their sun-star had made for spectacular viewing on the com screens, the shielded cameras on the probe lasting until the final, glittering explosion.

  And now, the remaining family members had gathered for the announcement of Joleat's final wishes.

  As expected, the old man left the home valley in Cyn's possession, to be parceled out to his children after her death. He'd arranged for currency for several family retainers and had ensured that his own brother Bravnon would continue to have a job in that portion of the family business that occurred on-planet.

  But now it was time for Cyn to announce which of his sons would inherit the business that had supported the family for as long as Erac could remember.

  Erac half-expected to learn that he would be forced to share the business with Delrin, as they had been born in the same solar week to different mothers and thus were both considered eldest sons. Such a split was not unprecedented, but Erac knew he would never be able to work with his brother.

  Not in a business that required the leader to execute raids on other planets to gather brides for auction.

  No. One of them needed to be in charge.

  My brother doesn't play well with others, Erac thought, glancing at Delrin, who was currently glaring at Erac.

  "Your father registered his final wishes with Planetary Legal before he died," Cyn was saying, her long, pale hair pulled back from her blue face and into a braid down her back. "As regards Sun Mates, he has arranged a contest to determine which of you shall inherit the business."

  Erac leaned forward. A chance to best his brother? Perfect.

  "Each of you will be required to complete twelve auctions of brides..."

  Easy enough. Erac knew his ship, the Zodiac, was faster than Delrin's bucket of bolts.

  "...from an entirely new planet."

  Wait. What?

  The room broke out into murmurs. It had been decades—generations, almost—since a new planet with women of appropriately compatible DNA had been d
iscovered.

  "Impossible." Delrin strode forward, looming over Cyn.

  She, however, simply shrugged. "Whichever of you is first to bring back twelve brides from a new source planet and successfully auction them to appropriate mates will inherit the entire company."

  Oh, this was going to be a Palavanian shitstorm of epic proportions.

  Erac grinned. "When do we start?"

  "Now," Cyn replied, her own grin echoing her son's.

  Anna

  Taking the last swig of the Mountain Dew sitting next to her, Anna Bartholomew sent up a silent prayer to any gods who might be listening.

  Let this work. Please.

  She dropped the bottle into the overflowing wastebasket next to her, shook her hands to throw off any bad juju that might be clinging to her, and pressed one button on the keyboard in front of her.

  The five screens arrayed in front of her glittered wildly as the company's logo spun up.

  She adjusted the headset she wore. "Ready?"

  As her team's avatars popped onto the screens, she nodded.

  "Looks good, boss," Xander's voice came through.

  "Yeah, well, looks can be deceiving," she muttered, then shook off the thought. "Let's play it through. Stay sharp. If you die, I'll reboot you where you are. Everyone taking notes?"

  Various versions of yes came to her from her team, but she was already moving her avatar forward, watching multiple screens to check the code as it scrolled past.

  And then the game started for real.

  Twelve hours later, she came back to herself as the rising sun streamed through her window. Stifling a yawn, she stretched her arms above her head, her joints cracking in complaint. "Good work, guys," she said. "I'm logging off. We'll pick up here tonight."