"Thank you," he said softly, "I can't tell you how much I am going to miss you. I feel like I'm not going to be able to breathe without you."
"I'm going to miss you, too," Eden said, "I can't bear the thought of sleeping in this big bed without you. I'm going to be alone more nights with you gone on this journey than I was when I first got here before we bonded."
The mention of their first bonding brought a flash of heat to her cheeks. That had been such a tumultuous, emotional time, but as Pyra lifted up to lie down beside her and pull Eden in against her so that he could cradle her in his arms, she knew that she would never trade a single second of it.
Chapter Four
Leia's hand clutched at the sheets beside her, her knuckles clenching so hard into the fabric that they whitened as she pulled it away from the mattress. Her eyes closed as her head dropped back against the pillow and her back arched up off of the bed. Gyyx flattened one massive hand into the middle of her chest and pressed her back down, holding her against the mattress with just enough pressure that she could feel his dominance. This sent even more of a shiver of excitement and arousal through her and she couldn't hold back the cry of pleasure as her mate flicked his tongue through her hot, wet folds again.
Gyyx had spread her thighs against the bed and pushed them up so that she was fully open to him, making her totally vulnerable to his touch. He pushed them up a little higher now, using the very tip of his tongue to concentrate fast, intense strokes directly on the pearl of hypersensitive flesh just at her peak. The sensation rolled through her like thunder, sending nearly overwhelming ripples of pleasure all the way along her body. Leia writhed against the bed, but Gyyx was far larger and far stronger than she was, and the pressure of his hands ensured that she would stay exactly where he wanted her for as long as he wanted her to stay there.
Of course, there was nowhere else that she would want to be in that moment. She reveled in being at her mate's mercy and in the way that he could so masterfully manipulate her body to create feelings within her that she had never experienced before.
Just as Leia felt like she was going to lose all control, Gyyx pulled his tongue away from her body and pressed a series of soft kisses along the inside of her thigh. He was allowing her to cool, to come down from the spiraling heights of pleasure he was sending her into so that he could just bring her right back there again. It was delicious, delirious torture.
She felt him guide her legs down and his hand slide from her chest down to one of her hands so that he could ease her up to a sitting position. As he did this, Gyyx came around to her side, changing positions with her so that he lay with his head on the pillow and guided her to kneel in between his slightly spread legs. Leia bit down on her bottom lip as the position brought her right into view of his powerful erection. Her mouth watered as she looked at it and she couldn't resist running her tongue from its base to the tip. There was already a crystalline drop of fluid collected there and she licked it up, allowing the tip of her tongue to dip inside just briefly.
Gripping the base of his cock in one hand, Leia traced the edge of the crown with her tongue, pausing for a moment to concentrate her licks on the bundle of nerves on the underside of the head just as he had concentrated on her. As Gyyx began to groan beneath her, Leia started to stroke with the hand that was holding him, gliding her palm and fingers along his hard, thick length as she continued to memorize his ridges and veins with the tip of her tongue. The taste of his body made her shiver, making her want him even more.
Suddenly Gyyx sat up and grabbed Leia by her upper arms, turning her and laying her down on her stomach so that she faced the foot of the bed. He climbed over her, balancing on his hands and the balls of his feet so that he didn't press too much of his tremendous body down on her tiny frame, and she felt his erection gliding along her thighs as he rolled his hips to stroke against her without entering her. Leia whimpered and lifted her hips, displaying herself to encourage him to fulfill the ache within her that he had created with the skilled ministrations of his tongue.
Gyyx complied suddenly, pushing deeply inside her in one hard thrust that elicited a scream of pleasure from deep in Leia's chest. The warrior growled and lay forward so that Leia could feel his body full enveloping hers. It was a primal, comforting feeling that encouraged her to lift her hips and grind them into him. His hands came up under her, cupping at the front of her throat in another show of dominance that made Leia feel so close to the edge that two more hard thrusts sent her body shuddering through an intense orgasm that left her gasping for breath.
Her climax did nothing to slow Gyyx. Instead, he tightened his grip around her throat so that her back arched slightly and pulled up onto his knees for better leverage so that he could slam in her with such speed and depth that each stroke was almost painful. That fine line between pain and pleasure, however, is what drove Leia crazy and she let the sounds pour out of her, panting, gasping, and crying out as she gave her body over to Gyyx in the hopes that he would still be able to feel her when he was gone.
Suddenly she felt his entire body tense and heard him let out a strangled moan as his cock pulsed wildly within her. He stayed buried deeply inside her as the tremors continued to flow through him, spilling hot streams that she could feel filling her. Finally he lowered his hands from her throat to her chest and carefully rolled them over to their sides, remaining inside her as he curled around her.
Even though she would have liked him to, Gyyx never let himself collapse down on top of Leia. She was so small and delicate-looking, particularly compared to him, that he was always convinced he would crush her if he let himself rest on top of her completely. Instead, he curved around her, cradling her body close to his so that she was surrounded by his warmth and the intoxicating smell of his skin.
His lips touched her neck and traveled up, following the curve of her jaw until he reached her ear.
"I love you," he breathed, pulling her a little closer to his chest and stomach.
"I love you, too," she said back, kissing the arm that was draped tightly around her.
Leia couldn't help but smile as she allowed herself to drift away on the waves of pleasure still rolling through her. It had taken so much to convince Gyyx that he was not going to break her if he made love to her the way that she wanted him to, but now that they had bonded, he had stepped into the dominant, aggressive role that drove her wild and brought out every primal instinct within her. She loved his strength and his power, and the way he knew how to use them to give her such incredible pleasure. She felt fully and completely safe with him, which made it even better when he exerted himself so strongly.
When their bodies had relaxed and cooled, she carefully extracted herself from his arms and walked over to the large black artist's bag she had propped against the wall. Reaching inside the main pocket, she withdrew what looked like a small scroll. She brought it over to the bed and climbed under the covers to meet his body where he had also cuddled down into the bed.
"This is for you to bring with you so that you can look at it and think of me whenever you're lonely."
Gyyx took the scroll from her and unrolled it carefully. She heard him let out a sigh as he saw the picture.
"This is beautiful, Leia," he said, turning to kiss her tenderly, "Thank you."
"I wanted to frame it for you, but then I figured that you probably weren't going to have the space in your bag to bring along a framed picture, and even if you did, you weren't really going to be able to find a place to hang it while you were traveling around." She looked down at the picture and reached over to run her fingers along the pencil and acrylic sketch. "This is the sunrise that I saw the first morning that I knew you. I remember it being the most beautiful sunrise I had ever seen, and I know that that’s because it was the first one I had ever seen now that I knew you existed in the world."
Gyyx tucked his hand around her face and stared into her eyes. She saw intense emotion there, and she knew that he was worried about her. T
hem coming together was a difficult and nearly tragic experience that neither of them liked to talk about very much, but both knew was something that was lingering right around them. They had found each other only because the Klimnu had high-jacked the university shuttle she had ridden from Earth, kidnapped her, and help her captive, torturing and tormenting her, for 57 days in a dark, dank prison on the other side of the compound, in one of the areas so close to the edge of their territory that many barely considered it the compound and others would never even venture. This is what compelled him more than anything to join up with the other warriors in order to go out onto the planet and find out what other creatures Uoria might harbor.
"I will think about you every single minute while I'm gone," he said.
"No, you won't," Leia said, kissing the tip of his nose, '"and that's perfectly fine. There are a lot of other things that you will need to focus your attention on. What matters is that you know I'm thinking about you, too, and when you look at the drawing I want you to know that I love you and can't wait to have you home."
Chapter Five
Elianna buried her head against Ciyrs's shoulder and held him tightly around his neck as he continued to rock her hips against his. She cradled him inside her body, enveloping him as though protecting him in the most powerful way she knew how. His skin was slick and warm with sweat and she felt it mix with her own as they both came down from their climaxes, maintaining the link between their bodies and allowing their breath to stream and blend between them as they preserved these last precious moments in each other's arms.
She kissed the side of his neck and let out a long sigh that seemed to pull with it all of the emotion that she had experienced since coming to Uoria. It had been like nothing she had imagined. When she left Earth to come to this strange and barely-known planet it was with the intention of helping humans learn more about Uoria and the Denynso. As a journalist she planned on writing a series of reports that would help to illuminate this species as the people of Earth got accustomed to the idea that the government and the academic sector were planning on not only making direct contact with the species, but cooperating with them. Knowing the reputation of the Denynso as the most powerful and skilled warriors in the galaxy, the goal was to bring some of them to Earth to fight and to train armies, while also allowing humans to go to Uoria to share parts of the Earth culture and visit the planet as tourists.
Elianna had had her own thoughts about these plans, but she had primarily kept them to herself. She wanted to remain as objective as possible, just as her career demanded, and that meant not contemplating a future in which the inhabitants of this far-away planet showed up on Earth and roamed freely, teaching humans to be even more violent and aggressive than they already were, and in which humans flew off to Uoria on cute little family vacations thinking that they would relax and make some fun memories, when they really had no idea what was awaiting them.
When she arrived, however, Elianna's resistance to other people and pain from abandonment in her past had nearly kept her from accepting Ciyrs as her mate. He had been patient with her, though, guiding her through the difficult and confusing first moments of their connection that would eventually seal them together. Before they could fully mate, however, a member of the Klimnu had masqueraded as Pyra and stolen her, bringing her to a dark, disgusting prison just on the edge of the compound, a place where she would learn that the Denynso never went. There she was tormented and tortured, the only comfort she got came in thinking about Ciyrs and reaching out to him through her mind.
It wasn't until the Denynso came for her that she discovered he had transferred some of his incredible healing power to her, but with the ability to heal came the ability to destroy. As much as she wouldn't want to admit it, she had delighted in the ability to wrap her hand around the bony, slimy neck of the vicious creatures who had made her life a living hell for the entire time that she had been there, and had nearly killed the frail, tiny woman that she had found battered and bloody, crawling through the halls of the prison, and watch them burn.
This had changed her forever. Suddenly life was not about writing articles and bringing back information to the people of Earth so that they could learn more about a planet that would remain a novelty. It became learning about the people that were now her family, giving herself over completely to the man that she loved and who she knew was her lifelong mate, and offering the gifts that she had just discovered to helping heal and protect the Denynso.
Now as she wrapped herself around Ciyrs, reveling in the feeling of the only man who had ever been inside her, she couldn't imagine a single moment of her life without him or without Uoria. She felt more at home and at peace here than she ever had on Earth, and it was as if his presence and the abundant, never-ending love that he gave to her had soothed all of the pain and emptiness she had suffered throughout her life. The thought that he was leaving with the warriors to explore the planet was gut-wrenching and she didn't want to think about it. She wanted to continue to hold him and let him protect her in his massive arms, ignoring the eventuality, and pushing back that moment when he would have to say goodbye.
Suddenly the first rays of sunlight started trickling through the slight gap between the curtains over their bedroom window and she knew that she couldn't put it off any longer. Her mate, the healer of the clan, was a vital component of this mission and he would still need to gather all of his supplies so that he could meet with the warriors at the main hall to be ready to leave after breakfast.
She climbed off of him slowly, savoring the feeling of his body stroking against hers as it left her, and crossed to the bureau on the far wall to pull out a dress that she dropped over her head. Out of a small drawer in the bottom of the piece of furniture she pulled a book tied with a green ribbon. When she turned back around Ciyrs was tying the strings at the front of his pants. She waited while he put on the rest of his clothing, and then stepped forward to hand the book to him.
"I brought this notebook with me from Earth. It was supposed to be where I was going to make my notes for my articles, but after I met you, I realized that I was never going to go back there so I didn't need to write them. Instead, you gave me the confidence to do something that I had never told anyone that I wanted to do, but that I had been dreaming of for my entire life."
Cirys untied the ribbon and lifted the hard front cover of the notebook. She watched him read the first few lines of her neat, precise handwriting and then look up at her.
"What is this?"
"I wrote a book. It's not quite finished yet, but I want you to bring it with you and read it. You'll be the very first person to read anything that I've written other than articles, and you can help me decide how to end it."
Ciyrs gathered Elianna into his arms and hugged her close to him. She breathed in the smell of his body and listened to the rhythm of his heart, wanting to internalize that sound so that she could replay it in her mind whenever she thought of him while he was gone.
"I will be thinking about you every day. I'll get home as soon as I can."
"I know you will."
As Ciyrs released her, she glanced down at the bed. It was going to be next to impossible to sleep without him beside her. The bed looked so big, empty, and cold already and she dreaded nightfall when she would have to climb in and try to will herself to sleep alone.
"Come to the shop and help me pack up the healing ointments and other supplies?" he asked.
Elianna nodded and let him take her hand, intertwining their fingers as he led her out of their house and through the compound toward the building that held his shop and clinic. This was where they healed the sick and injured, and where they had worked with Ty's brilliant mate Samira to create powerful healing ointments that had gotten them through the last battles with the Klimnu. She knew that the bottles and tubes that he packed in his large bag would be integral to the trip, but she didn't want to think of the suffering that they would end.
As they packed his supplies an
d checked the list of items that he had made the day before, Elianna could hear the compound outside coming to life as the Denynso started heading for the meeting hall to eat breakfast and say final goodbyes to the men.
Chapter Six
"I can't believe that I just found you, and now I have to leave you."
Bannack tightened his hands around Loralia's and stared into her still-startling lavender eyes. He had spent only three days with her, and one of them had been spent trying to find her so that he could apologize and convince her to come back with him. Now he was going to be walking away from her, leaving her in a strange place that she didn't know so that he could explore the rest of the planet for an indeterminate amount of time. Though it had been his idea in the first place for the warriors to go outside of the compound and explore Uoria to find out what other types of species existed beyond their boundaries, now that he was only minutes away from leaving, it made his stomach feel sick.
"Everything is going to be fine," Loralia soothed him, stroking the tip of his nose with hers, "You are going to go and discover amazing new things, and I will be here getting used to my new home. The women have been very kind to me and I'm sure that they will continue to do everything that they can to make me feel welcome and to help me assimilate to life up here."
His mate was truly incredible and Bannack couldn't help but stare at her in amazement. This creature, the last of her kind, had not only lived completely on her own without any contact from other species for years after her family and friends died from a mysterious plague that had spared only her for reasons that even she didn't understand, but had also left the only home that she had ever known in order to come above ground and be his mate among a strange species and in a world that she had never experienced. He might be a warrior, but Loralia by far had more courage than he ever would.
The Alien's Back! (Uoria Mates V Book 1) Page 55
