He was head and shoulders taller than her 5’7.”
“I was pretty nervous about going into space, but now that I am, it’s better than I expected. After they went over the safety regs, we had a meet and greet. There are quite a few felines on board traveling to other worlds to meet their meomees.” she told him. “I even met a woman about my age from Earth. She is also going to meet her meomee. But on a different world. None of the others are coming to Glasica.”
“That’s why it will take so long for you to arrive. Glasica is a long way from the normal travel and shipping routes,” he explained.
“Probably cost a lot, too.”
“It is worth every credit for me to find you, meomee. There was a good probability you would be from Earth because my genetic line had several people stationed on Earth at various times. I saved credits most of my life in anticipation of finding you there. It is no hardship, meomee.”
Even though he knew she was a hologram, Joven raised his hand as if to cup her cheek with it. “Are your quarters satisfactory, meomee?”
“Actually, it’s much nicer than I expected. Our space ships are completely utilitarian. But I have only seen pictures. This space ship is bigger than our space stations.”
“That’s because it hauls cargo as well as people. But the passenger quarters are designed for modest comfort.”
Carly panned the tablet around the small cabin so he could see. “There is even carpet of some kind on the floor. I have a chair and a table and room to stow my luggage under the bunk,” she told him. As she looked back at him, he was staring at her so intently that she caught her breath. A shock of attraction surged through her.
By the look on his face, she could see that he felt it, too.
“Carly…” was all he said.
“I know.” She smiled at him a little ruefully. It would be weeks before they could even share their first kiss. But it would erupt into far more than just a kiss. Felines bonded with their meomees emotionally while mating repeatedly driven by potent pheromones.
The big feline humanoid cyborg attracted Carly even without the lure of his body chemistry. Another woman might find him a little scary, but she knew with certainty that she had nothing to fear from him. The timbre of his voice was like an intimate caress that tightened her nipples and caused her pussy to clench, aching with emptiness.
It was sweet torture to stand before his holographic form, unable to even touch him. Carly gave herself a mental shake to stop the sexual fantasy. This was their time to get to know each other before the mating frenzy of the meomee bond. She breathed in and let it out slowly.
“Tell me about your work,” Carly said, breaking the spell.
Joven smirked. He knew why she was changing the subject, and she knew he knew. “What do you want to know?”
He told her how his job was created after his friend Rader and his bride were almost killed by poachers taking off from Glasica making his flyer crash. The remoteness of their star system meant that Alliance Law Enforcement only came to investigate after such incidents. After being utterly terrified that his wife would die before they could get help, Rader quickly convinced the governing council that they needed their own space patrol.
Joven was the captain of an Alliance Battleship during the Drayid war with thirty years’ experience. Rader was a warrior who traveled on that ship to the planetary battlefronts. Rader learned that Joven was leaving the Defense Force through the cyborg network after the crash and invited him to settle on Glasica.
The other cyborg petitioned the Glasica council to create the space security force for their star system with backing from the Alliance, or they might become prey to worse incursions into their system. Joven was hired to organize and run it.
Meanwhile, Joven bought the deluxe plan from Narovian Interstellar Matchmaking Service and a huge piece of land a continent away from Rader’s. He hoped the service would find his meomee. If they didn’t, Joven planned to make his own offspring in vitro and grow it in an artificial womb much like the cyborgs were made.
“I had once considered artificial insemination with donor sperm,” Carly said. “But as a last resort. I really wanted to make a family and not be a single parent. I wanted a life mate to share my life who would be mine alone, and I would be his alone.”
Joven smiled. “And you will be, you are. That is, meomee.”
“This will all be new for you, never having your own family.”
“We learned about family life and relationships in virtual reality. It was our prize at the end of the service. If we fulfilled our terms of service, then we would be released, free to try to live a normal life. In the meantime, our brothers were our family,” he said. “Because we are cyborgs, bred to be merciless warriors, we are not the most desirable mates for ordinary females. They feel that our years of fighting and killing make us too dangerous to be suitable for mating.”
He said the last with a touch of bitterness.
“That may be true, but I don’t believe that. The matchmaking service explained that cyborgs are predisposed to cherish and protect their mates, especially felines.”
“Doesn’t it scare you that once we meet, you can’t change your mind? That you will be biologically unable to leave me or risk death…”
“I could ask you the same,” she countered.
“No, my sweet Carly, you are meomee, my soulmate. There is nothing I want more than to have our lives joined together irrevocably. That’s why I hired the service to find you.”
Carly stepped closer to his hologram and raised her hand to touch his arm metaphorically. “Me too.” she murmured. “The hardest thing about this whole endeavor is the length of time it is taking me to reach you.”
“Yes.” His hologram smiled down at her, and his hand came up as if to caress her dark hair.”
“It’s been a long day for you, meomee, perhaps we should end this session so you can get some rest.”
“Will I see you tomorrow?”
“Count on it.”
Chapter Five
Carly Adrian looked out of the window in the observation lounge at the planet below. Arsoas looked much like Earth from space, mostly blue with varying thicknesses of cloud cover. This was the first of three stops before she reached Glasica.
She looked back at her handheld tablet. Joven’s feline eyes stared back at her as she waited for him to make their daily connection. It was the middle of the night for everyone else, so she was alone in the lounge.
The time schedule on the CS Star Traveler was precisely the reverse of her night and day schedule on Earth. But the night schedule on the ship coincided with Joven’s on Glasica.
Carly set her com to wake her at dinner time. She needed that interaction with the other passengers from in the ship’s guest dining room. Like her, they were on the journey to meet their soul mates, too. She wasn’t the only woman matched with a cyborg, just the only one matched to a feline cyborg shifter. She never shared that info with any of them. Even so, they were good company.
After dinner, they went to the lounge to watch holographic movies or the alien equivalent of TV shows. That gave time for their meal to settle before going to the gym. Carly worked out an hour or more every night. Everything she had learned about the feline mating frenzy told her it was physically grueling, and even more so with a feline cyborg. Sometimes, she would jog on the treadmill after her holographic sessions with Joven to work off the sexual tension.
By midnight most of the other passengers went to bed, so Carly spent a great deal of time alone during the voyage.
She didn’t mind. Even though she liked the other passengers, she would probably never see any of them again. She was the only passenger going to Glasica. Two other women from Earth were also keeping their day schedule on the ship because It would be the same on the worlds where they would settle. Sometimes, she ate meals with them in the dining room because meals were served at four-hour intervals around the clock.
In the last month and a ha
lf, her holographic meeting with Joven had become very personal and intimate. Right from the start, Carly could easily imagine him as her lover. As she had gotten to know him through vid-mail and holographic chats once she came aboard the CS Star Traveler.
Carly knew she had fallen in love with him without being exposed to his pheromones. His excitement and happiness at her acceptance of their match were infectious. Her growing affection for Joven had helped her come to terms with losing her best friend to the Drayid attack on Washington, DC.
Carly’s last holographic encounter played back in her mind. It was a good thing she had been in her quarters at the time.
“When you reach Glasica, I will have one of my team meet you at the starport,” he told her and smiled at the disappointment on her face. “I want to, but it would prove embarrassing for both of us.”
“I don’t understand.” She frowned.
“Because as soon as I scent you, it will send me into the mating frenzy. I will barely be able to concentrate on anything but getting you naked and putting my cock inside you.”
Carly had blushed at his brazen revelation even as she smiled. She really wished this holographic technology was like that on Star Trek where the holograms had substance.
“My cock hardens almost as soon as I hear your voice, and I want to fuck you almost more than I want to breathe,” he said with a sexy smirk.
Carly had blushed even more, yet arousal surged through her body.
“I want to reach out and pull you into my arms and feel your breasts against my chest and press my mouth to yours and plunder it with my tongue. I will grip your lovely ass and lift you, so my cock is pressed against your pussy, then carry you into our bedchamber.
“You will be wise to wear clothing that is easily removed, or I might tear it in my eagerness to strip it off your body. I will want to go slow and savor every delightful inch of your bare skin lingering on your breasts and taking each of your nipples into my mouth until you writhe with desire… Drag my lips and tongue down your body, breathing in your musk as your juices flow with your growing arousal.”
“I will part the curls over your mons and touch my tongue to your sensitive bud before I lap your delicious slick from your lovely cunt. Then I will push a finger or two into your opening while I turn my attention back to your clit, licking and sucking it as I fuck you with my fingers until you scream with your release.”
“Then you will be primed and ready for me to fuck you with my cock and you will surrender to your meomee, totally and completely. I will pleasure you beyond all of your dreams as we fly to the summit of ecstasy together.”
“You will be mine, and I will be yours for all our lives,” Joven concluded.
Carly was breathing deeply, mesmerized by the sound of his voice, and the smoldering passion in his eyes as his image stood before her. He seemed so close and so real she could have felt his breath on her skin had he been there in person. The timbre and ardor in his voice made her body react as if he were actually doing the things he was saying.
She was shocked and more than a little flustered that she actually had an orgasm with all her clothes on, without Joven even touching her. When she finally made herself look into his holographic eyes, he gave her an affectionate grin. Then he bent as if to press a kiss to her lips.
“Wow! I never expected a cyborg warrior to be so eloquent.” She gave a self-deprecating chuckle.
“The first time we come together will probably be rawer and more basic because of the pheromone and hormones of the mating frenzy. But I will gain control over it. Then, meomee, I will make you scream your pleasure.”
“I-I… Believe you,” she murmured with a gulp.
The holographic calls took place almost nightly. Every one intensified that sexual tension between them. Carly was glad their last contact had been in her cabin. Afterward, she spent a long session with her vibrator when she was alone.
Other than words, there was no holographic hanky-panky. Carly had reached the point where she was ready to be naked with her husband, but she didn’t want naked holograms of herself all over the universe. Joven didn’t want that either.
Carly sighed dreamily as she replayed it in her mind. Now she understood why Joven wasn’t meeting her at the starport. The minutes ticked by slowly as she waited and stared out at the beautiful planet they orbited.
It was daybreak at the starport where the passenger shuttle would leave off four passengers and pick up a couple more.
Carly’s com-tablet beeped at the exact minute Joven had scheduled it with her. She smiled warmly as his familiar face filled the screen. He smiled as well, and they both switched their coms to project their full-sized holographic images.
Her time with him was the best part of her days. She just wanted the trip to be over so they could finally be together in substance rather than holographic projection. “It’s so good to see you, Joven,” she murmured as his image appeared to be facing her. “How is your job going?”
“It’s peaceful compared to the chaos of war and chasing down slavers. We have a crew of five, and we cruise around the system in a star jumper to make sure that no more poachers or smugglers land on Glasica,” he said. “All we’ve seen so far is the stars and empty space, aside from routine space traffic. But that is why I came to Glasica. It will be a good place to raise our children.” He gave her a sexy smirk that had her blushing as her body responded.
Carly knew from the beginning that the genetics used by the Narovian Interstellar Matchmaking Service gave them a near perfect record of matching their clients to their soulmates. They specialized in races like the felines who biologically mate for life and cyborgs who have nearly the same criterion for choosing a mate. Their physiology chose for them.
It wasn’t fate, and it wasn’t magic. It was biology.
Carly thoroughly researched the phenomenon when she made her application to the matchmaking service. She’d read first-hand accounts of women from Earth about their encounters with their Narovian feline mates. They met by chance, but they all told the same story of how they were overcome by an intense need to mate within minutes of exposure to the feline pheromones.
That was a little scary to think about fucking a complete stranger like that. However, after the mating frenzy subsided, their relationships evolved into stable, loving partnerships.
Carly wouldn’t have to face that level of attraction with a stranger. She and Joven already had a month of exchanging video mail. They had another month and a half of three months of real-time holovid chats to get acquainted before they came together face to face.
“That’s fine with me,” Carly told him, caressing his handsome face with her eyes. “I had enough excitement to last the rest of my life when the Drayids attacked Earth.”
“The Drayids will be paying reparations for the next century. They will be barred from trade in Alliance territory even longer.”
The Drayids had slipped through Alliance surveillance and got that close to Earth because they had disguised their battleship as a star freighter bound for Mars City, the Alliance Starbase. It had been secret, until their existence was revealed to Earth.
“Glasica is too far for them to come and too poor as far as they were concerned. Not enough people and resources to interest them. But enough for the settlers to have a good life here,” he told her.
For a couple minutes, they just stood drinking in the sight of each other. “I can understand about the distance. I am already wishing away the time until we can be together.”
“Are the other passengers telling you that you are crazy to marry a feline cyborg shifter?” he asked with the familiar sexy smirk.
“Not to my face, but I have overheard some comments to that effect. I didn’t tell them you are a shifter too,” she sighed. “Your big cat persona is pretty scary, but not to me because I know it’s you.” The last was spoken with a tenderness that touched him deeply.
“And I would never hurt you, meomee,” Joven assured her. “Just the
sound of your voice tells me you are indeed meomee. It fills me with such longing to have you in my arms… To make you mine.”
Carly gave him a rueful smile. “Seeing you like this, standing right in front of me, does the same for me. The projection is so realistic. I feel like I should be able to reach out and touch you.”
“Soon, meomee, soon.”
Chapter Six
Suddenly, the starship quaked under Carly, nearly knocking her off her feet.
“Carly! What’s happening?” Joven asked frowning.
“I don’t know.” It happened again, and this time, Carly fell to the floor, and her com-tablet slid across the small room.
“Meomee, are you, all right?” Joven could no longer see her.
“I’m okay,” she called out.
Momentarily, a voice came over the ship’s com-system. “Your attention, please! All passengers, please return to your quarters, all crewmembers report to your work stations. We have been intercepted by marauders, who have disabled our ship. We will soon be boarded.”
“Carly?”
By then, she had been able to scramble across the deck and retrieve her com. “I’m here, Joven.”
His image was on the screen, no longer holographic.
“Meomee, if you are captured, don’t resist. They will most likely not harm you. They will either demand a ransom for you or take you to the slave markets on Se’nar,” he spoke in quick, clipped tones. “Your captain will have put out a distress signal. The Enforcers will track the marauders. Be brave, meomee. If the Enforcers don’t find you, I will!” Then she lost the signal, and Joven’s image became a still shot on her screen.
Carly hugged it to her, blinking at the tears welling in her eyes.
Joven roared his frustration like the feline he was. He had waited all his life to find his meomee or soulmate. Now she was in danger, and he was helpless to protect her.
Joven's Bride Page 3
