“Thank you for rescuing the little guy. No doubt, he would either have died, or the raptor would have retaken him.” He closed the cage and said, “I’ll see myself out.”
“How’s the shoulder?” Joven asked when they were alone again.
“Sore, I think I broke something. It hurt like hell when I landed.
“Your clavicle. The nanites should have it repaired by morning. I’m afraid your tunic is ruined, though.”
“That must be why I can’t move my arm. Oh, my God, that freaking raptor was as big as an ostrich!”
Joven’s mouth compressed into a grim line. “It could have hurt you badly, trying to get its prey away from you. But I was bigger.”
“I wasn’t putting the crying baby together with cawing raptor overhead… I should have remembered that one carried off a baby dragon from the meadow.”
“Next time come get me or someone to help you. I don’t know what an ostrich is, but I’ve been here long enough to learn those raptors are dangerous. They’ve been known to fight adult dragons when trying to get one of the babies for a meal.”
“I won’t make that mistake again.”
Joven sat down on the bed beside her, picked up her hand on her uninjured side, and pressed the back to his lips. “Meomee, I have never been that scared in my whole life!”
“I love you, too, meomee.”
Chapter Nineteen
For the next few days, Joven stayed close to Carly, maybe a little too close, hovering like he was afraid to let her out of his sight. He could do that because of his ability to monitor his teams with his onboard computer tapped into the base com system. Her injury had been healed by the next day just as Joven told her it would.
They spent most of the morning in bed making love, which Carly didn’t mind at all. But afterward, she was ready to get back to her teaching projects and educating herself about the changes in her perspective of the universe. She was still compiling material for her courses, and everything she was learning fascinated her.
Joven did actually help her with answers to questions she couldn’t find. But she finally realized that Joven was afraid to let her out of his sight. The incident with the raptor had left him deeply shaken. It could have caused catastrophic injuries with its sharp hooked bill and talons.
On the fifth rotation, after it happened, he still wasn’t going back to his job. Carly adored the long lovemaking sessions every morning. He was the best lover she could ever have imagined. As much as she loved him, his hovering was getting on her nerves.
When it became clear that Joven couldn’t put the raptor scare behind him, Carly knew they needed to talk. She wanted to get it settled before the dinner party in four rotations. That was one thing Skye had told her. Cyborgs knew all too well how easily an unenhanced humanoid could be killed before their shared nanocybots fully colonized their bodies. They would rather face death themselves than the loss of their females.
“What do you plan for this rotation?” Joven asked as they got up from the breakfast nook.
“I thought I would go outside for a walk to get some fresh air. Then I thought I would ask the AI to show me some ornamental plants for landscaping around our house. And I always wanted to have a kitchen garden,” she said.
“You were going outside, by yourself?” He gave her a worried look.
Carly sighed. She couldn’t be angry with him. Instead, she put her arms around his waist and hugged him, pressing her cheek to the hollow of his throat. “Joven, what happened was my mistake, because I didn’t understand. The only way a baby dragon that small could land in our yard was by a predator or a poacher dropping it here.” She rubbed his back over his jumpsuit, and he put his arms about her and hugged her back.
“I know, meomee, but my mind keeps looping back on the utter terror I felt when I saw that huge raptor diving down at you,” he admitted. “And I almost lost you because of that pirate Crazell even before I ever had the chance to hold you in my arms. But now if I lost you, it would end me.”
Carly shifted her arms and ran her hands up his chest to rest one hand at the back of his neck and caress his cheek with the other. “Joven, I know better now. The raptor came after me because I took its food. I looked them up on the AI system. Raptors don’t usually attack humanoids unless they are provoked.”
“That’s what my processor tells me, but my emotions tell me you could have been killed after everything you went through to be with me. Every time I think of how Crazell tortured you, I wish I had made him suffer more.”
As Joven stared down at her, Carly could see the anguish in his crystal blue cat’s eyes. “Meomee, it’s over now. Crazell is dead, and you scared the raptor away. Loving someone as much as we love each other makes us vulnerable to the prospect of loss,” she said. “I promise I will be more careful outside. I will take my pocket com with me so I can call someone if anything happens that I need help.”
“I love you so much, I feel bad that this has upset you so much that you are afraid to let me out of your sight.”
“I can’t help what I feel,” Joven countered.
“I know, sweetheart. But I want you to try to turn your thoughts to the fact you prevented the bird from attacking me. Think about how quickly I healed because of your nanite technology… Think about how we made love for hours the next morning, and I screamed your name so loud when you made me come long and hard.”
Carly smiled up at him and raised her self on her toes to kiss his mouth tenderly. She was pretty sure she knew where this was going as she felt the hardness of his erection pressing against her belly. That tender kiss became deeply passionate, and Joven lifted her in his arms, urging her to wrap her legs around his hips.
He kept kissing her and started walking to their bedroom. As soon as Joven deepened the kiss, Carly began to feel the wetness gathering between her thighs. She thought they might just have a quickie, but it soon became apparent that Joven had other ideas.
He stripped off her clothes and arranged her on the bed and paused to admire her naked body before he signaled his jumpsuit to withdraw from his body. He approached from the foot of the bed, starting at her feet, kissing and nibbling his way up her leg.
When he reached her mons, he parted her nether lips and covered her clit with his mouth for a long, slow kiss. He flicked his tongue over her clit until he felt her muscles tensing as her arousal built. Carly moaned plaintively when he stopped and journeyed down her other leg using his lips and tongue and teeth.
Carly panted as her clit and her nipples throbbed for attention. She rubbed her nipples with her palms and plucked at them aching for release. She knew that Joven would make her wait for it. Driving her mad with desire was his revenge for scaring the hell out of him.
Oh, but it would be sweet!
After sucking her toes, something new and incredibly arousing, he moved back to her sex to feast on her juices and tease her to the verge of orgasm again. She wanted to come, but she also wanted to hold out until he was inside her, so she was hugging his cock with each contraction of her orgasm.
“Joven, wait, I can’t…” she tried to warn him as her orgasm was getting close. She wanted him to share the pleasure, and she wanted his sweet torture to go on a little longer because he seemed to need that.
He left her pussy and continued moving up her body, dragging his lips and tongue over her soft, smooth skin. Carly reached to caress him everywhere she could and voiced her pleasure humming and cooing to him.
She wanted him utterly and completely and loved him all of that and more. He was hers, and she was his. She regretted her part in causing him so much reluctance to leave her side because she knew she would feel the same.
By the time he finished his trail up her body to her breasts to suck on her nipples, Carly was quivering and panting with wanting him. Had he even touched her clit while suckling her breasts, she would have come. Yet he always seemed to know when to hold back.
Finally, he poised himself to lower his cock to her ope
ning and settle into the cradle of her thighs. Carly stroked his back and shoulders as she looked up at him expectantly and smiled.
“Fuck me hard,” she whispered.
Joven blinked and gave her a surprised look then grinned at her. She had never said it to him in those words before. She probably knew he was planning to all along, but he liked that she asked for it.
As long as he had been teasing her and holding her on the brink, she came with the first of a few hard thrusts after he plunged into her. He pounded into her so that she cried out, ecstatically almost every stroke as she clung to his shoulders and raised up to meet him every time.
He kissed her a deep probing kiss dominating her mouth as he did her sex. She was his woman, and she owned his heart. He was making her know that with every thrust of his cock into her pussy and of his tongue into her soft sweet mouth.
For endless seconds they hovered on the brink of nirvana, then he freed her mouth and roared as he finally let go and filled her with his seed. Carly came yet again. It seemed he pumped his semen into her for a long time before he collapsed against her, his weight pressing down on her with his cock still inside her.
It was a little hard to breathe, but she didn’t care because he felt so good on her and in her. Carly hugged him lovingly.
Joven raised up on his forearms and looked down at her face as she sighed blissfully. “Was that hard enough, meomee?”
“It was perfect, meomee. Just perfect.”
Chapter Twenty
Although Joven still worried that Carly went outside alone, he no longer burdened her with it. He set up security cameras that he could access through their AI. He knew the raptor incident was highly unusual, but he wasn’t taking any chances with Carly’s safety. She was okay with it, mainly because it made him stop hovering. She still carried her com whenever she left the house as she promised.
Two days before the dinner party, Carly visited with the mates of the new team members. They gathered at the home of Deja and Wekler Pak. Deja introduced Carly to the other wives: Alcia Zelsi, Vres Makoi, Gemma Flinna, and Hezza Maan. They were still settling in their new homes when Joven brought Carly to Glasica.
Alcia was a story animator, Deja was an AI specialist, Hezzi was a medic on a Defense Force ship, Vres was an exo-botanist, and Gemma was a clothing designer.
As the Captain’s wife, Carly had commed them a rotation set ago to have a get-acquainted meet. Since Deja’s mate was scheduled to be in space, she offered to hostess the gathering because her children were young and she didn’t like to leave them alone with the child care android any more than she had to.
With the arrival of the second space team, their little hamlet grew from six adults to eighteen. Joven was the only one who farmed in addition to his job as head of Glasica system space patrol. There was still plenty of lands left to the west of them so more settlers could join their community in the future.
Carly had come from a community where everyone knew their neighbors. She wanted to make their settlement that kind of neighborhood. It was a sprawling neighborhood with the homes spaced widely apart with a single packed dirt road running between the two rows of five multi-domed houses. The road ran east to west and ended at the last set of homes to the west.
Carly’s and Joven’s home was set alone at the east end. From there the road curved south to their headquarters which was also a multi-domed building. The double landing pad for the star jumpers was just east of the building. It would have been a long walk for Carly, so she took the run-about wheeler to Deja’s home.
She was a little nervous about the meeting. She wasn’t sure if the other women would be friendly or unaccepting of her. She was the Captain’s mate and from a backwater planet that people called ‘dirt’ when she was on the ship to Glasica. She needn’t have worried. They knew about her ordeal with the pirates and were both concerned and curious. The five women were not acquainted before they came to Glasica, so they hadn’t much time to form a click before they met Carly.
The women were all gathered around Deja’s long oval dining room table when she arrived. Deja introduced her to the other four women who were all human but with variations in color not seen on Earth. Hezza Maan was distinctly pink with platinum hair. Vres Mekos had light blue skin with blue-black hair. The rest including Carly were all various shades common on Earth. All of them were attractive.
“You look like you have completely recovered from your encounter with the raptor,” Hezza said as Carly took a seat at the table across from her.
“Yes, the nanites took care of everything.” Carly gave her a warm smile. “I just wish they hadn’t taken that adorable little dragon away. He was way too young to be out of the nest, and I think he liked me.”
“I’ve seen pictures. They are very cute,” said Vres, “but the Indigenous Wildlife Preservation Bureau is very strict about protecting their right to live in the wild.”
Carly sighed. “I know, and I agree with that. It’s just that when I held him in my arms, he was almost like a little puppy, like he knew he was safe.”
“Puppy?” Vres asked.
“A dog, they are domestic pets back on Earth,” Carly explained. “I had one when I was a kid. I haven’t had any pets since. Pets weren’t allowed in the places I lived after I left home and lived on my own.”
“I hear they have eklans here,” Deja said. “My boys want one, and we are thinking about it.”
“The holograms I have seen, they look more like a little cat than a dog,” Carly said.
“Well, dragons don’t look much like dogs,” said Hezza. “One of the women from Narova on our ship showed me a picture of her dog. It had black fur and a stubby tail.”
“Where did they get a dog on Narova?” Carly asked.
“They’ve imported them from Earth for a couple hundred sun orbits,” Hezza responded.
“Yes, I learned recently the Alliance has had agents on Earth over 400 sun orbits---we call them years.”
“When my mate was offered this job, and I knew we would be settling here, I found a research project for evaluating indigenous plant life and the effects of agriculture. Maybe you could work with the “dragon preserve” caring for rescued dragons to be released back into the wild.”
“I wonder if they would let me. I was just a science teacher back home. I suppose I could learn about rehabilitating dragons.”
“The Preserve just might train you if you were to volunteer.” Gemma spoke for the first time. “We are so close to their boundary, it’s likely that little dragon is not the last one we might find.”
“That’s a great idea! If I go up there, I could see how the baby dragon is doing. I will look them up and com them when I get home,” Carly said with a big smile.
The conversation dwindled for a couple minutes as Deja’s domestic droid served lunch and fresh drinks to everyone.
“Well, Hezzi,” Carly said when the droid finished. “Joven told me that you are also mated to a feline. Even though I knew what would happen as soon as we touched it was still quite a shock. Joven didn’t even want to stop at the Star Traveler long enough to get my things. All I had were the clothes on my back when we left Se’Nar.”
“Oh, well,” Hezzi said chuckling, “You probably didn’t need any for the first seven or nine rotations.”
“You got that right,” Carly laughed. “At least we had a couple months to get to know each other before we met in person.”
“We didn’t,” Hezzi said. “We met for the first time on the Defense Force ship we were both assigned on. I wasn’t even registered with the matchmaking services. Nik and I met in the gym on the ship the first rotation of our mandatory physical training. I’m from Narova, so I knew what was happening. Neither one of us took it well at first. We got over it a couple days into it.”
“That’s one helluva surprise. Skye Carter Knight told me about the Captain of the passenger freighter that brought her to Glasica. He was on a mission to retrieve some women kidnapped by slavers, an
d one of them was his meomee. They didn’t think it funny at the time, but Skye said they both laughed about it when they told it.”
“Did you ever get your belongings from the passenger freighter?” Deja asked.
“They were finally delivered yesterday. We ordered some new clothes in the meantime, so I didn’t have to keep wearing Jovan’s jumpsuits,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-One
The six women talked for hours forging their new friendships. Carly was glad they could meet before they got together with all the men. It was so late when Carly got home that she couldn’t call the Preserve until the next day.
Joven was waiting when she returned from her gathering, but he wasn’t upset at all. However, he greeted her as though she was gone for days instead of hours. After a long, thorough passionate kiss, she wrapped herself around him and he carried her into the bedroom.
Carly knew exactly what would happen when she got back. Her body went on alert almost as soon as she left Deja’s home. She couldn’t even imagine fighting the kind of mating pull she shared with Joven. Then, she never even guessed she could share the level of passion that she found with him, before.
They spent so long in bed together, Joven decided they should have dinner in bed, naked. He even arranged it.
“Are you still nervous about the dinner party now that you’ve met the other females?” Joven asked after the droid brought their trays.
“No, not at all. We had a wonderful time. They were not what I expected.” Carly smiled at him. “We are all about the same age and they were so much nicer than I expected. “Vres suggested I should volunteer at the preserve to rehabilitate injured dragons. I’m going to call them tomorrow.”
“Dr. Meksaj commed me, today. That the little dragon recovered almost as quickly as you did, but their attempt to put her back failed.”
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