Love Without Boundaries

by Michelle Howard

  There had been no words between them. Nothing but their body’s rocking, the tangling of their lips and tongues as their hands slowly caressed whatever area of skin they came in contact with. It was, at least to Leah’s mind, the perfect round two after the almost mystical, spiritual joining with their bracelets. Bringing them both to the perfect pinnacle of pleasure but in a much gentler way than they’d found themselves in just minutes before.

  And as she relived those moments with Rykhan poring over his maps and hologram by her side, Leah didn’t know what to do, how to act or what to say to try and find the crack in all the beautifulness they’d built between them. And experience had taught her that there were always cracks, the uneven pieces that caused couples to stumble and break apart.

  So she just picked one thought and blurted it out, which seemed to be her way of dealing with things. At least when she was with him.

  “What does tersa blay mean?”

  He gave out a huge yawn before mumbling, “Sweet bride.” And as Leah turned her head to look at him, she saw he was shutting down his communications device. Setting it on the small chest to his right, he turned, lifting the sheet while scooting up next to her. “It means ‘sweet bride’, mica tisha.”

  “But we’re not married,” she countered, feeling her own body relaxing into sleepiness at the feel of his skin against her.

  “Not yet, my Leah.” His jaw cracked with the fulsomeness of the yawn that he couldn’t seem to help as he wound an arm over her waist before cupping a breast. “But it is only a matter of time.”

  Leah wanted to deny it but was unable to exert the effort of speech.

  ‘We can always talk about it tomorrow’, she assured herself sleepily, snuggling deeper into Rykhan’s embrace.

  ....*

  Leah came awake one muscle at a time, so refreshed yet so tranquil she almost hated to open her eyes. But not understanding the warmth she was cuddled up against, she needed to see what was causing it.

  A broad expanse of golden skin met her gaze and as she took a deep breath in, she realized it was Rykhan she was smelling. His own natural scent that seemed to be a blend of sandalwood and another spice she couldn’t quite identify. But whatever it was, the combination was more than pleasing to her senses.

  Just as pleasing as the heat of his still sleeping body. She was tucked securely against his back with an arm tucked around his waist that moved up and down with his breathing. And in that beautiful quiet, with the feel of him against her, Leah found a peace like she’d never known. At her admission, even if it was only offered within the confines of her mind, Leah realized she had deep feelings for the man she laid pressed next to. Feelings she wasn’t sure she wanted, not when having them meant she wouldn’t be living the life she’d carefully planned for herself, on the planet that was her home.

  Although what he had described of what he wanted, what he thought they were destined to have in the bits and pieces he’d shared, hadn’t been so bad. Especially not when he’d shown her his ranch on Nutrol. And she realized that the fantasy she’d entertained upon the viewing was still front and center in her head. A dreamscape that was as close to her adolescent, make-believe visions of what her life would be like, that it caused her heart to knock hard in her chest.

  “What are you thinking about that causes your distress, my Leah?” his sleep-filled voice broke the silence of the new morning.

  “I’m not distressed, Rykhan,” she whispered back, trying to deny the thrill she experienced when he called her his.

  “But your heart is beating very fast.” Grabbing the hand she had tucked between his side and the mattress, Rykhan turned onto his back while keeping her close. “Tersa mandai, mica tisha,” he murmured and Leah watched as he eyes moved over her face.

  “What does that mean?”

  Brushing his sun-streaked, sleep tangled hair off his forehead, Rykhan took a few moments to think. “Sweet morning, is the closest translation, I think. It is a traditional, formal greeting of the early part of the day in Picari.”

  She smiled and shifted until she was using his shoulder as a pillow. “Then ters-ah man-day, right back at you, baby.” Her hand slid to his chiseled abs that were exposed as the sheet slid down at his movements.

  He ran his hand over her back and drew Leah closer. “I very much like waking up with you in my bed. Did you sleep well?”

  “Yeah, I did,” she admitted, using her fingers to trail over the hills and valleys of his stomach muscles. She angled her head so she could look up at him. “Although I think we slept, like, fourteen hours or something.”

  “Then our bodies needed it. Which our physicians say is the best rest we can have.” He yawned again and Leah felt his body shift into an involuntary stretch. “But I am hungry.”

  “Me, too. But I need a shower first.”

  “You are welcome to use my cleansing unit, tersa blay,” he immediately answered, covering her wandering fingers with his hand as if to ask her to stop her exploration.

  Naughty, delicious thoughts of wet, soapy bodies crossed her mind but Leah knew she was too sore from yesterday afternoon’s physical activity to indulge them. “How about we make it a shower for two? You know, I’ll wash your back if you wash mine?”

  A flare of heat ignited in his blue-green eyes before his lids lowered until they were half-hooded. “I’ve never shared my daily cleanse but it sounds…inciting.”

  “I think you mean ‘exciting’, baby,” she corrected with a small giggle.

  He lifted one eyebrow as a suggestive grin lifted the corners of his full mouth. “No, I believe I said it correctly. To incite means to cause an action, yes?” The arm around her back tightened. “And I like the actions we have between us, my Leah. Especially when we are locked alone in my sleeping quarters.”

  “I do too, Rykhan,” she breathed, holding his gaze while feeling her pulse begin to pound in the tender, aching flesh between her legs. “But if we’re gonna use the shower together, we have to have a couple of rules, or I swear I won’t survive it.”

  He nodded once in curious acquiescence.

  “First off, no sex.” She almost laughed at the disappointed expression that crossed his face. He looked like a little boy who’d been denied access to his favorite toy. “And secondly, we have to keep our bracelets apart. No touching, brushing up against or coming in contact even on accident. Okay?”

  “Why no sex? Is joining in the morning something that humans do not do?”

  “No,” she drawled. Of all the conversations they could be having, Leah decided explaining how her body was too sore to ‘join’ with his was one she mostly definitely didn’t want to engage in. Knowing him, he’d probably ask to see the offending body part to assess the damage. But she knew she wasn’t going to get out of it unless she told him. “I’m too sore down there to…”

  “You are experiencing pain, tersa blay? Did I hurt you in our pleasure?” He had shot straight to sitting and was grabbing at the sheet to pull it off of her body. “Are you bruised? Bleeding? I am so sorry…”

  Clutching at the bedcovers and wiggling away from him and his impatience to ‘view’ the area affected, she let out an embarrassed giggle. “Stop it, Rykhan. I’m fine. Really. It’s just, you know, I need time for my body to recuperate.”

  “We have a tech-med unit here in the house. I will get it and it will tell us if we need to transport to the Searcher in order to heal any damage…” he was already sitting on the edge of the mattress, reaching for his clothes before Leah place a hand in the middle of his back in order to get his attention.

  “Stop, please!” she cried, but the giggles that escaped made her words different than the demand she intended. “I’m fine, baby!”

  He twisted around to look at her and she could tell he was weighing her words to determine the honesty in them. “It hurts me to think of you in pain, Leah.”

  The area in the center of her chest tightened at the tenderness in his voice and the care in his eyes. “I know.
”

  He swallowed thickly before continuing. “I value you, mica tisha. Value you more than I can describe in your language.” He closed his eyes and turned his head to the side before he brought his face back to hers. “You have taken up a place in my heart and I find that the thought of causing you any injury, hurts me as well.”

  Leah had no words, absolutely no words to say to him because of all the emotions that swelled within her after he spoke so honestly. And she completely understood what he was saying. Because even if he hadn’t expressly used the four-letter word, the look on his face definitely showed what he was feeling.

  Rykhan was falling in love with her.

  And the thought scared her almost senseless.

  ....*

  “Here’s the rest of the info that I got from Sean, Brent and Gere,” Pam said, slapping the steno pad on the table where Leah sat entering her findings into the spreadsheet she’d created. Between the two of them, they’d managed to ‘interview’ each of the warriors to see what dating sites and other singles events they were scheduled to attend in the upcoming weeks. To the women’s eyes, the lists were sparse and erratic. So they’d tried a different approach which the warriors found humorous as the girls tried to gather data on what kind of female each of the guys were attracted to.

  “I’d just like a fertile one,” Ty had admitted in his conversation with Leah and she hadn’t known how to respond except to laugh at the joke he’d made. Although he was quick to assure her that truly was his one and only requirement.

  Leah looked at her friend and saw she was more subdued than usual. Pam was the more enthusiastic one of their awesome duo and when she became quiet, Leah got concerned. “What’s going on, pretty girl?”

  “Nothing,” Pam said on a sigh as she began to pick at her cuticles. “Maybe we should’ve gone home last night.”

  Wearing her same clothes from the day before, with the exception of a clean t-shirt she’d borrowed from Rykhan but had been required to fold up and tie into a knot at her hipbone so it didn’t float around her knees, Leah didn’t disagree. No matter how much she’d enjoyed waking up next to her large warrior. “Did you sleep in Wyst’s room?”

  “Yeah. He snores,” came the heavy reply that Leah saw was accompanied by a tiny frown. Leah didn’t know what caused Pam’s eyebrows to draw together, but she knew if she didn’t press, that Pam would eventually talk it out.

  Turning back to her laptop, she went back to entering the information.

  “Last night?” Pam begin and then stopped to pick at her nails some more. “I don’t know, things just got weird. As in, way weird.”

  Leah knew that her bestie didn’t consider much to be strange in the whole scheme of things, so for her to use the word ‘weird’ twice in two sentences told of Pam’s unease. “How so?”

  “Well, things were tooling along really cool, you know?” Pam’s head turned toward Leah then shot back to here nails. “The boys that were willing, got their haircuts and looked awesome. We found some stellar clothes in Macy’s and the guys were all over them. But when Wyst pulled me upstairs…”

  Leah waited to hear the rest.

  “You know, like to his bedroom?” It was as if Pam wanted Leah to react in some way to the fact that her shorter friend had spent the night with Wyst, but when no reaction was forthcoming, she continued to speak.

  “We were in a major make-out session with our tongues half-way down each other’s throats. Then he pulled me on top of him.” She stopped and Leah’s glance saw Pam was looking away. “That’s when things went way off the charts. Like, so far off the charts they went into orbit.” Leah, even having known her friend for so long, couldn’t make sense of the tone in Pam’s voice.

  “What did he do?”

  Pam’s face bloomed red as she admitted, “it wasn’t so much what he did…”

  Again, Leah waited, knowing that Pam would eventually fill the silence.

  “When we…as I…”

  “Hmm-hmm,” Leah breathed softly in encouragement.

  Letting out a huge sigh, Pam turned back to Leah. “So, like I’m on top of him, yeah? Things are going really good too, you know. Then I leaned down to kiss him again and whammo!”

  “Whammo?”

  “I felt my necklace slide over his shoulder, but I wasn’t really paying attention to it.” She sent a beseeching look to her dark-haired friend as if to ask for understanding. “And it somehow made its way to the back of his neck.”

  It was then that Leah remembered what Pam had told her. That the wahrom on Wyst’s neck mirrored the necklace Pam had inherited from her grandmother.

  “And that’s when all hell broke loose?” Leah murmured in a measured tone.

  “Yeah. Big time.” And Leah caught the smaller woman’s gesture as her shoulders tensed. “That’s when all sorts of the scary, freaking-assed, messed-up shit exploded.”

  Leah found her fingers had stopped moving on the keyboard and she tried to look at her friend without turning her head.

  “I mean, geez-louise!” Pam breathed with a head shake and then turned to look over her shoulder as if to see who might be around to overhear what she was saying. “You know I’m no nun and I’ve never pretended that I don’t enjoy a bit of slap-and-tickle, but shit! To come that long and that hard with all your clothes still on when nobody was touching anybody else’s goodies?” Pam gave another head shake of the negative variety. “Absolutely not possible, girlfriend.”

  “But it happened, nonetheless,” Leah murmured. “And I’m getting that you didn’t like the connection that you felt when you…ah, exploded.”

  Pam twisted back to Leah so fast her curls bounced. “How did you know about…”

  “It happens between me and Rykhan,” Leah confessed and could feel a blush begin to heat her neck as it moved upwards. “It’s something to do with our wahroms touching.”

  “And you can feel everything he’s feeling when he’s…”

  “Yeah. Pretty much.” Leah’s face was on fire at talking about such a personal subject. “He says it’s because their god, Tsiran, made us for each other and our body jewelry is the proof that we’re mates.”

  Pam blew out a long stream of air which Leah recognized was something they’d learned in a yoga class they’d taken a long time ago. An action that was to be done in order to center yourself. “I absolutely can’t and won’t accept that. I’m nobody’s girl, much less some dude’s mate!”

  “What was Wyst’s reaction?”

  Pam shrugged and started picking at her cuticles again. “When things had calmed down a bit and we’d pulled apart, the big wuss got all pouty. Started acting all sulky and moody. Just being a major dick all the way around, if you want to know the truth.”

  Leah didn’t want to expound on the topic, but her loyalty to Pam exceeded anything she felt for Wyst. “Rykhan told me that Wyst has plans to nail every woman he can get his hands on before he gets stuck with just one.”

  “Seriously? Whew, that’s good to know,” and Pam’s voice held a note of relief. “Maybe he’ll find someone else that’ll grow metal on the back of her neck after she’s around him for a while and then he won’t think I’m trying to trap him or anything.”

  “Is that what he said? That you tricked him into coming in his shorts?”

  “Naw, the man didn’t go so far, thank god! But it was his little one-liners and put-upon sighs that made me think he blamed me.” One side of Pam’s pretty mouth quirked in a rueful grin. “We both slept on opposite sides of the mattress, clinging to the edge in order to keep our distance. And he wouldn’t have anything to do with me this morning.”

  “If you aren’t interested in being tied to him, maybe that’s not such a bad thing, sweetie,” Leah said softly, turning back to place her fingers on the keyboard.

  “No truer words have ever been spoken, my friend,” Pam replied in a distracted voice before she raised herself out of her chair. “Think I’ll grab a couple of warriors and let them help me make
lunch.”

  To Leah’s mind that was Pam’s best course of action in avoiding Wyst as well her own fears in being trapped into a ‘pairing’ that Leah meant marriage. One of the ‘no divorce’ variety.

  Chapter Nine

  “Uhm, guys?” Leah called to the men who were just beginning to leave the dining room after they’d again enjoyed lunch together. “I’d like to show you what I have so far and get your take on it, if that’s okay.”

  Rykhan let his butt drop back into his chair as Leah pulled up both the spreadsheet and the calendar she’d created and allowed the screens to hover side-by-side over the middle of the table. “As you can see, I’ve added a lot more activities to your schedules based on what you told me and Pam about your preferences. And, given that you only have approximately five and a half months to succeed in your goal, I think you’re gonna have to step up your game.”

  “Game?” Gere growled, looking at his warrior brothers in confusion before looking again to Leah. “This is not a game to us, Rykhan’s female.”

  “I think she means that you will need to engage in more activities in order to widen your search,” Rykhan explained, shooting Leah a glance as if begging for her patience.

  “Yes,” Leah agreed, resting her hand on Rykhan’s thigh beneath the table. “Pam and I don’t think that going out twice a week is going to be enough to do an adequate search. Since you’ve got so little time, you need to be working your mojo on Earth’s females every day.”

  The men all began talking over one another as they tried to give their opinions about the women’s suggestions. Leah caught a few comments about it making sense while there were other comments about having no time.

  “Wait…wait. Slow down,” she cried and when the voices fell away she tried again. “It’s not complicated and doesn’t mean you’ll be spending every second of every day chasing skirts. But it does mean that with the exception of Thursday nights, Saturdays and Sunday afternoons, you will make time every day in pursuit of finding your…ah…mate.”