Her future might only be counted in seconds, hours, or days. She had far less guarantee of years now than she had had on Earth and no real guarantee then.
He evoked a deep yearning inside of her and she saw no reason to deny herself a modicum of pleasure and comfort.
Or him, if he desired it.
He’d certainly earned any gift she was considerate enough to offer if return.
But was it selfish? It certainly wasn’t entirely selfless.
She wanted it for herself more than she thought of it as tit for tat—comfort for comfort.
She dismissed her confusion of qualms when he deepened the kiss, too swept away by the swirl and eddy of want and need to think anymore.
Feeling, she discovered, was enough.
She’d wanted this, she realized.
She’d told herself that she was willing to do whatever it took to survive, and she was—for the most part.
But this wasn’t that part.
He was handsome—not just for an alien being of another species, but in the sense of raw masculinity and symmetry of form. He was tall and lean and at the same time muscular in a way that made him appear both extremely strong and athletic. And the strong male features of his face would have made him a ten by anybody’s standards. He wasn’t ruggedly attractive like Jarek. He was next door to pretty boy handsome—just too masculine to be ‘pretty’.
By the time he broke the kiss, Lori was primed. All she could think about was mounting the lance digging into her belly and she began a search to unveil it.
Apparently, her search was more frustrating than helpful.
Fayn pushed her hand aside and dug his manhood out himself.
Lori immediately struggled to shove her loincloth out of the way to climb on.
Fayn untied it.
Possibly because it was cutting off circulation to his cock.
Lori couldn’t have cared less. The moment she was free of it, she began ‘rooting’ for the joystick.
Fayn tightened his hold on her and guided his cock to the general vicinity of the mouth of her channel.
That was what it felt like, in any case, when he began battering to enter the cave.
There was a damn hole there somewhere, Lori thought irritably, fighting Fayn to find it first.
That was when she discovered he actually was engaged with the mouth. He just wasn’t making any progress beyond moving skin—hers.
She felt around, but she couldn’t feel anything in the way.
He was huge, of course, but there was plenty of stretch room ….
Logistically speaking, gravity should have helped. It didn’t, possibly because of the buoyancy of the water.
Which also caused problems instead of overcoming them.
Logically, one would expect water to act like a lubricant. Lori had always supposed it must even though she’d never actually tried it. But although that was true under certain circumstances, it failed in the one instance most important to them at that moment.
More than failed, because not only did it not make the connection easier, it diluted or eradicated the natural lubricant Lori produced in response to her desire for Fayne.
By the time they managed to break deadlock and fully connect Lori was so breathless with effort she felt downright faint.
If Fayn was similarly beleaguered, he managed to hide it. He’d barely managed to hit bottom when he began a jogging rhythm that quickly convinced Lori that leaving her mouth open to gasp for air probably wasn’t a well thought out plan. She bit her tongue painfully enough to completely distract her from Fayn’s efforts for a handful of seconds.
Fortunately, he was applying just the right pressure and friction on just the right spot, because as the seesaw of pain went down again, pleasure rose to new heights and Lori found herself teetering on the edge of take-off.
She tightened her grip, held her breath, and focused on the leap.
And she still almost missed the launch.
Fortunately, when Fayn began to shake and shudder with release it set her train in motion and she was able to reach orbit before he lost all muscle tone and ability to pump.
They slumped together for support and to exchange appreciative caresses and sighs.
Lori was actually a little surprised that Fayn was doing his share of caressing and sighing.
She shouldn’t have been, she realized.
He had demonstrated, many times, in the little while that she’d known him that he was kindhearted and thoughtful.
That took nothing from his ferocity as a warrior.
He was scary when he was in fighting mode.
She had been unnerved when he’d challenged Aidan even though she’d been, basically, stoned by Aidan’s kiss.
She lifted her head finally and looked at him questioningly.
He sighed. “Feel too good quit.”
Surprise flickered through Lori and then she chuckled. “I’m afraid we’ll have to … uh … disconnect.”
His eyes danced with suppressed laughter, but there was heat, too. He seemed about to make a suggestion, but then he abruptly lifted her away and settled her in the water. When he saw she was on her feet and still head and shoulders above the water, he let her go. But he frowned in mock anger. “No distrac. Muss work.”
Lori gaped at him indignantly, but he missed it, turning away and hoisting himself out of the pool.
He was laughing when he turned back to offer her a hand to help her out. “Float away.”
“What?” Lori was confused.
He pointed.
She gaped at her loincloth floating across the pool. “Oh my god!” she gasped in dismay, wondering how she was going to get it back.
Before she could fully grasp the dire situation of losing the only damn thing she had to cover her privates, Fayn dove into the pool. When he surfaced again it was just beneath her ‘cloth’. Snatching it up, he headed back and climbed out again.
It was good timing.
Lori managed to get it situated before several other males arrived at the pool.
Jarek was in the front and he looked totally pissed off.
Struggling with the urge to glance guiltily at Fayn, she looked away from Jarek, trying to think what she might be doing if she didn’t feel guilty. Thankfully, looking down freed her mind so that it functioned.
She was wet and chilled enough from the air that her legs looked splotchy and covered in goose bumps.
And she had a bad feeling that wasn’t just water trickling down her inner thigh.
The top and bottom, naturally enough, were beading water so that it added to the dripping and her hair—long enough by now to reach past her shoulders, was hanging in snarled clumps.
She debated, briefly, and decided there was no point in getting back into the pool and trying to get cleaner. That was just not happening without soap—a lot—and shampoo and gallons of conditioner.
She moved away from where the men were setting up for something, hoping to find something she could use to soak up some of the water. If nothing else, she thought moving around would help her dry faster.
She found some moss-like vegetation she thought she might use to help squeegee the water off even if it wouldn’t absorb and, hopeful it wasn’t poisonous, used it. It wasn’t absorbent—no surprise—but it did help remove the excess water and she settled on a flat-ish rock in the sun to use her fingers to detangle her hair the best she could.
It smelled like wet dog, she thought in dismay, but she supposed she was lucky it wasn’t worse considering she had nothing but water for bathing and she’d been bathing in stinky sulfur water before.
Just about the time she gave up on her grooming efforts, she heard the unmistakable sound of beating wings and glanced around in time to see Aidan clear the tree line and settle between her and the Hirachi men.
He was holding something big, roundish with a flat bottom and a bail for carrying.
There was a notable lag between sighting and identifying—mostly, s
he thought, because it was something she wasn’t particularly familiar with anyway and had certainly never expected to see on this alien world.
Feeling her heart pumping with excitement as if it was an unimaginable treasure—which it was—she hopped to her feet and rushed over for a closer look.
“Oh my god! It’s a ….” She glanced at Aidan hesitantly. “Is it a cooking pot?”
He grinned at her abruptly—not like a parent approving a mentally deficient child—which she honestly felt like at that moment—but a triumphant sort of grin of achievement.
She found herself grinning back at him like an idiot, feeling almost as if she’d been clobbered by something that had stunned her stupid.
Because he was just plain magnificent all the time and when he smiled—stunning.
“Someone will miss dat,” Jarek said almost directly behind her.
Aidan’s smile faded. He studied Jarek for a long moment. “It is not as if they are not well aware that we are here.”
Jarek frowned when Lori moved to one side, but immediately returned his attention to Aidan. “You are certain dey know dere were survivors? And yet dere has been no search.”
Aidan’s black brows rose almost to his hairline. “I do not know how you arrived at that conclusion. There have certainly been some searches—enough that they know very well that there were many who came out of the lake and onto the shore.” He shrugged. “They are busy trying to repair their ship. I am certain they know we will be here when they are ready to pick us up.”
Jarek nodded a little absently. “Dat sounds like de Sheloni. I am certain you are right. We will need to be ready when dey come for us.”
Aidan shrugged. “Or we could take the fight to them.”
Jarek stared at him for a long moment. “Or we could take de fight to dem,” he agreed.
Chapter Sixteen
The men unrolled the hides they’d brought with them from their kill the day before and very carefully scraped every bit of flesh from the skin. The pot most definitely came in handy. They tossed all of the tidbits of meat into it, filled it with water, and built a fire under it so that the smell of cooked meat began to fill the air appetizingly.
While the ‘stew’ cooked, the men continued to work on the pelts, but Lori noticed several paused and went into the woods and came back out with roots/tubers and such.
She finally got up and followed one.
Naturally enough, that one had gone off to take a piss.
She beat such a hasty retreat she slammed into Fayn hard enough to make him take a step back and would have bounced backward and onto the ground if he hadn’t caught her in rebound.
She was embarrassed.
“What doin’?”
“I thought I’d help get food, but I don’t know what we can eat,” she confessed uncomfortably.
He looked torn between amusement and disgust. “Us neider. Test.”
“Uh oh,” Lori murmured in dismay, her heart sinking at the thought that the stew might not be fit for consumption.
He shook his head at her. Catching her arm, he led her deeper into the woods. They found an area where it was obvious someone or something had been digging. Fayn crouched and pulled her down for a closer look. Then he showed her that the holes had actually been dug by something with fairly long claws. “Some ting eat here.”
She nodded, feeling a touch of excitement.
If an animal had been feeding here then the plants must be edible.
He moved to several plants close by and unearthed them. When he’d studied it over, he brushed the dirt off and lifted it to his nose to smell it.
Lori couldn’t honestly say she could smell a damn thing besides dirt, but she realized he was smelling it to see if it smelled of any poisonous chemicals.
It was a damned shame humans had evolved so damned far they couldn’t trust their noses anymore!
He broke it open and allowed her to smell it again.
That time, she smelled the scents of the plant.
It reminded her of something, but she couldn’t place it.
Digging up another, he cleaned it off, broke it open and stuck the tip of his tongue to it.
Lori looked at him questioningly.
“No taste poison.”
That comment sent a wave of cold over her, fixing it firmly in her mind that she was on a mission that could be deadly if she wasn’t very, very careful.
She nodded, wondering how the hell she would know if she found poison, but it was enough for the moment to have something to add to the pot. She helped him gather what they could find and they returned to the clearing where everyone was either still working or had settled to wait on food.
When they’d cleaned the roots in the pool, they broke the tops off and broke the roots into pieces before tossing them in.
More to distract herself from her rumbling belly than from any serious interest, Lori wandered a little aimlessly from one skin to the next, studying them, wondering what the plan was for them. Clearly, there was a plan. They’d gone to a lot of effort to prepare the skins for something.
“What was that stuff that you rubbed into the skins?” she asked one of the Hirachi men when she looked up from studying one and saw that he was looking at her—or at least looking towards her.
He frowned, shrugged, and turned the others around him, speaking in the Hirachi tongue. What sounded like a heated discussion followed—not that she could see anything in their body language to suggest anger, but it was certainly a vigorous conversation.
Aidan sauntered up in the middle of it. “Come. I will show you,” he offered, lifting a hand toward her.
Lori tensed instantly.
There was nothing about his tone, gesture, or body language to suggest he meant anything except exactly what he’d offered. There weren’t, unfortunately, any sexual or flirtatious overtones, and she didn’t think he had ‘evil’ designs on her.
But, for her part, she was instantly aware of the suggestion of being alone and her mind filled with tantalizing images it shouldn’t have.
The hesitation wasn’t even that well thought out. It was instinct/habit from a life she didn’t have any more. A life where any woman with any life experience and or understanding of the human male animal hesitated and considered the situation carefully before she agreed to an action that could potentially be dangerous for her.
It struck her as ridiculous the moment she realized why she’d hesitated, though.
She’d been sitting in the midst of a dozen or more alien male warriors for a good hour and hadn’t felt any threat or any sense of danger the entire time.
She was certainly in no more danger with Aidan.
He’d flown off with her, after all. He could have taken her anywhere or done anything and there wouldn’t have been anyone to stop him.
Unfortunately, she hesitated just long enough for him to notice she had to think it over before she took him up on the offer. So, even though she did approach him, he had already allowed his hand to drop.
She was uncomfortably aware of that and disappointed in a way she was sure she shouldn’t have been.
On the other hand, she told herself, this man was such dynamite it was hard to believe he had ever suffered a moment’s doubt regarding his appeal to the female of his own species considering the effect he had on her. And it never hurt for a male to have some uncertainties.
A woman that was a sure thing rarely got any respect from a human male. That was certain and probably true of the alien males, too, regardless of, no doubt, the vast difference in their cultures.
Because the male was the ultimate predator.
It was in his blood and his dna.
It wasn’t mankind as most people thought of it that was the apex predator.
It was man.
The female of the species had never been in the running.
She dismissed it with the reflection that these males had earned trust—all of them—and focused on her footing as he led her over th
e rocks as Fayn had earlier, bringing that episode warmly to mind.
She resisted the urge to look back to see if Fayn, or Jarek, for that matter, had noticed and what their reaction might be.
She was liable to find herself in the pool again, she thought uneasily, if she allowed herself to be distracted, for the footing was treacherous at best.
It got worse when they began to climb.
Lori stopped, fairly certain she had no desire to climb up the side of the mountain, even if he had no mind to go far. The rocks were damp from the water cascading from a crevice above them and she had no doubt they were slippery.
He paused and turned to offer his hand again.
She looked at his hand and met his gaze. “I don’t think I can climb up there.”
“I will not allow you fall.”
Amusement flickered through her. “How are you going to prevent that?”
He opened his wings just enough to flutter them at her.
She felt her face redden. “Oh.”
She still felt reluctant, but she took his hand and allowed him to pull her up.
She was dismayed when she finally realized that his goal seemed to be the very spot where the water was rushing out of the rocks, but she discovered that there was a small ledge protruding from the wall beside it that was dry. Aidan put his back to the wall and braced himself and then grasped her waist and swung her in a small arc, depositing her on the other side of the wall he was leaning against.
It wasn’t a cave, she discovered with a good bit of surprise. It was dark because the mountain was simply cracked, top to bottom, leaning almost together at the top and blocking out most of the light. Moreover, it was not a shallow indentation in the rock. Once she was inside, she could see the crevice stretched out for what seemed a mile at the very minimum.
Aidan moved inside and headed toward a wall maybe three yards in. Taking a knife (no doubt more booty from the raid that had netted the cooking pot) from the waistband of his loincloth, he began to dig at the stone wall, finally breaking a chunk loose. Confused but curious, Lori approached him. “What is it?”
Alien Enslaved IV: Spoils of War Page 13
