by Cara Bristol
Lies.
Omra had reached the pinnacle of satisfaction under his mouth, his hand, his manhood. Her response had been so much more than he’d hoped for, which had been to mitigate her discomfort. Her cries of rapture, her writhing body, had excited him beyond all experience or hope, and he’d almost lost control. To surge inside her welcoming channel? Unparalleled ecstasy. He had succumbed quickly.
So had she. She’d ascended bliss even faster the second time.
Lies.
And if Protocol had fabricated untruths about a female’s inability to enjoy mating, what other falsehoods might it have promulgated?
From Omra’s mouth, Dak trailed his lips to her neck to nuzzle her flesh. Softness, everywhere he touched. He licked the juncture of her shoulder, kissed his way across her collarbone to the other side. She rolled her head to accommodate him and settled her hands on his shoulders. Her nipples poked at his chest, hard like fruit stones, begging for his mouth. Something else he’d never imagined himself doing—sucking a teat. But the feeling of Omra’s nipple in his mouth, hardening on his tongue, her whimpers…
How the mighty had fallen. He’d been taken down by a mere female. From conversation, he’d discerned Terran males revered the female body. And he’d seen videos of men sucking a female’s breasts. They seemed to prefer large ones. He’d never expected the desire to suckle like a babe would arise in him. But it had. He’d violated so many proscriptions…
The skin of his neck tingled when Omra threaded her fingers though the hair at the base of his skull. It was as if the individual hair strands were energized, sending jolts of pleasure through his body. Her breasts swelled against his chest as she inhaled, and her whisperfly touch stilled.
“Dak?”
His name, uttered in her throaty voice, sounded sweeter than her honeyed pastries. No one, save Corren in private, called him by name anymore. The man called Dak had vanished with the completion of military training. He’d surrendered his right to fulfill his personal needs when he’d assumed command of his people. Even securing a breeder had been mandated by his position. Dak did not exist. He was only Alpha.
“Yes, Omra?” He savored the vibration of her name; it hummed like a mantra on his lips. She calmed him—when she wasn’t causing claws of lust to rake his body until he thought he’d go insane. He could not resist the lure of her nipple any longer. He dipped his head in search of it.
“May I touch you?” She spoke before he could latch on. He froze. Her innocent question ignited a stream of salacious, perverse ideas. He almost groaned.
“You are touching me,” he said thickly. He raised his head.
She flushed. “I mean—” She licked her lips and dropped her gaze, sweeping it over his body. “More.”
Heat blazed in his groin. “You may touch me wherever you like.” He picked up her hand, kissed her fingers.
Though he’d given her carte blanche, his eyes widened when she pushed at his chest. “Lie back,” she commanded boldly, although pink had deepened to rose on her face. Bemused, he rolled onto his back. She sat up.
“Am I permitted to respond in kind?” he asked, hoping to learn the rules of this new game. Envisioning her hands on his body caused him to ache with lust. Her breasts were so close, her nipples so red and hard. The sight of his insignia, his mark, his claim dangling from her right one, pleased him in a primitive, sexual way. She was his. No one would take her from him as long he was alive.
“You may touch me too.” She paused, ducked her head, and peered at him through her lashes. “I give you permission.” Probably no female since Protocol had been implemented had spoken those words to a male.
All further contemplation of the significance incinerated when she scraped her thumbnail over his nipple. Monto. The sharp sensation shot straight to his erection.
“Your nipples get hard too,” she commented.
His mouth quirked. “Are you conducting an examination?” He recalled his inspection of her at the BCF, the discovery of the lock-ring. Her purity, so important to him at the time, scarcely mattered at all now. What did was that she belonged to him. Her beauty, her breasts, her smiles, her sex, her pleasure. Especially her sex and her pleasure. If she hadn’t already been fitted with a lock-ring, he would have had her pierced. He had been fooling himself to think he could ever share her with another.
“Maybe.” She ducked her head.
“Careful. I might bite,” he teased.
“You would remind me.” She blushed. He grinned. After she’d nearly taken off his finger, he’d reddened her buttocks to the color that tinted her face now.
Omra toyed with his insignia, causing little zings to tingle in his groin. He considered himself a man of controlled passions, ruled by strategy and logic, but around her, his lower head overruled his brain. She glanced at his face, and a teasing smile curved her lips.
“Do I get to spank you if you bite?”
“No,” he said. In an eve, the gap between their positions had narrowed, but he was still Alpha and she was still female. He tugged gently on her nipple ring. She parted her lips, revealing she felt the sensation down low, just as he did. The insignia he wore revealed to others his status; hers revealed she belonged to him. He took his responsibility seriously. He would do anything to protect her.
“You will have more freedom than most females, but you must obey my orders or face consequences. I promise I will never beat you, but I will discipline you to ensure your safety.” If he sounded stiff and stern, he needed to compensate for the tenderness that urged leniency.
“Yes, Alpha,” she said.
For once he thanked his rank that assured her unquestioning compliance. He could not bear it if anything happened to her. He tugged again on the insignia that marked her as his for all to see and then released it.
She bent her head, and her hair feathered across his chest and abdomen, his erection. She licked his nipple, and a spike of hot desire jabbed at him. Hard muscles clenched tighter when she rained kisses over his abdomen. Her warm breath teased the weeping head of his cock, and his respiration stopped.
She traced the ridge surrounding the exposed glans with a fingertip. “Your manhood is not cloaked.”
“The foreskin was removed during the ceremony when I became Commander.” Only Alphas were circumcised to set them apart from other men.
“Wasn’t it painful?” She smoothed her thumb over the sensitive glans, swirled in the pre-ejaculate. Pleasure shuddered through him.
He lifted a shoulder in a desultory shrug. “Pain matters not.” He and his brother had experienced the rite together. Dak had stood at attention, gaze straight ahead, and uttered not a sound as the skin was sliced off. His brother had crumpled to the ground, rendered unconscious by pain. Their sire’s power had mitigated the consequences of the display of weakness, although his influence had not been enough to grant his favored son what he coveted—the fifth province of Parseon, the one containing the large telenium deposits, the wealthiest of all the regions. That had been bestowed upon Dak.
Omra trailed her fingers along the length of his shaft. Her hand was so tiny; her fingers could not meet around it. But when she fisted his erection and pumped, heat curled. His testicles ached. Perhaps pain did matter. He covered her hand with his, urged her to grip tighter, slide faster. In tandem they stroked. She learned quickly what he liked. He could have released her, except their shared experience opened, and then filled, a yearning. She provided the answer to the question he hadn’t known until now he’d been asking. She furrowed her brow, and a tiny flash of white appeared as she bit her lip in concentration while she worked his shaft under his guidance. Her expression looked so serious; he would have laughed except for the keenness of his need.
Her breasts swayed and bounced with the movement, grace in itself, so he did release her to fondle a rounded mound. He supposed nature might have crafted her breasts to better fit in his hands, but he rather liked the way she overflowed his palms. Such abundance. And certain
ly nature had gotten the pillowy softness exactly right. Such a delightful contrast to the perfection of her nipples, red like ripe berries, hard like fruit stones.
Hair dusting his groin provided the only warning before she swooped down and engulfed his cockhead. He jerked and groaned at the explosion of pleasure. “Omra, monto…” he swore and wrapped his hands in her hair to pull her away lest she prove his undoing. But he found himself thrusting into her mouth instead, urging her to take more.
What she lacked in technical skill, she more than compensated for with enthusiasm. Her mouth was hot, wet, slick. Her cheeks hollowed as she sucked, and wetness ran down her chin. He could so easily succumb, but he wanted her to climb the heights with him, wanted her cries of ecstasy to play in his ears when he did surrender to the pleasure.
He wiggled a hand between her thighs, and she parted them to grant access. Except the angle required to massage her pearl twisted his wrist at an awkward angle. He desired more than to touch, anyway. He hungered to lose himself in her wetness. If only he could taste her while she sucked on him.
Maybe…
“Stretch out.” He prodded her thigh.
She popped his manhood out of her mouth, and he rolled to his side and turned her onto hers. He guided his manhood to her lips. He loved the vision of her mouth opening to receive his erection. Loved even more the satisfaction shining on her face.
She widened her eyes when he parted her thighs. He almost chuckled at her shocked understanding, but how could he laugh when the treasures of her flesh lay before him, folds swollen to plumpness, the pearl of her pleasure engorged, all of her wet pinkness ready for him. With a groan, he buried his face. She jerked and whimpered as he lashed at the nub, curled his tongue into her channel.
With desire raking over his body, he brought her to the pinnacle, growling with satisfaction as she convulsed in his arms, her cries muted to whimpers by his manhood lodged in her throat.
He continued to lick even though her passion receded. Moans of rapture turned to squeaks of protest, and she tried to writhe out his grasp. When that failed to deter him, she clamped her thighs against his ears as if to crush him like he was a hard-shelled acca nut.
He did laugh then and, using the flat of his hand, brought it down on her buttock to quell her resistance. She gasped, the sound tempered by his shaft, and he smacked the other cheek.
She stopped fellating him.
“Do not halt.” He delivered a hard swat.
She resumed fervent sucking, and he applied himself to her swollen clit, sucking just as earnestly, and to her plump buttocks, spanking with a controlled hand, because he could tell from the tenor of her moans it brought her pleasure rather than pain. Her muted cries, his low groans, the sibilant slurps, the crack of flesh against flesh harmonized to create music out of cacophony.
Her tangy taste mingled with her enticing scent, a whisper of musk tinted by his own smell, drove him mad by its tease. No mattered how he licked, sucked, he could not get enough of her. He rubbed his mouth, his jaw in her wetness.
Her thighs tensed around his head, and her squeals became more frantic, as did his desire. A ring of fire coiled in his belly. Pressure swelled beyond his ability to contain it, and he ejaculated, spewing his seed deep into her throat. She shuddered, moaning as a climax rocked her body.
Chapter Nine
Several paces ahead of her, Dak whipped around. “You are staring,” he accused.
At the affront in his tone, Omra smiled with amusement. Though he was Alpha to the core, at times an adorable boyishness slipped through his defenses and revealed itself. She gestured with her arm. “The Market is busy today. Perhaps I did not wish to lose sight of you in the crowd,” she prevaricated.
Vendors, betas most of them, barked out announcements of their wares—fish and fowl, metal works, potions and lotions, fabrics imported from other provinces and beyond—while females scurried about, removing animal waste, cleaning stalls, hauling jugs of water and ale.
Though the Market bustled with more people than usual, she did not worry they would get separated. Dak stood taller than any male. And as soon as people spotted his insignia, they peeled away to allow him to pass. He displaced the crowd like a boat moving through water, leaving a wake of whispers.
“That’s Alpha!”
“The Commander has come to Market!”
And even, “He is with a breeder.”
But she had been gawking. How could she not admire the breadth of his shoulders, the length of his legs, the tightness of his buttocks? And the way he moved, so confident and sure, a rolling gait of power and grace. Though he had taken her twice that morning, caused her body to writhe in delicious agony both times, she was wet again. A frequent state in his company. She had concluded that the production of moisture was normal and had ceased becoming embarrassed by it. The fact that Dak seemed to enjoy making her wet had a lot to do with her acceptance, she had to admit.
“How do you know I was staring? Do you have eyes in the back of your head?” she teased.
“I wish I did.” His expression serious, he did not rise to the jest. “Stay close to me.” For a moment his eyes blazed with fire before he banked the flame, but then he continued down the aisle lined by tented vendor stalls. Even Alpha—especially not Alpha—could not bestow a female with the status of striding as a peer by his side. She’d noted the first time they’d come to Market several weeks ago that females accompanied betas, but none were with alphas.
She followed him, conscious of the scrutiny of gawkers and her body’s arousal heightening with every step. Dak’s insignia tugged at her puckered nipple. The morn still bore the night’s chill, so she knew people would assume her body’s response resulted from the cold. Her shift prevented them from viewing the other taut peak, rendered red, even harder and more hypersensitive by Dak’s greedy mouth. He’d sucked both her nipples, but the one without the insignia garnered the most attention because he could better latch on. The tease of the fabric across the bud was a torment in itself.
As was the slide of her shift across her buttocks. He’d spanked those red and sensitive too with the flat of his hand vigorously applied. She’d never imagined being struck could kindle such erotic longing, where pain and pleasure bonded, where excitement and tranquility fused. He warned often of the imperative for caution, but clasped over his muscular thighs as he heated her naked bottom, she’d never felt as safe as she did in those moments. And so very aware of his superior strength moderated for her tolerance. With his bare hands, he could have snapped her in two if he so wished. But he wielded self-control as strong as his brawn and might. Though spanking her never failed to harden his manhood. For that alone, she would dive over his lap with alacrity. In her submission, she held sway over him. It was a heady feeling to command such power.
She understood why she enjoyed the spankings and was fairly certain why he did. Some emotion akin to her own compelled him to establish a physical claim. Proof of her theory lay in the way he frequently toyed with her nipple insignia, but most of all in his possessive expression when he removed his lock-ring and refastened it after staking ownership in the most primal manner possible.
“Mine,” he’d muttered that very morning as he’d reattached it.
She wore both tags with pleasure and pride. She was his. His lock-ring swung and tugged the swollen lips of her sex as she trod behind him through the marketplace. His. His. His. Much heavier and larger than her sire’s ring had been, it reminded her that she belonged to him, evoked memories of the sharp pleasures his mastery wrought within her, stirred desires for more. He owned her, by Protocol and by heart.
She’d unearthed a secreted stash of Terran literature and had pored over tales of love, of males and females united by a deep emotional bond. The Parseon tongue had no word to describe her feelings for Dak, but the Terran language did. Love. She rolled the word in her mouth, savoring its sound. During the lonely hours when his command called him away, she whispered to herself what sh
e could not share with him.
I love you, Dak.
Love was not one of the Terran words he’d taught her, and she had waited too long to confess her crime of literacy now. She could not divulge his library drew her like a whisperfly to a flame, and she had visited the room of tomes time and time again. She read to fill her mind the way a starving man ate to sustain his life. In her search for wisdom and truth, she had stumbled across the Terran books, discovered the poetry that described her sentiments.
Dak did not teach her the word for love, but he’d demonstrated the concept with every touch, every lick, every stroke, every burning glance, his yearning expression when he thought her preoccupied. And by the other secret Terran words he had divulged, the heresies he bade her never to utter in public: fucking, pussy, cunt, cock. Exotic, decadent syllables. Each one a murmured passcode capable of unleashing a molten need. Or maybe it was the way he said them, his hoarse voice vibrating though her. I want to eat your pussy. Suck my cock, Omra. Fuck me.
He checked on her, and she knew immediately her face revealed her desire. His gaze sizzled, and she could have sworn a growl erupted from his throat. “Monto. Do not look at me like that.” The line blurred between command and entreaty.
“How am I looking at you, Commander?” She cocked her head, an innocent enjoying her moment of power.
In a flash he closed the distance to tower over her. Had he glowered so fiercely when he first had bought her, he would have scared her to death. But not now. “Like you are inviting me to drag you into a vacant vendor stall”—he scanned the alley and lowered his voice for her ears only—“and fuck you every which way until the next Market day.”
She peered through her lashes. “Are there vacant stalls available?”
He reared back his head but shuttered his expression. “Come.” He pivoted and stalked through the Market.
The cries of sellers, of buyers haggling, of male voices rumbling in banter and argument, of bells clanging, of animals braying, faded to a drone as Omra jogged after him. The lock-ring swung between her legs, its heaviness pulling on her swollen, achy sex, causing the nub at the top to throb. He zigzagged through the maze of stalls, confusing her sense of direction. She trained her gaze on his back, fearful now she would lose him.
