by Emma Castle
“Thank you. That’s an excellent idea.” Sef was already making plans on how he would seduce his little human.
7
Sef worked the remainder of his three hour shift, collecting his tips, which, from the look on Jessie’s face, was considered an impressive haul. He had no need for the money, so what wasn’t used during his mission would be donated to a human charity. As soon as Katie arrived to take over the late shift that started at eight, he returned to his apartment and found a message on his communications system from Arus confirming Sef’s plan to monitor the meeting tonight.
He retrieved the fabricator from the vent by the front door and screwed the vent cover back on before he headed up to the roof. It was dark, but the sky was clear. The stargazing tonight would be incredible. Jessie was right. The roof would be romantic, and he was going to make it even better.
Working quickly, Sef used the fabricator to form two comfortable lawn chairs with plush cushions and a fire pit. Then he made several strings of light and hung them from some poles left behind by a construction crew. He positioned the chairs close to the fire pit and made plaid throw blankets for them.
With a satisfied look around, he returned to his apartment to shower and change. Then he cooked a meal and carried it upstairs to the roof in covered dishes. Now it was time to retrieve his female.
His heart was beating a little faster than usual as he knocked on Harper’s door.
“Just a sec!”
A moment later the door was flung wide, and his heart leaped into his throat at the sight of her. She wore a soft dark-green dress that stopped just above her knees and tan cork wedge sandals that made her a few inches taller, though still much shorter than him. Her strawberry-blonde hair was down around her shoulders in luscious waves and soft curls. She even wore a bit of makeup. Not that she needed any, but her smoky eyes seemed more mysterious now, with hints of shadow around them. She wore a gold locket around her neck that rested against her collarbone. For some reason, glimpsing the gold trinket against her pale-gold skin made him thirsty to sink his teeth into her skin and taste her.
“Do I look okay?” Harper reached out to touch her hair, her face reddening.
“You look exquisite.” His voice came out a little hoarse.
“Thanks.” Her breathless reply made him think back to that morning in her office and the way she had moaned and begged him for pleasure in that same breathless way.
“Dinner is up on the roof,” he said. Her brows lifted.
“The roof?”
“Yeah, come on.” He held out his hand and felt a rush of triumph when she placed her hand in his.
They climbed the stairs, and he opened the door that led to the roof and stepped aside for her to walk out ahead of him. Strings of lights illuminated the roof. The fire in the pit was already crackling merrily.
“Oh my…” Harper walked over to the chairs and stroked the thick woolen blankets. “This is incredible.” She spun around, her green skirt flaring a little to reveal a tantalizing glimpse of her thighs. Sef almost lost himself for a moment.
“You like it?”
Her head bobbed, sending her hair in a cascade of color around her face. “It’s wonderful.”
He pointed at the chairs. “Have a seat.”
When she was sitting down, he retrieved a covered plate and passed her a glass of wine. She removed the cover, and her eyes gleamed.
“Real cheese?”
“Yeah, and this.” He handed her a bowl and removed the covering. “Tomato bisque.”
He’d tried to go above and beyond, using a blend of expensive cheddars and pepper jack on the grilled cheese. The bisque had a dollop of sour cream and dill on top, spiced lightly with oregano.
“Who told you?” Her face turned to his as he sat down in the chair beside her with his own plate and bowl.
“Jessie. She didn’t want me to screw this up.” He chuckled and waited for her to take a bite. She sampled the sandwich, then the soup, and let out a heavenly sigh.
“Wow…that’s good. No Kraft cheese single slices in this, huh?” she teased.
“Only the best for you. I found a grocery store a few blocks away that has a good cheese selection.”
Harper started to giggle, and Sef started to laugh himself. Her joy was infectious. “What?”
“I just can’t picture you cheese shopping.” She tried to take another bite but kept laughing, as did he.
“You’re killing me.” He had to stop her from laughing, or they would never eat.
“So Jessie betrayed the girl code.” Harper shook her head, still smiling as she resumed eating.
“Girl code?” Sef wasn’t sure what to make of that.
“Yeah, you know, girls have a code. You don’t date each other’s exes, and you don’t tell boys stuff about your friend if it’s secret. It’s an honor thing.”
“And Jessie broke this code of yours? Grilled cheese is a secret?”
“No, not really. I was kidding.” She leaned back in her chair and finished the last of her sandwich before starting in on the soup.
He liked that she wasn’t afraid to eat in front of him. A healthy appetite was a good thing. Females were never meant to eat low-calorie foods all the time, despite what Earth advertising said to the contrary.
“This is really nice,” she said. Her eyes moved shyly to his face and then darted away again.
He gestured to the food. “Jessie said your parents liked to make this?”
“It was my mom’s specialty. She had this old griddle, and she knew just how much to butter the bread, and she always used white bread. It’s terrible for you, super processed, but it tastes amazing. She always knew when to make it for me or my brothers. And Dad would rope us into playing a board game after dinner. Even when Liam and Mason got older, they still played board games.” She paused, and he swore he could feel her pain emanating from her. When she spoke again, her voice was softer and a little rough with emotion. “We haven’t played any games in a long time.” She seemed to brace herself for whatever she planned to say next, and he waited patiently.
“I think we’ve all closed off part of ourselves since K-Day,” she said. “We all changed. Grief has a funny way of driving people together or wedging them apart. Losing Mom and Dad drove us apart. I know Liam and Mason are closer to each other, but that’s because…” Her words trailed off into tense silence.
“Because?” He didn’t expect her to answer, but he knew where she was going with this.
“Their hatred toward the Ks binds them together,” she finally confessed.
“But not you?” He wondered how she’d respond to that.
“No. I don’t hate the Ks. They aren’t evil.” That came as a relief. Sef took a sip of wine. “They’re just bossy.”
He almost choked. “Bossy?”
“Yeah. Sure, they seem nice and all, but they came here and started ordering us around, telling us it was for our own good. They don’t share their tech, they tell us what to eat, tell us how to live…straight up bossy.”
“But they let most humans, I mean, us, live our own lives.”
That was mostly true. His people had only really controlled human activity when they’d stopped the meat industry, banned coal production, encouraged solar and wind power, and found safe ways to dispose of nuclear waste.
“But I hear things, you know? This talk of X-clubs. Outside the K Centers in the big cities.”
“What do you know of these X-clubs?” He kept his tone mildly curious. He was well aware that humans had a distorted view of the clubs. Rumors grew legs quickly.
“Well, first off there’s what you hear on the news. They’re sex clubs where Krinar have sex with humans, and I heard they drink our blood too.”
Sef restrained himself from licking his lips, remembering her blood on his tongue, how good she was. She didn’t even remember that—she’d been too lost in pleasure. But she would someday, once she was his charl and he could talk to her honestly about i
t. He’d taken care not to drink too much, just enough to send her into a sexual high so she could relax and allow him to enter her without pain.
“I heard that sex with a K is intense,” he said. He watched her take a large gulp of her wine. He feared he’d said too much because of the sudden gleam in her eyes.
“Sex with you is intense,” she murmured, and her eyes flashed up so their gazes locked.
He nodded at her soup, hoping to distract her. “Finish your dinner.” The last thing he needed was her figuring out he was an alien.
Harper grinned. She took two more spoonfuls and set her bowl aside.
“I thought perhaps we’d enjoy some wine by the fire.” He put his dishes down and scooted his chair to align with hers so they touched end to end. She came closer, and it all felt too easy, too right to wrap one arm around her waist and pull her close to him. She shivered a little, and he reached up to wrap the blankets around them.
She snuggled into him and rested her head on his shoulder. He was quiet a long moment before pointing toward the sky.
“You see that constellation?”
“The Little Dipper?” Her hair tickled his throat in the faintest breeze. He could smell the sweet jasmine scent of her shampoo clinging to each strand like the lingering kiss of a delightful dream.
“Yes, that’s the one.” The Krinar had another name for it, the Flag Bearer, because it looked like an arm holding a flag. Of course, the star patterns looked different from Krina as compared to Earth, but he felt connected to Harper simply by looking upon the stars together. He nuzzled the crown of her hair before pressing his lips to it. “My mother loves that one more than the others.” Holding her like this felt incredible. There was a soft, fuzzy feeling in his chest that he’d never experienced before. It was a little frightening, but he knew he wasn’t sick. So what exactly was this strange emotion? For the first time in his long life, he wondered if he might be falling in love. If he was, it was a terrible and wonderful thing.
“Oh? Why’s that?” She raised her head, pressing a soft kiss to his jaw that made his heart ache in a deep way that scared him.
“She says it looks like a ladle, which reminds her of feeding me and my brother when we were young because we had such huge appetites growing up.”
“You have a brother? I didn’t know that.”
“We’ve only known each other for two days,” he said with a chuckle. “But yes, I have a brother…Sam.” He couldn’t say the name Soren—everyone knew the ambassador by name. It would be too much of a risk.
“Older or younger?”
“We’re twins, though I’m older by three minutes.”
“Are you close?” Harper placed a hand on his chest just above his heart, and his heart beat faster in response.
“We were. Now, not so much. He was reckless when we were younger, always adventurous. He got lost for several months exploring a forest. We feared the worst. When we found him again, I was so relieved, but things had changed.”
The full truth was that Soren had been exploring a distant world and had been captured by an alien race, and he’d been held hostage for three hundred years. When Soren had finally escaped and come home, he’d been quieter and yet angrier, a shadow of a long-endured pain in his eyes that haunted him still. And Sef had been helpless to save him or to heal him. Sef had become a guardian so that he could protect his people, especially from alien races.
“That’s so sad,” Harper said.
Sef smiled. “Things are better now, though not quite what they once were.”
“You will find your way back to him. True bonds with siblings are unbreakable.” Her fingers on his chest began to play with the fabric of his dark-blue button-up shirt. She unfastened the top two buttons and slid her fingers underneath to touch his skin.
That simple connection made him burn with desire, as well as something softer and sweeter than he’d ever felt in his life. Guilt ate at him about concealing who he really was, but there was no other way. He couldn’t tell her because she would warn her brothers. He would do the same in her position. Family came first. Yet…now that he was going to claim Harper as his charl, he had this strange compulsion to put her first, even over his twin if it ever came to that. And that was the scariest thing of all. His brother’s wild, irrational behavior toward his charl, Bianca, made so much more sense.
“Where do your parents live?” she asked. “Do you visit them often?”
“They live in Boulder. I don’t get to see them as often as I’d like.” That was yet another lie. His parents were still on Krina, his home world. He hadn’t been back there since the K-Day invasion of Earth.
“You shouldn’t wait. I would give anything to see my parents again. You should visit them soon.” She continued to stroke his chest, and he cradled her head as he gently claimed her mouth.
This woman was a drug to him, affecting him in a way no other had. He explored the shape of her mouth, and she parted her lips for him. Sef took his time kissing her, letting himself give in to every caress, every sweet side, every purr of pleasure as fully as he could as he cuddled her closer.
“Want to take this inside?” she asked when they took a moment to breathe.
“Why not beneath the stars?” He brushed his lips back and forth teasingly over hers after he suggested it.
“Someone might see us.”
“None of the other buildings nearby are tall enough. You’ll be safe from all but the cosmos above,” he promised her.
She smiled and leaned over to straddle him. The blanket fell away as she rubbed herself against him. He groaned as he grew painfully hard beneath his jeans. She laughed softly as he hiked her dress up over her hips and ripped her panties off.
“You owe me some underwear,” she teased.
“I suppose I do,” he growled as he unzipped his jeans and shifted her over him.
They shared a look that was full of heat and hunger but also something more. Then he thrust into her welcoming heat. She was so small and tight, he couldn’t imagine how he’d ever fit into her, now or the other times he’d been with her.
“Ahh!” she hissed, arching her back a little as she tried to take him deeper.
“Relax, Queenie,” he breathed as he worked himself deeper inside her.
She did as he said and let gravity pull her down. He sank another few inches deeper, and they both shared a moan before he kissed her again. The whole experience was exciting, extending beyond their bodies. He held her hips tight, afraid to let go as she spiraled in ecstasy above him, building to a shattering climax. He followed her seconds later, a release so deep and satisfying that for the first time that he could remember his mind blanked. It simply cleared of all thoughts. It was the most peaceful thing he’d ever experienced. No worries, no strategies, no deceptions. He was himself, cocooned by tranquility. Harper collapsed against him, her body trembling.
“It’s okay,” he murmured. “It’s okay.”
He wasn’t sure why he felt the need to reassure her. Perhaps he needed to reassure himself about the connection that continued to build between them. It took a long while for Sef to come back to himself. He was torn between a myriad of sensations in the aftermath of their pleasure. The weight of her body on his, the cool night air dancing upon his skin, the distant noise of King’s Bar in full swing, and the ever-present press of time as he finally had to face reality.
He couldn’t stay here with her forever, no matter how much he wanted to. This moment was one of stolen happiness, and it was all he would have with her before he had to leave, taking her brothers with him. And he’d lose her forever if she couldn’t accept his true identity as a Krinar.
“Thank you, Seth,” she whispered against his chest. “Thank you for helping me open up my heart again.”
It was the only thing she could have said that could make him regret everything that was about to happen.
But he couldn’t stop what had to be done.
8
Sef carried Harper b
ack to her apartment and helped her change into her pajamas. She was so sleepy that she let him strip her naked and put her into her panties and an oversized T-shirt. Then he tucked her into bed and crawled in beside her. These might be the last few hours he would have to get to hold her before he betrayed her, the only female who had ever truly given him peace. If her brothers decided to act tonight, he would have to call in reinforcements, but it was far more likely that tonight’s meeting would simply be that, just a meeting, in which case he could stay here a little longer before he had to reveal the truth to Harper.
Guilt knotted inside him, and his limbs quivered with flashes of anxiety. The only time he had felt this sick before had been when his brother had vanished off world. Three centuries he’d been told to believe his twin was dead when he was certain that he felt Soren’s bond still linking them. It had been a torture he’d thought he would never experience again. Yet now he was caught in that same familiar grip of guilt and fear. He had something to lose now, something that meant more to him than his own life. When he took Harper’s brothers into custody and revealed himself to be the enemy, she would hate him.
I have to protect my people. Her brothers are a threat to the peaceful relations we’ve worked so hard to establish between the Krinar and humans.
And it wasn’t as if he could have another guardian make the capture either. He would still have to reveal himself at some point as being a Krinar. He couldn’t live this human life forever, no matter how tempting Harper might be.
He lay awake, his eyes boring holes into the ceiling. An hour before the resistance meeting, he slipped out of Harper’s bed and went up to his apartment. He notified Arus that he was going to monitor the resistance meeting.
At ten minutes until four a.m., the cameras picked up the King brothers allowing a number of men and women to enter the darkened bar and head toward the storeroom. Sef changed the view so he could see both the bar and storeroom interior, and he tuned in to their conversations.
“Thanks for coming on such short notice, everyone,” Liam began. Mason stood behind him, arms folded across his chest, his expression somber like Liam’s.
