by Bertina Mars
With hands shaking, Mira slid her hands beneath his. She didn’t know if she was imagining it or if Arzak’s hands seemed warmer than usual. When she looked down, she could see that there was still a strange glow about them now. They looked warmer, and they were encompassing her. Arzak squeezed her breast beneath both of their holds.
And just like that, it started again. Though she had her taste of Zethrada’vass, Arzak was right. It was nothing compared to the real thing. She could feel his pleasure build just as she felt his release the last time. But she also could feel her own hands beneath hers.
Her body was pressed up against her body, and her lips were licking at the skin on her own neck. Hair was sticking to her face from her sweat, but then someone’s head was also leaning back on her shoulder, their head tipped back.
When Mira heard Arzak groan in her ear, she could feel that very same groan rip from her own throat as if she’d been the one to do it. She was feeling everything that he could, every time her backside pressed up against his pelvis, how she twitched and tightened around his cock. The way her hair felt against his skin and on the side of his face.
There was no more talking, both of them caught up in the new sensations. Everything Mira thought, Arzak did, and vice versa. They weren’t just inside one another as bodies, but as minds as well. They were truly joined as one.
Mira saw glimpses, memories, things that Arzak never told her. How his mother used to do his hair when he was younger, too, when it was much longer.
She saw his father with a grim face poring over war details, how proud Arzak felt that that was his dad. She watched the child that he was grow into a teenager, dutiful yet incredibly independent, felt the rage and sadness of watching his father die. And then she felt loneliness, so many years of loneliness and boredom.
Their bodies moved faster and faster together. Mira could tell from their connection that he was also seeing into her own memories, watching them flicker simultaneously with hers.
Their right hands moved down to Mira’s clit as the memory of their first meeting popped up. How turned on they both were when he started to feel her up in public.
One of them cried out, Mira couldn’t tell whom anymore. Her fingers rubbed her clit furiously, going in time with their thrusts. There was a pressure building up in her stomach and another below that in her center.
Her legs ached, and everywhere began to tingle – her head, her nipples, her knees, all the way down to her knees as they curled. It was his orgasm combining with hers as they came together.
Mira’s eyes flew open, and she could see stars, she came so hard. The force of it all combined was almost enough to make her pass out, painfully pleasurable and pleasurably painful.
Together, they fell forward onto the mattress, Arzak on top of Mira. He was heavy, but she didn’t ask him to move. Their hands stayed connected, as did their hips.
Arzak pressed his hips into hers as he finished; sighing softly as she felt his warm seed begin to well up inside of her. When he was done, he rolled them to their sides, giving breathy kisses all along her spine.
Needing to feel his lips on hers, she turned around. Their hands broke free of one another, but it didn’t matter. That connection was there now to stay.
“I love you, Arzak,” she whispered. He knew her better than anyone else ever would, just like she knew him. The Lord Commander was an ass, cocky and smug, but he was also strong. He experienced pain and loss, and instead of cowering, he always fought. And he’d protect her, always, she knew that now.
“I love you too, Mira,” he whispered back.
Chapter Six
“What do you mean you’re not coming back?”
When they’d first taken away her digital watch, Mira thought she would miss hearing the sound of Jak’s voice. She was wrong. “I mean that I’m not returning?” she tried, running out of ways to re-word it, “I’m not coming back.”
Arzak stood by the doorway of his office, high up in the glass tower, watching her carefully. It had only been a day since Zethrada’vass was performed between the two, since they became linked to one another in a way that no one but death could break up.
He was still in his work clothes, and after he came back from the capitol building with the rest of her things, Mira made sure to dress appropriately for the conversation.
“I met someone, Jak,” she said, but her eyes weren’t on the hologram of her now ex-boss. Smiling, Mira met Arzak’s gaze.
“You can’t be serious,” Jak argued, “What about… What about our project? What about your job? What about me?”
“I have a job here, Jak,” Mira replied, turning her attention back to him, “They’ve made me Head of the Science division here. They need me.” It was something she and Arzak discussed the night before.
As they lay in bed, Arzak hadn’t realized just how important work was for her until they joined together and he could see her biology career through his eyes. I can help our people with war as Ve Dominoks always have. And you can help our people with science, like no Ve Domina before you.
Ever since, it was all she could think about. Together, they were going to build a path for Zethrad to begin its bright future. People wouldn’t just see them as brutes anymore. “As for you… I’m sure you’ll find another lab technician.”
“But Mira-”
“Tell the others I say hello… And goodbye,” she interrupted. For once, it wasn’t Jak running away from the argument.
Mira swiped her hand over the hologram, hanging up the call. She sighed and got up from the bed, her dress falling down her legs.
“You’ll miss home,” Arzak said, his fingers brushing through her hair as she rested her head against his hard chest.
Mira gave a small nod. “I will. But this is my new home.” She tilted her head up, smirking. “Come on, I know you liked watching me reject Jak. I felt how jealous you were going through my head about him.
Arzak laughed. “Why would I be jealous of that puny Earth boy?” he asked, “I could snap his arms like twigs. And I got you now.” His hands reached down and grabbed at her ass, squeezing and kneading it through the cloth of her dress. “This is mine.”
She pressed her chest into him and closed her eyes at the feeling. Mira wanted his hands to slip down beneath her dress and finger her right there. But they had other business to attend to. “Stop,” Mira murmured, “The council is going to be here any minute.”
“We’ll be done by the time they get up the stairs,” he persisted.
Mira smirked, but fully removed herself and batted at his hands playfully. “I need you to focus, Ve Dominok.”
But Arzak was persistent, the two of them ending up on his desk and making out like eager teenagers when they started to hear the footsteps and voices of people coming up the glass stairs.
She didn’t feel nervous about this. Mira was already sure of how each member of the Council would react. Her brown eyes studied Arzak, though, and she could see that he seemed nervous.
He always appeared so confident to everyone all the time, even to her. But there were little signs that gave it away, how his hands folded over his lap to appear calm, but his fingers drummed on his pelvis, and his mouth was set in a too-grim line. Any sign of their teasing and kissing was gone.
“Ease up,” she murmured, as they got closer up the stairs. Mira stayed a respectable distance from him, both on either side of his desk. “They’re going to think someone died.”
He only managed to give her one withering look before Valdek reached the top of the steps, J’kar and Viera right behind him, and Q’til trailing behind them, his face a bright red from the exercise.
“Beautiful as ever here,” the officer of treasury commented, waving his hand around. With the knowledge that Mira could speak Zethradan, any attempt at speaking English dropped. “Piece of art… I don’t remember there being that many steps though.”
“We have not made the tower any taller since you were here last,” Viera said with a g
enial smile, “But it is a little hot today.”
“Yes, yes that’s it!” Q’til agreed, taking a seat. It really wasn’t all that hot that day.
The sky was overcast, even. But everyone acknowledged that Ve Domina Jord was attempting to be polite and graceful. There were three remaining seats, four in total, and all arranged across from Arzak’s desk. While Q’til took the one on the far left, Viera took the middle to the right, Tyroc sitting in between the two.
J’kar stayed standing, arms crossed. “What is the human doing here?” he asked, “Or the Queen Regent for that matter. I didn’t know we were having all the women sit on our council meetings now.”
“I know Zethrad is low in the female count, but I’m sure even with all the women, this room would be cramped,” Mira said, making her tone bored. She didn’t like him, and she wasn’t scared of him at all anymore, of what he thought he could do to her or her home planet.
His jaw tightened, and then he looked at Arzak. “You’re going to let this terrorist bitch speak to your officers that way?”
Mira saw Arzak move and quickly touched his arm. When their eyes met, she saw the fire, and she only hoped that he could tell that she wanted him to calm down.
He didn’t move any further, but when he looked away, the fire was still there. “Mira Hawthorne has been freed of any suspicions or charges of terrorism and war acts, or any conspiracy against Zethrad- “
“Because Tyroc covers for her-”
“Because I’ve seen evidence that points against it.” Arzak refused to be mowed down by J’kar’s anger, as any Ve Dominok would with his Betinok. “I know her. She is my vassa.”
She blushed only slightly. That act between them, though a tradition performed by every Zethradan, had seemed so personal in that moment, so intimate. It was like admitting to a room that she’d lost her virginity just the night before.
But as she looked at the faces, no one else was embarrassed by the admission. Tyroc and Viera looked pleased, happy… Q’til, while confused, seemed happy about it as well, instantly seeing that with her as the vassa of Ve Dominok, it could be very advantageous to his desires on expanding tourism.
J’kar acted how her and Arzak expected: terribly. Everything in his entire body tightened, and what little color the Zethradans had in their complexion drained out of his face.
“I want to believe that you’re not stupid enough to make this mistake, Arzak,” he said, voice low, “But you have been making very stupid decisions lately… Tell me this isn’t true!”
“It is true, and I will only ask you once more to watch your tongue, J’kar,” Arzak replied. The volume of his voice was starting to rise, and again Mira had to dig her fingers into his arm just to get him to watch himself.
“I have invited you here to tell you of the preparations for what is to come. Mira will be our next Ve Domina. She will lead as the Head of Science and have a place here on this council.”
“I won’t sit at the same table as this Earthling. She’s not to be trusted, Arzak. None of them are.”
“If you wish to give up your seat, I’m willing to replace more than Tyroc,” the Lord Commander offered.
Taken aback by this, J’kar stepped forward and pounded his fist against the desk. Everyone jumped slightly from the force of it, except for Arzak, whose eyes narrowed down into slits.
“I helped raise you. I helped build this nation for you, with your father! You have no idea what I have done for this land! And you would choose her over me?”
For the first time since they entered, Viera spoke up. “Preparing my son for a war that is never coming is not building this nation. Having Tyroc abandon his studies of real progress while you make him focus on the warships? Money this nation must come up with, decisions that should have been made by our leader, himself.”
Mira looked at Arzak to see if he reacted to the news. She never told him, but he didn’t seem surprised. She wondered if Viera had gotten to him, because he didn’t seem appalled. Angrier, yes, but she knew at this point, it was a slippery slope. And everything was going downhill.
“Everything I did, I did to protect this country.”
“When I heard you were re-opening Mira’s case for the third time, I personally looked into it,” Viera went on, as if he never said anything at all, “I wanted to see why you were wasting even more time and money than you were already. What I found out was that the detonation of the star shuttles was reported as bombs… But bombs of our own making. Bombs you had Tyroc working on six months ago.”
J’kar’s hands balled into fists, and he spun back to look at Ve Domina Jord. “Your weakling of a son sat there and did nothing while our enemies began to close in around us-“
“It was you,” Mira realized, interrupting him in her epiphany. Now this was something that surprised Arzak, though Viera and Tyroc didn’t seem all that impressed with the revelation. Q’til was just trying not to draw too much attention to himself at this point. “You found out I was coming, and you… You framed me-“
“Kill you!” J’kar corrected, “We needed action! We needed a movement! And scum like you, thinking you can come in here and rule us, take over our governments and our jobs… You deserve to die, Biologist Hawthorne.”
This time, she didn’t hold Arzak back. One minute, he was behind his desk. Then the next, he was over on the other side, his fist connecting squarely with J’kar’s jaw. Falling to the ground, Arzak followed him. The other four backed up against the walls, afraid to get caught in the skirmish. Managing to get on his knees, Arzak straddled J’kar’s torso, sitting on his chest firmly. Fist connected with face again and again, blow after blow.
“Arzak, stop!” she yelled at him. The others just stood there, stone-faced. Even Q’til.
He stopped long enough for a breath, and J’kar’s voice then rasped out from beneath his now fat lip, “Do you know where you stand yet, Lord Commander? All for a pair of legs… When they bring their wrath down on us, you’ll realize the mistake you’re making.”
“No more talking!” Arzak commanded, and connected his fist one last time. J’kar’s eyes closed, falling completely silent as he got knocked out. With his chest heaving, Arzak waited an entire minute before he got back up.
His knuckles looked bloody, but Mira didn’t go to coddle him. He looked back up at the rest of the council and his mother. “Does anyone else have a problem with what’s going to happen next?”
Nobody said a word.
******
There were many things to get used to over the next seven years.
For one thing, Mira was only just getting used to the fact that she would no longer age. Using herself as the subject, the blonde and Tyroc Valdek were constantly running experiments on her to see how Luirisna affected her chromosomes and cells.
It wasn’t until the fourth year, after she fully aged to the 31, that they started to see the difference. It was a breakthrough, and though Mira offered Tyroc multiple times to share the title of Head of Science, he instead chose to work as her lab technician.
He insisted that he was never much good at the politics and that sharing a position was never much of the Zethradan way. It was to conquer or not at all, and as the new Ve Domina, Mira had to start thinking like a Zethradan.
She wasn’t widely accepted at first, but the people didn’t have much of a choice. They followed the orders of Ve Dominok Arzak dutifully, as any subjects would with their alpha male.
And when they started to see the differences in their city, the science wing and shuttle port being rebuilt and actually invested in, as the tourism grew and Zethrad became a new, exotic planet for space travelers to visit, Mira became just as respected for what she was helping Zethrad achieve, just on her own.
She was also one of the first Ve Domina that seemed to have as equal of a say on the political decisions, her role as the Head of Science giving her a seat on the council.
“Now’s not a good time,” Mira said into her DigiWatch. On the other sid
e was a lanky man with wire frames on the tip of his nose, “I’m not on the clock, Ambassador Lazred.”
“I-I know,” the ambassador said from the other side. Over the course of time, people also began to respect Mira almost as much as they respected Arzak. Even Lazred Dorlo seemed scared of her if she started to sound irritated, like now. “Ve Dominok won’t take anyone’s calls-”
“He’s still getting used to the digital watches,” Mira explained. She stepped off the carriage that led to the estate, their estate. Her plum-colored dress glided perfectly on the sidewalk.
Mira’s hair was pulled up, as it always was whenever she was just getting home. Her husband loved her neck, and she wanted to show it off for him constantly. “I’m about to head in for the night. Do you want me to give him a message? He can get back to you in the morning.”
It wasn’t the solution that Lazred wanted, which was talking to Ve Dominok on his own and right at that moment. But Mira was off the clock. And Lazred was just easy enough that she wouldn’t have to do much to intimidate him.
For someone that was born amongst warriors, she wondered how the political boy with the thin arms and body even made It through childhood.
When she was finished with her call, Mira swiped away at the DigiWatch and headed inside, shutting the door behind her. The house was quiet, almost uncomfortably so. She frowned. “Hello?” she called out, “Hello?”
Viera swooped by, going from one room to the next with a giant bowl. She smiled and stopped when she found Mira there. “Ve Domina,” she greeted with a nod, “We’re all in the gardens behind the house.”
Mira smiled back and headed towards the gardens. It was late; she’d spent too long in the lab. Arzak always hated it when she did, but he understood her passion for it, just like she understood his passion for what he did, how running an entire planet and trying to recruit the remaining uncivilized tribes, working within the Alliance of Intergalactic Peace, and making sure they didn’t fall apart often could lead to him being home late too. Luckily when she got outside, she didn’t get the lecture.
