by Abigail Myst
“But I just keep screwing everything up. It won't last.” Humility took a few deep breaths.
”He cured you. To pay him back… there's nothing I could do to pay him back. Give him time,” her father said.
“How much time you do you have?”
“Well Clover has promised to take us anywhere we want to go when she gets her ship back. I don't think she knows how long that's going to be though.”
“You don't have to go back.”
“She mentioned that too. I mean what's left for me back there? The farm I haven't worked on for so many years, I'm not sure I remember how. I don't remember how to be anything else except for a shriveled-up shell of a man. And Wendy’s almost old enough to do whatever she sets her mind to. She doesn’t need me.”
“You've got your lungs back. You can be anything you want. Except maybe a lounge singer. if I remember correctly, you can't carry a tune.”
”You've got that right. But I've got some time to think it over.”
With that, her dad offered her a very dad-like pat on the hand. ”Now how about we get you something to eat? I keep hearing that there's alcohol around here somewhere but I have not seen a sign of it.”
They wandered out into the quad and before Humility could turn toward the mess tent, she saw Kave practically sprinting towards them from the command center.
“You are supposed to be asleep. That incompetent medic told me you would not wake up for at least another hour.”
“Incompetent? That's not the way I heard it because he blames this whole mess on you. I assume that’s correct?”
Kave's colors muddled and he turned strange almost gray green. ”It is correct. I deceived you,” he said, abashed.
“Thank you.”
“You will smile now?”
Humility tried to smile, but the only thing that came out was a rattling sob.
“You nearly killed me? To get my father here?”
“In my defense, I did ask you first. And had you actually died, I would have walked into the ocean in guilt. So everything has turned out for the best. Would you like to stab me again?”“No, I don't want to stab you. I want to hug you.”
“You may hug me. You may hug me at any time.” Kave held his arms out in front of him. Humility stepped into them and was enveloped by his broad arms. He put his head down into her hair and breathed deeply. Humility could not help but notice a certain part of him growing in length and hardness as they stood together.
“Perhaps, we should continue this conversation in our quarters,” she suggested.
“Only if you smile first.”
Humility plastered a huge smile on her face. “Happy now?”
“I doubt the veracity of that smile but I shall accept it.”
Without further warning, Humility found herself being swept up in his arms and carted off to his quarters. She didn't mind, considering it would be rather tacky to make out with her new husband in front of her father.
Kave had just put her down inside the quarters when Odette came storming through the door like a woman on a mission.
“Okay I'm holding an intervention. This has to stop. You are going to forgive Kave because despite everything, he's head over heels in love with you,” she told Humility.
“He might be a big stupid conniving idiot.” Odette paused to glare at Kave before continuing. “Do you know what he did to me when I first got here? He put me in a box. Yeah. Wanted me to jump out of a paper cake like a stripper.” She whispered in case she wasn't clear, “And if I can forgive him for that, you can forgive him for saving your dad. It might have been a little underhanded but sometimes that's how you have to get things done.”
“A stripper cake,” Humility questioned as she stared at her husband. “Really?” Kave looked extremely uncomfortable. Humility was beginning to recognize his colors. This was embarrassment. Humility tried to imagine Odette popping out of a cake like a tart at a bachelor party. it actually made her giggle.
Kave's face lit up. “You're smiling.”
“You've got to admit it's pretty funny.”
“It wasn't at the time,” Odette said.
Humility couldn't help herself. She snorted and laughed. Odette tried to keep a straight face and failed.
Athen appeared in the doorway. He did not look amused. Humility wondered how much of their conversation he had heard. The aliens had very good hearing.
Odette took one look at him and burst out laughing.
“Mate, I would speak with you.” he said to her.
“I bet you would. You two okay here?” Odette looked from one to the other with one eyebrow raised.
“I'm fine,” Kave said. “Hue?”
“Yeah.”
Odette approached her husband. When he didn't move, continuing to glare at Kave, Odette gave him a little shove. ”Let's go big boy,” she told him and they turned leaving Kave and Humility alone.
“Your smile makes my heart happy,” Kave told his wife. His skin turned a minty color with a hint of neon.
“We need to talk,” Humility told him.
“Are we not talking now?”
Humility ignored his confusion. “We have an expression on Earth. ‘It's not you, it's me.’
You don't need me. You give me things to do to make me feel better. I'm not a Wonder botanist, or a pilot or a kickass or Peacemaker.”
“I do not require any of those things. I require you. I do not know how things will go. Will Athen demote me or give me my own clan? I see the likelihood of either of these adding to 50% but I've always been alone. Now, I will not be alone. We will make decisions together. And you should stop me from doing anything stupid. And I shall make you smile. I require nothing more than that.”
“What if it’s not enough?”
“I require sex too?”
Humility snorted again, but her laughter must have encouraged him. Kave claimed her mouth in a kiss. A moment later, her wandering hand found that his hard on was back.
“So, are you saying you expect me to suck your cock regularly?”
He stalled, not sure of the right answer. She knew what he wanted, what she was willing to give. Pulling down his shorts, she guided him to their bed. A little shove was all it took to get him onto the bed. He straightened up and put his arms behind his head. If he thought he was going to watch her strip, he had another thing coming.
She climbed up onto the bed next to him and lowered her mouth onto his cock. She loved the way it felt in her mouth, loved to run her tongue over the grooves and ridges. He moaned as she stroked his shaft with her hands.
“Aren’t you going to remove your…?” suddenly pausing as Humility swirled her tongue around the head.
“My what? Do you want me to remove my mouth?”
“No! No, not that. Although if you continue much longer, I shall spill all of my seed. And I wish to get to the business of making a little warrior to compete with Athen’s child.”
“Is that the only reason you want a child?”
“No. But it is a good one. Unless you do not think it is a good reason. Whatever reason you like.”
Humility knew he was at the point where he’d agree to almost anything. And she knew she didn’t want him to spill himself anywhere but inside her.
Cursing her jeans for being too tight, she rolled off the bed to shuck them off. Fearing that she had changed her mind, Kave followed her off the bed, his skin turning a clear color of relief when he found her suddenly naked from the waist down.
He took advantage and sat her on the edge of the bed. Before she could manage an objection, his tongue was between her legs and giving her a lashing that had her screaming out an orgasm in less than a minute.
Kave lifted her legs onto his shoulders and pressed into her. It was a frantic mating, but it was exactly what both of them wanted, needed. Humility wanted to be pounded, to be taken and made his, only his. Her pleasure spiraled out of her as her hands clutched the sheets. Kave’s tattoos glowed a brilliant white as
he growled out his own release.
As feral as he had just been, Kave switched to the gentle lover as he placed her in the center of the bed. He peeled off the rest of her clothes and joined her in the bed, spooning with her. Humility felt cocooned in his heat.
“I would know what you would like,” Kave said after a long pause.
“I would like a breather before the next round.”
“I meant for our future. But I shall refrain from playing with your nipples until you have had a breather.”
“Thanks. But I don’t know what our options are.”
“I could pursue a diplomatic position back on Etlon. Athen would not like this. If I went, his father would expect him to follow. And he is stubborn. There is also talk of making Noven 90 a true colony planet, with actual dwellings and such. Multiple cities. With Odette’s plant growing well here, and the flegan, there are enough resources to expand operations here.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Make you happy.”
“Besides that.”
“Have lots of fat little warriors, and comrades and dinner parties.”
“Dinner parties?”
“It is a Terran thing. I have researched. Paired mates meet for dinner while leaving their offspring with some other warrior.”
“A baby sitter.”
“Why would you sit on a baby? A toddler, or young warrior, perhaps, but not a baby.”
“Someone who sits and watches the baby, not sits on the baby.”
“Ah. Yes. I will appoint Leif to do it.”
Humility giggled at the thought of the large warrior staring at the sleeping baby, burping him and changing a diaper.
“Here on Noven 90 or on Etlon?”
He paused to think. “My friends are here, but anywhere that you go, I will follow.”
“Then here we stay and have our babies for Leif to babysit. And if he wants, my father to stay?”
“Of course. And Wendy, as long as she is not called to be a mother. And if she is, I will do everything within my power to have her mate stationed here.”
Yes. They had options. Wendy didn’t have to be stranded on a planet where all of the males had already paired up. She could travel or go back to Earth and go to school. If she did get picked in the lottery, Kave would pull strings.
“Have you had your breather?” Kave questioned, breaking her out of her reverie.
“Maybe.”
Kave’s hand reached out to play with her nipple. It was going to be a long afternoon. Humility didn’t think that was going to be a problem.
The End.
Thank you for reading!
I hope you enjoyed Kave. If you haven’t already, catch up with Scrubs and Clover and their mini novel Snowed in With the Alien Doctor. Otherwise, Jane and her mate Zenik are coming up soon. Keep scrolling for a sneak peek of Chapter 1.
Chapter One
Barbara
Her mother was sobbing. It wasn’t the first time. She’d sobbed like this the first time she’d deployed. And the second.
“Oh Barbie!”
She tried not to roll her eyes, she really did.
“Ma! It’s only the Lottery,” Jeff said as their mother completely covered the front of his shirt with wet splotches. “Chances are she’ll be back in an hour.”
Only to have this scene repeated tomorrow when she had to report back to the base. It was policy to grant a single female a week’s leave before her birthday. Get some quality family time in, just in case you were shipped off to the far reaches of space to pop out babies for the Mahdfel. She almost wished they didn’t let her off base. Her mother had been weepy all week. Not only that, but her mother had paraded every eligible bachelor she could wrangle through the house. There hadn’t been a moment of peace. Even a night out with her brothers had introduced her to Mark, Luthor, and Quentin.
Barbara wasn’t a prude when it came to sex. She would have jumped at the chance for a quick release with Quentin, but surrounded by four brothers, there was little chance of that happening. No, instead she’d been the good little girl, keeping her trap shut but quietly refusing each of the candidates, even as her mother not so subtly hinted that some of them could be bought for very reasonable prices.
If Barbara had wanted to buy a fiance, there were plenty of guys back in her unit that would do it for an ice chest full of beer. Command was a bit short on soldiers not to look the other way when a girl’s birthday rounded the corner of the calendar. There was just something dishonest about it all and it didn’t sit right with her.
When Earth was invaded by the Suhlik, they’d been caught with their pants down. Golden space lizards with bulletproof scales and spacecraft that could outmaneuver anything they had rained down and declared Earth their own. While it was obvious that they had underestimated the scrappiness of humanity, Earth was well on the way to losing until the Mahdfel showed up.
Most of the people left were too grateful to be suspicious when the Mahdfel offered them a deal. Protection had its price, and in this case, it was a steady stream of Earth women to bear the next generation of Mahdfel warriors. The Suhlik had bred them, genetically engineered the species to be the perfect slaves, and as a safeguard, produced no female offspring. If they wanted to reproduce, the Mahdfel needed females of other species. The catch, because there was always a catch, was that if the DNA match wasn’t high enough, the mother would most likely die in childbirth.
So each country on Earth had instituted a draft or lottery system to determine which females were required to go. In some countries, there were rumors that they scooped the poor off the streets and held them in detention centers until they were matched. In the U.S., it was up to each state to determine how their lotteries were run, but most kept to policy of testing on their birthday, once a year, and then their DNA was wiped from the system for the year. Women with husbands, fiancés, and children were exempt. Barbara didn’t have any of these, but she’d been tested over ten times and come home every time.
“Oh, my little Barbie!” her mother wailed again. This time rotating and putting her hands out to her for a hug. Barbara bit her tongue. “I wish you wouldn’t cut your hair so short.”
She liked her hair. It fell right along her cheekbone and in a no fuss ebony mess.
“Long hair doesn’t fit under a helmet.”
“But it was so cute when you were younger, with your little braids-”
“Mom.”
A knock sounded at the door. It was strong and authoritative.
Her mother started wailing again. Jeff opened the door to reveal a soldier in combat gear. Once he saw Barbara standing there in her uniform, he relaxed a bit. Soldiers had more dignity than to throw a fit at going to the testing center. She picked up her duffel, more to keep her mother’s slobbery face away from her uniform than anything else.
“I’ll be back later, and we can go for that round of drinks.”
“What if you’re not?” Her blubbered.
“Then you can decide how to spend my million. Okay?”
Barbara went to the door, pausing as she stepped through the threshold. Something made her look back at her mother’s house, the one that she’d bought with Dad’s life insurance payment, not the one that Barbara had grown up in with her brothers. It was everything she wasn’t - plush, soft, overstuffed and over decorated with unoffending shades of peach and beige. There was nothing to miss here that she hadn’t already done without while living the life of a soldier. But that didn’t help assuage the guilt she felt while looking at her mother’s face.
“Mom, I love you.”
“Oh Barbie!”
She left swiftly down the walkway before her mother could take advantage of her weakness. Barbara mounted the steps to the tram and glared at the guy who was about to offer to carry her luggage. It wasn’t his fault exactly. This wouldn’t be her dream duty either. Dealing with sobby manic women all day, every day. She’d heard nightmare stories from buddies who had to serve. One guy swore he�
��d been shot at more times in Chicago than he had in two tours overseas. Women often went to ground, hiding to avoid their day, which was stupid. If they got caught, it could mean getting put in a daily draft or in prison until they were forty. No thank you.
Besides, Barbara had seen some of these Mahdfel warriors up close and personal and not a single one of them was fat, lazy or lascivious. They were all hot specimens in their prime. They’d give you a whiff, and if you didn’t smell right, it was all over, hands to themselves. These warriors also mated for life. There was no chance that you’d have to deal with wandering eyes or hands. Once he was yours, he was yours. That beat most Earth men hands down. Once you got over the pretty skin colors, the horns and the tails, everything was golden. One cadet had confessed that her cousin had recently been matched to a seven-foot tall wookie. When Barbara had pointed out that wookies were fictional, she’d simply gone on to add that this one could talk, and had a tongue and a cock that were both over twelve inches long. It was like fucking a bear with a monster sized cock, and her cousin was having the time of her life.
Barbara took every wild sex monster story with a grain of salt. She knew Earth propaganda liked to sow fake stories to make women more willing to appear for the Lottery. It wasn’t half bad for many women, anyway, who lived in parts of the world destroyed by the Suhlik. There were plenty of women who had volunteered. It was the only way out of poverty.
The two women on the bus were silent. One was creating creases in her dress as she constantly clenched and unclenched it in her sweaty fist. The other was a deathly pale and winced every time they went over a bump. Hung over and probably ready to binge her way to unconsciousness later this morning if she was still planetside.
The tram stopped and a fourth boarded the bus. This one was a lot less in control of her emotions. Her breath was coming in sobs and her eyes were red and swollen. She grabbed a handful of tissues and collapsed against the clencher, which in turn started a chain reaction. The two of them blubbered against each other in a mass of soggy tissues. Barbara looked at the hungover one. Thankfully she was too busy trying not to puke to join the tear train.
