by Zara Zenia
Finally, hundreds of feet down at the bottom of the crag, I shifted and dropped into the vegetation. Having only struck my legs, the charges were slightly less effective, but only slightly. I quickly ripped them out, but my movements felt delayed and heavy.
Then I remembered Andie. I needed to get to her. If Baluwama found her . . . I fought myself to block out the torturous images that assaulted me.
I raced with all the speed that I possessed until at last, I made it back to the cave.
Rushing inside, I found it empty and my heart stopped.
“That was quick,” came her voice from behind me.
I whirled around to see her with her jacket off and full of red berries. Relief flooded my body and clouded my sight. I pulled her into me roughly and kissed her soundly, desperately.
Breathing hard, I held her tightly against me and felt the tingling sensation of our link, connecting us, binding us.
“What happened?” she asked, pulling back slightly and tilting her face up to mine.
“The demon, the one they called Baluwama, was waiting for me when I breached the surface. He is hunting us. Rather, he is hunting me.”
A look of rage flashed across her face. “Take me back up with you. I’ll rip that son of a bitch apart.”
I was slightly amused by the ferocity of her response, but the knowledge that just one of the stun charges could easily kill her was sobering.
“No, it would be unwise to face him right now. You have no weapons and I was hit. I will recover quickly, but until then, we need to keep moving. He wants to flush us out, to make us reveal ourselves. As soon as we do, he’ll kill you and hit me with a handful more of stun charges.” I looked down to my leg, where the bleeding had already stopped.
“Shit! Are you okay?” She quickly dropped down to examine my leg and nearly began tearing her shirt to apply a field dressing when she recognized that the wounds were already well on their way to recovery.
“I’m all right. I’ll be fine again in a few hours. The charges he has are designed to immobilize us. If he wanted to do real damage, he wouldn’t have been using a stun charger. He wants to incapacitate me.”
“Why? Interrogation? Torture?” She said, looking increasingly alarmed.
“No, it would seem he wants to use me as a host.” Andie’s face scrunched into a look of disgust.
“They’ll want me for my spinal fluid. Recall that Infernians can’t hold a form on their own. Taking a Dragselian captive is a great boon to his kind. I would be a constant source for the serum they rely on for assuming a fully humanoid form.”
“Those nasty little rat-fuckers.” I laughed despite myself and the circumstances.
“You have quite the soldier’s mouth, you know?” I said, pulling her toward me again.
“Does that get you hot?” she teased, lifting her eyebrows.
“More than you know,” I said, reaching behind her and cupping the gentle curves of her bottom.
It felt as though electricity literally coursed through us, and if it hadn’t been for the hit my cells had taken with those stun charges, that would have been a glorious thing and difficult to pull away from.
However, the ache it caused reminded me that we needed to move and move fast.
“We need to keep moving. He can track us, not as well as a Dragselian, but well enough. It’s why he let me go. He won’t risk an outright attack if he doesn’t have to. He’ll take his time, wearing me down.”
I looked around, weighing the situation. As I did, Andie scooped up the berries and started off upriver.
“Where are you going?” I asked, catching up behind her.
She kept walking as she spoke. “Well, if the river is flowing back that way, the elevation climb is this direction, which is our best shot at getting out of this crag without your flying us out. We can hike along the canyon floor, hiding in the brush and whatever ledges or caves we can find. It’s our best shot at this point.”
“You’re right,” I admitted, “but I should go first. One of his stun charges—just one—will kill you.”
She didn’t seem thrilled about it, but she let me take the lead. “Fine, but just for the record, I can hold my own.”
I smiled to myself as we hiked on. She was a stubborn woman.
Chapter 16
Andie
Following Karun came easily at first. We snacked on berries and spoke quietly as we hiked along through the vegetation. We discovered more and more plant life than I had thought possible for Vaxivia. The sun was heavily filtered through the narrower stretches, the air colder and heavier.
As the day wore on, Karun seemed to spring back from the hits he had taken and his pace grew incrementally faster. It bothered me to admit it, but the scabbed wounds at my back were aching and I felt my energy waning. As it did, I felt Karun’s core stone warm slightly.
So strange, this connection or ‘link’, as he had called it. We were both treading on unknown grown in so many ways.
Even besides the influence of my family, who were staunchly independent and self-sustaining folk, I didn’t trust others easily. Everyone on Vaxivia had some kind of skeleton in their closet. It was a harsh planet full of people who led harsh lives. We were realists—it was just bred into me.
Yet with Karun, it felt easy, natural even, to trust, to be vulnerable. I didn’t need to understand the science or the history of the thing when I felt it so viscerally. I knew that I was somehow connected to this remarkable man, and I realized, then, that I never wanted that connection to end.
As I started to ponder what a future with Karun might look like, he turned to me. My cheeks flushed, and I wondered, momentarily, if linking meant he could read my mind.
He smiled. “What has you blushing so?”
Relieved, I realized he wasn’t getting the mental images of the two of us with little dragon babies running around that had errantly flitted through my mind.
“It’s nothing. I think I’m just starting to wear down a little,” I said, not lying but omitting the embarrassing vignette I had mentally concocted.
“Shall we rest?” He looked concerned.
“No, no, I’ll tell you if I need a break.”
He looked at me dubiously. “I don’t believe that you would tell me if one of your feet were falling off.”
Karun located a slight recess in the rock wall and headed for it.
“Here, sit down. I’ll get you some water.”
I didn’t argue. Ordinarily, I would never have admitted such a moment of weakness, but for once, it felt rather lovely having someone care for me.
He returned speedily with a large leaf scooped heavily with water.
He brought it to my lips and ordered, “Drink. You look dehydrated.”
I took several big gulps then retorted, “Maybe because someone wore me out last night.”
“You don’t sound displeased about that,” he quipped.
“Oh, trust me, I’m not,” I said, licking the water off my lips.
“Careful, that sounds an awful lot like an invitation to do it again,” he said, his silver eyes flashing with desire.
“Oh, it definitely is.”
Dropping the leaf between us, he crushed his mouth to mine. The taste of berries still clung to his lips as I traced them with my tongue.
I felt heat pool low in my belly as he turned and put his mouth to work at my neck.
“I want you. Here. Now,” I whispered.
“You’re a greedy little human, aren’t you?” He laughed.
“So greedy,” I agreed.
“Mmm, I shall enjoy appeasing your greed later,” he said, pulling away and standing us both up. “We need to save that energy for the hike ahead.”
I grumbled in resigned agreement. “Fine, but I’m going to hold you to that later.”
“Please do,” he said right as he copped a feel of my bottom.
Forcing myself to tamp down the arousal building up, I trudged on.
Our progress was slow
ing, and I knew it was my fault. Karun didn’t say anything about it, but not for the first time since I had met him, I resented my weaker human form.
Every hour or so, he would seek out some small shelter in the vegetation or the rocks for me to rest and he’d scrounge up different berries or fruits for us.
Darkness began to descend in the crag. We were so far down that it fell much sooner than it likely would on the surface. There was no streaking luminescent orange as the suns set. It was far more sudden and cold than I would have liked.
With the encroaching cold, our pace slowed even more. I began to worry in earnest that we might become sitting ducks.
“Can Infernians see well in the dark?” I asked.
Karun looked back at me. “Yes, extremely well, but not as well as a Dragselian.”
That reassured me, but only somewhat. I nodded but said nothing, growing nervous.
He must have sensed my increasing apprehension.
“Don’t worry, we are probably safer now than we were earlier.”
That made little sense. “How do you figure that?”
“Recall that Infernians biomanipulated their DNA to adjust to the volcanic turbulence of Infernis. Their forms are not suited for the cold.”
“Then why did they attack our camp and the clinic at night?” I persisted.
“They likely had a base nearby that they could easily retreat to. They will not have come unprepared. They may have portable thermogenerators like the sort your militia supplied us with, but it is not likely that our demonic stalker is moving such equipment around, not while he is tracking us.”
He walked beside me now, holding my hand, sharing his warmth. The simple contact was intimate and wonderful.
We went on like that for a few more hours, skirting along the bank hand in hand until finally, we came to the widest stretch we had seen yet.
There were several small groves of tall trees with thin, winding branches covered in massive flat, shiny green leaves.
Karun tucked against the rock wall.
“We have gone far enough, I think,” he said, and I inwardly sighed in relief.
“He is not likely to follow us, but it would be unwise to risk a fire,” he said, looking at me apologetically.
“You’re right . . . but I’m sure we can find other ways to keep each other warm,” I said saucily.
He gathered several fronds of the flat leaves and piled them up to buffer the hard, rocky dirt of the ground.
I sank down and rolled my neck, popping the tension out of my joints.
Unexpectedly, he came up behind me and his warm, heavy hands worked gently at the muscles of my neck and shoulders. Carefully, he avoided the gashes between my shoulder blades.
“Mmm, that feels so good,” I mumbled appreciatively.
“I did promise you I would appease you, did I not?”
He slid his hands down to my breasts, caressed them through my tank top, and bent his mouth to my neck as his hands slid down past the waistline of my pants.
I let my head sink back against his shoulder and enjoyed what he was offering.
His hands were firm, and the slight friction as he rubbed and caressed the exterior of my womanhood with his palm while entering and stroking me with his long, thick fingers brought my breath in shorter and shorter bursts.
I moaned and gripped his thighs on either side of me, needing more.
He got the message. He moved so swiftly that I barely registered the movement.
Setting his lips again to my throat, he slid me backward, beneath the sensual weight of him. His wet mouth drew circles against my throat.
Finding the fasteners of my pants, he slid them free and brought my tank up, exposing me to him. His head dipped down to where my breasts were heaving with the unsteady breath of my arousal.
He sucked and nibbled at the taut peaks and then slid his attention even lower down, licking past my navel. Drawing wet circles on my inner thighs, he finally found my entrance with his mouth.
Slowly, he traced a warm, wet line along my cleft, then covered my mound with his lips and gently sucked. As his tongue laved at my center, massaging and stroking unrelentingly, I felt the tension in me coil tighter and tighter.
My hands found purchase in his long silvery hair as he gripped my naked thighs and continued his sweet torture.
When his tongue zeroed in on the tight nucleus of my desire, he brought one hand up and used his fingers again to penetrate and stroke me, in time to the rhythm of his tongue.
Ready to shatter, I arched, every muscle clenched in anticipation of sweet release. I looked down at him to see his silver gaze watching the pleasure on my face.
The connection burned me, and I came. My body shook as I felt the fracturing release, strobes of light and color in my mind’s eye.
Before my vision had cleared from the explosion of sensation, I felt him enter me. His fingers paled in comparison to the blissful fullness of his manhood.
“Is your greed appeased?” he asked, cupping my breast possessively.
“No,” I said, smiling as I challenged him.
“Good.”
Withdrawing from me, he turned me over, skillfully supporting my weight as I leaned forward onto my forearms.
I couldn’t see him, but as his hands came forward and cupped my chest again. I felt him nudge my legs apart and enter me as my body gripped him like a glove.
Stroking with careful purpose, he found just the right angle until I was panting heavily again. He released my chest and brought his hands to my hips, where he moved me in time to the cadence he was setting.
I whimpered in delight at the glorious sensation of his hard girth pumping into me. Then he brought one hand up to my neck and gripped my hair, not hard, but firmly.
It was sensual torture and I couldn’t take any more. It felt like he grew, the fit of our bodies getting tighter. The sensual friction built up until, overcome, he growled and thrust harder, faster, and I felt the zip of connection as we both came together. I was blinded by the sheer overload of sensation.
We were hot, our hearts racing as we lay together under a foreign canopy. Neither of us spoke for a long time until a question arose in my mind.
“Karun?”
“Hmm?” he replied languidly.
“What normally happens when two people link?”
“There is typically a formal ceremony preceded by an isolation period where the couple enters a specialized chamber. A device called a—” he began.
“No, I don’t need to know the process. I mean, what are the implications?” I asked, wanting to be more specific but not knowing how to.
“Linking is far different from anything Earth humans engage in.”
“Yeah, you can say that again,” I said, smiling.
“I suppose you might relate it closest to marriage. It is a connection of life forces. To my people, it is a solemn and permanent thing, which is why it is not done lightly or hastily.” He paused. “I know neither of us was given a choice in this. If you should decide it is not what you want, I will understand . . .”
I heard the vulnerability in his voice and I knew the answer.
“I do want it. Do you?”
Over the next several hours, he showed me all the delicious ways in which he did.
Chapter 17
Karun
Light had not reached the base of the crag when the cold, damp air chilled and roused me. Andie and I had spent the night coiled around one another, making love to keep the cold at bay.
As I started to sit up, I felt her hand slide down and grab me.
“Looks like someone is ready for more fun,” came her raspy sleep voice.
I answered laughingly, “Woman, you’re enough to wear down even a Dragselian.”
“That sounds a like a theory worth testing sometime.”
We both dressed quickly and started looking for something to refuel ourselves. The canopy provided us some protection. It was still dark and chilly—I doubted tha
t our Infernian foe was back to tracking us just yet.
I watched out of the corner of my eye as Andie rummaged through plants, looking for edible fruits. She had braided her long honey locks and her face was set in determination as we both foraged.
Watching her in the gray of early morning, set about a mundane and tedious task, she was stunning. Not for any outward efforts, but because of who she was. She was strong and resilient, loyal and hardworking. In the face of such formidable foes, she had placed herself in the middle of this chaos, risked her life time after time to help us—exiled crash survivors to whom she owed no allegiance.
Beyond that, she had stayed true to herself and what she wanted. She hadn’t shied away from the connection that brought us together. Even now, knowing the level of its significance, she fearlessly embraced life.
I knew then, clearly and plainly, that I loved her. I finally allowed myself to acknowledge the emotion that had been growing with each moment that we had spent together.
What had initially felt like a bothersome and inconveniently timed attraction had exponentially grown into something completely undeniable. I needed to tell her.
Still, given how haphazard and impromptu all of this had been, she deserved something grander, more romantic than just those simple words. When all of this was over, I would take the time to court her properly, to demonstrate that the depth of my feelings went far beyond lust.
Gathering the small amount of edible fruit we had collected, we sat together to quickly eat while we discussed the situation.
“I think Jennifer is trying to EE me,” Andie said, closing her eyes.
“What is she saying?”
She put her hand to her forehead. “I can’t quite tell. I hear her voice, but it’s as if she is speaking through water. Everything is jumbled.”
“Do you see anything? Is there a visual message?” I asked. For a planet as remote and wild as Vaxivia, their EE tech was impressive. We had nothing like it on Dragselia and I was intrigued by the concept.
“No. There is no visual. EE visuals require closer range than audio messages. I’ll try to send her something, but she probably won’t get anything more than my voice.”
