Hunters Mate

by Hunter's Mate (lit)

  “No.” She stepped forward and put her hands on his shoulders. He bent his head to take in the musky scent of her skin. “I need to be here with you. You’re doing this for me.”

  “No, not only for you.” Kash put a finger against her lips. “This is my choice. If I didn’t need you, if I could imagine a future without you, I would send you on your way alone, but I can’t. It’s my own selfish desire to possess you at any cost that motivates me.”

  She smiled and pressed her lips against his fingers, then his palm and his body stirred for her again. She brought his hand to her breast and held it there above her swiftly beating heart.

  “Do Sha-Shiri believe in love at first sight?” she asked.

  “We believe in destined mates. I never would have thought I’d find mine on another world.”

  “Are you ready to live on that world? It won’t be easy, Kash. Earth is ... a challenging place at the best of times.”

  Kash raised a brow. “I would live in the tar pits of Mondavia if it meant being with you.”

  She laughed, a deep, feline purr. “That’s sweet. Tar pits. Earth has tar pits, too, you know, for when we’re ready to find a little place of our own.”

  Though he would have preferred to make love to her again, Kash stepped back and put the crimson tablet on his tongue. He focused on Victoria’s face, her moss green eyes and supple body beckoning him as the change began.

  At first there was no pain, only a faint electric tingle over his body. A wave of dizziness forced him to sit on the cot and Victoria’s worried voice reached him as if through an underwater tunnel. “Are you all right? Let me call Zhora.”

  “No!” His voice seemed rough and foreign to his own ears. His eyesight blurred then focused on a hairless hand that could not have been his own save that it seemed to be attached to his equally hairless arm.

  His face hurt and his skin felt cold and unprotected. His teeth felt blunt and too large for his mouth. Sweat covered the now smooth skin of his chest and poured in rivulets down his abdomen toward his cock which seemed blissfully unchanged except for the color of the skin that stretched over its length.

  He held his hands in front of his face and examined his rounded nails and the smattering of fine golden hairs that covered his forearms. “Do ... I ... how do I look?” Victoria stared, and Kash fought not to panic. What if he was hideous to her eyes? “Did it work?”

  “It worked. You’re ... beautiful.” She took his face in her hands and brushed her lips against his. The sensation roused him. Between his naked human thighs, his balls tightened when she dipped her tongue between his lips.

  “Incredible,” she whispered.

  Kash ran his hands over Victoria’s body and drew her against him. Without his pelt between them, the friction of her bare skin on his was delicious, more sensual than he ever would have imagined.

  When she bent her head to his chest and licked the new skin around one nipple, he groaned. As a Sha-Shiri he’d never experienced such a sensation.

  “So, I look normal?”

  “As humans go ... you’ll do.” She laughed and tugged on his hands to pull him off the bed. “Do you have a mirror somewhere on board?”

  “In the infirmary.”

  She sighed. “Well, maybe later I’ll let you go see yourself. Right now, we’d better test this new body of yours and make sure everything works.”

  Kash flexed his fingers and his arms. His muscles responded normally. Ligaments and bones all seemed in working order. He curled his toes and arched his back. “I think everything is--”

  “Lie down. I’m talking about the really important parts.”

  “Oh....”

  She pushed him onto his back on the bed and straddled him. Her bare skin seemed so much warmer than he remembered, softer and sweeter. “These look okay.” She palmed his balls and squeezed gently.

  Kash smiled. “Perhaps a closer inspection is in order?”

  “Hmm, this looks fine, too, but we’ll need to measure hardness and durability.” She lowered herself onto his cock inch by glorious inch and began a wild rhythm that sent Kash spiraling into oblivion. He clamped his clawless fingers around her hips and thrust upward, desperate for release almost immediately. She gasped and arched above him.

  “Is this hard enough?”

  She purred for him and within seconds, she’d begun to come, her slick folds tightening around his erection and drawing him to his own shuddering climax. “Oh, yes ... this will do nicely.”

  * * * *

  TWO DAYS LATER

  Moonlight streamed through the lacy yellow curtains of the Cambridge kitchen and danced across the table where Kash sat examining his new face in a hand mirror.

  Victoria gave the place an experimental sniff as she rounded the table. The sharp scent of lemon pine cleanser had replaced the fetid odor of rotting steak and everything seemed in order.

  She’d been gone ten days. Long enough for the pile of mail inside the front door to have toppled over, spilling envelopes and newspapers across the rag rug. Long enough for her parents to leave a dozen frantic messages on the answering machine.

  She’d called them immediately, caught them at the airport in Sydney and assured them she was fine and that she had a very special guest for them to meet when they returned.

  They’d be home in a few hours and she hadn’t yet begun to figure out how to tell them what she’d been through.

  Kash set the mirror down and ran a hand through the waves of golden blond hair that fell to his shoulders. “Do you think I should shorten this? Does it look unruly?”

  “It’s gorgeous,” she said. “I do think you should put on a shirt, though.” She ran her hands over his back and brushed a kiss on his bare shoulder, resisting the urge to sink her teeth into his muscular flesh. “It’s going to be enough of a shock when I tell my parents I brought home a Sha-Shiri from outer space. If you’re half naked when they get here ... well, it’ll be hard enough telling my father you got his unemployed, twenty-six year old daughter pregnant. It would definitely be better if you were fully dressed when you do it.”

  Kash’s tawny eyes widened. “Do you think he will demand penance?”

  Victoria nudged the pregnancy test stick that lay in the center of the table. She took a moment to admire the bright blue line that signaled a positive result and wondered how a race that could restructure someone’s DNA could not have invented something as simple as a urine screening test stick.

  “Not penance, but he’ll expect you to get a job and wear more than a leather harness and loincloth around the house.”

  “I will do whatever is necessary to care for you and all of our offspring.” Kash pulled Victoria into his arms and kissed her breathless. “No matter how many there are.”

  The End