by C. F. Harris
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
I decided to try a different tactic. One that wasn’t fair, but it was something that had worked time and time again so I wasn’t above keeping it as a weapon in my arsenal. It was a weapon that went back to the dawn of time. A weapon that worked on any complex species we’d found in the galaxy.
I started grinding my hips against him. Of course it wasn’t entirely to torture Jorav. I enjoyed the fuck out of it. I felt his hardness responding and pressing up eagerly to reach me and I closed my eyes and let out a little gasp. I felt delicious tingles running up and down my body as goose bumps moved across my skin. I thought of how he’d ripped my clothes off in that alley when we were confronted with the assassin and found myself hoping against hope that he would do something like that here.
Even if he didn’t tell me what he was hiding I figured it would be more than worth it to distract him to the point that we did something far more interesting than a little interrogation.
“Come on Jorav,” I said. “I know you’re hiding something from me. Now out with it.”
Jorav gasped and grunted. I felt him starting to press up against me and that added to the incredible fire that was burning inside me. I’d been reluctant to do anything like this with him before because it felt like I was sleeping with the enemy. It felt like a betrayal to my oaths to the Combined Interstellar Fleet. Oaths to protect humanity against the Livisk no matter what the cost.
Now that I’d thrown those oaths out, though? Now that I’d sworn allegiance to Jorav and Jorav alone? Well let’s just say that I was ready to go. I was ready to take Jorav in every way possible in every part of this tower. There were so many places to go.
I couldn’t wait. I felt as though a dam had broken inside me and the passion was running free. All the pent up energy I’d been keeping under control was breaking loose inside me and I was ready to rip his pants off and take him. I needed this so bad now that I didn’t have the lingering guilt that had been tearing me apart before.
Jorav grunted and his hands wrapped around my waist. They were so large that he could almost completely encircle me. He growled and stared up at me. Started pressing against me. I could feel the feedback starting in our minds. Passion building on passion as the two of us lost control. As we abandoned ourselves to pure animal lust.
It was the same feeling I’d gotten when we were fighting those assassins. Funny how lust and fighting could be so closely related in the bond, though I suppose I shouldn’t have been too surprised. This was the Livisk we were talking about, after all. It seemed like just about everything they did was pretty closely related to their desire to fight. It was no wonder they’d torn a bloody fiery path across the galaxy.
I still maintained one small shred of sanity though. I leaned down and kissed him, but I kept right on grinding against him as well. If I kept this up much longer then I was going to have one hell of a treat even if we didn’t take any of our clothes off. Besides, how could a girl not enjoy herself? He was rippling and blue and sparkling an topless showing off those intricate tattoos that had once meant the end of my world but now they meant a galaxy of pleasure was opening up before me.
“Tell me Jorav,” I said. “What’s in that dark corner of your mind you’re trying to hide from me? You know you’re not going to be able to do it forever.”
Was it a bit unfair that I was hiding some of my plans for regicide and forceful political change from him while demanding that he share the dark corners of his mind with me? Perhaps, but I didn’t care. I could recognize a double standard and not give a fuck about it at the same time.
Finally he did something that I really didn’t expect. He smiled. It looked odd on him. He was usually so dour and serious. He usually looked like he was about to order someone killed. There were a couple of times when I’d worried I was the one he was about to order killed.
“You have to understand that our bonding was done in a very irregular fashion,” he said. “Not proper at all.”
I rolled my eyes. “Not proper as far as the Livisk are concerned? So what’s the problem? Was I supposed to defeat every member of your family in single combat before you agreed to be my mate or something?”
Next to everything else I’d learned about the Livisk and their mating practices that wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
“Nothing like that,” Jorav said. “You see traditionally we are to go through a bonding ceremony before we complete the actual bonding. Because of the emperor moving ahead without permission we sort of got things mixed up.”
I blinked. I suddenly got a tingle running through my body that had nothing to do with the way he was pressing up against me in a not-so-subtle bid to drive me absolutely wild. Was he asking me what I thought he was asking me?
“You passed the mating challenge, Talia,” he said. “That means that we can proceed with the next step of our relationship. If you’re willing to take that next step.”
I put my hand to my chest and tried to look like I was overwhelmed by it all. I even tried to sound a little breathless, though from the way that odd smile stayed plastered on his face it didn’t feel like he got what I was doing.
“Why Jorav. Does that mean you’re proposing to me?”
The frown was back on his face in an instant. Now that was more like the Jorav I’d fallen for. He scrunched his eyes together in a move he used when he was having difficulty understanding a bit of human culture I’d just thrown at him.
“If you mean am I formally asking you to be my bondmate then yes, I suppose that is what I’m asking you,” he said.
I smacked his chest. “Don’t you think you’re being a little forward? Moving a little fast?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we’ve only fucked twice now and killed one assassin cell on our way to trying to kill an emperor. You haven’t even taken me on a first date!”
The confusion on his face only deepened. I had to constantly remind myself that he seemed to have a hell of a lot of trouble understanding human humor. Particularly sarcasm. Then again a lot of humans I’d known back in the day seemed to have trouble understanding it as well. Which might be part of the reason why I had so much trouble with my last crew, come to think of it.
“I’m just kidding,” I said. “Of course we can do the ceremony. Seems like it’s mostly a formality at this point anyway since we’re bonded.”
Jorav shook his head. “It will be so much more than a formality. You’ll be the first human to ever be officially bonded to a Livisk. I imagine that will cause even more trouble for us than the emperor having it out for you. The nobles in particular will be furious.”
I raised both eyebrows. I really meant it when I’d told him he could fill a book with all the things I didn’t know about Livisk culture. You could fill a planetary databank with that information, apparently.
“The nobles? What are you talking about?”
Jorav’s blue lips compressed to a thin line and he shook his head. “They’re politically neutered honorless scum who think far too much of themselves because of their birth, but they’re still powerful enough to cause trouble. I’ve already no doubt raised their ire by refusing several invitations.”
“Why Jorav. Are you telling me I’m going to have to get used to Livisk high society? Because facing down an emperor who’s trying to kill me is one thing, but putting on a dress and trying to act like some heiress is another thing entirely.”
The grin returned. This time it looked more natural. “No need to worry, Talia. I plan on staying as far from them as possible, though it will be inevitable that we have to deal with them some as we prepare for the bonding ceremony.”
A thought occurred to me. A thought that Jorav might not like, but then again it’s not like he cared for many of my thoughts. The old saying “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” moved through my head and a plan started to form.
I looked down to Jorav with a huge grin. From the way he braced himself he c
ould sense that something was coming. Something that he might not necessarily like. Well that was tough. If he really was going to help me free my crew and maybe overthrow his precious emperor as part of the deal then he was going to have to get used to hearing thoughts he might not necessarily like.
18: Waiting
“Do they like the emperor?” she asked.
“I’d venture a guest that they hate him even more than you hate him,” I said. “Their grandfathers were the ones ripped from power when the emperor’s grandfather fought the great war of consolidation, after all.”
“So how are they even still around?”
“Weak enough to be subdued when divided but powerful enough individually to stay around like a skittering Kethok getting into your food stores,” I said.
“Well anyone who hates the emperor sounds like someone I want to be friends with,” she said.
I looked out over the city. I wasn’t quite so sure about that. What I was sure of was that Talia was going to change things on this world if we managed to live long enough. I was certain I’d just found the most formidable bond mate in the entire Ascendency, and I wondered what it said about us as a species that I had to look to humanity to find a woman who was as ruthless as she was beautiful and ambitious.
“It means I’m going to rock this world, Jorav,” she said, responding to my thoughts even as they drifted across my mind. She looked down at me and smiled. “That’s not the only world rocking I plan on doing either.”
The churning of her hips picked up and her mouth fell open. She started making those delightful squeaking sounds that human females did when they were aroused. Already it seemed my mind had made the connection between those sounds and the very real possibility that we were about to have a good time, because I felt my body catching fire.
So it was with great reluctance and disappointment that I used my hold on her waist to pull her up and off of me. She continued grinding her hips for a moment even when she was grinding against thin air. Once she realized that something was wrong she looked down at me and her bottom lip jutted out. I felt disappointment coursing through the bond.
I was just as disappointed as she was.
“What’s going on? Why are you stopping?”
“Believe me, it’s very difficult,” I managed to gasp out. My manhood still throbbed for her. Begged for her. Needed her.
The only thing holding me back was centuries of tradition. The emperor might be willing to show himself for the honorless dog that he was, but I wasn’t going to do anything like that.
“Uh-oh,” Talia said. “You’re thinking about honor and stuff. Don’t tell me this has something to do with some weird Livisk tradition, because you have no idea how bad I need this right now.”
Her words struck to the core of my being in a way that no enemy weapon ever had. I wanted this just as desperately as she did, but it wasn’t going to happen. Not right now.
“We’ve agreed to be bonded to one another,” I said.
“So?” Talia said. She tried to lean down so she could engage me in that odd tradition the humans had of putting their mouths together and dueling with tongues. A tradition that had seemed very peculiar at first, but I’d since warmed to the idea after learning exactly what she could do with her tongue. I summoned every amount of discipline I’d learned over a long career in the military and managed to push her away again.
“What gives Jorav?” she said. “Usually on earth when you agree to marry someone it means you’ve already been fucking forever. We’ve gone at it twice now! Why blow cold all of a sudden?”
My eyebrows lowered. Blowing cold? There was another human turn of phrase that I wasn’t familiar with, though I could understand the analogy well enough. Things certainly did feel cold in here after the incredible heat that threatened to overwhelm me moments ago.
“I told you that we did things out of order,” I said. “But when we agreed to be bonded to one another that also includes the implicit agreement that we will not be with one another like that until the bonding ceremony is completed.”
“But we’re already bonded,” Talia said.
She tried a different tactic to distract me this time. She couldn’t press her body against mine because I was holding her away from me. It was remarkably easy and she was quite light. She couldn’t lean down to kiss me because I turned away from her. I knew if I gave into that temptation then it would be the end of things and I would dishonor myself just as surely as the emperor had.
So instead her hand snaked down and rubbed up and down my manhood. I inhaled a sharp breath and closed my eyes. Then with all the strength I could muster I pushed her away from me. She let out a surprised yelp and I could feel her tumbling through the air via the bond, but she caught herself and landed on her feet.
“We may already be bonded,” I said, going slowly as though explaining something to a child. In many ways she was like a child in terms of what she knew about my people. I felt a flash of irritation as that comparison moved through our mental link, but she didn’t say anything about it. “But that doesn’t change the fact that we have agreed to do the ceremony. While we are waiting for the ceremony to complete we can’t do… that.”
“Oh my sweet honorable Jorav,” Talia said, strutting towards me in a way that emphasized every curve of her now-forbidden alien body. From the feelings moving through the bond she knew exactly what she was doing, too.
She leaned over and kissed me. A long and lingering kiss that reminded me of everything I was going to be missing out on because of tradition. She pulled up and winked at me.
“I guess in that case we’re going to have to have a short engagement, because I’m going to go crazy if this takes too long,” she said.
I cleared my throat. I didn’t have the hearts to tell her that the traditional minimum waiting period between asking someone to bond and going through the ceremony could be months as they reckoned it on her world. I didn’t have to tell her, though, because from the look on her face she read that thought loud and clear through the mental link.
“Damn,” she sighed. “I don’t know what’s going to be more difficult. Overthrowing your emperor or keeping my hands off of you for that long.”
I grinned. Such a perfectly Talia thing to say. And she was absolutely correct. This was going to be a long engagement even if we kept it short.
More from C.F. Harris
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1: Duel
Talia:
I stared at my opponent from across the table. She stared right back at me. Her eyes flicked momentarily around the room as though looking for some sort of escape and I grinned. It was nice to know that she was just a little worried.
Perhaps my reputation was preceding me by now. It should after all the challengers who’d come along. Livisk who thought they could take out the naive human who didn’t know anything about how things worked on this world.
They’d all learned the hard way that I wasn’t going to be fucked with, but this one was still the most difficult I’d gone up against.
She made her move. Pressed a piece of paper across the table. I picked it up and looked at the price on it. I still wasn’t entirely sure about how much was a lot of money here on the Livisk homeworld, but the number she had on the other side of that paper was large enough that I knew she was trying to take me to the cleaners and then some.
“You’re insane if you think I’m paying that price to have you do the arrangements for the bonding ceremony,” I said.
She looked down at
the paper and sniffed. “You have to understand that these things are far more expensive for bonding ceremonies. There are protocols that have to be observed. I can’t give you any less than that without going out of business.”
I leaned forward, the irritation plain on my face. It seemed that people trying to take you to the cleaners over prices on weddings wasn’t a tradition that was unique to earth. I lowered my eyebrows and if I could’ve flashed fire from my eyes I would’ve done it.
“You listen to me. I wasn’t brought to this planet and enslaved yesterday. I know when someone is trying to screw me over and I’m not going to stand for this bullshit. You’re going to come back at me with a real price or you’re getting the hell out of here,” I replied.
Damn. In a lot of ways this was more difficult than dealing with assassins coming at me. Not that there’d been much issue with that over the past month. I was still thinking of things in terms of human time even though I was on a world where it was completely ridiculous to reckon things in human terms since this was a world that took its own sweet time rotating around its home star.
Months and years had entirely different meaning. I really needed to get into the habit of thinking of things in Galactic Standard. Not that any of that had anything to do with this witch trying to price gouge me. Or more accurately she was trying to price gouge Jorav. Probably thought he had enough money that it didn’t matter what number she threw out there.
My mind was wandering again. It felt like it’d been doing that a lot lately. This was the tenth bonding planner I’d met with, and they were all starting to run together.
“You are a human. You wouldn’t know good taste if it came up and stabbed you in the back like you deserved!” the planner shouted.
I stood, keeping my hands on the table. I had to keep them there because otherwise there was a very good possibility they’d fly across the table and wrap around this idiot’s neck.
