One by one the other couples are handed torches. It is a good year. The gods are pleased. Will they be pleased with us, too?
Beside me, Anya looks pale and unsure.
“Will they make me leave?” she asks. “If there isn’t a sign...?”
“Do you want to stay?” I ask, but before she can answer, there is a shout, and a rumble. We look up, and I see them—three Hoverpods coming through the village, their lights glaring as they stir up smoke in their wake. When they stop, another Earth female exits, wearing the required robes. She strides forward, trailed by two Earth males.
“Anya!” The Earth woman calls my mate’s name.
“Halt!” The priestess steps forward. “You are on sacred ground!”
The Earth male points to a badge on his chest. He is from the outpost. “We are here on Interstellar Council business,” he says. “On reports of an abduction.”
Beside me, I hear my mate gasp. She grabs my hand. Hers is shaking.
Chapter Eight
Anya
Laylah looks terrified for me. But it seems like years, not days, since I last saw her. So much has changed. What must she think, seeing me stand here adorned as I am on the arm of this huge warrior. She stops a few paces from where I’m standing, confusion replacing fear in her eyes.
“Anya, what’s going on?”
“A ceremony,” I say. “And it’s wrong to just burst in.”
“Wrong?” She looks around us. “I’m here to save you! When you didn’t come back, I went to the embassy. I had to file a report. Then an emissary came, and when I heard... But you’re saved now. You can leave.”
“No,” I say softly. “It’s not that easy.” My words echo those that Kohn said to me that first day.
The Earth ambassador steps forward. “Who is in charge here?”
“I am.” Kohn is a head and chest taller than the human male. “Has our emissary told you what happened?”
“Yes.” The ambassador is glaring at me. “Miss Givens, you are in a substantial amount of trouble. What you’ve done could have created an intergalactic incident on any other planet, but given that it’s here...”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
He smirks. “Come, let us talk over here.”
“No,” I say warily. “Whatever you have to say, you can say in front of the chieftain.”
The ambassador seems uneasy now.
“Look,” he says quietly. “On any other planet, you’d already be in prison. But if you’re going to break laws, you’re fortunate to have done it here amid half-breeds who derive income from the display of their antiquated customs. Their rituals are the stuff of entertainment for more civilized peoples. I’ve been directed to have you off this planet within twenty-four hours, with your only punishment being a permanent ban from returning.”
I know what he’s saying—that the Ythilians are inferior to the people of Earth, that intruding on them doesn’t matter because they don’t matter, that they have pulled strings based on Earth’s belief in its own superiority. I came, insulted their culture by spying on it, but am being assured that if I leave now, it will be without consequences. I feel sick. He does not know these people. He does not know their strength. He does not know the magic. But I do. And leaving is the last thing I want.
“Perhaps it’s for the best.” One of the other warriors has stepped forward. I can see distaste for the Earth leader in his eyes, and distrust in me. I want to make it right.
“No,” I say to the ambassador. “You’re wrong about them.”
“Anya?” Laylah looks stricken. “Have you let them brainwash you?”
“No. I’m not brainwashed,” I say. “But I have been enlightened about who the real barbarians are.” I turn to Kohn. “We have not lit the fire.” Tears fill my eyes. We both know if the couple in the flames do not join, I will never be accepted here. I will have to go back to Earth, and I can never return. Not after this. The only way I can stay is if the gods bless our union.
But we have broken faith.
The priestess steps forward. She hands Kohn the torch. Laylah is asking me what is going on, but I ignore her. My large hand is in Kohn’s as he steps to the pile of sapphire stones. He puts the torch tip to the blue rocks, which shimmer and catch light. Two plumes of smoke rise into the sky. I hold my breath. They drift far apart. Tears fill my eyes, and I watch as they begin to take shape. I hear Laylah gasp as the plumes take the form of both me and Kohn.
“What’s happening?” she asks.
“Wait.” It’s all I can say. I squeeze Kohn’s hand. I’ve never prayed, but I pray now to a god of another planet. The forms in the smoke waver and drift apart, then solidify once more. They start to spiral, to dance. It’s a graceful and beautiful display, but I can’t breathe. They are still so far apart. Then they rush to one another and embrace, pressing their hazy forms together in a beautiful dance. A smaller plume moves above them and forms the shape of a moon. Then two figures emerge from the embraced couple—a tiny blue girl, and a tiny blue boy. I gasp. Everyone gasps.
The priestess laughs. “Not in a hundred moons have I seen this,” she says. “You have already soul bonded.” She turns grave then. “You have broken the law, but the gods have been merciful. Despite your disobedience, they will bless you with twins by the next Moon Festival...”
A child. Not just a child, but twins! My hand goes to my belly and I turn eyes filled with happiness up to Kohn. He pulls me to him with a mighty laugh. The priestess begins to sing. Others join in. Only when we break the embrace do I turn to Laylah.
“Anya,” she says. Her face is full of concern, but there’s wonder there, too.
“One day,” I promise, “I’ll tell you all that happened. But please understand. I’m staying. I was so wrong in every way. I came here to find the truth, to expose it. And I have.”
Kohn is staring down the Earth ambassador while we speak. The human looks sheepish. He has offended the chieftain with his words. And I do not know when or how, but I have a deep premonition that someday, somehow, this arrogant man and those who share his views will know the truth about the noble culture of half-humans.
For now, one human does. Me. And that is a start. I no longer want to go home.
I am home.
Chapter Nine
Kohn
Since I glimpsed Anya in the cave, my only thought has been how to make her my own. Now that the gods have blessed our union in ways beyond my wildest imaginings, now that she wants to stay as much as I want her to, I am struck by the gravity of what this means.
I am taking her away from all that she has known. Like most other humans, she was raised with misconceptions about our people, our culture. Now she will live by our laws, by my rule. Will she be able to adapt? A warrior’s mate is cherished, but she is also disciplined if she does anything that can bring harm to herself or others. My little human has much to learn. Many a night will I put her to bed with a sore bottom.
It has been two days since the Moon Festival ended. We will not see another in two earth years. By then, we will be parents. The gods have said so.
I allowed Anya’s friend to stay in our village. It will be the last human she will see for many moons. We have decided to close our rituals to tourism. We will work harder on restoring the mines. We will make do. We will recover, with our pride intact.
The long night is coming to an end and the sky has taken on the deep pinkish purple of an extended dawn. Anya is looking at the stars, which shine a bit brighter now against the vast, vibrant mantle.
“There’s Earth,” she says, pointing to one bright spot that does not twinkle. “I focused on it the night you bared me.” She grows quiet for a moment. “I should feel a sense of loss, but I don’t.”
“Not even for your friend?”
She smiles and shakes her head. “Laylah surprised me. She said she envied me. Earth men...” She stops, trying to find the words. “They’re too civilized. We have no warriors there. No man would fight o
r die for me. No man would take me as you have. Yes, we have respect, but we’ve lost the primal connection, the mad passion that makes magic.”
“We will make magic for many moons,” I tell her.
“I love you,” she says.
Love. I know this word. It is an Earth concept. It is something that happens when a human male and female decide to give it to one another. An Ythilian warrior captures his mate and demands her affection. She fights him until he proves to her that he is strong enough to stay by her side. Is that love? I do not know. I only know that Anya is a gift from beyond the stars. A gift from the gods, and I will forever seek to show her that I am strong and worthy.
“Come here,” I say. We’re sitting on a pink slab of rock. She is naked, and I am happy to see her become comfortable enough to walk out clad only in the air around her, as mated women do on evenings like this.
I push her to all fours, and get behind her. Her dusky, slick inner labia are engorged and protrude slightly from between the pale white lips of her pussy. Her pussy. It is still so tight, for she is so small, and I am so large. I push into her, enjoying her little whimper. I will pound her hard, later, in the tent. But I am mindful of her hands and knees, and move in and out of her with easy, slow strokes as I tell her how beautiful she is, how special, as I regale her with words she would call ‘love,’ which only end when our passionate cries reach the sky, bringing with it, as if by magic, the first glimpse of the rising sun.
The End
About Ava Sinclair
Variety is the spice of life, and USA TODAY bestselling author Ava Sinclair embraces that variety. But the books all have a common theme - dominant alpha males dedicated to claim the hearts and bodies of strong-minded women.
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The Warrior’s Pleasure-Girl by Emily Tilton
Chapter One
Je’Tar, captain of the Swiftarrow, deadliest ship in the He’Ban space fleet, freely acknowledged that he had a weakness for Earth girls. As far as he could tell, he shared that weakness with half the officers of the fleet.
How could a He’Ban warrior not treasure the experience of enjoying a pretty young human girl? Je’Tar knew that a scientist on his home world actually claimed to have proven that certain elements of warrior evolution predisposed them to mate—fruitlessly of course—with inferior, smaller humanoids.
The fruitlessness of course made part of the attraction. Mating with He’Ban females, which was a legal obligation for warriors selected as procreators, happened according to a process designed entirely to maximize the chances of reproduction between selected individuals. It therefore gave no pleasure either to the warrior male or to the nurturer female.
He’Ban courtship rituals, of a kind roughly equivalent to what Je’Tar had heard Earth girls call romance, had passed out of the species culture tens of thousands of years before Je’Tar was born, in favor of a more efficient system. Even in the ancient days before caste differentiation, when He’Ban males and females had made bodily contact with one another when mating, the stimulation to the male reproductive organ—what Earth girls persisted in calling Je’Tar’s cock despite it not resembling a human penis in many respects—represented only a marginal incentive to the He’Ban act of coitus.
The body of the He’Ban female had evolved to maximize reproductive chance and the probability of carrying the litter to term, rather than attractiveness to males the way the human female body had done. The workings of what humans called DNA, shared by the two known forms of humanoid life in the galaxy, human and He’Ban, had provided strikingly different paths that had nevertheless led circuitously to He’Ban males finding human females irresistible as sexual partners.
Because the He’Ban now ruled Earth, and kept the human species in a benevolent form of servility, warriors like Je’Tar had access to the pleasure service. He had over his ten years of service in the fleet taken full advantage of its seemingly endless stock of human girls eager to escape the confines of the world on which most humans were bound to live and die despite now knowing of the wonders to be found in the rest of the galaxy. The He’Ban hierarchs had plans at some future date to allow humans to colonize. The Earth race’s weak but still costly attempt to fight the initial occupation of their world, however, had persuaded nearly the whole council of the wisdom of confining them to their planet for the time being, with the exception of a few who could serve a definite purpose in He’Ban concerns.
Foremost in that category were the girls of the pleasure service, who served rotations on the starships of the He’Ban fleet. Their lithe bodies enchanted Je’Tar just when moving across a room. Their soft skin in the variety of tones that characterized the pleasant range of human evolution, from nearly black, to coppery, to olive, to the creamy, rosy when stimulated, of old-European stock, made his dark red palms tingle when he ran his hand over a girl’s breasts, or spanked her for some small disobedience. To have his cock inside a human pussy kept hairless for him, to fuck that pussy, and then the girl’s tiny anus as she cried out in submissive pleasure, represented for him the greatest reward a warrior could earn.
He loved taking care of them, too. Their smallness and their softness—here he had to agree with the scientist’s findings—made his chest feel tight when he held them close to him, doing what human girls called cuddling. A He’Ban male, and a warrior in particular, associated the action of holding another being close that way with affection, too, though not in the same way: for Je’Tar the power inherent in the act, of being able to protect the thing he held in his strong arms, made him long to do it as often as he could.
He had taken a great many Earth girls to his bunk, and to his bed on Lordan, greatest of the He’Ban starship bases, to cuddle, to fuck, and to discipline when they needed it, in the past ten years. Indeed, before he first saw Tera, Je’Tar had thought he might even be growing a little jaded.
* * *
They kept telling Tera that most girls chosen for the He’Ban pleasure service felt excited and glad to go with the aliens who came to take them to a life of sexual servitude on the starships of the race who had conquered their world. They—her friends at school, her teachers, and now, in this final stage of her preparation, the woman who revealed to pleasure-girls exactly what they had to expect from their He’Ban masters—kept saying that she should feel lucky that she would spend the next four-and-a-half years, from the age of eighteen-and-a-half to twenty-three, far from everything she had known, giving bodily pleasure to what earthlings had assumed from the very beginning must be monsters.
“That all came about because of an unfortunate misunderstanding,” Nurse Lilia said as she sat at the small desk in the examination room where Tera had reported for her final medical interview.
No one in the human–He’Ban liaison office had confirmed what her dorm-mates whispered about this interview, that it represented the last part of Tera’s entry process into the pleasure service. Nevertheless, they all knew that as soon as the girls housed in the big room with its twenty-four bunks turned eighteen-and-a-half they either disappeared after their medical interview or they returned, mostly unhappily, to their ordinary human lives of serving Earth’s overlords in one way or another.
Tera, sitting on the examination table covered in crinkly white paper, wanted to ask what the nurse meant, but she kept her resolution not to submit to her enslavement. The few young women in the dorm who, like Tera, didn’t want to be He’Ban pleasure-girls agreed that it seemed the few the aliens rejected were those who didn’t readily comply with the wishes of the humans who oversaw their preparation.
Only two girls, of the eight who had turned the apparently requisite age in the two months Tera h
ad been in the program, had been rejected, but both of them—like Tera and the three girls who shared her reluctance—had received frequent punishment with the wooden paddle that hung on the dormitory wall for their faults in conduct. Tera and her friends agreed that although the humiliating bare-bottom paddlings at bedtime stung terribly, they were preferable to four years as a pleasure-girl.
The two rejected girls, Rena and Hasma, had each received a final paddling that left them sobbing and walking away from the program with tentative, painful steps, but they had indeed walked away and into careers as waitresses. Nurse Lilia, the head of the program as far as the girls could tell, announced this fate before paddling their bare bottoms so hard their screams of agony rang off the dormitory walls. Rena hadn’t been able to keep from trying to ward off the swats of the terrible implement, and had to be strapped down over the block to stop her from interfering with her punishment. Hasma had cried piteously when told she had to pull her panties up, because Nurse Lilia had turned her bottom into so painful an example of the consequences of disobedience.
Tera had felt the paddle once, for her reluctance to go to the bathroom while Nurse Grela watched. The nurse had clucked, marked Tera down on her clipboard, and made her stay on the toilet until the pressure became unbearable and the golden stream had hissed out of the pussy the nurse had told Tera only a few moments before would soon have its chestnut curls taken away. When Tera asked why, the nurse had said only that He’Ban warriors liked their pleasure-girls that way—as well as liking to watch them on the toilet, the way the nurse now would.
Not only had she in the end had to pee in front of the nurse, but that night at bedtime her white nightgown was raised and her pink panties taken down while she bent over the block with all the other girls watching. Nurse Grela had smoothed Tera’s long, slightly wavy auburn hair over her right shoulder so that she could see Nurse Lilia standing at her left side holding the foot-long paddle with its five holes, made of some dark polished hardwood.
Alien Alphas: Twenty-Three Naughty Sci-Fi Romance Novellas Page 55
