THE OFF WORLD COLLECTION (Short, Steamy Science Fiction Romances) (Off-World Series)

by Rebecca York

  “Hold out your hands,” he instructed.

  She did, and he carefully set the nearly weightless vessels into her palms. She tried to keep from shaking as he poured a half inch of pale green liquid into each glass, speaking more serious-sounding words as he did so. The unfamiliar syllables seemed to hold a certain power of their own, and the power was enhanced by the strong, confident tone with which he spoke them.

  As he took his glass, he raised his gaze to her. “Drink.”

  Carefully, she curved her fingers around the delicate glass and tipped it to her lips, smelling a tangy blend of herbs and spices in a fermented liquid. It tasted the way it smelled, full-bodied and hot in her mouth, hot going down her throat. As she finished hers, she saw that he had taken only a sip of his before setting it on the chest behind him.

  The room around her seemed to shimmer as he lifted the glass from her hand. She could feel the warmth from the drink spreading throughout her body, making her limbs feel weak, yet, at the same time, energized. “What did you give me?” she asked.

  “Something to make you relax,” he replied, “to open your mind---and your body---to possibilities.”

  A stab of fear shot through her, and she had an urge to run from him---though she wasn’t certain she could have.

  “Don’t turn away from me,” he said, his voice tingling against her heated skin. “Don’t fight what you feel. Let me touch you---your body and your soul.”

  The drug had made her mind fuzzy, yet she trusted the sound of his voice, the look in his eyes. And she suddenly realized that if she denied him what he asked, she would regret it for the rest of her life. When he took her hand and carried her palm to his mouth to stroke the edge of her index finger against his full lips, she closed her eyes. His mouth looked hard, but it felt soft. Sensual. His large, white teeth closed on her flesh, biting, but not painfully. Only hard enough to send darts of sensation along her nerve endings.

  Elena made a small sound, deep in her throat, a sound of pleasure that turned to one of surprise when Rohan gathered her into his arms. His mouth moved along the edge of her jaw, her lips and then her teeth. A shiver went across her skin again. This time, though, it was not a shiver of fear.

  Tentatively, letting instinct guide her, she touched his forehead, her fingertips tracing the ridges that looked so alien.

  “Ah, yes,” he growled, his lips blazing a trail down her neck, across her collarbone. His fingers twisted in the fabric of her gown, pulling it up and over her head in one quick motion, leaving her naked.

  Her breath caught, and as she lay exposed to his intense scrutiny, a little of her fear returned. When his silence became intolerable, she forced a whispered comment. “I don’t look like your women.”

  “Not so different,” he murmured, his gaze lingering on her breasts, then dropping to her narrow waist and gently flaring hips. “You are smaller than a Jalaran woman. More delicate. Like a cresteran.”

  “A what?” she asked.

  “In our legends,” he replied, “she is a goddess of the forest. Rare. Beautiful. The man who sees her is blessed.”

  “Oh,” she breathed.

  He traced his fingertips over her breasts, her belly, then back up again. “So soft. Like the down of sea birds.”

  She was caught between tears and white heat.

  With great care, he bent and rubbed his cheek, then his forehead, against the places where his hands had touched. His tenderness shattered her defenses, and the quivering sensations his touch evoked soon turned to desire. The desire ran, molten, through her veins as he shifted his head and his teeth gently captured one of her hardened nipples.

  She looked at his dark skin against her white flesh. He was so different from her. Yet this seemed so right.

  He stripped off his clothing, revealing a considerable amount of crisp, black hair and a line of ridges, like those in his forehead, running down his spine. When his arms came back around her, she melted against his large, muscular body. Wantonly, she moved against him, the friction of her smooth flesh against the hair sprinkling his chest and legs lighting a fire along her nerve endings. It was the drug, she reasoned, causing these glorious sensations inside her and making her feel so bold.

  For a time, she basked in the fervent attention he paid to her body, his lips and teeth tasting her flesh and bringing it to life. Yet, though she reveled in the new and wonderful feelings he aroused in her, something seemed to be missing. Something important.

  “You haven’t kissed me,” she whispered.

  He raised his head from her breast to meet her gaze. “I do not know this word---‘kiss.’”

  She saw instantly that he was unfamiliar with not only the word but the concept. Still, as his gaze focused on her mouth, she also saw that the idea intrigued him.

  “Like this,” she said, wrapping a hand behind his neck and pulling his head toward hers. Suddenly the aggressor, she pressed her mouth to his, nibbled, opened his lips with a flick of her tongue. His surprise turned to a growl of pleasure, and for a minute he simply let her teach him the basic tactics of the sensual assault. Soon, though, he was kissing her as if he’d been practicing for years.

  “Elena.” His voice was rough, heavy with passion. “This kiss---it is very . . . stimulating.”

  “Very,” she answered, breathless.

  His mouth came back to hers, and they feasted on each other. She had never been like this---wild, abandoned. On fire.

  His fingers stroked high up between her thighs, finding the core of her, and she gasped, her hips lifting involuntarily, seeking his touch, which he gladly gave her. She knew she was slick and wet and open to him, and she was astonished. It was the drug, she told herself for the second time. It had to be.

  He watched her face as he stroked her, doing what he’d promised, finding what gave her pleasure, until the pleasure became almost too great to endure.

  “Rohan. Please---“

  “Yes. Now.”

  He covered her body with his. And then he was inside her, opening, stretching as she had never been stretched before. Yet there was no pain, only a wonderful sense of fullness, of her body being joined to his.

  When he moved inside her, she moved with him, urgently, helpless to do anything but match the strong thrusting of his hips.

  “Don’t stop. Please don’t stop,” she called out, the words tumbling from her, over and over, as her fingers dug into his shoulders.

  He said something in his own language, something that sounded like an endearment. Then his movements changed, the angle of hips shifting, and, though the difference was slight, the change in pressure was electrifying. Suddenly, all sensation seemed to gather and focus in one small spot. For an instant, every muscle in her body drew taut, and her breath lodged in her lungs. In the next instant, the kernel of tension burst open, and an explosion of intense pleasure rocked her. Taken completely by surprise, she cried out as wave after wave of sensation surged through her. Above her, he gave a loud shout that sounded very much like a warrior’s cry of victory, as he found his own satisfaction.

  Afterward she buried her face against his chest, unable to stop tears from flowing down her cheeks. Never in her life had she imagined lovemaking being anything like this. And it was not, she knew, induced by any drug. It was him. Rohan. Her husband. Her warrior. She had given him her trust, and he had taken her to a place she never knew existed.

  His hands stroked her hair, her shoulders. “I was too rough, and I hurt you. I am sorry.”

  She couldn’t let him think it. Struggling to control her voice, she raised her head so that she could meet his dark eyes. “No. You didn’t hurt me. Not at all.”

  He touched one of the tear tracks on her cheek.

  “It was good,” she told him. “So good. I never thought . . . I didn’t know it could be that way.”

  Relief suffused his fierce countenance. Relief and male pride. “I said your people and mine could teach each other things,” he teased.

  “Yes. De
finitely, yes.”

  He hugged her to him. “I did not take you to your bed, because I knew you were afraid. But would you be more comfortable there now?” he asked.

  “I like it here, by the fire. It’s cozy, like the caves where your ancestors lived.”

  “You have seen them?” he asked, sitting up enough to yank the coverings from the bed, spreading them over her.

  “Yes. In the mountains.”

  “I thought your people stayed in these fortresses, where you think you are protected.”

  “Not always.” She hesitated, then added, “Some of us want things to stay the same. I know we have to change. We have to understand Jalar, learn to survive in this environment.”

  “I know this, but why do you think it is so?”

  “This is our home,” she said simply. “The only one we have.”

  Gathering the covers around her, she stood, took his hand and led him to the small window in the thick rock wall. Through the glass she could see the planet’s four moons, three small and one large. Their combined radiance lit the courtyard with an ethereal white light.

  “There is great beauty here,” she said. “Our home world has only one moon. Our ancestors could never have imagined this.”

  He stroked her hair, bent to run his lips along her bare shoulder. “I will show you the western caves, where the rocks glow with many colors, and the mountain streams where the slipper fish swim. And the groves where we gather kandali.

  “What is kandali?”

  “A kind of fruit we use in our cooking.”

  “I’d like to taste it.”

  “You will.”

  She smiled, wondering if she’d get the chance to meet more of his people, wondering if perhaps his mother might teach her to cook the dishes he had liked when he was a child. “They said you come from a village deep in the great forest. Can we go there, too?”

  His eyes clouded. “Not yet. Many of the men in my family have died in battle with your race. We will wait until I can tell their widows that we have gotten something good from this alliance.”

  She nodded tightly, sorry that she had let her enthusiasm carry her too far too fast.

  He left her to stir the fire once more, and she returned to sit on the rug. When he came back to her side, he touched his large hand gently to her cheek.

  “Sometimes truth is painful. But we will deal with all things together. I want to know you. Not only your body but your mind,” he murmured.

  “Yes. I want that, too.”

  “In truth?” The question rumbled low in his chest.

  “You said a husband and wife---mates---should never lie to each other.” She met his questioning gaze. “I think that’s a good policy.” She cleared her throat. “When you first came in, you said I was too small to bear your children. Are you still worried about that?”

  To her amazement, his expression became slightly embarrassed. “I think I said it because I was nervous.”

  “You?”

  “I knew what you thought of me,” he growled. “You expected a beast. An animal. That is what your race thinks all Jalarans are.”

  “My people are wrong,” she said, then added in a rush of words, “You are a man of honor and courage, a warrior. Yet you aren’t afraid to show tenderness to your mate in her bedchamber.”

  She was amused and touched to see color rise in his dark cheeks. Reaching for his hand, she placed it over the spot where her heart beat in her chest. “You are a man to claim a woman’s heart.”

  What does that mean?”

  She gave him a little smile. “It’s an old expression from our home world. Earth. We speak of our romantic emotions as residing in our heart.”

  He considered the concept for a moment. “I think I understand.”

  “So I’ve taught you something of my people,” she teased. “And I can teach you more.”

  He caught the light tone in her voice and arched one very bushy, dark brow. “Things such as?”

  Her lips curved in a smile. “Like advanced forms of kissing.”

  “Ah, yes,” he agreed, and he spoke the words with his lips only millimeters from hers.

  PART II

  THE UNKNOTTING

  Elena sat in front of the dressing table brushing her hair. It had grown longer in the three months of her marriage, until it caressed the tops of her shoulders. Rohan loved to run his fingers through the golden strands, and it made her happy to give him what he wanted.

  She put down the brush and smiled as she took in her vibrant reflection in the mirror. On her wedding night she had wrapped herself in furs to hide her body. Now she wore a translucent white gown that she knew would excite her husband’s blood---and add to both their pleasures.

  But learning the joy of making love wasn’t the only new experience of her marriage. Rohan had expanded her world, literally as well as figuratively. She knew what it was to laugh and talk and share her intimate thoughts and feelings with another person. To argue and discuss and tease and play with a new and exciting freedom. They didn’t always agree. Yet they had learned to respect and trust each other.

  And three times during her marriage, the Guardians had let her husband take her from the fortress, although always with a military escort. She guessed that the Guardians were using the trips to gather information about the planet, but Rohan didn’t seem to mind. He had kept his promises, and more---taking her to glowing caves deep in the mountains and to streams where transparent fish danced in icy water. And he had shown her hidden valleys and windswept plains where she had gathered rare medicinal plants, plants she was even now growing in her laboratories so she could test their properties.

  But his latest trip he had made alone. For the past week, he had been touring a remote mining installation; and in his absence, the doctors had confirmed what she had only suspected before he left. She was pregnant---with his son. A shiver of anticipation crossed her skin as she thought about telling Rohan the exciting news. His broad chest would puff out, and his ferocious countenance would glow with pride. And her own pride would match his, because although there were other mated pairs, like her friend Sophia who was mated to Karn, she herself was the first woman in the colony to conceive in twenty years.

  Elena’s smile softened, and a dreamy expression came over her features. Rohan had been right; the getting of this child had not been unpleasant. In fact, each time they had made love, the thrill of joining with him had shaken her to the depth of her soul. He had taught her the true meaning of mating. It wasn’t simply a joining of flesh to flesh but a bonding of the souls of a man and a woman committed to each other. Ironic that she should learn from a “savage” what her high-minded race, with all of its supposedly superior knowledge, did not seem to know.

  As ironic as the scorn she experienced from her own kind for having lain with one of the enemy. The colonists wanted children, but they were repulsed by the means being used to produce them. Some---those who had opposed the plan for procreation and furtherance of their species---would never accept the human-Jalaran unions as legitimate marriages; indeed, thought they should be terminated. But Elena knew that it had been the luckiest day of her life, the day the Guardians had paired her with Rohan.

  The door opened, and her warrior stepped into the room. The smile of welcome froze on her face, though, the moment she saw his expression in the mirror. She was out of her chair so quickly that it toppled over and hit the stone floor. Ignoring the clatter, she crossed the room in a few quick steps.

  “What is it? What’s happened?” she asked, her fingers closing urgently over his massive forearms. “Is it your family? Tell me what I can do.”

  It chilled her blood the way he stood stiffly, his hands at his sides, staring at her as if she were a stranger. She searched his dark eyes, and what she saw in their depths made her shiver as if a cold wind had blown into the room.

  “Rohan? What is it? Tell me!”

  “You have betrayed me,” he said, his voice low and grating.

&n
bsp; Shocked, she shook her head in quick denial. “No! I would never do that.”

  He answered with a harsh syllable she’d learned was a curse. Prying her fingers from his arms, he thrust her hands away from him.

  She shook her head again, trying to understand this nightmare.

  “Can you deny you made a pact with your lying Guardians?” he clarified.

  The words hit her like missiles fired from one of his primitive weapons, and she took several shaky steps backward. To give herself something to do, she turned and picked up the fallen chair. Draped across the back was a shawl her grandmother had woven. She had thought she might use it to tease him in their love play; instead, she pulled it protectively around her shoulders and across her breasts.

  It was hard to turn toward him again, hard to face the hurt and anger blazing in his eyes. “Explain what you mean,” she said.

  He gave a harsh laugh. “I’m sure you already know. You signed an agreement. You and the rest of the women who mated with Jalaran men. You were warned to tell us nothing of your technology---nothing of use. The men sent to work with us were instructed to show us only things a child would learn in his first years at one of your schools. Do you deny that?”

  She wanted to look away from his accusing gaze, but she kept her head high. “I---I was told by the Guardians that we should not discuss our technology, that the men you worked with would decide what to teach you.” She swallowed hard. “They said it was because . . . because we couldn’t judge what might be of strategic importance. That we might make a mistake. But it was innocent. We---“

  He cut her off again. “You expect me to believe that?”

  Her mouth was dry, and she had to swallow hard before she could speak. “You taught me never to lie to you.”

  He snorted. “It would seem, however, that I did not teach you honor. I saw your name, Elena, on the piece of paper you signed.”