Rohn drew out his fingers and ripped open his pants. His heavy member sprang out at her, and she almost cried in relief. He strapped his arm around her waist and hefted her off the ground. He pulled one leg out of the way and guided his cock between her legs.
Oh, yes, she wanted it! She would do anything for this. Let him dominate her. Let him hold her down and have his way with her. Who was she fooling besides herself with all that talk about Allies men respecting women? What was it all worth without this?
She didn’t want to live without this anymore. She didn’t want to live with that nagging hunger eating away at her guts. She had distracted herself with her career, her friends and her advancement to disguise this bottomless need inside her that no man could fill. She’d had to live thirty years and raise a son almost to adulthood and travel to an alien planet to find it.
What good were the Allies, if they robbed their members, and even their leaders, of this most basic human function? What was sex among the Allies but a waking death and a tiresome chore? What was sex anywhere if it didn’t answer this most primal need lying hidden beneath the surface?
His cock found its way to the garden between her legs. He inched his hand down her ass and aimed his shaft into position. Rose hung at the pinnacle of anticipation and waited for the defining moment when it claimed her, body and soul, to belong to Rohn forever. Would he do it? Could she stand the sheer intensity?
Yes! A thousand times, yes! His tool slid home, and she sank down on it with a sigh of shattered joy. It touched that place in her primordial recesses, and the itch stretched forth to rub against it.
Rohn jammed his hips forward to strike into her channel, and his shaft stroked along her tortured ridges. She shivered to her bones. Another second, and he thrust again to her limit. He beat a steady rhythm against her hips. His cock pierced her veil and satisfied her hunger.
She let herself be lifted on his powerful up thrusts, and she fell back down when he withdrew. Her delicious box slammed down on his rising pubic bone and knocked her clitoris sideways. His prick massaged her tense muscles until they lengthened and relaxed in infinite bliss.
Rose let her instinct guide her. Her body knew what it most needed, and it cantered to its ultimate destination. Rohn held her hands together above her head, but beyond that, he didn’t touch her except for his pulsing shaft plowing into her aching fissure.
Oh, let him come! Let him in to occupy her being. Let him have as much of her as he could take. Let him leave nothing behind. Let him consume her with that refining fire. He would redeem her wasted years and the wrong-headed ideas she let rule her life.
If only he would keep pounding her to eternity, she would know eternal bliss. If only he would keep stroking her insides with his muscled lance, she would climax again and again, and rapturous joy would fill her life. It would drive away all the demons and sweep the cobwebs from her mind. She would give herself entirely to him and never go back to her old self.
How long he pumped before he satisfied that itch, she didn’t know. She knew only the blessed moment when the itch transformed into the sweetest golden sunset light she ever knew. It filled her with contentment. She stopped fighting and struggling and reaching, and let him bounce her on his powerful pulses.
The light spread over her body and made every sinew glow. When every corpuscle and molecule shone with inner radiance, the whole mass of her being exploded into stardust. The concussion knocked her back against the tree, but she was already too far gone to notice.
Her lips hung open in a naked scream under Rohn’s mouth. Her body hung limp as he still pounded upwards into her. A fireball of sparks and burning gas erupted from her eyes, her lips, her hair, her skin. The explosion extended all the way across the galaxy to the darkest corners of space. It left no stone or space rock unchanged in its holy crucible, and Rose would never dwell in the same world again as long as she lived.
Chapter 9
Rose curled her back into Rohn’s chest. He held her from behind with his legs entwined with hers. She chilled from her burning passion as the day descended into evening, and she huddled against him for warmth. An unquenchable fire burned in him, and he never got cold. His warmth seeped into her back and kept the chill away. She held his hands.
“We should go back to the Keep. It will be dark soon.”
Rose was in no hurry to go. “Is it dangerous?”
“No. I sleep out alone all the time, but the others will wonder where we are. Your friends will get worried if you disappear the way Moira did.”
“Do you have any idea where she went? How could she disappear when she was too injured to move?”
“I wouldn’t want to guess. The important thing is to get you back.”
“How far away is it?”
“Not far. We’ll be there before dark.”
“I don’t want to go just yet.”
He fell silent.
“Rohn?”
“Yes?”
“Are you glad we’re here together?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t. If I wasn’t glad about it, I could get up and walk away. I’m not a prisoner.”
“That’s not what I mean. I mean, do you think there’s any chance for us? Is this all just a nice idea that will disappear when I go back to the Allies?”
“What other option is there? I won’t go to the Allies, and you won’t stay here.”
“Would you like it if I did?”
“You won’t stay. You belong to another world. This is all very pleasant, but in the end, you’ll decide you belong somewhere else and you would be right. You’ll leave, and your authorities will assign you somewhere else. For all I know, you might even take a lover from some other alien race. You’ll wonder if he’s just a nice idea the way I was.”
She clamped her eyes shut tight. “Don’t talk like that.”
“You said it. You said you would go back to the Allies. You never said anything about staying here.”
“Then why did you take me in the first place, if you thought it would come to nothing?”
“I wanted you, and I could see you wanted me, so I did it.”
“Don’t I mean anything to you at all?”
“Of course, you do. You mean a great deal to me. That doesn’t mean there can be anything between us in the future. You’re only here for a year. We can enjoy each other’s company in that time and then say good-bye and good luck.”
Rose sighed. How could he talk about it with such casual indifference? “Have you said good-bye and good luck to very many women?”
“A few. I’ve gotten together with them at the gatherings, but by the end of it, we both knew it wouldn’t come to anything, so we said good-bye. It’s better that way, when you know you don’t really want to settle with one particular person. They can go their way and you can go yours and look for someone you do want to settle with.”
“Tell me more about the gatherings.”
“Clans hold them when they have a lot of young people in need of mates. Other Clans from the surrounding area come, and everybody enjoys feasting and drinking and tournaments and a lot of talk.”
“How long does a gathering last?”
“Until everyone’s had enough. The young people get together and have a wild time. The young men wrestle and fight and try to kill each other. At night, they pair off with the young women and everyone has a sweaty time screaming and rolling and squirting all over each other.”
Rose blushed. “Oh, my God.”
He chuckled under his breath. “It’s loads of fun. The old people get together and talk, all night long. After a while, maybe three or four weeks, everyone is so exhausted, they all go back to their own homes until the next time. If anyone wants to pair off and get married, the girl goes home with her husband’s family.”
“What if a girl gets pregnant but doesn’t pair off with the guy? What happens to her?”
“That doesn’t happen.”
&n
bsp; Rose sat bolt upright and spun around to face him. “What?”
“It doesn’t happen. No one gets pregnant with anyone they haven’t paired off with.”
“How can they prevent it? If they have sex with each other, she can get pregnant.”
“Maybe that’s how it works with your people, but not here. The girl decides when to get pregnant, and no girl would get pregnant at the gatherings. She waits until she has a husband and a home with her husband’s family. Then she gets pregnant.”
Rose shook herself free of his arms. “I can see I have a lot to learn about your physiology.”
He rested his head on his arm. “So...do you want to go back now, or do you want to keep talking about the gatherings?”
“Who did you get with at the gatherings?”
He sat up and put his arms around her. “I have a better idea. Let me show you what we did. I bet I can make you scream the way I did with her.”
Rose succumbed to his kiss. He could turn her on and off like a switch. He ran his hands down her back to her ass and hoisted her up on his lap. Her body came alive, and she pressed herself against him.
His tongue slithered into her mouth, and he rocked her against his crotch. She closed her eyes and moaned, but at that moment, a loud screech stood every hair on her head on end. She leapt clear of him and landed on her feet a few yards away when the great dragon from the mountaintop swooped low and landed right in front of her.
She never imagined it could be so big. She’d only ever seen it before at a distance, in some cases a great distance. It always looked as big as a medium-sized truck—nothing she couldn’t cope with. Now, at close range, she realized it was enormous, as least twice the size of the morlock that attacked her. A hot wind rushed off its leathery wings, and smoke trailed from its mouth and nose.
It swung its head around on a long neck, and its tail sliced the air with a menacing hiss as it lashed back and forth. The creature’s eyes burned red with hatred, and its skin glowed devil red. A metallic sheen glittered on its scales in the dying light of the sun.
Rose braced herself, and Rohn jumped to his feet, but the lizard head darted out faster than the eye could see. The dragon grabbed Rose in its mouth and took to the air. It beat its wings, and the rush of wind knocked Rohn off his feet. The creature lifted off the ground, and with a few wing strokes, sailed over the forest toward its mountain.
She must have passed out somewhere in the air, because when she started to awake, the first thing she noticed was the sun dropping behind the horizon. She sat up and looked around. She was on a mountaintop. She could see Harkniss Keep from here. The dragon must have taken her to its perch at the summit.
Branches with their needles still fixed to them lay underneath her to form a nest. A warm updraft of air puffed between the branches from inside the mountain. The same volcanic lava that warmed Harkniss Keep must warm this nest as well. No wonder the dragon made his perch on this mountain.
Then Rose saw lying unconscious at her side the still, pale body of a human female. Rose crawled toward her. “Moira! Can you hear me? Moira!”
Moira didn’t move. Rose made a quick sweep of her body and found several dangerous wounds, but none of them bled anymore. They didn’t even seep. Something must have stopped the bleeding.
On closer inspection, Rose discovered they were puncture wounds. That explained the stopped bleeding. The flesh closed up and locked the blood inside, but the wounds could still be deadly. Moira could be bleeding internally, but without her instruments, Rose could do nothing to save her. She couldn’t even discover which wounds might be bleeding.
Rose passed her hand over Moira’s forehead. Her skin lay damp and cold under Rose’s touch. She was in shock from loss of blood. Who knew what other injuries Moira sustained from that wild pig?
Rose looked around her. She had to get Moira back to the Keep, but how? She couldn’t find her way back to the Keep from a short distance away, let alone across the valley through that forest.
Even if she managed to get Moira back to the Keep, Rose couldn’t help her. She couldn’t perform surgery without equipment. She couldn’t treat infection without medication. She couldn’t even give Moira a blood transfusion. Rose knew the blood types of everyone on her team, and none of them matched Moira.
She slumped down in despair. Here was the Allies representative for their team, dying in her hands, and there was absolutely nothing Rose could do but sit back and watch. What would she tell the Command when she got home? As Commanding Officer, she bore the responsibility for the whole team’s safety.
Oh, Moira! Why did you ever wander off? Didn’t you think this planet would be dangerous outside the Keep? Didn’t you see that dragon sailing through the air? He must have smelled Moira’s blood after the pig attacked her, and he carried her here to make a meal of her. She stood up, wavered and sat down again. The nest rested on a pinnacle of a rock overlooking the valley. Would she ever see her family and friends again?
Rose covered her eyes with her hand. She couldn’t break down now. She had to find a way to save Moira and herself. She inspected the branches underneath her. Maybe she could lash them together to make a sled to haul Moira back to the Keep. Maybe the Krataks knew a way to treat these injuries. Their men must sustain terrible injuries fighting these enormous animals, and they all remained vital and healthy.
She swallowed a lump in her throat when she thought of Ben. At least she had a chance to see him grow up. He tested his independence on this planet, so he must be ready to strike out on his own. Her heart really twisted in knots, though, when she thought of Reyna.
She and Reyna were best friends growing up. They stuck together all the way through college, and they even joined the Allied Command together so they could work together after they left home. Why had Rose treated her so foully when Reyna questioned her about Rohn? How could she disgrace herself in the eyes of her favorite sister—and over a man, too?
If she ever got back to the Keep alive, she would make up to Reyna. She would keep her head screwed on straight and not get caught up in some alien man who came sweeping to her rescue. She would knuckle down and do her job, and when this was all over, she would go home and forget all about Kratak.
Chapter 10
She got busy with the branches, but when she tried to dislodge one or two from the tangled nest, she found them hopelessly intertwined. She could almost believe some human hand deliberately wound them together so they could not and would not come apart.
She wrenched and yanked. Moira’s senseless body swayed under the branches. Rose stood up to get a better purchase when the big red dragon banked out of the pastel sky and swooped around the nest.
Rose screamed and toppled backward with the branch in her hands. Her own weight managed to free it from the tangle. The dragon landed nearby and let out a deafening screech.
Rose rocketed to her feet with the branch still clutched in her hands. She brandished it at the dragon and stabbed at its head. Its head slithered back on its serpentine neck, and it lashed its tail like a whip. It bellowed in Rose’s face, but she wouldn’t back down.
The dragon’s head bobbed and weaved on its neck, just out of range of her branch. When she made another jab, its head shot forward. It snapped at the branch with its mouth and bit the branch in half. The end with the twigs and needles attached dropped at her feet. The splintered stump remained in her hands, so she wielded that in the monster’s face instead.
The loss of half her branch didn’t faze her. It spurred her to fight harder, with desperate fury, to protect Moira and herself. The dragon darted in with its head again and clapped its jaws to bite her, but she stabbed her stump at him and drove him back. On his next pass, she took careful aim and jabbed him in the face. The splintered end spiked him missed his eye by an inch.
The dragon screeched louder than ever in pain and rage. His red skin glowed to bright yellow. He sent a spurt of flame shooting out of his mouth that swoope
d across the sky in a red and orange fan.
He glared at Rose with his gleaming eyes and withdrew his head for another deadly attack. Rose bared her teeth and leveled her weapon at him to strike. If she was going to die here in a blazing inferno from this horrid creature’s mouth, she would go down fighting. If he came within range again, he would suffer a lot worse than a sharp stick in the eye. He got more than he bargained for when he chose to fight with her.
He opened his jaws to burn her alive when another huge dragon, even bigger than the first, swept out of the sky. Its skin gleamed bright green in the dusky light, and it shot a jet of flame from its mouth toward the red dragon menacing Rose.
The red dragon swung around to face the newcomer, and the fire it spat at Rose sprayed wide. It shrieked in surprise and pain as the green dragon’s fire licked across its side. It whirled around and reared back its head.
The green dragon beat the air with its wings. The wind blew Rose over backward and she cowered in the nest for protection. She covered Moira with her body and peeked out from under her arm at the two dragons battling each other.
The green dragon overpowered the red one with its size and with its sudden appearance. It hovered just above the ground and thumped its wings in the air. Whenever the red dragon tried to spit fire at it, it blew the fire back on the red dragon with powerful blasts of its wings. The red dragon crouched low against the ground and screeched up at its opponent.
Rose didn’t dare climb out of the nest. The red dragon was dangerous, but the green dragon was far worse. It must want to steal the red dragon’s meal. It would kill the red dragon and then it would come after her. She groped around, but she could find no trace of her sharp stick. When he came after her, she would be totally defenseless.
The red dragon shrieked and bobbed its head, but the green dragon shot another deadly blast of flame from its mouth. It hit the red dragon in the chest and sent the red dragon tumbling backward over the ground. It rolled to the precipice and off into space.
Rohn (Dragons of Kratak Book 1) Page 7
