Keeper of the Flame

by Stephanie Burke

  Relinquishing the child without a fight, Flame lurched without his usual grace to the back of the minivan. Dragging out his duffel, he uttered a single gruff curse as he rooted around until he pulled out a small black case.

  With shaky fingers he pulled out a tiny black pill and swallowed it down with a small sigh of relief.

  By the time Kendall had refastened both children to their anchors in the back seat of the minivan and rushed to assess Flame, he was leaning against the side of the van panting with his hair tangled and hiding his face. Even in the waning light of the afternoon sun, his hair looked unusually dull and lifeless.

  Grabbing his wrist, she quickly began taking his pulse, all the while scolding him in her best no-nonsense nurses voice. “I knew you were up too soon after giving birth! Your pulse is racing...I think. Is your body chemistry different than ours? Are you spotting? Wait a minute. You’re a man. Of course you’re not spotting! You have nothing to spot from! I’ve never had this conversation before with a man! What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Kendall didn’t like not knowing what to do. She decided right there that she was never going to place herself in a predicament like this again. On shaky legs, she guided the silent, grim-faced Flame to the passenger seat and helped him inside.

  “My body is rejecting the alteration.” He spoke as if he expected it to happen. Still ignoring his tangled mass of hair, he leaned back in the seat and bit back a moan of pain.

  What more could happen? Would intergalactic tribes of plague-carrying mutants descend upon her next? Kendall sighed as operation Save the Alien Daddy took another unexpected turn.

  “What can I do?” she asked at last as his body began to shudder and sweat.

  “Nothing, Mistress. I apologize for your distress but my body will right itself soon.”

  “Why?” Kendall demanded. “Why is your body doing this and why can’t I help? And don't you dare apologize to me again, Flame. You are in serious pain and your apologies aren’t helping us now. I want to help you and I don’t know how!”

  Kendall tamped down her frustration in the face of his all too real pain. She looked on in concern at his stiff body.

  “My body rejects it because it is unnatural, Mistress. Our physiology is much the same as yours. Anything unnatural placed in it will be rejected after a time. You can do nothing but drive us to safety.”

  “Cut out that mistress crap, Flame! Is there nothing I can do?”

  Flame shook his head. “No, nothing. Just get my children as far away from the search zone as possible.”

  Like a wounded animal, Flame suffered in silence while Kendall strapped herself into her silver minivan, once again charging to the rescue. This knight business sure does stink, she thought as she eyed the man almost bent double with pain that he refused to acknowledge or accept. Yup, sometimes it stinks being a knight.

  It was near full dark when they arrived at the small cabin. They had only made one other stop to care for the children because Flame was in considerable agony. Kendall knew his condition was serious when he didn’t try to assist her with Ember and Spark. He remained quietly alert, but said nothing. The beauty of the day was lost.

  After carrying in the sleeping children still in their seats and placing them in the relative safety of the living room floor, Kendall rushed to help Flame inside the thankfully stocked cabin.

  Feverish and barely lucid, Flame allowed Kendall to guide him to the only bedroom in the four-room log cabin. They both collapsed onto the pale blue comforter on the bed in a tangle of arms, legs, and auburn hair. The heat from his body frightened her more than the feel of his hard body in such close proximity to hers.

  “Flame!” she tried to rouse him after separating their bodies and half-dragging, half pulling him to the top of the bed. “What can I do?” Her voice broke with her fear. She hated to see people she cared about suffer and she did care about this man who was fighting so hard for his children.

  “The alteration is dissolving.” He repeated in a daze. “I took an enhancer to speed up the process, but it comes with pain. There is nothing you can do. A man must bear the pain in silence.”

  “You mean it didn’t have to happen this fast? Flame, you could have spared yourself this pain.” Kendall looked down at his feverish face and sought to calm her sudden anger at this man. If he could have spared himself the pain, they all would be spared a lot of trouble. What did she know about alien medicine anyway? Would a good dose of Tylenol help with the fever and pain?

  “Mistress Kendall. We do not have a week for me to lie in seclusion while the alteration dissolves, nor do I wish to maintain the alteration for my next conception. I want that part of my life finished. It has to be finished for only then will my children be safe.”

  Kendall was horrified. What kind of people forced this abomination on their own? Testrios women, already on the low end of her opinions plummeted down to contaminated operating rooms and Richard. For Flame to willingly go through all of this to save his small family garnered more than her respect and admiration, he earned her unwavering loyalty. She would do what ever it took to assure him a new life on Earth!

  Something cracked in her heart and she lay down beside the man and offered the only support she could. She took him in her arms and clutched his shivering body to hers. Crooning a wordless tune, she rocked him from side to side striving to ease his pain a little, giving the same comfort he had willingly given to her.

  Flame stiffened at the contact, but gradually his body began to relax. He drifted off with the smell of her skin on his nose, the feel of her fingers softly stroking his hair and the sound of her voice lulling him to sweet oblivion. He had never before enjoyed a woman’s fondlings, but now he puzzled at his body’s easy acceptance of touch. His last thoughts were that he had to evaluate his reaction to her and proceed with extreme caution.

  “Do it like this,” the female voice hissed as she used his bound hair to yank his head up. “If you want to pleasure a woman, Flame, you need to remember that nipples are directly linked to a woman’s clitoris! Now do it again!”

  Again he turned his attention to the heaving bosom that lay spread out before him. In his mouth was the flavor of woman, the unmistakable feminine musk filled his senses and made his body crave something unknown. Already he had been suckling upon his instructor’s breasts for over an hour, trying to get it right.

  The brightly colored nub of flesh glistened with the moisture from his own mouth, and stood out, engorged with the desire he was bringing to her, but too slowly. He ran his hands across the warm firm flesh of her stomach, until his thumbs caressed the tip of her pubic bush.

  “Better, young one,” she purred. “You will be as good as your father. You want to make him proud, do you not? Can you see him there, watching you?”

  Indeed his father was watching him, and that made him more aware of his lessons and less aware of his own body. Turning again to the woman who lay under him, he playfully lapped out at her right nipple before taking the hard button between his teeth and gently bit down.

  “Yes!” she praised as she released his hair. “Now soothe the pain.”

  Running his fingers through her soft feminine curls, he grazed the top of her slit while he gently sucked on the fleshly treat that filled his mouth.

  His trainer hummed in pleasure and he felt her moistness grow.

  Taking a little initiative of his own, he let the pads of his searching fingers slide lower, through the slick moisture, to find the pulsing bead of her.

  Now what would be the most sensitive side, the left or the right, he mused. His father had taught him that all women were created different. Some preferred direct stimulation while others abhorred it. Some held more sensitivity to the clit on the left than the right. Some preferred gentleness, while others liked it rough. The trick was in correctly reading the woman.

  To make his task a bit easier, he bit gently on the nipple again and smiled as he felt her shudder in reaction. Taking a cue from her
actions, he grasped her clit between two fingers while he captured her lonely nipple with his other hand.

  Simultaneously, he began to pinch the throbbing women’s flesh between her legs while he roughly stimulated her nipple. Her head jerked back and harsh grunts and groans exploded from her lips.

  “Harder, damn you! Harder!” she shrieked, and like a good pleasure slave, his fingers drenched in her warm wetness, he complied.

  * * * * *

  The sound of her voice woke him. It was unnatural to hear a woman speak so softly, but then she was an unusual woman. Unusual women inhabited this whole planet, but Kendall seemed more unique than the rest.

  To be brought to tears by a mere man showed a weakness that would not be tolerated by any house on his planet, yet she was amazingly strong. In the time that he had known her she had delivered his children, believed him and offered to aid in his escape, and had taken care of him in a situation where the strongest of men shied away from the pain they too must one day endure. He knew because he had helped countless others in the pain of alteration and had dreaded the same ever happening to him. Kendall was strong. She had helped him endure.

  He had learned quickly about endurance.

  If only his mother had not seen fit to pull him from the Brotherhood, he would not now be fighting for his life and those of his children’s while tying to assimilate into a totally foreign society.

  Tessela, his mother, in truth probably had no thought of providing an egg that would create one such as him. He was the only male to be born with the energies of his forebears coursing through his veins. His twin sibling was born with hair as black as night and not a spark of the energies that he possessed.

  Rightfully, his sister should be the one next to rule. After all, what good was a man with the power? He could not be recognized as a voice in the Matriarch. He could not even argue with a woman without serious repercussions. To Tessela, he was a problem to be dealt with.

  The only person who cared about his future was his sire. Alonzid sought to teach his ungainly son all he needed to survive. Pride and strength were fed to him along with each of the rules that men had to obey. When his father petitioned his mother for his placement with the Brothers, he thought he had found the one solution for his strange son.

  His sire saw him struggle with his sibling and his peers for acceptance. He saw him fight to control the strange energies that had a tendency to show themselves when under extreme duress or when his temper flares, which was often. If an object burst into dust or exploded with heat, it was a safe bet that Flame was nearby. Escape to the Brotherhood was the only option for a man who often appeared less obedient than a man should with his flashing eyes and hair that waved with every strong emotion.

  Flame liked the isolation among the Brothers because he no longer stood out. The Brothers, deemed unfit because their bodies could not accept the altering or were in difficult positions, welcomed the strange boy and helped him master his unique power. He learned control because he no longer had to deal with the other young boys of his house calling him names or the utter jealousy he saw in his sister’s eyes.

  Although not raised together, siblings were often left in each other's company during non-training hours, and his sister made no secret of the contempt she held for a useless man being born with her legacy. He was an oddity. He was bigger and stronger than the rest of the boys in the household and his hair bespoke of the power that should have passed him by. So it was a relief to leave his mother’s house to go and train in safety with the Brothers.

  After years of training in the healing arts and more importantly, training to disguise his emotions as well as harness his energies, his mother removed him from the only safe haven that he knew. It seemed Catla, the new head of the House Of Ice, liked to collect unusual things and he was the most unusual to come to her attention in a long while. He still remembered the look of horror on his sire’s face as his mother brought him home. His father quickly explained the duty of a mated man to him with fear in his own gray eyes.

  Everyone but him, it seemed, knew of the woman’s cold evil heart, but no one saw fit to warn him about the nature of his new life-mate. He still remember the last words his father spoke to him before he was taken away for his manhood ceremony.

  Endure.

  “Flame?” her soft voice startled him from his dark musings. “Are you feeling better?”

  “I feel no pain, Mistress.” He could not bring himself to disrespect her by using her given name. He had not earned that right yet, though he was startled to think he might wish to.

  Mistress Kendall again was dressed in those odd pantaloons called jeans and a brightly colored blouse called a T-shirt. Her hair was pulled back into a short tail with an equally colorful tie and her Tarcas brown eyes were alight with concern for him.

  “I was worried about you. You’ve been asleep for two days now and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do if you didn’t wake up.”

  “Two days! The children. I must see to them!”

  “Relax. They’re taking a nap, Flame.”

  Flame leaped from the bed and stopped cold. He was naked as the day he was expelled from his father’s womb!

  A blush, amazingly the same shade of red as his hair, spread up from Flame's chest to his face. Kendall bit back a bark of laughter as he again dove for the bed and jerked the covers up to his chin.

  “Ah, your clothes are on the trunk over there,” she pointed to a cedar chest beneath the room’s only window, “And your bag is at the foot of the bed.”

  She shrugged and sat on the edge of the bed. With that many rules to govern the men, nudity had to be a taboo. “I’ve seen naked men before, Flame. Your body is just the same as theirs.”

  Who was she kidding? She had only seen bodies like that in the magazines her friends snickered about on breaks. He had the body of an athlete. Not overblown like competitive body builders who were just skin and muscle, but firm, muscular flesh. He didn’t even have stretch marks! And that sprinkling of auburn hair that arrowed down from his navel, well that was a treasure trail! Not that she was looking in anything but a clearly clinical way, she tried to convince herself.

  He still looked horrified.

  “What’s wrong?” Had he figured out the turn her thoughts were taking?

  “You saw me unclothed!”

  “Yes. I saw you unclothed when I delivered your babies too. And let me tell you it was no easy task to undress you with all of those strange fasteners. Why do you wear so much?”

  “To hide my largeness, Mistress. It is required that all men dress with decorum.”

  Yet another Testrois oddity. Most men she knew, Including Doctor Dick, would have worn as little as morally possible to show off that body. Kendall shook her head. “The shower is to the left and breakfast will be waiting for you when you’re finished. Do you know how to operate the shower?”

  At his nod, she eased out of the room to give him a little privacy and made her way to the kitchen where the twins were contentedly snoozing in their seats.

  “Daddy will be here soon, guys,” she whispered as she kissed each tiny cheek. “And we will figure out how to make you safe.” She hoped they came up with some answers quickly before she became too attached to the adorable babies and their handsome father.

  During the time that Flame was indisposed she and the children had come to an understanding. Changing diapers was not her idea of a good time, but then neither was screaming babies. Having never spent any great period of time around newborns, she decided to treat them like little people with incontinence.

  “Listen up, guys,” she commanded that first night as both babies sat in their seats, and damned if they didn’t stop fussing and looked at her. It was unnerving at first, both sets of those little gray eyes following her every move, but she quickly got past it in the face of the lecture she was about to deliver.

  “There will be no unnecessary crying. We will do a feeding every four hours as suggested by Doctor Know-it
-all in his little book.” She gestured to the book she waved in the air like a small shield.

  “I’ll change diapers as needed, but please take it easy on me. I’m a beginner.” Both children seemed to glance at each other in silent communication before turning again to Kendall.

  “Hugs and kisses will be unconditional, but I don’t want any trouble out of you two. I will not tread the boards with you two just so you can get your kicks off of running me ragged. Until your father regains consciousness, I am in control.”

  Both little rose bud mouths seemed to pucker just then and Kendall was almost at a loss to explain why when her lecture was going so well. “Are you guys hungry?” she asked as she dropped the book on the kitchen table and cautiously approached the twins.

  Their little faces began to screw up like two identical prunes. “Is it daddy? Do you want daddy?”

  Their eyes slammed shut and in unison, almost like synchronized swimmers, they began to whimper and wave their arms and kick their legs.

  “Oh daddy will be okay, little ones.” Kendall dropped to her knees on the tile floor and began to pet and stroke their little faces. Soon she was sitting on the floor, bouncing a twin on each leg and she was damned to know how it happened.

  Ember and Spark exchanged discreet glances as Kendall began to cater to their every whim. They had come to an understanding all right, and now it was clear who was the boss. The conspirators smiled and drifted off to a contented sleep. Kendall wondered again for the thousandth time, “Damned if I know how I get myself into these messes.”

  Chapter Four

  Kendall turned from the stove at the sound of his footsteps. Flame hadn’t eaten in two days and he need food to stay healthy for his children. Still, she was amazed at his body’s ability to heal itself. After almost two days of extremely high fever, the furnace abruptly cut off and he fell into what she would assume was a natural sleep.

  Whatever enhancer he took to speed up the natural breakdown of the alien augmentation in his body could mean things for the medical world. The thought of what it could do for antibiotics alone left her staggered. It also took her mind off of his sinfully gorgeous body and deep masculine voice. And then the fodder for all of her recent fantasies walked in.