His Untamed Mate (Swarii Mates Book 1)

by Korey Mae Johnson

  “You win, you freak!” Thorton shouted in the human’s language.

  With a victorious grin, Peyton released him and let Thorton untwist himself out of the position he had been wrestled into.

  Graham stood agape as Thorton pulled himself off the floor, his shirt askew and his face red where he had been pressed into the floor, then stretched out his shoulder and huffed, “Best six out of eleven.”

  How Peyton, a human, could take down a thick, tough brute like Thorton was beyond him. Peyton didn’t even look rustled. He just cracked his knuckles and, after a moment of face-off, he took Thorton down with such quickness that Graham was left speechless.

  “Best seven out of thirteen,” Thorton wheezed wearily from the floor afterward.

  “Somebody’s going to get hurt,” Graham finally warned, letting his presence be known to the rest of the room.

  “I’m not going to let a human beat me,” Thorton puffed, trying to crawl off the floor and regain his balance.

  “Thorton, he almost just smothered you with your own kneecap,” Graham reminded, grimacing.

  “Besides, I already beat you six times,” Peyton reminded, shoving his hands into his pockets and shrugging his broad shoulders. He turned to Graham and asked, “She still angry with me?”

  “We didn’t discuss you much,” Graham replied, crossing to the pilot console.

  “Ellie has one of the warmest hearts and the most loyalty of anyone I’ve ever met,” Peyton informed him, but then sighed. “Unfortunately, she is a pain in the ass. Swarii mate for life, right?”

  “Yes,” Graham admitted.

  One of the corners of his lips twitched upward. “Then God help you.”

  Graham was going to ignore that and turned around in his chair to look at the piloting interface, but then he turned back around. “Humans mate for life too, don’t they?” he asked, confused.

  “We try to,” came Peyton’s cryptic response.

  “See—it’s the try there that confuses me. Why would you stay with someone when you didn’t physically have to?”

  “Because we… love them…?” Peyton replied slowly, as if he was afraid of answering wrong.

  Graham blinked at him. “Like the feeling one has for a sister or a brother?” he tried to clarify.

  Peyton pursed his lips in deep thought. “Yeah, only that times a million… and different. You know, there’s that whole sexual attraction thing, but it’s not just that. People love their spouse so much that they’d forsake their family in a heartbeat. My dad didn’t talk to his family at all since he loved my ma, and his family didn’t approve of her. I would burn the universe down before I let anyone touch Mary,” he added. “I’d burn it down without a second thought.”

  “Hm,” Thorton grunted critically, plopping down in a seat. “And you lot think the Union is a strange concept.”

  “So…” Peyton drawled. “You don’t love Ellie, then?”

  “I care for her, certainly. I’d die for her. But what you describe… I don’t have those feelings. I feel an irreplaceable physical attachment to her. Like one might feel for their own heart or brain,” Graham specified thoughtfully. “Don’t get me wrong—she never makes me feel bored. She’s a cute little thing that provides an endless source of diversions.”

  “Well, that’s quite miraculous in itself!” Thorton added with interest. He turned to Peyton. “Graham has sort of a one-track mind.”

  “Sex?” Peyton guessed, his lip curling with disgust.

  “No.” Graham rolled his eyes at this, but then realized he had been thinking about it a lot recently. Hell, he was thinking about sex with Eleanor right that moment. She had a very beautiful body, after all. It was hard to stop thinking about it… “I mean, not until recently, anyway.”

  “Let’s just say everyone back home wants to eliminate the Frian scourge,” Thorton clarified. “But most haven’t made it their personal responsibility like Graham has.”

  Peyton’s eyebrows shot up but his mouth was still set grimly as he said, “Hey—killin’ Frians sounds like a perfect Saturday to me. Could make a pair a’ boots out of any one of those scaly sons-o’-bitches.”

  Graham was really beginning to like this human.

  “Before… you know, the plague y’all got, why were you fighting the Frians in the first place?” Peyton asked with curiosity.

  “Frians don’t co-exist with others. They take over. So for pretty much all of our history, we had been fighting a battle just to keep them off of our planets. Everyone understood the fight, and we’d made our protection a priority… but it hadn’t been personal then like it is now,” Thorton answered for both of them.

  Graham, still not liking to think about the plague, turned back to his console and then, after another moment, he asked Peyton, “So, what can I do to improve relations with Eleanor? I’ve never butted heads with anyone so much in my life.”

  “You’re asking Peyton?” Mary stepped in from the hallway, looking doll-like next to Fie, who was walking along with her. “Talk about the whale asking the shark how to waltz.”

  “I don’t think that’s even a saying,” Peyton retorted, crossing his arms in front of his chest defensively. “And I handled Ellie fine.”

  Mary snorted derisively. “She handled you fine. Look, Graham, everything you’re doing with her is wrong. Ellie is the type of person who’s going to do what she’s going to do. The only way you can facilitate that is by going along with it and lending a hand, or else you’re just standing in the way of a hurricane.”

  “She just needs a few good lickin’s, if you ask me,” Peyton huffed, “and luckily the commander here seems to be handlin’ her just right.”

  “They don’t spank grown women on Earth anymore,” Mary said, dismissing Peyton with a wave of her hand as she turned back toward Graham. “You can’t treat her like that.”

  “Maybe they don’t spank in Connecticut,” Peyton replied, “but in Texas, we—”

  “Oh, here we go! Another ‘Tough in Texas’ speech!” Mary groaned, throwing her hands up and turning back toward Peyton and jabbing her index finger into his firm chest. “Let me tell you something, buster—you’ll never be touching me that way!”

  Peyton’s face twisted up to begin to argue, but before he could get a word out, the room was filled with mocking laughter, including from Graham himself, who thought Mary’s resolute expression and hands-on-the-hips posture were just darling, as were her crazy notions.

  Peyton’s face turned bright red. “Just because most of Earth has forgotten about the proper way for a husband to handle his wife, doesn’t mean I have, missy! The only reason you’ve never gotten a good hidin’ is because you’ve never given me a reason. Keep up your naggin’, though, and see where you end up!”

  Mary’s fair face splotched dark crimson at those words and the room’s hearty laughter. She looked too taken aback by Peyton’s threat to conceive a response.

  Thorton suddenly chuckled. “Aw. I love humans. I want one.” He looked at the space between the couple as if he could actually see the tension between them. “Cute can’t even begin to describe them.”

  “Learn when to shut up, Thorton,” Mary demanded, turning her head to glare daggers at him.

  “What I really hope to see is when she gets to Swaraan and is absolutely shocked by how frequent those sorts of chastisements are. Hell, the admiral took a belt to me until I was grown up!” he continued. Then, thoughtfully, he added, “Which is odd, really—because I don’t think he punished Graham since he was a teenager… And he wasn’t even my father…”

  Graham smirked. Mary was onto something there—Thorton didn’t know when to shut up, particularly when they were growing up. Thorton’s father had died when he was very young and his mother took ill for years, and so the admiral, Graham’s father, took Thorton under his wing like he was his own and Thorton, in return, provided the admiral his biggest challenge.

  Mary was now looking so upset she was practically shaking. “You need
to get over it,” Graham advised, shifting his tone to one of command. “That’s just the way things are. Naughty mates—or wives, in your case—get spanked and then everyone moves on with a lesson learned.”

  “Naughty wives?” she echoed with venom. She pursed her lips and turned back into the hallway. “I’ve had it up to here with the misogyny on this ship!” she said, putting her hand over her head even as she marched angrily off. “Troglodytes!”

  Graham turned to Peyton for a translation of that word, but he merely frowned and said, “I don’t know half the words she uses and I like it that way,” he explained, and shook his head.

  “Good job chasing her off,” Fie grumbled. “I thought she was being quite useful. It’s not every day we run across someone who is a walking encyclopedia of the human condition like the Mary girl.” Fie turned his finger over an electronic tablet, continuing to grumble to himself.

  Graham was about to spin his chair back around to the console, but then he thought better of it. With Eleanor still forefront in his mind, he figured he’d get his concerns out of the way. He leaned forward, casually resting his elbows on his thighs, although even asking for help with Eleanor made his whole body feel uncomfortable. “Speaking of the human condition,” Graham said with a grimace. “Fie, I need you to do something for me…”

  Chapter Four

  Ellie was happy to discover that Mary was in a bad mood, since she wasn’t feeling particularly peppy herself. She had woken up with a throbbing bottom and the taste of soap still in her mouth, her emotions bubbling up inside her with the need to escape. Mary, in the past, would play the devil’s advocate when she was in her normal serene mood. Now, however…

  “I hate everyone here and I want to go back to Earth!” Mary snapped as soon as Ellie joined her in Mary’s cabin. “They’re all nothing but a bunch of cavemen who need their balls kicked in!”

  Ellie plopped onto the bed as Mary ranted on, happy to hear it, although she wasn’t happy either as she knew from Graham that Earth was a two-month journey from their location, and they were traveling in the exact opposite direction from their planet and toward a Swaraan mothership.

  Ellie, when given the opportunity, launched into a lot of grumbles about the way she’d been treated. Mary agreed, and just as heartily as Ellie had hoped. “They can’t just beat you like you’re some orphan in a Dickens novel!” Mary huffed. “It’s not right. None of it.”

  Ellie gave a nod and complained, “And to add insult to injury, your boy-toy ratted me out. Can you believe it? I wish he was turned into a eunuch. Right now I’m thinking it would have been a good and just idea.”

  “That man can be a real ogre,” Mary granted, putting her hands on her hips. “And being among the Swarii isn’t going to help him one bit. I don’t know if the Swarii are like him or he’s like them, but I’m not liking the parallel. He’s becoming more macho than ever.”

  “And just when I thought Peyton couldn’t get any more macho,” Ellie grumbled. “If he had any more testosterone oozing out of him, the people around him would start growing beards.”

  Mary paced the room a few times, and eventually her breathing cooled down from huffing and she took a deep breath in and out before calming. “You and I know two different Peytons,” Mary finally said. “I know the sweet, kind, caring, thoughtful leader Peyton. You know the brotherly, protective, self-righteous, easily frustrated, hot-headed Peyton.” Mary plopped down and pulled her feet up on the bed so that her back was against the headboard. “I’d been seeing that all along, but I was fine with it because I was happy with the Peyton I was getting. But now that Commander Graham’s in the picture, and Peyton doesn’t have you or the other girls to vent to, I’m beginning to see more and more of the Peyton that you know.”

  “Ha!” Ellie gloated in response to this. Putting it that way, she felt like Mary was finally getting a good look into her world. “Well, hopefully the sex is good. That’s all I can say.”

  Mary’s face blushed, and presently a small smile crooked the sides of her lips upward. “It’s very good, actually… It was everything I ever hoped it could be.”

  “Good. Because the brute is all yours,” Ellie said, rolling her eyes. “Although I’m still going to get back at him. I’ve had it up to here with his disregard for my ability to sit. Not to mention that I have a weird addiction now to an alien’s cock, which just compounds matters. There’s nothing I can do to get away now, and I know it, but Peyton doesn’t have to make everything harder for me. I just wish he’d keep his nose far out of it and mind his own business.”

  “I do hope when you get him back that it’s good,” Mary allowed, and then looked her up and down. She reached forward and put her hand across Ellie’s forehead. “You’re still looking and feeling very feverish, Ellie. I hope you’re not catching anything.”

  “No, it’s still that Union thing,” Ellie assured. “Supposedly it takes oodles of sex and time to get rid of the fever it causes. That’s what Graham said.”

  “So you believe all that now?” Mary asked, but it was easy to tell that Mary wasn’t completely sure of it herself.

  “Believe it?” Ellie echoed. “I live it!” Ruefully, she shook her head. “You have no idea of all the weird stuff that’s been going on in my brain. I’m beginning to think that I’m not human, after all. Why else would I be like this? Feeling the way I feel? I have these crazy urges when it comes to Graham that don’t make any sense to me, especially after Graham just spanked me. But it still doesn’t seem like we match up because I’m not even well equipped for sex. I can barely walk afterward,” she admitted, her face heating. “I swear last time we did it, I pulled my groin. His equipment is… like… oversized.”

  Mary made a face of disgust at this. “I don’t need that much detail.”

  Ellie rolled her eyes in Mary’s direction. “Ah, I see. So, I get all the gory ass-sex details back at the palace, but now that I have a story to share, nobody wants to hear it?”

  Mary nodded, but with a slight self-effacing grin. “That’s pretty much right. It’s not easy being Ellie Jonas, is it?”

  Ellie shook her head. “That’s putting it lightly.”

  Mary looked up at the ceiling. “I graduated first in my class at Harvard Med School. I was going places. I had tons of job offers. I was going to do something. But just like that—poof. That life’s gone, and I’m a slave getting shipped across the galaxy to get bought and sold, then sold again before—”

  “Hey, at least you got into our palace at the end. Peyton thinks you’re a goddess. When he first saw you, he tripped over his own feet and fell face-first onto the marble floor. You know what happened the first time I met Peyton? He strapped my ass. I’d just come across the galaxy, got dumped in the middle of the biggest shit-hole in the universe, had never been spanked before in my life, and then whammo. It was a fine how-do-you-do, let me tell ya,” Ellie grumped.

  “Perhaps you shouldn’t let people spank you.”

  Ellie couldn’t even believe Mary had said that, so she asked, “Did you just say that I shouldn’t ‘let’ them do that? Does ‘let’ mean something different to you or something? Because the way I’ve been using that word sort of denotes that I had a choice.”

  Mary didn’t retract her statement. “Well, you do. You should just be firm and more serious. Peyton might talk a big game, but I think we’re both very clear that I simply wouldn’t let him put a hand on me. Don’t get me wrong, you get bullied into it pretty aggressively, but I—”

  “‘Let’ is not a word that applies here,” Ellie assured her pointedly. “I’m somehow mated to a seven-foot-tall alien, and you’re married to a six-and-a-half-foot beast. He could eat you for breakfast if he wanted to.”

  Mary just gave her a smile as if she was just being silly, so Ellie pouted and got up to stomp out to sulk somewhere alone.

  She opened the door and pounded into the hallway. She turned the corner, only to realize that she had rounded the corner too fast and walked
right into the wall. She bounced back from the wall, wondering how distracted she had to be to misjudge the distance, when she realized that it was merely an eight-foot-tall alien looming in the hallway’s entrance.

  “Hello, little one,” Fie said in his low voice and accent that was very thick and almost hard to understand. “Might I see you for a moment?”

  He was so huge and quietly intimidating that she immediately grunted in the affirmative.

  “I need a blood sample from you,” he began. His next word was, of course, “Wait—” as she tried to turn and sprint in the other direction. “Please, Eleanor. It’s for science.”

  “You’re not getting my blood if it’s about saving creation,” Ellie assured him stubbornly, suddenly not caring that he was a giant. “I’ve put up with a lot from you people, but I’m not going that far. I have limits.”

  He smiled very kindly, as if he thought she was just being cute. “Your mate asked me to do a quick checkup,” he explained simply. It was clear that he thought this was going to get her to acquiesce.

  She turned and, once again, began to walk away.

  “There’s a piece of cake in it for you,” he promised.

  He’s lying, she told herself. There’s no cake in space.

  Or was there?

  She spun on her heel, slowly, and looked him up and down suspiciously, miraculously without getting a crick in her neck. “Cake?” she asked, watching his expression. “What kind of cake? How do you know about cake? Why would you keep this from me?”

  “Come with me to the lab and I’ll show you,” he promised, nodding in the direction of the lab and then turning and walking that way, leaving her to stand in the hallway.

  She followed him, although very slowly and apprehensively, all the way to the lab.