A Civilized Mating

by Marie Harte

  Though the planet called them barbarians, he liked to think his people were more civilized than grunting brawlers who were more comfortable naked than clothed. His people did more than fight and breed. They strategized, bartered, raised their own crops, and defended their own. As their leader, Talzec brought more than power to his clan. He brought a clear-sighted vision of the future—one that didn’t allow for his men to ignore their duty in favor of a good fuck.

  The female lowered Katan’s loincloth, stood, then bowed her head with respect. Katan at least had the sense to thank the woman before she left the area.

  Talzec waited to see what Xav would do, fully prepared to thrash Katan in front of one and all to make a point. But Xav didn’t disappoint him. “With me,” he barked the order, and Katan seemed to deflate before nodding, fully aware of the repercussions awaiting him.

  The pair moved into the training circle, and the others soon cleared the space to watch. Then Xav proceeded to show the men the merits of learning defense and attack in lieu of gaining pleasure, hitting all of Katan’s weak spots. The brutal scene didn’t take long before Katan couldn’t regain his feet and begged for a break, bleeding profusely from his nose and mouth and clutching his belly. Xav glanced up at Talzec.

  He nodded, and Xav left the group after ordering their trainers to begin again. Xav reached Talzec and held up a hand. “No, I know what you’re going to say.”

  Talzec raised a brow.

  Xav glared. “I had to let him finish. Even I’m not that cruel. You know Jalla’s a genius with that mouth.”

  It had been too many days and nights since he’d last experienced such pleasure, but Talzec had more command over his baser needs than most. “Did Katan give you a reason for why he decided to ignore training?”

  Xav sighed. “You know it’s getting harder. Our females are only so many. The men aren’t bonding like we used to.” He paused. “We might need to start raiding again.”

  “Damn.” Talzec had known this was coming.

  “Some of the men have formed their own pair bonds, but we need more females. You know that.”

  “Yes, but breaking training protocols isn’t the way to go about it.” Since he’d fought and won the challenge to take command of his clan a year prior, he’d been making changes. The clan had wanted someone to help them grow, and Talzec was just the warrior to lead them into the future. They already outclassed the other clans in weaponry skills and sheer ferocity when it came to battle. The Western resort now requested their members for guard duty more than any other clan.

  But sexual issues had come to a head if his own men couldn’t contain their needs.

  “You don’t feel it like they do. Like the rest of us do,” Xav emphasized.

  Talzec saw the strain on his friend’s face and sighed. “I see.”

  “I don’t think you do. Without the mating bond, the men aren’t finding satisfaction. Pairing with each other helps, but even for those with such a relationship, they’re losing focus.”

  Talzec understood more than Xav knew. “You think because I lost Nalla I don’t feel the same urges.”

  “I know you don’t.”

  “Oh?” Talzec should have seen this coming days ago. Xav had been acting up more than usual. If Talzec hadn’t been so used to suppressing his own desires, he’d have seen to Xav’s needs without having to be reminded.

  “When Nalla died, you went into mourning. We all know how hard that can be.” Xav paused. “But if you’d really look at what happened to you, you’d realize you—”

  Talzec left before he did something he’d regret. Like pound Xav into the next territory. Though it had been a little over a year since Nalla had left them, he still felt her passing deep in the hurt parts of him he kept buried—because a true leader did what was best for his clan, not just himself. Grief had no place in a world built on vigor and might. He could not afford weakness. None of them could.

  Barbarians, warriors, indomitable fighters. Talzec and his men were the best of the best, and they had enemies. Warriors who didn’t like them changing tradition. Rival clans who wanted their fertile lands, ripe women, and stalwart sons. He prized all of his people, and for a time he’d loved one more than any other.

  Yet he, like the others, knew it hadn’t been a true mating. Had it been, he would have died along with Nalla, bonded in that most fundamental of ways—through lifeforce. His love of her had been true, but something had been missing. And he hated the reminder.

  He lengthened his stride, not wanting to lose his composure in front of his men, several of whom had stopped fighting to watch him with Xav. He turned away from the main trail leading into the village center and instead sought a rarely used passage to a private grotto, where he normally went to work off his raging aggressions. Even among barbarians, Talzec knew he could be extremely destructive.

  As expected, Xav, that tenacious bastard, followed him.

  “Talzec, you run from yourself.”

  He stopped and turned around so fast Xav knocked into him. Annoyed, he used Xav’s momentum to flip the man onto his back, slamming him onto the ground. Hard. His warrior markings, normally skin-colored, darkened to black as he let loose his passion. He wasn’t surprised to see Xav’s markings already visible, swirling in patterns on his upper shoulders and down his broad chest.

  Xav reached up to grab his arm, and Talzec extended his hand. Yet Xav apparently hadn’t finished trying to make a point. He yanked Talzec down and grunted when Talzec let his full weight slam into his beta. They rolled over thick grass, each trying to outmaneuver the other. The battlelust between them grew. Fists, knees, and elbows knocked and dug into firm flesh. The invigorating challenge whetted Talzec’s appetite to dominate.

  Only Xav came close to matching him in a hand-to-hand brawl. His beta made up in agility what Talzec had in power, and they wrangled long enough for their contest of wills to shift into a need for something more.

  The constant rubbing against each other had turned Xav rock hard, as Talzec had anticipated. But he hadn’t worked off his rage just yet.

  “You need me,” Xav said, half-strangled under Talzec’s forearm. “Admit it.”

  “Oh?” He leaned close and sucked at the base of Xav’s throat, causing the leaner man to arch into him. “That’s a nice thick cock rubbing against me. You want release?”

  “Need it,” Xav breathed, and Talzec pulled back to see his lover flushed with desire. “Need you.” Xav ground up against Talzec’s own impressive erection.

  Talzec hadn’t taken release in too long, and the fury of his arousal caught him off guard. The surge of passion he’d kept tamped down rolled to the surface.

  Now Xav would get what he’d asked for—Talzec’s way.

  Xav moaned into Talzec’s mouth as his lover, his commander, took charge. Talzec had always been the best of them, a natural leader. An alpha warrior at heart. Firm but not cruel, emotionless at times, but never heartless. He’d been missing Nalla for too long, and it was past time Xav forced the man to take a good hard look at himself.

  Sex with Talzec was like nothing Xav had ever felt with anyone else. They’d been friends since birth but hadn’t bonded until just after Nalla’s passing. Xav belonged to his lover, but unlike Talzec, he knew they needed to mate with their female. A woman to complete them both. They just had to find her first.

  Talzec murmured, “I’m here, tonan.” Tonan—a term of general affection in one sense. On a deeper level, it meant of my heart, said from Master to submissive. Xav never knew exactly how Talzec meant it. Hell, he wasn’t sure Talzec knew how he meant it. “Stay with me, damn it.” Talzec sucked Xav’s nipple into his mouth, then bit down, and Xav moaned.

  A rough hand wrapped around his throat, making it difficult to breathe, which amped his desire. He jerked and swore, his cock on fire as Talzec continued to grind over him. But before Xav could pull his lover to him for another kiss, Talzec reached his free hand between them. He felt under Xav’s loincloth and grabbed t
he steely, slick shaft needing ease.

  “Mother suns, please,” Xav begged. Please, tonai, he wanted to say but didn’t. Tonai—heart made whole, from submissive to master. An acknowledgement of his place they both tacitly acknowledged but refused to say aloud. “Please.”

  “Watch me,” Talzec growled, let go of his throat, and stared into Xav’s face as he worked him faster and harder, his grip both punishing and so right Xav teetered on the edge of orgasm all too soon.

  They didn’t talk, only the grunting and harsh breaths of carnal hunger sounded between them.

  “Come,” Talzec ordered.

  Xav was helpless to obey. His first release jetted over Talzec’s thick fingers, and he felt a part of him relax as his lover took his tension away. But his desire, not yet fully sated, flared anew when Talzec shifted over him, reminding him his tonai had yet to find his own ease.

  “In your mouth.” Talzec got to his feet and lifted his pelt, exposing a glorious cock, nice and wet, prepared to fuck.

  Xav quickly rose to his knees and opened his mouth.

  Talzec pushed past Xav’s lips in one surge, hitting the back of his throat. Used to such roughness from his alpha and ecstatic to feel it once more, Xav was lost in the pleasure of working his lover until Talzec gripped him by the hair to stop him.

  “Slower. I’m close.”

  Xav obeyed. The thrill of acceding to someone stronger, more dominant, turned him on all over again.

  “Touch yourself,” Talzec demanded, his voice low, gravelly. “Come when I do.” He shoved deeper into Xav’s mouth, and Xav brought himself to another, more intense climax while Talzec continued to push between his lips. “Hammer and fire. Yes. Fuck.” Talzec came in a great rush of seed as he thrust once more and stilled, his release an explosive ecstasy Xav could feel pulsing through him as well.

  When Talzec ceased, Xav pulled his mouth away and finished spending on the ground, the act of pleasing his tonai as important as breathing.

  He gradually felt Talzec stroking his hair, then his cheeks as the large warrior apologized…in his own way. “I let this go for too long.”

  Xav stood on shaky legs, once again right with the world if not yet ready to catch his balance. By all the battle gods, Talzec made him crazed with lust, frustrated with need, and full of affection all in the same breath. “Apology accepted.” Pause. “Don’t let it happen again.”

  Talzec laughed, his gaze admiring. “Now who’s alpha?”

  “You are, you raging berserker.” A high compliment. Xav grinned back at his alpha, thoroughly pleased at the blue that sparked in Talzec’s golden eyes. Some odd strain of offworlder must have been introduced to Talzec’s line ages ago, because the Ussed barbarians were dark and gold.

  At the thought, he asked, “Why do we not engage offworlders for sex?”

  Talzec blinked, but not put off by Xav’s blunt change in subject, he answered, “Because Mextahn decreed we steer clear of them.”

  “When he ended his disastrous mating. But that was two hundred years ago. And I’m talking about sex, not mating. I think the time has come to revisit the past.”

  Talzec grunted.

  “Of course, you know I’m thinking of Maht and that mess.”

  “Hell. Have you tracked him down yet?”

  Xav nodded. “He’s at the yernax point, outpost four. He’s still got the offworlder with him.” One of the two trackers he’d assigned to keep an eye on Maht had reported back recently. “Apparently they might be truly mated. Zhen said the pair have been copulating for hours without cease. And the female’s most striking.” A little too much enthusiasm in Zhen’s tone, but Xav would address that later.

  “We have to fix this. If Maht’s truly mated to her… We’ll cross that if it comes to bear. But taking an offworlder from the resort could be considered a breach of the treaty. If that’s the case, we have a large mess to handle. The Tribe won’t stand for any clan ruining the East-West Treaty.”

  Normally the feelings of the West didn’t matter much to the Tribe, though their clan had always abided by them. Most other clans didn’t think the West mattered. No one wanted their lush, much-too-vulnerable land. Not when the eastern world held so much promise. But Xav knew Talzec had plans to increase trade with the West, especially with the xechelln pelts seeming to be so much in demand.

  “Want me to handle this?”

  Talzec nodded. “Quietly. The fewer who know of this, the better. Take Zhen back with you. Lore is there as well?”

  “Yes. He and Zhen work well together.” They’d also bonded, a fact Talzec no doubt knew, because he sighed.

  “Fine. You three should be able to escort Maht and his alien female back here. Or should I send a few more men to help you?” The arrogant ass raised a brow.

  “Funny.”

  Talzec grinned.

  “I can handle Maht on my own.” Xav frowned. “Why did you insist on Zhen and Lore helping anyway? I could have tracked Maht down myself.”

  “Because I needed you here more.” Talzec’s smile faded. “The Nasuhl are building for a raid. I can feel it.”

  “We should destroy them.” Xav had been saying that for years, but their old clan leader had wanted peace.

  “We will this time.” Talzec didn’t show any emotion, but Xav knew how he felt about their rival clan…and about their clan leader, Daveen. Daveen—the man who had butchered Nalla, his own sister, for daring to love outside her clan.

  Xav stepped up to Talzec, took his alpha by the shoulder, and squeezed it. “Yes, we will.”

  Talzec seemed to snap himself out of his mood. “Good. Now quit fucking around and fix this problem with Maht.”

  “What if the female doesn’t wish to return with us?”

  “I will decide if she stays or leaves us.”

  Xav grinned. “Yes, great leader.”

  “You’re still here?”

  Xav shot his leader an insulting hand gesture, to which Talzec replied with a chuckle. Then, in a much better mood than the one he’d arrived with, Xav left to search out Zhen and find their rebellious Maht.

  He could only hope that in bringing the female home, they wouldn’t be ruining relations between themselves and the West. Especially if the offworld female had truly mated one of their own. At the thought, he smiled.

  Imagine the possibilities…

  Chapter Three

  Skye had spent the past two days tromping through the mid-center line of the Tribe boundary into the East. With just her course-finder, her pack, and her unerring sense of direction, she’d drawn closer to the third outpost on Mandy’s list. The first two hadn’t panned out, but perhaps outpost four would be the magic spot.

  To her surprise, she’d started to enjoy herself after leaving the resort. The vegetation on Ussed was a mix of equatorial and tropical forest. And the land had a robust comingling of life and color. Greens, blues, browns, vibrant reds and oranges made up most of the hues she’d seen since starting her trek. The similarities to Earth didn’t surprise her. After all, she’d made a study of the planet for years, and its attraction for humans had been clear since the resort first opened.

  Ussed had all the life, lushness, and wonder of an Earthen atmosphere minus pollutants and technological interference. Only on Welcome could electronics and phreidonics—space travel-related technology—be used. Teleporting, space-jumping, and vid calling didn’t work past the East-West border. Welcome had had to erect a technological barrier to employ their wonders in the first place.

  But to a low-level security guard from Earth, to a person who did better with physical than psychic skills, using her body to overcome nature’s obstacles and miles and miles of walking was pure pleasure. She felt stronger with every step, enjoying the fresh air and binary sunshine. Lavender clouds obscured part of one sun, leaving her sweating but not overheating. It helped that she’d foregone longer capris for shorts and a cropped tank top. Her hiking boots were ideal for the terrain, and even her pack felt nonexistent. It was a
s if she were meant to be here.

  That odd thought struck her for a moment before a noise up ahead distracted her.

  She heard moaning and rustling coming from behind a set of thick trees. Carefully creeping forward and making no noise, she came upon what appeared to be a small, cleverly camouflaged hut. A male’s hoarse shout followed by a woman’s low moan told her exactly what she’d stumbled onto, and she felt her cheeks heat. She started to step back and away when she heard Lisa’s voice.

  “Maht, more.”

  Shocked, Skye had to know. She moved closer and peered through a slight gap in the brush masking a window. One peek to confirm Lisa’s identity and she’d move away, because watching her friend get it on had that ick factor she could do without.

  But what she saw froze her to the spot.

  Maht heaved and flexed, his buttocks just—superb. His entire body glistened with a faint sheen of gold as he made love to Lisa. Skye caught a glimpse of Lisa’s face, contorted in blissful agony, before Maht shifted and covered her entirely. Only Lisa’s dainty ankles wrapped around his back could be seen.

  Jesus. No wonder her friend had fallen for the barbarian. The man was a powerhouse. All that sexy groaning, the sheer beauty in his frame, his clear expertise when it came to sex. Though Skye had been off men for some time, she couldn’t stop watching this particular man work. No matter what Mandy said, Skye would bet all she owned that the eastern barbarians possessed some kind of sexual draw, because even Skye felt tingly all over.

  That sexual distraction would be her friend’s doom for sure, because Skye wasn’t at all sure she should interrupt the intense lovemaking in that hut. At any other time she would have chalked up their physical connection as mere fucking, but she sensed something else at play between Maht and Lisa. Some indefinable connection that spoke to more than bodies melding.

  “Ah, and what is this? An intruder in our woods?”