by Mel Teshco
The shield platform slowly descended, to the eruption of cheers from the waiting males. “Wave,” Ezra instructed with a lazy grin. She lifted a tentative hand. With the eruption of further cheers and odd musical shouts, a weird, yet all-too-familiar sense of empowerment swelled within.
These males weren’t going to hurt her. They were different from Dar’s people. They admired her without cause and without carnal scrutiny.
The platform glided to the floor, and as they stepped off, it concertinaed itself to a wall beneath the jutting dais. A male came forward, carrying two round cups, one clasped in each hand. He offered one to Ezra and one to Lillian. She accepted, and the male bowed before he retreated back into the crowd.
Ezra raised his cup. “Kas’lios.” He swallowed the yellow-tinged liquid in one long gulp. At her look he translated, “Cheers.” He swept out an arm, indicating the other men who held on to their drinks expectantly. “Drink up. Celebrate with us.”
“How do I know it’s not poison?”
He snorted. “Only in excessive doses.”
She took a deep breath. She was rather thirsty. She drank it down in a couple of swallows. Cool mint, warm spices with the exotic tang of kiwi fruit. It was all that and more. She threw him a wide-eyed look that summed up her enjoyment. “What is it?”
“Lakroda.” He motioned for two more cups. “I guess you humans would call it a fruit, much like a large, fluorescent-yellow egg with spikes. On Carèche, it is nature’s own liquor on a vine. We have some growing onboard in our hothouse, along with other special plants.”
She eagerly accepted her second cup. “You must grow a lot to keep up with demand.”
“No. We indulge only on special occasions. And the lakroda yields much liquid for its size.” His cup clinked against hers. “Kas’lios.”
“Kas’lios.”
By the third drink she realized how weak her legs had become. But the glow in her belly had spread to every vessel, every cell in her body, until even her mind rejoiced. But it was a lethargy that didn’t put a halt to the hunger within. Lust hummed through her body, a relentless force.
Dragging her stare away from Ezra, she watched the revelry around her. The males were sharing stories, laughing, touching one another, most of them clearly drunk and caring little. Her pussy clenched hard, the lust in the air liquefying her bones and making her aware of every square inch of her body.
“I think one of your Earth songs is in order,” Ezra murmured throatily, his gaze not leaving hers as he signaled the request.
“I’d like that,” she said, her voice thick.
Familiar music abruptly flooded the ship. It was familiar, she’d heard it before—
A luxurious jet. A white pants suit. Her long brown-gold hair snagged up into a careless topknot as she reclined on a spacious seat, earphones plugged into her ears. An overweight, older man dozed beside her, his meaty fist imprisoning her arm.
She jumped at Ezra’s touch. “I remembered something,” she confided starkly.
Had it been real?
He nodded. His strong features blurred a little from the potent alcohol and the threat of tears that had seemingly come from nowhere.
“The lakroda, the song. Both likely played a part in helping you recollect a tiny piece from your past. That is good. It means the virus is no longer in your system.”
Fear skittered up and down her spine. “You said I’d only remember what I wanted to.”
As had Dar.
His hands clamped onto her shoulders, bringing her close. “You are human. You may very well react differently.”
The music swelled. “Hold me,” she whispered.
As the song ended and quiet reigned supreme, Ezra drew her closer, his head lowering so that his mouth covered hers in a kiss she never wanted to end. Desire burned like wildfire through her veins, heating her from the inside out.
His torso scraped over her breasts, making them heavy, the nipples hard. The dress delineated every bump, every curve of her body and she was all too aware of the attention she captured, felt the many stares of men watching them. Watching her.
His mouth left hers and she conceded, “Waiting really is the best foreplay.”
“Mmm. Welcome to the dark side.”
His tongue flicked inside her ear and lust ricocheted from the nerve endings of her ear to her clit. She gasped, her cunt slick with wet heat even before he drew her lobe into his mouth and suckled the sensitive flesh.
“I’m going to come here and now if you’re not careful,” she hissed.
He stepped back. “Take a look around,” he said. “You won’t be the only one.”
Just a few yards away, two males were leaning toward one another, urgently locking lips and quivering with barely suppressed orgasm as, kneeling between them, two males sucked hard on their cocks.
“Oh my.”
Like a virgin watching her first porn movie, she couldn’t drag her eyes away from the shocking, but somehow thrilling and titillating sight.
Ezra grinned, a wicked glint in his eyes. “When there are no women to fuck, the men sometimes feel the need to ease the ache in their balls with one another.”
“Is this what you—”
“Not my thing, no,” he conceded. “Though I’ve been tempted a time or two by the offer of a clever mouth.”
“I’m so wet for you right now,” she said starkly. Hell, she’d probably let him do her right here, in this room with the moans of the other rutting men as their new background music, if he asked.
“Then we wait no longer.” He drew her through the crowd of writhing, moaning bodies. Only a handful of males abstained from the male-on-male action around them. Ezra nodded to them as they passed, and explained to Lillian in an undertone, “Females for these men or nothing. As they are all high-ranking men, we intend to seek Earth women for them soon.”
Joy swelled within. She’d have female company, another woman to befriend, to share her fears and confide in. “I’m glad.”
He led her through a semi-dark corridor lit sporadically by the blue-tinged lights that cast an eerie glow. “Perhaps you could make their transition to our way of life easier?”
“I’d like that.”
She followed him through a bright yellow, double-hung shield—into a large room with a sheer floor. She hesitated, gnawing her bottom lip. Earth was hundreds of yards below.
Ezra turned back and held out his hands. “You won’t fall. Trust me.”
She held his gaze for a couple of beats, and then stepped forward. The floor shimmered underneath, as if lit by its own network of veins that pulsed with invisible lifeblood.
Perhaps it did.
“Good.” Ezra smiled and she had to wonder where the ruthless man had gone. “Now raise your arms,” he instructed hoarsely.
She did so, and he hooked his fingers under the hem of her translucent dress before peeling it up, over her torso and above her head, flicking it aside as his eyes drank her in.
“So beautiful,” he said huskily.
A cool breath of air seeped through the floor, but it couldn’t chill her heated skin. She was dizzy with a renewed need so powerful that she wondered if she might faint with desire.
It took only seconds for her to tug his low-slung pants over his stunning-sized cock and down his long thighs and strong calves.
Their mouths joined as one, and in that moment it hardly mattered to Lillian that the floor was shifting, lowering. She only faintly registered they were suspended halfway between the craft and the ground, encased in a shield that had become something resembling a long, elongated bubble.
The head of his cock brushed against her belly. She whimpered with need, about ready to climb onto his hips, lock her legs around his waist and ride him.
Instead he turned her around so that her spine aligned with his torso. His hands cupped her waist. “Spread your legs,” he commanded huskily.
She did, but on looking down at the ground so far below, she let out a gasp an
d squeezed her eyes shut. Reality returned with a rush. What was she doing? This wasn’t her, surely? She didn’t just have sex with two strange men—aliens, at that—in as many days.
All thought fled when the head of his cock rubbed the entrance to her cunt. She groaned, aching to have him fill her. When he all but lifted her off her feet and impaled her on his cock, her eyes popped open, her breath expelling in a rush.
“Oh…yes,” he said thickly.
When he started rocking inside her, slowly at first, then faster and harder, she no longer cared that she had nothing to hold on to. She relied on his strength, trusted him to take care of her, to dominate, to master.
She cried out as an electric current pulsed from his cock and tore through her pussy, triggering an orgasm that struck her hard, locking her inner muscles and snatching away her breath. Even without the weightlessness and the near-invisible shield around them, Lillian could swear they were flying.
With her pussy locking onto his cock, he climaxed hard, his seed jetting inside her, flooding her womb. Gasping for breath, he pulled out of her and turned her around, tugging her against him and wrapping her close. His mouth pressed kisses on the crown of her head as his hands smoothed over her slick skin.
Lillian felt the sensation of movement. She looked below. The ground moved out of focus as the shield gently but swiftly brought them back up to the mother ship.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She looked up, her heart warming a little at his gentle inquiry. Was this really the same tough and scary guy she’d met just a few hours before? “Never better,” she admitted. “You and Dar…” She shook her head. “I might not have my memory but I’m sure I’ve never been so well pleasured before.”
Ezra’s green gaze gleamed with triumph, an emotion that quickly morphed into something deeply possessive. Just as with Dar, he clearly didn’t want to share.
“Next time won’t be so quick. Next time we’ll draw out the sensations, explore each other properly.”
“Oh. Yes. I’d like that.”
Heat flooded her face at his satisfied expression. They hadn’t needed to use mind control to make her fall for their sexual prowess.
“This way.” He gestured toward the other side of the room. On the metallic walls a large red rug—a caltronian fur—hung from a hook. He pulled it free and flipped it outward so that it formed a soft bed.
“Sleep,” he said huskily. “You will need your rest.”
Even after drinking the lakroda, she didn’t think she’d be able to sleep, not with desire still buzzing like a drug through her veins. And yet, darkness took hold from almost the moment she lay down, dragging her into the depths of sleep, of dreams—disjointed, fractured images that were real, yet not…
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
A fat man, the one from the plane, was naked and on all fours on a huge four-poster bed, leaning over her. His fleshy lips pressed slobbering kisses all over her bare skin, an act meant to please, to turn her on.
A shiver of revulsion racked her body. His balding head revealed brownish-colored sun spots, his quivering girth almost obliterating the small, sausage-like penis between his tree-trunk thighs. She closed her eyes, and a warm tear trickled down her cheek.
For the good of my country.
The thought echoed in her head even as the images dissolved under the skilled scrape of lips along her throat, her collarbone. She moaned, becoming impossibly feverish with need, aching in places already a little sore.
This was real. Oh, thank god.
She moaned, the sound resonating through the clouds of deep sleep, pulling her into immediate wakefulness…
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
She was cocooned in the warmth of Ezra’s arms, his green eyes studying her as she became fully conscious.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” he murmured.
“You should have woken me sooner.” It would have saved her from the horrible, too-real dream.
“Perhaps I should have.” His smirk was all carnal anticipation. “You’ve already slept the better part of thirty hours.”
Thirty hours?
She let out a weary sigh. She’d had a lot to take in the last few days and had obviously needed to recharge. “I was dreaming…remembering.”
He lifted his head, resting its weight on a hand. “Do you want to talk about it?”
His gentle voice seeped through her defenses and her voice cracked as she admitted, “I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Tell it like you saw.”
She bit her lip. “I was lying on a bed while an obese man kissed me. I was crying, but trying not to. And I…I remember lying there, putting up with it, thinking it was for the good of my country.”
Her breath caught. Had she been a spy? It was improbable…but possible.
“You’re remembering things you’d rather forget,” Ezra murmured, almost as if she was a breakthrough scientific experiment he was analyzing. “This might well mean you’ll recall everything from your past.”
She shuddered. “I’m not sure I want to. Not if that dream is what my life was like!”
In one fluid move, he climbed above her, unashamedly aroused and naked. His eyebrow jewel glinted, matching the green gaze appraising her. “Then let me help you forget.”
“Please do,” she said on a sigh.
The sound of a throat being cleared at the doorway had them jerking apart.
Ezra’s eyes hardened fractionally as he saw who stood there. What sounded like a curse left his lips, but when he turned back to her, his expression softened. “I was hoping for a little more time.” His lip curled a little. “But it seems my brother is as keen as I to have you all to himself.”
She sat up, not bothering to conceal herself from the hooded stare of the alien male waiting at the other side of the shield. Her eyes narrowed. Though the yellow shield wasn’t transparent, she could make out his shadowed silhouette.
It was one of the men who’d abstained from pleasure with those of his own sex. “That isn’t your brother.”
The shield would have allowed him to pass through if it was.
Ezra stood and stalked over to where her dress lay abandoned on the floor. He retrieved it and handed it to her. His expression was closed, inscrutable. “No.” He watched her dress, his gaze once again hard, but hungry too—as though he were imprinting her into his memory. “Renate is one of my men, and captain of the ship. One of our most trusted, which is why my brother sent him for you.”
Her belly fluttered, even as her still-hard nipples and wet pussy screamed for Ezra’s touch. “I just…I just want you and Dar.”
Ezra’s smile was all blatant possessiveness. “I wish that were the case.” He shrugged taut shoulders. “Nevertheless, you will find our other brother won’t disappoint.”
She stood, tugging the glove-tight fit of her dress over her too-hard breasts, down over the still-hot skin of her torso and aching pussy. She tilted her chin. “Then I guess it’s every man and woman for themselves.”
She swiveled away from the narrowed, dangerous glitter of Ezra’s eyes. And as she marched toward the captain waiting at the door, the words of before again echoed through her mind.
For the good of my country.
“Lillian, wait!”
She paused. When she turned, Ezra was there, looking down at her, his pulse jumping in his throat, his expression caught between helpless rage and desperate adoration.
She was mistaken, surely? He’d known her only a handful of hours having allowed her to sleep away much of their time together.
Then his hands moved, linking behind her head and drawing her close. She sighed, utterly lost as his lips covered hers in an open-mouth kiss that jump-started every one of her nerve endings. Desire swam in a slow burn through her veins until she was hot all over.
The captain cleared his throat again and she jerked away, brought back to the real world.
Ezra’s hands moved to cup her face. The pads of his thumbs slid across her
cheeks. “Don’t forget me,” he said hoarsely.
She watched, speechless, as he spun on his heel and strode through the shield.
She swung back to the captain, whose green eyes gleamed with a disturbingly intelligent light. Like Ezra, his hair was shorn to a thick brown fuzz on his skull.
He gave her an impersonal nod. “Please, follow me,” he said, his English flawless.
“Off to the lion’s den,” she said in an undertone. “Why the hell not.” She half jogged to keep up with his long, effortless stride. “So how do you know English?”
Renate turned his head, his dark brow raised. “You think a bastard child of the king shouldn’t have any need to learn English, to take on an Earth woman?”
He was a king’s bastard? That would make him Ezra’s half-brother.
So why didn’t he share command of the shields?
She shook her head, heat creeping up her face. “No. Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound superior.” And yet, just then, it had come as natural to her as breathing, as though that was the person she’d once been.
The captain didn’t seem inclined to talk and kept his words short, blunt. “Yet, you did.”
He turned away and lengthened his stride, conversation over. She pressed her lips together but knew he was right. She’d been a condescending bitch.
No more was said as they traversed the eerily empty corridors lit by the irregular blue lights. It was like walking through a cave, only no lime or sulfur tickled the nose. It was a tomb-like barrenness, devoid of scent. Of life.
She paused as the captain’s broad shoulders pushed through an orange shield, a color she’d not seen on a shield anywhere else. She shivered, perceiving that, somehow, this shield was the most dangerous of them all.
So why had Renate been able to enter this shield and not the shield to the quarters of his half-brother?
It was involuntary to hold her breath as she plowed through. Then all breath left her lungs in a whoosh and her eyes grew wide. All thoughts of the possibility of bad blood between Renate and Ezra were totally banished.
Her senses were…dazzled.
Golden light from a large orb splashed down from its glassed enclosure high above, warm on her scalp. Butterflies jigged and danced through the air—one was a huge six-winged creature the size of an eagle whose rainbow of colors merged one into the other.
