Piwaka held her against his chest, and her legs caught him around the waist, but their combined weight couldn’t balance on the narrow branch. They teetered. Aimee closed her eyes. She would die in his arms rather than return to her old, hollow self. She held him with all her might, and they tumbled off the branch.
The air hit Aimee’s cheeks, and her hair tussled in the breeze. They fell through the air. Then her eyes popped open. Her hair fell forward over her eyes, not upward away from her face. They were rising, not falling. The treetops sailed downward, out of sight. He was flying with her up through the canopy into higher treetops, and her arms and lips and legs remained locked around him for better of for worse. She sought out the bottomless pools of his eyes, with their iridescent margins streaked with microscopic fibers, and all her cares and worries vanished.
Piwaka floated beyond the last branches into the sky. Where would he take her, with her whole self wrapped around him? Before she could wonder, he descended again. His feathers tilted downward, and the air rustled off them in soft murmurs. His hips moved under her legs, and he extended his feet to land.
Her gaze never wavered from his eyes. She would never doubt him again. Wherever her took her, she would go with a glad heart. Something hard dug into her back, and he laid her against an inclined surface. A bed of soft vegetation formed a bowl under her, with tree trunks rising on all sides. Those trunks joined together into a single tree. The tree must have snapped off in a storm, and several trunks sprouted from the site of the break. Treetops swayed across the sky, and moving air whispered through the branches. Creatures scuttled and chattered in the distance. She was a long way from the ground.
This was the Avitras world, in the canopy beyond the reach of solid ground, where your feet never touched the forest floor. The Avitras lived their whole lives up here. Most never laid eyes on the ground, much less walked on it.
How did Piwaka know about this place to bring her here? Those questions belonging to her rational mind, the part she put away on a shelf for good. She wouldn’t answer those questions. She would swim in the ocean of his eyes and the commotion of his touch. Nothing else mattered.
His hands on her brought her back to her senses. He lifted the corner of her leather jacket and peeled it back to reveal her milk-white skin. The air pricked her skin, and it tightened and stood to attention. Then he lifted back the other side of the jacket. Those clothes formed an armor over her skin to keep the eruption of passion buried where no one could see it.
Every nerve shrieked to heaven. How long had she worn those clothes, the rough furs of the Lycaon? She always thought they were comfortable, but now, at the touch of Piwaka’s hand, they grated on her nerves. When did she become sensitive? She was always the tough one, the reserved one.
Piwaka loomed over her with the sky outlining the feathers behind his head. His eyes flashed, and the sun shimmered on his feathers. His shoulders jutted out from his chest in sharp angles, and his muscles flexed in fine chiseled lines. His face bore none of the wear and tear of age. He wore his experience with strength and power.
Aimee gazed up at him with wide eyes. No man ever struck her with such a sense of awe and wonder. What was he? Who was he? What had he seen and done in his life? She knew nothing about him, yet she could delve into every recess of his soul and never lose interest. What drove him? What brought him to her like this? What attracted him to a woman like her?
The rush of wind through the trees broke the silence. This belonged to the Avitras alone. The other factions dwelt on the ground, far removed from the rare air of the canopy. Anna never connected with the Avitras, or she wouldn’t have run off with Menlo the way she did. None of the others except Penelope Ann fully assimilated into the Avitras and made their ways their own.
What secrets remained hidden in the vast forests beyond the border? Those secrets hovered in Piwaka’s eyes, and his eyes traveled down to the white triangle of skin between the lapels of her jacket. He peeled away the years, the crumbling remnant of a thousand useless inhibitions, and the weight of crushing fear and doubt, along with her clothes. She floated on a cushion of cloud that protected her newborn skin from the rough bark and twigs underneath her. The keen breeze and Piwaka’s hands on her skin welcomed her back to life. Her jacket fell away, her shirt underneath, and then her pants and boots until she lay naked on her back for him to see. Her warrior persona dropped away with them to reveal soft female flesh.
Piwaka’s feathers shifted in the wind. Was he flying, up there above her? Was he hovering over her on drafts of air? She could believe his feet never touched the ground. He was too rare for that. He descended to her from atmospheric heights to lift her out of her misery to joy and contentment. He belonged to some heavenly species beyond mortal reach.
He drew closer, and smoldering power radiated off him. He took her in his arms, and the heavenly aura erupted in flames. He was no untouchable spirit from on high. His passion met hers in matched ferocity, and they exploded together in fiery bursts of heat and desire.
He slid his arms under her, and she enclosed him in her arms and legs again. His legs supported her from below, and in a heartbeat, he was inside her. Aimee couldn’t tell the moment it happened. She was one with him from her eyes down to her toes. Their bodies only expressed the reality already accomplished through their gaze and their kiss and their touch.
Out of the corner of her eye, Aimee caught sight of the tree trunks gliding past her. Nothing could surprise her now, not even the realization she was moving through the air in a primal embrace with him. They tumbled over and over in the air, and trees sailed around her in every direction. One minute she was under him and he penetrated into the center of her being with powerful thrusts. The next minute, he fell under her weight, and she bore down on top of him with all her might.
Was this the way the Avitras made love, in mid-air? They didn’t need beds, and they shunned the ground. They could fly, so why not this coupling flight? The Aqinas lived in water. The Avitras lived in the air, and everything they did, they did in the air.
Birds did it in the air. Some engaged in elaborate mating flights. Male and female fluttered around each other in mid-flight for hours until, at long last, they bumped into each other for a split second and transferred the male’s sperm to the female. Then they flew away, and that was the end of that.
Her time with Piwaka wouldn’t be like that. Her body throbbed with insatiable desire for his body. She inhaled him deeper into her, ever deeper, as deep as she could, but she could never get enough of him.
Every move she made to bring him closer, to consume him, he answered with greater desire of his own. He consumed her with the insatiable hunger. His passion destroyed the measured rationality that made him such an asset to Aquilla. The power of his desire astonished even Aimee, until she found herself locked in carnal oneness with a man she’d never seen before. Buried physical desire annihilated the old Piwaka the same way it did Aimee, leaving another vision of him, the avatar standing in the white expanse of pure authenticity. The two souls met in that landscape. They met, they merged, they embraced, and they became one. Their two old selves ceased to exist, and left two bright beings standing in their place, side by side for the first time.
Aimee fell down toward the ground, while Piwaka’s feathers caught him and held him aloft. His shaft slid out of her. The air chilled the film of juice on her thighs and made her suck her breath through her teeth. Then he caught her again and she stopped falling. He supported her, and her weight pulled him down beneath her. His shaft slid back into her, and its heat filled her up. Nothing could disturb her contentment as long as he was there, inside her, with her flesh enfolding him on all sides. Then she rolled around below him, and gravity tore her away from him.
When did it stop? When did they stop tumbling and twisting and rolling in mid-air, sliding together and falling apart and snatching each other again? Faster and faster they rolled with nothing but their own weight to keep the e
ndless tumult going. They might have gone on like that forever if their own hunger for each other hadn’t driven them to fulfillment. Each turn of the wheel with its thrust and withdrawal brought them to the peak of frenzy until not even Piwaka’s feathers could keep them in the air.
They no longer kissed. Their lips crushed against each other in a howl of mutual ecstasy. A combined roar to heaven of soul fire unleashed tore from their mouths. The last tumble of the wheel brought Piwaka down on top of Aimee with a powerful thrust of his shaft into her very depths. She cried out, but not in pain. That fall punctuated the long-awaited completion of her rebirth and seared the new reality into her flesh.
A fiery jet of superheated elixir shot through her insides, and she clapped her eyes closed against the orgasmic tornado sweeping toward her over the horizon. The silhouette in the plain was the only self she had left.
Chapter 9
Aimee sat up inside the treetop bowl. The evening breeze played over her bare skin, but she no longer hid her body from the elements. The wind never made her cold, and it couldn’t touch her bright burnished soul.
She cast a sidelong glance at her clothes. She touched the corner of her heavy leather jacket with the shaggy hair still covering the outside. A curious reaction traveled up her arm, and she pulled her hand back.
“You should get back,” Piwaka told her. “They’ll be wondering where you are, and when you deliver the message, they’ll have a long negotiation ahead of them to decide what to do about it.”
She turned away from her clothes and stretched out next to him. “Are you worried they won’t accept the invitation?”
“Not at all,” he replied. “They’ll accept it.”
“What makes you so sure?” she asked.
“They came up here to negotiate with Aquilla,” he replied. “They won’t turn down an opportunity to talk to him, even if the topic isn’t directly related to their peace mission. They’ll start talking about the borders, and that will naturally lead them into talking about other things.”
She folded on arm under her head and gazed up at the sky. “I wish I was as confident as you.”
“I’m only confident because I know Aquilla,” he replied. “There’s no other way to draw him into the negotiation. It’s the only way to get him to trust the other Alphas.”
“What if he never trusts them?” she asked. “What if he balks at the whole discussion? What if he won’t be drawn into discussing peace at all? What if he gets hostile and storms off?”
“I’m sure he will,” Piwaka replied. “I’m sure it will take him a long time to trust anyone here—except me, of course.”
“So how’s he supposed to negotiate peace with people he doesn’t trust?” she asked. “It sounds hopeless.”
He cocked his head. “I can’t really blame him. I don’t trust the others, either.”
Her head whipped around. “You don’t? Then why are you going to such lengths to throw them together with Aquilla?”
He rolled over on his side and faced her. “Do you want to know the truth? I’m doing it for you.”
“Me!” she gasped. “I don’t deserve....”
He closed his eyes. “Don’t even say it.”
“But I....” she began.
“Do you want to know the reason I’m doing this?” He trailed his fingertips over her collarbone and down her chest, between her breasts. “I’m doing it for this.”
Aimee shuddered and her eyes rolled back in her head. His fingers trialed off somewhere between her sternum and her navel, and her eyes popped open. Her voice croaked. “What are you doing to me?”
“Do you think we would have any chance at all together if this negotiation fails?” he asked. “What do you think will happen if Aquilla leaves here without coming to some agreement with the other Alphas? I’ll never see you again.”
“But I thought....” she stammered. “You helped Anna, and that was long before we ever met.”
He lowered his eyes. “That was then. I thought peace was a good idea. Now I know it’s a necessity.”
She hesitated. “I didn’t know....”
He finished her sentence for her. “You didn’t know I felt that way about you? Do you remember what you said to me this morning—about seeing a part of you that wasn’t there? Well, you’ve seen a part of me that wasn’t there, too—at least, it wasn’t there until you saw it.”
Her eyes flew open. “You too? I thought you were so strong and in control.”
“I was,” he replied. “I’ve always been in control. I’ve been in control of the whole Avitras faction for decades, at least as long as Aquilla has been Alpha—probably longer.”
“How can you be in control when someone else is Alpha?” she asked. “If that was true, you would be Alpha instead of him.”
He nodded. “I’ve been Captain of the Guard, and the Captain always has more power than the Alpha. My father was Captain before me, and Aquilla’s father was Alpha before him. My father told me I would take over for him when he retired to the village, and he explained the whole thing. He said I would be the power behind the Alpha, that the Alpha would never make any decision or take any action without my approval, and he was right.”
“And you want to give that up—for me?” she whispered.
“I don’t have to give it up,” he replied. “At least, I won’t give up the power. I couldn’t give it up if I wanted to. The Avitras depend on me to control our faction. Aquilla couldn’t do it without me, or someone to take over for me, and I’ve been doing it so long I’m the best man for the job.”
“So what changed?” she asked. “What did I see that wasn’t there before?”
He rolled onto his back and looked up into the sky. “You saw me, for the first time. No one else has ever seen me before.”
“You?” she asked.
He shot her a smile. “It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? I’ve been Captain of the Guard. I’ve been Aquilla’s shadow Alpha since I first learned to fly, but no one has ever seen me for who I really am. I could patrol the borders for years and never feel hunger or pain or loneliness. I never dreamed of a life in the village with a mate and children and friends. I’ve never been a flesh and blood man, who felt heat and cold and sadness and joy—until today. You gave me that. I was living death, and you brought me to life.”
Aimee tucked her head into his chest and closed her eyes. “Me, too. I was never a living woman until you came.”
They lay in their nest for hours until the sun fell behind the treetops. Aimee raised her head first. “I guess I better go.”
She glanced at her clothes again, but she turned away without touching them.
He watched her. “Don’t forget to put your clothes on.”
She stole a look at his face. Then they both laughed. “That would give them a shock if I showed up like this.”
She sat up. Her skin chilled without the sun to warm it. She picked up her pants. “I don’t want to put these on again.”
“They look warm enough,” he remarked.
“They’re warm,” she replied, “but too rough. They remind me of the person I was before. They make me the person I was before.”
“What was that?” he asked.
“A warrior,” she replied.
He nodded and sat up, too. “We have some work to do before we can shed these shells of the past.”
She sighed and slipped the jacket around her shoulders. “When did you say Aquilla wants to meet the other Alphas?”
“Sunrise tomorrow,” he replied. “At the big rock.”
She set her teeth and pulled the pants up her legs. The skins scratched her, and she shuddered. “We’ll be there.”
He stood up next to her. Without a word, he took her in his arms and kissed her. Her feet left the firm surface of the tree bark, and they floated into the air. A moment later, their lips separated, and Aimee’s feet touched the ground.
She stepped down hard on the soli
d soil under her feet. Not even this felt right anymore. She didn’t belong to the ground anymore. She belonged to the treetops, to the pure air. What would become of her? Who was she? Was she Avitras now, now that she’d mated with an Avitras man in mid-air? No wonder the other women didn’t understand.
How different the ground felt to her now compared to the way her heart used to soar when she ran through the forest with the Lycaon. Maybe her heart only longed for flight, and running was the closest she ever came to it. Now she had another way to fly.
He gave her one last kiss, and his eyes peered into her soul. He didn’t ask what was bothering her. Maybe he already understood. Maybe he felt as strange and out of place on the ground as she did.
“See you tomorrow morning,” she murmured.
He nodded, and she turned away. She walked down the hill without looking back, but her ears stayed tuned to any sound behind her. No rush of air rustled the trees, and no footsteps trod the leafy tangle of underbrush. He hadn’t moved. He stood there and watched her out of sight.
She found Chris and Marissa sitting in the same place in front of the transmogrifier, except this time, they looked satisfied and comfortable. “Did Emily show you how to use that thing?”
Chris nodded. “It’s great. Are you hungry? Where have you been all day.”
She sighed and sat down next to her friends. “I went for a walk up on the mountain, and I ran into Piwaka. He asked me to carry a message to the other Alphas. Aquilla wants to meet with them on the big rock tomorrow morning at sunrise.”
Optorio Civil War Complete Series Box Set (Books 1 - 6): A Sci-fi Alien Warrior Invasion Abduction Romance (Optorio Chronicles Book 2) Page 78
