I cringe a little, waiting for what comes next.
“That you’re the most beautiful, incredible thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Which do we talk about first?” She is almost stammering now, and I feel a tug deep in my chest. It’s guilt, but it’s also worry — am I going to lose the best thing that ever happened to me since leaving my planet?
“I don’t know,” I admit, and step forward, closing the gap between us and lifting her chin with my forefinger. “I don’t know if we need to talk at all.”
Elle is completely still. Her lips are so inviting, even if they are twisted in uncertainty. She just saw me switch to a different form; an ethereal form. One that cannot possibly exist within the confines of her own planet and its laws of science.
“Are you … are your people hostile?”
Another tug inside me pulls when she asks me this. “No,” I assure her. “In fact, we have your planet classed as one of the more hostile ones in the known universe.” I give her a small smirk of apology when she looks horrified. “You guys are pretty unfair to each other on Earth sometimes. Always starting wars with your own people over things that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.”
Elle actually rolls her eyes at me. “I get you’re an alien, but saying stuff as obvious as that just makes you sound like a jackass.” But she’s still smiling. “I think humanity really isn’t so bad.”
“From what I’ve seen, it really isn’t,” I agree. “I spend every day just trying to give things away. Gifts, money. They never want to accept anything without giving something in return.” I stoop and press my lips to hers, remembering how amazing she tastes everywhere, and feeling my cock harden almost against my will. “There’s so much good in the world, and I think your people just aren’t looking in the right places.”
I let the illusions fall away, slowly so I don’t frighten her any more than this needs to. I see reflected in her eyes, and dancing across her skin, my own true golden glow.
Chapter Eleven
Elle
I can’t stop thinking about what Braxen said, so even as he lifts me into his arms and my eyes are dazzled by his true alien form, I’m distracted.
I’m distracted until he carries me to my bedroom — which I hadn’t yet graced with my own presence — and lays me down on the soft, thick comforter before crawling over me to kiss my lips with urgency, hunger, and passion.
Then his words are lost to me as I feel like I’m floating, my body light as air as his tongue softly, but firmly, enters my mouth and dances against mine.
Soon his hands are scrabbling against my clothes. His body is still almost exactly human, but he has been somehow suppressing some of his true form. His skin glows a bright, glittering burnt amber. His eyes are the color of pyrite; like decadently dark wood peppered with glowing embers that seem to crackle when he stares at me.
And on his head, nestled in his dark curly hair, sit two short horns that arc outward, reminding me of ancient Greek depictions of satyrs or fawns. I take him in when he pulls back from the kiss, absolutely astonished by him.
Not just by him. By myself, too. By my reaction to him.
I’m writhing under his firm, perfectly sculpted like a marble statue, body. I waste no time in pulling off his two layers of shirt, and bite softly at his neck and shoulder, feeling the ebb and flow of his intense natural heat. But I never once feel overwhelmed by the temperature that emanates from him.
“You look like a … a demigod,” I joke as I fumble with his belt buckle, and then his zipper. He helps me, as if clothing has become the ultimate burden to us both and we cannot wait another second for it to be crumpled on the floor beside the bed.
“A what?” he asks, puzzled, but flashing his perfectly white teeth at me in a grin.
“Never mind,” I laugh, and squirm out of my underwear just in time for him to push his now-weirdly human boxers down. Exposing the most beautiful cock I’ve ever seen: long, thick, beaded at the end with sparkling hints of his arousal.
I sit up and bend over, forcing him to lean back to make space for me, and before I can really stop and think, I am lapping up his arousal. It looks like liquid diamond in the light, and tastes equal parts salty and sweet. At first I hesitate, not really sure what I’m doing, but the taste of him grows on me so quickly and so urgently that I find myself swallowing him deeper and deeper into my mouth.
Soon his tip is flirting with the back of my throat, and I slide him all the way out again to circle him with my tongue. I’ve never felt so … powerful, before. It’s hard to explain just how incredible it makes me feel to see this huge, strong otherworldly man quake at the knees because of the lightest touches of my lips and tongue.
“I need you more than I have ever needed anything,” he says, his voice deep and yet musical now, as if he had also been suppressing his real tone to sound more human.
I realize I don’t have a clever answer for him. I’ve spent too long backing out of and shying away from real life. This is what I truly want, and I’m going to have it. “Me too,” I say. My voice is barely a whisper, and when he presses his mouth against mine again, the end of my sentence becomes a whimper.
His cock presses against my opening, slick with the need I just promised him, and with only the slightest of thrusts he pushes several of many inches inside me. Filling me up. Pushing me to my limits already, and he’s only halfway there. I gasp, inhaling against his mouth, and my shuddering surprise calls him to nip at my lower lip, running his fingers through my hair.
As he enters me, I know without a doubt that I have never felt so wanted; so adored. Never.
“This is my first time,” I say, my words a rush and a scramble; I feel guilty if he thinks I’ve hidden anything from him. Which is silly, considering. “But I don’t want you to stop. I just wanted you to know. If I’m … you know.”
“Sweet thing,” he murmurs into my hair, nuzzling me as he slides out, leaving me aching almost painfully to be filled again. “You are perfect. Tell me what you want, and how you feel, and if you ever want to take a break.”
“A break?” I wrap my legs around his waist and angle myself around his thick shaft so that it feels even more incredible the next time he slowly slides inside me. Already, my thighs are quivering and my breath feels more shallow. I know from my time alone exactly what I want and what I need from a man. Or a … him. “I want you to move faster.”
He complies immediately and pistons between my legs, filling me up full and then pulling out almost entirely until I’m gasping. Crying out. The alternating between being almost overwhelmed by him, and needing all of him back inside me, is so intense that my back arches and my insides begin to heat up.
But just before I climax harder than I ever have before in my life, Brax covers me with his body, scrapes at my neck with his teeth, and turns my face to look him in the eyes.
“I want you to be mine. Forever. We can figure out the details later. Just say you’ll be with me.”
The hurried intensity of his voice, and the quickness of his breaths, suggests that he is just as close as me. I am stunned by his beauty, his vulnerability; by the way he looks at me.
I nod. “I’ll be yours. If you can be mine.”
“Forever.”
It’s shocking that it doesn’t feel strange to me. Not at all. In fact, right in this moment as he slides with excruciating slowness in and out of me, I feel like I can see and think with more clarity than I ever could before.
“I want to make you happy,” he offers, breathless, and then gives me a smirk.
And I just know. I am absolutely his. “Let’s do it.”
He traces his lips across my collarbone from my shoulder to my neck, and then clamps his teeth down lightly against my pulse. I feel the tip of his tongue teasing at my heartbeat, and then my body tenses as the orgasm hits me. Then rolls off me. Then hits me again. I’m shuddering, and the lights seem brighter. When he fills me, I feel as if the heat of the sun itself is roaring from
my core outwards. Every extremity, every eyelash, every hair on my head is filled with liquid warmth, and together we tense, and then relax.
“You’re everything I think I’ve ever wanted,” he says, brushing my lips with his. “And I didn’t know it.”
“I feel so lucky,” I murmur back, nuzzling into his perfectly shaped chest. Running my hand up his chiseled form, and feeling the aftershock of each earthshattering climax ripple through my body.
I didn’t understand the meaning of ‘toe-curling’ until today.
Finally, after kissing him until I felt able to walk again, I got to my feet and took the most leisurely cool shower. The water eased away the heat I’d taken on from his skin, but I never felt uncomfortable in the slightest.
I felt totally blissful, and completely at peace.
When I was out, and smelled wonderfully like flowers and cream, I towelled myself off and wrapped myself up and found Braxen back in his full human form, and fast asleep. Every now and then, maybe at the apex of each breath, his skin color ripples from golden tan to glittering gold under the light.
I watch his perfect chest rise and fall for a moment, and then I head downstairs to check on my phone.
Five messages.
One spam, one from my boss asking how it’s going, and three from Liara. Uh oh.
‘Sorry. Maybe I overreacted. But I dunno, maybe I didn’t. Meet me at the slopes and we’ll hang out, have some fun like we wanted to?’
‘... Are you ignoring me? You check your phone, like, every ten minutes. You could have at least told me you weren’t coming. I’m really kind of mad at you, and this isn’t helping.’
‘Fine. Wow. Can’t believe you’re being this way. Trying to stay mad, but … dunno, Elle. I’m just upset right now. Give me some space. I don’t want to talk for a while.’
I checked the time. The last one had come in just nine minutes ago. All in all, Liara had waited almost two hours for a reply from me. She was right — if nothing had been happening, and I’d been at home working like she expected, I should have replied within just a few minutes. I was glued to my stupid devices.
Absently I realize I am sort of hugging my phone like it’s my actual friendship with Liara.
She is more important to me than, well, almost anything.
“Brax,” I call, and then jog up the stairs and back to my bedroom. I’m not sure what it is I want from him, but I don’t want to stand there alone with those sad messages from my best friend. “Braxen.”
Should I ignore her desire to be alone and go and try to find her? Force her to spend time with me? I decide a text will be less invasive, and more immediate. I will let her cool off once she realizes I wasn’t being cruel, and then we can talk later. It seems like the smartest move.
As I go into the room, I send Liara a text. ‘I have so much to tell you,’ it says. ‘I was NOT ignoring you. I love you. I’m so sorry, for everything. I can’t wait to spend time with you when you get home.’
He is sitting up, rubbing his head, and when he sees me he looks so happy. I feel butterflies in my stomach, and I hit ‘Send’ without worrying for an hour whether the message had the exact right tone. Immediately, it buzzes back, and I snatch it up.
‘NEED a story by tonight. What’s going on over there?! You’re normally so fast at responding Elle, what’s the deal?’
I do a double take, having assumed it’d be from my friend, and read it over again.
Obviously it’s my boss. I check the date, and wrack my brain. Tonight? I shake my head and looked up at my alien reindeer’s sweet, blissful expression. “Give me … a few minutes,” I say. “I need to do something.”
My head is swimming with all the different things that happened in the last few hours, but I still feel that astonishing clarity.
It’s like something fundamentally changed inside me when I said yes to Braxen. To forever. It wasn’t time to think about forever just yet, though. Yes, I absolutely want to spend every second with him, but as I wait for Liara to return and meet him, I know something with absolute certainty. I have something more important to do right now.
Something for me.
I sit down at my laptop, open it, and I begin to write.
Chapter Twelve
Braxen
The next half hour is what I would call perfection. I never knew it truly existed. My wrist device is measuring that my comms could be almost halfway charged. I’ve collected half the energy I need to phone home, and it was all just mine and Elle’s happiness from today.
And I don’t know what to be more excited about: the fact that I can almost phone home, or the fact that Elle said yes to being with me. Forever.
She’s my mate. My one and only. My everything.
And soon I can contact my people again.
I should be ecstatic about the latter, but all I can think about is her. I watch as she taps furiously on her own device, still powered by electrical currents instead of psychic energy, which is adorable and dated. She smells delicious, and somehow looks even better.
When I pass her a cup of coffee, she takes it and thanks me with the softest, sweetest kiss for anticipating her needs.
Finally, she stops tapping, and I hear a little ‘whoosh’ noise as she sends an unknown message into the ether.
She is looking happy, pink-cheeked, and ready for anything when she rises from the table, but my stomach begins to twist.
The thing is — I know I’ve made the right decision. I spent all this time desperate to find a way to get my people to find their way back to me, and now I have it. With Elle’s help, I have my way home. My way off this sweet, hostile, little green and blue rock. But now that I have it, do I want it? I refuse to take her off of Earth when no other human even knows about all the life out there. It would be too much for her. Too unfair of me to ask. At least I have the translator and the human disguise.
I know I’ve made my decision, but it feels bittersweet. Everything I’ve worked for, I now have to rethink. That’s all. It’s just an adjustment.
She stands and stretches, and I ask what she was up to. “You’ll see,” is all she replies, and wraps her arms around me. When she leans her head on my chest, she lets out a sweet hum. An ‘mmm’, and I just can’t get enough of it. I will never get enough of her.
I lift her chin and kiss her, deeply, and she feels me get hard against her hipbone and bites her lip up at me. “You are naughty,” she says, wiggling her hips and smirking as if she’s said something funny. “Or are you nice?”
I tilt my head. “I’m nice, I think.” I nod. “It seems like I fulfill the definition of nice. Why do you ask?”
She begins to hum, dancing around a little and lifting my arm and spinning. “Gonna find who’s naughty and nice.” She takes my hips and gets me to step side to side with her for a moment, laughing. “You don’t know the song? Santa Claus is coming … to town.”
My human girl is so incredibly cute, so gorgeous, and is acting more calm and carefree than I’ve ever seen her, and I let her rock us from side to side slowly as I kiss her again. We dance for a moment to music that only she can hear, her head resting on my chest with a smile on her face.
And then I feel it.
A rumbling. Shaking. Tumbling. My hands tremble, and I take her wrists and step back, looking around. I know my eyes are wide and my teeth are almost audibly chattering, because Elle looks concerned and gives my shoulder a small shake.
“Brax? Braxen. What’s wrong?”
The feeling passes, and I shiver violently as it leaves my system. “Avalanche,” I say through gritted teeth. She raises her eyebrows, and I let out a heavy breath. “We have a few minutes, and then an avalanche is going to hit the ski slopes.”
She shakes her head slowly, gives me a deep frown that I wish I didn’t have to explain away. “This is like your alien superpower?”
I smile at that, and when she sees it, her frown turns into a matching smile too. “Yeah, just like that. I can sense them. I’ve
always been able to, ever since … well, my brother died in one back on my planet when I was a kid.” I swallow, never seeming to be able to get that part out without the lump forming in my throat. “An avalanche none of us saw coming. My people, when we’re affected by things, sometimes we build up psychic defense mechanisms from them. It’s, uh, it’s normal to us. Maybe not for you guys.”
“Brax,” she says, shaking her head, and I feel pain emanating from her. “That’s so awful. I’m sorry. It’s like I can feel your grief. I feel like I can see it happening. What’s going on?”
I kiss the top of her head, feeling the roiling guilt and sadness pass back and forth between us. “This is mated life,” I say. “We promised to be each other’s, forever. We call that mating. I sealed it with a bite.” I bend a little to kiss the skin of her collarbone.
“So— Wait.”
She shrugs me off and backs up, holding up her palms. “An avalanche on the ski slopes? Wh-where’s…” She trails off, and fumbles for her phone, tapping it as she paces and holding it to her ear. “Liara.” She pulls it away and yells at the screen. “Pick up!” Then she turns to me, tears springing to her eyes. And I feel her feelings, like a punch in the gut.
Worry. Regret. Guilt. Sorrow. Man, when this woman feels, she really feels. This must be why she almost single-handedly filled my energy-measuring device up to halfway.
No wonder I was awed by her from the second we met.
“You think someone is in trouble?” I ask, but I know the answer. She wheels around and I can see it in her face. “A friend?” She nods, and confirms what I already knew.
I bury my head in my hands. I can’t let this happen. I have a 100% success rate so far.
I can’t let the snow take someone else. Not while I’m here.
I tap on my wrist device and flick the tiny switches. All this time, I’ve had it on full absorption mode, but it can do more than that. At around this full, I am certain it can give me access to my almost full range of abilities. That includes the ability to treat Earth as a lower gravity planet, as well as engaging what is ultimately a miniature personal warp drive. I explain it as well as I can to Elle and she shakes her head, lost and confused, until I’m finished.
The Alien Reindeer's Wish Page 6
