by V. K. Ludwig
I step out of my shoes with a wet gulp and walk up to him. “How about a shower?”
“Sounds like a good idea.” He scoops me up bridal style and carries me through the downpour toward the house.
The moment he steps inside, the chill of the AC runs goosebumps across my body, and my nipples turn into hard, sensitive buds.
Using his tail, he activates the water and sets the temperature. All the while, I trail my fingertip over his pale scars, so much more prominent now that laboring in the sun tanned the surrounding skin.
“Can I wash your hair?” he whispers against my ear, and lowers me underneath the warm mist, fingers massaging the back of my neck.
I hand him the shampoo in response and lean my head back, wetting my hair thoroughly. Jax’s fingers soon massage over my scalp, and his lips brush over my forehead.
“Thank you for working so hard in the fields.” I close my eyes because of how the water reflects from his horns and drums down on my face. “Without you, I would be completely screwed.”
“I had no idea how much I missed physical labor until I came here.” A kiss prickles against my forehead. “And I thoroughly enjoy taking care of you.”
My pulse speeds at his words. It’s been so long since someone looked after me. For over a year, I just powered through, fighting for my lone survival out here.
“You do it well, Jax.” All of it. Even the way he’s lathering my hair with foam in slow, measured circles. “Vandalar females are clearly insane if they kicked you out.”
His hands stall on my scalp, and purple irises come looking for mine. “Can I ask you something?”
I scoop up some of the foam from my head and reach up, broadly applying it to where he has dirt stuck in the ridges of his horns. “Sure.”
He takes a deep breath, torturing his lips for a moment before he continues. “Did the slave trader tell you about my defect?”
“It’s the only reason why I walked out of there with the Vandalar slave who jerked off right in front of me.” Which, given the things I know now, sounds a lot funnier than it did that day. “I negotiated your price down.”
“Well, I tried very hard to make an impression.”
“Oh, you did,” I say with a laugh, but somehow, his lips remain a straight line. “What’s wrong?”
He bends his knees and takes my hands, guiding them around his horns. “Doesn’t my defect bother you? At all?”
I wash his horns, their surface slick against my fingertips. “You know full well that I like your ridges. They feel out-of-this-world good inside me.”
“All Vandalar males have ridged shafts.”
Oh?
Steph will love this news, but what the hell is supposed to be wrong with him then? That thing is working. Fully-functioning in all its alien glory, upgraded and all, and hands down deserving of a ribbon, because nothing ever felt better.
“Did you not notice this protrusion?” He tugs my hand toward his cock, guiding my fingers over the gentle rise at the base of it. “Those females I’ve been with before loathed it.”
I stare up at him in disbelief. And just as I want to throw a witty remark out there, I see it. Brows furrowed, shoulders tense, lips pressed into a slash. Pain sits at the depth of his eyes, right along with… shame? Is that why he hesitated that first time we had sex? Why he keeps pulling out?
I clasp both his cheeks between my hands and stare straight back at him. “I noticed it, but I figured it’s just an extension of another ridge. And it feels great, absolutely ama—”
His kiss swallows the rest, lips pressing furiously against mine until my teeth ache. It’s deep and intimate, affectionate in its rawness. And when he pulls back, his lips quivering, I have no doubt this male just exorcised a demon. My sex god has insecurities, which gives him an unexpected but welcome edge of realism.
“Mej liku,” he whispers, forehead pressing against mine. “Ik wesh uk senusha mej liku.”
Whatever he said makes no sense to me, but it touches something deep at my core. “What does that mean?”
His mouth opens and closes, tongue smacking several times while his pupils dart all over me. When he finally forms a sound at the back of his throat, the doorbell rings.
“Shit.” I curse and step out of the shower, quickly climbing into my bathrobe. “I hope that’s not Steph, because I don’t even know how to explain our clothes in front of the house.”
Twelve
Jax
I let the hot droplets drum against my sore muscles, the bathroom soon as steamy as my mind is clouded.
Ik wesh uk senusha mej liku.
I want you to be my female.
Each time my mind replays those words, my breathing turns into strained gasps. Where the vek did that come from?
One moment, it was a passing thought. The next, I announced that I want her to be mine. A female to spend my life with. To protect and care for. To seed with our younglings. But who can blame me?
After years of rejections, I finally found a female with a near-insatiable hunger for my body. But that’s not all. Whenever a Vandalar male gives, the female takes. But not my Lilly.
When I plow a field, she clears it of rocks. When I cook, she sets the table. When I stroke her hair, she cups my cheek. Whatever I offer this female, she takes with gratitude, always offering something in return. It’s the way things used to be between my parents. Or at least that’s how I remember it until my mother walked out on me.
I step out of the shower.
Ik wesh uk senusha mej liku.
Good thing Lilly has no idea what it means. I don’t even understand it myself. What am I asking her? To allow me to drive my teeth into her shoulder and mark her as mine so my seed will rouse for her? Yeah, right.
Climbing into fresh shorts, I half hop half stumble into the hallway, but neither Lilly nor Steph is in sight. “Lilly?”
She stands rooted in the kitchen, staring at the red envelop clasped between her shaky fingers. “This is just fucking fantastic.”
I never saw her this pale. “What’s going on?”
She sighs, dropping the letter onto the table, and walks over to the kitchen, retrieving a massive brown tub with white lid from the cabinet. The lid clanks across the counter and dives into the sink. Container in one hand, she pulls a spoon from the drawer and digs in.
“I’m three months behind on the mortgage for the farm.” There’s a long pause as she licks the sticky brown stuff from the spoon and stares at the age-worn floor. “The bank will kick me out of the house if I don’t pay up.”
My tail lifts, sharp claw ready to strike. A primitive reflex that shows itself whenever my kind perceives a threat. And this sure as vek is one. If Lilly loses her farm, then I might lose her. That can’t happen.
I grab the envelope from the table, the letters nothing but harsh, straight lines that make no sense. “You didn’t even open it yet. Are you sure it’s that bad?”
She hops onto the counter and holds the spoon out, the corners of her lips brown. “Jax, if I eat year-old Nutella from the tub using a serving spoon, you bet your ass it’s bad.” She slips back down and tosses the spoon into the sink. “This isn’t cutting it.”
Tub abandoned, Lilly pours the leftover water from a nearby glass into the sink. She grabs a bottle from the corner, quickly filling the glass to the brim with a clear liquid. Three massive gulps, and her face scrunches up for long seconds.
“What’s the plan?” I ask and walk up to her, her breath now carrying a sharp sting.
“I tried so hard, Jax.” Another glass of poison down her throat, followed by a gag. “Nick and I agreed that he wouldn’t ask me to repay him half of his investment in the farm until next year, considering he was the one who dragged me to this shithole. I had two greats harvests. Two!”
My hands curl into fists. “Nick is that…former mate?”
Her nod serves as an answer. “He changed his mind, and I had to get a loan to finance the rest. Everything went to shit fro
m there. Tractor transmission broke. Terrorhogs pushed into the feed storage and ate the seeds. Solar flares destroyed an entire crop.”
The moment she grabs the bottle, I take it from her. “The situation won’t improve if you’re hungover tomorrow. We’ll have to get the seeder unstuck.”
She tries to hop back onto the counter, legs kicking, palms slipping, her small frame already void of any grace whatsoever. But she makes it up there eventually, her spine taking on the rounded shape of defeat.
“Let’s buy some land on Agari II,” she mocks in a deep voice. “We can buy a porch swing, and our children can grow up in the country.”
“You have offspring?”
“No.” Her sniff shatters my heart, and that first tear rolling down her cheek constricts my chest. “And there won’t ever be any, because there isn’t a single cock in a twenty-mile radius from here unless I want my kid to have suction cups on her feet.”
What about a tail and horns?
I give myself an internal head shake.
Another one of those passing thoughts.
“I’m sorry,” she cries and stares at my crotch. “Except for your cock, of course.”
I debate between telling her that my cock is at her service, and a hug. Veking her might just help get her out of this mood. For reasons I don’t want to investigate, I choose the latter.
“Lilly…” I close the distance and take her into my arms, the base of my horns warming with how she buries her face against my chest. “Come on, let’s get you to bed. A nap will help.”
Slender legs wrap around my waist, and I pull her off the counter as she mumbles, “You’re so sweet.”
“As are you when you don’t want to shoot me.” I carry her to her bedroom, where I lower her onto the blanket. “Do you want me to get you water?”
“No.”
“Tea?”
She shakes her head and lies down to wipe the tears on her pillow.
I sit beside her, one leg hanging off the mattress, shoulder propped against her headboard. “We’ll think of something. The fields are plowed, and half of them seeded. What do you think about how much time they’ll give you?”
“Two weeks from the final notice,” she sniffs. “That’s what they threatened.”
“And that one was…”
A hiccupped gulp, and then, “The final notice.”
“They can’t evict you just yet.” I stroke through her hair, strands damp against my fingertips. “Humans are a minority group in this solar system, and credit institutes need to give you at least six lunar cycles from the date of the final notice.”
She blinks up at me. “Says who?”
“The Sol Delta Equal Chances Enactment for Minority Species.” When all I get is another, empty blink, and a stare going more crooked by the second, I add, “I attended school for intergalactic law with a focus on rights for vertebrate species. Never got my degree, though.”
Her next exhale wheezes through her nostrils before she explodes in laughter, and I get the distinct impression that she’s laughing at me.
And yet my cheeks bunch so high, I spot them from the bottom edge of my vision. “What’s so funny?”
“So, you’re like—” Another wheeze, her hand clasping her stomach. “You’re like a space lawyer turned sex guru?”
“Turned slave,” I add with a grin. “Then demoted to farm hand. The day after the fields are seeded, you and I will visit your creditor and set this straight. By the time they have the right to evict you, we will already be planning the crops for the next sun cycle.”
She gazes up at me, at my lips, to be precise, and I want to kiss her again so badly. Lose myself inside this woman who gives so much without even knowing it.
Lilly reaches her hand toward my face, missing several times until I just grab it and place it onto my cheek. “You’re so handsome, Jax.”
“And you’re drunk.”
Time falters to a standstill, every single beat of my heart drumming between my ears. I want her to touch me like that more often. Want to hold her each time she needs a moment to be weak.
I place my hand atop hers and close my eyes for a moment, allowing myself to drown in her caress as I lie down beside her. It’s an intimate touch as one would see between mates, and the urge to drag my teeth over her neck is strong.
“Want me to show you a human specialty?” she asks.
Not that she expects an answer, because she turns around, pressing her back against my chest. Reaching behind her, she takes my arm and drapes it around her shoulder, stowing my hand away somewhere between her chin and sternum.
“We call this spooning,” she murmurs. “Highly comfortable.”
I nestle my face against her brown strands, breathing in the scent of soap, though the sun-bleached tang still lingers underneath. “I like it very much.”
It’s not something another female ever allowed me to do. For that reason alone, I enjoy it more than I probably should, and my heart slows into an even rhythm. It wouldn’t bother me holding her like that all night. Every night.
“When he left you,” I say, “why didn’t you return to Earth? Sell the farm and start again?”
She squeezes my hand tighter. “Because I would be just as alone on Earth as I am here. At least on Agari II, people can still afford to own large tracts of land. Most of my family died during one of the interstellar wars since they formed a resistance group. They were quite successful. Managed to hide out in the Mexican desert for almost a year.”
So she grew up during a time of war. “Is that where you learned how to handle a gun?”
“Shoot, hunt, skin and gut a rabbit in under eight minutes. My uncle taught me most of it, but he passed away from a tumor three years ago.”
I place a kiss onto her head. “You are an extraordinary female, Lilly. So independent and resilient.”
“Yeah, so independent,” she sighs. “Totally didn’t need a male to plow my fields and seed them.”
“We all need someone from time to time. There’s nothing wrong with it.”
Her lips pout and stroke over the back of my hand. “You’re a good man, Jax.”
Less than five minutes later, she snores faintly, and pleasing her is out of the question. Without the threatening letter, I would likely have my horns between her legs by now.
But this is better. And it concerns me.
I want her addicted to my touch.
Not the other way around.
And just like that, I’m not sure anymore if becoming her saikh would be a victory… or utter defeat.
Thirteen
Lilly
When was the last time my fields spanned along the horizon, tire grooves running lines through dark, saturated soil? Not one weed in sight. Instead, the first seedlings dot Whispering Whillwheat in specks of bright green.
I put the bottle of pre-mixed Daiquiri Steph gifted me last year on the patio table. “Are you about finished?”
Jax stops painting the weathered siding, one brush in his hand, the other in his tail, and stares down at me from the ladder. “Give me two more minutes, and this side will be done.”
“It’s pretty.” And who would think a fresh coat of buttery yellow makes such a difference? “We could make the frames of the solar panels something darker.”
“Gray?” he asks, hand and tail brushing synchronized. “I thought I saw some leftover in the barn.”
I unscrew the bottle and pour us two drinks, letting the tingly freshness of lime climb into my nostrils. The rain stopped for a few hours, but a constant breeze keeps the humidity at bay.
“Whatever is cheapest,” I snort. “Money will be tight until the harvest, I’m afraid. Be prepared to starve.”
“I’m always starved.” I jump at his sudden whisper breathing down the side of my neck. “Starved for your cunt, your kisses, the way you moan my name.”
I put the bottle down and turn around, my heart giving one massive whomp against my ribcage. Eyes the color of dark heather.
Black hair cascading down in waves. Ornamental scars trailing over hard muscle. Was this male always this gorgeous?
“I’ll be the one starving then because humans can’t sustain themselves on bone-a-thons alone, I’m afraid.”
Jax and I do it on pretty much every surface this farm has to offer, showing off his entire skillset. But I know a few tricks as well, his favorite among them what he lovingly calls ‘your lips bumping down my ridges’.
His only comment when I first took his cock in my mouth was: ‘I heard rumors of females doing this on other planets, but I didn’t think they were true.’
“I’ll need some protein,” I say. “You’ve done so much pleasing on my body lately, I dropped two pounds.”
“I’ll go hunting then, like my ancestors used to. One well-aimed sting of my tail claw into the brain.” He whispers a kiss against my forehead and shrugs. “Or find an interstellar bank and transfer credits from my account.”
“You’re a slave.” Something that bothers me more and more each day.
“That robs me of my freedom.” He places the brushes bristle-down into a bucket with soapy water. “It doesn’t rob me of my savings, peanut butter. I’m far from rich, but I’m not without means.”
Peanut butter is so much cuter than Booty Call, and a whirlwind of emotions spins at my core. “You’re full of surprises, lawyer Jax. But I don’t want you to do that.”
He slumps himself onto the bench at the head of the table, one arm propped behind his head. “Why not? I use your water and eat your food.”
“And you’re more than earning your keep here.” Taking the two glasses, I squeeze myself between patio chairs and the freshly painted siding and sit down beside him. “Here. To Whispering Whillwheat and, hopefully, a great harvest.”
“To amazing teamwork.” Glasses clink, and that drink goes down my throat like liquid honey. “Glad I finally put this bottle to good use. Steph always brings quality stuff.”
