She grabbed it from his slack grip and examined it.
“It is! That’s what it is!” She looked at him excitedly. “You’ve been to Earth! You’ve been to my home world!”
He stared at her blankly and turned to look at Luki and Serge as if looking for directions from the pair.
Amber grasped his wrist, dragging his attention back to her. “You had to have gotten this from Earth! No way am I going to believe they made something like this somewhere else. They haven’t even made it on Earth in … decades.” She considered that. “Well, maybe retro.”
Sitting the lamp on the floor when he still didn’t seem to grasp anything she’d said, she lifted his hand and placed his palm on her temple—well across her cheek and temple—he had amazingly huge hands. Closing her eyes, she focused as hard as she could to bring up an image of Earth and then the lava lamp in a bedroom.
She thought, at first, when Alaric collided with her that she’d lost her balance and swayed toward him because she was standing with her eyes closed. Instinctually, her eyes flew wide when she felt the fleshy bump, but she didn’t actually get the chance to focus her eyes.
Alaric’s face was within a hair’s breadth of hers and even as she opened her eyes, his lips covered hers.
There was nothing supplicating or accidental about that collision.
A jolt went through Amber as he made contact, breached the barrier of her lips, and invaded the cavern of her mouth with his tongue in one motion. For a handful of nano seconds doubt warred with pleasure and then want filled her with his taste in a scalding flood. Her entire world narrowed in a split second to him, the heated wall of muscular flesh that enveloped her as he caged her in his arms and imprisoned her against his hard chest and belly.
A monolith rose between them—as hard and thick as an arm.
Because it was an arm.
Confusion struggled to pierce the heated fog of her mind, but really his hands and mouth just felt too damned good to question how the hell he was stroking her and licking her everywhere at once.
It was like—he had three mouths and six arms and ….
She was buck ass naked and dizzy from the kisses on her mouth and breasts and the trip to the bed.
It flickered through her mind that she should probably feel alarmed.
What she felt, though, was drunk—too inebriated to tell which end was up or what hand and mouth belonged to who.
She was aware that the four of them had somehow ended up in a wild tangle on the giant bed she’d had to herself previously.
But really it just felt too damned good to protest—even though she knew she should.
* * * *
Alaric realized, later, that the very fact that he couldn’t resist touching Amber was the primary reason he shouldn’t.
But he did.
He’d been struggling with his urges from the moment he had discovered just how much she looked like a Furian woman. He’d told himself he could and would hold himself in check because there was something far more important at stake than satisfying his lust.
She could mean the possibility of actual happiness when he had thought there was no chance of that—ever—after they’d lost everything.
He’d done his best to fill the hole with his rage and need for revenge, but those were cold comfort when they were any comfort at all.
And, nagging, always, at the back of his mind was his sense of his own mortality, the realization that tomorrow would only bring more boredom or more death and destruction. It would bring nothing of joy.
And then they had happened upon Amber.
It was as if she was a gift of the gods—compensation for all he’d lost and a future he hadn’t expected to have—a home and family, a place of true belonging again—people of his own to build for.
Not that he believed in the old gods anymore.
He was fairly certain that anyone left on Ator who had before the destruction of their home world had realized how very useless those ancient beliefs were.
But the odds of finding a woman who might be a mate after all that they’d lost and one, who, moreover appealed to all of his senses, his heart, and mind … had seemed so astronomical it had never even crossed his mind to hope for such a thing.
It was crushing to have something that tantalizing land in his lap and then realize how easily it could be lost—as easily as found.
He supposed that, more than anything, explained his complete loss of control.
Losing his mind at the most critical moment in his life.
But it was almost as if his world exploded all over again.
Everything was going to shit and all he could think about was that he hadn’t had time to court her and win her heart.
He hadn’t even had time to try the low down version of making her commit to them because they’d impregnated her.
And then she’d rushed to him, grasped his hand, and placed it on her face.
He’d been stunned—too shocked to think.
Unfortunately.
His beast had interpreted that gesture as an overture he desperately wanted and he’d simply reacted by instinct.
And the moment he’d touched her, intent only, he thought, on infusing her with the mating enzymes that would prepare her for him, he’d lost the little reason that remained to him.
He had kissed her.
He had passed the enzymes that would trigger a hormonal response from her so that her body released the eggs he needed, his triad needed, to complete the mating cycle.
But it wasn’t enough to assuage the need.
Instead, it had enflamed him, burned away all reason—even the instincts that had driven him to begin with.
Her scent and taste intoxicated him far more than the brews he’d sipped on as a youth for false courage—would have downed as part of the mating ritual if he’d been among his people.
The warmth and smoothness of her skin had created a hunger that seemed to be eating him alive.
He wasn’t certain he could have pulled back if Luki and Serge hadn’t joined him, but the fact that they did, as if they’d been summoned to complete the cycle, fed the flames so that he took another step and another.
Until he found himself entangled on her bed with her, felt her naked flesh pressed to every inch of his own.
And the only distress he sensed in her was the need for fulfillment.
He pulled her against his length and rolled to the side to allow Luki to position himself, probing between her thighs at the same time to find her woman’s place. Pushing inside of her when he discovered it, he thought for several desperate moments that he would pass out from the heat, the tightness of her moist cavern.
But he had barely gained access when he ‘felt’ Luki’s confusion and alarm.
Those emotions insinuated themselves into his mind, as well.
Had he missed the mark?
Or was Luki too far gone to find his place?
There was only one place, he discovered after withdrawing and conducting a desperate search.
Reason should have reasserted itself at that point, directly proportional to his confusion.
It didn’t.
Well, reason of a sort did—the kind that springs from madness.
He’d begun.
He had to complete!
He molded his body to accommodate.
She had one passage. They would both claim it!
Luki followed his alpha and they conquered her channel together, sawing in and out of her in desperate lunges until their bodies abruptly yielded the seed they meant to spill inside of her.
The heat of their combined sperm sent her over the edge. She bucked within their hold, groaned, shuddered.
Elation filled Alaric.
He and Luki withdrew and rolled away to allow Serge to complete the cycle while she was still convulsing with pleasure because they knew those motions would help to pull their seed to the eggs.
<
br /> Poor Serge had little time to release, but, just as clearly, it was more than enough when he had had to wait until they delivered. He’d barely managed to complete the circuit when he came.
Alaric shoved him off and gathered their woman to himself, stroking his hands over her beautiful form with appreciation.
He had not meant to do it this way, but she was theirs and that was what truly mattered.
It was all that mattered to him.
He lay drifting lazily for a time, enjoying nothing more than being curled around her, enveloped in her scent and the scent of their labors. His thoughts drifted as lazily as a leaf on a meandering stream.
He had not given a lot of thought, he realized, to what they would do with their future.
Because, he thought wryly, nothing had been certain.
They had bred a knew clan, though, a new triad.
The first in ….
He had no idea how many years it had been—a lifetime ago.
A knot formed in his throat at that thought.
The abrupt realization that they would have a family to take care of banished it.
They needed a home for their family.
A home world.
He sat up with a jerk at that thought, releasing Amber, who was more than half asleep, so abruptly that she threw out her arms to catch herself and smacked Luki in the face.
“Sorry.” Pleased he’d managed to dredge up the word in her language, Alaric leaned down and planted a kiss in the general vicinity of Amber’s mouth and bounded out of the bed.
Luki, wide awake now, though still confused as to the reason for retreat, scrambled out, as well.
Serge, who’d planted his face on Amber’s belly, lifted his head and looked around a little drunkenly. “We’re leaving?”
Alaric was halfway to the door. Without pausing, he threw a response over his shoulder. “The summoning, dick head?”
That threw Serge into total confusion, but it also jugged him into action. He scrambled off the bed, as well, somewhat drunkenly, and staggered after the other two. He paused and turned in the doorway, however, and bestowed a lopsided grin upon his lady—who, unfortunately, had burrowed under the covers and wasn’t looking.
He struggled for a few moments to think of something clever or romantic but finally had to give up with the reflection that he would think something up and rehearse it for the next time.
The thought of ‘next time’ buoyed his spirits so high he was able to completely ignore the dirty looks he got from both Alaric and Luki when he finally stumbled onto the bridge and took his customary seat.
“Do you think her breeding cycle will match the Furian cycle?” he asked somewhat dreamily.
Alaric and Luki exchanged a startled glance.
Uneasiness instantly filled the space that had been warm and satisfied and Alaric had to wrestle with the desire to stalk across the bridge and knock Serge’s teeth down his throat.
He couldn’t have brought that up before they’d bred, he thought angrily?
Now his nerves were going to be frayed past bearing long before she gave birth! He would have months to suffer over whether or not she would be able to safely deliver their sons or not! Months to think about the horrifying possibility of losing her to childbirth!
So much for his stupid assumption that they could insure their claim by breeding on her!
They could end up with no mate at all that that would be far, far worse—losing Amber—than things had been before when there was no chance of having one!
* * * *
Amber was so thoroughly relaxed in the aftermath of a stellar climax all she could think about was sleeping.
She didn’t know what was more amazing—the climax itself or the fact that the guys had decided on a ménage.
If they’d suggested such a thing, she would have been too horrified to even contemplate it, but they just … jumped in as if it was the most natural thing in the world. And she’d been too breathless with all of the stimulation from every direction to think about objecting.
Well, she actually had thought about it, but it was easy enough to dismiss her qualms in favor of the excitement and pleasure of the moment.
When she came down, though, she came down hard.
She dimly recalled that Alaric had bounded out of the bed almost directly afterward as if somebody had shoved a dick up his ass.
Luki and Serge had been a lot less alert and coordinated, but they’d followed suit as quickly as they could manage and all three disappeared.
At the time, she’d just been grateful.
It was sweet that they all wanted to cuddle afterward and let her know how much they’d enjoyed having wild beast sex with her, but she had no desire for a round two. All she really wanted to do was relax and bask in post coital bliss.
And sleep it off.
So she was actually glad when they’d gotten up shortly afterward and left.
When she’d slept it off, though, and woken by herself that consideration took on a whole new light.
They might as well have been human males, she thought with disgust.
The very minute they got through depositing their seed all they could think about was putting as much distance between them and the ‘scene of the crime’ as they could as fast as they could.
It was a gang bang wham bam, thank you ma’am—disguised as a foursome.
Because she hadn’t tried to fight them off. She’d gone with the flow.
Not because she was the least bit anxious or put off but because it was way more fun than it had any business being.
If she’d been thinking rationally, she would’ve been at least a little unnerved if not downright terrified.
But her brains had drained through her pussy the minute Alaric kissed her.
She hadn’t realized until he did just how sexy she thought he was, just how ready she was for any overture he was willing to give her.
It was mortifying, really, that she’d just collapsed and spread her legs.
Rationally, she knew if she’d actually given any time or thought to it she would’ve realized that the safest thing she could do would be to give in.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t comfort herself that she’d done what she needed to to survive and had no reason to feel bad about it.
Because surviving hadn’t crossed her mind.
Dick had crossed her mind.
Sure, she’d felt little tingling ripples of uneasiness that had, slightly, offset her excitement but those were easy enough to dismiss when there was nothing the least bit threatening about their touch—Alaric’s.
She’d always thought of herself as very level headed, maybe a bit of a prude sexually, but intelligent and logical.
It occurred to her in the depths of her disappointment, though, that she hadn’t been any of those things since she’d been rescued by the alien shifters.
She’d almost immediately developed an insane case of hero worship.
Logically, she knew they weren’t deities of any kind.
They were just aliens, just a different species.
Stunningly beautiful male creatures with awesome abilities and intelligence beyond anything she’d ever known.
And they seemed so ‘god-like’ admiration had washed away common sense.
Chapter Nine
Once they had managed to get their clumsy mother ship up to speed and set their course for the planet they had been using as home base there was really nothing to do but think.
And Alaric really wanted to avoid thinking.
He wouldn’t have minded if he could have focused on the rosy future he’d envisioned when he’d lost his mind and gone from ‘preparing’ Amber to accept them to breeding Amber, but he just couldn’t put his new fears to rest.
That did prompt a possible glimmer of hope that he hadn’t totally fucked up, though.
“We do not know that she was in heat,” he said a few hour
s later in response to Serge’s comment. “We may not have bred her at all. Not that that matters insofar as claiming her! We certainly thoroughly claimed her for our clan.”
Serge stared at him blankly, struggling to pick up the thread of the conversation he had thought was dead. “She was ready. I detected the scent of fertility. I thought you had and that was why you had signaled that we were to breed her.”
Alaric gaped at him as anger slowly gathered. “I did not summon either fucking one of you! But now that you brought it up I’d like to know what the fuck you were thinking by leaping in like that when I had only seized the opportunity she presented to give her the enzymes to bring her to fruitfulness!”
Luki looked shocked and then angry. “I distinctly detected a summoning!” he growled.
“As did I!” Serge seconded before Alaric could deny summoning either one of them.
“You could not have when I did not summon you! Either of you!”
Luki and Serge exchanged a long questioning look, thought back over the event the best they could, and disagreed louder.
Since bellowing often settled disagreements.
“I heard the mating call, gods damn it!” Luki growled.
“Yes!” Serge yelled a little louder.
Alaric had just sucked in a deep breath to shout them both down when he abruptly felt a tingling inside his head. He whipped a sharp look toward the door just as Amber entered, a wide eyed look of uncertainty on her face.
Instantly, his anger vanished—so quickly, in point of fact, that he felt vaguely nauseous. “Amber!” he exclaimed with somewhat feigned joyfulness.
Luki and Serge whipped their heads in that direction so quickly their necks popped.
Luki’s look of suspicion vanished as quickly as his anger and was replaced with surprise. You mind linked with her?
Surprise flickered through Alaric because he hadn’t actually been aware of a connection, only the faint tingling that suggested an attempt to connect.
Alien Touch Page 9
