by Amanda Milo
He frowns. Then he scowls. “If you want me to admit that I must take orders from Gracie—”
“No, who is your regular boss? Who owns your quarry?”
Now Bash’s whole scaly-covered face shutters. “Cessilla.”
Cessilla.
His jaw works and he says softer, “A Gryfala by the name of Cessilla.”
“Is she the one you lov—”
“Yes.”
Ow, ow, ow. “Oh.” Her name is even beautiful. A cruel, beautiful bitch’s name. And I use that term in the most positive definition: whip-smart, successful, accomplished, feminine and powerful. A proper bitch.
You know, not me.
“Isla, why does this vex you? Is it because she owns our cave?”
I gape at him.
His ears sling back and he licks his sharp teeth unhappily. “Ah. I see. You didn’t know to be insecure about that.”
“No!” I shout. “I didn’t!”
Bash gathers me to him, his jaw hard against mine and his scales scratchy as they rasp the side of my face. “You have nothing to feel unconfident about. Yes, she owns the quarry, and yes, the land our cave is set in. If you think a Gryfala would ever enter there, you don’t know Gryfala. They love their sky, they need it. And I feel it important to note that by the time she sent me out from her rookery, I didn’t want her to step foot in my territory. Not any of my territory.”
I let him hold me until I don’t feel like screaming. Then I pull back to look him right in the eye. “If I was employed by my ex-lover, the former love of my life—”
Bash’s snarl could belong to a saber-toothed tiger. His lips are curled back and his eyes glint dangerously. “I see. You must kill her.”
Weakly, I laugh. “I wouldn’t go that far…” I just need you to quit your job and relocate to a whole new cave someplace that your former love doesn’t have any control over.
“Isla?” He makes a loop of his tail again and presses it under my chin, tipping my head up until our eyes meet.
I clutch it tightly enough I can feel his scales make impressions on the insides of my fingers. “You know how you needed to shackle me to the bed and fit me in anti-straying panties?”
“Yes?”
“Now I’m the one who’s going nuts and needs serious reassurance.”
Bash stares at me like the two of us can’t be compared. “Isla, you haven’t seen how the other males look at you—”
“I’m extraordinarily average. There isn’t anything about me that can hold a candle to—”
Bash’s intense frown is not one of outrage but confusion and it has me rephrasing.
“Hold a candle: can compete with your lover,” I explain.
“NOT my lover,” Bash bites out. “Love wasn’t what Cessilla kept me for. Any feelings that developed were my own, not shared by her—”
I find that hard to believe. If she chose Bash, she must have felt something for him. Lust, surely. And how could there not be affection? Heck, how could she not fall in love with him? I bet he didn’t used to be near this grumpy, back when she had him. Him being this surly is the only way I’ve known him, and I’m crazy about him. What would he have been like before he was jaded and closed off and prickly?
“—and she’s had nothing of me in a very long time.” His claws touch either side of my chin when he takes hold of it. “And Isla, she will have nothing from me now, not ever again.”
“You say that, but Bash, I’m concerned. Here I am, wearing an iron-clad deterrent against extramarital affairs, but you…
“I would never take another female,'' he vows, his voice clear about the depth of offense he considers this. His wild eyes say the same thing. “Would you have me wear armor to soothe your concerns?”
“I’m thinking about it. But my fear is that the type of prevention we’d need doesn’t exist. There isn’t an iron cock cage big enough to fit you, and there is no iron diaper to prevent emotions. You are employed by this woman. She has access to you in ways I can’t possibly guard against. And when it comes down to a nobody human named Isla and an entrepreneurial wonder-alien named Cessilla, there’s no contest.”
“You are right. Between that female I once knew and my mate that I cherish—a fetching female who always smiles, who makes the best of things when her whole life is uprooted, a sweet female who saw something in me worth befriending, an alien woman who was brave enough to love me—you love me Isla. It’s healing just to know that. And I. Love. You. There is no contest,” he vows to me, earnestness beaten into every word like the eternal-steel head of a newly forged hammer. His eyes beseeching, soft and velvety as the double-thick frosting on a three-tiered cake of reassurance. He draws his rough-scaled knuckle along the side of my face. “Now that I know what it is like to be wanted, truly wanted by someone, I don’t even feel the sting of the old rejection. Not even the sting. She no longer even gets my feelings.”
I poof out a breath. “Well… that’s good. Reassuring. Okay.” I wiggle my arm until my hand is free between us. I form a fist and tap my knuckles against Bash’s groin, making him jump.
He eyes me in confusion. “That’s not how you touch me,” he informs me.
“I’m not touching you. There’s a human saying—”
Bash nearly rolls his eyes.
“—where we make a statement, and then we knock on wood.”
He frowns down at me. Confused or unimpressed or both.
I run my knuckles against his dick, up and down. Up and down. “We call this ‘wood’ when it gets hard—oh, oops—just like this.”
Bash’s lips slash into a what I think of as his hidden-smile, and then he’s bending low, taking my mouth and murmuring against my lips, “You are the most alien creature I’ve ever met. So completely, maddeningly teveking alien.”
“But you still love me,” I say against his lips.
Forcing a hard kiss on me, he draws back to declare, “I’ll be keeping you anyways, for always.”
“Good,” I manage before he melds our air options.
When he pulls away enough for us to grab oxygen, I pant, “Is this stall clean?”
He glances around us and sniffs, one side of his nostril scales bunching. “Yes.”
“Are we going to christen it?”
He captures my hair in his fist, pulling my head back roughly in a way I like. A lot. “If that phrase means that I bend you over something and mount you as if I’m your salkell, then the answer is yes.”
For the very alien word salkell, my translator flashes me the image of a sweat-frothed stallion.
Um, that works.
“Hooraaayyy,” I purr as he jerks up the hem of my dress.
***
BASH
“Yes, ‘hooray,’” I agree. I consider the merits of tugging her dress over her head or ripping it off of her body in a fit of claiming passion. However, if I do that, my logical brain reminds me, then Isla will be naked when we leave here, and that is unacceptable.
I’m really struggling with the desire to rip her garment from her body though. I growl my frustration.
Isla’s arm comes around my back to bring me closer. I oblige, stepping forward, my feet bracketing hers, my hips pressed to her stomach, my chin to my neck to look down into her face, my hand on her jaw, dragging her head up higher, forcing her to arch her neck and keep my eyes. “You will never see the end of me.” I finger her soft gown. Just one yank, and there will be a beautiful shredding sound, and the even more beautiful sound of her shocked gasp. I can nearly hear it; my ears are almost tingling with it.
Isla’s breath warms my chest as she exhales a relieved-sounding breath. “Your stalker-talk is weirdly, awesomely reassuring.” Her head tips in my hand, as if she’s considering something. “I should probably be running in the other direction—”
My hand unconsciously tightens around her face. With my other hand, I grip her dress at the bodice portion. One tug and she will be running naked. With her belt of chastity. She will not get far
in that heavy, heavy belt that cups her sex. Of course, I will still have to kill every male who sees her shapely form in all her glory. Glory only meant for me. Locked away behind that metal-fanged, cock-biting belt.
My tail coils around the both of us, trapping our fronts tightly together.
“—but,” Isla says, eyes cutting back up to mine, a smile sliding over her lips, “why the heck would I want to do that? Do you know how hard I had to work to win you over?”
“It was a trial, eh?” I tease.
Her eyes have taken on such a shine, such a shimmer, they look as if they’re dancing. “I’ve never put in this level of effort. You should be proud of yourself.”
My tail slides purposefully up, the area just under my blades folding, making a curl and cupping her behind with it. “I’m proud of us.”
Isla’s hand slides down until it finds the tuck of my shirt. She inserts her hand under my clothing, heading in the direction of my upper back—but then she experiences a change of her mind and reverses, changing her path to take her hand to the muscle of my glutes. “I don’t know about you, but I’m suddenly feeling like a celebration. Something reassuring, hot and… hard,” she enunciates, wiggling so that my erection is teased by her soft belly.
I take her in my arms. “We will have to be quick as sky bolts.”
“Sky bolts? Like lightning fast? Why?”
I glance at the door, my internal clock ticking so loudly I’m becoming restless. “The humans’ break will be ending soon. I can’t leave them alone for long. There’s no telling the sort of damage they’ll create.”
“You’re worried about your Counter, aren’t you? You want to guard it more than you want sex?”
“Of course not…” I hedge. “It would be ridiculous to care about some silly scoreboard.”
Isla smiles up at me, amused. “There’s no shame in you caring about your score. Let’s bang behind your throne. That way, we will still get to score, and nobody will get near your Counter then.”
I kiss her hard and drag her into my arms. “You have time-efficient ideas I approve of, female.”
CHAPTER 43
BASH
(Crying Counter: Marvelous)
Isla and I used the area behind my throne to make certain that her lock was working with my key.
Why, yes. It was.
You could say her lock was very, very slick, and my key was a long, tight, hard fit.
I bit myself twice to prevent my teeth from sinking into her. The first time, to my astonishment—and pleasure—Isla’s initial concern turned to heated delight at my display of savagery.
...Her receptive reaction is what led to the second bite. I stared into her eyes the whole time and lapped at the wound as if it were hers, as if it were her soft skin I was treating after taking it so roughly.
“Weirdly hot,” Isla had declared—and then she’d kissed me.
By the time we strolled out from behind the throne, no one was anywhere near the vicinity, and that pleased me because that also meant the infernal Counter retained my no-sniveling status. I haven’t admitted this to Isla, but lately we’ve worked almost exclusively in the area in front of the Counter whenever possible simply to prevent the possibility of overwrought employees having easy access to change my hard-earned accomplishment of tearless days.
“Are you in a good mood?” Isla asks me, trying to gather her hair back one-handed with her stretchable hair-tying band.
“Thanks to you,” I murmur, as I catch her fall of hair in my fist and draw the band from her fingers. I tug on her mane and fire snaps low in my midsection, heating my groin as if I didn’t just attack my poor female. “I am.”
“I could have finished putting my hair up by myself,” she points out. She doesn’t sound irritated, and I’m glad.
“I trusted that you could. But I wanted to feel you again. If I hadn’t moved to take over, I wouldn’t have been able to grip your mane like this and wonder why I never appreciated human break times before.”
“You do now?” she sing-songs. And she buzzes her rump into my front. It shouldn’t be arousing, having metal clank into my legs, but upon considering what her metal represents, I’m immediately hard enough I could drill with my erection.
I tug her mane again, loving the way her neck arches, her muscles passive, submitting to whatever act I want her for.
I want her for all acts. All of them. “I have never looked upon them with so much goodwill.”
When I drag my claws through Isla’s tresses to better gather any loose hairs, she shivers and sighs in a way that tells me she finds the action pleasant. Feeling stares accumulate on us as I tend to my female rather than shout at all the humans to get back to work at their stations, I accept that my priorities will never be the same. Now that I have Isla, nothing will ever be the same.
And I am pleased with the changes. Before Isla, I existed. With Isla, I am… happy. I am finally, truly happy. Fulfilled.
“So hey,” Isla starts, cutting into my thoughts.
I stop teasing her hair and start applying the controlling band around her mane’s mass. “Yes?”
“There’s this big harvest gathering coming up—”
I make an agreeable noise. I’ve never looked forward to the event before. But I have been imagining attending. With Isla. At events like this, it isn’t uncommon for males to spirit away their females and return them thoroughly disheveled. I’m suddenly anticipating starting at the feast table. Isla could drop her napkin, and when she crawls under the table to retrieve it, she could use her pretty mouth on me in her wicked way—
“—and I said I’d totally ask you.”
She reaches her hand up and pats her mane, bumping my hands but not batting me away. She steps out from under my frozen self and smiles up at me. “Thanks! Feels perfect. So would it be okay with you?”
Her eyes are so bewitching. The scene I’d been building in my mind from a moment ago gets more distinct. My loins are afire. While everyone is tasting the fruits of many months of field labor, while I’m wet and hard from her mouth’s illicit attention, I’ll gather Isla, slip behind one of the stave-made granaries and—
“Bash? Is that a yes?”
I stare at her.
“It’ll really make it a celebration to remember,” she says.
“Yes, it will,” I agree, thinking of my plans for us.
Isla lights up like she has all the illuminance of the moon when it’s directly overhead. “This is great! The girls and I want to contribute, but we thought you might not be as enthusiastic as everybody else about taking time off of work to put on the big feast—”
“Stop,” I tell her. I hold up a talon. “Explain ‘taking time off of work.’”
Isla frowns and blinks up at me. “How many ways can I say it, Bash?”
“Repeat all you’ve said to me.”
Isla lowers one eyelid—not in the fashion of a wink, but in a squinty-eyed stare that tells me she thinks I’ve grown daft. “We want to take some time off of work.”
“No.”
Isla’s petal-soft lips part. Her petal-soft, cock-loving lips. And her eyes, her beautiful eyes look hurt. “No? But I want to put on a play.”
My tail thumps the stone ground, unhappy that she is unhappy. “Fine. You may take your people.” I steel myself not to glance at the Counter. “But I will continue tallying days that I do not make your females cry especially if they are not here to weep.”
One half of Isla’s mouth quirks. “Okay…”
I sniff, causing my nose scales to bunch, and my tail brushes along her hand. “This will delay the human’s houses.”
“So the humans stay in the compound a little longer. The feast happens only once a year and this is special.”
“Hm. Perhaps this isn’t the worst idea I’ve heard. Your fellow humans will get out of my quarry and I’ll finally have my clear-headed workers back.”
Isla bites back a smile. “All right, but there’s another part you must
not have heard. Some of their mates are volunteering to help put the celebration on.”
My eyes narrow. “Your people are taking my hobs? My Rakhii? My workforce?”
“Some of your guys are paired with human women, yeah.”
I glare.
“The point I’m getting to here, Bash—and try not to scowl so hard, love, you’re going to get wrinkles,” she manages to add with a cheeky-hopeful smile, “is that all my friends are asking their mates to help and…” Isla’s beautiful sky-grey eyes catch and hold mine. “I wondered if I could ask you.”
I have my female’s love. And she wants me to spend time with her. She wants my help, and everything in me wants to please her this way. Yet… “You want me to leave my quarry—which will finally be empty of humans—only to have me join the humans?” I ask incredulously.
Isla gazes up at me hopefully. “I want to ask my mate if he’d like to do something fun with me. Something I’d love to do.”
Tevek. I stare down at her, stymied. “I would help you. I would join you if you’re asking me.”
“I am.”
“Then beside you I’ll be.”
Isla throws herself against me more and brings me down to her mouth for a kiss.
CHAPTER 44
ISLA
Bash and I settle into mated life the same way most couples do: we have almost nonstop sex, I fill his ears with all the little relationship details of our friends that he absolutely doesn’t care about, he avoids biting me during sex by latching his teeth onto the bed’s headboard, pillows, and blankets, and my workaholic husband becomes almost pleasant to his employees on account of his I’m-getting-constantly-laid level of relaxation.
(If you’re looking at this list thinking one of these things is not like the others, you must be from Earth, where your bed does not look like it’s been attacked by a tiger. Here, it’s par for the Rakhii-course.)
He’s still a taskmaster at work, but he’s not so quick to shout. His answers aren’t always bitten out.
And he rarely shakes, beats, or burns the hobs anymore. Gracie is pleased.
(I’m sure the hobs are relieved too.)
