by Stella Cassy
What day was it on Earth?
My manager and agent had probably had all sorts of threatening emails and calls from lawyers, assistants, and the director about breach of contract. What excuses were they making and for how long? When I got pneumonia and had to go to a private hospital, my agent had handled the contract fall out. No one had mentioned it, just resumed shooting, like it didn’t happen, but that was an independent project, and everyone involved had no power behind their threats, unlike my current director. It would cost me in reputation and many thousands for every week I did not honor my contract. They’d spin some story for as long as they could.
He let go of my hand and lifted my chin with a finger. “Your eyes are not usually red.”
He noticed too much. How could I tell him that my only way home was dashed? That Carissa was a human alien? Before I could answer him, he turned away and led the way to his room.
Inside, he tapped the space above the food vending machine. Two hydro packs slid out. He handed me an opened one. I drank it absentmindedly. He took his to the bed. He finished his drink without talking before I realized that he was waiting for me to speak. How much time had passed?
“Are you able to talk to me now?” he asked.
The packet fell out of my hand and the remaining juice sloshed on the floor. He picked it up and put it in the slot to the right of the vending unit.
“What do you mean?” I asked. What was he talking about?
When I arrived, I had slipped into the last role of a woman suffering from PTSD who didn’t speak for three quarters of the movie. I was known to sink deep into a role, the only reason a shy introvert like me could overcome my natural reserve to make a career as an actress. That was what my therapist had told me years ago, at least. Not that I didn’t still regularly deal with the near panic attacks at the beginning of a new project or the in the middle of a project or at end of project. Working with the same people, a limited number of people, and with daily doses of recharging without any other social interactions helped. I had a process and it had worked most of the time.
“You were full of questions, as usual, and now you are as silent as you were when I first brought you on board.”
He got up and slid open a closet on the other side of his bed. A row of black and gray uniforms was suspended from a wire. He pulled out a tube which he used to suction the mess without a hint of moisture left behind.
“I was thinking about Carissa. She was born out here, not on Earth. Did you know that?” I ran a hand over my almost dry hair. It felt smoother than normal. My skin, my nails, too. That probably wouldn’t last. I had twisted and knotted my hair into a ball at the nape of my neck under the dryer after we rinsed the rehydration fluid off.
“Yes. Matilda is a Hielsrane, as are many on my and Tarion’s fleet. He was just telling me she is ready to enter the operation already.” He smiled like he did every time her name was mentioned. “When she was ten—”
Fifteen. He had told me that earlier. Fifteen.
“Matilda is fifteen.”
“Yes,” he said.
I almost settled in to hear another snippet of her escapades, anything other my conversation with Carissa, but something else about Matilda bugged me. “Matilda has Carissa’s coloring. Her face and part of her hands do, at least.”
“She is Tarion and Carissa’s daughter. Half Drakonian. There are plenty of others with Drakonian blood all over this verse. I don’t know what other than Drakonian lies in my own blood. All Drakon that exhibit our traits or can shift into dragon form are enfolded into our community as equal.”
“She didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. You didn’t say.” I was too busy thinking about how my A plan to get home had been blown away. Earth was just a place she was from. She accepted her life in space. She had a husband. A family.
What other things did he know? What wasn’t he sharing that I didn’t even think to ask? Who would think to ask another human if she were born in space? It was, or used to be, one of those things that was safe to assume. There wasn’t much left that was safe to assume any more for me.
I couldn’t think about that or I’d have to go to bed.
“I’m similar to Matilda, my parents are of different races.”
“Are there other beings other than humans on Earth?” he asked while he ate some kind of nuts. He offered me the tube. I shook my head.
“No, but sometimes they act like they are from different planets. If I had experienced all of this, had known about you and all these different beings and worlds, I wouldn’t have felt so much like an outsider when I was a child. It would have been as insignificant as it is to me now, silly even. And then I became an actress, a different kind of alien — a movie star.”
“It was like that on my home planet as well. Hielsrane Drakons are expected to explore, rule, and conquer. There is no other option for us. We are so well known that some of my hatch mates have sworn never to return —”
“Hatch mates?” I wasn’t letting anymore of these information bombs get past me again.
“Hielsrane siblings,” he said.
“Brothers and sisters?”
He nodded. “All males. Females are not as common, and they take more than two of your earth years to get pregnant.”
Two years. I wouldn’t be around for even a year. My fingers touched my stomach. “I hadn’t considered that at all until I saw Carissa. With so many other new experiences, I’m overloaded.”
“That is part of the reason human females are highly valued,” he said. “Even though there has been little evidence to substantiate it, many think that your race is the most compatible in the galaxy.”
“Too bad I can’t sprout some wings, then I wouldn’t have been abducted and sold as a slave. Some of the makeup people back home would come in handy about now.”
He sighed and shook his head, not unlike Matilda’s parents had at her comments. He was born a Hielsrane and had known there were other planets full of beings since birth. How could he understand what it was like for me? I must seem primitive.
Lehar stroked my hair before walking over to the chest of drawers in the corner. He returned with two shell fragments – one wine-colored, the other copper. They were small and etched with intricate designs, mirroring the scales that lined his chest and arms. “So was Matilda like one of the eggs in the nursery?” I had wanted to ask Carissa but forgot after she told me she was born in space.
“No, Mattie was not a hatchling,” he said. “She was not born from the shell as I, Tarion and most Drakon are.”
“Actually giving birth to an egg might be less traumatic. Maybe.”
“Is that what you want to discuss all lunar?” he asked.
“I want to know about Drakon moms and their babies.”
“Drakons are pregnant half the time and after the egg arrives, it must incubate at the right temperature for as many months. At one point in time, the mother had to provide the body heat. Hatchlings emerge when they are ready to greet the world and have exhausted their nutrients and grown strong enough to break out of their shells.”
“Oh, like baby birds.”
“Are you through with talk of reproduction?” He drew me close to his side.
“Yes.” I leaned in and rubbed my lips against his ridged ones which caused a rumble in his throat. “It’s not as if I don’t have reason to ask about it.”
“That is unlikely. Even in Drakon females who are naturally the most compatible it does not happen easily or often.”
“Matilda’s existence disputes that, sir.”
“Carissa is an exception according to the doctors,” he said.
“Do you think it’s because she was born here?”
“Perhaps,” he said.
“Good to know, now let’s go.” I took his hand before we spoiled one of the best moments of my day, when there was one dragon alien and one human woman in our own little world in his round bed. “We won’t have to think about that tonight or anytime soon.”
> “When we meet in our nest, my mind is free of anything but stoking our heat to fire.”
“I could use a lot of that about now.”
14
Lehar
“I might as well enjoy the one good thing about being up here, the only thing I won’t regret when I leave, what I want to take back with me.” Lara marched ahead of me with a determined look on her face.
What did she hope to gain by her talk of leaving me? I paused in the doorway. I should leave and take Matilda with me to the recreation bay until my human regained her normal constitution. “Do you require solitude?”
“What? No.” She did an about face. “I’m alone more than enough.”
“You have been bored while I am away from you?” I should have provided her with structured activities.
“No, not yet.” Her nose wrinkled. “I haven’t had this long of a stretch without thinking about work since I’ve been working for the last twenty years,” she said.
“When did you start working in entertainment?” I asked.
“At five years old.” She shrugged. “It was fun, sometimes.”
Why did humans allow their young to work at such a young age?
“And you?” she asked. “How old were you?”
“I was a cadet in the Hielsrane operation at sixteen.” She had distracted me from her earlier comment. She was very good at that. “You are not leaving me.” I gripped her shoulders and sat her down on the bed.
“I’m not planning to tonight,” she said.
“Nor any other,” I said.
She frowned and shrugged my hands away. “Too tight big guy.”
“Apologies,” I said. “You are the color of one of my treasures, an ancient shell fragment.”
“Not sure how I feel about that,” she said. “What kind of shells are they?”
“Remnants of ancient hatchlings. Mothers often keep theirs, but these are as old as our kind.” I moved to the wall nearest the door and opened the compartment with the oldest shells. The wall light highlighted their intricate swirls of color like they were polished precious stones of every color.
“Are they like that naturally?” she asked.
“Yes, other than an initial cleaning when they were excavated. They’re my favorite inanimate objects; eons old and caressed by the ages into perfection.”
“They look so delicate,” she said.
“That’s what is so amazing about them. They’re as hard as any material comes.”
“I don’t have anything as amazing as this, but I collect antique perfume bottles. They are delicate. They live under lock and key. They’re hundreds of years old.”
“Then you will enjoy the crafters of litegem at the markets in Coovoo.”
“Will I get to go?” she asked.
“Yes, of course.”
“But I have no money.”
“I have credit enough for the whole market,” I said. I wanted to buy her whatever she wanted all over the verse.
“You go where I do.” I cupped her cheeks in my hands. “Always.”
“Good. I don’t want to be left behind.” She gazed up at me with her amber gemstones, which turned darker as she turned her lips into my palm and kissed one then the other. I kissed her smooth shoulders and ran my hands against the faint red impressions my fingers had left. I had to remember she was not a Drakon female, especially when we were in our nest.
I removed her outer garments and she took off her undergarments. “You’re surprisingly easy to be around, even, well, intimate with,” she said.
“Did someone upset you?” I removed all my clothing before she changed her mind.
“No.”
“There are other things you enjoy here?” Any activity alone with her was beginning to supplant all others, but I had to agree with her: the ones in which we were naked together were hard to beat.
“Yeah,” she said. “My daily walks, the observation deck, recreation room, all of it.”
“Yes, you seem to follow a specific route.”
“So people are spying on me?” Her forehead creased.
“There is no need when everyone’s movement are monitored automatically and logged by the ship,” I said.
“In here too?” she asked.
“No.”
“Why is that needed? Never mind, I don’t want to know.” She rose up on her tiptoes and brought my face to hers in a tender kiss.
“You always want to know all.” I lifted her off her feet.
She shook her head. “Not right now.”
I set her down in the middle of our bed.
“Now,” she said. “Lie down on your back.” Her fingers touched the apex of my ears and lingered there, the sensation shooting down my sides and across my chest to my legs. It was as if she had been given instruction on Drakonian libido.
I shook out my wings and complied. She had exceeded my expectations. Only her absence in my nest could cause me displeasure and even that would be dispelled upon her return.
“Tonight I’m not worrying about transference or Stockholm syndrome or birth control or any of that.”
“I do not know what any of those words mean except birth control, and we have already discussed that,” I said. “Your tone is not any of the ones I am accustomed to. I thought you were anxious to see Carissa. You were happy to meet her and Matilda.”
“Yeah, they’re great.” She climbed on top of me with a look she only got when we were both joined. “Enough talking about anything but how good you make me feel when we are together.”
“We will discuss this later.” I put my hands behind her head and brought her lips to mine. “I enjoy this as much as you. More.”
Her silky lips rubbed over my skin. She was softer than normal, which I thought was impossible. I smelled the plant essence used in the rehydration baths. Mixed with her unique scent, it had never smelled this good. “Carissa took you to the rehydration baths?”
“You were keeping your personal spa from me,” she said.
“We will go together from now on, but they are rarely private, not like this, or my cleansing unit.”
My hands went to her hair, which seemed too delicate even to handle. I did not think to take her to the baths as her skin was already optimal. I undid the twists she fashioned her hair in at night so that it was as full and free as when I first encountered her.
Her fingers were the perfect size to tease out pleasure wherever they glided. They slid across the scales on my chest, pausing at the ridges long enough to excite nerves which radiated and exploded my need and made my skin more sensitive. As the tips of her nipples brushed across my scales, ripples of pleasure threaded down to my groin.
She slid down my chest, stopping at the exact point where the apex to her sex met with the tip of my cock. She sandwiched its length between her legs. With her softest parts, she squeezed and rubbed against my cock. She rolled her hips in circles over the tip and down the shaft until it was slick and pulsing. Her feathery movements were threatening to shift my dragon fully.
She bounced up and down on the tip in a way that made it impossible for me to keep my hands at my sides. I filled them instead with her breasts, pulling her down for another kiss. Was she in heat? Was I? Was all that talk about eggs and hatchlings affecting us?
I pursed my lips together and directed my breath between her lush thighs. Her movements slowed, eyes closed, and her breathing increased. She ground down, taking me inside her a third of the way. My phallus vibrated as she descended, threatening to explode in her too early.
I wrapped my caudal around her waist and lifted her, cradling her onto her back. She opened her mouth and her little pink tongue circled the tip of my caudal and then she sucked it into her mouth.
My wings spread to their fullest and my wings flapped, the tips scraping the walls. We levitated above the nest while I rocked in and out of her slowly.
“Lehar...” Her hair whipped away from her face, about her head. She released my caudal.
; Each time I thrust and delved into her, I wanted more. Gods and spirits, I wanted her every solar and lunar as if her mating heat had invaded my every pore. I roared as my seed poured into her and I lowered her back onto the bed.
“Anomaly detected, diagnostic analysis to begin in five seconds…” the computer announced, startling her out of her bliss.
“Computer,” I barked into the room. “No anomaly.”
“Oh my God.” Laura laughed. “How many times has that happened in here?”
“Never.” I was pretty sure Tarion had experienced every kind of response from the computer system but not me. No anomalies had ever occurred in my quarters before.
I unwound my caudal from around her, leaning over her to suck her lower lip into my mouth before collapsing beside her. “Your rehydration bath has made you even more irresistible.” Trailing kisses along her neck, my teeth scraped her shoulder and I let them sink in a little deeper, claiming her. Her gasp was barely audible, and I wrenched my teeth away from her skin. I had prevented myself from breaking her skin for days.
“It didn’t really hurt.”
“Are you sure I did not hurt you?” I checked her neck and only saw a row of faint marks.
“No, not at all.”
She got up and went to the elimination cubicle. Though her body heat was minimal, I pulled the covers across me to stave off a chill I rarely felt. My body acclimated rapidly. Usually.
I had given her my fire and my bite readily. Naturally. No thought had entered my head but to mark and claim her in every way possible. Tarion ’s warnings echoed in my mind and my own to him revolutions ago, mocking my actions. I thought when the time came that marking a female would be a deliberate choice like the ones that had led to me from cadet to captain.
15
Lara
I curled my knees into my chest and pulled the sheet over my nose, inhaling Lehar’s distinct wood-smoke scent on the covers.
