by Cara Bristol
He shook his head and a self-deprecating smile twisted his mouth.
“What?” I said.
“I still can’t believe I didn’t realize you were female.”
“Well, yeah, when I’m naked, it’s easy to tell. All covered up?” Binding my breasts, cutting my hair, wearing men’s clothing, adopting a masculine strut—I’d gone to great pains to conceal my gender. Stuffing a sock in my pants may have been overkill, but my disguise had worked.
Enoki traced my bottom lip with his finger and stared into my eyes. “No, it’s obvious—it explains why I was drawn to you. My eyes were fooled, but my heart wasn’t.”
I couldn’t deny we had a connection, but I didn’t want to talk about it. My desire for him was simple, my conflicted longing too complex to sort out. To halt further discussion, I pressed my lips to his and smoothed my hands over his pecs, admiring his awesome muscle tone.
He hugged me close. His erection felt hard and warm against my stomach. I slipped a hand between our bodies to stroke him. My grip slid along the length from base to weeping tip. He groaned, and his horns pulsed. I squeezed his cock, and they throbbed. Squeeze, throb. Squeeze, throb. Interesting…
He cut short playtime by tossing back the top kel and guiding us onto the bed. Desire unleashed, hot and serious. His brow furrowed in concentration as he applied himself to my pleasure. With his mouth and hands, he touched my body, drawing sighs and moans from my throat. He kneaded my breasts then suckled the tips while slipping his hands between my legs to explore my sex. His fingers stroked over my folds, massaged my clit, causing me to writhe with pleasure, before slipping inside me. Muscles tightened to draw him deeper.
His horns fascinated me with how they pulsed and swelled in response to my touch. His growls of desire as I stroked them caused my core to ache with need. I marveled at the hard planes of his body, the perfection of each muscle group, his overwhelming maleness. His alienness. Humanoid at first glance, Dakonians had an undertone to their bronzed skin I’d never seen on anyone from Earth. Enoki’s chest and abdomen were bare of hair, but a tantalizing arrow led the way to his impressive erection—not that I needed directions.
I studied and learned what he liked, but on another level, I knew. We seemed to instinctively understand how to please the other, an unfolding revelation becoming irrefutable. We meshed. We fit. We grooved. There was newness and freshness, but also the comfort and familiarity of being in perfect sync.
Sex with a new partner could be awkward until you developed a rhythm together. Like our emotional connection that existed despite my masquerade, we connected with a depth and familiarity belying the shortness of our acquaintance.
We shifted, and he slid between my legs and entered me. The stretch and fullness, his strokes hitting all the right spots—brought sexual satisfaction and truth. I couldn’t fool myself any longer. We belonged together. From two planets far, far away, we should never have met. But we did. No mischief, mine nor anyone else’s, should keep us apart.
Our bodies moved together, and waves of ecstasy rolled through me. Sensation merged into a single totality. I locked my heels around his hips and surrendered to the rush of satisfaction. The orgasm came swift and powerful. I arched my neck, and Enoki buried his face against my throat, his horns pulsing in time with his galloping heart as he climaxed.
For long moments, we lay together, still joined. One by one, sensations distinguished themselves—the stickiness of perspiration, our feet cuddled together, his hair like skeins of raw silk against my cheek, a pleasurable achiness and the weight of his much heavier body pressing me into the kels. He exhaled, and then lifted himself up and disengaged, a physical and emotional withdrawal. In his sigh, I heard resignation. Acceptance of what we’d negotiated: no commitments, no strings.
He gave what I’d insisted I wanted.
When I contemplated a future without him, I saw emptiness and heartache. I’d been fooling myself I needed to leave because I couldn’t live on a cold, inhospitable planet when I’d been running away from love.
Afraid to take another chance, afraid to risk hurt, I’d thrown up huge protective barricades. After Matt had died, I’d believed I wouldn’t love again, so I set about trying to make it so, turning fears into a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’d always said I wouldn’t find love, but the truth was I’d spurned it, adopting a disguise to put off potential suitors, and ran as far as I could run.
Love had found me anyway. Hunted me down. Forced me to examine my intentions, my life, and my desires.
If I allowed myself to love Enoki, I could be hurt again. However, leaving would hurt more, and only the former offered a chance for happiness.
His guardedness broke my heart. He’d assumed he could handle this, thought he could settle for a one-night stand or two-night stand, and now realized he couldn’t.
I didn’t believe in Fates. Destiny was merely the outcome of thousands of individual choices, sometimes affected by random, chance events. But damn if it didn’t feel like something had guided me to this place, this man.
Nerves knotted my stomach. Although certain of his feelings—or as sure as one could possibly be—I had a bout of knee-knocking empathy with men who fiddled with a little velvet box.
“Will you be my mate?” I asked.
He accidentally head butted me as he sprang to a seated position. “What are you saying?”
I rubbed my forehead. “I’m not going to Earth. I want to…stay here with you—as your mate.”
“I don’t know what your Earth customs are. On Dakon the man asks the female. She can accept or not.”
I gaped at him. “Then ask me!”
Why get hung up on who proposed to whom? Wasn’t this what he’d wanted? I couldn’t have misread his feelings…could I? He’d called me his mate! We’d rubbed naked body parts. Had he been trying me out? Had I failed the sack test?
His eyes blazed. “You’re mine, Madison. Whether you agree or disagree, doesn’t change reality. But if you go back to Earth, you will take my heart with you. If you agree to become my mate, and then change your mind…it would kill me.”
I grabbed his hand, and held it to my chest. “I would never do that.” My heart hurt that I had made him feel that way, because I’d experienced the pain of abandonment. I had loved Matt to the depth of my being, and he had left me. Not his choice, but his death had nearly killed me, too. My throat thickened with tears. “When I say it, I mean it. That’s why it took me so long to reach this point.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He slid a hand around my nape. “Then, Madison…will you be my mate?”
“Yes, Enoki, I will.”
His smile started slowly then spread to a grin so wide, I feared he might split his lip again. “Obah!” he shouted.
“Obah!” I flung myself at him. My naked breasts mashed against his bare chest. Our thudding hearts synced. After so much indecision and agony, the rightness of the choice settled over me like a warm blanket—although it could have been Enoki’s body heat. Our mouths met in a searing kiss, and we tumbled onto the kels.
Chapter Eighteen
Enoki
“Hold on, tight,” I said as Madison settled on the skimmer seat.
She wrapped her arms around my middle. “How fast do you plan on going?”
“Not that fast. I wanted your hands on me.”
“Well, in that case…” She scooted closer until her thighs cradled my hips and her front pressed to my back. She squeezed my waist. “How’s that?”
The scent of another blizzard wafted on the air, and dark clouds advanced across a clear sky. Before the daystar reached its zenith, another blizzard would roll in. This one showed all indications of being epic.
“Perfect.” I grinned. The threatening storm couldn’t douse my happiness. I planned to spend days holed up in my hut, engaging in frequent mating relations with Madison. There was enough food left over from the we
lcome feast to feed us for the duration. I couldn’t imagine a more perfect situation to start our new life together.
Before we could proceed with our lives, we had to meet the SS Masquerade to inform the Earthers, Madison would be staying. While at the Meeting Place, I’d take the opportunity to make our mating official by listing it in the book of records. I’d watched the names and dates grow with every ship’s arrival but had given up hope of seeing my name among the lucky ones.
My female. Satisfaction swelled, and I sent a prayer of gratitude to the Fates for their intervention. Without their whispering guidance, Madison might have come and gone without me realizing she was my mate. I intended to repay the favor by assisting Andrea with her plan to bring more females to Dakon. I wished for all men to experience the joy I felt.
With Madison’s arms around me, I fired up the skimmer. As soon as we cleared the camp, I opened the throttle and we flew, the tracks of the skimmer barely touching the surface of the snow.
Madison squealed and hugged me tighter. I laughed, loving when a plan came together.
Over the skimmer hum, I said, “We won’t have a lot of time.” My nostrils quivered with the strong scent of snow, and the cloud cover seemed to be racing across the sky. “We’ll have just enough time for you to grab your possessions and for us to record our mating. We need to reach camp before the blizzard.”
“I’ll be quick. I’ll grab my stuff from my stateroom then message the captain.”
The ship wouldn’t have needed to come at all, except Madison required her clothing, images of her family, and a few other items. Otherwise, Andrea could have messaged the ship not to land.
She brushed her cheek against my back. “If we got stuck at the Meeting Place, it wouldn’t be so bad, would it? We could stay in one of the cabins? It would be like a do-over. It could be romantic.”
I squeezed her knee. “We could hunker down in an emergency hut, but I’d prefer to ride out the storm in our cabin in kels only we have slept in and where we have plenty of fresh food instead of year-old smoked kel.”
“That stuff we ate was a year old? Yuck!”
I laughed. “At least.”
She tapped my chest with her mittened palm. “Why don’t you drop me off at the ship landing site, go record our mating, and then come get me? That will save us a little time.”
“Good idea. Let’s do that. The kel sense the storm, too.” I pointed to a herd foraging in an open field as we flew through. Normally, kel kept close to the tree line, but the impending blizzard had drawn them to graze where the grasses were more plentiful beneath the snow pack.
I followed the natural path through the woods. Due to the leafy canopy, the snow was not as thick here. Both man and beast used the path for easier traveling.
As we neared the Meeting Place, we spotted the Terran ship arriving, a blue light in the dark-gray sky.
“Perfect timing,” Madison said.
I steered the skimmer through the open area inside the ring of huts.
Seated behind me, I couldn’t see Madison, but I felt her movement as she swiveled her head. “Looks the same as I remembered.”
“Hasn’t changed much in a few days,” I agreed. Or ever, in my recollection. The Meeting Place was the same now as it had been when I was a kit. In truth, until the females from Earth had arrived, nothing in our lives changed much at all.
“Hard to believe it’s only been few days,” she said. “It feels we’ve been together much longer.”
“That’s the way it is with Fated mates.” Already, it was getting hard to remember what my life had been like without her. The loneliness in my being had closed up and healed. The future appeared new and bright, lit with optimism and joy.
Madison didn’t believe in the Fates, but she would. Time would prove it to her.
The ship growled as it landed, the blowback whipping fallen powder and illuvian ore sand into a fury. I waited at the edge of the landing field until I could safely approach. As the air cleared, the roar abated to a hum, and then I goosed the skimmer forward.
The ship’s hatch opened and lowered.
I shifted the skimmer to idle, and Madison and I dismounted. Dark clouds glowered overhead. A chill wind stirred to tug at our hoods.
If we’d had more time, I would have liked to have seen the inside of the Terran ship. Maybe the next one. “I’ll pick you up right here. Hurry.” I brushed my lips to her mouth.
Madison flung her arms around me and turned a quick kiss into a long one. She smiled then sprinted for the ship.
I waited until she boarded then I hopped on the skimmer and sped for the hall of records. I had a female, a Fated mate. Madison’s name sang in my head. One day, we would have kits. I wished she was with me for this momentous occasion, but although she could understand and speak Dakonian by virtue of her translator, she couldn’t read it, so the scribbling in the book of records wouldn’t hold the import for her it did for me, and we did need to outrun the storm. Looking at the clouded sky and inhaling the scent, I realized I’d misjudged the timing. The blizzard would be rolling in very soon.
I dashed into the hall of the records, found the appropriate tome, and added our names and date. I permitted myself a moment of silence in thankfulness. I’d never doubt the wisdom of the Fates again.
Snowflakes tumbled from the sky as I left the hut.
A roar shattered the quiet. I whipped around to see the Terran ship rising into the sky. That hadn’t taken long. I hopped on the skimmer and raced to get Madison who’d be waiting in the snow.
I scanned the landing field as I neared, but I couldn’t see her. Where was she? She had to be here. I squinted through snow falling from the sky and spiraling from the ground, churned by the ship’s exhaust. I followed my skimmer track to the place where I’d dropped her off.
She wasn’t here. She was gone.
No. No. She wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t leave. She promised. I leaped off the skimmer. I tore around the landing field. Had she fallen? “Madison? Madison!”
The ship ascended higher and higher into the sky.
“Madison! Madison!”
The ship disappeared into the heavy cloud cover.
Chapter Nineteen
Madison
I scurried along the passage, hoping I wouldn’t encounter a crew member. The computer flew the ship, but the captain had had to override the program to come get me, and he would be miffed when he learned I wasn’t staying. For sure, the exchange program director would be pissed when she learned I’d walked off the job without notice.
I had a strong hunch the captain or his first officer might try to prevent me from leaving. They probably had some sort of rule prohibiting unscheduled, unauthorized departures. Why else would they have bothered to retrieve me at all? I had no illusions I was indispensable. The SS Masquerade had been only a few days into a three-month journey, so it hadn’t had to backtrack much, but time equated to money. With the weather’s unpredictability, an hour layover could turn into a week.
When the captain discovered I was gone again, he wouldn’t be happy.
So, best to dodge the crew.
If I hadn’t needed my stuff, I wouldn’t have risked it at all, but I had a few items I couldn’t bear to part with. Clothing didn’t matter. Most of it wasn’t warm enough for Dakon, and it was male attire anyway. Although pants were pants and shirts were shirts, I’d be glad to say goodbye to the disguise. I wanted to be a girl again.
Hopefully one who didn’t sweat so much. I shoved off my hood and undid the toggles of my kel. After the cold of Dakon, the ship felt too hot to me.
I punched my ID code into the pad outside my stateroom and entered.
Since I might never see my parents or my brother again, I had to have my photos and vids and also the pendant from Matt. I’d buried our rings with him, but I still had the necklace, which had been his wedding gift to me.
I loved Enoki; he was my present and my future
, but I couldn’t forget Matt and how much he’d once meant to me. He’d taught me how to love, and the necklace symbolized what we’d had, who I’d been, and what I’d become because of him. I’d never wear the pendant again, but I would treasure the memories of the man it represented.
I shuddered at how close I’d come to walking away from a second chance at love. So accustomed to grief, I hadn’t realized when it had ended. Like a persistent throbbing headache that somehow slips away without you noticing it, the pain had healed, leaving my heart ready to receive Enoki. Or perhaps my encounters with Enoki had helped me to heal. On previous trips to Dakon, seeing him had been something to look forward to.
Thank the universe or the Fates or a five-star roll in the kels, I’d awakened in time.
Time to get my stuff and vamoose. A new life and love awaited.
I grabbed a duffel from my locker, scooped in the case of photo chips and vids, the image viewer, and my jewelry box containing the pendant. The items didn’t occupy a lot of room in the bag, so after a quick perusal of my clothing, I shoved in my heaviest socks, some underwear—Dakonians might prefer to go commando, but I wasn’t there yet—and a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt with my brother’s favorite sport team logo. I tossed in a brush, comb, hand mirror, and an unused makeup kit.
Slinging the bag over my shoulder, I exited the stateroom.
The ship hummed, the rumble growing louder and louder, vibrating the floor.
I froze. That couldn’t be what it sounded like…
The ship couldn’t be leaving yet. It couldn’t.
I bolted for the disembarkation corridor.
The gangway had been retracted, the hatch sealed.
Dakon’s gravity dragged at me as the ship lifted off.
“No! No!” I beat my fists on the hatch. “No! We can’t leave! We can’t leave!” I ran to a comm unit and hailed the bridge.
“First Officer Malloy,” came the terse reply.
