A force had a hold of me now—one I had never felt before. Instincts more powerful than those of the hunt—or maybe the same, just a different facet. Charging into a room full of hostiles was stupid; it was the kind of impulsive act I would endlessly berate a young hunter for. This time, I had done it before I could even blink twice. I was lucky my appearance caused complete and utter chaos, and I gladly took advantage of that, dodging fists and crude spears wielded with little precision but a lot of force. My only goal was to get to the human, then get her out of there. There was no plan beyond that, but, as it turned out, I didn’t need much planning.
After I’d dealt with the first few opponents in a swift and just manner, she was thrown right into my arms by the red-and-black hunter. I had my suspicions about that, but no time to think it through. What happened then was so unexpected that I briefly froze. I just stood there, holding the small female while I stared, grappling with what my eye wastelling me—with what I had thought could never be true. It was just not in the stars for a male like me. Except, now, my sight was telling me that it was.
It was the shouted words of the red-and-black hunter that jarred me from my dangerous moment of inaction. “Go! Get out of here!” The words were clear in my mind, as if spoken in my own tongue—though they couldn’t have been. I responded to that command by hauling the female more tightly into my arms, where she was safe. Then I put on a burst of speed and bowled over several sky creatures on my way out of the hold.
They gave chase, but in the dark, and aided by the odd quirk of my scales, they could not see me well enough to aim their spears. Some clattered nearby, but most went wide by far. Then I hurled myself into the small room with the hatch in the floor, my tail adept at yanking open the wheel and gears that controlled it. Dropping down through the hole with my precious burden in my arms, I knew I had another advantage. Below the belly of the ship, I could move fast, but those clumsy two-legs had to crawl awkwardly; they would never catch up to us.
I raced away, body hunched low to the ground, tail moving fast to propel me forward. Us. The female was quiet, her hands digging into my fur tunic, her face pressed against my throat. Her odd silver robes flapped and fluttered around her, tangling with her strange, thin legs and impractical feet.
At the edge of the ship, I halted once to carefully check that no danger awaited us beyond. Then I retraced the way I’d come, following the footsteps the red-and-black hunter had made in the snow. I made no effort yet to obscure my tracks, keeping low to the snow to provide a much harder target should they get a chance to fire arrows or more spears at us. Those never came. In fact, I saw no sign of pursuit at all when I glanced over my shoulder.
At the edge of the woods, I swung my body behind a tree, pressed my back to it, and let my scales do the rest. Myfemale was trembling in my arms, and her odd coverings had gotten layered with snow, clinging to them in a fine powder. She tilted back her head, gazing at me with eyes a bright shade of blue—so very right for a Thunder Rock female. Except she wasn’t. She wasn’t Thunder Rock; she wasn’t even Naga.
My eye dropped from her gaze, gliding along the curve of her cheek, the spotted bridge of her nose, and her soft-looking mouth. Her lips were dark purple, like she might be from Copper Tooth. It stirred something inside me. She was that same blend of purple and blue that shouldn’t be, yet was… She was just like me.
Then my gaze lowered even further, to the edge of my tunic where light spilled out of the fur. It was a bright, golden hue, and even in the snow-blinding brightness of full day, it shone brightly—too brightly, far brighter than any sigils I’d ever seen. They glowed like the Serant sun, only gold, not purple. Yet another color my cursed body was doing wrong.
“No,” I snapped at her. “You arenotmy mate. My mate is dead…” But she wasn’t. Kusha was gone, but Kusha had never truly been mine, had she? And this female—human as she was—made sigils on my body glow that I hadn’t even known I had. My words were a lie, and I’d always worked hard to be truthful, no matter what. Truthful in everything but my mating, because that was such a tremendous lie I didn’t know how else to live with it.
A human mate was the biggest complication—the very last thing I could use right now. She would never be welcome at Thunder Rock; the Queen would see her dead in a heartbeat. My younglings might be fascinated by humans, but I doubted they wanted one as their new mother, either. More importantly, taking a human mate would mean they had to leave the only home they’d ever known. I could not do that to them, not after all the upheaval their short lives had already seen.
She might have been intended to be my mate, but she never would be. I couldn’t let my own selfish desire influence the future, and what was right for my young. And itwasvery right for them to grow up at home, with their peers. I had to do everything for them; they came first.
Then her eyes grew wide, her lips trembling, and something shot through me that was wild and irresponsible. For one blinding moment, I forgot all about my young and the future, about doing the right thing. I very much wanted to do the wrong thing instead. My mouth was on hers before I could stop myself, claiming her lips the way I’d seen my outcast brethren do to their human mates. Hunters had speculated about that late at night as the campfires died, but nothing they’d theorized compared to what it was like to taste your female that way.
She gasped, and I slipped my tongue into the wet cavern of her mouth. It curled there, around hers, flooding my senses with her sweetness, her innocence. She was so soft, so small, and so very weak compared to me. This was not something any Naga female would ever allow. It was too close, too intimate, too much like a claim. A Naga female would never let her male have all the power, and this was definitely power. I controlled her, and yet…
Then my human shocked me by reeling back, her hand coming up to slap me across the face. It was only a soft sting, barely felt, but I blinked in confusion at her furious, mutinous expression. She reminded me of Nisha when she wasn’t getting her way, but though small, there was nothing childish about this woman. Blue eyes sparkled with icy reprimand; her mouth was a thin line, but, oddly enough, no longer purple. Her breathing matched mine, too fast, racing like she had been deprived. I winced. Had I done that? Did I do the mouth-mating wrong and take her air? Was that why she was mad?
“I will try again,” I told her recklessly, already dipping my head to hers, though the rational parts of my brain shoutedat me not to. This was a mistake, but she was simply irresistible. Those eyes, her taste, they made me forget all about the responsible, rule-abiding male I was. I didn’t even care, and that was dangerous.
***
Jolene
My hand stung from slapping him; the scales that covered his face made him a hard target. I was still reeling, confused, turned on, and a little scared. It wasn’t every day that a guy angrily told me I was not his “mate” before kissing the living daylights out of me—all while we’d never been introduced and weren’t even the same species. I was still shaking from the adrenaline of that confrontation, and from the cold, too. If I had thought it was cold inside the ship, that had seemed balmy compared to outside.
Not that I had much chance to appreciate the change of venue or the shift in my circumstances. No, my savage native had decided, apparently, that I was the perfect target to practice his kissing on. My body was not entirely opposed to the idea, either. His scent was like catnip, and something else had been added to the blend now. Something salty and sweet, like caramel popcorn. It was delicious and made my mouth water; it was so tempting, I almost wanted to reach out for more.
When he told me he’d try again, I hissed, shocked by how badly I wanted that—when I did not even know him. He jerked back, his one amethyst-colored eye growing wide in surprise. He didn’t think I’d put up a fight? Well, he was dead wrong, even if he had my libido revving like never before. I didn’t kiss on the first date, damn it, and this didn’t even remotely count.
He had fangs, and he bared them, hissing back at me in a much more impressive manner. He was all blue-purple scaleswith a matte finish, thick black hair, and sharp ivory horns, a pair of them that jutted from his chin. He also had an eyepatch, the right eye covered by a scrap of deep purple leather held in place by a leather strap. Very rakish, very much like an alien, feral pirate. “No,” I told the pirate alien, “I’m not your mate, remember?”
His eyebrows went up—sharp and nubbed. They were a very interesting texture that made me want to test if they were rough or soft. I tightened my fists, then discovered, much to my mortification, that they were still clinging to his fur jacket. I started to let go, but it wasn’t like I could go far—he still held me in his arms, my feet dangling in the freezing breeze. Part of his bizarrely long body was also pressed against my back, as if he’d raised a coil of his tail to hold me to him. I was sort of not quite sitting on it.
“No,” he snapped at me, but confusion danced in the dark purple of his one visible eye. Something shifted in his expression, shutting away the heat of passion and making room for sharp intellect. “Who are you, human?” he demanded, his tone sharp enough to cut. His tongue flicked out from between his soft lips, which I had felt personally. It was split at the tip, just like a snake’s. He’d stuck that in my mouth, and I had liked it a hell of a lot. It was far too easy to fantasize about what that would feel like if he licked me in other places. My thighs pressed together, and I squirmed in his grip.
“I’m Jolene,” I said, to cover the sharp arousal that rushed through my veins. So he was hot and sexy—and far too bossy—but that didn’t mean I needed to let that get to me. I was definitely not offended by being told I wasn’t his mate. I knew that mates, or husbands—even boyfriends—weren’t my thing. My own bossiness always interfered. I was too headstrong, had too much sass, and never enough time.
“Jolene,” he mouthed to me, not quite vocalizing my name but shaping it with his sexy lips. I saw a hint of fang again, and that made my belly twist with another sharp lanceof arousal, one that bordered on pleasure. Geez, this guy was potent. I hoped he didn’t know that, but maybe he had a whole harem of ladies somewhere. What the hell did I know about these natives?
He opened his mouth again to speak, but a gust of wind blew straight through the thermal blankets poorly wrapped around me. It cut through my stasis clothes and made me all too aware of how dangerously close I was getting to hypothermia and frostbite. Even wrapped in his arms, pressed up against his warm, muscular body, I was still too cold. Holding up a finger was enough to make him pause. “I’m going to die from exposure if I don’t get warmed up soon, just so you know. So if some part of you wants to keep this “not-mate” alive, you’d better think of something quick.”
I wasn’t sure why I brought that up again. I’d used it to tell him to stop kissing me, but now I used it as a barb. It was obvious it struck home, he winced, and his expression grew flinty. It was ballsy to demand he save me, but the truth was that there was nothing I could do on my own out here. I didn’t have survival skills like Jasmine; I had no clue how to save myself out here. It was all too obvious that Thor had been right, staying in stasis had been my only chance at survival. I’d gambled and lost, waking myself too early to have a true chance at escape.
His eye narrowed suspiciously, his mouth growing tight, but then his gaze dropped from my face to take in the rest of me—not with any haze of desire, but with a calculating expression. Either this was when he’d drop me and leave me to freeze to death, or he’d do something about it. I was hoping for the latter, but I wasn’t holding my breath. My savage pirate seemed to keep his cards—and his feelings—close to his vest.
“You do seem inadequately dressed for a human in these temperatures. Don’t worry, spring is coming.” As if I could wait around for spring to thaw me, I’d be a human-shaped popsicle by then. He didn’t make me point that out, though,but shifted me in his grip with warm, gentle hands. His tail got very handy then, coiling around me to shelter me from the wind while he took a big pack off his back to rummage around in.
