He couldn’t believe his eyes. A female... a female crouched before him. And it wasn’t just any female valos, from any number of the races that had females, but an unmarked one, a new one. He felt her rapid pulse under his fingertips. It lulled him, quickening his blood.
Slowly, as he took in her strange appearance, her bright orange skin and mottled black hair, he adjusted his own now-alive pulse and his breaths to match hers.
Quist looked back down at the glittering sunburst stone clutched in her hand. It was a fabled heartstone; he knew it, for Lusheenn had roared with laughter as he told his sons about the heart he had kept from them. A heart they would have to earn through loyalty and servitude.
He took a deep, lingering breath, filling his senses with the strange valos girl, and was unable to place her smell to anything he had ever encountered before. It was exotic and delicious. It took him by surprise. He had been almost everywhere in the world, everywhere at least where natural light traveled. But her smell he couldn’t place: it was otherworldly, new, and ethereal.
Maybe Lusheenn came back and created a counterpart to his species, a tantalizing companion to the male valos of light? Quist could almost forgive his Creator if this were true. Almost. He pulled the unusual girl closer to him, needing to be nearer. She was so small, so fragile, and he was afraid that his war-forged wings and his skills wouldn’t be enough to protect her.
“By light, you smell delectable.” His nose hovered above her head, close enough to taunt him to bury it in her hair but far enough to keep her face in full view.
He studied her further, his eyes trailing over her damp black hair and pronounced pale skin that abruptly shifted into a garish orange color at her neck. She was not like him or his brothers but she held Lusheenn’s fabled heart in her hand.
Quist knew it to be so. He could feel it in the empty hole in his chest. The blissful pounding of each beat that was the music to life. But he felt something more: he felt a need. A deep-seated one that he had only heard rumor of before. A need to be within something. He bore his focus down on the female before him.
To be inside of her.
The thought made his body harden and his wings turn to erected stone. The sexual appendage between his legs moved. Upward. It made him growl as a violent demand to strike this girl with it overcame him. He pushed his hips forward, following the spear between his legs that now pointed straight at her.It points me where it needs to be.
He hadn’t felt the like since Lusheenn walked the world. But even then, it was different than what he felt now.
Quist reached forward and touched a wayward strand of her silky hair that had fallen forward. Their breaths mingled as he rubbed its fine threads between the pads of his fingers.
The deepest shadows and darkest waters could only come close to its color. It was utterly strange against his lustrous skin.Lusheenn would never create a female so unlike himself.He released her hair and pulled away. The female followed him, magnetized, until he made it clear with steering her away from him that he didn’t want to be close to her.
But every fabricated speck of his being fought him. Moving even an inch from her presence, from the stone she held, hurt like a spear to his empty chest.
Or like one of his brothers succumbing to sleep. The image of Annahs flittered over his vision, his younger brother, and the first time he took flight.
That would never happen again.
Quist dropped her wrist and shifted further away, although he kept his wings enclosed around them both.If the girl is a gift to appease me, Lusheenn, it won’t work. I’ll take her regardless for my own but will continue to hate you until my final crumble into the dust.
“What’s wrong?”
He narrowed his gaze back at her, not understanding the gibberish that came out of her mouth. The more he stayed in her presence, the more he realized how little they resembled.
Why?
“If you’re not from Lusheenn, then who are you?” The question was more for himself than her. He itched to capture her hair again but chose to keep still and watch as she brought the heart to her chest. His sex hardened at the gesture until it tented the loose material of his pants.
She didn’t immediately answer; her eyes were glazed. They had done that several times now and he didn’t know why. He didn’t like that her eyes saw something he couldn’t see. He wanted the strange female to only see him.
When her eyes cleared and came back into focus, it took all his power to not take her in his arms and press her slight body against his. Her lips pursed and he zeroed in on them and barely heard her next words...
“My name’s Yahiro.” She tapped her chest, between her breasts. “Ya-here-ro,” it came out slower this time, softer.
“Yahero,” he copied her. The female nodded excitedly.
“Yes! Yes, that’s my name!”
His eyes didn’t leave her mouth. “Yahero-Yesyesthasmanme.”What a strange language she speaks.The glee on her face morphed and he didn’t like it.Why would you create a female, Lusheenn, who can’t speak my language!?
“Yahiro,” she responded again, curtly.
“Yahero.”
“Close enough.”
