Sure enough, his mouth and chin still glisten, his lips are all puffy and swollen. I’m reminded that the guy is like that because he’d helped me outall night long, and my stance softens…a little. “Hey,” I huff, trying to get his focus since he’s still on high alert, glowering at the other guys over my head. “Aloryk,” I demand.
His eyes briefly flick down to mine before they bounce back up to the others. But, just like he’s doing a double-take, his gaze drops to me again, taking in the annoyed look I must wear with a confused one of his own.
“Look, I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, I really do,” I tell him, reaching forward and gently lowering the hand holding the knife with an urging touch to his forearm. “But if you’re going to keep using terms like‘female seed’so casually andpubliclylike that, then you and I are going to have issues.” He continues to stare down at me, his skin-stars flaring up in twinkling patterns at his temples as his tail swishes vigorously behind him. “Besides, aren’t these guys your friends?”
Aloryk sucks in a breath to say something, but someone behind me is faster.
“Yes, brother. We are here to aid you and your mate, are we not?”
I turn and see it was the nearest one who had spoken. The one Aloryk had called ‘High Spear Rynn’. I’m pretty sure this Rynn guy is their leader - the one Tryk had told me about, the one who had displayed that ‘heart-star’ thing first. He grins at us both and stands there with his arms over his chest, his decorated spear shoved butt-first into the ground and standing to attention beside him. His wings are huge and healthy-looking, which only serves to make me feel even more urgency to get Aloryk back to his home so someone can help him with his own.
“I… ah…” Aloryk swallows thickly before sighing. Deliberately, he re-sheaths his dagger at his thigh. “Forgive me, High Spear, I am weary and in need of rest.”
With that, I move to stand beside him, reaching to take his hand. This big lug is exhausted, wounded, and in dire need of medical attention. His hand squeezes mine and he leans down to murmur, “you will come tomeshould the effects of the pollen resurface.”
I nod swiftly and start to walk forward toward our rescuers. Aloryk does not move. Instead, he stands still like a rock, his grip on my hand tightening, almost jerking me back to his side. “I mean it, Polly,” he rasps. “They all want what is mine. And if any of my brothers so much as offers his tongue to you, he will not possess that tongue for much longer. Do you understand me?Your cunt is mine to tend to.”
I gape up at him, words caught at the back of my throat. What those words actually are, I don’t know, but they’re definitely there, and they’re probably just as shocked as I am. My mouth starts with the beginning of one, but cuts off halfway through to flounder like a fish out of water before trying for a different word with the very same outcome. What on Earth am I meant to say to that?
He’s looking at me with so much seriousness for someone who just saidthose wordsa few seconds ago. And all I can do isstare back in shock. Shock and… is that the pollen again? No, I don’t think so. I stare at his swollen lips with his growled words,‘your cunt is mine to tend to’echoing in my brain. Maybe I’m a little exhausted too? Because I’m thinking I’d really love to betended toright now.
Even after a whole night of being eaten out.
I swallow, my eyes dancing between Aloryk’s purple ones. “But you don’t have your heart stars,” is all that comes out of my mouth. The words sound hoarse and weak and…dumb as shit. But it’s true. Tryk explained that these guys get all twinkly in the chest when they meet ‘the one’ and seeing their leader wear his proudly only serves to bring that to the forefront of my mind.
Aloryk straightens and I feel a zing of guilt for bringing them up. The words hadn’t come from wanting to upset or challenge the big guy, more that I felt the need to remind myself. When I was a kid, I’d thought my dad was the best guy in the whole wide world, and he used to proclaim his love for my mom all the time.
It hadn’t stopped him from having a whole other family in secret on the other side of the state though.
I glance at the leader alien, Rynn. His heart-stars don’t look like a wedding band you can take off for the weekend. When I look back to Aloryk by my side, his jaw is set like granite again and all he says is “come, Polly,” as he pulls me forward to meet his ‘brothers’.
Chapter 16 - Polly
If looks could kill, almost all of our rescuers would be six feet under by now.
All because someone needed to carry me as we flew back to the safety of their village. Aloryk had not liked that one bit. But he was out of action and being carried on a woven-leaf stretcher-type contraption, so how else he thought I was going to be rescued, I don’t know. In the end, he’d demanded his ‘High Spear’, carry me, much to Rynn’s amusement.
While being carried through the air by a 7ft wall of muscle that I’d only just met a few moments ago, I tried desperately not to look at Rynn, particularly that buzzing, twirling excitable cluster of skin-stars decorating his chest. He wears it so damn proudly, too.
After what must be almost a day’s worth of flying over mile upon mile of thick vegetation below us. We finally land in a small clearing at the base of a large mountain. The whole ordeal was awkward as hell, but at least I now know the effects of that stupid horny pollen is behind me. Aloryk had made both me and Rynn promise that if that hadn’t been the case and my ‘needs’ started to flare up again, that the whole rescue party should land so that he could…tend to me.
Yeah, that wasn’t embarrassing at all.
When we land, the gusts of air from Rynn’s giant, inky wings sprays grit from the dry, red earth scattering and plumes of dust billowing.
“Rynn!” a brunette woman squeals, emerging from between stone huts topped with woven leaves.
I’m quickly put on my feet, just in time for Rynn to catch the woman with an amused ‘umf’ sound, as she launches into him with open arms. I watch as he lifts her up effortlessly, the woman linking her arms around his neck as he buries his grin into hers. He mumbles something into her collarbones that makes her chuckle before pulling away and declaring, “I have brought you a new friend, my love.”
“Oh my God, yes! Sorry!” The woman slides down Rynn’s body, pressing a peck of a kiss to his heart-stars as she goes. Turning to me, she gives me the biggest grin, happy cheeks tinged with bright pink. “I’m Serena,” she says, her arms already opening again, ready to welcome me to her world. “Are you a hugger?”
* * *
The rest of the rescue party had landed on the south side of the village. Apparently, thebig boss manhad wanted to land close to his own particular hut in the hopes of seeing Serena sooner, and because he is said ‘big boss man’, he can do exactly what he wants.
It didn’t take long for others to come find us, though. Two human women appeared to welcome me, but mainly lots and lots of the huge, half-naked, muscley, winged guys. Seriously, they’re all so freaking tall, I don’t know how these women aren’t getting neck aches from just talking to these dudes.
I’m surrounded by these skyscraper aliens, all staring so intently at me and firing questions one after the other when a commotion seems to be headed my way.
