Chapter 6
Felicia
I woke because I was too warm. My skin was sticky with sweat, my hair plastered to the back of my neck and my forehead. My body was limp and tired, cushioned by warmth in the most comfortable way. I was also surrounded by an enticing scent: a combination of sweet and savory that made my mouth water, and heat that had nothing to do with my body’s temperature sizzling through my veins.
It took me a very long time to make my brain work. First, because I was too warm, and second, because I was turned on and my libido was very much clouding my thoughts. I ached. I wanted sex. I wanted… him. He was an image in my mind: alien, foreign, bizarre, and beautiful. But he wasn’t just a dream; he was real, and he was the reason I was overheating.
Levant had crawled under the furs with me, and he’d curled his strange, long tail around my legs, and his arms around my torso. I was lying with my cheek on his chest, and the slow rise and fall of his breathing lifted me just slightly each time he inhaled. Soft hair brushed against my forehead, a lock of silky black hair with several bright strands of green. I was fascinated by those strands for several long moments, because that green looked so real I thought perhaps it was natural. It wasn’t vanity, that streak; that was just how he was built.
“Ah, mate, you’re awake,” he rumbled, and the slashes of warm light that swirled over his front seemed to glow brighter. They were so savage-looking, and so beautiful at the same time. Hisarms grew a little more snug around me, then shifted. I saw the ivory tip of the horn jutting from his chin as he shifted. Tilting back my head, our eyes met, and his were a beautiful shimmering gold with a hint of alarm. “Why are you wet?” he asked, and it wasn’t in the are-you-wet-for-me, baby kind of way. No, he was alarmed by my sweat, and now I was embarrassed.
“I’m too warm,” I said, but I couldn’t make myself move. I wanted to stay in his coils, his arms. It was simply too comfortable, even if I was warm. A full-body hug. At least Levant was a man of action, and he seemed to care a very great deal about my comfort. The furs were quickly shoved off us with a hand, but then he returned his arm around me. He liked this cuddling a bit too much to give it up, too. More heat sizzled through my belly, and I struggled to think through the mounting desire to find out what he tasted like.
“Are you ready to mate now, sweet mate?” Levant asked, and his tongue flicked out. It was long, exactly like that of a snake, split at the tip. As he drew it back between his lips, I knew he was using taste to enhance scent. My body began to tremble, and now, instead of sweating, goosebumps broke out.
Where he pressed against my belly, I felt something shift, and then a hot, firm press ofsomething. His cock. It had to be his cock, and I should recoil and move away, but I still couldn’t bring myself to move. He was pressing his alien cock, thick and erect, against my belly. My flight suit was thick, insulated, and still I could feel it—not the details, but definitely the thick, shockingly long length of him.
Through the haze of lust, his words penetrated me the way I was already picturing his cock penetrating me. He had one; I had that answer now, and it wasn’t helping. “Mating? What do you mean?” I asked, and it sounded almost like a moan. Had I just wriggled against his rigid length? I had to fight the impulse to throw my leg over his hip. Why had I put this damn flight suit back on again? Now I couldn’t feel nearly enough of his sexy body against mine.
He’d used that word before. He’d called me sweet mate, and now it was beginning to sink in that perhaps that wasn’t just some strange custom I didn’t know about. This was serious. It sounded serious, and if I could just get my brain to work, maybe I could figure it out. Lying in his arms like this, practically splayed on top of his erect cock, it wasn’t helping one bit. I just wanted to shed my clothes and test myself on his huge length. It was crazy, the way I desired him, and it was definitely his scent that was driving me over the edge.
“That’s what you are, Felicia. My fated mate, my one and only, the female created just for me,” Levant growled. “I might be exiled, but I found you anyway. Fate. The universe’s grand design, pure and simple.” His cock pulsed against me; I had to be imagining it, but for a moment it almost felt like he had two of them. Half my brain was shouting, yes! The other half finally got shocked into a semblance of rationality.
“You think we are fated mates?” I panted, and I began pulling back. It was with regret; my core pulsed and ached, squeezing tightly as if it wanted his cock to clasp. I liked sex. It was fun, a good way to relax and get rid of anxious energy. Never, in my entire life, had I desired a man as much as I wanted Levant. Ithad to be the weird alien pheromones he was leaking all over me. “That sort of thing doesn’t exist!”
Levant’s golden eyes seemed to glow even brighter from a distance, but he was letting me retreat. His tail unwound from around my legs, and his arms opened to let me go. I really shouldn’t, but before I could stop myself, I dropped my chin to my chest and looked. Ihadto know what his cock looked like. My mouth opened in a shocked gasp, and pleasure shivered through me at the sight. Yup, definitely huge. Thick, black, as long as my forearm, and covered in a fine dappling of black scales flecked with gold and green, just like the rest of him. He didn’t have two, no, the thick head split apart and writhed in the air like two thick fingers. Bifurcated like his damn tongue. I was salivating, my panties utterly soaked, and still I made myself withdraw further.
“It does,” he said calmly, and he lowered his hand to fist his cock. I thought he was about to jerk off right in front of me, like this was some kind of bizarre courting ritual. Believe it or not, I was actually disappointed when he didn’t do that, but began pushing his massive erection into a slit along his front—a pouch his cock could extrude from. He was putting it back in, hiding that beautiful length from my eyes.
“You are my mate, Felicia. We must mate to finalize our bond, but we can wait until you are ready. I would do anything for you.” Levant said those powerful, possessive, mind-boggling words in a voice like velvet, uttering them like they were a promise for the future, an inevitability I shouldn’t even want to fight. My whole body was on fire for him, and my mouth was ready to go, “Yes, let’s do it!” I held those words back by a hair’s breadth because I had too many questions. Too many problems,and a past that might have been obliterated with a few words not that long ago.
The sound of an alarm blaring through the tent was both a curse and a blessing. Saved by the bell? Was that a thing on an alien world, too? It felt a little like that, even though I wanted to crawl back into Levant’s arms and pretend there was only passion and nothing else.
Levant rose from the furs with a furious hiss, and then he was across the tent, hovering by a bank of computer screens. His clawed hands rushed over keys and buttons with utter confidence. I scrambled upright and fanned my face in an attempt to cool down. He was so naked, with just some leather straps for emphasis around his narrow hips and wrists. How was I supposed to think?
“What’s happening?” I asked, trying to make my brain focus on anything other than how sexy he was. Those alarms sounded serious, and the longer they went off, the more I began to worry. He was still touching me, because I could understand his answer better when I climbed from the furs to come stand next to him. A coil of his tail wrapped very loosely around my ankle.
“A sensor was tripped. It happens all the time and could just be snow,” he said, but there was a tightness to his tone that told me he didn’t think it was something that simple. He sounded worried as he tapped something else on a screen, wavy readings I could not decipher but that were probably script. “Another is picking it up now too, however, so I think this must be the Burrowing Revenant again. There’s an energy signature, faint but there. That might be your ship. Do you recognize it?” I didnot, but that was because I couldn’t read a single thing on the screens. I helplessly shook my head.
“What is a Burrowing Revenant?” I asked. That sounded bad. Revenant made me think of ghosts and undead creatures that wanted to eat your brains. I didn’t think that was what he meant. Burrowing wasn’t something I associated with loads of ice, either, but my mind instantly flashed to images of that rounded, huge tunnel through the ice beside my ship. I’d been a bit out of it—exhausted, confused—but I still remembered traveling through it for some time before we climbed out of a massive hole into a blizzard.
Leaning in beside him meant getting close, and my whole body trembled when I inhaled that same savory-sweet scent. I wracked my brain trying to figure out what it reminded me of, but all it did was make my mouth water. He looked way too competent with his hands on all those controls, too. The whole bank of computers reminded me a bit too much of the interior of theFuture’scockpit to fully get my libido revving, but it was a close call.
“It’s… well, you’d better have a look. It’s hard to explain,” Levant said, and he pulled up a very advanced camera feed on the screen. Despite the absolutely icy temperatures outside, it worked just fine, and contrary to what he’d implied, it was not buried beneath snow. I wasn’t sure what I should be looking for in the darkness outside, during what appeared to be a raging blizzard. Levant was peering at the images with the same focus I had, a frown creasing the strange, nubbed and spiked ridges of his brow. His golden eyes hunted for something in that blizzard, and he expected that seeing it would explain everything.
Staying on task suddenly wasn’t hard at all. My brain switched into a survival mode I was very familiar with—the kind of high-speed thinking that made me so suited to being a test pilot. It wasn’t a love of flying or a desire for adventure, though I had those too. It was my brain needing to run under high pressure for me to feel alive. This situation fit the bill, and I felt like a junkie getting a hit: adrenaline soaring, pulse racing, my mind spinning. I felt like I was about to be confronted with a monster, a beast—something huge to battle—but there was nothing there.
“I don’t see it,” Levant said. “Which means the sensors are malfunctioning again, damn it. I have to go outside to fix them.” He rose higher on his tail and swung away from the desk with the computers to head straight for the tent flaps. There, on a rack, furs were hanging, and they did not appear entirely dry yet from a previous trip. He began strapping himself into them anyway, and then he hissed when he grabbed for a pile low to the ground and it turned out to be Auby.
“Pardon me,” the cute cow robot said, and he flicked his long ears back and fluttered his black lashes over his huge, lavender eyes. “My sensors indicate a spiking energy signature as well. I do not think yours are malfunctioning.” Levant’s eyes flicked from Auby to me, and his mouth grew tight. Then he cocked his head, and his green-and-black hair slid over his shoulder, now covered by a long-sleeved fur tunic.
“I see, then it must be Felicia’s ship,” he said, and my heart thumped even louder in my chest. That was it. If this was my ship powering up somehow, I needed to be the one to do the inspecting. I shrugged my foot free from the loop of Levant’s tail and then headed for the rack to locate the tunic I’d worn beforeto pull on over my flight suit. I’d need extra layers to stay warm in the subzero temperatures outside.
Levant assisted, but it was a little clumsy as he pulled a tunic over my head and started lacing a hood around my ears. My body was jittery for all kinds of reasons, but mostly it reminded me of pre-flight nerves. “Auby, can you safely go outside? Do you have sensors that can lead us in the right direction?” I asked as I brushed Levant’s hand from my face and began searching for my socks and boots. To my dismay, the laces on my shoes had all been cut; what remained of them was a wet, soggy mess of knots.
“Affirmative,” Auby chirped cheerfully. I hadn’t even realized he was speaking the same language as Levant now, though it was still perfectly understandable to my brain. Apparently, Levant’s ability to facilitate our communication extended to others when we touched, and Levant hadn’t stopped touching me once. Even when I shook him off, he just found another spot to hold on with his tail or a hand.
Right now, my handsome Exile was curled low at my feet, not kneeling because he didn’thaveknees, but close. His hands moved quickly as he slashed away the remains of my shoelaces and redid my shoes with lavender leather strips from one of his supply crates. It barely took a moment. I was impressed he knew how, when he didn’t have feet and thus probably had never even seen shoes before.
