Page 19

Zoriss

I don’t know why I allowed Laang and Pfall to talk me into coming to the mixer.

I guess I wanted to experience being in a room full of females at least once in my life.

Having only been around my mother, my two aunts, and otherwise all males, it’s interesting to feel an actual difference in the energy in the room.

They’ve tried to make it festive; it’s draped with ribbons and bows and there is food everywhere. But it’s not the decorations that are the most prominent feature of the room, it’s the smell of female arousal that assaults the nose from every corner.

Then there are the females themselves. There are redhairs and brownhairs and goldenhairs.

There are curlyhairs and straighthairs and shorthairs and longhairs.

There are tall ones and short ones. Some females are modestly dressed, some have breasts falling out of their tops.

They’re getting the most attention, although I’m not sure how many of those will get serious mating proposals.

Now that I’m used to human features, I don’t find these females bland or unattractive as I initially did with Lumina. Not one of them, however, is nearly as beautiful as my Lumina.

My Lumina. I worry about how she’s doing. The female in charge of outgoing comms said she was given strict orders not to allow me to contact her. It doesn’t bother me too badly. As soon as everyone goes to sleep tonight, I’ll sneak out of the barracks, climb the wall, and head north to find her.

At one point in her anxious babblings, she mentioned her home city. I’ll make my way there and find her.

A few of the women have asked me to dance.

I guess I should take it as a compliment when a human approaches me, eyes luminous and full of interest, and hands me the stiff slip of paper with her comms information and her first name on it in English and all three alien languages of the males on the planet.

It is the way the facility conducts the dance so that couples can meet and begin the process they call ‘dating’.

Although I wonder what it would feel like to dance with a female, I have no desire to do it with anyone but Lumina.

I’m holding my hands behind my back in the ‘at ease’ position we use in the military. I hadn’t even noticed a female approach me until I feel one pass a stiff piece of paper into my palm. I turn to politely tell her no when I’m struck speechless.

This female looks exactly like my Lumina. She acts shy, just like the other females did when they approached me. Perhaps human genetics differ from Draalians’. Could two females look exactly alike?

“Care to dance, Draalian?”

And could they sound exactly alike? My heart expands in my chest. This isn’t Lumina’s double. This beautiful female is Lumina.

“Lumina?” I ball my fists, accidentally crunching the slip of paper in my effort not to pull her into my arms and kiss her with the force of the Miriain meteor shower.

“Call me Taylor,” Lumina’s mouth tells me, but her eyes are roaming over me as if she wants to tear my clothes off and continue where we left off on the floor of the cave back in the canyon.

“Pleased to meet you, Taylor,” I say as I drag her against me and move across the floor.

“I saw you from across the room and just knew you were the male I wanted to dance with all night long,” she says.

Most of my brain believes this is the female I just spent the last week with, but part of me still wonders if she has a double.

How did Lumina find me? And how did she sneak in?

This place is guarded as well as the presidential palace back on Draal.

And she understands what I’m saying. Did she get a new translator?

“Ever heard of a place called the River of No Return?” I ask, trying to be sly.

“Heard of it? I met the most shamispah Draalian on Earth there.” Her eyes are twinkling.

I dance us to a dark corner in the back, trying to hide the smile on my face. This removes all doubt of who, exactly, is in my arms.

I know we’re not invisible back here, but we’re partially hidden, and we’re not the only couple barely dancing as we hold each other in the shadows.

“In a moment, I’m going to ask you about your concussion and how you managed to not only find me, but sneak your way into this dance. But right now, Lumina. This. Just this.”

I pull away, grip her shoulders, and drink in the sight of her. I allow my blue tongue to slip between my lips to smell her, barely stifling a hiss as I catch her scent. She’s cleaner than I ever experienced her, and I smell her arousal as it floats to me on the humid room air.

She shivers.

“Cold?”

She doesn’t answer, just shakes her head.

“Ah, as I remember, you like my tongue.”

“Handsome, sexy, despicable male,” she scolds, a close-lipped smile brightening her face. “Don’t you know it’s considered impolite to discuss such things in public?”

I pull her closer, one hand on the small of her back, the other on the delicate nape of her neck. “Is that right? I know so little of the social norms on Earth. So that I can follow the rules, would it be rude to mention that I haven’t stopped thinking of you since we parted?”

“No. That would be fine.”

“And to ask how you’re feeling?”

“Also in good taste. I’m pretty good. Just a small headache and occasional double vision which is a bonus, by the way, when I’m looking at a certain handsome Draalian male.”

I laugh. “So good to know. Very reassuring. Just to get this straight, would it be impolite to mention that if I concentrate for just a moment I can actually conjure your taste in my mouth.”

Her pink lips pop open in surprise. She doesn’t have to answer my question for me to know that my comment just shocked her. Her pink cheeks announce the fact.

“So I guess it would also be impolite to mention I miss the way you moan when you come apart underneath me?”

“Zoriss?” Is she asking me to stop, or wanting me to continue?

“And painting a word picture, telling you how beautiful you were in the firelight, sweating from exertion even though the air was frigid, your nipples pulled into hard points from wanting me? Would that break a social norm?”

She nods as if she’s hypnotized, under a spell. My spell.

“Then I shouldn’t mention that sheathing myself in your body was the single highest honor and privilege I’ve ever been afforded in my life.”

Her hands slide up my back and stroke my nape. She presses my shoulders lower so she can whisper in my ear.

“I like understanding the words coming out of your mouth.” She sneaks the tip of her tongue into my ear.

“I want to dance with you, Lumina. But before we do anything else I need to apologize.”

“It’s okay—”

“No. It’s a big ugly thing between us. I don’t want it there. There are things that must be said.”

She nods, then looks at me as if she’s afraid of what I’m going to say.

“Don’t worry, sweet, only one of us is shamispah , and it isn’t you.” I pause a moment, drinking in the sight of her, so happy we’re warm and clothed and together. Most of all, I’m thrilled to see the affectionate gaze in her blue eyes.

“I was drugged and thrown onto a transport. They locked me in a stasis pod. I’ve been in them a dozen times before, but this time the drug that puts you to sleep didn’t work properly. It paralyzed me but left me wide awake.

“I laid like that for three of your months unable to move, unable to open my eyes or stretch or scratch an itch. The only thing I had for company was my own thoughts. Well, my own thoughts and the endless loop of information about Earth they relentlessly piped into the pod.

“When they were about to open the stasis pods, they told us the reason we were brought here was for our cocks and our sperm.

We were auctioned and bought before we even landed.

Because I was never knocked unconscious, when they finally allowed us to move, I was fast enough to make a run for an escape capsule. As you know, I had a hard landing.

“I lost my memory at first, and my attraction to you was immediate and powerful. That first night, that was the true Zoriss, the one who cares about you.” I pull her hand to rest on my cheek, then turn my head to kiss her palm.

“You said something that unlocked my memories. They bombarded me, and my outrage at my abduction was so hot it overrode everything else. I was furious, and you were the only person I could take it out on.

“The male you met had marinated in agony and anger for three months with one thought and only one thought pulsing through his brain—revenge. Well, two thoughts. The second was hatred. Hatred toward all evil Earth females who would steal a male from his life in order to force him to Earth for their own desires.”

She presses her lips to the scales exposed above my collar. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You didn’t earn it. I’ve played it over and over in my head, wondering if your translator had worked if things would have been different. If the whole misunderstanding could have been cleared up in the first hour. But we’ll never know.

“What I do know . . .” I grip her shoulders and pull her away from me so she can look into my eyes. “What I do know is that I made the biggest mistake of my life. You’re kind and loving and generous. You saved my life, Lumina. I would have bled out in that escape capsule without your help.”

This beautiful female is perfect. Instead of hating me, she’s looking at me like I’m the best male in the room. No, the best male on Earth. I don’t warrant this level of affection and acceptance.

“And I would have slipped into torpor in the cave if you hadn’t generously shared your warmth with me despite the way I had treated you. And the intimacy? Lumina, that was so much more than a male like me could hope for. You’re a good female and I’m lucky to have met you.”

She presses tightly to me, her chest squeezed to mine. I feel her swiftly beating heart.

“Tell me you’re sorry one more time,” she says, her gaze spearing mine.

“I’m truly sorry. Repentant. I’d do anyth—”