Page 14 of Relyn (Warriors of Etlon #6)

Nora

N ora sat on the bed and stared at the black puddle on the floor.

What the absolute fuck had happened to her life?

It had only been a week ago, as far as Nora could figure, that she’d been standing in front of a class of bored kids trying to explain Mr. Bennet’s sarcasm to her students.

It was hard to keep track of days and hours when planetary rotation was not a constant.

What would Mr. Bennet say now? He’d probably keep his mouth shut while his wife complained that her daughters and husband were so ungrateful.

They’d been presented with a prime hunk of male who, the way he just threw out a bet of ten thousand credits, must have quite a nest egg.

And he was young and handsome and sexy as hell.

But then he’d melted. She touched the puddle with her big toe. It jiggled, like gelatin that hadn’t quite finished setting. He said poison? What if he never rematerialized? What if she was stuck in this room with a puddle of black pudding forever?

It was a common fantasy, to be fought over, and if she’d not been completely horrified at the thought of the other guy winning, she might have enjoyed it more.

His opponent looked like someone had cut off the head of a warthog and glued it onto a mangy gorilla.

That thing had been huge, but Relyn had faced it confidently and competently.

How the hell had they gotten captured so easily?

Nora was pretty sure she hadn’t slept through any engine noises that would have alerted her to a chase in progress.

There were no alarms, and Bright had just let her sleep through being boarded?

Something wasn’t adding up. Bright’s previous comments about pirates were seeming very suspicious to Nora right now.

Well, that and the fact that Bright had whispered in her ear while everyone was watching the fight.

“I think we can trust him.”

Nora had thought she could trust Bright, but she seemed to be wrong about that.

Every instinct told her that Relyn was also worthy of that trust, but her brain was keeping her heart and her gut in check.

Perhaps it was that she’d never met a guy on Earth that had ever looked at her that way.

There were some sloppy experiments in college, but no one had ever lasted.

She wasn’t the sexy teacher that guys crushed on.

She was the smart geeky one that laughed at her own jokes when no one else in the room got them.

Nora stood up from the bed and walked into the bathroom.

Her robe was now splattered with blood. It wasn’t quite the same color as human blood either.

It looked a little darker, more purple. Either way, she needed to get it off.

Her nighty was clear, thank goodness. Nora put the robe in what she hoped was a sonic washer.

None of these things came with labels. The sonic shower looked familiar.

Clover had the same type aboard her ship and while it was efficient, Nora still preferred good old hot water.

In space, hot water was a precious commodity that didn’t get wasted in showers.

The rest of the suite was typical of a fancy modern hotel room on Earth.

Furniture came out of the walls at the push of a button.

There was also a replicator, but it had a credit lock on it, so unless Relyn gave her his code, she couldn’t use it.

Nora stared at the puddle again. If he didn’t reform, she could actually starve in here.

In a closet hidden by a button, she found a large duffle bag that was hard for her to lift.

It seemed to be the only personal object in the whole place, so she half carried, half dragged it out on the floor.

Once she opened it and laid it out flat, Nora let out an exasperated huff.

It was full of knives of every shape and size.

Unless he liked to carry his knife collection everywhere he went, Relyn was awfully fond of killing people.

But he hadn’t killed the space gorilla, which had to count for something.

He’d known, he’d been told that the thing was trying to murder him, and he’d shown mercy.

Was that smart, or dumb? Nora didn’t know, but it did make her like him more.

Nora left the knives on the floor and paced for a bit before forcing herself to calm down.

There was nothing more she could do here.

Working herself up accomplished nothing.

It would be better to start fresh on the problems in the morning, or whatever time it was.

She wasn’t sure how long she’d been sleeping before Relyn had awoken her.

Judging by the fact that neither Bright nor Wendy had changed, it had probably only been an hour or two.

Nora lay down on the bed, and concentrated on taking a few deep breaths.

She must have drifted off quickly after that, because when next opened her eyes, she found herself aroused.

Nora never woke up hot and bothered unless she had a dream that she remembered, and she had no recollection of any dream.

She was sure that Relyn would have featured very prominently if she had.

There was also something on her foot. It was tingly and warm and sending sparks of arousal straight up her leg. She looked down to see that Relyn’s puddle had made its way up the bed and immersed her foot.

“The fuck?”

Nora tried to pull her foot away, but he came with it, spreading upward and enveloping her calf.

It was far from unpleasant, but it was alarming.

The black oozed up to her knee and Nora had to remind herself to keep breathing.

Waves of arousal flooded her, wetting her panties and tightening her nipples into prominent peaks that poked obscenely out against the thin silk fabric of her nighty.

She was about to orgasm and he had just passed her knee. What the fuck was that all about? Her brain wanted him to stop, so she could analyze the pulsing pleasure of it all, but as he continued up her leg at a faster pace, she felt herself spreading her thighs, giving him access to her center.

She came when he was still an inch away from touching her clit.

Her hips bucked off the bed and she yelled out her pleasure.

He apparently took that as a sign that she wanted more and slid up her torso to her breasts.

She could see the black ooze moving under the negligee but only for a moment, because he covered the last inch and pressed against her clit.

It was as if a hundred tiny tongues decided to play with her pussy at once.

She closed her eyes and a loud moan tore from her throat.

A second orgasm bucked her hips again, followed quickly by a third.

After that, Nora admitted that she lost count of how many and how long she spent covered in the slime that was Relyn.

There was a form, though, after a while.

She felt a tentacle push tentatively against her, seeking her entrance.

“Yes!” Nora heard herself cry and he penetrated her, sliding inside her, growing and pulsing, becoming less tentacle and more cocklike with every thrust. Even after multiple orgasms, Nora’s body realized that this is what she had been craving.

She needed to be filled and fucked. The black puddle pulled away from her skin and began to take shape.

It ripped the nightgown in two as Relyn, the purple warrior, began to reform, his cock still firmly in her pussy.

His hands encouraged her legs to wrap around his hips and finally, he was complete above her and completely inside her.

Nora wrapped her hands around his neck and held on as he finished, building her continual climax to an even higher level.

The world exploded into stars and Relyn’s mouth came down on her neck.

She didn’t even realize he had bitten her until after he shouted and shuddered on top of her.

They lay there for a moment, breath heavy before Relyn withdrew and then flipped her over, draping her across his form.

“Okay. What just happened?” Nora finally asked.

“We mated,” he said as if it was a very simple answer.

“No, go back a little before that. The part where you went from a solid to a liquid.”

He sighed loudly. “That is me. As I truly am.” He held out his arm, made a fist and turned it into a black mass before reforming the hand. “I have merely borrowed this form.”

“You’re a shape shifter?” Nora asked, running a hand over the purple peck opposite of the one that her head rested on. “I thought those were just myth.”

Ever since the Suhlik had descended on Earth, bringing a myriad of alien species in their wake, humans had been obsessed with categorizing all the new species and their seemingly magical abilities, especially as women left the planet and started making babies with them.

There were also the wacko conspiracy theorists that thought the aliens were there to replace them.

There were aliens that could change their shape and camouflage their color, but none that could perfectly replicate anything the way that Relyn had.

“I am unique. Perhaps the only one.”

“Can you turn into anyone?”

“I can only replicate those of which I have a… sample.”

That sounded ominous. “So where did you get this sample?”

“The Suhlik assassinated him, after I refused to kill him,” Relyn said with such sadness in his voice that Nora almost didn’t want to press on, but she had too many questions.

“So do you liquify every night?”

“No, I don’t return to my natural state very often. For one thing, it unnerves people. Secondly, it’s not necessary. I can hold a form consistently.”

“Do you sleep? Eat?” she asked, leaving off the bathroom bits for later.

“I have learned to process nutrition in a way that is similar to the form I have. I do sleep,” Relyn said. “No one can know that I am not Sangrin. They cannot know that I take other forms. Our safety would be at risk.”

“That’s why you rushed back here,” Nora said.

“Yes.”

Several things dawned on Nora at once. First of all, she’d just let herself be carried off and had mad monkey sex with a practical stranger without too much concern for her fellow shipmates.

As far as she knew, they might have left her behind, thinking that she no longer wanted to go back to Earth.

Nora dismissed that idea pretty quickly.

While she was still unsure of Bright’s role in all this, she doubted Wendy would take off without at least asking her first.

That didn’t mean that Wendy was safe. What if one of the other aliens had carried her off, like the amoeba one that looked like he wanted to get handsy, or blobsy, or whatever appendages they felt like laying on her?

And where had Data gone? He had an automatic dry food feeder, but she’d promised Clover that she would care for him as her own, including supplying him with a daily portion of wet food.

Nora sat up as the guilt started to descend.

Not for sleeping with Relyn, that had been great, more than great, but for putting her personal needs and desires above her responsibilities.

She swung her legs over the bed and stood up.

That’s when she realized that she was completely naked and Relyn had pretty much ruined the only scrap of clothing she had that would make her decent.

“I need something to wear.”

The man had the gall to look disappointed, but he got up from the bed without complaint and went to work pushing buttons on the replicator.