Page 13 of Warrior (The Outlander Book Club… in Space! #2)
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A Vaktaire warrior running on open ground is fast. A Vaktaire warrior with his mind on other things, not to mention nursing a hard cock, is not so swift and a little clumsy.
Daisy
Kissing her was as delicious as I imagined.
No, it was more delicious than I ever dreamed.
The Earth videos made kissing appear pleasurable, awkward sometimes, but ultimately enjoyable.
Nothing was awkward about how Daisy's soft body melted against mine.
Nothing less than perfect the way our lips fit together and her tongue… .
Fuck!
I tripped over a small stone, flailing and faltering momentarily before regaining my balance.
While there weren’t any inherent dangers on the moon’s surface—no wild animals, or violent population— even a small rip in the enviro suite could kill me.
The suit's fabric was thick and sturdy, woven from threads of our sturdiest metal, yet the sharp edge of a rock might still do damage.
Giezo's surface was sand and rock, but its atmosphere was a combination of acids that reminded me of the gaseous atmosphere of Jupiter in the Milky Way.
One touch of the acidic vapors on my thick pelt would cause deadly burns.
I needed to pay attention to the terrain and the mission at hand and not the beautiful human who awaited my return.
Yeah, good luck with that.
The memory of Daisy's touch was a whisper on my skin. I could still taste her tongue and how she felt in my arms…. It was like she dwelled within me; no matter how far I roamed, she would never be far away.
Why did she affect me this way?
I was no stranger to carnal pleasures. Hell, Tarook, and I nearly got kicked out of warrior training for sneaking off to visit the hedonism ships. But nothing, not even a room full of Natavian triplets, compared to holding Daisy tight against me, feeling her soft, slick tongue rub against mine.
A memory flashed across my brain; stories told in my youth of the Vaktaire mating ritual—the valakana. The way I feel toward Daisy reminds me of the intense draw they say a mated Vaktaire feels toward his mate.
It can’t be that.
Daisy is human. In all my days, I’d never heard of any but a Vaktaire female surviving the valakana. The last communication received from the Bardaga indicated Khaion mated with the human he rescued, but the transmission was broken with static. Surely, I misheard.
The valakana affected one physically, stopping and transmuting one’s heart so that it beats in unison forever with one's mate. The ritual was said to be quite painful and debilitating.
Khaion was most likely finding pleasure with the human female, not unlike what I craved with Daisy. Even if Khaion's mating with Emmy proved true, I recalled the Chieftains female as formidable and stronger than sweet, gentle Daisy.
A batch of menhir appeared through the acidic din.
The large upright stones set into a henge by a long-forgotten species appeared as a group monsters through the haze.
I'd hidden my skiff amid one. This particular menhir wasn’t large, most of the stones barely taller than I stood.
Hazy vapors blocked the sun, making the interior as dim as the tunnels below ground.
I wove my way through, mind flickering back to softness and kisses. Maybe my imaging was moot. Daisy's lost her mate on Earth only recently. I could see the pain in her eyes when she mentioned him. She might not be ready to take another into her sheets for some time.
But she kissed me. I'd been too stunned to move when her soft body slammed against mine. Her lips tasted like the sweetest delicacy in the universe. She kissed me, and that meant something. What? I had no clue.
I stepped around the largest stone in the henge, shifting my hard cock into a more comfortable position.
The Aljani guard looked almost as surprised as I felt.
He was big as far as Aljani went, clad in the same type of enviro-suit, his pearl horns a hump underneath the helmet.
His pale, eyes widened, and he took two stumbling steps backward, blaster lifting from below his shoulder.
I reacted without thinking—training and battle honing my instincts.
Feinting to the right and drawing the guard’s aim, I spun left, the warmth of his laser blast passing harmlessly over my shoulder.
The guard pulled his aim toward me, but I moved quicker, yanking the blaster from his hand.
The thick face mask of the enviro-suite muffled the Aljani's scream, and the acrylic allowed a good view of his face.
I noted the absence of a scar before my hand landed at the base of his skull.
My sharp claws, always elongated in battle, tore into his enviro-suit, ripping a wide gash.
The guard froze, an expression of horror flashing across his face—his last conscious movement.
His hands clawed as his neck as the acid in the atmosphere burned into his skin and lungs.
His mouth contorted in a scream, but only a faint keening sound hit the air before the Aljani slumped to the ground.
He wasn't the first male I killed… and certainly wouldn't be the last. As war chief of the Bardaga, taking life to protect my brethren and the weak was my duty. I knew the deficiency of every single species in the galaxy and how to exploit it. I trained the warriors under my command to kill swiftly and efficiently. In battle, it was kill or be killed. I’d always expected to meet my end in battle, finally succumbing to one more skilled than myself.
The thought of death never bothered me… until now.
Daisy.
Now my heart had more to beat for than just blood and battle. She was something precious and sweet the Valana placed into my life path—a gift for which I possessed eternal gratitude, even if the only kiss I would ever share with her had passed.
I must protect her and the younglings, even if it meant pushing thoughts of her and my desire aside.
I concentrated on the Aljani guard at my feet. His weapons were a standard-issue laser blaster and blade, nothing fancy. I slid both weapons into my belt before grabbing the guard’s feet and dragging him into the shadows of the henge.
My skiff sat just a few kilometers away, hidden in the shadows of a larger henge. The presence of this guard was too coincidental this close to my ship.
Fuck!
The only good thing about Giezo’s acidic atmosphere was no wind, which meant the guard's footprints were easy to track. Only one set so far, leading away from my skiff, the pattern of his gait suggesting a scouting mission.
Staying low, where the shimmer of my enviro-suit reflected the red dust underfoot, I moved onward. I would fight the entire Aljani army to retrieve that medi-unit. Without it, Ewok would die, and Daisy's heart would break.
I could not withstand her heartbreak.
My mind centered on my mission. It took only minutes to traverse the miles to the second henge rising like a monolith from the moon's surface. These rocks were massive beasts. I barely spotted the gleam of my skiff's metal hull in the midst of the stones.
I didn't need to see the faces of the three guards to know they were Aljani. The weapons carried at their waist gave them away.
They'd set a border around my skiff, dim lights atop thin poles driven into the moon’s surface.
A sloppy job that made me cringe and entirely indefensible.
Granted, I was Vaktaire, stealth was in my DNA, but these three were too loud and sloppy in their movement to suggest any battle training.
One strutted about, shoulders reared back and chin high, dust clouds kicking up beneath his boots, making him appear to hover on a red cloud.
The larger of the three sat on the ground, his back against a stone—he might be asleep.
The third one kept touching my skiff and suffering from the low charge travelling along the hull—a theft deterrent common on all Vaktaire ships.
It would be easy to attack—to kill them. So easy it seemed like a sin not to do it. Aljani were not known for their prowess in battle. Their military strength came from technology, which was lacking on the surface of Geizo due to the acidic air.
Even if they had the best Aljani weaponry available, battling these three would be easy—boring, even.
Why would Duke Ako, the reigning Aljani noble send such sloppy guards to oversee something as illegal and profitable as mumje mining? He should have used well-trained mercenaries, like Kerzak or Trogvyk. Species he could disavow if accused.
It wasn’t like Duke Ako to risk his reputation in a situation like this.
An accusation of mumje mining would be disastrous to his standing with the Alliance.
Despite his fetishes with human women, Duke Ako was very respected in political circles.
Maybe he didn’t care? The Duke ranked as the wealthiest being in the known universe, rich enough to buy a human, drugs or anything else to satisfy his urges.
Mining a drug like mumje meant you had only one thing in mind…
conquest. Even with the Alliance guarantee that the drug was destroyed, most planets had built-in atmospheric defense against the drug.
I could think of only one that didn't—Earth.
The Alliance would never allow such an attack on a helpless planet like Earth—neither would the Vaktaire.
To attempt such an onslaught would cause interplanetary war.
From what I knew of Duke Ako, he favored spending his wealth in peace.
I kept to my crouched position near the base of the large stones, watching as the guards milled about. I should kill them for boring me to near death. Not to mention the repeated eyerolls their behaviors imparted was giving me a headache.
I needed to get the medi-unit back to Ewok, but the war chief in me knew this was too good an opportunity to pass up. The guards might know the plan for the mumje, and that knowledge was worth tarrying—at least a few minutes.