Pheromone, page 22
part #1 of For the Love of Aliens Series
My hands grip his arms, my short nails digging at his skin as I moan loud enough to scare off the shadow creatures in the dark. Or … Abraxas raises his head, lips rippling in a massive snarl. The spines along his back and tail lift up, and his body blazes with bioluminescence. I hope that whatever those things are, they’ve learned their lesson.
“Mate …” he growls, inhaling my hair, snorting so that it flutters around my face. There’s heat in his breath, sparks and embers and flame. He smells like a campfire, like something else musky and strange yet somehow familiar. “Female.”
He fucks me so wildly, so ferociously that I enter a trance-like state, head thrown back, body blazing. I can barely remember my name let alone where I am or why I’m here. None of that seems to matter. I’m close, close, close … I’m falling and orgasming so hard that I scream. The sound breaks through the trees, startling periwinkle blue bats into the dark canopy.
An odd sound, something between a laugh and a growl, ripples through him. I look up through the stars in my vision, and I see a horned god above me, something dark and fierce and ancient and old. Wow. Fucking wow.
Tears prick my eyes and stream down my face, but they’re just pleasure tears. It feels so good, and my orgasm is so complete that I can’t stop them.
Abraxas ruts me so hard that I can feel it in my bones, my legs spread as wide as physically possible to accommodate him. His wing-hands claw the dirt around my wrists as he uses his other hand to tilt my chin up. His tongue dives into my mouth, and I go hot all over as he comes inside of me. I can feel it, molten liquid deep in my core. It makes me thrash underneath him, seeking more, wanting more. Another orgasm threatens but doesn’t quite peak.
His body relaxes substantially, lowering down so that he’s covering me completely. My cheek is pressed into his rib cage, and I can feel his tail as it whips around behind him.
“Okay, Big D, scoot.” I’m panting for breath, pushing at him. It’s not like pushing a brick wall. It’s like pushing a skyscraper made out of steel and antimatter. His muscles are so hard that there’s not even a give of skin over flesh. Abraxas is a rock. But he’s a living rock, and that’s what matters.
As promised, sex has restored him to full strength. I don’t understand how. Maybe he was bullshitting me and pretending to die so he could get laid? The thought comes and goes just as quickly. No. He was truly dying, and he used the last of his strength to bring my ungrateful ass to the market.
I owe him an apology or at least a thank you.
“No.” That’s his latent response to my question. He hefts himself up as best he can, curling his spine in that way of his, so that he can stare down at me, wings spread wide, shadows dancing around his body, blurring the edges between his strong form and the darkness around him. The fires could use some tending, but I have a feeling that nothing else will bother us tonight, not with Abraxas functioning enough to fuck like a fiend. “I cannot. We are post-coitus and joined.”
I wiggle a little, and that’s when I feel it, something strange but not unpleasant. It’s like … like I can feel him, his heartbeat, his blood. I’m giddy with the rush of it. When I move my hips again, I can sense something connecting us on the inside, like small filaments linking his body to mine. We’re stuck together, but not knotted like a pair of mating dogs. Something different.
We lay there, his body not only inside of mine, but all around me. Four hands searching my body, a tail wrapping my ankle, and that goddamn tongue. He uses it to lick the side of my face, right up and into my hair, like he’s grooming me.
“Stop that,” I whisper, heart pounding. When my pulse races, I swear that I can sense his speeding as well, like our very blood is connected. My cheeks flush as I shift beneath him. Trapped but not unhappy. I have the strongest predator in the jungle poised above me, cleaning the blood and tears and dirt from my face. “If I hadn’t screamed the word fuck …” I trail off with a laugh that makes him growl, grinding his hips more deeply against mine.
My thighs quiver with the stretch of staying open for him, but he’s so big, I have no choice. Guess I’ll get real flexible real fast, I think, and then my eyes widen in disbelief. What the fuck, Eve? No. You’re going home. You’re going back to Earth eventually!
I have so much to return home to. A big, loving family, an incredible career, prospects of a house and a husband and children. I want all of that, and I can’t have that here. Not even if … I don’t let myself go there. I have to find Jane, and I have to get us both out of here. Abraxas can help me with all that, can’t he? That’s what he’s been doing thus far.
He takes the translator from me with one of his wing-hands and puts it on his head, waiting, I guess, for me to repeat myself. So I do.
“If I hadn’t screamed the word fuck, you might’ve eaten me,” I whisper, wondering how I’m managing to hold a conversation with a massive alien dick between my thighs. My blood feels so hot, almost foreign, like he’s doing something to me through the connection between our pelvises. I have never felt this vulnerable and exposed with a human man before. This is sex on a whole other level.
He gives the translator back, and his mouth splits into a terrifying grin.
“I knew before I heard or saw you; I knew because of your smell,” He leans down and licks the side of my neck, causing me to moan and bite my lower lip hard enough that it bleeds. “You weren’t to be eaten; you were to be mated—by me.”
The translator … I’m impressed.
He relaxes again, covering me protectively with his body. I’m tempted to stroke his arms with my fingers, but that feels way too intimate in a situation that’s already stretched far beyond the limits of my shame and acceptance. I need him off of me, so that I can process whatever it is that’s going on between us.
No sooner do I have that thought then he draws back, sliding out of me.
There’s a sharp pinch that makes me whimper, and a little bit of blood between my thighs. I sit up suddenly, quick enough to notice that his cock is dark before it draws back into his body. No more purple spirals or glowing. The rest of his body though? He’s as lit as I’ve ever seen him, and he’s supernatural in his poise. He towers over me, a force to be reckoned with.
I just so happen to look down at my own body, and I … what the fuck? My eyes widen as I notice a purple glow coming from my vagina. Like, from inside of me.
“What did … what did you just do to me?” I ask him, looking up to see him crouching over me in his gargoyle pose. It’s all the more intimidating for his sudden vigor and vitality. I understand now what he meant by not too little later. Yeah. He changes size, and his dick changes sizes with him.
I swallow a lump of dread.
My vagina saved his life.
And now it’s glowing from the inside.
Of all the dumb-dumb alien romance plots, this one takes the cake.
Abraxas cocks his head at me. Crap. I blush as I sit up, and I realize that our entire relationship is now completely different. Jane calls it ‘the sex thing’.
“You know how it’s hard to be friends with someone you find attractive? You know why? It’s the sex thing. It’s the possibility that you could be fucking at any moment.”
Sigh.
The sex thing.
I look up at him, firelight dancing across the very alien planes of his face. His mouth is split in a shark-toothed grin.
“Mates,” he repeats, reaching out to dig clawed fingers into my hair. “We are mates.” He slithers forward, a brush of shadows across the inky night, and curls his massive body around me, dwarfing me completely. The fires continue to crackle, adding to the after-sex atmosphere. I’m simultaneously full of energy and also exhausted all at once. “Rest, female.”
He takes a moment to lick the wound on my midsection and then tucks me in close. I feel unbelievably safe with his body protecting mine.
What did I just commit myself to? I wonder, but there’s not a lot of time for that.
I relax on my side with his tail wrapped around my legs, and I let myself drift to sleep.
My eyes crack to morning light, my body jostling all over the place as Abraxas moves around. I realize very quickly that I’m on his back, that he’s essentially strapped me to him with his tail. He’s walking in human form—or however you want to call it when he walks on two legs instead of four—and he seems more than recovered from last night’s brush with death. He’s sleek. Agile. Glowing. Strength coiled in tense muscles.
“What the …?” I groan, trying to extricate myself from his grip. I have no chance in hell of ever getting a one-up on this guy. He’s not just two or three times stronger than me; he’s like fifty times stronger than I am.
He looks up at a massive tree, and then he unsheathes the claws in his knuckles. With little effort, he scrambles up the trunk, digging ribbons of wood from the bark as he scales it effortlessly. I choke back a scream as we ascend fifty feet, a hundred, higher, and then we’re on a tree limb and he’s crouched down with his tail twitching behind him.
“What are—” I start, but he cuts me off. I’m still wearing the translator, but somehow, he understands what I’m saying anyway. Starting to think he knows a lot more English than he’s letting on. I would absolutely love to know how he knows it.
“Shush, female. Hunting.”
I look over his shoulder and down the length of the branch, toward a bird with orange-gold plumage and a curling tail. It’s like the one I saw last night, but it’s not glowing. Instead, it’s curled up in a nest made entirely of dead insects with shiny exoskeletons. I’m not sure how the nest stays together, but it’s pretty, a shimmering circle of turquoise and purple chitin.
Abraxas stalks along the branch while I do my best not to look down. It’s not that I have a trembling fear of heights or anything, but we are way up here. Skyscraper high. Also, last memory I was conscious for, we’d just fucked. And also maybe my vagina was glowing.
This is a sudden turn of events.
With a low growl, Abraxas takes off down the branch, startling the bird—or whatever it is—into the air. It drops toward the ground, and he follows, leaping off the tree and snapping his wings out to either side. I can’t help it: I scream like a lil’ bitch. Wind whips my hair around my face, stinging my eyes and sticking to my lips.
Abraxas snaps his wings back in and turns into a dive, plummeting toward the earth at such a violent speed that I feel dizzy. My stomach ends up in my throat like I’m on a rollercoaster or something.
The bird hits the ground and tries to run off, like an ostrich or an emu. Abraxas slams into it, snatching its neck in his massive mouth. Blood spatters the ground, and I fight back a wave of PTSD-induced trauma from yesterday’s near swallowing incident.
A quick shake of his kill, and Abraxas seems satisfied that it’s dead.
“What … what the fuck?” I whisper, but he doesn’t respond. He can’t. He’s dropping down to all fours and trotting off into the woods with a dead bird clutched in his jaws. Shadows streak around us, blurs of ink-like blackness that smudge the cheerful woods and the beams of sunshine breaking through the trees. His shadows. Like the creatures from last night that tried to eat him, the man blurs the edges of reality with his very existence.
The ship comes into view—his ship, specifically—and I feel weirdly like I’ve just come home.
That scares me. That scares the fucking shit out of me. Remember: I’ve only been here for ten of this planet’s days. I was kidnapped. I was nearly sold into sex slavery. Jane is out there somewhere. The lawyer got swallowed by a worm-blob monster. A crazy moth prince is stalking me. I almost got chained to a brothel wall. I was swallowed.
This is not my home; this is a hostile alien planet.
Abraxas hops up into the ship, spitting the bird’s corpse onto the floor, and then setting me gently on my feet. I sway for a moment, hands grasping his tail to stay upright. He waits patiently for me to find my feet, splits that massive mouth into a grin, and then heads into the bathroom.
I can just feel Zero-One-Zero-One’s eyes boring into my back. Err, if not her eyes then I guess her cursor? IDK.
I whip around to see the damning text hovering on the screen.
“What the hell happened to you last night?!” she demands, and I sigh. No way in hell I’m going to tell her that I fucked Abraxas, but I can give a partial truth, can’t I?
“He’s all healed up. Good to go.” I offer a thumbs up that she can’t see.
“He’s healed up? So you found the antivenom?” If she weren’t a random computer running off solar power that I strongly suspect is an AI chatbot, I’d find her enthusiasm charming. “I knew my people were pioneers of preservation and medical science.”
“Err, yeah. Nice work.” I turn and follow Abraxas into the bathroom. He’s gargoyling (I just made that word up) beside the bathtub, clawed hands curled around the edges, wings tucked close, head dipped to the water. That long tongue of his slurps greedily as he lifts his eyes to mine.
Heat suffuses my cheeks. I’m pantless, by the way. Not by choice. I’m wearing white space boots and a torn pink top that barely covers my tits. I have the evidence of last night’s coupling between my thighs and very possibly a glowing vagina. How could I not blush?
The guy made me a nest and performed some sort of primitive mating dance by a vista. Who wouldn’t fall in love? Certainly there are worse choices for a boyfriend. Only this doesn’t feel like we’re boyfriend and girlfriend. It feels like we’re married, Costco card in hand, and signing a thirty-year mortgage.
Just … deeper than all that.
“Nice to see that you’re feeling better.” Do I sound awkward? I sound awkward. This is the weirdest morning-after I’ve ever experienced in my life. I take the translator from my head and approach him, but our entire vibe is different now. I feel it in my, well, in my everything when I get close to him.
He stares down at me with eyes like precious gems, his mouth disappeared into his ebon face, his clawed hands still gripping the rim of the bathtub. When I lean forward to put the translator on him, he dips his head toward me and closes his eyes. My fingers brush the sides of his face as he draws back and waits for me to talk.
I suddenly find myself at a loss for words. I think I was going to ask about antivenom, and how mating plays any part in that, but it seems suddenly strange to bring it up.
“Do you think I could have a minute?” I ask. He just stares at me and doesn’t move. “Like, to be alone?” Nothing. He’s still fucking staring at me. “Can I have some privacy?” Nada. Either he doesn’t get what I’m saying or he’s too stubborn for his own good. I am strongly leaning toward the latter. “Ugh, fine. Suit yourself, you dick.”
I turn away from him and head in the direction of the nest, praying that he isn’t going to follow. For a scant few seconds, he doesn’t. I’m alone in the nest, surrounded by furs. I sit down in the pile, pushing my auburn hair back with both hands.
I just fucked an alien. Like, literally. An alien. A dragon monster. He’s barely human. I’ve lost my goddamn mind. What would Jane say, hmm? I can hear her words now, echoing around my head. “Girl, he’s stacked, and he’s a provider. What’s so wrong with him being an alien?” Ugh, maybe Jane Baker isn’t the best person to condemn me for my actions.
Then again, maybe the fictional Jane has a point?
Curiosity kills the cat, but satisfaction brings it back. Satisfied is right. For a wild rut with zero foreplay, that was … Damn. I look toward the entrance to the room, at the beautiful new curtain hanging over the doorway. Abraxas isn’t there, so I take a moment to spread my legs and look down as best as I can. There’s no glow coming from downstairs, but as soon as I spread the lips of my vagina, I see it. Purple bioluminescence.
Uh.
What the hell?
I dip a finger inside and pleasure slams into me with bone-cracking ferocity. Those pheromones. Need surges through me in an impossible wave, and my lips part in panting. But not just for anyone—for him.
Abraxas pushes the curtain aside with a hand, crouching down in the doorway to stare at me. His mouth is twisted in a smirk again. In the beginning, I didn’t give him near enough credit. I thought of him as an alien—which he is—but he’s also a dude. He’s a goddamn dude, and I was stupid not to recognize that right away.
“What did you do to me?” I repeat, but he doesn’t answer, dropping down to all fours again and crawling toward me. His tail lashes out to snatch my wrist, and he forces my fingers to his mouth, that long, hot tongue wrapping around them and sucking them clean.
I’m trembling when he’s done, my eyes on his. They’re so beautiful, his eyes. Purple and sapphire and gold all at once. I could sit and stare at them forever. No, Eve! This is … it’s whatever he did to you. He put something inside of you. Like … those purple spirals on his dick. He gave them to you!
“Why do I have a glowing vagina?” I ask him, and he quickly switches the translator back to my head.
“We are mates. You are marked. Do your people not mark their mates?” He pauses there, tilting his massive head at me, horns shimmering.
It’s a legitimate, understandable question. Coherent, too. I can actually understand what he’s saying! I’m absurdly impressed with our current translator. We switch the headset over to him. I’m about to tell him no, but then I think about wedding rings and what they actually mean, and I’m not sure what to say.
“What am I going to tell my gynecologist?” I ask, wondering how the translator is going to handle that question. “I mean, once I actually get a gynecologist.” I’ve never been to one. Not keen to start going to one. Especially not keen to start now that my vagina glows purple.
He parts his lips to snarl at me, shoving the translator back onto me again.
“No one looks at my mate. Mine.” He nuzzles the side of my neck, and my breath huffs out of me. I want to explain to him that we’re not actually mates, that it was a one-time thing, that I’m human and I need to go home to be with other humans … but … I can’t. I can’t bring myself to say any of that. It feels like a blatant lie. “My apologies, female, for my poor mating last night. I was not in proper condition.”
