Strictly Taboo, page 14
Damn it!
She took a deep breath. She could do this. She could mingle with the male guests and behave as naturally in a social setting as any other woman would. She was more than a woman, she reminded herself. She was a warrior woman. Xena. Phoenix from the—
Bah! She could do this. Enough said.
Her chin going up a notch, Nancy firmly told herself that she would—right now at this very moment in time—join the party and seek out an attractive male to talk to. A simple thing to most women, perhaps, but a portentous symbol to herself.
Taking what felt like her millionth calming breath of the evening, Nancy adjusted her sword belt and resumed her stroll through the throng of guests.
Tonight, she would get a life. Tonight, she would find a man. Tonight, she would end the bitter solitude of not having known a man’s bed since big hair had been in fashion. Tonight, she would—
Bah! She would get some cock tonight if it killed her. Enough said.
Chapter 1
6067 Y.Y. (Yessat years) Hunting Grounds of the F’al Vader Pack Planet Khan-Gor (“Planet of the Predators”) Seventh Dimension
“Ahhh . . . CHOO!”
Nancy’s eyes squinted shut as her entire body shuddered from the violence of her sneeze. She sneezed three times more in rapid succession, then waved her hands madly about to clear the puff of whitish smoke that was swirling around her like a cranky cloud.
Good grief. What weird concoction had that old witch blown at her? It was translucent white and very sticky, much like a resin.
Nancy harrumphed as she absently studied her hands. She never should have decided to take a break from Lori’s party. She never should have exited to the back alley in order to regain her composure. So what if a man had engaged her in conversation, she thought acidly. Any normal woman would have been able to sustain a casual conversation with a man without finding it necessary to take a break and air herself out before resuming said conversation.
Damn it!
Nancy’s lips pinched together. Perhaps she really should have taken that job in Alaska. She doubted she would have gotten so fidgety around a mountain man. She doubted she would have cared whether or not such a male found her impressive enough to seduce. Her biggest concern with impressing a mountain man would have been whether or not she looked inbred enough to suit his sexual taste.
Nancy’s back went ramrod straight. This was enough mental babbling, she babbled to herself. She’d gotten her air, as well as some weird, sticky white junk blown at her by the feisty old witch, so it was time to go back inside and continue the conversation she’d been having but minutes prior with Justin.
Justin seemed like a good enough guy, she assured herself. He wasn’t an athletic hunk by any stretch of the imagination, but then again she doubted Playboy would be contacting her any time soon, begging her to pose for a centerfold spread.
Nancy supposed that if she possessed a body worthy of Playboy, she probably wouldn’t be so damned unsure of herself where the opposite sex was concerned. But she didn’t, and she was. She’d just have to figure out a way to get over it.
One thing was for certain, she thought as she finished clearing the air of the whitish smoke with her hands, her goal of getting laid tonight would be a hell of a lot easier to accomplish if Justin were a more forceful type. As it was she felt as if she was the one doing all the seducing—hardly an easy feat for a woman who’d been known as a reclusive social mouse not even a full day ago.
Nancy took a deep breath as she squared her shoulders. It was time to go back inside. It was time to rejoin the party. It was time to seduce the hell out of nerdy, geeky Justin. She was a warrior woman now, she reminded herself with a sniff. Xena. Phoenix from the—
Bah! She was going to fuck that little dweeb tonight if it was the last thing she ever did. Enough said.
Her chin went up a notch. Her nostrils flared. She was determined, damn it. Horny and determined. She hadn’t purchased those condoms tucked away in her scabbard for nothing.
Gritting her teeth, she took a resolute step toward the backdoor entrance to Lori’s party. Warrior woman, she silently reiterated as her nostrils flared impossibly farther. Alpha female, she grunted, her muscles flexing.
It was time to go back inside. It was time to rejoin the party. It was time to—
She stilled. It was time to figure out where in the hell she was.
“Oh, shit.”
Nancy’s jaw dropped open as the air finally cleared of the whitish smoke and she got her first unimpeded look at her surroundings. Her eyes widened and her teeth clicked shut as it dawned on her that she was standing in some sort of . . .
Nest?
“What the hell?” she muttered.
Nancy gaped down at her feet, noting that the structure she was standing in was silver and glittery, the fabric similar to that of twined tree bark. Worse yet, there were animal pelts scattered all about the nest, as if it had been recently occupied.
She gulped. If the nest had been recently engaged, it didn’t take an Einstein to figure out that whatever had occupied it would probably come back. And it might not like to share.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Her heart pounding, Nancy quickly made her way to the other side of the silver nest. The shell swayed a bit, scaring the daylights out of her. She immediately came to a standstill. Waiting for a moment to find her nerve, she crept slowly to the side, careful not to rock the glittery thing in the process.
She blew out a breath. In the befitting words of SpongeBob SquarePants, holy mother of pearl.
Nancy understood that she was in shock. Breathing was difficult—hell, even blinking was difficult. She had no idea where she was or how she had gotten here but—
“Oh—my—God.”
Standing by one wall of the nest, Nancy’s entire body froze in place when she glanced to the terrain that surrounded it. Or more to the point, when she glanced to the terrain that didn’t surround it.
“I am in a damn tree,” she said in a monotone. She was so shocked she couldn’t even blink. “The witch actually put me in a tree.”
Insomuch as she could tell, there was no land on any side of the nest to step off onto. It appeared to be high up—very, very high up, she uneasily noted. The silver nest was perched in a tree and surrounded on all sides by a towering view of a silvery, icy mountainscape hundreds of feet below it.
Her heart rate soared. Silver-ice mountains? Hundreds of feet below her?
What a damn day!
She gulped. Nancy’d always been afraid of heights. The nest she was currently standing in was up higher than she’d ever been before. If she couldn’t see any land directly below the nest, then that could only mean that—
She gasped, noting for the first time that a pointed piece of silver ice jutted up from the middle of the nest. That could only mean that—
She swallowed roughly.
That could only mean that the nest was impaled upon a narrow, pointed piece of icecap. One singular piece of ice was all that held the nest up, she thought hysterically. It was all that stood between keeping the nest perched upright on the mountain apex and allowing the nest to plummet only God knows how far to the ground.
I’m going to kill that old witch!
Blood rushed to Nancy’s head, pounded through her veins. Her heart rate accelerated impossibly higher as a near-maddening hysteria bubbled up inside of her. Her eyes wide with fright, she opened her mouth and did the only thing she could think to do in such a situation.
She screamed. Loudly.
“Help Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
She screamed out her platitude three times more, her voice hoarse when at last she stopped. Panting for air, she braved another glance over the ledge, immediately noting that the plummet from up in the nest didn’t look any more welcoming than it had before she’d started wailing like a banshee.
For as far as the eye could see there was nothing but mountains and silver ice. The ice was everywhere, coated everything, and formed slick shields on mountains that were so tall she couldn’t see their bottoms.
“What—is—going—on?” she bit out.
People didn’t just walk into an alley and land in another world! She had to be hallucinating. She didn’t do drugs and wasn’t much for drinking. The only thing Nancy could figure was her mind had somehow snapped.
I’m going to die! And just when I finally had a half-assed presentable body!
A gust of icy wind hit her in the face, inducing Nancy to realize for the first time just how cold it was up here—wherever up here was. Shivering, she raised her hands and began to briskly rub them up and down her arms, absently working the chill bumps out of her flesh while simultaneously racking her brain for a way out of her predicament.
She bit her lip. She was up in a nest. The nest was perched on top of one of those pointed mountain apexes she’d just seen below. How would she ever get out of here? And when—and if—she did get out, where to then?
Her nostrils flared to wicked proportions. Alaska. Why the hell hadn’t she taken that job in Alaska? “Damn old witch,” she mumbled under her breath. “I should never have given her my last stick of gum. I should have . . .”
She didn’t know why, couldn’t say what premonition it was that instructed her to shut up and look down, but slowly, ever so slowly, Nancy’s gaze trailed down her body until she ascertained that—
Yep, she was butt naked.
Damn it!
Ooooh, she thought angrily, her lips forming a snarl, the witch had gone too far this time. Not only was she stuck in a silvery glitter nest made of twined bark, not only was the nest thousands of feet off the nearest ground, not only was her body covered in a sticky white residue, not only was it colder than she didn’t know what up here, but she was also naked. Butt naked.
Her hands fisted into tight balls and fell to her sides. When she got out of this place—and she would get out of it—she was going to strangle that old witch and enjoy the depraved activity with every cell of her being.
So this is the thanks she was to receive for being kind to that woman, she thought melodramatically. She couldn’t believe this was her reward for being nice enough to give the old woman the last stick of gum she’d had on her, the very one she’d tucked away in her—
“Scabbard.”
Nancy let out a breath of relief when she realized she might be naked, but she still had her sword and scabbard with her. She didn’t know why that knowledge gave her such comfort, but it did.
Perhaps it was because the sword, at present, was the only connection she had to the world she’d been transported from. Perhaps it was because the sword—useless as it no doubt was since she didn’t know how to use it—would still offer her minimal protection from any predator that might think to reclaim its nest while she was occupying it. Whatever the reason, it did the trick and helped her to calm down a bit.
“I have to get out of here,” she murmured, her brown eyes darting warily back and forth.
Just then another gust of chillingly cold wind slammed into her face, making her flesh goosebump. Her teeth chattering, she sank slowly to her knees and ran her hands over one of the animal pelts lining the nest. It was warm and fuzzy, and very inviting at the moment.
As she looked around she noted that the sun was rapidly fading and that darkness would soon overtake this mountain she was stranded atop. The darkness, she thought nervously, would cause the temperature to plummet even lower.
She spent a threadbare moment considering her options, but realized rather quickly that she didn’t have any to consider. There was no getting off this mountaintop without aid. She would have to bide her time and pray that the old witch decided to poof her back to Salem in the morning.
Climbing under the intoxicatingly warm animal pelts, Nancy expelled a deep breath as she fell asleep with her sword laid against her backside. It was there, the still-warm metal reassuringly within reaching distance if she needed it.
Drowsy, confused, angry, but mostly frightened, Nancy allowed herself to succumb to slumber. She hoped against hope that she was already asleep and would wake up to find that all of this had been no more than a bad dream.
When her gaze flicked up and she took notice of four crimson full moons tinting the nighttime sky atop the mountain a haunting blood red, she closed her eyes and told herself it simply had to be a dream.
A very horrific, intensely frightening, could-drive-a-woman-to-drink, bad dream.
Damn it!
Chapter 2
Vorik F’al Vader, the eldest of seven sons and heir to his sire Yorin’s dominion, landed silently on the ground, careful to make not a sound. He shape-shifted immediately from his winged kor-tar form and landed on humanoid feet, his heavily muscled body nigh unto naked, save the kilt wrapped about his waist and the pair of knee-high silver muu hide boots he wore.
Slowly, his dark-haired head came up, his acute silver gaze scanning the mountainside for any sign of yenni movement. He felt the excitement of the hunt coursing through his veins, knowing ’twas at long last time to round up his own pen of pets. Some would be bartered at market, aye, but most he would keep for himself.
What made a yenni so valuable was not only the she-beast’s insatiable hunger for humanoid male seed, but ’twas also the sheer beauty of her fertile form—the fleshiness of her hips, the milkiness of her pale skin, the way she’d daintily flick her tail about whilst she suckled seed from a Khan-Gori male’s cock.
Vorik sighed a bit dreamily, and with much anticipation. He had seen eighteen Yessat years as of this moon-rising, so now ’twas his rite of passage into manhood to take as many yenni as he desired into his keeping—and into his bedfurs.
For years he had fantasized about what it might feel like to have a hoard of females suckle from him, drink from him, feed from him. He would care for them well, he knew, making himself and his cock ever available to see to their feminine appetites.
He was a selfless barbarian, he told himself with a sniff. No matter how much seed his pets would wish to suckle from him, he’d see to it he provided them with it. Aye, he was forever putting the needs of others before his own. He was forever thinking of the happiness of other creatures before he saw fit to care for himself. He was forever—
Bah! He wished to have his cock suckled til ’twas possible it fell off. Enough said.
Vorik took a deep breath and closed his eyes, drinking crisp cold air into his lungs. He needed to calm himself, he knew, for his man sac was already tight and nigh unto bursting just thinking about the hunting booty that would soon be his. ’Twas cruel indeed the ancient custom that forbade a Khan-Gori male to lose his virginity until he saw eighteen Yessat years, for it seemed that his cock and man sac had been in desperate need of satiation ever since the moon-rising he’d turned twelve.
Every waking moment for the past six years had been hellish, every hour had passed as an eternity. The need to thrust into the warm, suctioning flesh of his destined mate had come upon him at hourly intervals, nigh unto driving him insane.
Because the males of his species realized they weren’t likely to find their Bloodmates until much later in life, if at all, ’twas the way of it on Khan-Gor to expend one’s seed within the bodies of the dim-witted yenni until at which time a Bloodmate was claimed. Even then a Khan-Gori male was expected to keep up the feeding of his pets until they were bartered at market, for ’twould be cruel indeed to allow the beautiful creatures to slowly starve to death.
Vorik harrumphed. He could never be so cruel.
As is ever the way of nature, the system worked out just fine, for female yenni could not survive without feeding on seed. And so it came to pass through the perfection of trillions of Yessat years of evolution that the yenni provided sticky flesh to thrust into and voracious mouths to suckle with whilst the Khan-Gori male provided his dimwitted pet with food. ’Twas a perfect system. Or, Vorik mentally qualified as his lips turned down grimly, mayhap it would have been a perfect system had he been allowed to indulge of yenni from his twelfth year onward.
By the tit of the she-god, he needed a suckling.
A soft purring sound a mile away snagged Vorik’s attention, inducing him to smile slowly. He had heard that very sound many a time emitting from the pen his sire’s yenni were caged in. The sound always meant one of two things—the yenni had either fallen asleep after feeding well, or she was cleaning herself.
His nostrils flared as he breathed in the scent of her. It mattered not that she was a mile off in distance, for the males of his species had the most acute sensory systems of any known creature in the seventh dimension of time and space. He could smell her skin, could smell her pussy, could smell the scent of her arousal.
Fangs exploded into Vorik’s mouth as he shape-shifted back into his kor-tar form. Faster than an eye can blink, his skin dimmed from its usual golden bronze color to a translucent shade of silver ice. Talons that tore prey apart so easily spiked out from where his toes had been, and wings that spanned twelve feet across protruded from his back as he leapt skyward and took flight.
At last, he thought as his manhood hardened, oh, aye, at last.
He tracked her easily, a skill any Khan-Gori male perfected by childhood. Part and parcel of growing into manhood on his planet was learning to provide food for one’s family, and one could not provide food for his pack without a hunter’s skill at taking down living, moving prey. This yenni would provide him with no food, ’twas true, for ’twould be Vorik who provided her with much nourishment.
Oh, aye.
He found the yenni cleaning herself near unto an ice-coated stream, her face lowered betwixt her thighs and her tongue darting out to lap at her own pussy. Vorik’s nostrils flared as he watched her, her pink tongue meticulously rimming the folds of her flesh, then darting up on a purr to lick at the bud nestled between the lips. She purred and cooed as she lapped at herself, and Vorik found himself simply staring at the beauty of the scene.
