Alien Heart, page 16
A shuffle of movement had me craning my neck back to see what he was doing.
Varrow had moved to his knees, closer to me. His massive clawed hand glided up and down his cock as he stared, his gaze murderously intent upon me.
His tapered tail pressed further, making my eyes roll back in my head.
“I can see how I’m stretching you,” he panted. I became aware of the erotic slapping sound of his fist, increasing in speed as he jerked off harder. Heat built inside me, teased into massive flames when Varrow’s tail began to twist while it thrusted. Unable to help myself, I reached between my legs, massaging my clit.
“I’ve dreamed of stretching you like this on my cock.”
The dark, commanding edge to those words, and the image they created, shocked me. My fingers dug desperately against my clit as I clenched around him.
“You’re getting tighter,” Varrow hissed.
I didn’t need him to tell me. I already knew.
I was coming. My whole body coming apart against him and around him. I mewled, my mouth hanging open in slackened pleasure as Varrow continued the motion that was so fucking perfect – that twisting thrust.
“J’arrive. I’m coming! Varrow.... Putain. Varrow. Je t’aime. I love you!”
At those last words, Varrow’s tail tightened, twanging with tension inside me. I could feel my core continuing to spasm, massaging around him, as ecstatic shivers rained down on me.
No, something was actually raining down on me...
Varrow’s hot come was spurting all over my lower back and ass.
Yes!
I rocked back against his tense tail, grinding on him. His orgasm renewed mine, making me quake as I stared back at him taking his pleasure. His fist slowed somewhat, drawing sensually along his still-spurting cock. His gaze was laser-focused on my spread pussy, on the place his tail was fucking me. His seed coated me, coated him, coated the place where we were joined.
Without thinking, I reached back, drawing some of his wetness onto my fingertips. I massaged it into his tail and slicked it over my stretched entrance.
Varrow growled, drawing his tail slightly out of me. He rained down more seed upon it, then thrusted inside once more.
Even more of him is inside me now, I thought giddily.
Dizzily, actually.
My muscles sagged, and I let out a soft “oof” when my body hit the ground.
“Cam-Eel? Cam-Eel!”
I moaned in complaint when Varrow slipped his tail out of me, leaving me empty and aching.
I rolled weakly onto my back as he scrambled over me, looming above me on his knees. He scraped my sweaty hair back from my forehead, his face coming so close that his nose bumped mine.
“What is wrong with you?” he demanded. If there weren’t a bite of panic to his words, I would have gotten offended.
So blunt. Classic Varrow.
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” I retorted. “I’m just weak from hunger and the most mind-blowing orgasm of my life.”
“Mind... Blowing... What did I do to your mind? Tell me it is still intact.”
“Barely,” I muttered, sighing as an aftershock of pleasure made my insides contract. My eyes slid closed.
I probably would have passed out right there if Varrow hadn’t made a terrified choking sound.
My eyes snapped open.
“Varrow, my mind is fine. It’s a human expression. It means, like, amazing. Incredible.”
“So you are saying that I’ve pleased you?” the fear faded from his voice, replaced by a rumbling, husky tone that made my nipples tighten.
“Yes. I am.” I smiled and planted a soft kiss on his mouth that hovered just above mine. Then, drawing back, I added “Now would you please, please, go get your mate some food?”
After all the kerfuffle with the ablokoi, we’d found a spot to set up the tent and hadn’t had a chance to eat. If I’m hungry, he must be absolutely starving. He had about 80 extra kilos of muscle to fuel, not to mention all the energy he’d burned actually fighting with the ablokoi.
I would have offered to go get him something to eat after everything that had happened today, but I knew I wouldn’t be much good at hunting or foraging something for us. Besides, Varrow was already rising and re-fastening his loincloth.
“You will be safe up here while I am gone. Do not leave the tent or this stone platform,” he said.
His words sobered me, bringing me down from the ecstatic high of a few moments ago. There were dangerous things out there...
What if he runs into trouble again?
“Varrow, wait!”
But he was already gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Varrow
I had to refocus myself several times while out of the tent. My normally disciplined focus had vanished. I barely saw the moonlit stone floor, nor the peaks of the Death Plains mountains. I saw instead Cam-Eel’s face, the exquisite peaks of her breasts, the world-shattering way she glistened and stretched herself over my tail.
As my tail bumped a rock, I winced. Between the ablokoi squeezing it and the rigorous, Zaphrinax-shattering tightness of Cam-Eel’s cunt, it had been through a lot today. It was worth it, though. Worth the extra sensitivity and bruising to feel every catastrophic clench of Cam-Eel’s pleasure.
I gave her pleasure...
Even more than that, she said she loved me. Me.
I still could not quite believe it. The wet, ready willingness of her mouth and her hands and her cunt had helped, though. Had helped pummel it into my stubborn brain.
She loved me.
It would probably take more convincing before I believed her other claims – her claims that I was worthy of that love. I was still half-convinced that I’d somehow tricked her into her affections, even though I had not meant to.
But for now, I eased off the dread and the anxiety surrounding Cam-Eel and her love and just let myself bask in the beauty of it all. I stopped for a moment, far from the tents, tilting my head up to gaze over the star-addled sky. The stars, the line of moons, they seemed brighter. The stone around me seemed ever-so-slightly less dominating, less dangerous. These lands had taken much from me. But now, I had a new, good memory to treasure, formed between these stone peaks. The first time I truly touched Cam-Eel. The first time my tongues tasted hers. The first time I started to believe that the world could be good again.
As I paused, I drew my tail up into my hand, absentmindedly rubbing at the painful parts. I realized with a swallowed groan that Cam-Eel’s scent was still upon me. I drew the tip of my tail up under my nose, breathing in deeply.
There was a resounding pang down my spine, thickening my cock once more.
Cursed sands, would I ever be sated in my need for her?
I doubted it.
Stop dawdling. She is hungry.
I shook myself back to my task, loosing a blade from my back and stalking through the stone with renewed purpose.
A short time later, I found a Death Plains rakdo. I quickly killed the fluffy white thing and hoisted it over my shoulder. I did not immediately return to the camp, though. I spent a little longer combing through the landscape, looking for a borrot plant. I remembered Razek once mentioning that he’d fed it to Jozelyn when they’d been here together last and that she’d seemed to enjoy it.
Ah, there!
A short, black, tubular thing, almost looking like the small trunk of a babkit tree, but branchless. Dumping down the rakdo, I squatted beside the borrot, hacking away long strips of its bark. I held them carefully as I re-positioned the rakdo on my shoulder. After picking a few valok plants as well, I was ready.
I did not tarry on my way back to camp now.
I had someone precious waiting for me.
Someone who loved me.
And I was not about to do anything that would jeopardize that love. Namely, making my hungry woman wait for her food.
My own stomach cramping with the need to eat, I took off, sprinting.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Camille
Varrow took so long to come back that, if I weren’t feeling so lightheaded, I would have ignored his orders and gone out there looking for him. I knew I wouldn’t get very far – whoever was on guard duty out there would have seen me and stopped me. But I could have rallied a search party for him, at least.
As the minutes ticked by, my dread only grew. I imagined him caught in the endless arms of an ablokoi, but alone and unable to fight it off this time. Or I imagined him cornered by Death Plains zeelk, getting hacked to death like I’d seen happen to the crew of our ship when we’d first landed on this planet. Even though I knew it was extremely unlikely for a warrior who knew these lands, I imagined him slipping and falling into some deep, dark crevasse, never to emerge again.
I’ve only just gotten him. If I lose him...
I was just preparing myself to go out there after all, ignoring the swimming of my vision and the roiling of my empty stomach, when the sound of soft grunting and claws on stone caught my ears. I froze, half-sitting up, still naked among the hides.
The tent flap whipped open, letting in a shocking bolt of silvered light.
And in that light, lit from behind and turned into a velvety silhouette of alien perfection?
Varrow.
I sat up all the way and then rapidly moved to my feet. Bad idea.
The tent whirled, and my knees buckled.
Varrow’s arm was lightning quick. He looped it around my back, slamming me to his chest. I sighed, melting into his solid warmth. He’s OK.
“You’re back,” I murmured, feeling absurdly like I was about to cry. Again.
“Of course I am,” came the rumble of his reply. He guided me back into a sitting position on the hides and crouched in front of me. His hand grazed my jaw, catching a stray strand of my hair and fingering it reverently. “I will always be at your side. Your shadow as you stand in the light.”
“Not my shadow,” I whispered, leaning my head heavily against his hand. “My mate.”
I didn’t like that he thought of himself as the darkness trailing behind me instead of what he was: the sudden centre of my world.
“If anything, you’re the sun in this analogy,” I huffed. “I feel like I’ve been circling endlessly around you, trying to get closer to you. Like you’re exerting some kind of gravitational pull on me.”
“What is a gravitational pull?”
My stomach somersaulted, and I swallowed nauseously.
“Let’s save our physics lessons for another time. Did you bring anything to eat?”
“Ah. Yes. I dropped it earlier, when I caught you.”
He moved from his crouch to a sitting position, twisting and grabbing things from nearby. Raw rakdo meat and valok gel.
“Thank you,” I moaned, digging into the food. I knew some of the other girls didn’t like undercooked meat, but it didn’t bother me at all. I’d eaten more than enough steak tartar and beef tataki to appreciate the food that Varrow had brought, even in its slightly bloody state. Luckily, he’d already done all the cleaning and butchering for me, so all I had to do was hoover everything up.
Varrow watched me for a long time, as if making sure I wasn’t about to keel over. After he was apparently satisfied, he ate, too. It made me all warm and gooey to see him eating. To know that he was getting his fill after a long and difficult day.
“How are you feeling?” I asked softly. “How... Oh, mon Dieu! Varrow, how is your tail?” In the overwhelming passion of the evening, I’d completely forgotten his tail had been injured. “I can’t believe you let me... You know! On your tail! Are you hurt?”
“I told you before that it will mend,” he said, his words nonchalant. The verbal form of a human shrug.
“But Varrow -”
“If anything,” he continued, interrupting me, “I’m sure your body will prove to have been a healing balm for it.”
“A healing balm?” I repeated flatly. If a healing balm was the equivalent of my needy pussy wringing the absolute life out of his poor bruised tail, then sure.
“No more tail stuff until you are healed,” I said sternly. Now that I’d eaten, I felt more strength and energy. More than enough to tell Varrow what was what.
Varrow grumbled, and I wondered if I was going to have to further argue this point with him, when he said, “Then I will simply have to find another way to fill you.”
“Fill... Me...” Heat bloomed along my neck, down into my belly. He’d just made me come, and apparently I was ready for more.
“Yes,” he murmured, leaning closer. “My cock is not injured. Nor are my tongues.”
“Oh,” I squeaked, nodding rapidly into the darkness. “Well, yes, I suppose either of those things would be acceptable. Considering they aren’t injured and all...” I was already drooling over the idea of Varrow’s head buried between my thighs. Three tongues... Sacré blue...
“But not tonight,” Varrow said. This time, it was his turn to sound stern. “You need rest.”
I wanted to whine. I wanted to climb into his lap and drag my tongue across the seam of his firmly-set lips. I wanted to seduce him.
But I wanted, even more than all of that, for him to get some sleep and a chance to heal.
“So do you,” I agreed.
Varrow gave a snort. “Me? No, little bean. I do not require rest. Not for this. Not for you. I could take you ten times this night and still be ready to fight to the death tomorrow. No, we are not stopping for my benefit. But for yours.”
“What!” I cried. “I’m not that weak!” I tried to prove it to him by wiggling forward onto my knees, planting my hand against his chest, and pushing with all my might.
Of course, he didn’t move. Barely looked like he even felt it.
He grasped my hand, drawing it up to his mouth and brushing his lips along my knuckles.
“Sleep,” he murmured against my skin.
“I don’t need to,” I said. I doubted I was very convincing, though, as a sudden yawn shuddered through me, making my mouth stretch and my eyes water.
I could feel Varrow’s knowing look, and I rolled my eyes.
“Alright. Fine. But I’m going to have a bit more food first.”
“Oh. Here. Try this,” he said, pressing something rough and crumbly into my hands. I turned around, my back to him, scooting back on my knees until I could plop myself down into his lap. His muscles hardened as the contact, then his whole torso sagged forward to embrace me. His arm wrapped around my waist, pulling my back against his chest. A prickle of pure, ticklish joy erupted along my neck when he settled his chin on my shoulder.
“What is it?” I asked about the stuff in my hands. It wasn’t meat, that was for sure. It had a bark-like texture.
“It is called borrot. The Gahnala Jozelyn enjoyed it last time she tried it. So I brought some here for you.” There was a rough modesty in his words, giving me the sense that he was trying to downplay that he’d wanted to do something special for me. I smiled, thinking about that night when he’d dumped three little beans unceremoniously into my palm after searching them out for me. I’d been so confused by the action at the time – it had seemed to mean nothing to him. At least, it didn’t seem to mean as much as it had to me.
“Hey, why did you go forage those beans for me before? I know you hate them,” I asked, settling happily against the warmth of his chest and sniffing curiously at the strips of borrot in my hand. Mmm. It smelled pleasantly bitter, like cacao powder.
Varrow paused, then gruffly answered.
“Because when you rode atop my irkdu that day and told me all about the sort of man you wanted, you told me that receiving gifts was important to you.”
I pursed my lips to hold back the high-pitched sound of my heart shattering into a gazillion pieces. This entire time, I’d thought I was the only one with feelings. Meanwhile, Varrow was even more lovesick than I was.
“So, when exactly did you find out I was your mate?” I asked, taking a tentative bite of the borrot. It turned powdery in my mouth, but the scent of cacao had been spot-on. It had a lovely dark chocolate flavour that coated my tongue and throat. After swallowing, I elaborated a little more on my question. “You said that you felt something for me even before the mate bond. What does that mean?”
Now that I knew Varrow loved me, I was insatiable in my need for more information. Almost like I still needed to prove to myself that this was all real.
“I was always drawn to you,” he said. “Some of it was confusion about your odd cooking habits.
I chortled, remembering the scowl on his face when we’d first spoken in the garden all those nights ago.
Are you going to put beans on the meat again tonight?
“So eventually, you found out I was your mate. Ah, that makes sense. That’s why you got added to this party at the last minute, right?”
Varrow hadn’t originally been one of the warriors who was supposed to travel out here with us. But if his mate was going, it made sense he’d want to come along too.
But he replied, surprising me with his answer.
“No. I did not know you were my mate then. I only knew that I could not let this tiny, odd beans woman travel into such hostile territory without me.”
I absorbed that while munching on the borrot.
I remembered how stunned he’d looked when I’d told him I was going on this journey into the Death Plains. How he’d immediately spun on his heel and left me in the garden after the conversation.
“So when you left me in the garden after I told you I was leaving, you were...”
“I was tracking down Gahn Razek to inform him I would accompany you.”
Inform. Not ask.
I nodded, the back of my head bumping up and down against him.
“It was not long after this that the Lavrika came to me.”
