ALIEN’S GAMBLE

OUTLAW PLANET MATES

ELIN WYN

CONTENTS

The World of Outlaw Planet Mates

Kamek

Jaylee

Kamek

Jaylee

Kamek

Jaylee

Kamek

Jaylee

Kamek

Jaylee

Kamek

Jaylee

Kamek

Epilogue: Jaylee

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THE WORLD OF OUTLAW PLANET MATES

R eazus Prime is a hard planet. Once a prison, it was abandoned once the mines dried up and the Overlords could no longer turn a profit off the prisoners. Now it’s a haven for outlaws, pirates, and anyone holding a grudge against authority.

It’s isolated, alone, and the only ships coming are the worst sort. One such ship carrying a cargo of abducted human women, explodes in orbit. A lucky few were ejected in pods, only to crash on the outlaw planet.

NOW THE RACE is on to find and claim the human females…

KAMEK

I almost heard the urge to ask if we were there yet brewing and bubbling in Laux’s chest.

Every time I glanced back at my brothers, there he was, the youngest out of us all, nearly vibrating in his seat.

He’d missed out on the last game of Speiwet due to a mid-game injury and he was itching to show off his new moves. Today would even double as revenge, given how we were going up against the same team that took him out before.

“To your right!”

Sorik’s shout made me jolt in my seat. My instincts took over and I changed course, barely avoiding crashing against a fragment of debris.

“Is that a slavers’ unit?” my brother asked.

I directed my gaze towards the point Sorik was staring at, and, sure enough, he was right: fire, hot and bright enough to rival Reazus Prime’s twin suns, had engulfed a slavers’ ship.

Flames like tentacles rollicked up its sides and everything they touched reddened and darkened. Parts of the craft flew apart from the main body, disintegrating during its unmanned descent until finally, like a firecracker, dozens of smaller lights streaked through the dark.

"I'm getting life signs on those," Sorik said.

“Escape pods?” I muttered. “They don’t look right.”

Sorik looked over sharply. “Do you think anyone survived that?”

Norsuk leaned over the back of my chair. “They would if they were in storage pods. See if you can find what’s in there.”

A few moments of quick scanning, and Sorik had an answer. “Human females.”

A moment of quiet came over us as we considered the possibilities.

“Sleeping slaves, all ripe for the picking. What do you all say? Finders’ keepers?”

The familiar beep of incoming data transmission drowned out whatever else Norsuk meant to say.

The air shimmered before our eyes and took on the form of a multidimensional map of Reazus Prime.

With a flick of my wrist, I sent over the tracking data. At first, there was nothing, but then one by one, tiny blue dots flashed, drawing our gazes to them, scattered all over the globe.

“I hear they make good breeders,” I added, my mind forever on the prize. “I’ve counted at least a dozen. They should fetch a good price.”

It was stupid and probably nothing, but I found I couldn’t keep my eyes off a certain pod, far to the north in the mountains that were permanently covered in snow.

A noiseless hum rang in my ears and I felt my heartbeat accelerating. Something deep within me, almost primal, made me want to sprint and collect my bounty before anyone else got the same idea.

I cleared my throat before speaking. “Let’s each pick a pod and whoever’s female brings the most money, wins.”

The proposal was welcomed with excited hollering and none of us wasted any time in getting into our stingers and claiming our literal gifts from above.

“Good hunting!” I called out as my brothers’ personal crafts split off from mine, racing towards their own targets.

All I cared about was mine.

A storm had beaten me to the site, heavy winds and thick gusts of snow coated the mountain passes, burning away the moments until I found the long trail from the impact of the stasis pod.

It had torn through a nearby stand of trees, the trail of smoking destruction in its path already half covered by the storm.

Banking away, I landed the stinger in a small clearing, excitement spurring me on.

Nothing was more exciting than the rush of the game.

Well, except winning.

Sinking up to my knees in snow, I grabbed a heavy cloak from the ship and checked the blaster holstered at my hip and the comm unit on my wrist.

Nothing from my brothers. I still might be the first to reach my prize.

The knot in my stomach tightened and I rushed towards the pod.

Restlessness, an urge to run and claw my way to the female slowly took over me.

I pulled my cloak tighter against myself and broke into a sprint, the distance between me and the stasis pod lessening with every heartbeat.

Once there, I peered down at the shattered glass and let out a low growl.

She wasn’t there.

Deep tracks zigzagged away, but quickly faded out into nothingness.

Frantic, I ran around in circles, desperate to pick up her trail, going past a derelict cabin, a stand of trees, more pieces of debris.

Nothing.

She couldn’t have made it far. At least, not unless someone had already taken her, and if that was the case, I was prepared to fight to claim her.

Were there others out here, searching for the human females?

I snorted. Of course. We couldn’t have been the only ship who witnessed that explosion.

Tapping at the communicator, only the crackle of static filled my ears. What had I expected during a storm like this?

Of course, I’d be cut off from my brothers.

They’d have to fend for themselves.

And then I found her.

Swaying on her feet, dressed in nothing more than scraps.

It was her. No question.

But if I didn’t reach her soon, she’d freeze to death and I’d have nothing to sell.

That was the only reason I sprinted through the storm, panic ringing through my ears.

Nothing else mattered.

Only the game.

JAYLEE

I  let out a long groan of displeasure.

I’d swear the cold nipped at my feet.

Perhaps I’d forgotten to close the windows? Unlikely, but then again whose ass was freezing?

This girl’s.

Oh well, too late now, I told myself.

If I got up and closed them, I knew it’d be a while before I’d fall back asleep, so I stubbornly stayed put. I tossed and turned in my bed, ignoring the lowering temperature, determined to get my eight hours of sleep.

Come morning, I was to start my dream job at the local gym and I needed to be fresh as a daisy, not showing up with raccoon eyes.

Except this was freakin’ cold!

Whoever said chilly weather was conducive to good rest was an idiot.

Still reluctant to move from my comfortable position, I blindly patted the space around me, wanting to pull my blanket up higher.

Yet, instead of soft Egyptian cotton, the cold lick of metal grazed my fingertips. I recoiled with an audible gasp.

The thermal shock brought forth an unpleasant realization: it wasn’t my bed.

It wasn’t even a bed.

With sleep still coating my lashes, I glanced around. Opaque glass and unyielding metal surrounded me from all sides, like a nightmarish cocoon.

Swallowing down my panic, I called upon all the strength I was capable of, kicking and beating my fists against the fine white lines peppering the ciel blue glass.

Whatever this thing was that I found myself inside of, it was already cracked, which meant I could escape.

Once, twice, and then with all my upper body strength, I slammed myself against the least sturdy portions of my prison, ignoring the mounting headache and the soreness of my body.

I was used to pain, but this was pushing it.

With lucky number ten, I finally broke free. On unsteady legs, I climbed out of my enclosure, but my hard earned freedom merely making the air in my lungs freeze.

Without something between me and the elements, the wind kicked my ass something fierce. The cold hit me doubly hard and I could barely draw in another breath.

My body folded in on itself and I dropped down low.

I winced and closed my eyes. The sudden brightness was almost painful, not to mention unnatural, and for a moment there, I could’ve sworn I saw two suns, looming blue above me.

I shook my head off the nonsense imagery and I called out. “Hello? Is anyone there?”

Yes, I knew shouting into the unknown was mistake number one in horror movies, but this wasn’t a movie. This was… I dunno, more like a nightmare? One set in apocalyptic levels of cold?

“Please? Anyone?”

My voice was quiet and soft, all but lost to the snowstorm around me. The strong gusts of wind tearing across the space around me made my skin tingle.

“Fuck,” I muttered.

I huddled, momentarily paralyzed with cold and fear.

Where the heck was I?

Did I sleepwalk to Narnia or something? This was definitely not LA weather.

I couldn’t make sense of things, but at least I was still wearing my pajamas, so nothing too bad could’ve happened. I glanced down at my bare legs and arms, sunkissed brown now tinted red by the biting frost.

My flimsy pajamas offered no protection against such weather. A thousand needles prickled my skin and I wrapped my arms around my knees, making myself smaller to preserve my body heat and minimize the exposed areas.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to survive for long like that. Rescue seemed unlikely and something inside me, equal parts hysterical and pragmatic, bubbled to the surface, driving my body as if on autopilot.

If I stayed where I was, I’d die.

So it was time to move.

I began to walk, slowly putting one foot in front of the other, staggering like a Walking Dead extra.

I wanted to run, to sprint and scream, really, but I was groggy, shivering, and overall just ill, and every step of my bare feet onto the cold snow shot daggers up my half numbed calves.

It felt as if someone had drugged me, but there couldn’t have been anyone. I worked and lived alone, hadn’t been out bar hopping or whatever people with social lives did.

And right now it didn’t matter.

I shouted and shouted again, each time the sound echoing less and less into the distance.

There was nothing but a great white flurry of flakes whichever way I cared to look.

Was I going in the right direction?

Was there a right direction?

Maybe I should’ve stayed in that metal cocoon.

I wanted to return to it, to let it shelter me, protect me.

Unless that wasn’t real either. Just a part of this crazy dream.

Thinking straight was a chore and the reality before me had grown fractured.

Because I could’ve sworn there was a person out there, not ten feet away, coming towards me, but that had to be another brain glitch.

Real people don’t have skin that looks like molten gold.

They’re not that tall.

They don’t stand that way, so rigidly straight.

I was aware of the rasp of my own breath, the quiet, barely audible rustle of my pajamas as I walked, trying not to fall onto my knees and let the white death take me.

Almost there, I thought, almost close enough to fall into this golden man’s arms and then I’d be safe.

I felt myself swaying, my vision growing blurry and after a few shaky breaths, I found I couldn’t hear anything anymore.

It was suddenly so quiet, the awful kind of silence that only the dead of night brought, but I wouldn’t die now, would I? Maybe it was all just a dream, I thought, before my legs gave out from under me and I fell.

KAMEK

T he most valuable cargo wasn’t the biggest, bulkiest, most outstanding, but the exact opposite.

Just like the little female in my arms, lithe and almost weightless, whose shallow intakes of breath worried me. She was ice cold and motionless, practically lost to the world around her.

Fragile, like all humans I’d ever heard about.

Vulnerable, like all stolen females.

Mine to keep, a voice from within added, but I pushed it back into the darkness it’d come from.

I wasn’t the type to be easily softened and I most certainly didn’t have a weak spot for the less fortunate of this world.

She wasn’t the first, nor the last, kidnapped female about to be thrown into a life of slavery.

It was just her bad luck. It had nothing to do with me.

Whatever that moment of doubt was, it better pass as quickly as it had come.

The skies added to the miniature mountains of white surrounding us.

On instinct, my body wrapped itself around her form, lending the female some much needed warmth. My kind could sustain ten times nature’s fury, but she was of a much more fragile breed.

I glanced down at her.

If I meant to sell my quarry, it was imperative that I acted fast, bringing her to proper shelter.

The stinger, small and light, would never make it out of this storm.

The trees weren’t thick enough to break the wind.

So the cabin I’d passed would have to do.

I could take her there, see the condition she was in, other than half frozen to death, and then make a decision.

With renewed purpose, I made my way to the building. From up close, it was clear it’d been abandoned for quite some time.

Its roof looked suspect and some of the windows were replaced with wooden boards.

But it was better than being out in the elements.

We could wait out the storm and then I’d bring her to the main ship, win the bet, and carry on with a heavier purse.

With my hands momentarily full, I kicked open the door, stepped inside, using my considerable body weight to close it shut, before taking a look around.

If the place looked derelict from the outside, the inside wasn’t that much better. There was a rudimentary fireplace, something akin to a bed, a slanting, half-broken table, and a chest that doubled as a chair, if need be.

I gently laid the female down onto the rickety bed and she let out a low moan.

The sweet sound of it made my insides tie into knots. Small and precious and wonderful, it called for an answer.

For protection against the world.

For answering sweetness.

Yet, it was as far from that as it could be and I knew it.

I wouldn’t delude myself by thinking something might happen between us once she woke up. I intended to sell her and win the bet against my brothers.

I couldn’t keep her.

I wouldn’t even imagine it.

Without truly meaning to, I reached out a hand and brushed the little human female’s hair out of her pale face. She looked so peaceful, so delicate.

Was I really going to do this to her?

It wasn’t my fault.

She’d already been taken.

Her fate was decided upon long before I laid eyes on her.

Somewhere between now and the moment the slavers picked her as their target, her life’s course had been completely altered. There was no going back.

She moaned again, this time closer to a whine. Her strange, soft skin had taken on a bluish hue and she was so cold to the touch, the few snowflakes remaining on her body wouldn’t even melt.

I sighed.

“This doesn’t bode well,” I murmured, my breath turning into a frosty fog. A cold shelter wasn’t much better than no shelter at all.

There was no way to immediately seal off the space and the fireplace didn’t have the tiniest twig with which to make fire for the little human female to warm up near.

So I did the only thing I could - I took off my cloak and draped it over her form before kneeling down the side of the bed. She was barefoot and her toes were turning dark purple.

Carefully, I touched her, but the little female hissed.

“Bear with it,” I said, unsure if she could hear me or not, but some strange part of me needed her to know I meant her no harm. “I need to restore the blood flow or you’ll lose your feet.”

For a moment, I froze. Even if she heard me, did she understand?

A quick check behind her ear answered that question. The slavers had implanted a translation device. Usual procedure to ensure that slaves would follow orders quickly, but useful for me now.

Reassured, I massaged her foot, from sole to ankle and higher up her calf.

Slowly, surely, the deliberate path my fingers took as they pressed and dragged over her frozen, aching skin started to produce heat.

Not just in her body, but in mine as well.

Inappropriate thoughts crowded my mind, but I pushed each and every one back down.

She wasn’t mine.

If I took her, claimed her, tasted her, she’d be worth less at auction.

Nothing could or would ever happen between us.

I switched limbs, giving her right leg the same kind of hands-on treatment and she moaned again, sending my thoughts back out of control.

I stared at her fragile form, visibly more relaxed, so completely unaware of the dangers of this world or of the way my hands worked to loosen the kinks in her muscles, fighting the urge to explore more of her body.

She was so different from the females of my species and yet, still so beautiful, even with such smooth skin and a lack of scales or facial ridges.

There was some meat on her bones, some good muscle definition there, telling me this human took good care of herself.

I wondered how she managed to become someone else’s prey.

Lost in my own head, I failed to notice she’d woken up and was quietly staring at me, assessing the situation.

It was only when I pushed the cloak higher on her body, revealing her curved thighs, that our gazes met.

If she was scared, she hadn’t shown it.

She looked ready to fight me - her jaw squared, her lips set in a thin line and all the fierceness this beautiful, tiny creature was capable of was infused into the words she uttered next.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Hands off me, you bastard!”

She tried to pull her leg from my grasp, but I held onto her, unreasonably unwilling to let her go.

If she panicked, if she ran, she’d be back out in the cold.

She was like a wild animal, straining, pulling and twisting, wanting to get away, but my grip wouldn’t let her gain an inch of freedom, no matter how hard she tried.

“Calm down. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

She’d only end up killing herself in the raging storm out there, or worse, die a slow and painful death by the time I found her to bring her back here, her limbs lost to frostbite and then going septic.

I wrestled her closer to me and with a neutral, level, tone, I laid out the terms of how it’d go. “If you calm down, I’ll tell you everything. If you continue to try to fight me, I’ll have no other choice but to tie you up.”

Her eyes flared wider. “Let me go! Let me go, let me go!!”

She continued to uselessly struggle against my superior strength, making me think she was pretty, but dumb.

Surely she knew it wouldn’t work.

“Fucking asshole, I told you to let me go!”

Then she kicked me in the face.

I had to admit, it’d been a while since someone had taken me by surprise like that.

Her little foot actually managed to split open my lower lip.

Golden liquid stained my copper skin and I tasted iron on my tongue. I rubbed the pain away.

“Impressive,” I let out.

I could make her pay for that, hit her back and beat her into submission, but I wouldn’t.

A dainty little human she might be, but I’d been a fool to think she was dumb.

I deserved the ass-kicking I got, for underestimating my opponent.

She was a firecracker.

There was a part of me that wanted her to take a gamble and go against me once more, to see what all she was capable of.

I liked her fighting spirit.

I liked the thrill of the chase.

What else would she try? When would she admit defeat?

Or was she the type to never admit such a thing?

I liked the idea.

Finally free, at least from my touch, she slid backwards on the bed until her back connected with the cold wall behind her. She eyed me with apprehension, but also a good deal of determination.

For some stupid reason, I felt proud of her for that.

And then the questions flew out of her and my feelings of pride were replaced with ones of dread and awkwardness.

“Who are you? Where am I? Why am I here? Where is this place, anyway? It’s not LA. Why the hell are you dressed up like that, like it’s Halloween?”

She pulled my cloak around her body. Bundled up like that, crammed into the corner, she looked even smaller than she was.

I got up to my full height, towering above her. Playing nice hadn’t worked. Maybe she would only respond to fear.

Or not.

She didn’t shy away from me, just going back to a defensive position. I could tell she was like a tight coil under the cloak, ready to spring into action if the opportunity presented itself.

“My name is Kamek Teki and,” I trailed off. Surprisingly, the words tasted bitter on my tongue. But this little warrior deserved the truth. “You are a slave now.”

She scoffed. “The hell I am!”

“You were kidnapped by slavers, taken from your home and brought here, to my planet.”

“Planet? Are you drunk?”

I ignored her. “And as soon as this storm passes, you-”

I didn’t get to finish my sentence, because she threw the cloak at my face, distracting me.

I twirled on a foot and reached out, my hand just barely grasping her wrist to pull her back.

I miscalculated the force I used, though, and we fell backwards onto the bed, landing with a loud and painful thud, her sprawled over my chest, my arms trapping her to me.

She wasted no time kicking my shin and punching my stomach, but I breathed through the impact.

“You’re one crazy fucker, you know that?”

I bore punch after punch, kick after kick, roll after roll, noting how precisely she targeted the spots on my body.

Were I another human, I probably would’ve been defeated five hits into her attempt at escaping.

Unfortunately for her, she was against a far tougher species.

I used to go fishing with Laux when we were younger. The bigger the prey, the harder it struggled.

Her size had nothing to do with her value. I let the little female exhaust herself before reining in my exotic game once more.

With her on top of me, panting hard, trembling, and how I could see down the valley between her breasts, taking in her nearly bare legs splayed open, wrapping around my hips.

Even in her anger, she was beautiful.

Yet, now all I could do was ignore the way my cock stirred feeling her soft weight atop my body.

Rolling slightly, I maneuvered her between a wall and my solid presence, wrapping a hand around her throat.

The human female stopped struggling the second I squeezed her against me just enough to tell her I’d won this round.

During our little dance of power, my cloak had fallen off her body and she knelt before me, half naked and flushed, out of breath, her messy hair inviting me to run a hand through its gentle waves and bring her head closer, covering her full lips with mine.

I could make her burn, even with this snowstorm outside.

Her quickened pulse echoed in my own body, making it harder and harder to not push her on her back and claim her as mine, at least once.

It was madness.

Her defiance was an incredible turn on. Even like this, her eyes bore into mine, unafraid.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she panted.

I coughed, clearing the lust from my voice before addressing her. “Are you done trying to hit me, little one?”

I could almost taste the frustration in her words.

“Yes.”

“Will you try to run again?”

“No.”

I chuckled. Her answer came much too quick, too clear, to be genuine. “Yes, you will.”

“Then why ask me if you already know the answer?”

I shook my head, deeply amused.

She was unlike any female I’d ever met.

Hells. She was unlike anyone I’d ever met.

The more she held her ground, the more she swore at me, yelled at me, kicked me and tried to escape me, the more I wanted to keep her for myself.

I wanted to claim her, to ravish her, to conquer her in a way that perhaps she wouldn’t fight so hard against.

I wanted to talk to her some more, to draw out her name, to coax some compliance and sweetness, but an unexpected itch across my back and a sharp pain in my chest made it hard to stay coherent.

“I’ll be back with some wood,” I snapped. “If you try to run again, you won’t live to see another sunrise.”

And then I fled the cabin, and my own disturbing desires.

JAYLEE

I  waited until the strange man closed the door before taking off my cloak - correction, his cloak, and throwing it in its general direction, along with a few choice curses.

“You won’t live to see another sunrise,” I parroted his threat in the most mocking tone I could muster.

If he thought I was the type to give up and surrender after that little display of strength—however impressive it had been, then he had another think coming.

I’d been through so much crap in my life, very few things still scared me. Bigger than life men with anger issues weren’t among them.

But now that I was alone and in no immediate danger, I had time to breathe and think.

And think again.

I had so many questions floating around my brain.

Such as… Did eating expired yogurt cause hallucinations?

Or, as it stood, some very, very weird and yet realistic dreams, borne out of my trademarked loneliness-slash-too much night time TV?

Because first, there was that metal cocoon-like thing that’d felt pretty real.

And then the ridiculously powerful snowstorm that definitely felt more real than a dream had any right to.

And now this humongous man and his strange, otherworldly, appearance.

It wasn’t just the height or the accent I couldn’t place.

I deduced from those that my captor-slash-savior, actually-to-be-decided-what-the-hell-he-was-to-me, had to have come from some Eastern European country or something equally exotic.

Lots of people moved to L.A. from all over the world.

His skin was painted a coppery gold and I was pretty sure those scales and ridges on his face and body were either legit, or the result of a very talented makeup department for some movie or whatever.

Again, you could find anything in L.A. Best special effects on Earth.

I’d seen pictures of people who’d done that. What was it called? Extreme body modifications. That’s right.

That’s obviously what was going on here.

He should lay off those sci-fi flicks for a while.

And if that wasn’t the answer?

Maybe I should.

Maybe this was a dream, a nightmare. Being trapped, finding this place. Imagining such an alien-like man, letting him affect me so much.

I brought my hand to my throat. I could still feel his hands on me. So unbelievably strong.

And yet, the man hadn’t hurt me at all.

Not so much a man as a dragon, minus the wings. Broad shoulders, burning eyes and the way he so easily held onto me and subdued me?

He’d put gym bros to shame.

A shame he was totally crazy, or else I’d have… I had to stop myself there.

No, I wouldn’t’ve stopped fighting.

The ease at which he overpowered me was not a turn on.

The way his hand had felt at my throat was perfectly normal.

“Jaylee,” I scolded myself, “this is not the time!”

I shook my head at the memory of his words—kidnapped by slavers, like I was property and not a person with rights and free will.

How ridiculous!

Too many movies, for sure.

I strained my ears to see if I picked up on any noises, but all I heard from my spot on these planks of wood were the ones of the raging storm outside.

Had he really left me alone?

Normally, I’d dread that.

But now, I was glad I was used to only having myself to rely on.

I got up and retrieved the cloak he’d given me, tightening it around my body for warmth and a sense of protection.

Its material was harsh, almost like a burlap sack, but it was better than only wearing my cutesy pajamas.

With that, I paced around the small cabin, looking for food or weapons, or any clues as to where the hell I might be. L.A., it was not, but an alien planet?

No freakin’ way. I had my flaws, but I wasn’t a gullible village idiot.

Half an hour later and there wasn’t much to go on, to my disappointment. The furniture looked antique and it had no hidden compartments from what I could see. Decorative objects were missing entirely and the overall state of things hinted at it being an abandoned space.

The only useful thing in the chest was an old, tattered, pair of boots. Way too big for me and of a strange, almost triangular shape, but if I got out of here, they’d be better than trying to run barefoot through the snow.

Nothing about the man who’d brought me here.

But he was obviously the only one who lived in this place. No one else would use it, if they didn’t have to.

Was this his home, the humble abode of a man of poor financial means, or just an adjacent shack meant to conveniently keep his victims?

Countless Criminal Minds episodes formed a disturbing scenario in the back of my mind.

This was how women met their ends, kidnapped by deranged men and then tortured, or worse.

I made a perfect target: single, orphaned, no one would notice I was gone until way too late and even then…

If he was some sort of nutter, it’d also explain the odd costume-like appearance.

Perhaps he’d experienced a trigger and gone through a mental breakdown and now he thought he was a dragon-man?

It sounded crazy to my ears, but then there were those guys, what were they called?

Furries? Yeah. They dressed up like animals, too.

I’d started to put together the pieces of my unusual puzzle, and the picture they’d formed seemed grim.

But there was something that didn’t fit.

I should’ve felt afraid, except that I hadn’t been harmed yet.

Glancing down at my feet, I remembered the sight I’d woken up to.

This stranger carefully massaging blessed heat into my flesh.

One thing was certain.

I could’ve died out there.

I could’ve lost a limb or two.

I hadn’t, though, and that was because of him.

No matter the reason I was here, he wasn’t violent towards me or asking me for sexual favors.

That made me feel a little bad about all the scenarios my mind had come up with. He’d even said he’d bring wood for the fire.

I walked to the window next to the door. It was covered by a flimsy wood board, but I wanted to see where he was.

Was he coming back?

Did I want him to?

Prying up a corner, I peeked out, only seeing a world of white and cold.

I could only look outside for a few moments before I was forced to retreat.

I definitely wouldn’t have survived out there on my own, wearing my pajamas and no shoes.

Perhaps I should show the strange man some gratitude.

Maybe even form a bond with him to find out more about what was going on.

I’d read somewhere that in cases like this, it was imperative to make one’s captor see you as a person, as a human being, to not let them treat you like an object.

Objects met with unhappy endings.

Hours or maybe just minutes later, I couldn’t keep track of things in this desolate cabin, he was back.

He strode across the small space between the door and the fireplace, letting the few logs of wood he’d brought back drop haphazardly at his feet.

I watched it all unfold from my spot near the window, where I’d snuck peeks, watching for his inevitable return.

As small as this shelter was, it was made even smaller, almost claustrophobic by his sheer physicality.

He had to walk with his head bent down in order to not hit the ceiling. I’d never seen a man that tall before and that included my one basketball player crush from ten years ago.

“You should be in the bed,” he growled.

Um… no. That wasn’t where I planned to spend all of my time, thank you.

And then he made fire, without a lighter, without any matches, just by rubbing some twigs together, and it was like witnessing a magic trick.

My mood improved immediately and I felt hope building in my chest again.

“Thank you,” I murmured.

I kinda hated how low my voice sounded, how unlike me, but the mood was such that speaking any louder felt inappropriate.

He glanced back at me, over his shoulders, surprise visible on his face. His hands lingered on the remaining logs as he stacked them in a neat pile, but he didn’t say anything back.

It was a little awkward.

“My name’s Jaylee. Jaylee Santos,” I began my speech.

I’d thought of what to tell him in order to endear myself to him.

I couldn’t say I taught self-defense classes for a living, because that was my hidden ace, and I couldn’t tell him I was an orphan, either.

I needed him to think there were people out there that I loved and who cared about me who’d stop at nothing in order to get me back home to safety.

Even if that was all a lie and the only soul missing me would be the stray cat I liked to feed on my way to work.

“I’m from L.A. and-”

“I don’t care.” He cut me off, his deep voice even rougher than his exterior.

He got up from the fireplace, now burning quietly and steady, the warm yellow glow of the fire bathing the entire space in golden hues.

Like a moth, I was drawn to it and little by little, I slid towards the flames.

Or rather, towards this man whose presence set something deep within me, not just on edge, but on fire.

“Kamek, right?”

“What?”

I ignored his glacial tone.

“Why am I here?”

“I told you -”

“Kidnapped. Right.” I took a deep breath to rein in my outrage and level my tone to one that was simply inquisitive. “So basically, I’m your slave now? You get to do whatever you want with me? I have to obey you?”

His reply was quick to come and I thought I sensed some underlying indignation in his words.

“I have no need for a slave. Do you understand?”

I nodded, stunned into silence.

The sheer vehemence behind his warning took me by surprise, and in a way, scared me straight from trying to sass him again.

Maybe he was a good man after all? And we’d gotten off the wrong foot? I didn’t want to spit in the face of a benefactor.

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

I let myself drop to the floor with all the grace of a baby elephant, and I reached out my hands for warmth.

As nice as having his cloak was, it was like carrying around a bed sheet, or a comforter. It was too big and too loose for me to be comfortably snug.

Or elegant.

I sighed. If anything, I was a walking disaster. Not that it really mattered, considering my circumstances.

I found myself speaking without truly meaning to.

“So if I’m no longer on Earth, but on another planet, does that make you an alien?”

Way to dive right into that one, Jaylee.

“You’re the alien as far as I’m concerned, little one.”

“I guess I can’t argue with that.”

I considered Kamek for a moment.

He reminded me of a tiny bronze dragon I once had as a kid. I loved that toy so much.

I’d managed to keep it through three, maybe four foster homes, until a bully three times my size snatched it from me and left me with a broken nose and wounded pride.

That was when I’d decided I’d become strong and be able to protect myself and my belongings. Unfortunately, it was also the point where I distanced myself from the people around me, who’d done nothing but fail me.

And there I was, the current highlight of my life, sharing a cramped space with a guy who thought he was an alien, pretending I believed his delusions.

Kamek’s next words took me by even greater surprise than his odd mood swings. “Give me that,” he said, pointing at my body.

Did he want his cloak back?

I started to feel warm and toasty.

A nice thick layer between my bare skin and the crazy guy seemed like a good idea.

I crossed my arms over my chest. So much for trying to get on his good side.

“No.”

He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath, the universal sign of annoyance. His patience with me was wearing thin, but I was suddenly too angry to care.

I liked my layers, they made me feel safe.

And not much did right now.

“I won’t ask you again,” he growled

Like a petulant child, I shook my head.

Before I refused again, he’d pounced on me, grabbing twin fistfuls of my cloak.

We wrestled for a short while, until the sound of fabric being torn put an end to our shenanigans.

He’d managed to rip the clothes off my body, his cloak and my pajama top, both.

There I was, bare chested and speechless, in front of a man I didn’t know.

For a few heartbeats, we both just stood there, unsure of each other.

A blush spread from my face to my breasts and lower, as quick and devastating as a wildfire.

I melted under the heat of my shame and unbidden physical need, the intensity of his stare adding layers of different, contrasting and torturous emotions.

Just like that, the strangest impulse came to me: I wanted to kiss this man. Or for him to kiss me, it didn’t matter.

I wanted to feel his strength again, this time in a more pleasurable horizontal dance.

I read it on his face, too.

He wanted the same thing, to feel me, to taste me, to explore me.

I watched him take off his jacket, exposing himself to me, matching my nakedness.

Shit.

He told the truth.

This was not my Earth and he… he wasn’t human. The scales, the patterns on his flesh, the coloring. They weren’t part of a costume, nor were they tattoos.

He hadn’t lied to me and he wasn’t insane.

My thoughts came to a screeching halt.

“This should keep you warmer,” he whispered, draping the leathery jacket around my shoulders.

Instantly, I was enveloped by his scent, something spicy and something I couldn’t quite describe, a little tangy, perhaps, like sweat, but not unpleasant.

Something… alien. How ironic.

“You’re… really…”

His gaze took on a compassionate nature. “I told you. This is not your home world.”

I hadn’t fully processed his words yet.

I couldn’t connect the dots, but I still had to ask.

“What’ll happen to me?”

A shadow passed through that molten gold gaze before he answered.

“You should stay inside. We’ll wait out the storm first.”

He rose from his spot and walked out on me again.

Call me stupid if you want, but I didn’t feel the least bit afraid.

Maybe I was numb.

Maybe I was dumb.

But something told me that this man… alien… wasn’t going to hurt me.

Then why did my breath come so fast when I was near him?

KAMEK

I  grabbed the goxuin by its broken neck and dragged its heavy carcass away from the cabin door, underneath the shelter of the trees at the edge of the clearing.

I hadn’t noticed I’d nicked its belly trying to carry it and the logs at the same time so I wouldn’t have to make two trips in such lousy weather.

“Thrak take it.”

I’d been careful not to use the blaster to keep the hide from smelling like burned hair, breaking the neck with my hands to keep from leaving a trail.

And now this.

A worrisome quantity of blood had already pooled beneath it, a scented beacon for all the wild and hungry.

We were in a dangerous part of the mountains, where packs of axtolls roamed the mountains and stalked the forests.

I didn’t want to spend the night fighting off four-legged, sharp-fanged opportunists.

I was already busy enough staving off something far fiercer and harder to conquer, despite an unassuming form—my raw emotions.

The blood boiled inside my veins, making me feel as if I were sick and feverish, clouding my judgment, muddying my thoughts, confusing my priorities.

I welcomed the physical exertion and the biting cold of the icy flakes.

Skinning and butchering the unlucky critter into portions was just the distraction I needed, and the fact that I was doing it out here, half naked during this terrible snowstorm, was even better.

Why did the little human female have to be so beautiful?

When I’d accidentally torn off her odd human clothes and I saw her full figure, her silken smooth skin that looked so soft, her round breasts, full and plump, with their pointy pink nipples, I almost reached out to touch her.

I wanted to inhale her scent and drink the sweetness of her nectar.

I wanted to run my hands across the mountains and valleys of her body and make her part her legs for me.

And that was when I felt it, the dark impulse to keep her as mine, despite telling her I had no need for slaves.

I hadn’t lied to her.

Not about that, at least.

But if I didn’t claim her, didn’t take her, how else could I keep something so delectable to myself?

She wouldn’t accept me otherwise, given the shocked expression she had upon seeing me without my jacket on.

Obviously, I was a monster to her.

For some reason, the idea made me sick to my stomach.

She was such a brave female, with her sharp wit, sassy comebacks and always on the lookout for an opportunity to escape.

She was so unwilling to lay down and surrender.

Why’d she have to be a fighter, a survivor, an opportunist, like me and my brothers?

She was just a human female, one of many in this universe.

Simply my temporary prisoner and prized loot.

There were too many out there, just like her.

Stolen, sold and used.

She’d be out of sight and out of mind soon.

She’d fetch me a good sum.

I’ll win the bet against my brothers, and then life would go on as usual.

I didn’t care.

Couldn’t care.

Except, of course, none of the above was true.

My chest tightened every time I thought about her future life.

A female that intelligent and strong-willed didn’t belong at the beck and call of some highly ranked brute whose pleasure would lay in breaking her.

She deserved to be treasured and cherished.

By some perverted twist of fate, I just had to pick the stasis pod hosting the world’s most obnoxiously feisty and inquisitive human female.

I couldn’t lie to myself and pretend her whole being didn’t affect me.

Despite all my training, the many moons of hunting, chasing, fleeing, dominating the creatures of the wild jungles of the south, the three moons of trials to prove myself to the elders of my kind, nothing I’d been forced to learn could’ve prepared me to face the fierceness in that little human female’s brown eyes.

She simply disarmed me with one glance.

“Is everything all right?”

I hallucinated her gentle voice, it seemed. I hadn’t even been near her for that long, and she’d seeped into every crevice of my mind, as if she had any right to do so.

“Kamek? What happened? I’m coming over!”

I heard snow crunching softly behind me and when I turned to look, the hallucination suddenly materialized.

It angered me, how reckless she was.

A fragile little thing and she braved the storm that almost claimed her life, worried about me, a total stranger, a man who, unbeknownst to her, would sell her for a hefty sum.

I’d never felt more like an asshole than I felt right then.

“What are you doing out here? Get back inside!” I shouted, not thinking she heard me.

She kept pushing forward through the snow, up and down the miniature valleys and hills that’d formed, determined to reach me.

She was closer to swimming through the amassed snow rather than plowing through it, but she was relentless.

I knew how things must’ve looked like.

What she probably imagined upon seeing me half bare with blood splattered all around and all over me, a sharp, bloodied knife in my hand and something large and furry beneath me.

“I’ll be right there!” she shouted. “Are you hurt?”

And then I saw it, before it actually happened.

She’d pulled on a pair of tattered boots, ridiculously larger on her tiny feet.

And she was headed straight for one of the bloody patches of iced snow.

Her leg would give way and she’d fall, maybe even break a few bones.

She wasn’t being careful and thinking with her brain, but with her passionate heart.

Silly female thought I was in need of help and she tried her damnedest to reach me in time.

To help me.

To protect me.

Injured, for me.

I couldn’t allow it.

The goxuin’s partly skinned carcass dropped from my hands as I leapt towards her, catching her in my arms and breaking her fall with my body.

Soft, freshly fallen snow and jagged lengths of hard, old ice connected with my skin and I swallowed my grunts of pain.

We slid a ways further, down into a patch of pine trees, where we finally landed in a tangle of limbs, with her sprawled on top of me, a variation of our usual dance.

I held her tightly, trying to keep her out of the snow.

She was still so cold, the foolish human female.

No one but my brothers had ever rushed to my side.

I’d given her no reason to show such care for me.

She was simply that kind of person. It humbled me.

“Thank you,” she breathed, then after a moment, added the barrage of questions she was accustomed to rain down on me.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt? What was that animal? Was it a small bear or…” She trailed off, unsure in the face of my silence.

“Kamek? I’m sorry.”

I half expected her to pull away, remembering the shocked expression she had when I’d offered her my jacket.

My garment swallowed her frame whole, making her look even more fragile than she actually was, making me want to grab those hands she’d placed on my chest for stability and direct them lower to where I ached.

I wanted to warm her up in ways that’d color her cheeks red and make her feverish with need.

Impossible wants.

“Do you have a death wish?” I scolded her.

I needed to channel this energy, these thoughts, in a different direction, and anger was the first emotion I stumbled across.

It’d have to do.

Her lips pressed into a thin line. “There was a lot of blood, I thought you…”

“I’m fine,” I snapped. “I know how to take care of myself. Unlike you.”

She lowered her gaze, chastised and embarrassed. I didn’t mean to be such an asshole to her, but she made me feel things that’d only serve to get us both hurt later on.

Jaylee pushed away and this time, I let her sit up, ignoring how she felt as she moved against me.

“It’s just that… you remind me of something from back home.”

“You mean someone?”

There was that tightening in my chest, torturing me again.

If I didn’t care much for selling her, despite trying to be resolute about it, I outright hated the idea that she had a lover.

Someone back on her homeworld who’d touched her body, held space in her heart.

“Nevermind,” I huffed, “I don’t want to know.”

Scooping her up, I curved my body around her, encasing her in a protective shield, wordlessly claiming her as mine, at least for now.

The past was in the past. Whoever had enjoyed her affections once upon a time, they’d never get the chance to do so again.

As we trekked back to the cabin, she huddled against me, both arms clinging to my neck and shoulders for support, not making another sound.

I didn’t need to glance down to know she was watching me, perhaps curious or confused.

I felt her eyes on me and I hoped she couldn’t tell what went on behind my mask of indifference.

The inside of the cabin had grown colder.

“You forgot to close the door,” I sighed. “The fire’s almost dead.”

I set her down on the chest and went to stoke the few remaining embers.

Her words took me by surprise. “I’m going to tell you anyway.”

“What?”

“You remind me of a lizard. Well, not like an iguana or a gecko, more like…” She trailed off while I blinked.

The translators were seldom perfect, especially with languages from planets that hadn’t officially been contacted.

The word she used brought to mind something small and skittering.

Living under rocks.

“I’m not a puny critter.”

“No, obviously not,” she amended with a grin, “but you’ve got scales and you look a little-”

“You think I’m little? There’s nothing little about me.”

I didn’t mean it that way but she glanced down, blushed, and then upon catching herself, redirected her gaze back to my face.

It proved to be the wrong move.

Our eyes met and then my mind went exactly where hers had been, and if I didn’t put an end to this, there was no telling what I’d do to her.

“Maybe you’re more like a dragon than a lizard,” she offered. “Except you don’t have wings.”

I flinched at her words.

What male out there didn’t want to find his mate and have their wings emerge?

And yet it was so rare, almost unheard of, that most of us learned to give up on such dreams early on, content to grab whatever else the universe threw our way and call it a good enough life.

“I should go back to the goxuin. I’ll bring you the fur, it’s good quality and you could sleep on it.”

She rose from her spot, blocking my way. “Don’t you want your jacket back?”

The jacket covering her tempting body? “No.”

“But aren’t you cold out there? At least a little?”

I shrugged. “I’ve learned to ignore what ails me.”

I’ve also learned to ignore the hypocrisy behind my words, it seemed.

“What ails you, though? You’re out there, during a snowstorm, the likes of which I’ve never seen. You seem to have no trouble hunting and chopping wood, I just…”

“It’s not that big of a deal.”

“Well, to me it is. So in that case, I really do appreciate you giving me your jacket. It’s warm, even if it’s more like a dress on me.”

“It’s the least I could do. It looks good on you, anyway,” the compliment slipped without me meaning to bring it into existence.

The little female blushed.

“Yeah, like a weird dress, but I’m not complaining, it’s the best. Thank you, Kamek.”

She offered me a smile, a genuine, no sass, no trickery.

Proof that she was indeed this survivalist I’d made her out to be in my head.

She didn’t dwell on her troubles, or my sour mood, she rolled with the punches life kept throwing her way.

“I think, uh, I think we got off on the wrong foot here. You’ve saved my life and I kicked you in the face. I’m sorry about that, I was just-”

“-fearful.”

“Taken by surprise.”

I couldn’t help but smirk at how she punctuated her every word. She didn’t like being seen as weak.

Jaylee crossed her arms over her chest. “What’s so funny?”

“You.”

“Me? Why? What’d I do? Are you mocking me?”

I shook my head. Another barrage of questions. But despite that, she was so like me in some regards, it was uncanny.

“I’ll be back soon. Don’t let the fire die again.”

“Of course, I wouldn’t want you to spank me as punishment,” she joked.

Now that’s an idea, I thought, grabbing the torn cloak to wrap around my shoulders, leaving the cabin and the tempting little female behind.

But before I finished butchering the beast, there was another task.

It wouldn’t go down well, but I went ahead with it anyway.

I climbed inside a shallow cave on the side of the mountain and pinged my brothers using the communicator on my wrist.

The crackle of static filled my ears once more. As usual, it was difficult to establish proper connections under such weather conditions.

“Where are you?”

“There’s going to be a delay,” I replied to Laux, the usual few seconds of delay stretching into minutes before I finally got a reply.

Laughter surrounded his words. “Don’t tell me someone got to her first! You’re getting old, man.”

“Nothing like that. I’ll just need a day or so more.”

“Uh huh, you just don’t want to admit defeat.”

He’d found the truth, but not how he’d expected it.

There was, indeed, something I didn’t want to admit.

But it wasn’t about my so-called defeat.

It was something much more serious.

JAYLEE

I  wanted to slap myself stupid.

No, maybe not stupid, because I was pretty sure I was already.

Did I just tell Kamek, a guy I’d met for less than a day, that he should spank me as punishment?

An alien man.

An alien dragon man…

Was I out of my mind, completely forgetting any sense of modesty or shame? Yet, despite my embarrassment, I couldn’t help a cheeky grin.

Now that we’d sort of fixed our crappy beginning, I found talking to Kamek was easy.

Too easy maybe, given the stupid flirting that’d just flowed out of me, without even realizing.

Sure, he was half gruff, half puff, but like the badger house in Harry Potter, he was a rather okay guy.

Tall and imposing, but not domineering and violent, quite the opposite, caring and cautious. He’d saved me, clothed me, kept me warm and then saved me once more, this time from my own recklessness.

He was like my guardian angel from space.

Also, I may or may not have taken the liberty to cop a feel of those hard pecs and well defined abs when I braced myself against his body after the fall.

Sweet baby Jesus, he was sex on legs! I wasn’t the type to throw myself at a man, but there was something about Kamek that was simply… different.

It wasn’t just that he was super hot, which he was, for an alien.

But most guys I knew couldn’t even find their way around a pre-cooked meal kit, whereas Kamek?

He hunted, could make a fire the old fashioned way, had mad fashion sense—okay, I might be biased here because men in leather just do it for me, and unless I was mistaken, perhaps he had built this cabin, too?

Not that long ago, back on Earth, there weren’t construction companies to do the hard work for people looking to settle down.

Men had to chop trees and cut timber and put together humble houses for their families all on their own.

Maybe that was true for him, too?

Other than the thing on his wrist he kept checking, which looked relatively high-tech, everything about him and the cabin screamed primitive, handmade.

A little rough around the edges, maybe, but like a fix-it-up crafting project.

We sort of had that in common, now that I thought about it.

Not the crafting part.

I had two left hands, but we were self-made, the both of us, fending for ourselves and making progress in a world that hadn’t welcomed us with open arms and wouldn’t really give a rat’s ass if we lived or died.

Otherwise, why else would he be here, alone, without a soul to share a meal with?

Whatever it was, he looked to be a very capable man, hardworking and determined, and that was hot.

As hot as those nice abs I’d managed to catch some glimpses of before he found a way to wear the torn cloak.

Oh God, the cloak… I couldn’t believe that happened, too! I wanted to squeal like a schoolgirl.

When did I become so shameless?

I got up from my spot near the fire and peeked outside again, looking for his form, needing him to be back and kill this eerie silence, but I saw even less than the last time I’d tried it.

The dark mauve dusk had become a frightening expanse of pitch black and the snow kept falling, never ending.

And Kamek was out there, alone, braving Mother Nature head on, apparently to get some food and furs.

For me.

Even if he didn’t seem like he could stand being in the same room with me for long, as if he were afraid of me.

Which was hysterical.

I was out here on an alien planet, without my own clothes to wear and the one time I went against him, hitting my hardest, I’d gone for known weak spots, what had happened?

He won.

The strength he possessed was plain… otherworldly.

I pulled the jacket tighter around me and decided I wouldn’t make any sort of progress with my little mystery like this.

I was tired and hungry and I couldn’t see a mile ahead of me with this snowstorm.

Perhaps tomorrow morning, after a solid nap, I’d learn more and come up with an action plan.

I climbed into bed with my back against the wall, so I could sense if anyone or anything came at me and be able to defend myself. Plus, however tempting it was to sleep right next to the warm fire, I didn’t trust myself not to roll over and into it.

That was not on the list of tricks to turn oneself into a hot girl.

When I woke up next, a sense of déjà vu took over my entire being.

I was once again shivering, alone, surrounded by unfamiliar things and slightly confused.

I rose up in the bed, trying to control my breathing while at the same time, summoning my memories.

The light inside the cabin was considerably dim and it looked like I was all alone.

Dread joined in the impromptu gathering of negative feelings.

Kamek had lied.

He hadn’t come back for me.

He’d abandoned me here on my own, to die of cold and hunger.

I was an idiot to think a total stranger could care enough about me, another total stranger, to make sure I survived this ordeal.

I was cursed to always be on my own.

I craned my neck to check the fire. It was still burning, yet not as brightly.

I wasn’t much of a winter child, granted, and still sort of ill-dressed, but I used to think of myself as tougher than this.

Come on, Jaylee, you got this, you’ve been through much worse, I told myself, in an attempt at pep-talking myself into action.

I meant to get up and throw a log or two into it, but all I managed to do was a half-stretch followed by a yelp, when a gust of wind caressed my bare leg.

Not very insulated, this cabin.

Yet before I could find yet another flaw in this place’s design, or feel sorry for myself some more, twin golden orbs shone in the opposite corner, drawing my attention to them.

Blink.

I blinked back.

My heartbeat sped up and I froze in fear when it occurred to me that something or someone might’ve crawled up in here while I was resting.

Shit, if only I had some sort of weapon!

And then, to make things even worse, my uninvited house guest got up, instantly doubling in size, and came towards me. On instinct, I drew away, flattening my body against the freezing cold wall.

“Don’t come any closer! I will hurt you!”

I was ready to kick and claw my way to safety if needed, when a low chuckle filled the space.

“Silly female. You’re so fragile, who’re you going to hurt, hmm?” The voice came as a whisper, half-scolding, half-mocking.

“You…”

“I’m sure you think so, but quiet now. Wear this.”

He climbed into bed next to me, wrapping a length of fur around my shoulders.

Kamek.

Part of my brain shouted at me to say something in protest, to shove him away for daring to leave me alone for so long and for being too forward now, wanting to maintain my dignity and modesty. But at the same time, he was back and he was so freakin’ warm and grudges were for the stupid.

When Kamek pulled me into his lap and that comforting spicyness enveloped me, I told reason and shame to go fuck themselves.

I was too exhausted, in dire need of restful sleep and craving the feeling of safety, however unreal it’d end up being.

I’d enjoy the small comforts of his embrace.

With that, I stopped fighting against my body and closed my eyes, letting sleep claim me once more.

Hours or minutes later, impossible to tell, I stretched and lounged in bed like a house cat, enjoying the pleasant toastiness of my sleeping environment.

It almost didn’t register in my brain that I was mindlessly petting my pillow.

Or that my pillow was anything but one. It was, first off, rather firm and the texture kind of scaly and were pillows supposed to move up and down, almost rhythmically?

Unwilling to wake up, I turned around, still comfortably snuggled in my fur cocoon, and I opened my eyes just enough to make out on top of what, or rather, on top of whom I was laying so sprawled.

I let out a groggy chuckle upon seeing the coppery-gold skin shimmer in the faint fire light.

“Of course, I’m dreaming about you like this.”

Here in my dreams, I could be honest.

Kamek had haunted my every waking hour. Considering what half my thoughts about him had been, it made sense for me to find traces of him in my dreams, too.

Half naked and cuddling me adoringly, there was no way it was real.

If it were, I was sure Mr. Grumpy Lizard Man would’ve kicked me off the bed or something, considering his odd mood swings.

But in my dreams, he was romantic.

I snuggled into him, nuzzling his chest, inhaling his addicting scent.

Despite it being just a figment of my affection-starved mind, I couldn’t fault myself a little… harmless… exploration.

I wouldn’t dare do this awake, for real, to the actual man, but since it was just me indulging in a fantasy no one else was privy to, why not indulge myself to the fullest?

Biting my lower lip, I slid a hand across the muscled expanse of his chest and then lower, a ghost of a touch, tantalizing and provocative, conquering new territories on his body, but soon stopped above his pants zipper.

Heat radiated from him, but I attributed that to me just being warm under my fur covering. Dream men didn’t get to grow excited. They were immaterial, after all.

“Who gave you permission to be so hot,” I mumbled, “when half the time you’re such a brutish asshole? At least in my dreams, you’re like that old saying: sugar and spice and everything nice.”

I enjoyed the freedom of my dream—it was like exploring a new lover all over again.

Finding out how to be with someone else.

Learning what we both wanted.

What felt good.

What felt best.

I wanted to know what Kamek liked having done to his body and I wanted him to teach me all of it in small, prolonged lessons. Bite sized moments of pleasure.

There were scars on his flesh, thin lines I hadn’t noticed simply by looking at him, but over which my fingertips trailed across, memorizing their path, wondering how he’d come to have them.

Maybe my dream thought a creature like this had to have battle scars, so to speak.

I must’ve wanted him to touch me back, because tentative fingers prodded at my coverings and without much thought, I let the fur fall.

I snuggled into his unyielding frame, as if wanting to become one with my bed—what else was this solid in reality, that my mind could reflect and reform according to my deepest, darkest desires?

I took one of his hands and splayed his fingers over my breast, showing him how to knead it, how to caress my ribs, my hips, cup my ass and explore my most sensitive body parts. For a dream, it felt so good, so real.

“Touch me, touch me everywhere,” I moaned.

We were unhurried, as if the night would never end, dawn would never break and we didn’t have to return to being self-cautious and snappy with each other, shields up and running at full power.

We trusted each other with our bodies now and it felt… right.

All the desperation life generally tended to bring forward evaporated and it was like we were busy building a different world.

I didn’t have any illusions about the ultimate limits of my attraction to someone like Kamek, but it was still nice—for a little while—to pretend that nothing and no one else would interfere and we’d be a couple in love.

Or rather, in lust.

His hand slowly worked me between my legs, where I’d shamelessly directed it, and I swallowed hard, my breath growing tight in my chest.

If I didn’t do something, I’d come undone, and then if I did that, how’d I still look the real Kamek in the eye in the morning knowing the dirty things I’d made him do to me in my dream?

Or worse, what if he woke up to me fingering myself in his bed, mere steps away from his sleeping form?

Oh God, what if when I orgasmed I screamed his name?

It’d be so mortifying.

I had to stop.

Now.

My body full of need and ache and regret, I pushed dream Kamek’s hands off me before I crossed that unforgivable line and I turned around, away from my own imagination and desires.

“I can’t,” I told myself, because if I repeated something for long enough, it’d become real.

KAMEK

I t’d been about a week or so since we’d found ourselves snowed in this cabin.

Or rather, since I told the little female we couldn’t go anywhere for the time being and we’d have to wait out these storms. I promised her good weather was incoming, making a show of checking my communicator.

It’d been a bit of a stretch, a bit of a lie, considering it was just early winter for Reazus Prime, but what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her, right?

Just like the other secret I’d kept from her.

What else was I supposed to do?

If I hadn’t been ready to part with her when I called my brothers, after the night of carnal explorations that followed, I was even less ready to give her up.

To move on and forget about her existence became more impossible every day.

Every time I tried to convince myself it’d all be for the better, that I had a good life with my family, my crew, and she’d likely find a good master for how incredible she was, something in my chest hurt, like I’d killed myself from within.

The snowstorm had come and passed, the ice had partly melted, and we were still living together here, a simple and quiet existence.

If I didn’t have my brothers waiting for me to return, I would’ve let everything go to hell and started a home here, in this cabin, with the little human.

The very idea should shock me, and perhaps it was due to our new sleeping arrangements—I was her favorite pillow, or perhaps we’d grown used to each other, but life with her didn’t seem half bad.

I’d quickly found the firing mechanism on my blaster froze within seconds of being outside, but we’d found coils of permisteel cables, enough to set snare traps to catch our dinner.

Jaylee turned out to be a competent enough chef and had picked up on how to use the quick solution to tan a hide pretty fast.

After three mangled attempts, I’d managed to make leggings to protect her better from the cold.

Between the chores and her questions and stories from Earth, time seemed to pass much too quickly.

We’d just wrapped up another session of hunting for every crack and hole in our shelter when laughter overtook me.

Humans were ridiculous, completely so.

“You’re telling me your people gather round to watch other people hit a tiny little ball across a field of grass and sometimes of sand and expect me to believe it? I’m not a fool.”

“But it’s the truth!”

“Do you all have nothing better to do? What does one even gain from hitting tiny little balls around?”

Jaylee laughed. “Well, of course it’s going to sound ridiculous if you put it like that!”

“Then explain it to me again. There’s a guy in shorts and he has a tiny ball. Right?”

She found my outrage so amusing, tears of joy streaming down her cheeks.

Her breasts heaved with each breath from too much laughter. I had to wait for her to calm down to continue.

“It’s a game of precision and dexterity, you have to hit-”

“-a tiny little ball-”

“-through a series of holes-”

“-balls in holes, gotcha-”

“-stop it, Kamek, you’re worse than a teenager!”

She playfully struck my bicep when she said that, giving birth to that strange feeling deep in my stomach again.

Her innocent touch had become something I both dreaded and looked forward to.

I wanted to avoid it, because it’d knock down my defenses and derail all my thoughts.

At the same time, I lived for the occasional and not entirely accidental brush of hands or bumping into one another.

But I couldn’t let her know that. I didn’t want things to change between us, for her to have reason to demand we sleep separately, like two total strangers.

We were anything but strangers now.

Still, as wanton as she’d become while she dreamed, she seemed to have no memory of her actions the next morning.

“What’d I do?” I shrugged, trying to keep my face expressionless. “I’m just trying to understand this… cultural phenomenon.”

“It’s a sport.”

“Next you’re going to tell me they also teach it in schools.”

“Well, they might do that, but golf is mainly for the rich and posh. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that a couple of colleges for rich kids have classes or at the very least, an extracurricular.”

“You should’ve started with that. It explains everything. Rich people in this galaxy do all sorts of dumb shit as well.” I tilted my head. “Maybe not that ridiculous.”

Rolling her eyes she puffed a strand of her dark hair from her face.

“You make it sound so bad! Golf is a perfectly reasonable pass time activity where I’m from. Too bad we don’t have any clubs and balls, or I’d have demonstrated its appeal.”

“We do have balls, at least I do, but clubs are the last thing I’d want near mine.” I laughed at my own crude joke then fell into an awkward silence.

Jaylee’s cheeks had turned a lovely shade of pink.

Her lips full, her eyes dark.

“Kamek?”

I looked at her, hopelessly in love—fucking hell, I’d fallen in love, imagine that—thinking I’d probably never been more scared of anything in my whole life than I was of this tiny female right now.

What if she rejected me?

Handsy as she’d get at night when she thought she was dreaming of me in dirty scenarios, she’d never attempted anything during daylight.

At the same time, though, I was sure I’d never wanted to do anything as badly as I wanted to kiss her.

Claim her.

Taste her.

“I want to do something,” I whispered, heat and desire stirring my blood, until there was only one option left. “Don’t move.”

I reached a hand and cupped her flushed cheek before angling my head to capture her lips.

I felt her pulling away slightly.

Shock? Anger?

Then she softened, and I plundered her mouth.

She wasn’t laughing anymore, her body having gone still, but she parted her lips against mine nonetheless, surrendering.

My heart jumped into my throat as her small, delicate, hands snuck under my cloak, the one she’d mended just the night before, traveling up my back.

Wrapping my fingers in her luscious chocolate hair, I tilted my head to get a better angle to devour her.

She tasted sweet.

She tasted mine.

If the world fell apart around us now, I was sure I wouldn’t even notice.

All I heard was my own heart beating wildly in my chest, a pressure building up, somewhere close to it, and feeling the heat from the kiss spreading over my skin, warming me up like a sunny summer day.

I once again thought of how much I wanted to have her, to claim her as mine.

But now how small and insignificant any future pain seemed compared with the desire for her living inside of me.

The burning desire I wasn’t allowing myself to act upon.

Well, that stopped now.

I’d indulge.

Despite knowing better than to go faster than she thought she was ready for, I pushed the little female onto her back.

“If you want me to stop, I will.”

“No, don’t stop, don’t you dare stop,” she panted, kissing me back.

I pulled away only to continue peppering more little kisses across her jawline, her slender neck, her flimsy chest bones and even lower.

This was about bodies, yes, about my physical need and the way she moved and writhed beneath me, a slave to her own carnal desires, but at the same time, it’d slipped into things that didn’t necessarily have to do with our bodies.

“Oh, Kamek, yes!”

Whatever I felt for this little female, from the thing bubbling in my chest, making me either ache or burst with joy and pride upon seeing her living her new life, to the other way, less pure and decent in the way I craved her, too intense for my body to contain.

I hadn’t realized how much I needed to hear her soft gasps, her quiet moans, her sharp little intakes of breath as I explored her sweetness, until each and every one of them proved fatal to my self control.

Every tremor of her body, every jerk, every spasm and twitch sparked a need to lose where I stopped and she began.

A need so intense, I applied myself to her softness as if we only had a few stolen moments.

The future narrowed, as all I saw was my little female, the way her chest rose and fell in rhythm with everything I did to her.

She was fascinating.

I wanted to commit to memory the way her mouth hung open loosely, her breath coming tight and shallow, how she blushed all the way down over her chest.

There was no plan here. I moved on pure instinct, shifting to things as they attracted my attention: kissing at her exposed neck, dragging my teeth over the one spot along her ribs that I found elicited a pleased mewl, biting, tugging and releasing her flesh, working it between my teeth, marking her body with traces of me.

I relished the way her body tucked against mine, the rise of her ass fitting in my grasp like hand and glove.

I dragged myself low across her body, dragging the thin fabric of the shorts down past her ankles, parting her legs.

“Kamek…”

“Shall I stop?”

“No. I just… are you sure you wanna eat my pussy? I, uh, guys don’t really like to do that, in my experience.”

“Eat your pussy?” I tasted the strange words and found their flavor fitting of the act. “Yes, I’d do just that and worry not, there isn’t anything else I’d rather do. You’re perfect, Jaylee, and I want to enjoy your perfection.”

I sucked two fingers into my mouth, wetting them, but when I pushed them into her and found her soaking wet, it turned out I didn’t need to.

She was so responsive that my brain dissolved into incoherence.

Her walls tightened around me as I pushed deep, pulled back, pushed in again, fucking her slowly as she rocked back to meet my rhythm.

Her breathing had become strained, and her words, mere helpless moans.

Just my touch brought her to the edge, but I needed more.

I needed to taste her, drink in that sweet nectar.

Sliding my hands around her hips I lifted her to my mouth, letting my tongue drag across her silken folds to twirl around the sensitive nub at her mound.

“Kamek,” she groaned. “Careful, that’s…”

I swiped at it again, craving the way she shook in my grasp, then plunged my tongue deep inside of her tight channel, alternating my attention, drunk on her desire until with a scream she shattered, heels drumming on my back until she finally lay still and lax.

Gathering her into my arms, I held her close to my chest, stroking the hair from her face as sleep overtook her.

My little female, so filled with fire and passion.

I’d hold her close.

Because far too soon, I’d have to let her go.

JAYLEE

B eams of sunlight poked through the holes in our little cabin’s walls and windows.

I didn’t want it to be daylight already.

Day meant getting out of bed and getting busy and doing chores, and while I wasn’t a generally lazy person, today I decided I’d indulge.

After all, last night’s events needed a refresher.

Maybe I’d coax one out of Kamek, now that I knew he liked me that way, too.

It’d honestly been such a long time since anyone had looked at me the way he had last night, and even longer since anyone had held me like I was precious and important.

The things he did to my body, the things he’d made me feel, had let me experience, those were new heights he’d taken me to, and he did it with such determined passion and an insatiable hunger.

If I wasn’t careful, I’d easily grow addicted to Kamek’s lovemaking.

I’d easily imagine a life with him, out here.

I stopped myself there before reality trickled into my fantasy and ruined it.

I chased reason and logic away by snuggling into my favorite pillow, inhaling that spiciness I now knew had a lot of different flavors.

Kamek let out a low chuckle in response. “If I knew this was the remedy for your early morning sass, I’d have kissed you sooner.”

I playfully slapped his stomach and those perfectly defined abs barely even moved.

I’d never not be amazed by this man’s physique.

Which reminded me—was his tongue like… textured?

Every memory of last night was tied and tangled together, the ghosts traces of pleasure still winding themselves through my body.

But I was pretty sure when we kissed, that was a different sort of tongue.

And when he’d licked me?

I was certain of it.

I bit down on my lower lip, my curiosity pushed to the background by my need to experience more carnal pleasures with this man.

I didn’t care much about anything other than letting myself surrender in his arms.

“I remember you doing a lot more than kissing me last night.”

“Oh, do you? I-”

Whatever else he was about to say was interrupted by a series of loud beeps as the weather thingy on his wrist flashed bright white.

Kamek instantly got up, visibly perturbed by what he saw.

I didn’t understand.

Was a serious storm incoming?

Should I be concerned? Should I unleash my typical 101 questions on him, or give him time to explain himself first?

“Stay here,” he snapped out, “and don’t make a single sound. Do you hear me?”

I nodded, seriously freaked out by the way he was acting and the hard lines on his handsome face. This was something serious.

Something I didn’t understand.

So I did something surprising.

Almost unheard of.

I obeyed.

“Good little female,” he whispered, bending down to kiss me one more time.

It was a deep, forceful kiss.

Taking, not giving.

It left me breathless and my lips sore and questions in my heart.

What stopped me was the look in his eyes, the one he gave me before grabbing his cloak and that massive knife, and leaving the cabin.

For a moment, I thought it was like a goodbye. Like I’d never see him again.

I didn’t know where the thought had come from, but it frightened me.

I shook my head clear of it.

That was just the past.

Now, it was different. Kamek was different.

I wrapped one of the lengthier furs around me and went to peek outside, needing to make sense of this situation I’d found myself in.

One moment, we were lovey-dovey, the next, he acted like he was going to war or something.

Or… something.

Shit!

Just because we hadn’t seen another sentient being around these parts until now, it didn’t mean that other people, or aliens, didn’t travel or roam these parts.

At first, I couldn’t see anything other than the usual glittering white of the snow, but an unusual shadow drew my attention to a trio of trees.

Behind their thick trunks, there seemed to be someone watching the cabin.

Not just one someone.

Far too many.

I narrowed my eyes in that direction, cursing at the meddling sun and its insufferable rays that made it difficult to see much of anything.

I decided I wouldn’t wait to be protected, so I put on my borrowed jacket and boots with such speed, you’d think a drill sergeant shouted at me.

Then I slowly, very slowly, pulled open the front door to see what was going on.

From this side and with the sun not beating down directly on me, I could see the situation better.

But it didn’t look good: Kamek faced about a dozen giant creatures, which were best described as walking rhinos.

They were dressed in dark leather suits with chains, like a weirdly zoo-inspired punk-rock band.

They had heads that somehow seemed too big for their bodies, one horn protruding from above their mouths and the second, from smack-middle of their foreheads.

I wished those were for design only, like Kamek’s scales, because if one of them was to impale him with it, given the girth and length, I could easily see Kamek bleeding out.

Just as I finished that dark thought, I realized the rhino-men had him surrounded.

He didn’t even seem aware of it. They kept him focused on them, walking side to side and taunting him as they pressed him back towards the cabin, wicked looking guns drawn.

“We know she’s in there,” the one in the front snarled, his voice like sticky molasses in my head, carrying across the snow.

“Doesn’t matter,” Kamek shrugged. “She’s not for you.”

“How do you think you’re going to stop us?” the rhino laughed. “With your hands?”

I glanced again at the rickety table. The knife, the only usable weapon, was still there.

No. No, no, no, no, no.

“If I have to,” Kamak answered. “You’re not touching her.”

The rhino leader laughed, raising his arm to fire. “You’re not going to have anything to say about it.”

Hands over my mouth, I muffled my scream, wanting to look away, knowing I’d never reach Kamek’s side in time.

The rhino fired.

But nothing happened.

“Kill him!” he roared to the others at his back. As one, they advanced blasters up, but the result was the same.

“Should’ve checked the temperature, boys,” Kamek spat. “But maybe thinking ahead isn’t your strong point.”

“We don’t have to put up with this,” one of the rhinos shouted, lunging at Kamek with a long, wicked looking blade.

He caught it between his bare palms and with what looked like a mere wrist flick, broke it in half.

“If you’re going to try to take my human, you’ll put up with a lot worse.”

Another one lunged and Kamek dodged him, too, but only to fall in the arms of a third rhino, trying to hold him in a headlock.

Kamek broke away by hitting a spot on their hips. The rhino wheezed and released him before falling down, hissing in pain.

“She’s just a slave. She won’t fetch you that much, definitely not enough to pay for a life. Why surrender your own so easily?”

“What makes you think I can’t beat each and every one of you?”

For a long, terrible moment, I watched Kamek fight, taking note of how he moved, where he aimed his hits, trying not to wince every time one of the rhinos landed a good one on him.

When I was sure I had a decent enough idea of their weak points, I grabbed the hunting knife and launched myself at the nearest enemy.

The element of surprise was quickly lost when he grunted his pain and twelve pairs of eyes were on me, the little human female who’d jumped onto the back of a rhin0-man three times her size, stabbing him with one thin blade.

The shock of my insane audacity wore off quickly and by the time my first victim’s immobile face touched the ground, two more ugly bastards had started towards me.

I quickly grabbed the blade from the rhino, backing away towards Kamek.

“What are you doing out here!” he shouted as the next pair of them sprang at us.

“Helping you!” I yelled back, dancing and dodging away. “You didn’t think I’d just sit and let you be killed, did you?”

It was easy to synchronize with Kamek, like he was inside my mind, two halves of one whole.

Except him urging me to get back inside every two or three blows.

“Thanks for your confidence in me,” he snarled.

“Be angry later,” I answered, trying not to breathe too heavily. “Right now, we just need to survive.”

Because physical pain, I could handle. They could all beat me up and I wouldn’t shed a tear at the end of it all, but I couldn’t take the idea of Kamek dying to protect me.

I wouldn’t let that happen.

We would either win or die together, as insane as it sounded.

A decidedly less insane notion was that I was tired.

I might’ve started this with an adrenaline boost, which turned into two, then three bursts of wildfire courage, but the more of these guys I had to push off me, the more energy I used.

Another parried blow and my reservoir was nearly depleted. I panted hard, sweating from the exertion and my muscles screamed for respite.

I glanced behind me at Kamek, who was busy tackling three guys at once, proving to have been just the window of opportunity a rhino needed to take me down.

I was pinned underneath him and none of my tricks to free myself worked, because of how unnaturally strong and heavy he was.

I swallowed my panic and I used everything I had left, which at this point was sheer determination, my uncut nails and every curse word I’d ever heard or come up with.

I threw it all at this ugly rhino, praying he’d release me or get annoyed and make a bad decision, like I had.

“Enough, slave!” he yelled at me.

“Fuck off!” I shouted back. “Ugly ass motherfucker! I’m not a slave!”

He smacked me across the face, splitting my lip and making my head spin, before pulling me upright. I was like a rag doll, seeing stars and hearing little birdies in my head, reeling from the slap.

Weak. I was so weak against them.

For all my training and wishful thinking, I was not a match for them the way Kamek was.

“You’re whatever the fuck I say you are, human!”

My ears rang and I wanted to cry.

What a brute. I wanted to slam my fists against his chest and make him release me, but I knew how futile it’d be. I could only count on…

“You have five seconds to release my female,” Kamek’s voice broke through the sounds of battle around me.

He sounded dangerously calm and serious.

“Or else what? You’re going to kill me? We have you surrounded, still, and now we also have the slave. You’re worthless.”

The rhino laughed and I wanted to turn my head to look at Kamek, to plead with him to save himself, but all I managed to see was darkness.

A shadow passed above me, disturbing the air and the snow, raising small wispy tornadoes around me, and when it did, the arms keeping me upright were gone and I fell to the ground.

One by one, the remaining rhino-men were snatched up into the air, then dropped to the ground, broken beyond repair.

A few lucky ones ran away, but out of the dozen that’d come to attack us, to take me, more than half were dead or dying.

“Are you in pain?”

I rubbed my eyes in disbelief.

Perhaps that smack to the head made me see more than stars, because this… this was… straight out of a fairy tale.

KAMEK

J aylee was the first one to recover from the shock of my transformation, or at least recover enough to be able to speak.

She picked herself off the frozen ground and rushed to me, wounded and tired as she was, her brown eyes wide and mouth half-open in shock.

“Am I imagining this?” she asked.

“No.”

Not unless I was imagining it, too, but given how much I hurt all over, I was pretty sure it was real.

My wings were real.

My mate was real.

She ran circles around my complete form, giving me several once-overs.

“Oh my God, you’re like one of Daenerys’ dragons! Look at those wings! Does this mean you can fly now? You’re amazing-”

To me, it felt as if my brain was a device stuck in a reboot loop.

I shook my head and rubbed my still eyes in a futile attempt to make sense of the situation, only for my thought process to crash again, blinking lights and blinking eyes behind layers of wetness.

Had I been crying?

Oh, yes.

She’d almost gotten herself killed.

Again.

I noticed the bruises blooming on her skin, contrasting sharply, accusingly.

My chest ached with every patch of reddened skin I saw peeking out from under her clothes—on her collarbone, on her neck, along her jawline and of course, her bloodied hands, with missing fingernails, once smooth expanses of flesh, now scratched and dripping red.

Every one of her injuries shouted at me, shedding a clear bright light on my incompetence when it came to guarding her.

First, I’d almost lost her in the snowstorm, near her stasis pod. Then she almost fell on that bloodied ice and now, a G’zanta almost broke her before my very eyes.

The feeling of guilt, accompanied by dread and too much adrenaline snowballed in my soul, echoing and pushing an action button somewhere within me.

I wasn’t used to feeling like this, to caring so much about someone other than my brothers, and I hadn’t expected this little waif of a human to turn out to be such an important person.

My… mate.

I’d nearly lost my mate.

It was so fucking rare for one of my kind to find The One and not only had I accomplished it, I’d also almost lost her as soon as I’d found her.

And she didn’t seem the least perturbed by her near death experience.

Looking at Jaylee staring at me now, she was like a child presented with its first stinger, ecstatic and carefree.

While my blood boiled and my breathing was still labored.

Regular defensive mechanisms reared their heads—an impulse to strike first before the opponent spotted a weakness and a need to silence an emotional side that didn’t belong in battle.

Except Jaylee was no longer my opponent, so I didn’t know what to do.

Several sarcastic, quite acidic and equally vicious phrases ran through my head in quick succession, yet before I gave voice to any of them, she was right there in my face, poking my chest with her tiny human hands.

“Hello, are you there? Did you just space out on me? Kamek? You’re worrying me.”

“What is it with you and your apparent desire to get yourself killed?”

“Excuse you?”

Our eyes locked together, challenge versus determination, and it was my turn to push a barrage of words onto her being.

I was tired of playing hide-and-seek with myself and my fears and that was me giving up.

“Don’t you get it? You’re a mere human, out here on a savage planet where there are so many things that’d kill you without even trying to, and yet you rush out and put yourself in danger and for what?” I shouted and didn’t care anymore. “Don’t you value yourself? Your life?”

She stopped talking and crossed her arms, adopting a defensive stance before me.

“Well, do you?” I pushed.

“One, I’m not a mere human,” she spat. “I was a self-defense instructor back on Earth. I taught women how to protect themselves. Maybe I’m not as strong as those rhino guys back there, but I’m not some weakling who has no idea what she’s doing. This damsel can save herself.”

Shock, terror, the very thought of her having to fight for survival wiped away her words.

“That G’zanta almost killed you! He would’ve, had I not have gotten my wings when I did. The way he’d slapped you… he…”

“But he didn’t,” she insisted. “I’m alive. A little worse for wear, but alive.”

Fury swept through me. How could she not understand what I said?

“Not thanks to your efforts to preserve yourself. I told you to stay inside.”

“You were overwhelmed.”

“It wouldn’t have been the first unfair fight I got out of, little one! Can’t you see what I am and what you are?”

I then realized how violently my hand was trembling, how close I was about to come to grabbing her and shaking some sense into her.

Why was I being like this? This was what I had to do, wasn’t it?

For her sake, I had to put this ridiculously brave human female in her place, teach her to shut up and listen and obey my commands…

Shit.

This wasn’t protecting her.

This was being an asshole.

No better than any of the masters of this world, owners of human slaves who had no choice but to shut up and obey.

Fuck it all, I’d messed up more often than I got things right.

“You know what? You suck at being thankful. So until you find your way to your manners, I’m going back home to get some breakfast,” she huffed.

I watched her round ass get further and further ahead, wobbling and muttering curses under her breath, right until she vanished behind the cabin’s front door.

She hadn’t looked behind once, but of course I followed her, albeit at a safe distance from her indignation.

Would it have killed her to admit I had a point at least?

Probably.

When I stepped inside, she tried to impale a goxuin’s back leg on a few twigs and roast it.

I didn’t want to start another argument, but when she dropped it for the third time, her hands trembling too much to be of use, I walked over to where she knelt and snatched the meat and the skewers from her.

“Let me.”

It was only when I lowered myself to fix the meat above the fire that I noticed her crying.

“I’m sorry,” she hiccuped. “I feel like I never do anything right and you’re always mad and I’m all alone here, without you. If you’d died back then, what was I supposed to do?”

“You’ll find I’m very hard to kill, little one. You-”

“If you call me weak again, I swear I’ll smack you,” she whimpered.

“I was going to say you need a bath. We can argue about this later. First, we need to get the blood off, some food in and rest. It’s been an eventful morning, wouldn’t you say so?”

She sagged, just a bit. “Yeah, you’re right.”

It’d been the first thing that came to mind.

I needed to see with my own eyes that she was merely a little ruffled, but otherwise fine.

That there were no deeper injuries lurking under her coat.

What better way to give her a general check-up than to have her naked before me?

I brought in a wooden bucket I’d found in the back of the cabin and ripped a part of my cloak so she could use it as a washing rag.

Now that my wings had emerged, I’d need to come up with something else to cover my torso anyway.

For water, we had nature’s best and freshest snow to use, now melting at a decent pace.

I’d thrown enough logs in that fire to heat up an entire spaceship.

This part was going right.

What wasn’t, however, was the way Jaylee acted so compliant and submissive.

Sure, it was just the type of behavior I would’ve liked to see from her on a daily basis, no sass, no grief.

But… I found I disliked her being this calm. I liked her best when she was her usual firecracker self.

Looking at her watching the snow melt, quietly sniffling with her eyes glassy and a faraway look in them, I realized she was just now processing everything that’d happened.

I shouldn’t have shouted at her.

It was probably the first time she saw someone, or rather, several someones, being killed.

And killed by someone she knew.

Someone who, whether she knew it or not, she was forever bound to, because I’d never leave my mate’s side.

“I can manage.”

I shook my head.

She was either suddenly shy around me, but I didn’t know why, considering the things she’d let me do to her naked body earlier, or something else was truly wrong.

“I know, but let me lend you a hand. You need to take these off, little one,” I said, marching to where she stood like a statue.

The warmth of my hands on her hips spread, and where she was at first a little rigid, I felt her slumping, melting into me. “You don’t bathe with your clothes on. We’ll get to cleaning this later, but first you gotta wash your body.”

While she was busy stripping, I took the opportunity to do the same.

Maybe I wasn’t particularly good with words, but I’d show her, physically, that she was safe with me.

She was alive, I was alive and everything was all right with our world. The intruders were gone and didn’t matter one bit.

Everything else we’d figure out later.

“Kamek?”

“Yes?”

“What, uh, what are you doing?”

“I need to get cleaned up, too, and there’s plenty of water for the both of us right there.”

She seemed satisfied with that explanation.

Too quiet. Too calm.

I didn’t like it.

We’d fix that, though. The ice that’d formed around my chest cracked, just a bit, as she stood exposed, bending over the bucket of warmed water.

There’d be bruises marring that perfect skin. But she was miraculously unharmed.

And even more wonderful, before long, she snuck glances at me, wanting me to touch her, just like I’d hoped.

She sought comfort from me, safety, protection.

And with luck, she’d want a way to wipe those memories from her mind by replacing them with something far nicer.

“Wash my back for me?” she asked, settling on her excuse.

I gladly accepted, washing long strokes curving from her shoulders down to the swell of her hip, before reaching around to tease the edge of her breasts.

Kneading and squeezing the soft pillows, fondling them, cupping them, pinching the rosy buds until they were tight peaks and she melted into me.

“Feeling better?” I murmured into her hair, breathing in the sweet smell of her.

A soft groan gave me all the answers I needed.

Shifting focus to her upper thighs, I worked my way up, then rubbed and pinched the silken folds there as well, making it difficult for my mate to stay still.

I needed her primed and ready for my cock. When I finally couldn’t wait anymore, I turned her around and kissed her, channeling every ounce of love I felt for her.

Lifting her in my arms, she wrapped her legs around my waist, her sweet nectar dripping over my cock as I ground against her.

“Kamek,” she whimpered. “Please…”

There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for her.

And to please her was a joy.

Slowly, I pushed inside her, every gasp of pleasure that rocked through her maddening me.

It was intoxicating, how hard I was, how soft she was, and how perfectly I fit within her tight warmth.

The noises she made became sobs and she sounded frantic, as if she were able to talk, she’d plead with me to give her release.

I would.

As many times as my sweet mate wanted it, I’d make her shout her release to the sky, filling my ears with her cries.

Her overheated skin, her incredible wetness, everything melted into one hot point until we cried out our release together.

My mate.

Mine.

And I’d never let her go.

JAYLEE

“Y ou’re a dirty liar, Kamek,” I said, pushing his rock-like shoulder.

The morning after the G’zanta attack had dawned clear and bright, as if nothing bad had ever happened to our world.

We both knew I didn’t have the strength to make him even stagger, but it was fun to pretend, to imagine I held any sort of advantage or power over him.

“Me? I’d never!”

“You told me it’d started to snow again and that’s why we needed to stay inside! But now I think you just wanted an excuse to keep me in here, available for… you know.”

He schooled his features to mimic indignation. “Well, it’s kind of wintry out there, maybe I was mistaken for a second. Perfect as you might think I am, I’m still a poor fallible male.”

I made a face at him before letting him know exactly how I felt about his thinly veiled excuse to enjoy some more naughty bedtime. “Poor male, my ass.”

“Your ass? What about it?”

He grinned and eyed me up as if we hadn’t just spent half the night fucking each other stupid.

Every time he’d claimed me, every time I’d shattered in his embrace, the fear that I’d lose him, that those fucking monsters would take him from me, faded just a bit further.

“You’re not getting your filthy hands on me again, you pervert! Learn to be less shameless.”

“Wanna bet I can and I will?”

“Sure. You can’t and you won’t.”

It felt good to be teased by him, to see happiness bleeding through his grim mask.

He was too serious far too often, and the eruption of the shimmering wings from his back had seemed to give him something else to worry about.

Which made sense, you know? I couldn’t imagine my body suddenly deciding to grow wings out of the blue.

Maybe it wasn’t a surprise.

Maybe that’s just what his people did when they were in danger.

But… Kamek didn’t seem to be so certain about it.

Like something had changed, becoming even more dangerous.

And this little game between us was also dangerous because it made me bold.

Giving him my most blasé expression, a look of utter disregard for his idle threat, I turned around and shimmied my ass in his direction.

While Kamek was quick, he wasn’t quick enough to stop me from twirling out of reach, flowing from one space on the floor to the next, like a prima ballerina.

I clicked my tongue against my teeth, wordlessly scolding.

“Nah, you obviously can’t, old man.”

A slow grin crossed his face.

“Maybe I’m letting you go easy before I plunge myself into that puckered hole. Have you thought about that, little female? Have you thought about what I might like to do to that round ass of yours?”

My heartbeat sped up at his words, spoken in a distinctly lower tone.

I’d never done anal with anyone before and while it was on my list of things to try, my pussy still hadn’t gotten used to his unnatural thickness and those ridges…

And then he took advantage of my distracted mind and lunged far enough that it was impossible to both save my dignity and remain upright.

Falling backwards, I grabbed and pawed at his shoulders in sharp, quick movements in a fruitless attempt to stop myself.

All I’d managed to do, though, was to drag Kamek down right along with me, and we both collapsed into a heap of tangled arms and legs on the cabin’s wooden floor.

It’d been a matter of reflexes, I told myself.

I hadn’t meant to pull him on top of me.

Even if the unfurling heat from deep in my belly insisted otherwise, because nothing that felt that nice could’ve ever been accidental from my equally devious self.

As much as I liked scolding him and playing hard to get, the truth was my body craved Kamek’s touch, more and more.

I suddenly forgot how to breathe and he stared at my face, one arm propped alongside my head, the only thing preventing me from feeling the full force of his weight.

He’d first broken my fall with his hand, safeguarding my head from breaking and spilling all its dark secrets.

My hero once again.

Just like in a romance book, except we’d never be because I was a human and needed to get back home, and he was an alien, who surely had to have a pair among his own kind.

But none of it mattered right now.

None, because I felt the outline of his whole body over mine, his breath on my cheeks and the tickle of a wayward butterfly fluttering around in my stomach, telling me to ignore reason one more time and just enjoy the moment.

I wanted to feel him, not just the heat and form of his body through my clothes. I wanted to feel him move inside me, to fill me and hit that spot that made me see stars.

Half a dozen things continued to flit through my mind, each one dirtier than the one before it.

My breasts were compressed with each intake of his breath that swelled his chiseled chest.

There was a dangerous current here and I might not have the strength to swim against it.

I’d known that for longer than I’d wanted to admit.

It was why I’d kept away and only indulged in my dreams.

While it’d started as playful, now it’d become a moment thick with something else. I panted beneath Kamek, out of breath, lips slightly parted, pupils dilated, unable to form a coherent phrase.

Electricity popped along my veins.

I’d read about men and women getting addicted to the feeling - adrenaline rush, they’d called it. Danger junkies, they’d called them.

Seeking out high risk situations, usually turning promiscuous with all the wrong types in all the wrong places, having all sorts of taboo kinks.

Was that me, now?

Had I gotten addicted to the way my attraction to my alien made my body feel?

“Are you okay? You’re, uh, kind of worrying me, little one…” He trailed off, finally breaking the silence.

My fingers trailed up into his hairline and my nails lightly skimmed his scalp, before daring over his shoulders to trace around the base of those impossible wings.

“Fuck me, Kamek. I need you to shut up and fuck me.”

His expression shifted instantly, eyes dark and hungry, raking over me before he plundered my mouth.

“Happily, my Jaylee,” he growled.

It wouldn’t be a pretty, romantic lovemaking session. It’d be raw and passionate, serving to exercise at least three and a half demons and to silence some of my worries.

We wouldn’t fuck around with some tantric foreplay or whatever.

I wanted to be taken hard and fast, and to orgasm until there wasn’t room for anything else in my mind.

He hissed when he aimed his cock at my entrance and pushed into me. The hiss sharpened into a groan when he finally slid all the way to the bottom of my cunt, making me cry out.

“Fuck, you’re still so tight,” he muttered, shallowly thrusting a few more times into me, moaning, reveling in the feel of my body.

My pussy felt tight indeed, slowly stretching to accommodate his girth.

The ridged shape of his cock sent sparks to my clit with every thrust, the pleasure already sucking me under.

“You feel so good,” he said and his movements picked up speed, making my breasts bounce.

Kamek kissed me, licked me, and bit me wherever his mouth found purchase - neck, collarbone, breasts, he’d mark the spot every time. I knew that no expanse of flesh would escape his hunger for me.

Soon enough, his movements made me feel something new. Maybe not completely new, given the previous night’s activities.

Something further down a certain path than I’d ever gone before and it was impossible to ignore the plain and simple fact that the path frightened me.

“Harder, please, Kamek.”

The change of pace was welcomed and it seemed to suit us both. I felt it in his voice, tasted it on his skin - the same dichotomy ruling me, ruled him, too, in and outside this bed, this cabin.

We both went from calm to raging after being reminded of the hell surrounding us, torturing us.

He seemed as starved for love as I was and while whatever we were doing in this place now, naked and joined at the hips, probably wasn’t real love just lust, it was still the kindest and gentlest anyone had ever been with us both.

I ran my fingers through his hair, slightly tugging. I needed him to fuck me even harder - I was so close to coming.

“I won’t break,” I pleaded.

Sex with him was good, too good, to the point that doing it with anyone other than him would make me feel cheated out of something glorious. I found myself wishing and praying we’d always be together.

“Bear with it, I can’t control myself anymore,” he confessed his weakness against my breasts, worshiping their softness with his tongue, suckling on my nipples like a babe.

I was confused when he pulled out of me. But it was only for a moment before he rammed into me, again and again, claiming and reclaiming me with every moan his cock drew out of me.

He wound his fingers tight in my hair again, pulling on it, making me arch against him as he took me at a driving pace, pounding into me, hitting my clit with every thrust.

The length of his cock in my pussy burned me on the inside, my body growing hotter and hotter with every thrust.

The scent of this man, the scent of sex, thick and musky, it was all too overwhelming.

I gasped in pleasure and the sound must have stoked the heat inside of his belly, because he turned even more demanding, pushing so deep, as if trying to become one with me.

My own fires burned brightly, licking my body with delicious flame, and all I wanted was more.

And he, too, hungered for me and wouldn’t feel sated until he had me.

Again.

And again.

I was his oxygen, now. And he was mine.

I touched his cheek, running my fingers down to his mouth and then to his jaw. He was hot and it was not just the ambient temperature. I liked how he burned over me. For an instant, I imagined his blood thundering through his veins, simultaneously running from and chasing his roaring heart.

“It’s okay,” I whispered, his hold on me tightened. “It’s all right. Promise. It’s all right.”

I could tell he was about to ask what exactly was all right, but I didn’t want to give him the chance.

I didn’t want to have to answer the question and anyway, he knew. He’d carried it around just like I’d been, the weight and truth of what we’d become if we didn’t stop.

But we couldn’t stop.

We were too weak against our desires and needs, and all we could do now was live in the moment and ignore the inevitable future.

I wanted to keep him braced over me, holding me down with thick and delightfully calloused hands. I wanted him to run those hands everywhere, rough and hungry, manhandling me.

And as he drove himself deep, one final time, we trembled with the force of our orgasms.

I felt his heat coating my insides as I shook under him.

Nothing had ever felt like this.

Nothing ever could.

We were magic together, like a spell under moonlight.

But what’d happen when the spell broke?

KAMEK

“Y ou’ve got brothers?”

The amount of surprise in my mate’s voice didn’t go unnoticed, nor had the sudden disconnect I sensed from her.

Something wasn’t right, I felt it in my bones.

Spent and tired, we’d make a nest of sorts in the bed and we’d both decided we’d do fuck all the entire rest of the day.

But keeping silent wasn’t something my little female would enjoy, which is how we’d gotten to playing a game of Questions, or whatever she’d called it.

Jaylee untangled herself from my embrace, sitting straight in our bed, her body angled away from mine, leaning back against the wall.

She eyed me as if she was looking at me for the first time. As if I was suddenly a total stranger.

I supposed it made some sense, to want to know more about me. Perhaps all humans were like that, with her need to know everything all the time, a barrage of questions at every twist and turn.

Not that it was a bad thing.

Her propensity for acquiring new information would come in handy in this world.

But clearly, while all I really cared about was the knowledge that she was my mate and how nothing mattered to me beyond that, she had other customs and metrics when it came to relationships.

It didn’t matter—whatever her wishes and desires were, I’d fulfill them.

I’d make her happy.

If she wanted to know a little—or a lot—about my unspectacular life and reckless brothers, then I’d tell her.

“Kamek? Still with me?” she teased, but her tone was somewhat contrived, bereft of the usual lightheartedness her sassing had.

I mirrored her and sat up straight as well, giving her my undivided attention. “Yeah. Sorry, my mind wandered for a second there.”

“You don’t say,” she bit, before sighing and starting again. “I don’t want us to fight, but you’ve never mentioned having any brothers before. Actually, you’ve never really mentioned anything beyond what we needed to do, what I needed to know—bare necessities, and even those were sometimes hard to extract from you.”

The words brutish asshole came to mind.

That was what she’d called me that first night, when she thought she was dreaming and she let me touch her naked body for the first time.

Of course, she’d want me to be more… approachable. For her, I’d try harder.

“You’re right. We’ve taken things as they came and I haven’t been very forthcoming when it comes to many issues. I’ll do my best to fix that from now on, okay?”

My words didn’t seem to reassure her. Her shoulders slumped and her eyes seemed to look at something far beyond what this cabin contained.

“Be that as it may, the point is we don’t really know each other, do we? All we’ve been running on was this need to work with each other, to survive the snowstorm and the G’zanta. All I really know of you is your name, that you live here and are poor as fuck. You know even less about me.” Her hands flew to her mouth. “Oh God, was this a huge mistake?”

She’d grown more and more distressed with her every sentence, visibly so, her panic setting every fiber of my being on high alert.

“You’re not a mistake. We’re not a mistake,” I insisted. “You’re my mate, you belong with me.” I took her hands in mine, wincing at their sudden cold. “I’m here, you can ask me anything and everything and I’ll answer you fully.”

Her eyes came back to me, haunted with memories I wanted to expel. I needed to anchor her to me somehow. I couldn’t let her drift off, for this moment to create a chasm between us or worse… make her want to leave me.

“Why haven’t you told me anything about anything?” she whispered.

“Well, there wasn’t really any reason to.”

She shrugged, not entirely convinced. “I guess.”

I swallowed hard. “But there is now. So here it goes. My name is Kamek Teki and I have three brothers,” I said, with utmost seriousness, since everything depended on my next words.

Jaylee’s features softened and I was rewarded half a smile.

“Three?”

“Yeah, three overgrown, dumb fucks that I’m proud to call family and have them watch my back out there: Laux, Sorik and Norsuk.”

Another little curl of her mouth. “Are they all like you?”

“They wish they were like me and when I introduce you to them, they’ll be even more jealous. None of them have found their mates. I’m the first one to have gotten his wings among the entire crew. I plan on rubbing it in their faces.”

“You guys sound like you love each other.”

I snorted, but there was truth there. “They can drive me crazy, but they’re family.”

The smile on her face looked like it was missing something, and a shadow passed over my mate’s lovely features.

“What happened? Do you miss your family from back home?”

Wetness shimmered in her eyes but she refused to cry.

“I don’t have one, actually.”

“What? How can that happen?”

“Mine didn’t want me and put me up for adoption. Or so everyone said, but even if that wasn’t true, no one ever tried to come get me, so I spent the first eighteen years of my life going from foster home to foster hell. It’s always just been me,” she sniffled. “Even now, into adulthood.”

The image of my beautiful, brave Jaylee, a child left alone to the mercy of strangers, sent fury through my chest, making my wings itch.

But anger wouldn’t solve anything, not now. Now she needed safety.

“That’s over,” I promised. “Now you have me and my brothers. None of us will let you feel alone again, I promise you that much. We’ll be obnoxiously around all the time, to the point you’ll be fed up with our antics.” I laughed.

“So, where are they now?”

“Oh, they’re with the other females from the slavers’ ship, apprais-” I caught myself before I finished that sentence.

Oh shit.

Her face had gone utterly, terrifyingly blank.

This wouldn’t go well.

“Kamek?”

I took a deep breath.

In the heat and wonder of discovering each other, of learning everything about my mate, her wants and needs, the sounds of her pleasure, her taste… I’d pushed away the reality that I still kept her in the dark about something.

More than a few somethings.

“I don’t actually live here and I’m not poor.” I waved my hands at the cabin. “My brothers and I own a spaceship and a couple of stinger units and we were there when the slavers’ ship crashed.”

She nodded slowly, eyes fixed on mine. I pushed on.

“We noted where the stasis pods landed. Where you’d been, before you decided to brave the snowstorm.”

“Okay, so you’re like… rescuing everyone? Taking us to safety?”

This wouldn’t be good.

“Yes.”

Her eyes softened. It’d be so easy to stop. To let her believe the best.

“Then-”

But I couldn’t do it.

“And at the same time, no.”

Jaylee’s entire body went rigid and she removed her hands from my grasp. “Go on.”

I got up from the bed. I needed to phrase everything very, very carefully now. Which meant thinking carefully.

Something I was obviously unable to do while touching her.

“Me and my brothers, we’re just trying to make a living, right? We’ve always had an eye out for a chance, made our way however we could.”

I glanced at her and looked away quickly, taking in a deep breath before I stopped myself. “And now I know that what I wanted to do was wrong. I do, I swear, and I’m so very sorry about it.”

“Stop beating around the bush, Kamek, and tell me what were you going to do to me?” Her words came as sharp bursts, each stabbing at me like a dagger. “What are your brothers doing to the other women?”

I blurted out my sin. “Sell you. We were going to sell you. We’d made a bet to see which one of you was going to fetch the most credits.”

The words, like a stinger under heavy fire, crashed and burned between us, leaving a crater’s width worth of space between me and my incredulous mate.

“You were going to sell me,” she repeated, blankly. “Auction me off. Like an object.”

I knew how bad it sounded, especially to her human ears. Especially since it concerned her so intimately.

Trading assets, such as ships and tech and even people was nothing uncommon in the galaxy, especially here on Rezaus Prime.

We all knew there was a hierarchy in this world and that human females were, ironically, at the bottom.

Rare beyond belief, prized as universal breeders. They were stolen and passed down from male to male until they could no longer fulfill a purpose.

Most of them ended up either broken, or resigned to a life of breeding and raising halflings for their masters.

A cargo full of them, scattered across this world? We wouldn’t have been the only ones after the women.

But none of that mattered now.

“I’m not going to now. You can trust my words when I say you’ll be safe. No one’s going to touch you or force you to do anything you don’t want. I’ll kill the fucker that tries. I swear.”

“Because I’m your mate,” she said flatly.

“Yes. I’d never hurt you.”

I took a few steps in my mate’s direction, but Jaylee raised her hand to stop me.

“But say I wasn’t your mate. You’d have fucked me and sold me to the next bastard to have his way with me, and then what? He would’ve sold me to another next?” Her voice broke, a sob quickly suppressed. “What am I to you? The other women? We’re just slaves?”

“I told you at the beginning, I have no need for slaves, and-”

“But you were all right with capturing one and selling her. Me.” Her hands pressed to her belly and she doubled over as if she’d been punched. “I was so stupid to trust you! Get out! Leave me alone!”

Her words were like knives, shredding me to the bone.

Just as the joy of my mate filled my heart, her hatred made my soul bleed.

And she was right.

It was vile, what was done to her kind.

And I’d been about to be a part of that.

Anger at myself washed over me.

I needed to stay, to explain. To let her know that I’d never hurt her.

But one look at the anguish on her face let me know there was no hope.

My mate wouldn’t hear me.

Not now at least.

“Fine. I’ll go. I’ll be back later, to make sure you’re all right.”

“Be back never,” she cursed. “I don’t need help from someone who wants to sell me!”

I closed the cabin’s door, blocking out the heart-wrenching sounds of her sobbing, no real purpose behind my steps, just a need to keep away and let her have her safe space.

I’d come back, I told myself.

Just as soon as I was sure she was calmer.

But as the minutes turned into hours, I still wasn’t sure when that’d be.

I stopped in a clearing, near one of the traps and checked it: half a goxuin’s torso was still snared in the loop. Something had gnawed at its corpse and eaten all the meat and innards, leaving behind the mangled fur and broken skull.

Crouching down, I studied the marks.

The forest was eerily silent, especially for such a warm afternoon.

That was never a good sign.

And then I finally heard it, the hungry growl of a Reazus-born predator.

And not just one.

Atxtolls.

How could I have been so absentminded, to have let myself become surrounded by a pack of hungry beasts?

And more importantly, were they the only ones or had my carelessness put my mate in danger, allowing them to prowl close to the cabin?

I needed to deal with them and return to her as fast as possible.

With that sole purpose in mind, I turned around and growled back at my opponents.

They stood between me and Jaylee and for that, they had to die.

JAYLEE

T he worst part about deeply rooted traumas was that they never heal completely.

There’d always be a sliver of darkness lingering in one’s subconscious, dormant and unassuming, until something happened, bringing back all the feelings of helplessness and despair that almost ruined you the first time.

When Kamek told me he’d intended to sell me as a slave, I felt like a lifetime’s worth of betrayals had come crashing back.

I was the same stupid, hopeful little girl who just wanted a family and to be loved, but wasn’t worthy of anything good.

Like everyone else in my life up to this point, he’d done nothing but lie and disappoint me.

He’d tricked me, used me, lied to me, all the while keeping his sick plan a secret.

He’d needed me pliable and manageable and I’d played right into that fantasy of the good little human female.

We’d spend so long in this little wooden cabin, away from all my everyday concerns and struggles, that I’d lost my way.

Had forgotten how much other people could hurt me.

Had let myself realize how much I craved real, genuine interaction.

I’d foolishly thought that Kamek had been a godsend, even considering the strange situation I was in.

The worst thing I thought I’d have to face was an inevitable breakup.

I was human and he was an alien and we didn’t belong together.

Even if we did make a pretty good team or had the best sex ever or… him calling me his mate.

Just another lie.

Still, I’d have never imagined he was the kind to sell people.

And if I believed his excuse that he wouldn’t sell me any longer, then what about the other women?

What were his brothers doing now?

With a rush, all of my feelings of inadequacy turned into anger.

Not just anger.

Rage.

“I hate this place!” I shouted, grabbing one of the carefully stacked logs from the pile of firewood.

“I want to go home!”

Back to my life.

Back to my dream job.

To pretend this had never happened, that little gray men didn’t abduct human women in the middle of the night.

Back to a world of human men.

Back… away from Kamek.

My heart gave a little lurch and I sighed.

I was really useless, wasn’t I?

Useless and stupid.

Gullible.

And Kamek was an asshole.

Then it happened.

A new thought finally entered my head, penetrating the hurt and anger.

At first, it’d frozen me still, but then it slowly seeped into the forefront of my mind, firmly taking hold.

I fully intended to ignore it, but it was persistent and refusing to be pushed away: Kamek might have been that asshole, but he seemed a changed man.

A snort burst from me.

What was this? A romance novel, where the villain meets the good girl and then he’s reformed?

This was the real world, where villains not only remained villains, but… he’d saved my life.

Countless times. He could’ve pawned me off, dragged me to an auction block, done all sorts of vile, cruel things to me, but he hadn’t.

Was I the asshole now?

For having screamed at him and chased him out of his own house?

Wait, he’d said he didn’t actually live here. He’d said he had a ship.

Whatever.

I went back to the bed, pulling the furs around me.

Despite their warmth, no spot was comfortable enough. My conscience nagged at me to go out there and find him and try to fix this.

But the more I thought about it, the more I felt like it was pointless anyway, so why even bother?

Well, maybe because no one in my life had done so much for me than this man.

Alien.

Lizard dragon mountain man.

Whatever.

No one.

Fine.

I got out of bed and peeked outside, through my flimsy window blockade. It was midday already and there were no traces of Kamek outside, anywhere in the near vicinity of this cabin.

Suddenly, his absence hurt like I’d been stabbed.

“He couldn’t have left for good, right? He’d said he’d be back.”

I picked up some furs and a sharp, thick piece of wood that I intended to use as a weapon—I learned from my mistakes, after all, and then cautiously made my way outside.

I took in the scenery before me: calm and quiet, unnaturally so, a blanket of pristine powdery white covering the trees, stones, earth and everything in between.

“Kamek?”

No reply.

I waited a few heartbeats before venturing off, just in case, but like before, it was clear I was all alone out here.

All too clear.

My heart sank, remembering the rage I’d shouted at him, but I was determined to make things right, to at least hear him out.

The silence surrounding the cabin set me on edge, though.

While we were pretty isolated up here, there were usually birds or small critters running around, despite the on and off snow falling, lending an eerie white feel to everything, muting colors and life.

But now it just felt like a scene from a zombie flick.

I ignored my subconscious wondering if this planet had zombies, because now was not the time for my brain to turn the ridiculousness up to eleven.

Wondering if I’d ever find Kamek, or instead be doomed to live out my days alone in the cabin was quite enough. I didn’t need to indulge in new levels of horror.

There was only one clear path into the treeline, which I was carefully treading.

If I were a giant, angry man, I’d instinctively head in its direction and then I’d go from there, so that’s what I did, too.

The snow had covered most of the tracks he’d left behind, but it was a good thing that I’d watched a ton of survival shows in the evenings I spent alone in my apartment.

I knew to look for more than footprints on the ground—snapped twigs, portions of uneven snow or the opposite, much too even paths that seemed manmade and recently plodded through.

I was a fair way away from the cabin when I got the distinct sense that someone or something was following me.

It made my skin break into goosebumps and the hairs on the back of my neck rise.

Stranger danger.

Were the G’zanta back?

Hunching down low, I walked a long circle around a gathering of smaller trees and when I returned to my initial path, I saw two sets of tracks: two human feet, mine.

And another with paw prints, maybe like a dog?

I was half relieved, because ironically, beasts were less vicious than aliens or humans. They were just hungry or defending their young.

But on the other hand, compared to a dog’s, those paws seemed bigger.

I thought back to the plethora of animals Kamek had brought to the cabin, and the furs he’d given me, and none of the presented options had made me any happier.

The native fauna was nothing to sneeze at and it was clearly a predator that’d latched onto me with how closely it’d followed in my steps.

I could be the first meal it’d seen this week, or at least a seemingly easy one.

How did animals decide whom to attack?

I surely couldn’t be looking too small, or ill, or… shit.

Alone.

The instinct to run away screaming and hoping to somehow land in Kamek’s safe arms ripped through my brain, but I wouldn’t give into my panicked thoughts.

I’d meant it when I told Kamek I was no damsel in distress.

I could and would conquer my fear.

Especially when I didn’t have a choice.

This human city girl was perfectly capable of keeping herself alive, thank you. I had my thick, sharp stick with me and a whole lot of determination.

Both of which deserted me the instant I felt something land on my back.

The force with which it jumped on top of me, knocking me to the ground. I instantly wrapped my arms around my head, protecting it from impact with the hard, frozen soil or potential bites.

With me momentarily pinned beneath it, the beast clawed and nipped at my clothes.

At first, all I could do was swallow my cries and bite down onto my lip, hard enough to draw blood.

The taste of copper in my mouth brought along clarity.

I risked raising my head to see where my makeshift spear had landed.

To my surprise, it was within reach, so I left myself open for a head attack while I reached out to grab it and once I did, I wasted no time in swinging it backwards, as if I was trying to whip myself.

The beast yelped like a kicked puppy, getting off me and attacking the wood instead. Panting with my heart lodged in my throat, I got up, too, trying to keep a hold of my only weapon.

It was an odd game of tug of war, the wolfish looking creature biting and mauling the wood like they were old enemies and this was their final confrontation.

If I didn’t do something, it’d chew through its core and break it into splinters.

I didn’t have anything else to defend myself with, but I did have a ton of snow all around.

Heart in my throat, I flung snow at the creature’s eyes, hoping to either blind it or give it a nasty enough brain freeze that’d make it reconsider its meal choice and go for a less troublesome prey.

The world’s best plan?

Nope.

Did I have any other options?

Not really.

I bent down for another handful of white, when my fingers brushed against something solid. I felt around and, sure enough, I’d stumbled upon a rock.

I grabbed it and aimed it directly at the fiend’s face.

A howl and a growl later, where there was once a pair of fearsome gray eyes, there was only one and a bloodied socket.

The beast ran, defeated, and I let myself drop to my knees, exhausted and relieved, and above all, proud of myself.

“Take that, alien planet! You’ve yet to make me your fearful slave!”

I only allowed for a moment’s break, though, before picking myself up, dusting off the snow from my furs, and deciding I better grabbed the stone, too. Just in case.

“What the hell?”

The patch of icy snow it’d fallen on was a little bit bloodier than I would’ve expected it to be from a mere eye injury.

It hadn’t looked like I’d penetrated the socket … but the blood, there was so much blood.

I looked around and it wasn’t just in this spot, but there were patches here and there and the more I looked, the more signs of a scuffle I saw.

Had something happened to Kamek?

Was he all right?

Things couldn’t end like this between us.

No! I had to find him.

Tears burning my eyes, I followed the bloody trail, terrified of what I’d find.

KAMEK

E very situation had an upside and a downside.

Even this one, where I was literally upside down, hanging off one of my own goxuin traps.

My mind had been on the fight, on killing the pack of wild axtolls roaming too close to the cabin for me to be comfortable with.

In between fighting one off of me and landing a killing blow on another, I hadn’t paid much attention to my location.

I kept hacking and slashing and cursing and dancing a dance of death with the wild beasts, happy to have something to unleash my feelings of fury and frustration on.

Upside: in the end, despite being outnumbered, I’d managed to kill all but one of the axtolls.

Downside: one beast had escaped me.

Downside number two: getting pulled up by my legs and left there hanging like a bad antenna in a space storm, half-wrapped in permisteel cable, unable to cut my way down or even to get my wings free enough to reach the release knot I saw, tantalizingly out of reach below.

Upside number two: I’d time to think about how I’d make things right with my mate.

We could and we would recover from this, somehow.

We had to.

Something bonded us together, something we couldn’t ignore.

Besides, we had an entire winter to look forward to.

There was plenty of time to turn things around, right?

I could explain.

Make it up to her.

I could be better. For her, I would be better.

I didn’t have it in me to ignore her existence now that I’d found her and realized how important she was to me.

I wouldn’t let my mate, my beautiful, brave mate, fend for herself in this unknown world.

I could make a care package from my belongings. I could bring things back to her. Whatever she needed. Whatever she wanted.

Which meant going back on the ship and telling my brothers I’d lost her and maybe make up some lies about my wings and lack of a female by my side.

Crap.

But for her, it was worth the heckling I’d get for it.

But then what?

Pray she was skilled enough to hunt for her own food?

That in a week of watching me she’d learned how to butcher an animal? I’d still need to quietly shadow her and leave “presents” on her doorstep every few days.

Resourceful as she was, she was still like a baby animal on this planet and needed time to settle in and learn everything I hadn’t been able to teach her.

The plan had one teeny tiny glitch, though.

She’d figure it out in no time. It was me who did that, who shadowed her like a celestial protector.

What if she refused to eat the things I’d hunt for her?

Like she’d refused so many of my protective gestures in the past, based on some stupid need to prove herself as this skilled warrior.

What’d make her lower her guard and be more accepting, I wondered?

A pet?

A friend?

Yes, that was it!

I could buy the other human females from my brothers and send them all to the cabin and let Jaylee take care of them.

She’d said she was used to teaching women and maybe she’d find a new life purpose as their leader, teacher, protector.

The cabin wasn’t that big, though, so perhaps… three? Four little females? I’d need to see them first, if they were all dainty like my mate.

Maybe more could fit inside.

And maybe by doing that, I’d prove to her that I was done with gambling with the lives of people and that I’d make it up to them, return them all their freedom and maybe we could…

I sighed.

I’d gotten way ahead of myself here.

What I wouldn’t have given to hear her one more time.

“Kamek!”

Like that, I thought.

“Kamek, where are you?!”

It would’ve been nice if she were to come find me, because maybe it meant she’d had a change of heart and would forgive me.

Or at least be willing to talk to me, to listen to me.

I imagined her crying out just like that, desperate to see me and hold me tight in her arms.

“Oh God, no.”

This time, it sounded less like a panicked shout and more like a defeated cry.

And definitely more real, like it’d come from down below.

I opened my eyes, which I’d had so far kept closed so I wouldn’t get dizzy.

There was nothing I hadn’t seen a hundred times yet: blood, more blood, and bloodied furs.

One of which was moving.

I wanted to say something, but all I could do was drink in the sight of her, my mate, going from one axtoll corpse to the next, looking for… me?

She looked frantic and I swore I heard her hiccups even from up here.

The thought struck me like lightning.

She loved me.

As much as I loved her, I realized, looking at her now.

“You must think I’m the world’s worst hunter,” I chuckled.

She froze.

“Kamek?”

“That’ll be the day, when a mere pack of axtolls does me in.”

I watched her look around for me, turning every which way and still not seeing me.

“Show yourself, this isn’t funny. Are you hurt?”

I knew it wasn’t the moment, but I couldn’t help a little pettiness.

“Why do you care? You told me to go away and never return again.”

She flinched at my words, and I felt a little bad for doing that to her, but she was so used to being independent and a loner.

I needed her to say it aloud, to see for herself what I saw—she was no longer one to bear through life all on her own.

“I don’t care!”

“Then why’re you here?”

“I was hunting for my dinner.”

“Unless you killed these, I don’t think that’s what you were doing. Besides, you called my name.”

“Maybe… maybe… you’re my dinner.”

My mind instantly went to the act she called “eating her pussy” and apparently, there was a way to summon back some of the blood pooling in my head.

“Go on,” I purred, hoping she’d get the hint.

“You’re such a guy! Grow up and get your ass over here so I can see if you’re all right.”

“So then you do care.”

“Fine, maybe I do a little. Maybe we need to talk this over.”

Her voice shook just a little and I ached to wrap my arms around her.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know if you heard me before, but I’m sorry for the stupid bet,” I admitted. “But I’m not sorry that it brought me to you.”

She sniffed. “It wasn’t just stupid. It was flat out wrong.” She turned around again, slowly searching the surrounding undergrowth for me. “But I was wrong, too. I should’ve listened. You’ve done a lot for me.”

“Such as?”

“Are we really doing this?” she sighed.

“I don’t have anything better to do at the moment, so yeah, we are.”

Besides, once we were back at the cabin, I wasn’t sure there'd be much talking going on.

Jaylee, me, an enclosed space, a bed… it usually ended only one way.

And for now, it was oddly endearing to watch her from above, like this. She was her unguarded self, one of the rare occasions she let her shields drop.

I heard it in her voice, how she calmed down and returned to a better, more positive mindset.

It was the same for me.

I was no longer in a rush to get out of my trap.

I could hang off this branch forever, now that she was here, safe and sound and ready to sass me back, as hard as I teased her.

“Little one?” I called out.

“What?”

All right, maybe she’d gotten a little bit pissed that she couldn’t find me, but giving in now would mean I’d be free to hold her again.

And it wouldn’t take long before neither of us were listening to anything but the desire for each other that burst into flame at every touch.

“You were saying?” I replied in a sing-songy voice.

“Will you show yourself after?” she huffed.

“I swear.”

“Fine.” She was silent for a while, and just when I was about to prod her again, she started, sounding a little like a petulant child and looking the part, too, with her arms on her hips.

“I’m thankful for everything you’ve done for me, for rescuing and keeping me safe and not dragging me to whoever it is that buys slaves around these parts.” She swallowed hard, and it wasn’t a game anymore.

It was my mate, baring her heart.

“I realized, while you’ve been gone that you could’ve done that from the first day. But you didn’t. You’ve been a bit of a pain in the ass, like you’re being now, but you’re… good. I should’ve let you say more, explain things, before jumping to conclusions. I judged you based on the people from my past and that wasn’t fair to you. Done. Happy now?”

Happy wasn’t the word.

Ecstatic. I’d managed to get through to her, to prove myself.

Maybe, just maybe I’d convince her to stay by my side.

“I promise I’ll do something about the other women.”

“You will?”

The joy that ran through her voice was a drug I’d happily get addicted to, do anything to have.

“You were right. There are things that shouldn’t be gambled with.”

Her life. Her happiness.

“Me and my brothers, we’re truly not that kind of men. We don’t abuse. We don’t steal. We gamble and we’re reckless, but we should’ve known better.”

“I’m so happy you’re doing the right thing.”

“Me, too.”

“So… care to show yourself now?”

“Look up.”

At first, she merely glanced a little higher up the tree line, but then she threw her head back and saw me dangling almost directly above her.

The instant she saw me, clothes half torn, wings and limbs flailing about a thick cable I couldn’t cut wrapped tightly around me, she broke into laughter.

“Oh my God, I wish I could take a photo of you like this,” she snorted. “The big bad man, trapped like… what was the expression… damsel in distress? Whereas lil’ fragile, human me, is perfectly fine.”

Jaylee laughed.

She’d forgiven me.

And all was right with the world.

Except for one little thing.

“When you’re tired of rubbing it in, get me down, all right?”

Her eyes flashed with mischief. “I’m never going to get tired of this. Or rubbing… well, something.”

Need gnawed through me.

“Down now,” I growled. “Or when I catch you, there’s going to be a lot more than rubbing going on.”

“Hey, I’m the sassy one in this relationship! Tone it down or else I’ll let you spend the night like this.”

My heart soared. “We have a relationship now?” I asked slowly.

She mellowed at that. “Of course we do, we made love and I…”

“Yes?”

“Nothing.”

The hell with it.

If she needed to hear me say it first, I’d no problems with that. I was not ashamed of my love and weakness for her.

“I love you, Jaylee. Do you love me? Is that why you’re here, acting like a fool?”

“Know-it-all,” she blushed. “You’re so not romantic.”

“I’ll romance you beneath the furs all night long, if you want. Just get me down from here now. You’ve had your fun.”

“Now that’s a gamble I could get behind: would I or wouldn’t I let you spend the night here for tricking me into confessing?”

EPILOGUE: JAYLEE

I t was strange to wear normal looking clothes, or to be around other, erm, people.

I pulled on Kamek’s sleeve, silently asking him for a pause, a moment to take all of it in. It’d been a while since I’d been around others and never before around others like them.

I easily spotted those rhino-like creatures, the G’zanta. I tried to keep a neutral reaction upon seeing their horned heads, but they still scared me on some level.

Considering how I’d been half beaten to death by one of their kind, perhaps it wasn’t the worst thing to learn to keep my distance from certain races.

Not that I wanted Kamek to know I could feel, not fear, apprehension.

He’d never stop teasing me about it.

Next to the trio of uglies, there were more reptilian-looking men and even a couple of straight up walking fish-women with gills on either side of their necks, but among this mish-mash of creatures, it looked like I was the only human female around.

I felt a little self-conscious and quite out of place.

“Are you nervous?” Kamek teased.

He definitely felt how ramrod straight I stood, taking everything in, imagining everyone staring back at me and assessing me, wanting to either gobble me up or do worse things to me.

In truth, most of them probably didn’t care about my presence here one way or the other, but given how two out of two alien species I’d met so far had seen me as a sellable item, it was hard to give this lot the presumption of innocence.

“I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“And they probably never saw anything like you, a human female to walk freely, or one like me, with my wings on display. We’re kind of a hot topic,” he chuckled.

“At least you’re amused.”

All I saw were flashing danger signs everywhere. I didn’t understand why we had to meet at the busiest bar in the hub, out of all places.

Why couldn’t we have gone straight to the ship and met the rest of the family there?

I wasn’t afraid of everyone exactly, but I hated, hated being stared at.

I’d never been the center of anyone’s attention, at least not outside of my classes.

It was strange and not entirely pleasant.

“Or maybe you don’t want to be seen with me?”

“Yeah, you’re ruining my street cred here,” I teased.

I almost asked him if we could go home, to my home, for the millionth time, but I swallowed that impulse. It wouldn’t do us any good if I kept thinking about impossible things.

It didn’t matter. He read my expression, his face softening.

“You know I’d take you back to Earth if I could.”

“I know. I’m not… bitter about it. As long as I have you, it’ll be all right.”

“We have a lifetime together, little one.”

Kamek and I were still a little uneasy, neither of us that good at this whole talking thing.

But we loved each other deeply.

He was a part of me now. I needed him as much as breathing.

As much as I missed home, and the life I’d built there, I would’ve returned to something hollow, half empty.

Because there was no way a man like Kamek could survive in my world, with those wings and that skin.

So between the lonely life I was used to or an unfamiliar one my mate—mate is such a new, strange thing to say—I chose the latter.

It wasn’t even a choice at all.

“They’re already here,” Kamek said, bringing me back to the present.

He nodded at a table and I followed his gaze.

“So that’s them, huh?”

“Yeah. The crew. The family. And a few unfamiliar faces, it looks like,” he said, nodding at the women hanging off two of his brothers’ arms.

“Mates?”

“Possibly.”

“Gossip buddies,” I joked.

Kamek let out a groan. “Why do I have a feeling you’re all going to band together and give us hell?”

“Oh, you’re learning fast,” I poked him in the ribs “Cause we so are!”

He turned me back toward him and I tilted my face up to him, lost in his gaze again.

“As long as you’re not plotting against me all of the time.”

“Nope.” I stretched up on my toes. “You and me against the world. Always.”

His kiss scorched my lips and the world faded away.

My mate. My future.

Forever.

WANT MORE OUTLAW PLANET MATES?

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CHOSEN BY THE RAKIAN COMMANDER

I t was just another mission. Until she was thrust into his arms. And now everything has changed...

Suppressing the rebellion on Crucible should have been just another mission for Commander Nic Vistuv and the men of his unit. But lies and misinformation plague their mission from the beginning.

The only way out of their predicament may lie in the form of a bribe, but this bribe is different. It’s wrapped in the body of a young healer, battle-scarred and broken by a deep betrayal.

And her touch is enough to bring him to very edge of control.

As secrets unravel and enemies draw nearer, Adena may be the key to understanding the truth of Crucible.

Can a wounded healer and an embittered soldier come to trust each other in time to forge a new beginning for them  for both?

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REAVER’S QUEST

H e was unexpected.

No.

Our ship getting blown up was unexpected.

Crashing on a planet filled with murder-goats was unexpected.

Being rescued by a copper skinned, winged hunk with golden eyes and not wearing much more than a leather kilt and a weapon harness was so freaking miraculous that I wondered if I’d actually fallen off that cliff.

This was just some sort of hallucination to keep my mind busy before I died, right?

Because otherwise, unexpected just got very, very interesting...

REAVER'S QUEST is book one of the Thaxian Warrior Mates steamy science fiction romance series.

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GIVEN: STAR BREED BOOK ONE

When a renegade thief and a genetically enhanced mercenary collide, space gets a whole lot hotter!

Thief Kara Shimsi has learned three lessons well - keep her head down, her fingers light, and her tithes to the syndicate paid on time.

But now a failed heist has earned her a death sentence - a one-way ticket to the toxic Waste outside the dome. Her only chance is a deal with the syndicate's most ruthless enforcer, a wolfish mountain of genetically-modified muscle named Davien.

The thought makes her body tingle with dread-or is it heat?

Mercenary Davien has one focus: do whatever is necessary to get the credits to get off this backwater mining colony and back into space. The last thing he wants is a smart-mouthed thief - even if she does have the clue he needs to hunt down whoever attacked the floating lab he and his created brothers called home.

Caring is a liability. Desire is a commodity. And love could get you killed.

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DON’T MISS THE CONQUERED WORLD!

He shattered her world. Can she trust him with her heart?

Giant spiders, walking trees, bloodthirsty vines.

For Jeneva, it's just another day trying to survive in the jungles of Ankau.

Until the sky ripped open, and the true monsters came through.

Now her world is under attack, and the only place of safety may be at the side of a rock-hard scaled alien.

But he's filled with secrets - how can she trust him?

Vrehx cares for nothing other than the destruction of the Xathi hordes who burned his home and killed his family.

But when a weapons test goes horribly wrong, the battle spills over to an uncharted world.

The planet is filled with lethal native life...but nothing is more dangerous than the human woman who obsesses his thoughts.

When war rages around them, can they fight together, or will his burning need for her drive them apart?

Vrehx is the first book in the science fiction romance series Conquered World. Each book is a new romance with alpha male alien warriors and women who don't put up with their nonsense. No cheating, no cliffhangers, HEA guaranteed!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I love old movies – To Catch a Thief, Notorious, All About Eve — and anything with Katherine Hepburn in it. Clever, elegant people doing clever, elegant things.

I’m a hopeless romantic.

And I love science fiction and the promise of space.

So it makes perfect sense to me to try to merge all of those loves into a new science fiction world, where dashing heroes and lovely ladies have adventures, get into trouble, and find their true love in the stars!

Copyright © 2022 by Elin Wyn

All rights reserved. These books or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the Author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and co-incidental.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Contents

The World of Outlaw Planet Mates

Kamek

Jaylee

Kamek

Jaylee

Kamek

Jaylee

Kamek

Jaylee

Kamek

Jaylee

Kamek

Jaylee

Kamek

Epilogue: Jaylee

Want more Outlaw Planet Mates?

Chosen by the Rakian Commander

Reaver’s Quest

Given: Star Breed Book One

Don’t Miss the Conquered World!

Please don't forget to leave a review!

About the Author

Copyright