Alien Conquest: (The Warrior's Prize) An Alien SciFi Romance (17 page)

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to just fall apart all over you.”

“It’s all right,” he replied, fingers catching a bit of her hair and easing it back behind her ear. “It’s been a long night for us both.”

“I was so afraid that Lohar was going to kill you.”

Vega’s smile was grim. “So was I, donara.”

“You must be in so much pain,” she said, and started to let go of him and find her feet.

But he held onto her and just pulled her close, and before she could do anything else, he kissed her. It was quick and hard, and then he let her go, but it left her dizzy and breathless.

“I am in a lot of pain,” Vega said. “But it’s healing my heart to have you here.”

Alaina brushed at the dark fall of his hair. It was soft and glossy against her fingers. Then she eased to her feet and went back to the door to get her medical bag. She brought it back to the bed and sat down beside Vega, setting the bag next to her.

“I’m going to redo your stitches,” she told him, “and rebandage the wound. And I have some drugs here for the pain.”

“No drugs,” Vega said. “I’ve had enough of them tonight. No more. I was too slow on the sand, I almost lost because of the painkillers they gave me before the party.”

“You don’t have to fight anymore tonight,” Alaina said softly. “And it will help with the pain. Please take them.”

Vega grimaced and looked away, but she was relieved when he nodded all the same.

It was unpleasant work, and Alaina felt somewhat responsible for this new round of wounds Vega suffered from. She knew it wasn’t her fault, that she had nothing to do technically with Atticon or Lennai, or the way they seemed to be lashing out at each other. But she’d been a pawn in the game, and she hated it. And she hated that Vega was the one paying the price for it.

As she settled with the needle to redo his stitches, she asked, “Will you tell me about your home planet?”

Vega exhaled as the needle pierced his skin, bracing his hands on his knees. “It’s beautiful. It is the greenest planet in the Cepheus system, where the Errai are from. Just endless plains of green grass and red-leafed trees. Twin suns so there is always a sunset and a sunrise. My family has worked the same farm for generations. I left it in my sister’s care, and her husband can’t get any damn thing to grow. But she’ll take care of it. I’d hoped to go back, to bring riches to them, to plant and plant and take in a greater harvest. To feed everyone in my village without cost.”

“You could still do that,” Alaina said.

“Maybe,” Vega murmured.

“So you’re...a farmer? Really?”

He smiled a little better at that, through the pain, and nodded. “Really.”

“You fight pretty well for a farmer,” she said.

“I had to learn, like anyone. Master Dyhar is a gifted teacher and a ruthless coach. I was naturally strong from working the land, and he gave me the tools I needed to use that strength in the games.” He looked down. “I had never intended to become a murderer, though.”

“You’re not a murderer,” Alaina insisted. “You’ve had to do all these things. They’re
making
you and it’s disgusting. Vega, you are so much more than this. Than a cursu. Than whatever chains they’ve forced you to carry.”

He looked at her again.

She was struck by the deep gratitude and equally fierce desire in his vivid violet eyes.

“Thank you, Alaina,” he said softly. “I need to be reminded of those things after tonight. I’ve been so determined, since I started fighting, just to get through it. To make it out and win my freedom, and I forgot why I was fighting to begin with. You’ve helped me remember. You’ve helped me remember that I am not just a cursu, but a man as well.”

Alaina tore her eyes from Vega’s and looked back at the work of her hands. She finished redoing the stitches and smoothed a fresh bandage into place over them.

“I’m glad to help you,” she said, cleaning her hands, and looked into his face again.

His alien face. His beautiful, alien face. She did her best to memorize it in that moment. The high cheekbones and bright, hooded eyes. The strong jaw and the way his dark hair fell across his brow. The glossy, black
qamalai
which crept up his throat. She reached over, brushing that shining obsidian scale with the tips of her fingers. Still smooth and soft.

“All I’ve wanted since I got here was to escape this place,” she whispered, voice trembling with the truth of it. “But now I don’t want to escape without you.”

His mouth curved in a frown, expression grave. “The only way to leave this place is by winning your freedom in the Arena.”

“That can’t be the only way,” she insisted softly. “It can’t.”

“Or if I win my freedom and you are mine, as the donara.” His eyes blazed. “I could take you with me.”

“Vega, don’t,” Alaina said, shaking her head. “You’re hurt. You can’t fight right now, I can’t even handle thinking about you fighting right now.”

“Atticon will make me fight in the next games whether I am hurt or not,” Vega said. He took her hand and lifted it, pressing a kiss to the backs of her fingers. “So you heal me as best you can, and I will climb the lists for us.”

“I’m not a sorcerer,” Alaina said. “No one can heal wounds like yours that fast. Vega—”

She would have argued with him all night. She would have convinced him that he just couldn’t fight, that it was too much of a risk, that there must be a way to make Lennai and Atticon understand that sending him into the Arena in this state was a death sentence. But he used his grip on her hand to pull her close and kissed her again, and all the arguments and protests died in Alaina’s throat. She felt her blood warm, her whole body heating up as Vega’s lips explored hers, as his tongue slid into her mouth and his hands drifted over her, into her hair. There was no
clostrata
tonight to keep them apart. There was nothing to keep them apart, and Alaina’s heart thundered in her chest already.

His arm tightened around her waist and he spilled her onto her back on the bed, shoving the medical bag and her instruments onto the floor as he kissed her down to the pillows and nudged her knees apart with a brush of his other hand. Her thighs opened for him, ready, and he lowered himself between them. She sank her fingers into his hair, mind a-whirl and at war with her body. She should stop. They should stop. He was hurt. But she wanted him so badly now that she wasn’t sure she had the will to stop. More than anything, he was the bright and shiny hope she had in this place. This one night of peace and pleasure in his arms was all she could think to live for.

But, Alaina realized, that wasn’t who she was, and it certainly wasn’t who she wanted to be. She had to hope for more. She had to believe in herself first.

The kiss broke and she set her hands on his shoulders, their breaths coming hard, and gently started to push him onto his side and off of her. “Stop,” she gasped.

Vega stopped immediately, eyes flashing with confusion, but he eased onto his side on the bed beside her, brow furrowing. “I thought you wanted…”

“I do,” Alaina said quickly, nodding. “I do want. I want you. This. Us. But you’re hurt, and I don’t want you just once, Vega. I want you again and again.” She smiled a little and touched his face. “Again and again. You have to heal first.”

“Damn my healing,” Vega muttered, frowning even as he turned his face to press a kiss to the center of the palm of her hand. “I want you again and again as well. Starting right now. We may never have a chance like this again.”

“Yes we will,” Alaina said. “We’ll make this chance again. We won’t let them stop us. But it means you have to fight and you have to win, and you have to be well to do both.”

He pulled her closer, their bodies brushing, legs tangling together, but he let his head hit the pillow and just folded her hand against his chest. His eyes were tired, Alaina thought. But they were beautiful and when they were focused on her, it was like the rest of the universe and all its wickedness just faded away.

“But you’ll stay the night,” he murmured. “Won’t you?”

Alaina smiled, brushing her nose to his, and then pressed a kiss to his mouth as if to seal the deal. “I’m not going anywhere until they drag me away tomorrow morning.”

Vega smiled too, and it was such a rare expression on his mouth that it sent Alaina’s heart fluttering all over again.

“You’re such a strange creature,” he said. “Human. Beautiful and strange. I never could have imagined you.”

“I couldn’t have imagined you either,” Alaina admitted. “You’re strange to me too. But...not so strange at all.”

He chuckled, and shifted his weight a little, getting an arm beneath her to fit her snug against him. And then he tucked his face against her hair and breathed, in and out, and she could feel the warmth of his breath against her ear.

“We’ll get out of this place together,” he whispered.

“Together,” she agreed softly.

“And then there will be a hundred more nights and a hundred more mornings for me to prove how deeply in love with you I am.”

Alaina’s heart melted right on the spot and she smiled, and she felt an ache in her belly that was all things desire and happiness and terror. Men had said they were in love with her before, but she had never believed any of them. Maybe they were in love with the idea of her. The strong woman, the EMT, the woman who went charging into danger to save lives. But she was too independent for every last one of them. She made too many demands of them all. And in the end, none of them ever really loved her. But when Vega said it, she believed him. He’d seen only the worst of her, only the lost and the strange and the foreign, the confused and chained down Alaina, but he still loved her. He loved her in spite of her fragility, and for her continued strength, and she could tell it was so by the way he spoke.

“I love you, too,” she whispered, the words so delicate on her tongue, so careful. A tiny, breakable gift.

Vega kissed her hair and they fell asleep wrapped up in each other’s arms.

In the morning, Vega woke with Alaina still fit close against him, and he thought it would have been perfect had they only been anywhere else but the station. Anywhere but the palace of House Chara. Where the politics of the system couldn’t touch them. But at least, now, in this moment, they were together. Eventually as they’d slept, they’d gotten under the blankets on the bed. Alaina curled on her side and Vega was curled around her, an arm snug about her, his nose in her hair. He liked the smell of her hair. The smell of her hair was perfect just as it was. He inhaled the scent, shifting a little so he could kiss her shoulder. And the curve where her shoulder met her elegant neck. She stirred a little in his arms, waking, and he could see her smile. So he kissed her throat. Her jaw. And when she pressed her back against him, desire woke in him as well.

“They’ll come for you soon,” he murmured against her skin, his arm tightening around her because he didn’t want to let go of her. Not yet. “But we have a little time.”

“Are you sure?” she asked softly.

He knew she wasn’t asking about the time. He knew she could feel what he wanted, and Vega took stock of himself, of how much pain he was in. But his desire for her was stronger. And they had so little time he didn’t want to waste it.

He slipped his free hand beneath the blankets, caught the hem of her dress and eased it up her thigh, to the slope of her hip, then let his fingers coast down, over her soft belly and further down. Her breath hitched and she opened her legs a little to accommodate the journey of his hand, and he realized she was holding her breath until he cupped her sex. Then she exhaled, and his longing for her was so sharp he ached with it, pressing his hard cock against the curve of her buttocks as he slipped two fingers between the folds of her sex. She was warm, wet, and he kissed her throat as he slid his fingers inside her. She turned her face into the pillow and arched against him, and he held her close, curving his fingers within her, coaxing.

“Vega,” she gasped.

“We’ll be careful,” he said. “We’ll be slow.”

He closed his eyes, let his fingers explore and learn her as he inhaled the scent of her hair again and again, memorizing the way she smelled and the way her sex felt as his fingers plundered her. She reached down, hand covering his, guiding his touch and the rhythm of his fingers, and sooner rather than later she was panting into the pillow, hips moving against his hand, and he was so hard he could barely stand it. But careful, he’d said. Slow. And he held all that passion in check, pulling her towards climax with every slide and slick curve of his fingers, with every press of her sex against his palm.

He’d thought humans fragile before, but Alaina was gorgeous in her ecstasy, sweat glistening along her skin as her heart beat and her eyes closed. Her lips parted in a silent scream as she came into his hand, and she grasped her own breast through her dress. Vega bit down lightly on her shoulder, growling softly, and she trembled and smiled and reached to pull the hem of her dress even higher.

He withdrew his fingers from inside her, sighing as she lifted her ass a little, invitingly, the curve of one buttock brushing back against his cock. He shook a little with the effort of going so slowly, but he curved himself more completely against her, her back to his chest, and listened to the thundering beat of her heart.

“Gently,” she whispered. “But oh god, Vega, do it.”

“I love you,” he told her, because it was true. “I want you to marry me.”

“Yes.” She gasped and laughed and he saw the glisten of tears in her eyes. “I want to marry you, too. I want to be with you forever.”

Vega’s heart sang. He hooked a thumb into the waistband of his pants and tugged them down over his hips, freeing himself against her.

Then he slid his hand down over her ass, lifting her leg a little, and the head of his cock found her entrance, sliding along it, and she shuddered in his arms in anticipation. Slowly, so slowly, he slid the length of his cock inside her, easing in inch by hot, aching inch until he was fully sheathed inside her. Now he was panting into her hair, and she squirmed back against him, touching herself at the same time. Vega pulled out a little, then eased himself back in, and felt her clench herself around him as though to keep him there. He nearly lost it then, but withdrew again, the entire way, and then thrust himself in one huge buck of his hips fully back into her.