Alien Romance: Rusneon Mates Boxed Set: A Scifi Alien Abduction Romance (Alien Romance, Alien Invasion Romance, BBW) (18 page)

But he wasn’t looking at her face. Not any more. He was, in fact, staring at –

No. Not her chest. He was looking at her leg.

“You’re bleeding,” he said. Cynthia frowned. Was she?

“Am I?” she asked. She felt drunk, and she wasn’t entirely sure whether it was the food, Rushael’s musk, or something else.

But she followed his gaze, and was surprised to see a smear of red on the dress. Where had that come from? And why hadn’t she seen it in the shower?

He was lifting the dress up. Cynthia let out a laugh and tried to bat away his hands – a giddy, slurred movement, confused and half-hearted at that. Rushael stopped, but did not draw his hands away.

“I need to see the injury,” he said, and his eyes flicked away from hers for just a moment.

No, he doesn’t
, though Cynthia.
But he wants to.

And, if she had to be perfectly honest, she wanted him to as well. She settled her hands in her lap, gave a little cough, and tried not to shiver when he continued to slide his hand up under her dress.

He lifted it smoothly and swiftly. His hand was at her knee, and then on her thigh, before Cynthia even had a chance to breathe in. She felt her face grow hot, and then realised with a sudden panic that if he lifted the dress any further he would
know
exactly how turned on she was –

She pressed her thighs together. Perhaps that would help – but then, why was she trying to hide this from him? Maybe if she let him know, he’d look into her eyes again. Maybe she’d see more than just cold blackness there –

There was a sting of pain, and Cynthia let out a yelp. Rushael didn’t even raise his head – he was busy looking at a long, thin cut along the length of Cynthia’s thigh.

“Hm,” he murmured. “The fabric must have opened your hide as it readjusted.” He brushed a finger along the length of the injury, and Cynthia shivered in anticipation of pain that never came.

“Human women are much more fragile than Rusnean ones,” Rushael mused, and Cynthia flushed hot again.

Rushael tugged at the hem of Cynthia’s dress, and for a wild, pulsing moment Cynthia was convinced he was going to lift it higher for some reason.

But he pulled it downward, then stood and offered Cynthia one of his hands. She stared at it for a moment, and then placed her own in his.

The size difference was ridiculous. She almost felt childlike.

“We should get you to the sickbay,” Rushael said, and it was the first time he’d said anything even remotely tender and Cynthia almost felt like crying.

Instead, she pressed her lips together and rose to her feet.

And then whimpered and sat back down.

“I … it hurts too much to stand on,” she said, and she was amazed that she managed to say that without her voice shaking. It wasn’t the pain of the injury that was making it difficult to stand; the smell of him and the feel of him in such close proximity was more than her legs could bear, it seemed.

Rushael looked at her for a moment. Then, with a single smooth movement, he scooped her up in his arms. Cynthia almost protested, but realised before the words had even formed that he wasn’t going to hear a thing she said.

He swept out of the dining room and turned left without hesitation. He knew exactly where he was going, and the way he moved it was as if Cynthia weighed nothing at all.

She let herself be carried along, one arm slung around his neck, the other resting on her belly as she tried to keep her breathing as even as possible. After a few steps, she let herself rest her head on his shoulder.

Aside from everything else, this was actually rather nice.

He tended to the cut on her thigh with a clinical and detached air. Cynthia, for her part, fought to maintain at least some of her dignity. Her skin goosebumped like mad at his touch, and she told him it was because the room was too cold. He waved his hand at a wall without a word, and the temperature in the room increased to almost uncomfortable levels.

Cynthia stayed silent after that, even as she found herself wondering if the heat would make her captor want to disrobe at all. After all, she was lying there on another bench with her dress hiked up around her waist, a mere fragile scrap of cloth protecting her modesty –

She let out a shaky breath, and Rushael drew his hands back. His eyes met hers, and she was surprised to see something in them she hadn’t seen before. He was frowning, but there was a gentleness there in the touch of his eyes upon her face.

He was concerned.

“Am I hurting you?”

Cynthia laughed – then bit her lip. Quite the opposite. Even his hand brushing the outside of her thigh sent shivers of electricity running through her body. But she didn’t want to admit that to him; some part of her mind still held stubbornly on and refused to admit just what was going on.

“No,” she said. “Not at all. Your hands are …” she trailed off, and blushed.

Rushael continued to look at her. Whether he was waiting for her to finish her sentence or something else, Cynthia couldn’t quite tell – but she couldn’t bring herself to say another word. Her voice was shaking, her body was on fire with a heavy wet heat, and his eyes were drawing her in with an inexorable gravitational pull.

He exhaled, and Cynthia let out her own breath. He returned his attention to her leg, and with his eyes no longer on her Cynthia allowed herself to bite her bottom lip. She wanted to arch her back, to grab his hands and guide them up her body, but she didn’t dare –

“We are done,” Rushael said. He started to pull the hem of her dress back down, but Cynthia sat up and took the fabric away from him. He straightened, threw his shoulders back, and glared at her. She froze.

The two of them stayed like that for a long, interminable moment – Cynthia sitting on the low shelf, Rushael standing over her – and then Cynthia began pulling her dress down over her legs. They held each other’s eyes the entire time, and as the dress came down over Cynthia’s knees she lifted her chin. Rushael responded by lifting his hand, and for a moment Cynthia was sure he was simply going to grab her and push her back down on the operating table.

She wanted him to. Oh, how she wanted him to.

But he did not. He let his hand hover in the air for a moment, and then dropped it to his side with a sharp exhalation of air. Cynthia, disappointed, returned her modesty all the way and pulled the dress down to her ankles.

“Can you walk now?” Rushael asked. There was a rough edge to his voice, a hunger that he struggled to hide from her. Cynthia glanced downward, and marveled at his self control. He wanted her, she could see and hear and
smell
that, oh god his musk, and yet nothing showed in the form-fitting clothes he was wearing.

He was waiting for her to answer. She looked up at him and stammered out an answer.

“I – I think … I’m not sure.”

She held out her hands, and for the first time Cynthia caught a glimpse of the man behind the self control.

He tilted his head to one side. It was a fraction of an inch of movement, but it was undeniable.

His head straightened, and he bent his knees and looped his own arms around Cynthia’s waist and under her knees. She pressed herself against him, and he carried her out of the medical bay. As he walked, he kept his eyes firmly ahead.

“There’s a library onboard,” he said. “I go there when – when I have nothing else to do.”

He looked down at her. He didn’t say anything – he didn’t even raise an eyebrow – but Cynthia nodded all the same.

“That sounds amazing,” she said.

He left her in there alone, which was quite possibly a mistake.

It was a tiny room, barely big enough for the computer screen and a reclining couch in front of it. He showed her how to use the screen, set the language to English for her after she stared at the slowly moving glyphs and logograms in confusion, and then excused himself to tend to something involving stars.

Cynthia was burning with curiosity – and something else, besides. She had to know.

She waited until she was sure Rushael wasn’t coming back, distracting herself with some desultory reading about space travel and Rusnean medicine, then she swiped across the screen to bring up the keyboard.

She hesitated, glanced at the wall where the door would appear, and then typed in her search string.

Rusneon mating practices
.

The results came back instantly.

Cynthia started reading, and then read some more. The onboard library was … well. It was very detailed.

Cynthia was more than a little surprised about how similar Rusneans and humans were. There were some superficial differences, going by the pictures, but at that point she wasn’t really paying attention any more.

She couldn’t stop thinking about him – about Rushael. About the way he looked at her, about the way she felt in his arms. She was worried that there’d been something else behind the way he looked at her, but from what she’d been reading Rusnean men had far more control over their own bodies than humans did.

Which meant that if he ever got hard around her, she’d know it was because he
wanted
to.

Cynthia glanced at the wall-door again, and bit her bottom lip. She was still incredibly turned on, and all the things she’d just been reading didn’t help her at all.

She traced her hand across her collarbone as she waved her way through some more pages. There were … traditions … to the mating process, it seemed. The male would declare his intentions, and then the female would submit to his desires.

Cynthia let her hand drift lower. She pushed it under her dress and imagined it was Rushael’s hand – far larger than hers, but just as gentle. She brushed her nipple, and bit her bottom lip to prevent herself from making any noise –

The wall-door slid open. Cynthia jumped and snatched her hand away at the same time as she swabbed the computer screen with her other arm.

Rushael stood in the doorway. He showed no reaction to Cynthia’s embarrassment, and she turned to face him and pressed her knees together.

“We’ve arrived,” Rushael said, and Cynthia blinked.

“We … sorry?” she managed.

Rushael let out an impatient puff of air. “We have arrived on Rusneon,” he said. “It’s time. I will present you to my people as my trophy.”

He held out a hand, and without thinking Cynthia took it and allowed him to pull her to her feet.

All she could think was about how fast the trip had been, even as he led her down a familiar corridor. They were heading back to the airlock she had stumbled through when fleeing the jackals.

It was time. Cynthia was about to see another world.

CHAPTER FOUR

She had no idea how she managed to walk without assistance. Rushael was still holding her hand. That probably had something to do with it – whether Cynthia liked to admit it or not, she drew strength from the archon’s touch, and if that wasn’t the most childish thing ever –

They reached the entrance to his ship, and he smiled at her. Cynthia smiled back, and he nodded and the smile vanished. A moment later, he dropped her hand and pointed at the floor behind him.

She didn’t move, and his brows furrowed.

“You are my trophy, Cynthia Withers,” he rumbled. “You must stand behind me. And do exactly as I say.”

Cynthia opened her mouth to protest, and he lifted a hand to pinch his nose.

“Please, Cynthia. This is important.”

She closed her mouth and nodded. Okay. She could do this for him. As a favour.

She fell in behind him, and he waved the entrance open.

Rusneon was bright, and hot. The heat and the light hit Cynthia with all the power of gravity, and she found herself falling back a step as she dealt with the weight of it. She looked up and squinted at the bright, washed-out sky.

There were two suns up there, one huge – roughly twice the size of the sun back on Earth – and one smaller, but still large.

Cynthia let out a shaky laugh.
Back on Earth
. Like all this was normal somehow.

Rushael was waiting for her, an impatient frown upon his face. Cynthia drew in a deep breath, and had to fight not to cough as hot, humid air entered her lungs. She hurried to catch up, and only barely remembered to fall in behind him. He turned away from her, and she felt a cold sting as she saw his jaw clench. She wasn’t doing so well, so far.

A moment later, she felt annoyed. Why did she care so much about pleasing him? It wasn’t like he wanted her as anything more than a trophy.

And
that
thought brought up a roiling welter of emotions and ideas too complex for her to easily navigate – not right now, not when she was overwhelmed with bright heat and the very idea of being on another planet.

So she distracted herself by looking around at the world of Rusneon – or, at least, the part of the world immediately around her. Cynthia turned slowly, careful to keep pace just a few steps behind Rushael as she walked.

It looked like they were in the middle of a city. The ship – a smooth, egg-shaped oval sitting on its end – was fitted neatly into one of a dozen holes in the middle of a white stone field. It was probably stone, Cynthia thought. It certainly felt like stone under her bare feet, anyway: hot but not painful, smooth and polished.

Tall buildings rose up all around them, all white stone and tinted glass. At least, Cynthia assumed it was glass; it certainly
looked
like it. How could she know what
anything
was on this planet?

There were roads weaving between the buildings above and below. One of the roads looped past the white stone field Cynthia and Rushael were walking across, and dozens of smaller egg-shaped vehicles zipped back and forth in a continuous stream.

There were people inside each of those eggs, Cynthia realised. Rusneans – not humans.

“How many people are on this planet?” she asked. How many families? How many husbands and wives – is that even a concept here?

Those were questions she wanted to ask, but she couldn’t bring the words forth.

Rushael delayed his answer for a few moments, and Cynthia started to wonder if she had spoken out of turn. Was she supposed to just remain meek and silent?

“Twenty million, or thereabouts,” Rushael said, and Cynthia felt a flood of relief pour through her. So they were allowed to talk to each other, then.

“That’s … not very many,” she said. Wasn’t that the population of Mexico City? There were more people in a single city on Earth than there were on this entire planet?

Rushael looked over his shoulder at Cynthia. “We have space travel. We see no need to cram ourselves shoulder-to-shoulder on a single planet.”

Cynthia felt a flush of heat brush her cheeks, hotter than the air around her. There was scorn in those words, a condescending sneer of declension that made her feel even smaller than she actually was – by comparison to Rushael, at least.

They were approaching a building. Nothing about it marked it as distinct from any of the other buildings that surrounded the stone field – the space-dock, Cynthia decided to call it – but Rushael approached it with the absolute confidence of a man walking through his own living room.

Rushael slowed, and Cynthia slowed along with him. He drew in a deep breath, and then fell back beside her. She looked up at him, and felt something flutter in her chest when she saw the tension across his brow.

He was worried. Nervous, even.

She wanted to reach out and touch his hand – she almost did – but then she pulled her fingers back at the last moment. She wasn’t sure how he’d react to that.

But he saw the start of the gesture all the same, and he offered her a thin smile.

“We are about to present ourselves to the Perataik,” he said. He frowned, and hesitated. “That word … doesn’t translate very well. Parliament. War Council. High Command?”

The frown deepened, and he shook his head. “None of those words quite fit. They are the leaders of this world – my world. They – we – maintain control through weapons.”

He clenched his jaw. “They have the right to judge whether my trophies are suitable.”

Cynthia didn’t understand much of what Rushael was saying. But she could see he was distressed, even as he tried to hide it. She hesitated, and then reached out and touched the back of his hand.

His face softened, briefly, and she felt an electric shock run through her body. Feeling his skin under her fingertips reminded her of when he had tended to the injury on her thigh –

And this really wasn’t the right time to be thinking or feeling like that, she thought. She pushed the lust down and offered him a smile. She searched for some reassuring words, struggled to find something appropriate to say, and realised that she didn’t even really know what was going on.

“I’m sure it will be fine,” she said. It was better than nothing, and even those words seemed to have a positive effect. Rushael nodded and smiled at her, and for a brief moment managed to look much younger and more vulnerable than he ever had before.

Cynthia found herself quashing the wet electric heat within her body yet again.
Inappropriate
.

“Let us proceed, then,” Rushael said, and he turned and strode toward the building. Cynthia fell in behind him, her mind roiling with all manner of thoughts and images as she let her gaze wander over the tall, muscular alien’s shoulders and down his back.

That fabric really was form-fitting, she thought.

And she was wearing exactly the same fabric. Just how much was she showing off right now?

She pushed the thought out of her mind and concentrated on the building in front of them.

There were no doors visible until they were less than a few metres away, at which point a panel appeared and slid seamlessly out of sight. Rushael didn’t miss a step, and led Cynthia through into the interior.

They were met with a hostile barricade.

A dozen men, tall and scowling with their arms folded across their chests, each with half a dozen women standing behind them, hands clasped and eyes cast demurely floorward.

Rushael stopped in front of them and raised both his hands in salute.

“Elaba, Perataik-narun,” he said, and bowed his head. It was quite clearly the start of a ceremony, and Cynthia hurried to imitate the body-language of the other women present. Was that the right thing to do? Or was she supposed to do something else? Rushael hadn’t told her a thing–

He was still speaking. Cynthia risked a glance upward without raising her head. Rushael’s head was still bowed, and the other men were still standing with their arms folded across their chests and scowls cutting across their faces. They were letting him speak, but they were not happy about it.

One of them glanced at her, and a cold shock ran through her body. She dropped her gaze, afraid to even show that she’d been looking up. There was a naked honesty in that gaze – anger, and contempt, possibly even disgust.

They weren’t happy about
her
.

Rushael finished speaking, and raised his head. Cynthia could see him out of the corner of her eyes, hands still clasped in front of his face as he waited for the – what did he call them? The Para-take? – to respond.

The one that had seared Cynthia with the gaze of withering scorn stepped forward and dropped his arms to his sides. The women behind him did not move; nor did any of the other men or women in the room. Even Rushael remained very, very still.

And of course, at that very moment Cynthia’s nose began to itch.

She dipped her head lower and wriggled it back and forth, hoping that would be sufficient. It wasn’t, of course, but she would not – could not – do anything else. She had a feeling making a movement out of turn right now would be the worst mistake of her life.

No one had spoken for awhile now. The room was completely silent, completely frozen. Cynthia risked a glance up at Rushael. He was still standing with his hands clasped in front of his face, but as she watched he lowered them to his sides.

“Zai-archon Verek,” Rushael said, and Cynthia was surprised to hear his voice take on a soft, almost deferential tone.

“Rushael,” Verek said, and there was such poison and spite in his voice that Cynthia took a step back out of reflex. Every eye in the room snapped toward her, and she couldn’t help but feel the disgust and contempt in their gaze.

What was she doing here? Why had she just allowed Rushael to lead her into this room? These people
hated
her!

And then Verek turned his eyes on her, and all the scorn and contempt she had just experienced suddenly seemed like a friendly shrug from a stranger. This man
embodied
disgust – at least so far as his attitude toward her was concerned. It was so overwhelming that it was almost a tangible force, and the pressure of it left Cynthia trembling.

“You bring this – this
vilkriek
into the oma-perataik?”

Cynthia didn’t need that word translated. It was so clearly a vile insult that the syllables hung in the air like poison – and Rushael’s response only underlined that: he clenched his fists and drew in a sharp breath.

Verek raised his chin, and for a moment Cynthia could have sworn he smiled. Then Rushael let out his breath and unclenched his fists.

“Under the rules of acquisition, which all archons must adhere to, I am required to present any trophy I claim as my own to the Perataik,” Rushael said. There was a sonorous quality to his words, and Cynthia realised he was reciting them. It was part of a ritual – and judging by the reactions of the other men (more archons?) he had somehow just gained the upper hand on Verek.

Was it because the zai-archon was ignoring ritual?

Verek sneered.

“It’s a
human
, Rushael. Why would you claim a hairless ape as a trophy?”

The other archons laughed, and Cynthia felt the sting of humiliation on her cheeks. She hadn’t asked to be treated like this –

And then she saw Rushael’s reaction.

He clenched his jaw again, but also glanced sideways at her. There was something in that gaze – something completely different from the way everyone else looked at her – and she thought she knew what it was.

Was she more than just a trophy to him?

There was no way of knowing, and he certainly wasn’t giving anything more away. He turned his attention back to Verek and raised his chin.

“I can claim anything as a trophy. I could claim a
rock
, if I so chose.”

There was a veiled insult in there, Cynthia thought, and from the way Verek narrowed his eyes it certainly seemed to have struck home. A smile touched the corner of Cynthia’s mouth, and despite herself she felt pride at Rushael’s victory over this arrogant, spiteful man.

He saw it.

Verek saw her smile, and that was probably what made him do what he did next.

“
Vilkriek-mo lash!
” he shouted, and the other archons stepped forward with murder in their eyes. Rushael glanced at her with a frown on his face, then stepped forward as well.

Between Cynthia and the other archons.

He held out a hand.

“What is this?” he demanded. “What do you hope to achieve?”

Verek was actually smiling. His eyes were empty of emotion, but his lips were curled and he was clearly enjoying himself.

“No human is worthy of ever becoming a Rusnean’s trophy,” Verek said. “You know this, Rushael. You know they are primitive, crude, over-sexed –”