GalacticInferno (8 page)

He nodded. “You have no need for physical healing now.”

“Then what—?”

He stepped back, the cup still in hand. “Let me introduce
you to Lillian. Our queen.”

The earth woman stepped through the leafy plants in an
almost sheer dress that fell mid-thigh, made of the same alien substance the
males wore as pants. Her long gold-brown hair swung forward and curtained her
face as she twined slender arms around Maddox’s neck. The cup thudded to the
floor as they kissed with tender, loving restraint, their eyes clinging for a
moment before Lillian turned her attention to Ally.

Ally felt her eyes bulge. No. Way.

Though her memories were fuzzy at best, she knew the
beautiful woman who stood before her. Queen Margaret Belgrave.

Earth royalty.

She sucked in a breath, pushing aside the need to bow. She
wasn’t on earth, those rules no longer applied.

Queen Margaret—Lillian—stared at her. “I can hardly believe
it, another earth woman.” She smiled, delight sparkling from her eyes. “I hope
we can be friends, yes?”

Ally smiled lopsidedly in return, half-aware the brew she’d
swallowed was making her feel…woozy. “I…yes. I think I’d like that.”

Lillian interlaced her hands and tucked them beneath her
chin, prayer-like, as she studied her. Apparently pleased, she dropped her
hands and held one out. “So would I,” she said huskily. “Come, let’s get you
clean, comfortable…relaxed. Then later, you can tell me your story.”

She accepted Lillian’s small, feminine hand. All too
conscious of the queen’s soft skin, her fragrance…

What is wrong with me?

Ally cleared her throat. “The aliens have a shower?”

The queen smiled a secret smile. “Something like that.”

When Lillian spun around and tugged her to follow, Ally
squeaked, “I don’t want to go anywhere, not without Renate.”

Lillian turned back, a brow raised. “He won’t be too far
away, believe me.”

Ally paused perhaps a second or two longer. But really, what
choice did she have but to follow this human? Besides, she needed a friend in
here. And a powerful friend at that. She managed a smile in return. “Then I’m
all yours.”

Lillian giggled, an almost girlish sound. “Oh I am so glad
to hear you say that.”

The queen led her through a jungle of leaves, exotic-looking
fruits, vines and shrubs, but Ally scarcely noticed. Her body was thrumming
with ever-increasing need. Her breasts had hardened, nipples tight and
engorged, her pussy sensitized and clit tingling.

What had that Maddox bastard given her?

Needs were taking over, stark and wanton.

Renate. Bonnie. Despite herself, right then she could
scarcely dredge up their names.

She repressed a groan. Lillian’s fragrance smelled of
ambrosia, shooting shockwaves of lust straight to her cunt.

She tore her stare away from the queen’s swaying ass and
slender rearview, forcing herself to notice everything but the woman in front.

A huge crimson butterfly with six jagged wings flittered
past, its extra-long antennae that was speckled with fleshy knobs, seemingly a
dead weight it had to lug around. Little wonder it needed an extra pair of
wings.

She brushed against a plant with fluorescent yellow leaves
with the appearance of long, leathery porcupine quills. It quivered and then
abruptly whipped into itself, leaves twisting around one another to form a
knot. Self-protection?

Lillian turned back and smiled at her. “Don’t worry, you’ll
get used to it. The Ak ‘ Bella houses some incredible things.”

“Ak ‘ Bella?” she asked, voice breathless and heart skipping
beats. She could only hope the effects going on with her body weren’t apparent
to Lillian.

“Yes. It’s the mother ship’s hothouse. Maddox is the genius
who looks after all the plants and their companions. Not only has he kept many
otherworldly species from extinction, he helps supply food for the crew and
tonics for all their ills.”

The tinkling of a waterfall reached Ally’s ears even before
they broke through some spiky greenery. A large pool gently bubbled and steamed
before them. Ally’s eyes widened. “Wow. It’s beautiful.”

The other woman dropped Ally’s hand to peel the dress over
her head. Ally’s pulse jumped, her cunt squeezing. Speaking of beautiful. The
queen’s slender body could have graced the cover of any number of beauty
magazines. Her full breasts and pink, puckered nipples were made to be sucked,
her pussy made to be tasted and fucked.

Three kings would see to that.
So what does she want from
me?

Lillian slipped into the steamy water with a luxurious sigh,
but it was only once the queen had swum out to the middle of the pool that
Ally’s lust dimmed.

She drew in a steadying breath. She’d never felt this way
about a woman. Ever. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. It took every
bit of her restraint not to push a finger into her cunt and satisfy even a
little of the lust overtaking her body.

Water splashed. Ally’s eyelids flipped apart. The queen was
on her back, thighs opened, the soft pink folds of her pussy in full view.
“Don’t ask me how all this works,” she called out, sweeping a hand to encompass
the pool and its surrounds. “All I know for sure is that the steam coming from
this hot pool is vital for many of the plants survival.”

Ally swallowed, her throat dry and her pussy wet. What would
it be like to taste her majesty’s cunt? To make her vibrate with pleasure and
sample her essence as she brought her to orgasm with her tongue?

Lillian flipped back on her belly and swam to the other side
of the pool, her long hair fanning out behind her.

Ally absently touched her short, cropped hair. Just a few
days ago she would have felt dowdy, ugly, beside this exquisite woman. Oddly
enough, she didn’t. Somewhere in her short time with Renate, she’d grown past
her insecurities.

Renate.

Pain lanced her heart, her soul. He might have helped her to
find her poise and self-confidence, but he’d betrayed her trust. Her hands
curled into fists. She wouldn’t be forgetting that fact any time soon.

“Are you coming in?”

Ally started a little, lost in her realizations.

“It’s beautiful in here,” Lillian added.

She nodded, and then slid into the liquid warmth that
encased her body, caressed her with gentle bubbles. She all but moaned. “You’re
right. This is heaven.”

Lillian swam toward her, gliding close. “Almost,” she breathed.
And then she moved closer still, her mouth settling over Ally’s like
silk-on-silk, soft and inviting.

Ally didn’t move, didn’t react—at least not outwardly. On
the inside undercurrents of pleasure surged into a deluge of frustrated need.

Lillian drew back, her eyes slumberous and hot. “Did you
like that?”

“It wasn’t…unpleasant,” she admitted hoarsely.

The queen’s eyes darkened. “Good.” And then she moved back,
swimming with slow strokes to where the bottom of the pool—the floor of the
craft—dropped away. She flipped on her back again, arms scissoring forward and
back through the water either side as she kept her head up and watched Ally. “I
guess you’ve learned our men don’t want to share?”

“So why do they?”

Lillian arched a brow. “Aside from the fact the men would
never find enough females to go around?”

Ally moved deeper into the water, following Lillian as
though an invisible lead tugged her forward. “Yes.”

Lillian’s smile tilted with pleasure. “The more sex we
embrace from our multiple partners, our soul mates, the more chance there is
we’ll be impregnated to increase our population.”

Ally stilled at the precipice where shallow became deep, her
toes digging into the odd surface of the mother ship. Did the queen see the
flash of pain that momentarily shot through her body, her soul, blinding her to
any of the lust that had consumed her?

“Barbaric and a little shocking, I know,” Lillian continued,
evidently unaware. “But there is validity in their reasoning. Without alien men
fucking earth women, both species would die out.”

Ally barely heard the queen’s logic. She was dying—at least
on the inside.

Lillian swam close. “Are you okay? You don’t look so good.”

“I’ll be fine,” Ally managed. “I’m just…shocked.”

Traumatized. Devastated. Distraught.

Lillian moved behind her. And Ally sighed as the queen’s
hands clasped her shoulders and gently kneaded. The queen’s breath along her
ear sent shivers through her body, her pussy.

What the hell?

She’d never been intimate with a woman before, never even
been halfway interested in her own sex.

“Relax,” Lillian said huskily. “Enjoy.”

Lust reanimated as though a lightning bolt to kindling when
Lillian began to gently kiss the side of her throat, her shoulders, her body a
mass of quivering, sensitized nerves, hungry for so much more.

“Let’s get you clean,” Lillian added.

The queen retrieved a bottle of shampoo and conditioner
wedged in a crevice of a purplish rock. She squeezed a blob into her open hand.
“Allow me.”

Ally closed her eyes as Lillian massaged the shampoo into her
hair. She moaned, desperate to end this torture. Dunking under the water to
wash the shampoo out, she luxuriated in the feel of the conditioner next,
rubbed deftly through her hair.

“I’m not supposed to use the human shampoo and conditioner,”
Lillian admitted softly. “Dar—one of my husband’s—asked Maddox to make me a
concoction, similar to what we have on earth, only plant friendly.” She let out
a sigh. “I can’t help myself though, I just love the scent of our human stuff.
And it’s the little things that take me back, even now.”

“You miss home?” Ally asked, turning to face her.

Lillian smiled. “Home? This—here—is my home. Besides, I
could hardly miss the life I had on earth where I was forced into a marriage I
hated. In comparison, this new life with my alien lovers is beyond par. Dar,
Ezra and Maddox make me feel things that would’ve been impossible with a
human.”

“I think I know what you mean,” Ally whispered. “Renate
makes me forget my old life, my loveless marriage.”

Lillian’s expression softened with understanding. “The
captain is a remarkable man, even without his lineage.”

His lineage? Captain?

“Lie back now,” Lillian suggested softly, “and allow me to
rinse the conditioner from your hair.”

Ally floated on her back, surprised to discover the bubbling
water supported her weight, as though this alien water was denser than what was
found on earth.

Lillian’s hands worked the conditioner from her hair and
Ally’s lashes fluttered closed as sensation speared from her scalp to her toes
and back again.

“Oh, look who’s here,” Lillian murmured, a smiling lilt in
her voice.

“Here?” Ally spluttered, sinking under the water before
quickly surfacing and only too aware she’d been putting on quite the show.

“Yes.” My husbands, Dar, Ezra and Maddox.”

Ally’s eyes goggled. The kings were as different as three
men could get, but each one was deliciously handsome. One of them resembled
Renate—short cropped hair, compelling green eyes—but with a gem in his brow and
restrained anger in his stare.

“What are they doing here?” Ally whispered, a flush heating
her cheeks.

Lillian’s smile pulled the corners of her lush mouth.
“They’re here to watch us.”

“Watch us?” she echoed.

Lillian’s eyes turned smoky with need. “Yes. You and me.”

“But—why? I don’t understand?”

Lillian brushed back a lock of wet, darkened hair. “These
males are no different to our earth males,” she murmured. “It would give them
great enjoyment to watch us pleasure each other.”

She moved back, shaking her head. “No. No! I’m sorry, I
just…I can’t do that.”

The other woman looked more bemused than rejected. “Then I
take it you care for Renate a lot, perhaps more than a lot?”

Why did it take such a simple question to break through her
walls? Why did it take the gently worded knowing of another woman to catch her
off-guard?

She felt the blood drain from her face, felt passion ebb
away even as sadness engulfed her, followed soon after by the wretchedness of
pain. “I…do.”

“Then why so sad?”

“He betrayed me,” she admitted in a small, shaky voice. “He
broke my trust.”

“He saved your life.”

“And yet I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to die with the
rest of my race than face a life of lies, of shattered dreams and broken
promises.”

“Kitten, I’d never do that to you. Not deliberately.”

Chapter Seven

Ripples eddied around her as she spun toward Renate. He sat
at the water’s edge, as buck naked as she and wholly unselfconscious. His eyes
regarded her with an intensity that struck at her soul and snared her heart.

She shook her head. “How do I know that?”

Really know?

He moved into the water, his movements so graceful, so
masculine it left her mouth dry, her heart pounding.

“You don’t. Not for sure.” He swam close, and in that moment
Ally realized they were alone. Lillian was even then moving out of the other
side of the pool and into the kings’ arms, all four then leaving Ally and
Renate to their own devices.

Her eyes narrowed. Had this been some kind of a test? A
trial to see how deep her feelings for Renate really ran?

Had she passed?

Anger flared. “I’m not sure that’s enough.”

“I can’t promise never to hurt you. But I can tell you
without question—I love you, and will keep on loving you until we’re both just
memories left behind.”

Her chest hurt. Something came undone inside.
He loves me
.

The very idea was surreal. Indescribable. Incredible.

She bit her quivering bottom lip. “You will?” she asked in a
small voice that somehow echoed the little girl crying out from deep within.
The same girl who’d been abandoned by her mother and raised by a father whose
ability to love had left right along with the woman he’d once called a wife.

Ally squeezed her eyes shut, willing away the sudden memory,
the knowledge. She couldn’t take any more sadness, any more despair. Especially
not after hearing those three little words that had the ability to make
everything right.

“Yes, Ally,” he whispered with a seriousness that couldn’t
be denied, “a thousand times, yes.”

When he kissed her, she knew she was a fool for not trusting
him to begin with, for not seeing him as the hero he was. He’d stayed to fight
off a dog pack to keep her safe, he’d taken her to his people—undoubtedly at
great risk to his own safety—to save her life.

She opened her eyes, struck by the strength of his deep
green stare. “I don’t want anyone else,” she breathed. “Just. You.”

He didn’t say anything, he didn’t need to. Words weren’t
needed. His mouth pressed over hers once again, his lips soft and dominant all
at the same time. He walked her slowly backward, kissing her even when he laid
her back in the shallow water and she was pressed fully against his aroused
body.

When he pulled his mouth free, his eyes searched hers, as if
ensuring she really wanted this as much as he did. “I want to make this special
for you.”

More special? Impossible.

God, how had she thought anyone, male or female, could be a
substitute for Renate? He held her heart in his hands. Her soul was irrevocably
entwined with his.

She cupped his face in her hands and urged him down, wanting
him with all the pent-up emotion and needs of before, only this time she had absolutely
no doubts, no restraint.

He put his hands over hers, stilling her. “Trust me, okay.”

She leaned back, a little deflated but a whole lot more
intrigued and aroused. “Yes, of course.”

Because she did trust him, just as she should have from the
very first. Besides, if it was possible their lovemaking could be even more
special, who was she to have doubts?

She relaxed, putting herself in Renate’s hands and staring
up at the domed roof. Odd-looking insects flittered through the air, all colors
and shapes. Something much larger soared up high, its skin spotted with crimson
and yellow. Carèche’s, or perhaps some other planet’s, version of a flying fox?

The water rippled around her as Renate’s weight moved away
from her. “Give me a moment,” he said thickly.

When he moved back, he placed something warm and squishy on
her thigh. She started when it began to pulsate. She looked down. “What is
that?” she squeaked.

“Kio kio.” His stare was unmistakably hot as he guided the
spongy thing that was about the size of his hand along her inner thigh, toward
her pussy.

“What are you doing?” she gasped, turned on and horrified
all at once.

“Carèche people use the kio kio as a stimulator.”

“A sex toy,” she breathed.

He looked up, his stare hot. “Yes. Relax, kitten, you’ll be
thanking me soon.”

She swallowed, holding his stare. “Okay. I…I trust you.”

He nodded, then said with a smile, “I know you do.”

The vibrations strengthened as he pushed the kio kio plant
up and down one thigh, then the other, at times so close to her pussy she
gritted her teeth to stop her hips from gyrating toward it and force the
pulsations over the inner folds of her pussy, her tender but sensitized clit.

Her breath left her lungs when he moved upward, placing the
stimulator on the underside of one of her breasts.

“Nice?” he asked hoarsely, his stare every inch knowing.

“Are you trying to make me explode?” she asked in rebuke,
except her voice pitched into a mewl as he swept the kio kio right onto the
stiff peak of her nipple.

Sensation pierced her breast and shivered all the way to her
womb, her pussy shuddering in reaction even before Renate’s mouth replaced the
kio kio and he suckled on her taut nipple, his tongue expertly flicking the
puckered areola.

She groaned, arching closer. His head reared back. His mouth
curled into a satisfied grin. And in one deft movement he used his free hand to
spread apart the folds of her labia, his other hand pressed the kio kio right
over the stiff bud of her clitoris.

She pushed into its writhing pulsations with a gasp. Bolts
of pleasure darted through her clit then spread every which way as a climax
tore through her, her body shuddering in reaction. He pressed the stimulator
harder against her and more powerful vibrations set off another round of
shudders as a second climax ripped through her body.

Renate leaned down, his mouth taking ownership of her mouth,
his tongue sliding past her lips and curling like smoke around hers

Only when he removed the kio kio from her insatiable cunt
did she wind her arms around his neck and kiss him back fully.

God, I love you.

She stiffened.

He pulled back, eyes searching her face. “I think it’s safe
to say you’ve had enough pleasuring for one day, hmm?”

She breathed slow and deep, re-gathering her thoughts, her
emotions around her, before tucking them all neatly away. Even without all her
memories—and the tonic running through her veins—she’d learned firsthand that
life wasn’t all hearts and flowers.

Perhaps old wounds really did take time to heal.

At Renate’s faint frown, she half-sat. “I think you’re
right.”

He nodded, then released the kio kio in the water. Its
tentacles vibrating through the water, the spongy stimulator moved out of sight
to the bottom of the pool.

In one graceful motion Renate stood and offered a hand.
“Come, let’s get you dry, dressed. And fed.”

She arched a brow at his massive erection, at the veins
criss-crossing his cock like hard railway lines. He was the one who looked
about ready to explode. She looked up at his vaguely amused stare before
looking pointedly at his ripe-to-fuck cock. “Shouldn’t we take care of your
needs first?”

His bark of laughter was honey over her senses. Warm and
golden smooth. “Waiting will make my release that much sweeter when your body
is ready for me.”

She took his hand and he brought her to her feet with
effortless power. The inner walls of her pussy clenched. “Then I look forward
to it,” she admitted huskily.

His eyes flared. But then he stepped away, toward a yellow
vine that held his pants aloft with sucker-like leaves. He swiped its scaly
trunk and the leaves retracted, releasing his pants. He turned to her and used
the alien fabric to swipe the moisture from her skin in gentle, reverent
strokes that were more an intimate massage than anything practical.

She closed her eyes, resisting a sudden need to purr as he
rubbed slowly, deliberately along each of her breasts, the outer folds of her
cunt.

He stepped away again and her eyes jerked open. She tried
not to focus on the sexy globes of his ass, the long, lean length of his spine
and the muscles of his broad shoulders that flexed and rippled as he bent and
retrieved something from another vine further in.

He turned back and she tore her gaze from his cock, to the
dress he held out for her, made from the same alien substance as his pants. She
accepted the feather-light fabric that looked similar to the web weaved by a
spider, only silky soft. “What happened to my clothes?”

Renate shrugged as he pulled his surprisingly dry pants up
past his thighs and then snapped the waistband low on his hips. And somehow his
arousal looked even larger tenting the fabric. “I suspect they’re now compost
for Maddox’s plants.” He looked up. “We have no use for earth clothes here, not
when our own self-clean.”

“Yes, well I could see how that would be an advantage,” she
muttered drily, pulling the dress over her head and allowing it to drape over
her body in a perfect fit.

His hand was warm around hers as he led her back through the
jungle of plants. But a sudden coldness gripped her. Damn. She didn’t feel too
good. She stumbled, pain slicing through her head as her thoughts slammed back
to reality. Her breath hissed. “I think that damn tonic has worn off.”

Renate turned and scooped her up into his arms. “I’m sorry
Maddox gave you that, unfortunately Ezra insisted.”

“Ezra?” she asked weakly.

“Yes. He’s one of the three kings.”

“Let me guess, the one who looks like you.”

He nodded. “That’s him.”

Another pain ripped through her frontal lobe, making her
gasp. She put a hand on her brow and squinted up at him. “Why? What has Ezra
got against me—against you?”

He looked down at her with a faint frown marring his face.
“Don’t fight against the pain, ride with it. The anxieties you had before
the…tonic are struggling for recognition.”

And then it hit her. Bonnie had been left behind! Her pulse
jerked in alarm. The head pain abruptly disappeared, but she felt no less
anguished. In her mind’s eye she saw loyal Bonnie waiting for her mistress,
laying in a pool of blood and slowly dying. She clasped Renate’s forearms,
fingernails digging into muscle. “We have to go back. We have to get Bonnie.”

He let out a heavy sigh, as if unsurprised by her request.
But something close to regret shadowed his stare when he said, “Unfortunately
our course is set.”

She pushed upward, pinning him with the full force of her
stare. “There must be something we can do.” It wasn’t a question.

“Unless all three kings are in agreement, there’s nothing—”

Her vision narrowed. “Everyone has a weakness. Even alien
royalty.”

A wry smile tugged at his sexy lips. “Lillian.”

“Yes.”

His head swooped low, his mouth taking possession of hers
for one long, lingering moment before he murmured, “The royal consort are about
to eat. I think it’s time we joined them.”

He strode quickly through Ak ‘ Bella, then paused at a
doorway covered by some kind of orange substance that looked similar to their
alien clothes. He looked down at her, eyes somber. “Don’t ever go through this
colored shield alone and without permission. It is our strongest defense
against intruders.”

“So I can’t touch it?”

“To do so means instant death. The Ak ‘ Bella is off limits
for almost everyone but the royal lineage.”

She held his stare as he brushed through the fabric—the
shield—without a qualm. “So you’re part of the royal family,” she whispered,
feeling all the old insecurities come blazing back.

What the hell could Renate want from her? She was a nobody,
a Plain Jane commoner.

He looked all kinds of uncomfortable when he conceded, “I
guess I am, if you count a bastard child to the king as royalty.”

She took little notice of the semi-dark corridor he carried
her through, lit by the eerie glow of blue lights. All her attention was caught
by the man—alien—she’d come to call her own. “Your mother not being queen
doesn’t make you, or her, any less worthy.”

“I’d probably agree if she’d been a loving mother, a woman
of high values.”

What the hell does that mean?

But then Renate was stepping on to a white substance—a
shield?—that ferried them gently downward to the next level.

Even before he stepped clear of the shield and placed her on
her feet, she felt the stares of the alien people. She turned around, seeing a
good twenty or more of them sitting cross-legged on the floor.

Lillian smiled and lifted a hand in greeting. Dar and Maddox
looked amused. Ezra looked…wound up. His eyes glinted with a whole lot of
irate.

“Come,” Renate murmured into her ear, “dinner is about to be
served.”

Lillian had some of the men nearby shuffle along until there
was space enough for Ally to sit with Renate. The queen smiled. “I wasn’t sure
you guys would make it,” she leaned closer, “if you know what I mean.”

Ally murmured something back to Lillian, but she couldn’t
even recall exactly what she’d said. She was far too aware of Ezra’s dark stare
on Renate, his hostility.

A long, narrow shield floated outward from an opened
doorway, clearly Carèche’s answer to a conveyer belt table, not unlike what a
diner would find at a Japanese sushi restaurant. The shield all but groaned
under the weight of food offered in bowls that could have been the halved
coconut husks from earth.

Despite the tension, Ally took a steaming bowl filled with
meat and odd-looking vegetables. She breathed in its tantalizing scent and
sighed appreciation.

Renate grinned as he took a bowl filled with something that
looked similar to pumpkin soup. “You have chosen well. Caltronian meat is
flavorsome and full of energy. The intergalactic herbs and vegetables are also
rather tasty and aid the body’s immune system.”