Genesis (18 page)

He rolled away from her and onto his back, breathing as gustily as she was.

“Not hurt?”

Surprise flickered through her. Frowning slightly, she did a mental inventory. “Nope. I think you might have displaced my womb a little but not to worry,” she added teasingly. “I’m sure it’ll drop back into place if I jump up and down a few times. And if it doesn’t … well, what the fuck? As long as you don’t shove it under my rib cage I’m sure the baby can find his way out.”

She thought for a moment that she’d been so enthralled with the aftermath of that glorious climax that she’d forgotten herself when Kole’s hand settled heavily on her belly. Consternation went through her, but after mentally reviewing her dialogue, she decided she’d said it in English and supposed he’d recognized the word baby.

She used it often enough he should know it.

Guilt pricked her at deceiving him, though. She ought to just tell him she could understand, and probably speak, his language.

Doubts still niggled at her, however, and the reflection that it might just piss him off clinched the matter. Maybe after she went to ‘the room’ next time she’d tell him they’d
just
taught her? As long as he never found out she’d been able to listen and understand every word he said while he still had to struggle to understand her he couldn’t be pissed off about the unfair advantage the
Sheloni
had given her.

She rolled onto her side with her back to him when he lifted his hand, teetering between the desire to sleep and the need to get up and wash off the stickiness. She’d never had sex vigorous enough to work up a sweat--Of course most of it was from trying to force that kong sized cock of his up her. God! The man was hung like a fucking horse! Not that she’d expected any different. She might not have a very clear memory of the first time, but she remembered that part.

Anyway, he was big all over. It stood to reason he would be there, too.

She supposed that was why he’d thought he might have hurt her. She rolled her eyes at that. Men!

Or maybe, she thought, biting her lip to keep from smiling, he didn’t realize it was
his
head he’d been banging against the wall?

She was still more than a little wobbly kneed when she finally pushed herself up and headed for the bathroom to clean up.

“The feel of Hirachi on your skin is repugnant?”

Bri tensed and came within a hairsbreadth of giving herself away at the comment. Fortunately, she was so surprised that he’d followed her into the bath and that he’d interpreted her wish to bathe in that light that she merely gaped at him in blank faced dismay when she whirled around at the sound of his voice. He took that to mean she hadn’t understood him, but he didn’t leave it at that. He lifted his arm to his nose and sniffed. “Smell bad?”

Pursing her lips, Bri turned away, wondering what was up with him. He’d come twice, the jackass! He ought to be content if now downright happy! “Earth custom,” she answered shortly, irritated that he’d come in to pick a fight just as she was going to wash her sex. Deciding to ignore him, she cleaned herself anyway.

“Think wash baby off?”

Oh he was spoiling for a fight! Bri turned the water off and came to her feet. Turning to face him, she plunked her hands on her hips and glared at him. “If you must know I don’t like … dripping come! I’m lucky
baby
didn’t shoot through my nose!” she snapped, making a motion with her hand.

She saw something then that was completely unexpected. His skin darkened. If she hadn’t been looking straight at him she would never have noticed it … or the way the whites of his eyes pinkened with color.

Hirachi’s
did
blush, she realized with dawning amusement. It just wasn’t as noticeable when they did … which meant he’d probably known all along that she was blushing and was just playing dumb to tease her.

He stared at her a long moment, but she thought she saw his lips twitch with the beginnings of a grin as he turned around and left.

After staring at the empty doorway for a moment, Bri looked around and made another discovery. She’d left the damned towel in the other room!

Letting out an irritated huff, she stalked back into the main room and looked around.

Kole was sitting on the edge of the sleeping platform dangling the towel. Noticing her scowl, he held it up in offering. When she stalked over to him and tried to snatch it from his hands, he gave the towel a sharp jerk that snatched her clean off her feet. She only had time for a look of stunned surprise and dawning dismay before he caught her as she flew toward him. Lifting her up, he settled her astride his thighs. Slipping one arm around her hips, he caught her hair with his other hand and tugged, tipping her head back so that he could inspect her face.

His expression was unreadable as he scanned her face, but his face tautened as he studied her, his eyes darkening. He swallowed thickly. “You are so … strange to my eyes,” he murmured. “I can’t fathom why you are so beautiful to me.”

Bri felt a heated blush of pleasure fill her cheeks even as he covered her mouth hungrily with his own, slipping his hand from her hair to her shoulder to draw her closer. Crushing her against him as if he wanted to feel every inch of her flesh against his own, he moved his hands restlessly over her back and buttocks and finally broke the kiss to suckle at the tender skin of her throat and neck.

Surprised at the intensity of his ardor, it took Bri’s mind longer to catch up than it did her body, for the fierce hunger of his kisses and rough, demanding caresses was contagious. Within moments, Bri felt as needy as she had before she’d experienced the explosive climax only a little earlier, felt starved for the feel of him inside of her, fevered with the heat churning in her belly and breasts.

Dragging her upright after a moment, he hunkered down to capture the throbbing tip of one breast. With the first drag of his mouth on the keenly sensitive bud, Bri felt as if her lungs had collapsed. Struggling to catch her breath, she stared down at the play of his cheeks as he suckled her breast, her passage clenching almost painfully for his possession with each drag that sent a new wave of pleasure roiling though her. Looping her arms around his head as he switched his attention to her other nipple, she explored the intricate swirls of his ear, from the opening to the pointed tip and back.

He shuddered, moaned, and broke from her breast to recapture her lips in another heated kiss.

Blindly, Bri explored his chest with her hands and groped for his engorged member. Her fingers grazed the rounded head and then she curled her fingers around him. Guiding his cock to her cleft, she aligned their bodies and pressed downward, lifted slightly, and then pressed again until she felt the moisture of her passage begin to coat him, to ease the fit of their bodies.

Breaking from her lips, he pressed his forehead against hers, dragging in deep, harsh breaths, holding them and then releasing them in pained grunts as she struggled to mount his shaft. Crushing his arms around her abruptly as if he could no longer bear the tease, he bore down on her even as he lifted his hips to thrust upward. Bri groaned as he slipped deeper inside of her. He eased his grip at once, stroking his hands over her almost apologetically.

Lifting until he slipped almost completely out of her, Bri bore down again until he could go no deeper inside of her. She hesitated, feeling her body quivering perilously near release, wanting nothing more than to savor the thrill of having him inside of her for as long as she could.

His face was a mask of agony as she lifted her head to look at him. As if he sensed her gaze, he opened his eyes to stare at her before he pulled her close and began to nuzzle his face against hers, caressing her body with his hands. “By the gods, woman,” he said on a ragged breath. “I want to pleasure you as you do me, but I can hold my seed no better than a Halfling when I feel your heat, feel your body fisting around mine.”

His words sent a shaft of pleasurable response through her, making her belly clench around him harder. His touch, his scent, the feel of his hard flesh embedded so deeply inside of her, touched off an explosion of sensation. She began to move on him as she felt her body begin to convulse in imminent release, uttering a long, low groan as the first tremors of her climax hit her.

His arms tightened around her once more and then relaxed. Gripping her hips, he guided her in her shaky movements, held her tightly as he surged upward again and again until his own body peaked. Uttering a choked groan as his cock expelled his seed, he went still, clutching her tightly as the spasms of ecstasy shook him.

He lay back when the tremors had finally stopped. Carrying her with him, he held her against his chest, stroking her back. Bri wasn’t certain if it was meant to soothe her, or because he seemed fascinated with the feel of her skin, but she found it didn’t matter. It
felt
like the caress of a lover, and it gave her the illusion of being cared for and protected. It was nice to feel that even briefly.

“It is good,” he murmured after a long while, taking one of her hands in his and studying it, “that you are not nearly as fragile as you look. I feared that if I did what I wanted to do that I would … hurt you.

“It is not nearly so good that I know now what I only imagined before. I will regret this. I know I will regret it. And I fear you will too … though not as I will.

“I only wish that you were as big and strong and fierce as you seem to believe you are.”

The problem, Bri thought wryly, was that she had no illusions about how she stacked up next to the opposition. No reasoning person, suddenly discovering themselves in the land giants, could delude themselves into thinking they had a snowball’s chance in hell of matching a Hirachi toe to toe. She supposed he thought she saw herself that way because she wasn’t really afraid of him anymore, but that wasn’t because she had this illusion that she was capable of taking him on. It was because she didn’t believe
he
would hurt her, not intentionally.

She wasn’t so sure about the others, particularly since he’d made it clear that she’d been right. They had never seen a race, or a representative of a race, that was, on average, so much slighter in stature. She supposed it was inevitable that some of them would look upon that difference with contempt.

Kole probably did for that matter.

Which made her wonder how they looked at their own women. Were they, poor things, just one of the guys? Expected to be as strong and fierce at fighting as the men?

Maybe she’d misjudged them? Maybe their way of life had snuffed the nurturing instincts the female of the species was supposed to be born with? Maybe they hadn’t ignored the needs of their young so much as they hadn’t been able to bond with them, had only been able to see them as a parasite that endangered them by limiting their ability to protect themselves?

That would certainly make all of them more fierce, wouldn’t it, the males and the females? If they had no real nurturing, no one to ‘coddle’ them, they were less likely to develop the ‘weakness’ of gentleness.

Kole had some gentleness in him, though, or at least a recognition of the concept.

He hadn’t thought he had it in him to be gentle, though, if she’d understood his thoughts. He’d realized that he couldn’t grab her and toss her around as carelessly as he might one of his own women, and at the same time he’d doubted he could manage enough self control to keep from breaking something.

Why had he thought he would regret it, she wondered? What was to regret? It wasn’t as if either one of them had a choice in this situation. For her part, she was delighted to discover it not only wasn’t the chore she’d thought it might be, but it had a definite bright side.

She’d enjoyed it. With the exception of Cory, the sex had been the only nice thing that had happened since she’d been taken. She wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. If one had no choice but to do something, discovering that it wasn’t half bad, was actually enjoyable, was an unexpected windfall of good fortune. She sure as hell didn’t regret that it hadn’t been horrible.

More than that, it was actually a relief that he’d finally managed to work up the enthusiasm to do the dirty deed. She’d begun to fear the separation from Cory would be indefinite, but if he continued with this much enthusiasm surely to god he’d get her knocked up in no time and she’d get him back.

The doubts that had been teasing at the back of her mind, that she’d been at pains to ignore, surfaced.

She could only ovulate once a month--unless the
Sheloni
had done something about that, too. She didn’t know whether to hope they had or hope they hadn’t tampered with that. She knew what tampering with fertility could do to women--some of them had fucking litters, and she thought
one
Hirachi
would be hard enough to deliver.

She didn’t want to think about
that
at all, though. She hadn’t, in point of fact, thought about that aspect of it before because it was not something she could do anything about and there was no point in borrowing trouble that hadn’t come up yet. She had her hands full dealing with the troubles already upon her.

She pushed the worry about whether or not she was fertile at all to the back of her mind, too. The
Sheloni
wanted Cory to survive. They had to know that he would’ve been dead by now if not for her, which meant that she would get him back.

She had to try to stop worrying about that or she was going to go crazy, and she wouldn’t be any use to Cory if she was a blithering lunatic.

They were ‘rewarded’ for performing by being allowed out for exercise, ‘allowed’ being the operative word. Bri wasn’t exactly anxious to leave the habitat and stroll around the exercise yard in nothing but a towel but, as before, there was no choice. This time they didn’t have to give her more than a mild jolt to convince her that her modesty was misplaced.

When the door opened, they went out whether they wanted to or not.

Bri made a new discovery when she went out.

The Sheloni had been busy little bastards. Every Hirachi within her view had been handed a ‘pet’ to breed, and in the habitat that had housed the Hirachi women was at least a dozen ‘unassigned’ Earth women.