Alien Prince: (Bride of Qetesh) An Alien SciFi Romance (18 page)

“I have a lot on my mind,” he said, his tone low and level.

“Would you care to unburden yourself?” I asked, turning my attention to a beautiful side table, made of wrought iron with a blue and yellow mosaic top.

“I would not,” he said, and that’s when I looked up at him. He had his arms crossed in front of him, and he was staring absently into the mirror. But not as his own reflection: at me, as I moved like a ghost from object to object.

“Calder,” I said quietly. “Are we back on the money again?”

“Well—”

“Because I promise you, they will not let you down.”

“You cannot know that.”

“I can. And I do.”

He shook his head, and moved to sit on a cushioned bench at the foot of the bed. I watched him lean forward so his elbows rested on his knees, and bend his head forward. Muscle and sinew, like velvet over stone. He was a fine and beautiful creature.

“Please try not to worry. Just try to trust me.”

“I do trust you,” he replied, without looking up.

“Then why are you so… so…surly?”

“Surly?” He quirked a brow.

“Is…” I blinked. “Is that not what you’re being? Honestly, I cannot read you right now.”

He chuckled a low and humorless sort of laugh, shaking his head. “No, my dear,” he all but growled. “I am not being surly.”

“Then what is it!” It wasn’t a question, it was a demand, and he rose to the occasion. Literally.

He uncoiled slowly to his full height and approached me in a manner that reminded me of my place in the food chain, as it were. He could snap me like a twig. But he wouldn’t. He never would.

“I’m expecting to hear from the
Atria
at any moment,” he said, “and when I do, they will come here, and you will be gone.”

Stupid Lorelei. I was not so vain as to think I would be his sole concern, not when he had all but bankrupted his kingdom on my behalf, but I should have known that my leaving would have some impact on him. I wished that I could promise that I would come back. I wanted to promise that I would come back. But that was simply a promise I could not make. What of my family? My life’s goals? Could I shirk them all to be the queen of an unknown village? I gave a sharp shake of my head. I had only one goal, and I needed to keep it at the very center of my intentions. Find the last remaining girls whom I had promised to save. And, furthermore, bring down the cartel that would make slaves of us all.

“I will come back,” I said, and he arched a brow slowly over one discerning eye. I was clutching my hands in front of me, a sort of nervous response because I wasn’t sure how he would react. I wasn’t even completely sure that I meant it. I wanted to mean it, but I just couldn’t stand the despondent look on his face.

“You lie.”

“No,” I said, and took his hands in mine, “I will. I will come back. Maybe not right away, and maybe not forever, but I will come back.” Yes. That much I could promise him. Some day, and perhaps only briefly, I would return to him.

“Do not make promises you do not intend to keep,” he gently chided me, even as I could see hope growing in him like a light on a dimmer going up, up.

“I’m not,” I protested. “Maybe it will not be to stay,” I continued, looking down at our fingers, laced together, “and maybe it will only be for a short while, but I promise you that I will come back.”

He scoffed, giving a slow shake of his head. “I am not certain that I want you to come back if I cannot keep you forever.”

His words stunned me into silence, but even with the feint of a smile gracing his lips, I knew he wasn’t joking. A knock at the door jerked me back to myself, and I stammered a stuttering, “Uh, c-come in…?”

Waelden peeked in, trying to ensure that we were decent before pushing his way into the room. I tried to smile for him, but there was still something about what Calder had just said that rattled me to my core. I withdrew my hands from Calder’s, and moved toward the door to greet Waelden.

“Begging your pardon,” he said, inclining his head slightly even as he clasped his hands behind his back, “I hope I’m not intruding.”

“Of course not,” I said.

“Don’t stand on ceremony with us, Waelden,” Calder said, standing beside me with his arms crossed. “What can we do for you?”

“Two things, if I may,” he replied, and Calder gestured for him to join us deeper in the room. He smiled his thanks and took a seat perched on the edge of the divan, as though he didn’t want to sully it with his presence. I took a seat in the rocking chair across from him, and Calder stood stoic at my side.

“Go on,” I urged him, wishing that I’d had something in the way of refreshment to offer Waelden, if only to give him something to do with his hands. The poor creature was fidgeting something fierce.

“Well, firstly,” he said at length, “the
Atria
has responded to our signal.”

Startled, I looked up at Calder who was, in turn, staring down at me, his blue eyes bright and shining and clear. “So soon?”

“Yes,” Waelden confirmed. “Even sooner than we’d anticipated.”

I went cold. I thought I had more time than this.

“They’ll be in range in a matter of hours and I took the liberty of asking them to wait until morning for further contact. They responded that they’ll send a shuttle along by eleven hundred hours.” Calder nodded. He said nothing else.

“Well,” I said. My mouth was dry. Suddenly, too suddenly, this was our last night. It was over. The whole strange adventure was really over. I cleared my throat, shook my head. “I’m sorry,” I said, very aware of Calder in my periphery, “You said there were two things?”

Waelden looked suddenly bashful, but he nodded all the same and set his jaw in a stoic line. “I was wondering, er…that is, about Sara Yve.”

I canted my head to the side. “What about her?”

“I was hoping…”

“Waelden,” Calder gently chided, “you are already married.”

“I understand that,” he spat back. But then his expression softened. “I mean no disrespect to my wife, it’s only that she…that is…we haven’t…”

“You don’t have any children,” I helped him along.

“That is right.”

“Well, none of us do, Waelden,” Calder barked, unnecessarily harsh in my opinion. I turned around and sent a glare his way.

“And furthermore,” Waelden said, rising to his feet, “you’ve seen how she is with me. Vanixa, I mean. She despises me — she only very rarely beds me, because she feels it is her duty, since she signed up for the program and all, but she really, really hates me.”

“I’m sure she doesn’t hate you,” I offered, but honestly, I wasn’t so sure that Vanixa didn’t hate everyone and everything in the known universe. She was the nastiest Europax I had ever encountered, up to and including the entirety of the Mafaren family.

“I wanted to ask for a dissolution of my marriage to Vanixa,” he went on, ignoring my comment entirely. “I want to know what that process would look like.”

I looked up at Calder — I had no earthly notion as to what divorce looked like on Qetesh. But when I looked over at him, I saw that he had gone totally pale. It struck me, then, that he was worried the conversation would put the idea in my head. What struck me was that it wasn’t there already.

“It’s a simple enough thing, Waelden,” Calder muttered, going to his friend and patting him on the shoulder even as he helped to hoist him to his feet. “We will work it out for you, I promise.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“Of course, your wife will have to consent–.”

“And if she does not?”

“Well, I suppose that’s where things get a little more complicated.”

“Is this for Sara?” I asked abruptly. And by the way Waelden smiled, I could see that it was, at least in part.

“No, it is for me,” came his calculated reply. But Sara Yve was round and kind and lovely, and Waelden could — and had — certainly done much worse.

“But she will have to go with us tomorrow,” I reminded him. “Sara.”

“Yes,” Waelden said, bowing his head. “I understand that. But she has sworn to sign up for the program that Vanixa had signed up for, and—”

“But Vanixa is Europax,” I said, “and Sara is human. Your settlement was given access only to Europax women. What makes you think Sara wouldn’t be placed in another settlement?”

Waelden glanced desperately between Calder and me. “Could that happen?”

“It could.” Waelden looked despondent, and as much as I wanted to help, I was more concerned about getting my time alone with Calder, as time was precisely what we were lacking. “I will do what I can to help you from aboard the
Atria
, Waelden.”

He smiled. “Oh, thank you, my lady.”

I stayed in my rocking chair as Calder ushered Waelden out the door, and they muttered words amongst themselves as they walked, which I could not hear. That was fine by me. I was very much preoccupied with how my life was about to go back to normal, a change that I wasn’t entirely certain was welcome.

After I heard the door close, we lapsed into a long stretch of silence before Calder took up the seat on the divan across from me. “What are you thinking?” he asked quietly, leaning forward so his elbows rested on his knees, his fingers steepled together.

“I am honestly not sure,” came my whispered reply.

“Are you…happy? Relieved, perhaps?” He searched my face, but I didn’t know what to say to him. Except the truth.

“No. I’m not either of those things.” I chewed at my lower lip for a moment, trying to pick apart the knot of thoughts and emotions sitting heavy in the pit of my stomach. “I think…I will be grateful when I can turn the task of finding Tel and Ciara over to someone much more capable than myself.”

Calder chuckled quietly. “Always putting the girls first.”

“Yes,” I confirmed. “Of course.”

“But?”

But I don’t want to leave you.

“I don’t know.”

He smiled at me. He was trying to be kind, I realized. “You’re only just getting used to being a queen, and maybe you do not care to go back to a smaller life.”

I returned his smile, but I didn’t feel any mirth. “Maybe.”

“Being a queen suits you,” he said graciously, moving to the far end of the room, examining too closely the tapestry covering the far wall. It was a primitive thing depicting some scene of Qeteshi history. And what it lacked in stylistic elegance, it more than made up for in radiant and rich color.

“Being a king suits you,” I said, and it did. Something about it had leveled him out. Though I had known him only for a short time, he started off so volatile, so angry. But he slipped right into this role, in all likelihood because he had been born to do it.

“Do you think so?” he asked, without turning to look at me. “I am not so certain.”

“It does, Calder.” I went to him then, standing close by his side, looking at his profile while he examined the tapestry. The room was awash in warm golden light, and he looked quite beautiful in the glow. “Your mother would be quite proud.”

He tried to smile, but instead he dropped his gaze to the floor. Something opened up in him as he exhaled a shuddering breath and turned to face me. He was so large, easily three times my size, and yet in that moment he seemed to shrink before me. “I do not want you to go,” he said, his voice hushed and urgent. “I am sorry. I know, perhaps, that you must. But you will take my heart with you when you do.”

It was the raw vulnerability of it that sucked the air out of me. I went to him, tugging him forward by the collar of his shirt until our mouths met. I kissed him like an apology, and he forgave me again and again and again.

The touch of her sent all my words away, and my hands communicated my longing as they pulled away the fabric that separated her soft, round body from the air. But I knew I could not be gentle with her that night. I knew I had to possess her utterly.

I stripped her down without ceremony until she was bared to me in the warm light of our shared chamber, and I admired the curve of her. She made me salivate, some primal part of me knowing that I wanted her so much I might devour her. Her hair, black as ink, spilled in soft waves over milky white shoulders. Her eyes were twin peridots framed by thick lashes, and her lips! Fruits ripe for the picking. I beckoned her forward, and she came, her lips parted as I laid her down on the velveteen blankets strewn all over the bed.

I kissed her, our tongues circling one another in a sort of dance, before I headed south, into the valley of her clavicle. Then my mouth scaled the peak of her breast, and I sucked gently at her nipple until she arched her back to meet me. My hands were two travelers across the continent of her skin, and I slipped a finger between the warm cleft where her legs met her torso, and she moaned.

I kissed down, down, nipping at the flesh of her belly even as I rubbed at the pith of her sex until it grew rigid beneath my fingertip. Then I pried her legs apart with my hands and situated myself between her thighs, and put my mouth where my hand had been.

She sucked in air through her teeth as I gripped her thighs and licked the length of her. Then she grabbed me by the horns and drew me closer, and I chuckled a little before going back to work.

“Please, please,” she gasped, her hips undulating of their own accord as my tongue flickered over her most sensitive pressure point, but I did not know what she was begging for. She tasted sweet and briny, and I let her overwhelm my senses. I felt myself growing hard to the point of discomfort, and I knew when I finally plunged home, it would not take me long to achieve my release.

So I slipped two fingers into her slick, wet center, thrusting them in and out of her as I continued to work her with my tongue.

“Calder,” she cried, squirming as though to get away from me, but I held her firm with my one free hand. She was dripping wet and ready, but I would not stop until she reached her zenith and shuddered in my arms.

Her entire body tensed, and she arched her back as she sent a great cry skyward, even as I felt the muscles of her sex contract around the intrusion of my fingers. I pulled away, smugly satisfied, and lapped her juices from my fingers as I stood upright to admire my work. She was spent, lying with her legs spread, breasts heaving as she panted to catch her breath.