Daahn Rising (18 page)

Just when she thought she could take no more, he slid his cock inside. Her breathing hitching, Zondra tried desperately to clear her head. Evan held her, stroking leisurely circles over her clit that launched her toward climax.

“The next time, it will be a frenzy,” he vowed.

But there was nothing frenzied about what he was doing to her. Every movement was torturously slow. Every breath he took warmed her mating stripe. Evan couldn’t have proclaimed his place in her life more clearly if he’d screamed it to the nest.

Zondra pressed back against his length, urging him on.

“Scream for me.”

The order sent shards of pleasure up her spine. Zondra didn’t doubt that he wanted her
gran-seir
to hear it. It was a very Xxanian instinct to want the other males to hear how sated his mate was.

The sound stuck in her throat, and Evan prompted her with a sharp little pinch to her nipple. That not only prompted the scream but launched her into a mind-altering climax. His name echoed off the stone walls, and Evan roared his own climax out.

His cum was hot and potent, a promise of what was to come when they reached their rooms upstairs. Evan held her loosely to his body in the aftermath, his cock bucking against the walls of her sheath, prompting groans from both of them.

They parted slowly, and Evan rose, helping Zondra to her feet after him. Her knees shaking, she gratefully accepted his support out of the pool. He stopped and reached out for something, and her gaze snapped to the bottle of clove oil floating on the water.

That was all it took to get her laughing. She stifled the response, so as not to offend Evan. If his smile was any indication, he wasn’t offended.

“At least I closed it,” he pointed out.

“Good thing, too. If you hadn’t, you’d be paying for a new bottle and a new filter.”

He raised an eyebrow and guided her to her
gran-seir
’s chair. Before she quite had her breath, he had her wrapped in the drying cloth someone had left there for them. He rubbed the oil into her skin, then pulled down the
S’suuhhea
from the back of the chair and helped her into it. His turn toward their discarded clothing ended abruptly, and Zondra looked down at the
S’suuhhea
she’d slept in.

The S’suuhhea. His uniform pants aren’t there.
She bit her lower lip, torn between telling him it had likely been a joke and laughing outright at the jest.

Evan wasn’t amused in the least. He turned his attention to the back of
Gran-seir
’s chair and glared. Though she didn’t need to see it, Zondra turned her head. She sighed at the sight of the
S’suumea
.

His muscles strung tight, Evan wrapped the drying cloth around his waist and tucked it in tight, muttering curses. Zondra opened her mouth to tell him it was a joke, but Evan turned on his heel and marched toward the main door.

She hurried to follow him. “Evan?” He couldn’t be considering leaving.
Can he?
That thought made her panic, and she moved faster. “Evan?”

He didn’t answer her. Instead he made the turns toward the
s’sanuea
, his step purposeful. He pulled the door to the preparation room open and strode through without closing it. Without preamble, he unlocked the outer door and strode through.

Zondra shut the door between the
s’sanuea
and the nest, then rushed to the doorway. “Evan? What are you doing?”

He reached into the back of his truck and pulled out a seabag. Slinging it over his shoulder, he turned and waved her back into the
s’sanuea
.

She complied, at a loss to explain his actions. Evan came back into the nest and shut the armored doors. He slung the seabag down on the closest bench and opened it. He pulled out a pair of jeans, let the drying cloth fall, and pulled them on.

“I am not wearing that damned
S’suumea
,” he grumbled. “Not a chance of it. Not ever.”

“Have you already told
Gran-seir
that?” she chanced asking.

“Yes. And I intend to stand by that, no matter what tricks they try to pull or jokes they make. I will walk outside nude next time if I have to.” Evan worked the button fly closed.

At least he knew it wasn’t a serious bid to make him wear the traditional dress. “Then he won’t force the issue.”

He shot a look of disbelief at her.

“I’m guessing this was Aleeks’s idea of a joke. I never said my brother had a good sense of humor. Did I?”

Evan fastened the last of his buttons, then tossed the drying cloth over one shoulder and the seabag over the other. At last he offered Zondra his hand. He whipped open the door between the
s’sanuea
and the inner nest, tensing at the sight of Daahn behind the door.

Without giving the elder time to ask what the uproar was, Evan shoved the drying cloth at him and drew Zondra along with him. Half a room away, Daahn recovered enough to roar out Aleeks’s name.

“Hopefully Aleeks is in the nest now,” Zondra imparted. “It will go easier if he faces
Gran-seir
now rather than later.”

And he would face their
gran-seir
. A simple prank between Dominants — even a scuffle between them — would have been beneath
Gran-seir
’
s
notice, but Aleeks’s prank had upset Zondra, and no Dominant worth his scales would allow that to pass without punishment.

“His problem,” Evan replied simply.

“Yes, it certainly is.” Zondra smiled up at him. “You know... The drying cloth wrapped around your waist looks quite a bit like an informal
S’suumea
.”

“I’m not wearing the
S’suumea
.”

“You looked really good in it.” He did.
Positively scrumptious.

He turned at the base of the stairs and glared at her. “I’m not wearing the
S’suumea
.”

“They are very accessible.” She let the tease hang between them.

His eyes narrowed. “I am not wearing the
S’suumea
... in the center nest. Not for your family.”

“I can live with that.”

Close Enough to Human

Dedication

To Tamer, the man whose killing rage would rival even Aleeks’s.

To the military men and women of the past, present, and future.

Chapter One

Three years later

“What do you think, Daahn?” Jacks asked.

“You know what I think. This is fucking stupidity.”

Commander Aleeks Daahn forced his jaw to unclench. There was something wrong with this whole setup. Even his
gran-seir
had agreed that the Xxan didn’t negotiate this way.

The Xxan didn’t negotiate at all. They were hunters; they took what they wanted, as they’d tried to take Earth fifty years earlier.

But the councilors had refused to listen. They’d claimed that since Daahn the Eldest had been away for half a century, things might have changed for the Xxan in that time.

Barking unlikely, in Aleeks’s opinion. According to his
gran-seir
, the Xxan hadn’t changed significantly in millennia, his own decisions and those of some of his command notwithstanding.

The councilors had agreed to this meeting on Xxania Hethhh, the Xxan sister-moon, a festering hunk of rock that had been all but mined out of its precious ores and minerals. Now it was up to Aleeks and three squads of other elite troops to keep the fools alive, agree or not.

The Xxan entered from their side of the mountain range, streaming into the amphitheater in triple rows. They were massive reptilian humanoids, the Dominant males with their ridge plates fully extended in show and their serrated teeth bared as a warning to rival males. Not that Dominant Xxanian warriors saw humans as rivals. It had taken his
gran-seir
two years in captivity to develop that much respect for humans.

The Grea Elders took the higher seats, the lesser Dominants below, and the Subdominants as a buffer between them and the humans across the theater.

Just as Gran-seir postulated.
Their opinions of the untouchable humans hadn’t changed.

Then why are we here?
It was a setup, but it was a damned odd one. Most of the human Council was present — all but the three female Council members, by his count — and all the Xxanian Grea Elders. The former made sense to him; the latter didn’t compute.

Aleeks forced himself to breathe through his nose alone, keeping his mouth shut tight. The tongue-scent of so many rival Dominants would make it nearly impossible to control his need to raise his ridge plates in response.

As it was, they’d hidden his Xxanian eyes behind dark glasses and trusted the confusion of Xxanian and human scents to mask his own mixed heritage. It was a safe bet that the Xxan would assume the worst if they discovered Aleeks among the humans.

When the Xxan were seated, Councilor Allen greeted them in the traditional manner. While many of the other soldiers listened to the conversation on translators, Aleeks chose to do his own translation.

“
Honored Grea Elders, Dominants, and all, I greet you and speak as negotiator for Earth’s leaders. I am Councilor Ian Allen.
”

One of the Grea Elders stood, motioning expansively. “
The Xxan welcome our human guests. It is an honor you show us, learning our language. Perhaps you would allow us to show you the same honor.
”

Aleeks motioned his men to covert readiness. After nearly fifty years of disdain for all things human, the Xxan wouldn’t offer such a magnanimous show unless there was a trap involved somewhere.

This entire thing is a trap.
The question remained: where was the switch to activate it?

A murmur in the human ranks swelled into a cacophony of voices overlapping.

“It can’t be.”

“She’s human.”

Aleeks examined the slight female making her way to the center of the dirt floor between the delegations. She was dressed in black pants and a button-down shirt, not unlike those worn by Earth’s soldiers of two generations ago, though hers bore no insignia of rank and affiliation. Her dark blonde hair was pulled back in a braid behind her head. She was barefoot and wearing a pair of dark glasses not unlike Aleeks’s pair. In fact, they might have been a pair of standard-issue glasses taken from a human prisoner of a few decades earlier.

Curious, he tasted the air, using her female musk to separate her from the other bodies crowding the amphitheater. His mind rebelled, and Aleeks forced his ridge plates back, almost painfully.

Jacks jostled him. “She’s human, Daahn. Some of the prisoners must have —”

“She’s not.” Aleeks knew precisely what she was, but she started speaking... in English, stealing his chance to say it first.

“Honored councilors of Earth, I greet you and speak as negotiator for my Grea Elders Xxan.” She bowed her head first to the Xxan and then to the human delegates. “I am known as Mirienne Johns. I am of your Marilyn Johns, formerly of planet Earth.”

Jacks started to ask a question, and Aleeks motioned him for silence.

Councilor Allen recovered his wits enough to speak. “You’re human?”

Aleeks rolled his eyes. Though he didn’t trust this, the idea of crossbred Xxan-humans should hardly come as a shock to Allen.

She hesitated, then removed her glasses, meeting the councilor’s eyes across the five meters that separated them. Aleeks didn’t question what the councilors saw. No doubt, Mirienne Johns had retained the Xxanian eyes, just as Aleeks had.

But why is she called Johns?
She should carry the name of her
seir
or mate. Barring the possibility that Marilyn Johns herself had been pregnant with a son when she was captured, and that son had taken a Xxanian female to mate, producing Mirienne in the bargain, her naming made no sense to Aleeks.

Mirienne didn’t put her glasses back on. The amphitheater was dark enough for the Xxan and those with Xxanian eyes. He wasn’t certain why she’d worn the glasses at all.

It’s theatrical. Something is very wrong here.

“I know this must be a shock for you,” she continued.

Hardly... if it’s real.

“But I hope you can see past —”

The first blast came without warning, mowing Allen down. Taken off guard, the human troops and councilors scrambled.

Mirienne turned, seemingly horrified at the attack. Her weapon came up as Aleeks’s did, both locked on the Xxanian shooter. Her blast hit home a split second before his, both killing shots.

Blasts came from every direction in response. Aleeks shifted his attention from the Xxanian warriors attacking them to the “negotiator” taking down those she “represented” and back again.

She was shouting in Xxan, ordering them to stand down, shooting one warrior after another as their weapons came up. Her head snapped around at a command from the Grea Elder who’d called her forward.

“
Kill the crossbred abomination.
”

Aleeks’s heart stuttered in fear and then smoothed. They didn’t mean
him
; they meant Mirienne.

The Grea Elder was dead before his words echoed... then two more went down. They weren’t three in a row, which would’ve indicated she wanted to kill the entire forum. Rather, they seemed chosen at random. Something told Aleeks they
weren’t
random.

The uproar from the Xxan seemed to support that theory. Mirienne abandoned the next elder she’d targeted and started dodging blasts, bolting for a tunnel opposite Aleeks’s position. Suddenly, none of the Xxan were interested in firing at the retreating humans. Every Xxan with a weapon in hand was firing at a single crossbred woman.