Star Warrior: A SciFi Alien Romance (12 page)

“Let me go,” I whispered.

Amazingly enough he did just that. Almost I didn’t want him to. Almost I wanted him to continue what he’d started. To flip me around and press me against that wall and do what came naturally to a man who was as enthralled with a woman as he seemed to be with me. So I felt a flash of disappointment as he let me down and looked down at me with an almost gentle expression.

“Did you not enjoy that?” he asked. “I admit I’m not entirely familiar with how your species acts when aroused, but I thought…”

He seemed hesitant. Almost afraid that I actually hadn’t liked that. I guess that was proof positive that he really was an alien from another world, because any human male who just got that performance from a woman would know that he’d either just done one hell of a job or that the girl he was with deserved a best actress award for her performance.

“That was fine,” I said. “It’s just that…”

Damn it. He was the enemy! He was not my lover, as much as I might want him to be. I needed to get out of here. I needed to get out of here five minutes ago before any of this happened and I was tempted by this perfect specimen of inhuman muscle and sexiness.

“I need to get out of here,” I muttered.

He looked at me and his eyes flashed. I sensed something behind that look. There was danger in this room, and not the sort of danger I’d expect from a Livisk warrior. No, there was the danger that he would lose control. How I wanted him to lose control even as the thought terrified me. That would be taking things too far for sure, and they’d already gone way too far.

I scrambled for the door leading back to my room. It didn’t occur to me until I was through that he could get through that door easily enough. Yet the door slid shut behind me and I fell back on the bed breathing heavily and not sure if that heavy breathing was because of how turned on I was or because of how terrified I was at how fast everything was moving.

Getting captured was far from the most dangerous thing that had happened to me lately, because even now behind the illusory safety of that door all I could think about was how much I wanted him to join me in here.

12: Strange Desire

Jorav:

I stood in front of the window and clenched and unclenched my fists several times. It was an exercise I always did to calm myself. Imagining the skulls of my enemies cracking under my fist never failed to make me feel better about the world, no matter how bad things got around me.

That female. That infuriatingly arousing human female! No woman had aroused such desires in me since my wife, and even then by the end our relationship had been more about a political expediency than any of the passion we might have once felt for one another.

This was different. This was intense. This was the fire of two warrior spirits coming together. I suppose there were some, most human males came to mind, who might shy away from a mating experience that started with a female coming at my cock with a sharp blade.

For me it simply added spice to the experience.

I looked out over the city. At the height of Livisk power in this galaxy. This was the pinnacle of our civilization. Billions of our warriors were being trained out there. Billions of Livisk females out there were learning to fight right alongside our men, as was proper for a true warrior people.

And yet I didn’t want any of them. All I could think of was this human. Talia. I rolled that name around in my mind, the sound of it exotic and strange in the human tongue. I wanted to touch her. Feel her. Smell her.

Even the thought of her was enough to drive me to the edge of madness. Enough to make me want to beat down her door to take her, and damn the consequences.

No. I wouldn’t do that. Not like that. The humans placed more value on free will than we did, and so I would have her in the way of her species. There would be nothing to come between us. I did desire to see her again. Nothing would keep me from that. No feeling of propriety from a strange enemy world that would be vastly improved if its great civilization was ground into atomic dust by orbital bombardment.

I walked over to the door. Hit a button in a hidden panel in the wall and took a deep breath as the door silently whisked open. This wasn’t combat in the strictest sense, but I still had that itch between my shoulder blades that came whenever I was about to drop into a combat situation.

The door opened on a scene that had my eyes bugging even as it stirred a monster inside me. I was instantly hard to the point of pain.

Talia stood in the center of her room completely nude with the dress in a bundle on the floor at her feet. I held my breath as I drank in the sight. She was shorter than a Livisk woman. Slighter. And yet she was captivating. I filled my mind with every curve of her body. Every delicious contour. I memorized the way the shadows played across her body and imagined what it would feel like to sink my hardness between those deliciously muscled legs that looked as though they could do some serious damage even without the help of power armor.

“What the hell are you doing?”

I didn’t avert my eyes. I knew that’s what I was supposed to do. That’s how the human sense of false modesty worked. It had to be false given how pervasive their sexuality was in every facet of their culture. I was Livisk, though. The Livisk way was to appreciate something when we wanted it, and I felt a want, a need, that burned brighter than any emotion other than battle lust.

“Looking at something I desire,” I growled.

I noted that she made no move to cover up. The dress was right there on the ground waiting for her to pick it up. All she would have to do is lean down and she could preserve that strange human modesty. Only it seemed she didn’t possess any of that modesty in this moment, at least.

“Well enjoy the view, sparkles,” she said with a sneer coming to her face that was at odds with how she acted otherwise. “Because this is the last time you’re going to see me like this.”

That would have been a terrible thing if true, but there was something about the way she looked at me, something about the fire that flashed in her eyes, that told me that wouldn’t be the case. We were far from done with this little dance of wits that was almost as amusing as the dance of combat.

I was about to cross the room and continue where we’d left off, there was an invitation in that defiant look as she stood there, when a comm unit along the wall beeped and an urgent purple color flashed on the screen. My eyes narrowed. That purple glow could mean only one thing.

A summons from the emperor.

“Is something wrong?” Talia asked.

I admired the way she was immediately on guard. Her eyes ran through the room as though she expected an attack from any direction at any moment. Her body tensed, even completely nude, as she braced herself from an attack that wouldn’t come.

“You can stand down,” I said. “This is not an enemy that you’ll be able to take out in single combat.”

“But it is an enemy?” she said, suddenly sounding curious.

“In a manner of speaking.”

I walked over to the wall and hit the pulsing purple light. A screen hidden in the wall there sprang to life with an image of the imperial seal. A personal message from the emperor himself, but not so personal that he bothered one of his communications aides to even do me the honor of delivering it via screen, let alone the in person message that would have been befitting a general of my station before the incident.

It was a slap in the face. Plain and simple. I let out an annoyed grunt.

“Something wrong?” Talia asked, coming up next to me as though it was completely normal for her to walk around a room in the nude like that. I squeezed my eyes shut and clenched my fist a few times for good measure. The last thing I needed was her distraction on top of a message from the emperor.

“It would appear that my raid on the human system hasn’t completely brought me back into the good graces of my liege,” I said. That seemed simple enough.

“Still in bad with the emperor after you screwed things up the first time we met, huh?” she asked.

I winced at how simply she put it. Such a cavalier understatement of the moment that had destroyed my world as I knew it, even if it had freed me in other ways.

“Something like that, now be quiet,” I said. The imperial fanfare piping through the screen came to an end which meant the message was forthcoming.

“General Jorav. You and your human captive are summoned to the throne of Emperor Liviskal the IV. Immediately.”

And with that the screen winked out. Nothing else. Just a simple message summoning me. There was a time when I would have ranked highly enough that such a snub would have been enough to make me challenge the emperor himself in combat.

Now, though? It was far better than the silence I’d enjoyed since my last spectacular failure. I wondered what a successful raid on the human home world would’ve been worth. Perhaps a letter personally written by one of his lower assistants and signed by a higher level assistant.

Still, a summons from the emperor was a summons from the emperor. I hit another button on the wall and a drawer slid out.

“Put that on,” I said. “I’m going to see the emperor and you’ve been invited as well.”

Talia looked down at the contents of the drawer. Her uniform. Repaired and neatly pressed, as they said on her world. I had no idea what that meant. There were so many anachronisms that peppered their language considering they’d only recently pulled themselves out of a technological backwater.

I had to remind myself that they were a technically backwards species who’d still managed to challenge our dominance of this region of the galaxy.

Talia crossed her arms under her breasts. A move that brought them to my attention which served to distract me from the impending audience with the emperor which could very well result in both of our deaths.

“So what if I don’t want to meet your emperor?” she asked.

I squeezed my eyes shut and took in a deep breath. Clenched and unclenched my fists a couple of times for good measure even though I knew that wouldn’t do me a damn bit of good with this stubborn and pigheaded human female. I had to remind myself that she wasn’t a Livisk female. Roaring at her would do no good.

“If you don’t want to meet the emperor then that is fine. You can stay here and enjoy the amenities at my suite while I have my audience,” I said.

“Good. Glad we’re on the same page here. I’m not his subject and he doesn’t order me around,” she said.

“Perhaps your death will be swift when he sends his troops to kill you for the crime of ignoring an imperial summons. More likely they’ll make both of our deaths long and drawn out and extremely painful, but I suppose that would be worth it to prove you don’t take orders from the man who controls the planet you happen to be on, right?”

I grinned. A gesture that was the same for Livisk and humans. I had the pleasure of watching her turn several shades paler.

“Maybe I will go with you after all,” she muttered.

Talia looked down at her uniform and then back up to me. She cocked an eyebrow and it almost seemed as though she was smiling, though of course that was impossible. I didn’t think a smile was possible on that dour face unless she thought she was getting the upper hand on me somehow.

“What is wrong?” I snapped.

“Were you planning on giving me any sort of privacy while I change?”

That was enough for both of my eyebrows to raise. I understood that was a mark of surprise with the humans. It was very confusing getting used to an entirely new set of expressions to communicate with a new species.

“I had no plans as such,” I said.

She sighed. “That’s what I thought.” Though there was a smile on her face. A smile that, for once, didn’t have anything to do with her pointing sharp implements at various parts of my body or threatening to destroy my world.

It was a nice change.

She slipped into her uniform quickly, and I drank in the sight of her body as she did so. I didn’t know when I would next get a chance to enjoy this sight, after all. She might be acting pleasant now, but if I’d learned anything about human females in my short time with Talia it was that they were volatile and quick to change their mood.

“So who are you that you rate a personal summons from the emperor anyways?” she asked.

I opened my mouth to explain to her that I’d hardly gotten a personal summons from the emperor, but reminded myself that she was just a human. She had no idea how our system worked. She would have no idea that getting a summons in the manner I just had was more of a slight than an honor.

Then again, how could I expect a human to know what was right and proper in the world? Besides, a simple answer seemed like the best course of action. Less chance for confusion or misinterpretation.

“I am the emperor’s uncle,” I said.

There. That was simple enough. Best not to go into the intricacies of it. That I was supposed to be considered the lesser uncle since I was related by marriage twice over, my former wife being the first link by marriage and then her niece being the second link through her marriage to the emperor. How to explain the intrigue when I became the favored uncle because of my military experience? At least until my fall.