Ruwen: Mated to the Alien Read online

  Lis’s eyes widened as she said, “Oh, no,” in a tone of voice that said she knew exactly what would happen next. Her fingers curled casually into the fabric of his top.

  Ru placed his own hand on top of hers. “It looked like one anti-grav engine was on the verge of overheating. That’s about the simplest thing to fix on any ship. Recycle the core, flush the coolant, refill it, and you’re done. It takes five minutes. Under normal circumstances.”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  He could still feel the heat of the engine room on his cheeks, smell the tang of oil in the air. “The engine was actually failing. Same sensor, but a quick diagnostic would have revealed the problem. Only I wasn’t authorized to run diagnostics by myself.” At the time it had seemed completely unfair, though now Ru understood the method. “So I did what I thought would fix it. And the engine blew.”

  She gasped. “Was anyone hurt?”

  He shook his head, “Luckily, no. But I was demoted and given extra chores for three months along with a dock in pay to cover 10% of the cost.”

  “How expensive was it?” He was close enough to read every minute expression on her face. He would talk all day if only to catalog her every tic.

  “We were assigned to a military grade freighter out of the Nyglan Conglomerate.” At the time, the Conglomerate had been on the verge of war and in need of every ship it could get. Training was hard, fast, and incredibly strict. “I could not take a payment for more than a year.”

  She winced in sympathy and he was reminded that she’d lived the life of contract muscle as well. She understood the need for payment. “That must have sucked.”

  “At least my meals and board were provided at no cost.” And he had gotten what he’d paid for. The processors had been stocked with flavorless meal packs and protein drinks, and he’d bunked with three other apprentices for five years, well into his journeymanship.

  The sound of a bell ringing caught his attention. The hourly alarm he’d set to remind him to check the navigation course rang. He didn’t want them to stray too far off course if the system failed. He looked down at his plate and was shocked to see that he’d eaten all but a few crumbs. He’d been so caught up in talking with Lis that he hadn’t realized that he’d been slowly eating. Still, he said and meant, “This was truly the best meal I can remember having on this ship.” He packed decent, nutritious meals, but rarely bothered to enjoy anything that took more than a few seconds to make.

  Her cheeks turned an adorable pink. “Thanks.”

  “I need to check the navigation system and do some rewiring.” He’d left everything in a pile when he saw her in the kitchen. He dreaded going back to tangle with those problems alone, but it was necessary. “The system will need to be checked once an hour for the next few days to make sure we are on course for the next gate.”

  Her eyes widened. “Were we that damaged?”

  Ru shrugged, now used to the extent of the damage. He wasn’t happy that his ship had taken fire, but he knew the truth. “It could have been much worse were it not for you.”

  Lis looked down, her face fallen. “I let us get hit.”

  Ru hooked a finger under her chin and lifted her face up so that she saw him. He needed her to know exactly how much he valued her, not just as his denya, but as the woman who had saved his life. “You took out a satellite and only let a single blast through. I’d hardly fault you for one shot.”

  She gave him half a smile. “Not bad for a first timer, I guess.”

  Ru kissed her forehead. He would have done more, but the alarm still rang and he wanted her too much to be satisfied with one chaste kiss. “Not bad at all,” he said. They cleared the table and placed everything in the recycler. Before Lis could walk away or Ru could stop himself, he asked, “Would you join me?”

  He didn’t know what he expected. She looked at him with an odd expression, her brows drawn down and lips turned in what could almost be called a smile. She was silent for a few seconds before nodding once, slowly, and saying, “I think I’d like that. A lot, actually.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lis was falling for Ru. Hard. It had started sometime back on Polai. Maybe when they’d made out just before they were caught, or even some time before then. She couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment, but the emotions had caught up to her now and were a storm churning in her brain.

  Though 'falling' might not have been the right term. She was terrified and excited that she'd already fallen and was just waiting for one little hint from him to admit it.

  Because that was the weird thing. They'd escaped Polai more than a week before and in that time, they'd spent a good portion of their time together. They would talk and laugh, casually brush up next to each other, share their meals, and generally do everything that two people who really liked each other did. But Ru hadn't kissed her, not really kissed her, since they'd been interrupted.

  And things were getting uncomfortable.

  Okay, she was horny.

  Her feelings weren't only hormones, but there was a definite chunk of her that wanted to climb on top of him and ride him into ecstasy. Goddamn it, that would be fun.

  The cockpit seemed a little cramped to get the job done, but they each had their quarters and there was the holoroom, so it was not a lack of space that kept them apart.

  It was Ru.

  She caught him looking at her when he didn't think she noticed and he had that smoldering look in his eyes that told her she belonged in his bed. It lit her up, and her dreams had gone from steamy to creatively wicked. Four nights in a row she'd woken up panting and on the verge of screaming out his name. She tried to hint that she was open to him, that she wanted his caress.

  First she made sure to stand too close, invade his space. She'd bent over at times, showing off her ass. She'd touched him, brushing her fingers against his thigh and coming within inches of his cock. Every single action she took would have been obvious to a red blooded Earth male that she was hot for him.

  He still wanted her. She was certain of it. It was evident in those stolen glances and the words he almost said to her. Each time he slipped and called her 'denya,' she saw him wince as if he wished that he could stop himself. At first, the term had scared her. Now she wrapped it around herself like a warm blanket. She didn't understand fate or magical bonds, but it made Ru hers and that was all that mattered. Even if the attraction evaporated once they made it to civilization, he was hers now, and she was done pretending otherwise.

  Eight days after jumping through the gate and escaping Polan territory, Lis sat in the cockpit with Ru. Wiring seemed to grow out of every panel of the walls, and every day, there was more and more tangled all around Ru's workstation.

  And every hour the alarm sounded for one of them to check the nav system. In eight days, it hadn't once led them off course. But Ru wasn't content to trust it. Half of the wires he fiddled with interacted with the nav controls in some way, and if he cut the wrong one, they could easily lose their way.

  But it was too much work for just one man. He hadn't been completely caught up in his wiring. He'd taken time to teach her how to check the system against the maps he kept stored in a separate database. And after she'd absorbed that, he'd shown her how to manually fly the ship. She wouldn't be able to practice breaking atmo or landing until they found a suitable planet, but she could take over if something happened to Ru and the autopilot.

  After she'd learned how to monitor the nav system, she and Ru had fallen into a pattern of sleeping in shifts. One of them was always up to monitor the controls, and when they were both awake, they spent most of their time together, either sitting in the cockpit or the kitchen.

  She'd been cooped up with other people before and been on the brink of violence within a day or two. With Ru, it felt… nice. Comfortable. Right.

  At the moment, she wasn't doing much. But her gaze dropped to where Ru sat, propped against the wall, his brows drawn down in harsh contemplation.

  He sco
wled and threw down the handful of wires he'd been working with. “Damn it!” he said. Apparently he hadn't gotten the memo on 'comfortable.'

  “What?” Lis asked. He'd been working all day, occasionally talking with her, but mostly just staring at his project.

  “Nothing." Ru blew out a breath, the hair that had fallen across his eyes momentarily flying away before settling back down. "I’m merely frustrated. I mis-spliced the cords," he explained, holding up a bright yellow piece of wire.

  Lis put down the small piece of equipment she'd been studying and stood up. “Okay, that’s it.”

  Ru had to tilt his head back to look at her sudden height. “Excuse me?”

  “We’ve both got cabin fever or something. It's time for a break.” They'd spent too long working. Every single waking moment was connected to keeping the ship flying. And right now she suspected Ru was working on the wires just to keep himself busy, not because they would fall out of space without it.

  “Cabin fever?” he asked.

  Lis waved her hands around and said, “Small space, nowhere to go, only the two of us. We’re stressed.”

  He kept his tone deliberately even, but she knew he was still on edge. “The trip will only take a few more days. I can keep track of the nav system if you need some time…"

  “Ruwen.” She cut him off. His face jerked and his eyes glowed red. How she’d ever read that look as demonic, she didn’t know. That was pure desire.

  “We both need to relax,” she said, trying not to get distracted. “So we need to take a break.”

  He pointed to the central computer, “The nav system…”

  Lis wasn’t interested in that just now. She had other ideas. “Just three hours. We can check it after.”

  “If it goes off course…”

  “It hasn’t yet and it won’t do much harm if it does.” They could spare a little time to unwind. And, at worst, they’d end up a little off course. That could easily be corrected. They were in empty space; there wasn’t much danger of flying into a star or hitting a planet.

  Ru grinned. “What do you propose?”

  “A walk in the park.” She held out her hand and he rose from his nest of equipment and took it.

  After they set the alarm for three hours, Lis lead Ru down the hallway to the holoroom. When she wasn’t sleeping or sitting in the cockpit with Ru, she’d spent a little time experimenting with the different settings of the holoplayer.

  She set it to the one that she wanted and watched the forest of maple trees sprout up around them. “It’s not quite home, but it’s close.” It looked a little like the movies she’d seen of parks from the end of the twentieth century. The sky above them was a clear blue interspersed with fluffy white clouds. Trees shot up fifty or more feet in the air with green leaves providing a bit of shade.

  There was nothing like that in the Wastes, but it still felt almost like Earth.

  She took Ru’s hand and walked with him down a leaf strewn path. The air was fresh and whispered around them, tousling her hair, not cold enough that she needed a coat. Birds chirped off in the distance and it smelled fresh, green, and lively, everything that she imagined a forest should smell like.

  But it wasn’t just the forest she wanted to see.

  The little path terminated outside of a small cottage. The woods blocked them from walking any further, but the wooden building looked completely inviting. If some fairy tale witch had claimed it, she must have been one of the good ones.

  Lis smiled at Ru. “I saw it last time I chose this holo, but I didn’t go inside.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Because I didn’t want to go alone.” There was something special about this place, something that she wanted to share with him. That might have seemed silly. This was his holo program, after all. He could have gone into the cabin any number of times, but from the contemplative look in his eyes, it was new to him as well.

  They walked up the gray stone pathway to the door and climbed the three steps onto the porch. It was a log cabin made of reddish wood with dark tiles covering the roof. Lis saw smoke billowing out of the chimney.

  She opened the door and stepped in, Ru right behind her, his body heat seeping into her skin through her clothes. She leaned back, pressing herself lightly against him. Ru placed a hand on her hip and was about to slide it away when Lis covered it with her own fingers. He stilled.

  Physics had been thrown out the window.

  From the outside, the cabin had appeared small, one story and perhaps a few hundred square feet. They'd been in the middle of a forest and it should have been surrounded completely with trees.

  But the inside of this cabin was enormous. The roof soared above them, probably twenty feet high or more. It was too tall to make out the detailing of the decorated wooden beams on the ceiling. Along one wall there was a fireplace that would have fit into a palace; it was taller than her and the fire that roared within was hot and big enough to roast a boar. A big furry rug was laid out before the fire in between two high backed leather chairs.

  However, the cottage had only one star. A four poster bed took up an entire quarter of the room. A dozen people could sleep comfortably without any risk of rolling over onto each other.

  Opposite the front door, a large window took up most of the wall. It looked out over a cliff and onto the ocean, where waves crashed against rocky outcroppings.

  "Is this what all of your dwellings look like?" Ru asked, voice full of wonder.

  Lis couldn't stop the laughter that bubbled up on her throat. "God no. I can touch the opposite walls of my room if I really reach for it and there aren't any windows." Even the crew quarters she was sleeping in now were nicer, though she knew if she were sharing that room with three other people she wouldn't have the same opinion. "This place is special." And not just because it would be a palace on Earth.

  He stepped in past her and looked around, slowly turning so he could drink in all of the details. But his eyes finally settled on her, bright red with his inner fire. "Yes, special."

  Lis's heart skipped a beat. He wasn't talking about the cabin.

  The kiss had been days in coming and when they closed the distance between themselves and his lips covered hers, it was like taking her first gulp of water after months in the desert. This was what coming home felt like. She didn’t care that he was an alien, that his tongue was slightly pointed with strange ridges on it, or that his body was covered with the most fascinating patterns that she’d ever seen on a person.

  A distant part of her thought that he should have tasted strange. None of Ru’s building blocks had come from Earth. He’d never eaten an apple or petted a cat. But as her tongue rasped against his, nothing could have felt more familiar, more like home. It wasn’t that he was something that she knew, it was that he was everything she needed.

  Her fingers grasped his shoulders, digging in deep.

  Ru hitched one hand under her thigh until she wrapped her legs around his waist, letting him take all of her weight and support her completely. She was wrapped around him, clutching him close as his lips devoured hers. This wasn’t like kissing a human man. His tongue had those delicious little ridges and his teeth were too pointy.

  He pressed her up against the wall, letting it do most of the work to keep her in place. But wild horses couldn’t have dragged Lis away from him, not right now, not when she was on fire with desire and more than a little in love with the way his tongue played against hers.

  When he tried to pull back, Lis dipped in again, keeping him flush up against her. She felt the growing hardness of his cock against her stomach. Her insides clenched and she knew that she was wet at her core. It would take little work to slip out of her clothing and take him inside of her.

  God above, she yearned for him.

  She arched her hips up, rubbing against him, her most sensitive flesh against his own. Ru groaned and lightly bit on her lip, tugging at it. Lis set one foot down on the ground, trying to find some semblan
ce of balance, but that only brought her into closer contact.

  Why wasn’t she naked right now?

  Ru kissed down her jaw and over the rapid pulse in her neck. His fingers splayed against the swell of her breast and she bit her lip to keep from moaning as he stroked over the sensitive flesh.

  “Do you like that?” he asked, his voice husky and full of lust.

  Lis let the moan free, barely able to say, “Yes.”

  “You’re more sensitive right here, aren’t you?” It was only when he asked that she realized he’d never made love to a human before.

  Lis reached up and placed her hand over his own. “It’s sensitive here,” she confirmed. And then she took his hand lower until his fingers barely brushed the juncture of her thighs. “And very sensitive here.”

  The red of Ru’s eyes darkened to almost black as he gently stroked one finger against her. For a moment, Lis remembered the claws he could summon up at any moment, but she felt no fear. She knew to the very foundation of her being that Ru would not hurt her.

  She thought he would fall to his knees right there to bring her pleasure, but instead, he tugged gently on her hand and led her across the room, where he laid her down on the bed.

  “Let me give you a taste of what we could be,” he said.

  Lis didn’t know what the we meant in that sentence, but all she cared about was the taste. “Do whatever you want,” she responded, unclasping the button above the zipper on her jumpsuit.

  He revealed her, inch by glorious inch. And it was short work of sliding out of the top and shedding her undershirt before her breasts were bare before him. His hands smoothed over the skin of her stomach and Lis wasn’t self-conscious of the swell of her stomach or the curve of her hips.