Page 44 of Into The Rift

“I’m going to make sure this building is secure and then I’m coming back. I’d like you to take off all your clothes and be lying on this mattress waiting for me when I return.”

“Take off all my clothes? You want me naked?” he squeaked.

“Very much so. Then I can show you exactly what happens to little boys when they provoke men to make love to them. Would you like that?” I bent to kiss his shocked little face and prodded him when he didn’t answer. “Well?”

“Y-yes. I’d like that very much.”

“Then do as I asked, princeling.”

He nodded. “Yes. Yes, I can do that.”

“Good. Get more blankets if you need them. This is where we’ll sleep tonight.”

“On this same bed?”

“Most certainly on this same bed.”

His face suffused with pink, but he nodded again. “I can do that too.”

Chapter Thirteen

Jago

As soon as Niko left the room, I took off my clothes and scrambled to get under the blanket.

I wasn’t really cold, but I was shivering with nerves. I heard him moving around the small building and then coming back toward me, lying there on my narrow mattress.

He stopped at the foot of it and looked down at me, and then he slowly began to take off his own clothes. I watched in complete fascination.

It had occurred to me—maybe a little too late—that he might not be the same as I was under my clothes. After all, he was an alien and from a whole other galaxy. He had beautiful, golden horns on his head, and he even had emerald-colored scales that ran in a pattern down his throat and disappeared under his clothing. There were bound to be differences, and I was about to see what they might be.

He was still completely humanoid, though, and all humanoid species looked basically the same and had the same “equipment.” At least that’s what I’d been told, and I had cousins married to many different species and surely, I’d have heard about it if there were any significant differences. Wouldn’t I?

He slipped off his shirt and I saw a broad expanse of muscles and gleaming tan skin. The scales only trailed down to his ribs, with a bit over his chest and never got much broader than the pattern on his neck. I had touched and even kissed the ones on his throat, and they were warm and soft. I imagined these would be the same.

He took off his trousers and I saw another patch that began on his hip and went down his left leg almost to the knee.

“Why do you have scales?” I asked him and he ran a hand over the ones that stretched over his chest. “Are you like the Tygerians who shift into animals when they get excited or lose control?”

He smiled. “No, we don’t ‘shift’ into anything. But long ago, when our world was new, legend says that our ancestors consorted with the gods who made them. They were known as shenron. They were very large, flying, serpent-like creatures, covered in scales of all colors and who had beautiful golden horns.”

“Like yours.”

He smiled at me. “Perhaps like mine, yes. We don’t have any reliable images of them. Only descriptions and of course, their offspring. We know they were all powerful and all knowing.”

“Like gods then?”

“Yes. Some say they weren’t celestial beings, however, and they only came from distant stars with far greater knowledge than ours. They were here on our planet for many years and then abruptly went away. But not before leaving a large amount of children for us to raise as we saw fit, because according to legend, those who had been with a shenron never remarried.

Over time, the offspring of shenron only mated with each other and two races emerged on our planet. The children of those who had mated shenron and those who hadn’t. The purest shenron children were considered more beautiful and lordly.”

“Like you?’

He smiled at me and lowered his beautiful body over mine. “Are you sure you want to talk about this now, princeling? I can think of things that are far more interesting.”

“Y-you can?”

“Oh yes.” He started to kiss me all over then—all over my entire body. I was a little shocked and embarrassed that he seemed so intent on tearing down all my defenses and leaving me no safe refuge, no way to fall back and regroup. No way to deny how much he was coming to mean to me. His hand gripped me on my most private part—my typpid, as I called it. That’s what Rakkur had told me would happen, but I hadn’t quite believed it.

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