Page 42 of Her Alien Savior
My breath caught, and his eyes went to my lips. Direl lifted a hand to my cheek and rubbed his thumb over my lower lip in a slow, deliberate motion that sent tingle down to my core. We stared at each other suspended in that moment, and he slid his waist down the seat towards my hand. Hard muscle twitched against my forearm, and I didn’t dare avert my eyes moving back in tandem as he leaned closer to bridge the distance between our mouths. I wished I’d stayed still, allowed our lips to meld, but I didn’t trust this need he felt for me. Could I handle this being something only physical?
“They wish to see us mated, to see that you have claimed me. Pulsunne, all you must do is take me.”
No, I thought, this wasn’t just physical for me… he kept saying things that made me melt and I was scared. Scared I’d open my heart to someone who would leave me when he realized the blood he craved wasn’t really mine.
Chapter eighteen
Direl
ThegleaminmyPulsunne’s eye was all fight, and a healthy amount of fear, though I didn’t sense any dangers within the quarters. I understood the fight, it was common with many warriors to fight their mates to prove that they were worthy.
Female warriors were designed by the goddess to have their epul longer than a male in their arms and back to defend from unwanted mates. Their shoulder epuls were curved to the front to prevent a warrior from biting their necks and sharing blood. Even their agility and strength could easily subdue an untrained warrior without much effort. The fight I recognized as that of a mate gauging trust, that’s what I felt from her, and her mind was lost in questioning if she could trust me enough to allow me the honor of giving my life in service to her. She wasn’t ready to accept me. I knew this, but it didn’t stop me from feeling that primal urge to prove myself.
So, when she responded with the strangest question, I was stunned.
“Why?” she asked with such a soft and bewildered expression around those blue eyes I stilled before I could offer her relief for the way her thighs clenched together in need. It was unheard of for any warrior to ask such a thing in any tribe. No one would question a warrior’s desire to be claimed by the one that made their glands burn, and their fangs ache. Sure, there were plenty of young warriors unworthy yet of being claimed by their chosen Pulsunne, but even then we all worked to prove ourselves.
Then an understanding burrowed its way into my epul. How could I be so blind? I knew how, the pull that told me she was mine to care for if only she accepted me was stronger than any other time of my youth I had tried to bond with a female after a victory. I hadn’t even felt this pull from Seira-Le and we had a claiming ceremony planned before our tribe. This was more than a rut for me, but she was human, and I was disgraced. What could I offer her? Did her body even need me like mine needed hers? She wasn’t necia, even if her blood was...
I knew this the moment the scientists drew blood from her, and even if I didn’t, they spoke of my mate as if I were not there. She had necia blood, but even if her blood was not her own, it was everything about her that drew me in. Her scent and her voice caught my attention, but it was the way she stood up to me, defended me, showed she could best a warrior with no weapon, and that look in her eyes that told me she found me as attractive as I found her irresistible that stole the beat of my hearts.
Doubts ate away at me, but I knew that I would get her out of here, even if that was all I could do for her.
My silence was too long, and she continued, “Why stay? Why allow me to claim you? Why me?”
It came out in a slur of words that barely translated; she was using her Earthling language, which made my translator kick in and interrupt the beautiful sound of her natural tongue.
Finally, I settled on what my elder would say to this, “There is science all around us, it explains things in terms that we can store neatly in our mind’s eye. A gift of knowledge that we accept until we don’t, until it doesn’t fit into the box we’ve placed it in, then we reexplain this science in a new way, some say better, and the wise say more understandable.”
“What does this have to do—“ I cut her off with a single tilt of her chin with my knuckle to have her focus as my tribe elder would do to me when my mind was hot, and my temper hotter.
“Science can explain biologically why we are compatible mates, but it does not explain the why. Why I stay, or why I will wait until you accept me regardless of if another scientifically compatible mate comes along. Our minds will never truly understand why you are what you are to me.”
“Why?” she repeated softly, her eyes uncertain she wanted to hear the answer, as it was not as simple and easily digestible as science. I placed my hand where her heart was beating beneath her thin skin.
“Because the goddess has placed a rarity in my life that I cannot turn away from. You, my Pulsunne, are everything to me.” She frowned, dissatisfied with my answer, and I continued to try to quantify what this feeling was inside of me that built and continues to build the more I’m with her.
“My hearts choose you because you do ask why,” I smiled at her and leaned in closer to speak with her softly in the small shell of her ear, my need to taste her growing with every word, “instead of accepting that I’m merely a tool that is at your service regardless of whether you claim me. Because you cared to scold me for caring more about your wellbeing than my own while I was being seared by restraints. Because you gave me choice when I was frenzied with rut instead of forcing your nectar into my receptors. Though, everything in me wished for you to place your slick fingers within my mouth instead of tucking your nectar away from me. Because you showed both bravery, adaptability, and skill in besting a trained warrior all because you wished to heal me yourself.”
I chuffed, rearing back from running my tongue along her delicious skin. I was unworthy, knowing that she did more than that, she gained honor, and respect by bonding with the one warrior that could actually protect her, and it wasn’t me. I continued as I watched moisture well up, making her eyes the most vibrant of blue. “You did heal me. I owe you my life, and I’m blessed by the goddess that you are the kind of mate that won’t take it. It is a blessing and a curse, Pulsunne, because I desperately wish for you to claim every part of me.”
I retracted my hand from her chin, knowing if I stayed like this much longer, I would not be able to control myself from showing her as I would during a claiming ceremony how I wished to please her. My restraint was waning, and my cock was already pulsing with need to bond with her and prime her body to be compatible for our spawn. It was an ancient impulse, and until I could connect with her, bonding to her service, I will slowly lose myself until my rut sees nothing but forcing her to claim me. It wasn’t how I wished for us to bond. I wished for her to demand that I please her, and for her tiny teeth to draw blood from my veins of her own desire.
I cleared my throat, already feeling heat pool beneath my epul... a warning.
It was a normal necia tradition to fight our mates, but she wasn’t necia... there would be no epul sprouting from her skin to protect her from me if I couldn’t get us out of here before then. Her skin was so smooth, a sign to many warriors of acceptance. When the epul withdrew back into our mates... that was their way of saying they accepted the mating.
I smiled to myself realizing that all of my epul were thrumming under my skin, excepting the ones on my shoulders that were more difficult to withdraw easily. I was relaxed around her, and if I was honest with myself, my shoulder epul stayed out because on instinct I still wished to be seen as impressive by her eyes. Ridiculous, I thought, knowing humans did not have epul and were not impressed by them the same as my tribe did not change my will to show them.
“Necia warriors mate to balance their body chemistry, a symbiotic exchange to stay alive. When you’re in rut, your body is turning off your higher brain functions in favor of survival, on auto pilot to either fuck a willing female that you have the scent of, or one you fight to prove your usefulness. Where, in this tribe, would I fit, Direl? Is it my fluid that balances your body? The act of rutting with me that expels the excess gland production of adrenaline? The primal desire to have your spawn with a mate that is brave enough to defy you? What? Do you think this is love?”
My mouth sealed shut as my jaw hardened at the way her voice trembled on the last word. She was trying to push me away, and she had learned much about my anatomy in the short time she had been gone. The distance between us felt more than the arm’s length as she leaned away from me with a groan, and it felt so cold. The fire was behind those watered eyes as her lashes freed a drop down her cheek. I wasn’t sure what I should do as this leaking from her powerful eyes was doing unimaginable damage to my insides as they twisted at the sight.
“Love is a fickle Earthling invention, Pulsunne,” I growled feeling both possessive to prove to her that being my Pulsunne was more than being a mate to fuck, as human’s say, it was life, it was meaning, it was... everything.
But the other part of me was angry, impulsive and desperate to make her beg for me to accept her claim over me. With a twitch in my jaw, I felt the epul in my forehead extend in challenge. I would deny myself until my mind was lost, or she claimed me in the ancient ways of defeating me in a Rakture. “For a warrior there are two kinds of bonds, one of service that is used for both tribe and mates alike, and one with the goddess that pulls from our very essence making two separate entities one, a true mate. Our elders talk of this bond as a shredding of being that unites the best in a warrior with the best in another to lift the darkness together.”
“You think that’s me?” She shook her head in disbelief, not knowing what it felt like for necia to find their Pulsunne, and neither did I until I met her.
