Authors: Bernadette Gardner
Icarus Rising (11 page)
out of the program, but it didn't. Not at all. "And depression?"
"Ask Namara. She found me on the jetty more than once
crying my eyes out."
Caleb straightened his shoulders. She'd cried over him?
Why would that make him feel proud and intimately
protective of her? "When did you get to acceptance?"
"The moment you met Jidar on the beach. I knew nothing
was going to stop the joining."
Caleb broke the rule he'd been staunchly trying to uphold
all day. He touched her. He put his hand on her shoulder and
squeezed. She reached up and covered his fingers with hers.
"I guess I'm a liar too."
"We make a perfect pair."
Zara stiffened. Gently she pushed his hand from her
shoulder. "That's just it. We could never be a pair.
Somewhere, there's an Icarian woman waiting for Jidar to
assign her a mate who can give her children."
"That's not going to happen now." And by God, he didn't
want it to. He sat down next to Zara and put his arm around
her shoulders. She leaned into him, and a warmth spread
over him that had nothing to do with the fire.
"If Danson can fix your biochemistry, it will. The Icarians
have invested too much in this project to give up now. They
need to start reproducing during this mating cycle."
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"They'll find someone else. They'll have to." Unbidden,
Caleb's thoughts shifted to a dark future. He imagined having
his symbion removed and losing his battle with Rennard's
while Zara looked on helplessly.
He'd tried so hard to keep those maudlin thoughts and
images out of his mind, but now that the symbion had seen
his fears and experienced them, its period of calm came to an
abrupt end. His wings lashed out, guttering the flames and
sending sparks skittering across the stone floor of the aerie.
Zara screamed and backed away from the embers.
"It's all right. It's all right," Caleb yelled, but he wasn't
talking to Zara. "I didn't mean it. Everything will be all right.
You have to trust me."
Fear overtook him, pumping from the symbion's brain in
wave after heart-pounding wave of adrenaline. "I won't let
them hurt you. I promise I won't."
"Caleb, you have to get control!" Zara rushed at him,
hands outstretched. His human brain knew she wanted to
comfort him and keep him from taking flight, but his animal
brain saw only a threat.
The symbion flung a wing at her, knocking her backward.
He tried to turn away, but uninjured and determined, she
rushed forward again into his arms.
"Caleb, you're stronger than the symbion. You can control
it. You can convince it that you won't allow it to be harmed."
Her urgent words soothed him, and the feel of her supple
body in his arms distracted both him and the symbion. Her
cool hands on his face calmed his anger but not his blood. His
desire flared, and so did the primal needs of the alien.
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"Zara, no!" He tried to push her away, but she held on,
one hand at the back of his neck, her face only millimeters
from his.
"You are stronger. Make it understand that whatever it saw
in your mind was not real."
"You're real." His arms went around her.
"I'm real," she echoed. "Listen to me. We will not let
anyone take the symbion away from you."
"Zara, I want..." Caleb began to sweat with the effort to
control the symbion. In a moment he would lose control again
and give in to its aching need to procreate before it died.
Desperation and selfish desire mounted in him, blocking out
any other thought.
"Stop, Caleb. Fold your wings. Concentrate on what you
want to do right now."
He was. Oh, he was. He cupped her ass and squeezed, slid
a hand into the waistband of her shorts and explored her
naked flesh.
Zara gasped and her breath came in a ragged pant against
his ear. "Fight it, Caleb. You're in charge. You lead."
He pushed her backward toward the
alor
pallet, one
thought only on his mind.
I lead. I command.
The symbion agreed. It surrendered control to him,
knowing it was about to get exactly what it wanted.
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With Caleb's hands on her, Zara couldn't think. She
couldn't fight her own desires any longer. She let him push
her onto the sleeping pallet. She didn't protest when he shed
his shorts or reached with steady hands to tear hers from her
body.
She arched into his rough caress as he climbed over her
and helped him shove her thin shirt up over her breasts and
slide it off.
Fear of breaking the rules no longer concerned her. She'd
held out long enough while they'd spent the day talking,
speculating, pretending they didn't want each other like this.
Once they returned to the station, she'd never have another
chance to feel his perfect body poised above her or to show
him how much she'd longed for his intimate touch.
"Caleb..."
"I can't stop, Zara. I won't stop this time." Regret tinged
his voice, but didn't slow his feral exploration. His hands
roamed over her breasts, pinching her nipples until they
stood erect and dark pink, caressing her burning flesh until
she thrashed beneath him. Everywhere he touched, her skin
tingled. Her nerve endings blazed with an insatiable need for
more.
He spread her legs with his, and she didn't resist. She
moaned when the head of his cock slipped between her pussy
lips, mixing his warm pre-cum with her own. She'd never
been this wet except for the times she'd dreamed of him
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doing just this, taking her in the dark, in the heat, fucking her
without reservation until she screamed her release.
"I don't want to hurt you." He whispered the words into
her neck as he burrowed his hands beneath her ass and tilted
her hips up. His long fingers searched the crease between her
cheeks, spread the flesh and teased her anus. He massaged
her, pressing the puckered flesh to show her he could
penetrate if he wanted to, but this was only a tease. He didn't
take her there, just used the contact to heighten her arousal.
"You won't ... you can't—ah!"
His first deep thrust cut off her reassurance and left her
momentarily breathless.
He filled her, just as she'd imagined he would, a perfect fit.
She moaned her fulfillment and above her, he shuddered.
"I'm sorry."
"No, no! It's good, God, Caleb, it's good."
He thrust again, and she dared to look up into his eyes as
he began a sensual sexual rhythm. Fully dilated, his eyes
were black, fathomless, but far from cold. Hunger blazed in
them, a need so basic he couldn't control it, like the need to
breathe. She knew he couldn't have stopped now if she
begged him, but she'd never do that.
"More." Zara wrapped her legs around his back, and the
rough underside of his wings brushed her skin. The contact
was alien but perfectly erotic. All the fear she'd harbored
about what he might become faded away as she locked her
ankles over his backside and snaked her arms up under his.
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His wings fluttered and spread to the side. One stroke sent
loose tendrils of
alor
down flurrying around the room. Another
actually lifted their twined bodies slightly from the pallet.
"Caleb!" Zara stiffened. Would he attempt to fly with her in
his arms?
They hit the pallet a second later. Though they'd only lifted
off a few centimeters, the impact jarred the breath from
Zara's lungs and pushed Caleb's erection deeper inside her.
She gasped, and her back arched as the beginnings of an
orgasm flared in her core.
"I didn't mean to..."
"It's okay, it's okay ... oh, God, Caleb!" Zara shuddered.
Every sensation seemed to rush to her pussy. She was wet
and full and poised on the verge of climax, but she held on,
reluctant to go over the edge with him and be done with this
moment she'd longed for.
Caleb seemed to have slipped away now into some primal
odyssey. He pumped relentlessly, groaning his pleasure with
each thrust. His wings ruffled, and he lowered his mouth to
Zara's nipple and began to suck and bite the painfully erect
tip. She gasped when a long pull from his lips and tongue
arrowed through her body like a bolt of electricity, shocking
her system into overdrive. Instinct took her over as well, and
coherent thought fled. She knew only one thing, that she
belonged to him, body and soul and she would let him do
anything he wanted, anything he needed to do to satisfy the
alien urges that controlled him.
She cried out and something exploded in her. Her clit
pulsed, sending waves of erotic sensation through her entire
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body. She closed her eyes and keened, while her inner
tremors forced her hips up off the soft
alor
pallet.
"Zara..."
"Come now, Caleb. Come in me."
He buried his face in her neck and clutched her so tightly
to his body she thought she might break. As she commanded,
he came. His hot seed shot into her, heating her already
burning pussy. She shuddered again, the pulse of her orgasm
renewed by his.
For an eternity, they held each other, bodies still stiff with
cascading pleasure.
Alor
down fluttered around them in the
still air, falling slowly onto their sweat-slick bodies. The spicy
scent of the crushed leaves beneath them filled the room,
mingling with the combined aroma of their arousal.
Zara breathed the sexually charged air in deep, grateful
gulps. She'd never come like that, never felt so perfect as she
did now with Caleb still inside her, his weight above her,
holding her safe and immobile on the primitive bed.
She could have stayed that way forever, but Caleb began
to move.
He rose up on his hands and looked into her eyes. His
expression was dark, hot.
"Caleb we—"
"I'm not finished." His voice had taken on a dangerous
quality that frightened and excited her. He'd climaxed
spectacularly, judging by the sticky evidence of his orgasm
coating her thighs. What more could he want from her? It
didn't matter. She'd give it. Anything he asked was his.
"What do you mean?"
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"The symbion wants you now."
At first Arilani thought her tired eyes were playing tricks on
her, but as she circled closer to the hundredth—or was it the
thousandth?—island she'd flown over in her relentless search,
she realized she was indeed seeing the flicker of firelight.
Before she could bank on the dying wind, though, the
flame went out, leaving her wondering if she'd seen it at all.
Only a closer look would assuage her curiosity, so she
swooped in for a landing and cautiously advanced through the
alor
screen to enter the half-hidden dwelling nestled at the
crown of the island.
Even in the dark, she recognized Caleb's wings spread
wide, their tips pointed upward in sexual triumph.
Arilani froze. Hidden in the shadows at the entrance to the
aerie, she remained, stunned by what she saw. Caleb knelt on
the sleeping pallet, naked, with his back to her. Before him,
on her knees also, legs spread, her backside in the air, Dr.
Abbott lowered herself to the submissive mating position.
The couple's ragged breathing filled the air along with the
distinctive scent of sex. Their whispered words had Ari
straining to hear every breathless syllable.
"Oh, God, Caleb, do it."
"The symbion is—"
"I don't care, please, fuck me again..."
The sudden stiffening of Caleb's muscles as he thrust
forward told Ari he'd obeyed his lover's command. His own
backside tightened, the sinews of his thighs straining as he
threw his head back and began to pound his lower body
against his female's exposed sex.
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Arilani covered her mouth with trembling fingers. This was
exactly what she'd feared would happen. The symbion had full
control of Caleb's actions and was claiming the nearest female
as its mate. It would continue to do so, until she conceived.
Ari's first instinct was to rush in and stop the illicit act.
Jidar hadn't sanctioned Caleb to mate, and he wouldn't until
the success of the joining had been determined. If the Icarian
leader learned of this, he would never give Caleb to Arilani.
By the time another man was chosen for her, she might be
well past the most fertile mating cycle of her life and she
could miss the opportunity to produce the offspring who