Taken to Nobu (Xiveri Mates, #2)

by Elizabeth Stephens

Her mouth is large. Obscenely so. I have never seen a female with pillows on her mouth like these.

had resisted. And I have already used up the reserves of that resistance. What is left behind is but a tendril, a thread, diminishing smoke.

I had never been foolish enough to consider braving it, but for her, I’d have continued on until the last breath left my lungs. Not even for her, but for the promise of her.

white flash along my ridges, followed by a splash of black and on its heels, a wave of green — surprise, bloodlust, amusement — before finally my ridges settle on a fierce orange pride.

She strikes me. My warrior queen is savage.

we on Nobu almost never see Voraxia’s suns for our world has been claimed by ice that covers everything.

This combination of my emotions will know her well. She pleases me to no end. Even as she strikes.

Too curious not to continue my exploration, I delve one finger forward, careful not to cut her with my claws as I explore this mystical fur and this tantalizing heat. My spine stiffens as I finger something wet and so soft catacat silk traders would be jealous. This cannot be the place where my xora will enter. It cannot be…

My fingers slide against my tongue and I suck hard, unwilling to let so much as a droplet of her miaba go to waste, for it is just as sweet and bitter as its scent promised. And even more deadly.

She is human. Perhaps she does not feel Xanaxana in the same way we do. If this is the case, then what I attempt to do to her here will not be a union. It will be a rape.

She does not know that I will not claim her. Not like this. Not ever like this.

Claiming her when this sensation of wrongness hangs so heavy between us I can scarcely breathe its cloying air, would ruin everything.

Tradition is not worth keeping if it causes pain.

The Drakesh left behind many of their genetic traits to mix with those of the Voraxian populations that remained, resulting in the varied skin tones of my people. And then they left this.

It's a pain that says, this monster is mine, bound to me across every lifeline, across every lifetime and there’s nothing I can do to prevent it. Nothing I can do to stop the pain. No thing, but the one thing.

inhaling the scent I find there. So strong, my eyes nearly roll back into my skull —

my finger slides deeper into her, reaching a desperately tight wall, and I feel her suddenly, all at once, clench. Her core can tighten even more? I cannot believe it.

“It must be the merillian. It healed you inside and out. Your barrier will have grown back, so I must break it if we are to continue.

“Hexa, you are untried. As am I,” I tell her, though I do not know why. “This will be a first for both of us.”

“You are safe. It is over. From now, there is only pleasure.”

Moving gently in and out of her gripping, desperate heat, I feel supernovas explode behind my eyelids on each thrust.

And then I feel the pressure. Her core squeezing my xora to the point of pain, making me realize with elation and with horror that the battle is not yet complete. It is a full-out war not to find my release right after hers — one that I lose.

pull my stiff xora from her wetness and rip the coverings away from her body so I can tuck her cleanly into my suit. She is cold, and I am warm. It has nothing to do with my needing to feel her close against me. Nothing at all.

Okkari. I hated clinging to him the most. Because it felt way too much like need. Like safety.

He even told them about my pussy clenching around his dick — the treacherous, evil bitch — robbing him of what he called his zah-nah-zah-nah first mating.

the front half of the alien’s home is glass while the back half is buried in a mountain made of hard black rock.

can’t believe I fought him. I can’t believe he felt, at any point, defeated. And I can’t believe that at no point, I did.

got to try again. I got to start over. And when he took my virginity, I hated how much I loved it. Because I loved it so much it hurt to breathe. It still hurts. And I regret nothing.

That would mean getting rid of hate, but without hate, what is there? What’s left of Kiki? Nothing.

My xora is stiff and unyielding, small tendrils of color illuminating it that I can no longer control. I am a calculating male, yet I am nothing but raw emotion before her.

Deep indigo desire, blue pleasure, canary uncertainty, a darker shame.

Clearing my throat, I speak when she does not. “I will leave you then, unless you would debase yourself by informing me how you would like to receive pleasure in the human way, and describing to me how human males are able to deliver it to their females.” The request is both selfish and humiliating, but it is what will allow me to expedite this process and remain close to her.

“I will tell you the answer. It does not. You are my Xiveri mate and I treasure you more than I treasure my own life. Now you will tell me that you understand my words and believe them.”

She licks her mouth pillows and I nearly ejaculate then.

Now you will tell me how you would like to be pleasured and I will take you to our nest and spend the coming lunar bringing this pleasure to you.”

I nip at the skin above her hip, making her jerk. “Kiki, what did I say? You will watch me as I bring you pleasure.”

understand her pain, but before I can save either of us, I need her to tell me. “Tell me you need me.”

When I slow, she moans deeply, when I quicken, her fingers clench and her back arches. When I nibble the folds of her lips, she cries out to the stars. And then when I worship her little nub, she shatters.

“Human females are known to lead the rutting too, sometimes. I never have… But I just… I thought. I mean, I wanted to try.”

she rises up onto my xora and slides down onto it smoothly. She moans and this time it is I who grips the zyth fur below me, as if fearing that it will fly away or I will.

Because as I fill her tight, wet heat, and issue a bellowed roar into our cavern, I am lost to her. Completely. Nothing more than driftwood, washed up onto paradise’s shore.

“You can’t release your demons if you keep them prisoner.”

With neither mercy nor warning, I snatch her up by the throat. “Kuaku, you have lost your senses!”

The Xanaxana in my chest beats harder for her as rage and fear and honor and duty and something greater than all of these disparate parts overcomes me.

Even if I must debase myself and ask her question after question, I will have answers from her.

She gasps, and then she does something very small. Something damning. She lifts her right arm, splays her fingers, and uses that elbow to shield her face and head. She prepares to be struck like someone who has been struck before, many times, and could not fight back. Time stands still.

I just want to fuck and fight until I’m numb.

These beings aren’t like the Drakesh. They aren’t even like the humans. Humans are mean, nasty little things. And since I’ve been made by humans, and reshaped by the Drakesh, what does that make me?

White for surprise. Red for rage. Yellow for shame. Grey for grief. Blue for happiness. Purple for desire…

Svera and her Tri-God be damned. Leave it to a worshiper to write such a manual…