Alien Desire by Hannah Haze
Chapter twelve - Tor
We are kissing, a pastime that seems to have no purpose other than pleasure. It will not lead to the Omega’s impregnation. It will not breed us children. It will not sustain or refuel us. It will not secure us lands or wealth. It will not expand our minds or our knowledge.
Yet, I want to do this and only this for the rest of my days.
Kissing Emma is dizzying and thrilling. Electricity spirals up and down my spine, racing through my abdomen and along my limbs. My skin buzzes and heats.
Her lips are soft and hot, her tongue wet and tactile, her teeth smooth and sharp.
How is it that this act has no equivalent in my world? How is it that the Gryton have not discovered the pure, basal pleasure that comes from pressing one’s mouth against another’s?
Although, I know this kissing would not be the same with any other being. It is Emma’s mouth, Emma’s taste, Emma’s scent. It is kissing Emma that has my heart fluttering in my chest.
Time is lost to kissing Emma. I forget about the need to mate her. I forget about the necessary upgrade to the computer. I forget about our predicament.
Who cares if no one comes for us? Who cares if we are trapped here forever? I will happily kiss Emma until I have no breath left to do so.
Minutes and hours must pass. The windows darken and the lights flick on. We continue kissing.
She teaches me how to do it. And I kiss her in all sorts of ways.
Finally, my lips leave hers and travel to the hollow of her neck, where she smells particularly sweet. I trail kisses down her throat over the delicate bone that sweeps across her shoulders and down towards the swell I am so eager to explore.
But she stops me, her stomach growling loudly like an angry Wyger.
“Come on,” she says, standing up. “Let’s get some food.”
I stare at her. “What?” I whisper, my mind reaching for this word and spilling it from my lips before I’ve had time to think about it. It is a word that belongs to her, of her language.
She tilts her head. “Let’s eat.”
I understand her. It is like something has slotted into place in my mind, a button pressed, a switch flicked, and now I understand her. Was it the kissing? Is the kissing some kind of magic? Did she pass her language from her mouth to mine? Did she teach me how to speak with the sweep of her tongue?
No, I am not a being who believes in such nonsense. I am not a child. It must be the translation device finally kicking in and doing its job.
“I am not hungry,” I tell her, grabbing her wrist and tugging her back down. “I want to kiss you some more.”
Her jaw drops open and I lean in, meaning to thrust my tongue into her waiting mouth, but she pushes me away. “You can speak,” she gasps.
“Yes. This translation device has taught me your language.”
Her eyes flip up to the little disc pinned to my right forehead.
“How? That’s … That’s … how?”
I don’t think she really wants me to explain the intricate details of the technology involved so I simply say. “I can understand you now, Emma.”
She nods, still staring at the device, then shakes her head like I’ve seen her do several times now when she becomes entangled in her thoughts, and stands again. “I really need to eat.”
I would much rather continue with the kissing, but a good Alpha ensures his Omega is well fed, and besides this break from the dream-like state that is kissing reminds me that I need to mate her. Maybe, now that we understand each other, she will instruct me to mount her after our meal.
She fetches food from the store and I find a few more delicacies my mother snuck into my trunk. Bless my mother; I wonder if she foresaw the need for sweet things to tempt my Omega when I found her. My mother, unlike myself, had been sure I would be successful. She has always had this unwavering belief in me, even the times when I have had very little.
We meet at the table and this time when I insist she sit on my knee, she doesn’t refuse me and perches on my thigh, resting her back against my torso.
Although we can finally speak to one another, it seems the ability has almost overwhelmed us, and we fall back into our simple way of communicating with gestures and grunts. She lets me feed her little pieces of the sweet pastry my mother made and in between her mouthfuls I steal kisses, noting the way the taste of her mouth changes.
It gives me the strangest urges. I bite a berry in half, exposing the juicy flesh inside, and I smear this along her lips, then lick it off with my tongue. Her pupils swim wide and her scent spirals. My cock starts paying attention.
I do it again, this time gliding my tongue slowly along her lip one way, and then nibbling my teeth back along the other. Her eyelids drift shut and she sighs softly. It forces me to grip her waist and kiss her more firmly.
When I release her mouth, she takes a berry for herself and bites into it slowly, dragging her teeth through the flesh. The purple juice cascades down her chin. She offers the halved berry to me, bringing it to my mouth, and with my eyes locked on her, I mimic her action, biting through the fruit. But before I’m done, she smothers her mouth with mine and captures the other half. We kiss, the berry dissolving into our mouths and the juice spilling over our lips.
Eating has never been so enjoyable.
As I draw my finger up her chin, swiping away the wetness and licking my sticky fingers, I have a strong desire once more to discover what lies beneath her clothes and to smear berry juice over every part of her, simply so I may lick it off.
Another bewildering thought.
Then she takes my hand and leads me to the bedroom where we lie face to face on our beds. She wants to kiss me some more, but I can see that her lips are bruised and swollen. I trace them carefully.
“Where is your family, Omega?” I ask her.
“Omega isn’t … I don’t know what you mean by that.” She points to herself, like we’d done out on the ice. “I am a human female. My … kind originates from the planet Earth. It exists in a galaxy called the Milky Way, on the other side of the universe.”
“Yes,” I say, “But you are also an Omega. I can smell it in your scent.”
“My scent?”
“In my world there are six kinds of Gryton: Alpha male or female, Beta male or female, and Omega male or female.”
“And what are you?”
“An Alpha male.”
“And how are you different?”
“Only an Alpha can mate an Omega.”
“Mate?”
“Create offspring together.”
“I am not an Omega,” she tells me fiercely, pushing up on her elbow to peer down at me with defiance in her eyes.
I do not know what to make of this. She is. My nose could pick out an Omega’s scent over hundreds of kilometers. And never has an Omega smelled as potent as this one. But she is ignorant to what she is. I wonder how this can be possible. But if it is so, I need to ease her into this new reality gently. I need to know how much she understands.
“You are not mated,” I say. This much I know.
“This is the wrong word,” she says with irritation. “I don’t have a life partner, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“And have you ever mated an Alpha?”
“Have you?” she snaps.
“It is not physically possible for an Alpha to mate with another Alpha or a Beta. Only an Omega.”
“And have you mated with an Omega?” The irritation is still clear in her voice and her scent. I do not know why.
“All the Omegas on my planet belong to my father or his closest allies.”
“Pardon me?” she says.
“Only about thirty Omegas remain on our planet. My father has claimed nearly all of them.”
“And how many Alpha are there?”
“There are several thousand Alphas and millions of Betas.”
“We don’t have Alphas or Betas or Omegas in our species. But I’ve never …” Her forehead wrinkles. “I’ve never been with anyone before.”
This is a strange choice of words and I am unsure what she means. “I don’t understand.”
“I’ve never slept with anyone. Urgh, I mean, I’ve never had sex. Sexual intercourse.”
“No, you have no children.”
She blinks, then shakes her head. “You can have sexual intercourse and not have children.”
“No. The act creates children.”
“Not always, and we have ways of preventing it from happening.”
“The sexual intercourse?”
“No, the getting pregnant from doing it part.”
“But why?”
She looks away from me. “Because, I suppose, it’s enjoyable.” She looks back to me. “Like kissing.”
“But if this is the case. Why have you not done it?”
Her scent peaks and she sits up, hugging her knees to her chest. She does not like the question. Again I do not know why.
“I’ve spent a long time working hard and training to be a space cadet. I haven’t had time for other people and relationships. Not that they were allowed anyway.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “This was my first mission.”
“It is hard to be alone,” I say.
“Sometimes. I’m used to it.” She brushes her hands over her knees. “This all seems like a strange dream. Our people have travelled the whole universe and never found any other life form. But I found you. And then that monster under the ice.” She shivers.
“There is life throughout the universes. Many forms. Sometimes it does not want to be discovered.”
She peers at me and nods.
“Where is your family?” I ask her again.
“They’re … dead. Died ten years ago. It’s just me now.”
“You can make a new one.” I will give this Omega many children. I will fill her life with a new family.
“It doesn’t work like that. I miss them. I miss my mum, especially.” She swipes at her face, then turns to me with a smile on her lips but it doesn’t make her eyes brighten in their usual way. She is sad. “How about your family? Your dad has thirty Omegas. Is your mum one?”
“Yes, my mother is one of my father’s Omegas. He has a lot of children.”
“You have many sisters and brothers, then? That must be nice.”
“I have many half-siblings, yes. I am my mother’s only child.” I pull the Omega back down to lie against me and she comes without complaint. “She caught the sickness that swept across the planet. It killed many of the Omegas. My mother was one of the lucky ones to survive it, but her fertility was affected.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It is not your fault.”
“I know, but…” she struggles for words, “when something sad or bad has happened to someone, we express our sympathy or empathy by saying we are sorry.”
“In that case, I am sorry for the deaths of your family.”
“Thank you.”
We lie in silence for some time. I know she is not asleep.
I think about how she is alone in the world — has been for a decade. She must have been very young when her family died. I realise it has made her both tough and fragile. She is a survivor. I hold her a little closer, and my heart beats a little more rapidly as if trying to keep pace with hers. This is what she has done to me, infiltrated and influenced the very beat of my heart.
I remember the flash of pure horror I felt when I watched her crash through the ice. The overwhelming need to dive in and drag her out. How I fought with everything I possessed to free her from the monster who tried to steal her from me.
I know I would fight like this for her again and again. Perhaps I will have to when we return to my planet, especially if I have not mated her. And I will not mate her unless she asks me. I will not pressurise her. I am not my father.
“Do you think anyone is coming for us?” she says. “I’ve tried to reach my people but no one responds.” She sighs wistfully. “I want to go home. I miss it so much. My planet is so beautiful, full of colour and warmth. I miss colour. I miss life.”
She wants to go home, back to her own world and her own people.
Kissing and holding each other means nothing to her. She does not want to be mine, my Omega. She wants to go home.
“The computer is too weak,” I say, “I will finish fixing it and then I will call Astia.”
“They’ll come for you.”
And you, I think, suddenly realising for the first time with horror that she may choose not to come.
She says nothing and I grip her tighter. I can not let her go. But I know, deep down, that I will not force her to do something she does not want to. No, I will move whole worlds to ensure she has what she wants. And if that is leaving me to return to her home, then so be it.