Alien Desire by Hannah Haze
Chapter twenty four - Emma
“Are you OK?” I ask as he rolls off me with what seems reluctance and I trace my finger around the slice in his shoulder and then the one on his face.
He captures my hand and brings my fingers to his lips, kissing the tips of each softly. It is too tender and my chest aches with it. I don’t want my imagination to make me believe this is more than it is.
“I’ll go fetch the medical pack.” I try to tug my hand away but he clings onto to me firmly.
“Emma,” he says, “Please.”
“Please? Please what?” I can’t look up at him. I can’t lose myself in those eyes. I can’t.
“Stay.”
A deep sigh rushes from my mouth and I sink back into the mattress.
“I have broken everything between us,” he says quietly. “Tell me how to fix it.”
Five of his kind, sent by his father to rescue him, have just tried to kill him, murder him out there on the ice, and what he is concerned about is us.
The adrenaline of the battle and of our love-making lingers in my veins and it’s stopping me from thinking straight, from making sense of any of this.
“I thought they were coming to rescue us,” I murmur, avoiding his question.
He drops my hand, and the air seems to cool between us.
“Yes.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know. They may have been supporters of a rival claimant to the throne, and saw this as an opportunity to dispose of me.”
“Oh. There are lots of claimants to the throne?”
He smiles wearily. “I have lots of half-brothers and sisters. Although there are only a handful of serious contenders.”
“And they’d really want you dead?”
“I don’t know,” he shakes his head, then pauses before adding, “Or it may have been my father who gave the order.”
I sit bolt upright, staring down at him in shock. “Your dad? You suspect your own dad?”
“I don’t know who I suspect. Until I get back to Astia and carry out inquiries, I can only speculate.”
So he is going back to Astia? I’d allowed a little hope to creep into my heart that maybe this assassination attempt would deter him. Perhaps that he’d return to what he’d promised. It all seems so impossible.
Automatically my hand wanders to my stomach, and I rest it there. Tor’s eyes follow the movement and he rests his own large hand over mine.
“The baby is growing rapidly,” he says.
I stare down at my belly, looking at it properly for the first time in days. Yes, it is. The dome forming behind my tummy button and the slight thickening of my waist is more pronounced even than it was yesterday. “I don’t think I should be showing this much already,” I confess.
He bustles beside me. “And this is why I must take you to Astia and have them check you out, Emma. We don’t know what this pregnancy means for you or the baby. If it’s safe. We need to get you medical care.”
I stare at my stomach and worry floods my mind. I hadn’t considered that. This baby is a little miracle and it never occurred to me that something so wondrous could be a danger to me, could be in danger itself. I can’t lose my baby.
I can’t help but tighten the hand on my belly. Our child will be a miracle for certain, if it survives, if it is even possible it can live. I think of what limited knowledge I have of animals on Earth crossbreeding. For some species it is possible but often, if the offspring live beyond birth, they don’t live long.
I think he must see the panic in my eyes.
“I’ll take you both to the medical facility on Astia immediately. Our technology is advanced and the facility will help us. They will ensure all is well.”
My hand balls into a fist above my tummy button. It’s my child, his child. I know deep in my soul it will live.
“This is the reason you want to take me to Astia?”
“Yes,” he says, confused.
“Why didn’t you explain that then? I thought you’d lied to me when you agreed we could set off on an adventure together. I thought it was a big trick and all you really wanted was to claim me and make me your Omega pet.”
Deep creases form above the bridge of his nose. “No, Emma. I didn’t lie. My number one priority will always be your welfare and your safety.”
“It should have been something you explained, something we discussed.”
“I am an Alpha Prince of Astia. I’m not used to explaining my decisions.”
“I can’t be owned and commanded. If you want us to be together, we need to be a team — like we were out there battling those assassins. We need to make our decisions together.”
He nods, mulling this over. “I understand.”
I consider what he’s told me too. I want my baby to be safe. “They just tried to kill you. How do you know they won’t kill me, and the baby too?”
His face darkens. “I would never let that happen.”
“Because I’m your Omega and this is your heir?” I can’t help but test him.
“No, because you are both precious to me and I want you to be safe.” His hand is heavy on my belly and for the first time I feel the faintest of flickers within. A flutter so light I’m unsure if it’s real. It’s the baby moving beneath our conjoined hands. Our baby. “But I won’t make you come if you don’t want to, Emma. If that is really what you wish. I will take you wherever you want to go.”
“And then what? You leave us?” I try to keep my voice steady, not wanting the falter of my words to reveal how much the thought breaks me in two, as if the guardsman had swung their spears straight through me.
“I will not leave you. I will stay with you and our child. I am sorry for attempting to force my will on yours.”
“What?” I gape at him, unsure I’ve heard him correctly. Still, not allowing myself to hope. “You’d give up your chance to be leader? To find out who tried to have you killed?”
“Yes,” he says simply.
“For me?”
“For you.” The colours in his skin and in his eyes are bright and vibrant but still, calm, glimmering in the shadows of the room. I’ve never seen them like this before. “I love you, Emma.”
“I didn’t think that was possible,” I blurt out without thinking and my forehead crinkles in puzzlement. The blood rushes to my head, making me lightheaded and giddy. A warmth swims from the centre of my heart and glides through the whole of my body. He loves me? “How do you know?”
“How does anyone know they are in love?”
I think of all the things I’ve read or heard about love. The poems, the descriptions, the many attempts to put it into words. It is not an emotion I’d ever experienced before I met Tor, and even now I am in love with him, I’m still unsure I can explain it. “You just know. You feel it and you know.”
“Exactly,” he tells me with such certainty, it knocks me backward and it is only the firm pressure of his hand that keeps me grounded.
I stare up at him. A storm of confusion and fear and uncertainty swirls inside me. But he stares back calmly, the gold in his eyes deadly still, like silent waters. My brain races away laying out all the things that could go wrong, all the awful possibilities and tragic probabilities. I bring my fists to the sides of my temples, the tears streaking back down my face, but he pulls my hands away.
“This won’t end well,” I say gruffly, my voice hoarse with the effort of holding back this barrage of fears.
“It will be OK, Emma. Whatever you choose, it will be OK. I promise you that.”
And I know this is the truth. Because he loves me. Of course he does. We are so different and still learning but underneath it all there is love. A solid glowing source of heat that will sustain us through all our days. It burns right in the centre of my being. And suddenly I am so giddy with it, so drunk on it. This is better than kissing and sex. This is love.
He takes me in his arms and kisses my lips.
His scent billows around me. Not aggressive, not aroused. Passionate, deep and never ending. I sink against him, wilting into the sensation of his strong arms wrapped around me, and the pound of his heart fierce against my chest. I hear his heart beat too, along with the rush of his breath, both loud in my ears.
He is so precious — his heart, his breath. I think again of the very first time I’d seen him, how desperate I’d been to keep his heart beating, his breath coming. I’d known even then how special this Alpha was.
I will fight to keep him with me, always. And I will fight for our child too.
Before long our kisses turn feverish and hungry and he’s pushing inside me for more. Sex for us has become a tonic. Even though we can talk the same language now, we speak best with our bodies. And right now we need to tell each other how deep our love runs. The sex is a manifestation of our love.
We hold each other close, and the sex is slow and languid, as we treasure each part of the other with kisses and touches, and he coaxes my orgasm from me slowly, building it up incrementally so that when it comes, with him whispering my name in my ear, it is so powerful, it sweeps away all the doubt, all the festering worries, and leaves nothing but the knowledge that whatever happens we will have each other.