Kraving Dravka by Zoey Draven

 

Chapter One

Morning was breaking over Everton.

Like a cracking egg, Valerie mused as she watched, spilling yellow and gold over the horizon. Her insides felt slimy and wrong as she gazed out the small, circular window.

She was standing in the Cluster. It was what they called the top floor of Madame Allegria’s infamous brothel on the Earth colony of Everton. It was where the Keriv’i—more commonly known as the Krave—rested and slept and ate…mostly.

The center of the Cluster was comprised of a common sitting area, one they all shared. The walls were made of bricks, ranging from deep reds to rusty oranges and browns. Old World sconces cast the room in a warm, flickering, darkened glow. It wouldn’t get much brighter. There was a circular window in the sitting area, a single window, that faced the back of the building opposite the brothel. But the Keriv’i, Valerie had learned, could see better in the dark than humans. They didn’t seem to mind the lack of light. Sometimes they seemed to prefer it.

The floor was lined with a plush rug that had seen better days, though Valerie knew how pricey it had been to import from the Genesis colony.

Valerie’s lips twisted. Madame Allegria had always had expensive tastes. The trader had bragged it had been brought from Old Earth itself, from a country called Morocco. The orange and green dyes were beyond faded now. It looked grey to her. Bleached of its vibrancy.

There were five doors that surrounded the sitting room. One was the washroom. The four others led to small bedrooms, though one lay permanently empty now, with Khiva’s departure.

It had been three months since then. Three endless, sleepless months since Khiva had left the brothel and the colony with Evelyn, the human woman he’d fallen in love with.

Valerie’s fists squeezed tight, feeling that sense of panic and helplessness rise within her again. These days, she was always a nervous wreck. But of course she never showed it to the clients that frequented Madame Allegria’s brothel. She was always expected to be unflappable, calm, and should always—always—wear a smile, so the clients would feel comfortable, so the clients would never suspect what evil lurked long after they departed.

A week ago, Valerie had had a vivid dream of her sewing her own lips together. Of them never opening again, never laughing or speaking or smiling again. When she’d woken in a cold sweat, gasping for air, rubbing her fingers over her lips, it had disturbed her how relieved she’d felt in that dream.

The door to the Cluster opened.

A little hitch in her breath came and she swung to regard the male entering the common room.

The male she’d come to see.

The Keriv’i paused on the threshold of the doorway when he saw her but his hesitation only lasted a moment before he closed the door behind him. His gaze flicked to Tavak and Ravu’s doors—both closed, which meant they’d already returned from their clients and were likely resting—before resettling on her.

Anticipation, relief, warmth, and crippling grief and guilt came over her like a wave as she watched him.

“You should not be here,” Dravka murmured, keeping his voice low, though that deep, husky voice made her shiver.

I am right where I want to be, she thought. With you.

That thought cut her like glass. Could words shred a heart? She thought it very possible.

Clearing her throat, Valerie said, “Aren’t you ever tired of saying that to me? You know how stubborn I am.”

Dravka grunted, stepping into the heart of the Cluster. His shirt was balled up in his large palm. His feet were bare, treading over the worn rug. Black pants encased his long legs, clinging to his muscled thighs.

His chest was bare, revealing his sculpted, hard flesh and his dark nipples. His skin was dusky blue with the occasional patch of black and grey, which she knew was slightly rough in texture compared to the rest of him.

The first time she’d seen him, she’d been terrified because he was massive. A little over seven feet tall with thighs like tree trunks and shoulders so broad she almost couldn’t see past them.

Yet, she’d been intrigued. Especially by his eyes. Mesmerized might’ve been a more accurate description of how she felt during their first meeting, over five years ago.

Dravka looked at Valerie now, his eyes like dark, swirling opals. Pine-tree greens and cerulean blues shimmered in his gaze as his dark pupils flicked over her.

Longing burst in her chest, quickly followed by guilt, and she swallowed hard, her hands beginning to shake at her sides.

She clenched her palms. If she lusted after him, she was no better than the women he slept with every night. She would be no better than those women who paid Madame Allegria for the chance to take an infamous Krave to bed.

Her stomach turned sour, a bitterness rising in her throat, especially when Dravka drew near enough that Valerie could smell Mrs. Pafford’s cloying perfume all over him. The silver-haired woman had floated down to the lobby of the brothel only twenty minutes before, her cheeks still pink, which told Valerie all she’d needed to know as nausea had burned up her throat.

And yet, Valerie had fucking smiled at her. That small, delicate little smile Madame Allegria—her aunt, her own blood, her mother’s only sister—had taught her to use with the clients.

Mrs. Pafford, one of Dravka’s regular clients, had booked another visit and then departed the brothel in the early morning light. Valerie had come straight up to the Cluster after she left.

Underneath Mrs. Pafford’s perfume, which seemed to coat Dravka’s skin, she smelled sex and sweat and the musky scent that came from a Keriv’i’s teela, which was what all the human women came to the brothel for.

Because a Keriv’i’s teela could trigger orgasm after orgasm within a variety of species, humans included. An endless stream of orgasms until their semen was neutralized or cleaned away.

And women on Everton paid 900 credits for a single visit with the ‘Krave.’

Valerie craned her head back to meet Dravka’s eyes. There was a rigid tightness in his features that only seemed to intensify the longer he looked down at her. There were only a couple feet of space between them but lately, ever since Khiva had left, it had begun to feel like miles upon miles of distance.

Dravka had purposefully been putting a wall up between them. For five years, he’d been her friend. Her best friend. Valerie had never felt what she felt for Dravka before. Not with anyone else. He made her feel centered. He made her feel whole in those little moments when they both forgot who and where they were. He made her feel desire. He made her laugh. Sometimes, when they were with each other—at least before Khiva left—all they would need to do was look at one another and know.

They knew that their friendship, their relationship, their whatever-the-hell-this-was…was rare. It was special.

And Dravka was purposefully letting it tarnish and crumble away.

And Valerie was letting him.

She loved him. She’d always known that. At one point, she’d believed Dravka had returned her feelings.

Now, she wasn’t so sure. Something had shifted between them.

Last night, she’d finally decided to ask him what had changed.

Only, standing in front of him now, her treacherous tongue felt glued to the roof of her mouth as a heavy stretch of silence slammed between them.

It wasn’t news to her that she was a coward. Growing up, she’d always thought she was brave. She’d always thought she could do whatever she wanted, could conquer all the Earth colonies and beyond if she desired. Partly because her mother made her feel like she could, partly because Valerie believed that she could.

Since her mother’s death, however, since leaving Genesis and coming to live on Everton, that brave girl she’d once been was nothing but a whisper of a memory. A whimsical fairy tale, a falsehood that she couldn’t believe now that she’d grown up and seen the universe for what it truly was. An ugly, greedy, unfair place.

Dravka had made that place a little more wonderful. With nervous butterflies in her stomach, she remembered that he’d once told her she was all he wanted to look at, for the rest of his life.

So why did those butterflies feel like knives in her belly now?

“Dravka,” she murmured, taking in his swirling eyes, the sharp bridge of his nose, the high slope of his cheekbones. His features resembled a human man’s…yet they didn’t. “Are—are we okay?”

His lips parted and Val’s gaze went to them. Soft and full. Lips hundreds and hundreds of women had kissed, no doubt. Yet, she’d never felt them on her own, though she’d watched them carefully with tears in her eyes as Dravka had told her of his family, his sister and his father, and his home planet of Kerivu, grief threaded through his tone.

“What do you mean?” he questioned, but the gruffness in his tone told Valerie he knew exactly what she was speaking of.

Her gaze went to the two closed doors across the Cluster. Behind them, Tavak and Ravu were likely asleep. She didn’t think they’d care to eavesdrop on their conversation anyways.

When she turned back to regard him, he was looking away. His gaze was out the small window and her breath hitched at the fucking despair she saw etched across his features. Fine little lines of anger and grief, drawn out like ink across a page. There was a restlessness inside him.

She’d always been able to read him well. He’d always been able to read her too. He knew she saw it.

“Dravka,” Val breathed, stepping forward, reaching her hand across the space between them, raising it higher so she could cup the side of his face. He stilled when she touched him. She very rarely did, fearing that it would unleash something untamed between them. “Tell me what’s wrong. What can I do?”

The husky laugh that barked out of him made her recoil and her hand withdrew, though she remained frozen in place.

His eyes turned to her, his pupils flickering back and forth between her own.

The silence that stretched between their faces was charged and it made her shiver. That prickling of desire bit at her belly but she snuffed it out quickly.

They were both miserable. They’d found solace within one another…but even that seemed to be fading away.

His words were tight and hardened.

“I’m tired, Valerie,” he said. “My client kept me up all night.”

Bright heat, stemming from anger and disgust, stabbed through her chest. That, too, she snuffed out quickly as Mrs. Pafford’s perfume once again bloomed off his skin.

Sometimes, Valerie wondered how much she could extinguish before the raging inferno within her became too overwhelming. She almost feared what would happen then, if it was unleashed.

“You should go,” he finished, already turning his back on her. “We can’t do this, Val.”

“Dravka—”

He entered the washroom and shut the door on her words.

We can’t do this, Val.

His words rang in her head.

Val stared at the door, her face draining of color, and she wrapped her arms around her body. She’d lost some weight the past few months. She hated that she could feel the brittleness of her bones underneath her palms.

Broken.

So broken.

I want to be whole again.

She couldn’t even remember the brave girl she’d been before. The one who would’ve marched to the washroom door and tore it off its hinges so he would speak to her. The one who would’ve demanded answers and not let him skirt around the distance that had been building for months.

The one who would’ve confessed her love the first minute she’d realized it, years before.

The one who would’ve left Everton…when she’d had the chance.

I want to be that girl again, she realized, that thought blooming inside her, filling up space that she hadn’t known lay empty until it felt suffocating but right. She struggled to hold onto it as her feet brought her before the washroom door. Her fist raised, about to knock, to demand.

Then the back of her neck prickled…

And that bravery left her all at once, freezing her in place, the old scars across her back beginning to throb in memory.

She smelled Madame Allegria’s heavy perfume before she heard her voice.

“I knew I’d find you up here,” her aunt chimed.

Most people, men especially, would do anything for a voice like that. Seductive and lilting. Often, Valerie had wondered if her aunt could’ve become one of the most influential and wealthy citizens of the colonies if she didn’t have that voice. The one that made men beg and made women envious.

If only they knew the monster that lurked underneath.

“Come,” Madame Allegria ordered, her tone hardening. “We have a party to go to this afternoon. And I won’t be seen with you looking like that.”

Unease curled in her belly. A party? Valerie had never been to one. Madame Allegria preferred that no one knew of her existence.

“Now,” her aunt snapped when Valerie hesitated too long, staring at the washroom door. “And don’t let me come searching for you again. You won’t like it when I do.”

Valerie’s mother had always told her that hatred was a disease. It festered and ate at you until there was nothing left. It had always been her mother’s wish that Valerie would never know hatred.

Now, she wondered what her mother would think, knowing that all of Val’s hatred was directed at her mother’s only sister. That she had felt hatred’s sharpness and acrid sourness for years.

Other than Dravka, hatred was the only thing Val had left to hold onto.

And now, Dravka was slowly slipping away.

What would remain of her then?

Valerie turned away from the washroom door and left.