Kraving Dravka by Zoey Draven

Chapter Two

The hot water did nothing to soothe the tension thrumming through Dravka’s body.

He leaned back in the Keriv'i-sized washing tub in the Cluster’s shared bathroom. The look in Valerie’s eyes was haunting him until it was all he could see in the swirls of steam clouding his vision.

A spark of regret made his fists clench underneath the water. If they had met anywhere else but Everton…

If Valerie wasn’t Madame Allegria’s flesh and blood…

If Dravka wasn’t a Krave whore working in her brothel…

If they had both left Everton when they’d had the chance…

It’s too late now, Dravka thought. For everything. For anything to be different between them. It was too late.

And Dravka had always known that their relationship was doomed from the start. She was a human. He was a Keriv'i on a New Earth colony. He should’ve been beneath her notice entirely.

If they had been two entirely different beings, in an entirely different place…Dravka would’ve taken one look at her and never let her go again. He would’ve marked her in the Keriv'i way, with his bite on her neck and his teela shimmering across her skin, gotten her heavy with his children, and they would’ve been happy together until their dying days.

“Vauk,” he whispered in the quiet.

Regret mingled with his desire. That desire, those visions that plagued him once he returned from his clients, made his cock thicken beneath the water. True desire. Desire that heated his blood, that made his belly clench in anticipation, that made his fingers curl in longing.

Physically, Dravka could thicken his cock at will. Something he’d learned while working as a whore was that if he couldn’t service his clients’ needs at night…it meant punishment. Physical arousal meant nothing to him. It was a means to an end.

He hadn’t felt true desire when he was mating since…possibly since he’d been a younger male on Kerivu. Before his home planet was destroyed.

But for Valerie…vauk, he desired her.

Dravka growled and propelled himself from the washing tub, not caring that he was drenched. He didn’t need to be alone with his thoughts or his desires. They were dangerous things.

Instead, he needed sleep.

When he left the washing room and entered the sitting room of the Cluster, he found Tavak seated in the cracked leather armchair, looking down at a thin scratch on his arm, no doubt from his client the previous night. Last week, one of Dravka’s clients had raked her nails down his back as she came. Perils of the job.

Tavak’s gaze flashed up when Dravka exited the bathroom. He eyed Dravka’s thickened cock for a brief moment but didn’t blink.

“Ah,” Tavak murmured in Keriv'i, their language. “I thought I heard your female’s voice earlier.”

Dravka grunted. “Not my female.”

“Done with her then?” Tavak asked, his lips twisting in bitterness. Out of the three of them that remained at Madame Allegria’s after Khiva’s departure, Tavak had always been the most unpredictable. There was an edge to him, a roughness that had perhaps always been within him.

His brother, Ravu, was the last of the Krave at the brothel. Tavak was the eldest. Dravka knew the brothers hadn’t had an easy life, even on Kerivu. Their mother had abandoned them young and they’d grown up hungry and homeless. Long before Everton, Tavak had already been exchanging sex for credits on the seedy colony Madame Allegria had found them on.

“Vauk off,” Dravka bit out. Tavak had never trusted Valerie to begin with. Tavak didn’t trust anyone except Ravu.

“You think she will leave you alone now?” Tavak continued, shaking his head. “Don’t think I have not noticed you pushing her away the last few months. We all have. Including her.”

“Since when do you care about anyone but yourself and Ravu?” Dravka asked, his teeth gritting. Even still, his irritation at Tavak was helping to edge out the desire and longing for Valerie, a welcome reprieve, at least so he could sleep that morning. “Stay out of my business.”

Tavak snorted but didn’t answer him.

But Tavak surprised him by asking, “Do you think Khiva ever regrets leaving this place?”

Dravka’s brow bones pulled together, his frown deepening.

“No,” he replied truthfully.

Khiva had fallen in love with one of his clients, a human named Eve. When Madame Allegria had found out…she’d whipped him so badly Valerie had been scrubbing his blood off the floor for days after.

Eve had connections and had able to get them both off Everton. Khiva had extended the offer to the rest of them—to Tavak, Ravu, Dravka, and Valerie—but only he and Eve had gotten off the colony. Last Dravka had heard, they were settled on a neutral colony in the Second Quadrant.

He hadn’t heard anything since. It had been three months since they’d left.

The fact that Tavak was bringing Khiva up now was strange in itself. His question was even stranger. Tavak was the first to decline Khiva’s offer, given his past. In Tavak’s mind, work was hard to come by on the colonies. In Tavak’s mind, he would always be a whore, one way or another. And unlike Khiva and Dravka, Tavak and Ravu knew the sharp sting of hunger and desperation.

At least on Everton, they were fed and housed. They knew what to expect, day in and day out.

“You regret not going with him?” Dravka asked, cocking his head to the side, watching the other male closely.

Tavak blew out a breath. His expression grew guarded once more. “I didn’t say that.”

But he was saying something.

Dravka shook his head, casting the other male a speculative look. “I need sleep.”

But as he was heading for his bedroom, Tavak said behind him, “She deserves a straight answer.”

Dravka froze, a scowl spreading across his lips. He glared at Tavak over his shoulder, knowing he was speaking of Valerie.

But Tavak didn’t back down from his glare. Instead, the male said, “If you truly love her, why prolong her pain? Cut her free.”

His words struck a sensitive ache in Dravka. He’d always known that. He’d always known that Valerie could have a life beyond Madame Allegria’s. She could marry, she could have a family, the one she’d always wanted. She could have the children she’d always wanted. Children that Dravka knew he could not give her.

But selfishly, for five years, Dravka had kept her tethered to him, perhaps unknowingly at first.

After Khiva’s departure, however, it had become all the more obvious that a future between them was an impossibility. With Khiva gone, Madame Allegria would never let another of her Krave go. She was already searching the outer colonies for his replacement, seeking another desperate Keriv'i male who would whore himself for safety and a full belly.

Many would.

But this life had started to tear at all of them, Tavak and Ravu included.

Tavak thought he should cut Valerie free?

Though the words felt like blades torn from his throat, he rasped, “I know.”