The Alien’s Claim by Zoey Draven

Chapter Nineteen

“This is what’s down here?” Erin asked, gazing around at the strange landscape when they reached the bottom of the pulley system. Outside the short stretch of cave, they were surrounded by tall mountains on all sides.

A white fungus—or perhaps a type of plant—stretched along the base of the mountains. Jaxor led her through a pass. The mountains were so high and there wasn’t a clear view of what lay beyond or above. It was claustrophobic.

There was no life down here. Perhaps that was what made it so eerie. No cries of the kekevir, no chittering little bugs. The whistling wind winding its way through the pass was the only sound. And their footsteps.

Not for the first time, she wondered why Jaxor had chosen this place of all places to settle on Luxiria. Surely there were nicer locations, places not threatened by predatory beasts or plagued by torrential downpours. A place not so…lonely. So empty. So void of life.

Erin watched him from the corner of her eye. For a moment, she was struck with longing. Longing to reach out and touch him without fear. Longing to speak with him openly, as they had last night by the fire—talking about love and memory. Longing to know him.

Do I really have anything to lose by asking him what I want to know?she questioned next.

Not particularly. He could either ignore her or answer her. Or lie to her.

“Do you miss the Golden City?” she decided to ask. She hadn’t seen much of it during her time there, but the glimpses she’d had were beautiful.

“Tev.”

His answer surprised her. She hadn’t truly expected him to answer. But he’d been different that day. Different since last night. Erin would give anything for a glimpse inside his head.

“Do you think you’ll ever go back?”

“Not now,” he said, helping her over a boulder that blocked their path, his hand lingering on her waist after he pulled her over. Erin looked up at him, found his eyes on hers. “I can never go back now.”

“Because you took us?” Erin asked. “Would you get…punished?”

Jaxor let go of her waist and walked on, continuing down the pass. “Tev.”

Erin’s gaze went to the injury he’d come back with last night. He was still bare-chested, despite the cold. He’d wrapped a blanket around her shoulders before they departed the base, but the cold still wound up her legs. His only protection was his thick hide pants and the travel sack he’d filled with furs, soap granules, and spare clothes.

The mark on his chest was healing, but she could still make out the swirling lines in the flesh.

“What is that?” she asked, risking the question.

“The mark of Oxandri, one of the Fates. The Fate of Sacrifice.”

Erin’s lips parted. She stopped walking, making him pause and face her, and she asked, “Why are you answering all my questions now?”

The Fate of Sacrifice?

Why had he marked it on himself?

“I already told you,” he rasped, his brows furrowing. Erin blinked, her eyes straying to his lips. A tendril of his freshly cut hair blew over his forehead and Erin ached just looking at him. “I am tired of fighting.”

“So what does this mean?” she asked quietly, pulling the blanket tighter around her shoulders. Her feet were freezing cold—her tender, healing cut stinging—but she didn’t move. She was rooted in that place, held frozen by his gaze.

“I…” he trailed off. His hand ran over one of his horns, the blue tattoos adorning his arms gleaming in the low light. Not for the first time, she wondered what the markings meant. “I do not know.”

The torment in his voice made her breath hitch. So, Jaxor had been conflicted. About the trade?

Tentative hope began to rise, speeding her heart.

Was it possible he would return her to the Golden City? Was it possible she wouldn’t have to risk her life trying to make it back there by herself?

Slowly, as if approaching a wild, untamed beast, she stepped towards him. His eyes flickered, his back straightening at her nearness. Did he even realize the things he did unconsciously when she was near?

Then again, maybe she did unconscious things when he was near, things she didn’t even realize.

Reaching out, she traced the mark of Oxandri on his pectoral. The flesh was healing, but the wound might be deep enough to scar. His skin was warm and velvety smooth. Then her fingers went to his shoulder, where the tattoo started, and she traced part of it.

Jaxor held still and though Erin’s eyes were on the mark, she felt his gaze like a touch.

Finally, she let her hand drop. When she craned her head to look back at him, she remembered the night they’d kissed—the night they’d done a lot more than kiss—and she felt a shiver of anticipation run down her spine.

She stepped back and faced the pass again. Jaxor stood still a moment more before she sensed him moving again, leading her down between the mountains, cutting through a slim, jagged alleyway.

They were quiet the whole way. Erin guessed they walked another ten minutes, going over rocks and boulders, and navigating the maze of the mountains. Erin wondered how long it had taken him to learn it. She wondered if he’d ever been lost.

Finally, they reached another cave entrance, though it seemed to lead down, not through.

Erin was a little nervous as she watched Jaxor jumped down through the hole first. But the drop was short and she could still see the tops of his horns in the darkness.

He held out his arms for her and she slid down inside. He caught her easily, his arms wrapping around the backs of her thighs before letting her slide down his front. Her tunic rode up on the way down, their eyes locked because he knew it too, and Erin’s brain felt a little muddled afterwards.

From the entrance, the hot springs weren’t far. The ceiling was low, however, and Jaxor had to crouch, though Erin could stand. From his travel sack, he drew a lantern and lit it easily. Warm, golden light illuminated the cave and just feet away, there was a pool with steam curling from its surface. It wasn’t as large as the bathing pools in the Golden City, but it looked deep.

For a moment, an image of an alien creature swimming up and snagging her down to the depths made her swallow.

“There’s nothing in there, right?” she asked quietly. The surface was black and inky, but it was nice and warm inside the cave. Humid. Her cold feet were already beginning to thaw on the warm floor and the healing cut on her sole gave a small throb in response.

“Nix,” he said. But he tilted his head to her and asked, “Would you like me to check?”

“I have a fear of sharks,” she informed him, which seemed ridiculous to say out loud, on an alien planet, after everything she’d experienced. “And heights,” she added.

He paused. “Sharks?”

“They’re a type of creature on Earth,” she explained. “In the ocean. On occasion, they attack people in the water.”

Erin would’ve laughed at herself, but Jaxor’s expression was serious. He looked at the hot springs, then back at her. “There are no ‘sharks’ in there, rixella. No creatures of any kind. It is too hot. And we are underneath the mountain, so you have no reason to fear heights here.”

“Okay,” she whispered, feeling foolish despite Jaxor’s attempt to assuage her fear. She dropped the blanket from her shoulders, then paused.

She hadn’t really given thought that she would bathe in front of him. Or that they would bathe together. After all, she’d knowingly washed herself in the waterfall the afternoon after they’d kissed. After he’d told her that it had been a mistake…after he’d made her feel surprisingly rejected. A reckless part of her had wanted him to eat his words, had wanted to test his restraint.

Yet, he hadn’t made any advances towards her since. Neither had she. So it didn’t really matter if they bathed together, right? He’d already seen her naked. Twice. The first time had been in the Golden City. He had kidnapped her and Crystal while they’d been bathing, after all.

Erin had never been so liberal with her nudity before Jaxor. She’d rarely shown much skin. Back on Earth, she taught second graders for a living. Her wardrobe consisted mostly of midi-length dresses, cardigans, and blouses that revealed only her collarbones. After work, her choice of clothing mostly consisted of pajamas. On the rare occasions when she went out at night, her most scandalous outfit was a black sheath dress that hit just above her knees with a sweetheart neckline. Her friends had all lovingly teased her about her grandmother-esque wardrobe, but Erin liked her clothes.

So Erin thought she’d be more shy about her nakedness around Jaxor, but she found the opposite was the case. Parading around in nothing but tunics, sans underwear, had certainly helped.

“Will you go in first?” she asked.

The corner of his lips quirked. “Still do not believe me about sharks, rixella?”

Was he teasing her?

Erin suppressed an amused smile before he could see it. “Well, if there are none, then you don’t have anything to worry about.”

Erin’s mouth went dry when Jaxor loosened the tie around his waist and stripped out of his pants. Her eyes swept over his firm ass, solid thighs, and narrowed, sculpted waist, before dropping lower to his seemingly perpetually hard cock.

Her fingers curled, as if imagining grabbing for it.

Jaxor walked forward and dropped into the hot springs. A groan of pleasure escaped his throat and Erin’s breath hitched, her body throbbing with that sound, remembering a similar one he’d made as he climaxed all over her thighs.

“No sharks, female,” he rasped after a moment, those blue eyes piercing into her. She couldn’t tell if he was teasing her again or not.

The lantern’s light wasn’t bright. It flickered off the cave walls like a candle might, casting most of the space behind the pool into darkness. When Jaxor dunked his head beneath the water and then resurfaced, he raked a hand through his short hair, pushing it back, that golden light reflecting off the water on his arms. The tattoos seemed to glow from it.

Erin’s heart was beating fast. A sound escaped her—it sounded embarrassingly like a whimper. But why, oh why did he have to look the way he did? It made everything so much harder.

Before she lost her nerve, Erin got close to the edge, sitting, dangling her legs in the pool. Jaxor hovered close, looking up at her. She realized he wouldn’t give her the luxury of looking away as she undressed. He wanted to see her. He was going to see her.

A stray thought came to her. She wondered what he would do to her, right then, if there was nothing lingering over them. No promises, no memory of past actions, no expectations, no threats. If they were just two beings, impossibly and insanely attracted to each other, promised to one another through magic and something that felt a lot like destiny.

She wondered what she would do to him. Her blood was roaring and pulsing hot with all the possibilities.

This felt like one of those moments in life…the point where something would irrevocably change. For better or worse, but definitely permanently. Something unchangeable.

Erin reached for the hem of the tunic she’d stolen from Jaxor, one of a thicker material than the one she’d been wearing. She pulled it over her head and let it drop.

Then she pushed off the edge, hot, steaming water greeting her, blanketing her limbs, relaxing her muscles. Despite the heat, her nipples were pebbled underneath the water.

The water was deep. She searched for the bottom, but found none.

“Come,” he murmured, that voice weaving through her body. “There is a ledge so you can sit.”

He surprised her—again—by taking her hand away from where it was clutched to the edge of the hot springs. He guided her over to a place at the back of the pool, nearest the darkness that the lantern’s light couldn’t reach. She thought of the kekevir, but Jaxor seemed to read her thoughts.

“They do not live in this mountain,” he soothed, bringing her to sit on a little nook in the pool underneath the surface of the water. It was perfect for sitting, for soaking. The water lapped at her collarbones. “My female fears many things,” he noted softly, looking at her.

My female.

Her stomach clenched in longing and she sunk into the water until it came up to her chin. Her face felt flushed, but at least she could pretend to blame it on the heated water.

“Maybe with good reason,” she finally said. She determined he was tall enough to stand at the bottom and it made her feel slightly better—that there wasn’t this endless abyss beneath them. The water came up to the tops of his shoulders. Erin found herself relaxing.

“I do not like the dark,” he confessed, reaching forward to rub a strand of her hair between his fingertips, the action strangely intimate, but not out of place. As if he’d done it a million times before.

What is happening?she wondered, blinking. He was willingly telling her a fear, a vulnerability?

“It’s dark back here,” she whispered, feeling a little breathless. He’d come closer. She was acutely aware of how naked they both were. How easy it would be for him to reach out and widen her legs. How much she wanted to feel him there, how she could almost imagine how his hips would feel digging into her inner thighs.

“I do not mind it so much right now,” was his reply. “Because you are here.”

The water was a blessing because it hid the scent of her arousal, which was becoming harder and harder to control around him. In her mind, she struggled with processing it all. He’d kidnapped her, threatened her, and wouldn’t tell her what he planned for next. But the warmth in her chest told her she would still accept him. That she would love to touch him, that she wanted to hear his laugh again, that she needed his eyes on her and she needed to feel his touch.

When she put her mind and her soul together, when she tried to mix them both and form her wants into something tangible and certain, she failed. Because nothing made sense.

So which one did she listen to? Her mind or her soul?

His fingers brushed between her brows, smoothing out the lines that had formed there. “What are you thinking of?” he murmured, coming even closer still.

She took a deep breath. As if under some kind of trance, her honest answer came easy, “I’m thinking that I want you. And I’m thinking that I shouldn’t.”

A sound rumbled from his throat. One of agreement? As if his thoughts mirrored her own.

“You told me it was a mistake,” she reminded him, feeling oddly panicked but oddly calm. There, in that place, with the darkness at their backs, whatever was going to happen next seemed inevitable. As if his Fates had already written it and they were actors in a play, performing exactly what they were meant to. “That it wouldn’t happen again. Just yesterday morning.”

His jaw ticked, as if he regretted his words.

He drew closer, or maybe she did. All Erin knew was that suddenly her knees were brushing his thighs under the water. All she had to do was part them. All he would have to do was tilt his hips slightly and he could make both of them burn.

Something feral and dark entered his gaze. Something wild. She felt his hands come around her waist, felt him pulling her closer and lifting her, despite the fact that he’d just situated her on the little ledge.

Erin was in his arms now, holding her against him. His head bent. One of his horns tangled in her hair when he ran the angled tip of his nose across her neck, over the hickey he’d given her two nights ago, dragging his nose up until his sharp exhale tickled the sensitive shell of her ear.

He was…scenting her?

She heard his swallow, felt his hands tighten around her waist.

When he inhaled, her lips parted, her eyes fluttered shut. The soft whistling sound of it, knowing he was so close, feeling those strong arms around her, made her head swirl, made a shiver tingle all the way up to her scalp.

“Vellixa,” he groaned in his language. Erin didn’t know what the word meant, but she heard the awe in his voice.

Tentatively, she clasped her arms around his shoulders. Her eyelids felt heavy when she looked at him.

“Jaxor…” she trailed off, unsure of what she was going to say.

“Do you think I could deny you?” he rasped in her ear. “Do you think I have the strength to? It has been mere spans since I first saw you and already, I am weak.”

His head moved again. He shifted her higher in his arms.

Erin’s lips were parted from his words…but then a soft moan escaped them when his lips found her breast.

Her nails dug into the back of his neck as his tongue flicked over her exposed, hard nipple. The warmth of it, the texture of it was amazing. She’d already known it was ridged from when they’d kissed, but feeling it on her skin, on such a sensitive place, was divine.

A breathy sigh was pulled from her lungs as he sucked gently. She wondered if she might come from this. That was how good it felt.

She tried to keep her head, tried to focus even as she held him in place, in fear he would pull away.

Another one of my fears?she couldn’t help but question, adding it to the rest.

“Inevitable,” she whispered, as he switched to her other breast, wetting it with his tongue. He was almost lazily suckling her, as if this was just normal.

And perhaps it was normal between fated mates. This proprietorial, possessive intimacy.

“Rebax?” he rasped against her flesh before sucking again.

“This was always going to happen,” she whispered, realization jolting her, just now discovering the power of the bond, though Jaxor had hinted that he’d felt it before. She felt insignificant in comparison to the inevitability. She wondered if Jaxor felt the same way.

He had told her he was tired of fighting against her. Was this what he meant?

“Tev,” he murmured. His eyes met hers, even as his cheeks hollowed as he sucked hard. “It was.”