The Alien’s Seduction by Zoey Draven
Chapter Nineteen
Vrax, vrax, vrax!
Cruxan held his breath when he scented the first inklings of his luxiva’s arousal. Already, his horns were straightening, his cock growing—harder than its perpetual state—in his leg coverings.
His Instinct knew his female was aroused and it was driving Cruxan to mate with her. Lust and desire fogged his mind and when he had to take a breath, he almost groaned at the strong perfume of her scent.
Tevvaxwas powerful. So powerful that the oil from the bloom had to be diluted when it was taken among pleasure partners or mates.
Crystal had touched the flower directly. The potency of its oil, which covered her fingertips, which had already begun to enter her system, was undiluted.
Luxirians had a strong reaction to the drug. He couldn’t imagine what a human female’s reaction would be.
This was bad. In another circumstance, one where she readily accepted him as her mate, the situation would be quite the opposite. He could help her ride through the pleasure, could help her take the edge off until the drug left her body.
But she didn’t accept him as her fated mate. Not yet and possibly—though he didn’t want to admit it—not ever.
She didn’t want his touch, didn’t want the pleasure he knew he could bring her.
So, this situation was bad. Very, very bad when his control was already limited.
“Crystal,” he murmured, careful not to touch the oil on her fingertips, or else it would doom them both. “We need to make camp.”
“W-why?” she asked, her gaze going a little unfocused, her cheeks flushing an enticing pink color, her lips reddening.
Fates, help him.
“The drug will need time to pass through your system. We cannot travel until it does,” he said.
“I’m fine,” she assured him, even though he heard her breath hitch as she said it.
His lips pressed in a grim line. “It will only grow. The peak of the drug will come hours from now. You will be in no shape to travel further.”
He saw the delicate flesh of her neck bob as she swallowed. Then she said quietly, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what it was.”
“You could not have known, luxiva,” he told her quietly. “Now, come. We will find a place to settle for the night.”
It took some time to find a suitable camp and Cruxan knew that her desire was only growing, the tevvax ramping up in her system.
“W-what’s going to happen?” she asked quietly, her voice tinged with panic as he looked for a camp.
Cruxan gaze raked through the jungle, desperate to find a safe place for his female.
Softly, he told her, “You will not be yourself, luxiva.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she whispered.
Right when Cruxan spied a grouping of nixia trees close enough together to provide protection, Crystal let out a gasp and wobbled on her feet.
Reacting on instinct, Cruxan snaked his arm around her waist, steadying her when her knees gave out. He cursed under his breath when she moaned at his touch and knowing that she couldn’t walk further, he swept her up in his arms, cradling her warming body against his chest.
“Cruxan,” she said, her voice strained. “It’s getting stronger.”
“I know, luxiva.”
He ignored how right it felt to hold her in his arms. Except for the night when it had been pouring rain and he’d held her to keep her warm, this was the closest they’d been since.
“Cruxan, your horns,” she said softly, looking up at them.
“Ignore them,” he said, gruffer than he intended. His horns were probably ramrod straight right then, mirroring his cock.
He brought them both over to the grouping of the nixia trees he’d spied. Shoving aside a few large leaves, he peered within and found that there was a suitable place for camp. A protected and private little enclosure, shrouded by the nixia leaves. He was pleased to see that the ground was dry and, with slight reluctance, he settled his female there, with her back to the strong trunk.
“I will need to gather supplies for a fire,” he told her, raking his gaze over her face. Her eyes were unfocused and heavy-lidded. When his eyes went to her neck, he saw her racing heartbeat there. “I will not go far.”
Cruxan ducked and pushed past the nixia leaves, letting them fall back into place once he exited the enclosure. Outside, her scent wasn’t as strong, though it still lingered in the air.
He groaned deep in his chest, wondering how he would survive the night with tevvax coursing through his mate’s blood. Undiluted tevvax.
He’d taken tevvax with pleasure partners before. It created a pinching hunger, a need to mate and fuck and lick and touch. For a few lust filled hours, it would drive Luxirians to mate like they were beasts in heat.
He gathered his supplies quickly, but didn’t hunt. He knew his female wouldn’t have a hunger for food that night, though he would hunt something fresh for her once the suns rose. Even from a distance, he heard her squirming inside their camp, past the heavy and thick leaves of the nixia. He heard her pants, her soft gasps.
It would take every bit of his self-control to keep his hands off her. She didn’t want this. She wasn’t herself. He needed to remember that, even when she inevitably begged for him to satisfy her.
Steeling his spine, praying silently to the Fates, he ducked back inside.
His pupils dilated when her scent hit him like a wall. The muscles in his arms actually trembled and his abdomen clenched at the sublime scent.
She’d taken off his tunic and it lay in a pile next to her. Only clad in her own thin tunic, her back was still to the trunk of the nearest nixia, but her legs were shifting restlessly, her toes curling inwards, her fists clenched at her sides.
“It’s hot,” she gasped out. “Please don’t make the fire.”
Holding his breath, he grumbled out, “It will be dark soon, luxiva. There will be no light source otherwise.”
“M-maybe…maybe it’s better if you don’t see.”
Her words were so quiet but they tugged at his chest. Vrax, he could hear the worry and fear in her voice.
“I will need to heat the water gourds,” he reminded her gently. “You will need them.”
He didn’t remind her that he would be able to see her in the darkness regardless of the fire or not.
She groaned, but didn’t protest when he went about making a fire, though he made it as far away from her as possible and kept the flame low. Once the gourds were heating, his gaze couldn’t help but flash over to her. Illuminated by the fire, her face flushed, her eyes bright, she looked every bit like a fantasy made flesh. A glimmer of sweat dotted her forehead and the hem of her tunic had begun to ride up her thigh.
Swallowing, he looked away, trying to measure out his breaths evenly and quickly. Every whiff he caught, every little mewing sound he heard, made his whole body clench with need. Vrax, he’d never felt need like this before.
Settling as far away as he could, he put his back to one of the nixia trunks, mirroring her position. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her tunic ride up more. Between her thighs, he caught a flash of her bare sex. Pink, wet, swollen with desire and need.
“Vrax,” he growled out before jerking his head away and squeezing his eyes shut.
“Cruxan,” she whimpered. A moan tumbled from her lips next and it was everything he ever wanted to hear from his luxiva…if it were her choice and not the tevvax’s.
One thing was becoming clear. This night would absolutely destroy him.
Crystal feltlike a stranger in her own body. Everything in her felt different, felt like too much.
Her senses were overloaded, her whole body tingled, and she felt a dull, throbbing ache deep inside that made her want to moan in pleasure and scream in frustration at the same time. She needed that ache filled. She needed that ache filled badly.
She’d never been one to show her desire openly. Even in the beginning of her first and last relationship, she’d been shy and inexperienced. In the beginning with Leo, however, she’d come to appreciate sex, at least before everything went downhill. She missed it. She missed that connection, that raw animal need, the weight of a male’s body pressed against her, that musky, delicious smell on her skin afterwards.
But she’d always been private about sex. She’d always envied the women who had the confidence to make their intentions clear with a man they saw at a bar or from across a room or at a party. Crystal had never been one of those women.
So, in reality, she should’ve been mortified that Cruxan was seeing her this way. Certainly, she’d felt it when she sensed the rising tension in her body. She’d felt fear too, dismay.
But now?
She’d never felt anything like the desire rising inside her and it was only growing. She simply didn’t care anymore. The need inside her felt powerful, a force that she couldn’t stop so she might as well bend to its will.
She didn’t care that he saw her this way. That was the most baffling notion, perhaps, out of all of this. Nothing else mattered but easing the ache inside her. Nothing else mattered but releasing some of the pinching tension deep in her core.
She wanted sex. She wanted it so bad that despite everything, she was prepared to beg for it.
“Cruxan,” she panted.
He was sitting rigid and still across the clearing, as if the slightest move would make everything crumble around them. Perhaps it would.
Crystal eyed him with a heavy lidded gaze. He was a magnificent male. Even when she’d done everything to deter his advances, she’d always known he was magnificent.
His chest gleamed bronze from the fire, the golden bars through his nipples shining. Her mouth watered. She wanted to lick those bars, wanted to lick a line down his chest, wanted to free his cock from his pants, and push him inside her.
Crystal felt dizzy. The world was beginning to spin but all her attention was focused on the male in the clearing, like a predator with its prey.
He’s my mate, isn’t he?her mind whispered, like a devil on her shoulder. It’s okay if anything happens between us. It was bound to happen anyways.
He looked like he was in physical pain as she purred, “Cruxan, come here. Please.”
He didn’t move. Not a single inch. “Nix, luxiva.”
“Cruxan,” she moaned as another brutal wave of need crashed over her, dragging her deeper, dragging her under. She thrashed, her legs squeezing together. Too far gone, her hand raced between her thighs and she gasped when her fingers brushed her engorged, sensitive clit. To her amazement, she began to orgasm immediately, that small touch enough to send her over the edge.
Her back arched against the trunk of the tree, her eyes squeezing shut, as her cry of pleasure echoed through their camp. It was an orgasm so intense that her world went black for a moment.
When she resurfaced, to her agony, she realized her orgasm didn’t do anything to assuage the need roaring inside her.
If anything, it had made it worse.
Cruxan’s eyes were so dilated and dark that they appeared black. Black pools that reflected the fire’s light. His horns were ramrod straight and when her eyes trailed down his body to settle just below his abdomen, she saw his heavy, thick cock outlined in his dark pants. Impossibly thick and too big, but she wanted him. She wanted every last inch inside her. She’d never wanted anything more.
Crystal licked her lips, which made a harsh sound tear from Cruxan’s throat.
He’d told her that this night would hurt him, more than it would ever hurt her. Why? It didn’t have to hurt. Nothing had to hurt.
“Cruxan,” she rasped, her throat raw from her cries of pleasure. “I need you.”
He bit out a guttural curse and jerked his head to look away from her.
Crystal couldn’t understand why he was fighting this. This was what he wanted, wasn’t it? Her. He wanted her. And right now, all she wanted was him.
That knowledge made her push up from her seated position. Her knees trembled, her limbs felt entirely too long and too unsteady, but nonetheless, she crawled over to him across the clearing.
His eyes flashed to her, alarmed.
“Crystal,” he growled. “Stop.”
That need was pinching her again. So delicious that it was almost painful. She felt drunk on it. Her head was foggy with a haze of lust and she didn’t second guess herself when she crawled into Cruxan’s lap, straddling his strong thighs.
She almost groaned when his heat penetrated her skin, when his scent—which reminded her of the evergreen trees back in Washington—filled her nostrils. Was this how he felt whenever he scented her arousal? Crazed and needful?
“I want you,” she murmured to him, her hands pressing against his bare chest. “Please. It was always going to happen, wasn’t it?”
He looked pained again, like her words were cutting him with a blade. “Crystal, this is not what you want.”
“I know what I want right now,” she argued, biting her bottom lip.
Looking at him pleased her. Immensely.
“I want to draw you, Cruxan. When we reach Kroratax, will you let me?”
His brow furrowed, baffled and aroused and frustrated and in pain. She hadn’t had the courage to ask before, but her tongue was loose right then. She felt like asking…so she did. It was freeing.
“Luxiva,” he groaned when she trailed her fingertips over his pierced nipples, down his muscled, sculpted abdomen. He was so hard. Everywhere.
“Touch me,” she whispered in his ear, her tunic riding up her thighs as she squirmed in his lap. A sharp prick of need made her moan and she immediately pressed her hips down, grinding her bare sex over his hard cock. Sublime. “Yes,” she gasped.
He hissed, a dark sound falling from his throat that she wanted to hear over and over again. His strong palms grasped her hips, stilling her immediately. “Luxiva, stop this,” he growled.
“Why?” she groaned, looking at him with a half-lidded gaze, frustrated that he’d stilled her hips.
She reached for his hand, curling her fingers around his palm, before leading it down her thigh, leading his hand underneath the hem of her tunic.
“Please touch me,” she begged him, pressing his hand against her slick, swollen pussy.
His touch was enough. Her stunned gaze flashed to his, her lips parted, when his fingers brushed over the wet slit of her sex. His fingers curled into her, for a brief moment, as if he physically couldn’t stop himself, as if he knew that he would own her there.
He groaned as she began to cum on his fingers. “Vrax,” was all she heard as her world tilted again, as she thrashed in his lap and let her cries of pleasure drift up between the trees that shrouded them.
She sensed him steadying her, keeping her upright so she didn’t fall over. His hand remained between her thighs, seeing her through her orgasm, elongating it until the last pulses were wrenched from her body.
Crystal dragged in breath like she’d been starved for air when she resurfaced for the second time that evening. And just as before, she groaned in frustration when her need didn’t go away. It was like her orgasm had never happened because she was just as she was before.
“More,” she begged Cruxan, her hands scrambling between them for his cock. She pushed the band of his pants down before he could protest, freeing what she wanted so desperately.
He bellowed out a rough cry when her hands clasped around his cock, her eyes widening when she realized she couldn’t fit her hand all the way around its girth. Knobs lined the top and the bottom of it and in stunned disbelief she watched as beads and beads of iridescent pre-cum pushed from his mushroomed tip.
Magnificent male.
“Enough,” he growled out, his voice so deep and dark that it was unrecognizable. When she looked into his eyes, she saw a wildness there. She had almost pushed him over the edge. She saw that realization there, in his own eyes. “Enough, luxiva.”
His hand fell away from her sex, as if it was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do, and he plucked her hands from his cock gently, gripping her wrists in a tight grasp so she couldn’t squirm away.
“I am sorry, luxiva,” he murmured to her, that darkness in his gaze never abating. “I should not have touched you. I promised you I would not, not without your permission.”
Crystal groaned in frustration, trying to pull her wrists from his grip. “I wanted you to,” she cried. “I want you to!”
“This has to stop,” he said roughly. “You are not yourself, luxiva. Not this night. We cannot continue.”
“Yes, we can,” she argued, now trying to push against him. That desire was building and building again.
“You would not want this,” he murmured to her, gentling his voice. “Not truly. Not in your right mind. Tevvax is powerful and you are feeling that power. But once it leaves you, you will regret it.”
“No, I won’t,” she cried out.
“Tev, you will,” he insisted.
She was beginning to realize that he wouldn’t touch her again. He was being serious. Dead serious.
Frustration unlike she’d ever known filled her and tears pricked her eyes because of it.
“Don’t,” he murmured softly, looking pained as a tear escaped from her eye, dripping down her cheek. His tone was anguished as he said, “Luxiva, nix.”
Her hands were shaking in his grip from the need.
“You know I desire you, luxiva. Beyond anything,” he murmured, brushing her tears away without releasing her wrist. “But we cannot. Not like this. This is not real.”
“Is this what it feels like?” she rasped, more tears escaping down her cheeks. “Your Instinct? When it awakened for me? To want something so much and not have it? Not yet?”
She wasn’t even denying the truth anymore, not when it was obvious.
His lips pressed tight, but she saw the answer in his gaze even though he remained quiet.
Yes, his eyes said.
This agony was what it was like.
And suddenly, Crystal felt like crying for a different reason.
He brought her closer, pressing his forehead against her own, somehow more intimate than his touch had been between her thighs earlier.
“It will be a long night, luxiva,” he said. “But you will see it through. I know you will.”
