The Alien’s Seduction by Zoey Draven
Chapter Nine
They traveled the morning in almost complete silence.
It was a little unsettling. Cruxan usually enjoyed the quiet because he didn’t experience it often. Usually only on long tracking trips, or on his journeys from Otala, did he have quiet. His senses were too keen.
Far from any outposts or the Golden City, with only the eerie silence of the forest and his female’s footsteps, the rustle of his tunic over her own, Cruxan’s mind was at ease. And yet, it was in complete turmoil, an all around strange sensation.
Cruxan liked to be around other beings. He liked to be around females. He liked to talk and laugh and drink and mate. He enjoyed the life he was given, after fighting for it for so long.
But his female…she seemed like the complete opposite. She was quiet, shy, reserved, and she’d been so appalled by his words earlier—about how he could smell her sweet, heady, mouth-watering arousal—that he hadn’t said anything more about it.
But he’d wanted to. He’d wanted to say all kinds of things to her—not just about sex—but he found he was biting his tongue more often than not.
He didn’t want to scare her. Or perhaps, he didn’t know how to act around her. Everything was new. So new.
In the back of his mind, however, he wondered why the Fates had chosen her for him…and him for her.
It was a strange match.
His Instinct demanded he remain close to her. Vrax, his Instinct demanded more than that. He wanted to touch her, hold her. He wanted to strip her nude right there in the forest and do a million wicked things to her with his tongue, his hands, and his cock, but he held his control in a tight grip. Something told him that one misstep could cost him forever.
It wasn’t comfortable.
A little while after they’d left their makeshift, temporary camp, they came across the area where Cruxan had tackled Crystal, where Jaxor’an had taken Erin.
Cruxan pulled up short. Behind him, he sensed Crystal stopping in her tracks, unmoving.
“Here?” she asked quietly. Her golden hair rustled around her shoulders, telling him she looked around the clearing.
“Tev.”
“How can you be sure? It was so dark.”
“I can scent it,” he told her, mirroring the words he’d said to her earlier.
She went quiet and Cruxan couldn’t help but look over his shoulder at her. He caught her staring at his bared back, but her gaze darted away immediately.
Clearing her throat, she asked, “Do you know which direction they went?”
He jerked his chin back towards the Golden City. “Towards his sandcraft.”
They moved on. Despite Cruxan wishing that he could carry his luxiva in his arms again, he knew that she would never allow it, even if they made faster time. The Mevirax were nowhere to be seen—or heard, or scented, for that matter—so Cruxan deemed it safe enough for her to trail behind him. He would sense any danger long before it ever got within attack range of them.
They’d only been walking for another handful of moments before she surprised him by asking, “How did you learn how to track?”
“I cheated,” he murmured, his lips quirking, though he kept his gaze firmly in front of him.
She made a sound in the back of her throat. “What?”
“I was born with better senses than most,” he told her. “So it was natural. I have an advantage that most will never have, an advantage that cannot be taught or learned.”
Cruxan sensed her walking closer and his breath hitched, his fists squeezing to keep from reaching out to touch her. For all his mental doubts that they were a match, his body certainly didn’t have any qualms about the Fates’ decision.
When she appeared at his side, though keeping an arm’s length distance between them, Cruxan slid his gaze over to her.
“That’s a gift. It’s not cheating,” she told him. “You truly have better senses?”
He gestured in the direction they were walking. “What is the furthest thing you can see?”
She blinked, tearing her eyes away from him, and then squinted, her delicate nose scrunching slightly. Cruxan’s lips quirked. “Um, I see white trees. And more white trees.”
Cruxan looked at the scene in front of him and told her, “I see the edge. I see the black sand that gives way into the desert. I see white trees, as you call them. They are called pillerva. I see their husks and their roots crawling from the moss. I see the texture on their pods. I smell the sickening sweetness of their rot on the earth and the scent of a cold breeze from the north that tells me a storm is approaching.”
Her pink lips were parted as she blinked up at him. In that moment, she looked at him unguarded, possibly for the first time, and Cruxan jolted, sucking in a lungful of crisp air too fast, making his lungs squeeze.
Vrax, she was beautiful. Lovely, in her strange, alien, human way. In that moment, he didn’t think he’d ever seen anything lovelier.
He swallowed past the knot lodged in his throat as she asked, “Doesn’t that ever get tiring? Being so aware all the time?”
“I have been this way all my life,” he said, taking in the shimmering green of her eyes. She had golden threads going through her irises, just like her hair. Mesmerizing. “If I had normal senses, knowing what could be, I think I would be frustrated by the limitations.”
He grinned when she said, “Then that’s unfortunate for us lesser beings, to never know what could be.”
Her light tone told him she was teasing. When she saw him smiling, her own lips quirked, her white teeth peeking through, and Cruxan felt another piece of his soul leave his body, attaching itself to her.
She’d smiled without realizing it, it seemed, because a moment later, her demeanor changed again. He heard her breath hitch and her gaze darted. Her smile dropped and Cruxan’s stomach dropped with it.
Not ready for her to lapse back into silence—he didn’t know if he could stand another stretch of it, not when she’d willingly walked beside him, not when she’d smiled at him—he hurriedly asked, “How are you finding Luxiria during your time here?”
“This is the most I’ve seen of your planet,” she admitted.
Cruxan looked around the pillerva forest, observing how melancholy and quiet it was. “There are more beautiful places than this.”
“I like the view from the city,” she commented. “It’s hot there, but where I’m from, it can get hot too. I don’t mind it so much. I like the sun. And there are two here.”
“You only have one sun?” he asked, frowning.
“Shocking, I know,” she said lightly.
During the cold season, one of the suns rose faster than the other. It was the only time of the rotation where one sun was absent, but they were bitterly cold spans and not relished by many Luxirians, Cruxan included.
“The Golden City,” Cruxan started, “is beautiful in its own right. But compared to the regions of coastline near Lopixa, to the mountain ranges of the Otylia, to the lush forests near Kroratax, I find the Golden City isolating, though it has the largest concentration of Luxirians on the planet’s surface.”
“It’s isolating? Being surrounded by that many people?” she asked, quirking a brow. Cruxan was relieved to see that she wasn’t as guarded as she’d been before. “You strike me as the type that likes to be around people, so what you’re saying is surprising.”
“Are you trying to read me, female?” he asked, his tone gentle.
“It’s just a guess,” she said quickly. “I mean, I don’t know you. Maybe you like to be alone for all I know.”
Cruxan didn’t know what to make of that, but he found himself asking, “And you? Do you like to be alone?”
Her gaze was startled when she looked at him. She bit her lip before admitting quietly, “No. I don’t.”
Her words unleashed something him. His protective instinct. His need to comfort her. Whatever it was…it made determination course through his body.
“Were you alone?” he asked next, his voice dropping low. “On your home planet?”
“No,” she said. But then a moment later, she said, “Yes. I mean, I had my sister, but she’s married and she works a lot. I had a couple friends I saw on a somewhat regular basis, but…I guess I was alone most of the time. I stayed in at night. I like drawing. It tends to be a solitary activity, I guess. And—sorry, I don’t know why I’m blurting this all out right now. To you.”
She seemed embarrassed by what she revealed. Though she kept her eyes straight forward, he saw her eyes peek over at him.
“You make many apologies, female,” he told her, “for things that do not require one.” She blinked. “Now tell me, what is it that you draw? Schematics?”
He was eager to learn as much about her as possible. Any scrap, he would gladly take and store away for another time.
“No. Like…art. Landscapes and people.”
“Art,” he repeated. Something wiggled loose in his mind and he murmured, “Ah, you are a creator.”
That granted him a small smile and he felt that smile deep in his chest.
Yet, she waved away his word and said, “I just draw. Things I’ve seen or want to see. I…draw these characters sometimes. Krane and Jron. I want to write and illustrate a series of children’s books with them one day. I was going to school, studying that…illustration, I mean.”
Frustration at his language implant, at not knowing what these things were—things that were obviously important to his female—ate at him.
“You will have to explain these things to me,” he told her, a little sheepish over his lack of knowledge of her culture and society. “I do not know what—” He spied something in the distance, something that shouldn’t be there and something that was missing. “Vrax!”
“What?” she asked, her voice climbing higher in her startled alarm.
Jaxor’an—that scheming bastard—had stolen Cruxan’s hovercraft and left his steaming pile of useless junk in its wake.
Vrax!
