Taken to Lemora by Elizabeth Stephens

18

Essmira

“Essmira?” Raingar stands in the doorway of Timor and Lyla’s shop, early lunar light streaming in wonderful colors behind him.

“Coming!” I dust off my hands and pack away the last of my supplies in the drawers that I’ve recently helped Lyla reorganize and label. Then I head to the door and meet him outside. “I just finished up my last alteration on an Asgid dress. It’s a new design. I’m not sure Thoedrea likes it. I’m hoping she does in time.”

“That’s nice,” he grumps, but he sounds distracted.

Outside, the wind is surprisingly warm and I smile. “It’s supposed to be an exceptional sunset this lunar. Do you think we might watch it?”

He huffs and his shoulders sag. He sounds annoyed. Ordinarily, I might berate him for trying to kill my enthusiasm, but this lunar, I worry. “It’s only been twenty-three solars since you were shot. Are you sure you don’t want to postpone whatever surprise this is that you have plann…”

“NOB! Would you just…pagh!” He shouts, sounding annoyed all over again.

He fidgets a lot, shifting from foot-to-foot. He’s stopped wearing the protective healing cover Moreth had fitted to his right shoulder, as well as the graft to replace some of the skin that was lost to the blast — apparently the ion rounds the assassin used were laced with venom from a creature called a hevarr. Found only on Nobu, the acid alone might have chewed straight through all three of his hearts had his skin been less tough than it is.

I frown, heart aching at the thought that I might have lost him before I ever even made him mine. “Raingar…”

“Essmira…please. I promise, I’m fine. I just want to get going before we’re late.”

“Late? And wait — what is this? We’re taking pad pads?” Now, I’m really skeptical as he leads me to two pad pads and lifts me onto the smaller one. I straddle her back and give her gentle, soothing touches.

“Unfortunately, yeffa. Now come on. Let’s not drag this out any longer than we need to.”

He starts out of the village at a surprising pace, barking and cursing at villagers to get out of our way, even though they mostly don’t. Instead, they smile and wave up at him — up at us both. It fills me with joy unlike any other. Well, like one other.

But…I’ve been too nervous about his injuries to do anything other than kiss him.

I’d like to, but all my training’s flown out of the window. Concern has made me forget how to initiate intimacy with a male. And I’m not sure how he feels because so far he hasn’t initiated anything either. He’s inexperienced. I should make the first move. I think. Maybe? But he’s also clan chief. And he’s injured.

Perhaps I should ask Moreth if he’s up for…adventure, though if word ever got back to Raingar, he’d probably have a nervous breakdown that I was talking to Moreth about sex.

I snort and Raingar looks over at me from atop his pad pad. The road we’re on is one I’ve never traveled and is almost entirely clear, so we’re able to ride side-by-side.

“What?” He barks.

I almost tell him, but then I change my mind. “The human female. Is she alright?”

“You ask that every solar.”

I chew on the inside of my cheek, nodding. “And I’ll continue to.”

He chortles lightly and shakes his head. “I told you. She’ll be okay.”

During the battle of Wasteland, we left her alone on board Ashmara’s uhh…lovely vessel. In her panicked state, she woke alone and took one of the escape pods — the shooters — all on her own. Without a programmed destination, they all fly to one place…

“She’s alone on Evernor, the Eshmiri gladiator planet. How is she going to be okay? You didn’t see what state she was in…”

“Yeffa, but she isn’t alone. Herannathon went after her and enlisted in the tournament. He’ll protect her.”

“Can’t Ashmara get them out of it?”

“The Eshmiri are good creatures to haggle with, but not when it comes to the tournament. It’s their biggest contest and only happens once every six rotations. They aren’t going to let even one of their own break any of the contestants out of it.”

One of their own. Even though Ashmara might be a human-Drakesh hybrid, it’s only by blood, not by choice. And as I’ve learned, blood means little. Choice is more important. Even if it does make me sad. She might be the only one like me out there, but I’ll never really know her. She’s just as far from me as a four-armed pirate or a soulless assassin. It doesn’t matter if our origins may have started beneath the same star. And since neither Ashmara nor I know of our origins, it wouldn’t matter even if we did.

But we are sisters in another right. Sisters in the battle waged against Tyto. I’m glad that it’s over for me, but my heart still strains for the pale-skinned human female with the bright red mane.

“Besides, Ashmara’s got enough problems of her own.”

I wince. “Rhorkanterannu can’t help her escape Jerrock?”

“Nob. And her contract is too large to buy out. We clan chiefs tried to pool our resources and combine them with what Rhorkanterannu and the Voraxians offered, but it still wasn’t enough.”

“What is her bounty even for?”

“She’s been liberating slaves from some of the wealthiest corners of the Quadrants. Quadrant One alone has a bounty of twenty-eight kintarr tuns on her head. Apparently, over one thousand of their garden slaves went missing over the course of six lunars. Ashmara’s been labeled the culprit.”

Surprise. Warmth. It fills my chest and I nod as we start up a hill towards a beautiful purple sky. “Good. Hopefully, the kintarr she recovered from Tyto will help her stay lost until she’s an old, old reaver.”

“Too bad she didn’t get any of it.”

“What?” I pull up on the pad pad reins and the beast beneath me releases steam through its wide nostrils.

Raingar’s cheeks darken and his eyes drop to my clenched fingers. “We offered to make up the sum, but both the Eshmiri and the Niahhorru refused.”

“What happened to the rest? What Tyto was using to pay off my contract?”

“Jerrock…”

“He took it? But I thought…”

“Nob.” Raingar shakes his head. “A Sky bounty hunter wouldn’t steal tokens for an incomplete contract. He destroyed it.”

“But why…”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about the Sky and I hope never to know anything about them.” He shudders and cocks his head. “Now come on. We’re almost there and I don’t want to bring thoughts of assassins or war with you.”

“Of course, my Lord.”

His eyebrows pull together, concerned, beneath his pearly white horns. His horns…mmmm…they shoot up into the sky, arching towards the orange clouds. They are magnificent and I feel myself — and my core — pool with heat at the sight of them, maybe just knowing that they’re mine…

“My Lord?” He scowls so fiercely I laugh, the sound carried away from me on the wind, and then wrapped around me all over again. “Not sure what I did to deserve that…”

“I’m only teas…” We approach the crest of the hill and just as we ride over it, all the words I was going to say are yanked violently from my lips. I can’t say a word. Well, I can say one word. And that word is, “Ohr.”

Raingar chuckles. “These are the Dark Flats, Essmira.”

Endless fields of brightly colored pebbles rise and fall from the base of the hill out to touch the horizon. “It’s…”

And then there’s an explosion.

A cluster of pebbles shoot into the air and smash together and when they do, there’s light. Lights of all colors and shades and intensities and heights. Some of the pebbles spark just over the sandy dunes while others rocket hundreds of feet up into the air and fill the entire purple sky with magical fire.

Tears fill my eyes. My jaw works. I stammer. My chest floods with fire. I can’t believe this. Every solar, Raingar has taken me out to do something special, but this? Nothing holds a candle to this.

“Pagh! Now, don’t do that,” Raingar grumbles, looking all annoyed all over again. “Follow me.”

I do so dumbly, unable to look away from the field that clashes violently with the darkening sky. A single Lemoran sun hangs like a blue orb, like a fruit, on the horizon line. It dips a little lower as we follow a path around the crest of the hill until we reach a series of platforms. They must be viewing platforms. At least, that’s what I assume. But I don’t ask, because my mouth has entirely dried and my tongue is in knots as Raingar leads us to the largest one.

We dismount our pad pads and follow the short flight of yellow stairs to reach it by foot. Halfway down the hill, the platform juts out, not quite covering any of the Dark Flats beneath it, but perfectly positioned to view the spectacle, uninterrupted. A flat yellow base is surrounded by a pink guardrail, but my gaze is drawn away from the Dark Flats — an almost impossible task — to the structure in the center of the platform.

It’s a bed.

An enormous mattress covers much of the platform while a wooden platter covered with food sits on a low table off to one side. A bucket with bottles of something — I hope not lobba — rests beside it. Mountains of maroon and taupe pillows and blankets form dunes of their own on the mattress, the one Raingar is standing beside with that same frustrated — nob, not frustrated, nervous. My male is nervous this lunar.

My heart leaps up into my throat as my reality comes crashing down. I thought he’d been avoiding me because he was hurt, not because he was nervous. Not because he wanted to surprise me…

“I know that the last time we tried this, I wasn’t ready. But I feel ready now and, if you’re willing…or I mean, if you’d like to try again…I…” He scratches the back of his neck, his face darkening even more. He twists his hands together in front of his abdomen while I just stare.

I thought I was in love before.

I did not know love until this very moment.

My heart explodes through my chest and I don’t hear anything he says next because the wind is in my ears and I’m running, running, skipping, dancing, jumping up to meet him. I hit him so hard he wobbles and then goes down. He collapses onto his back on the mattress in the center of the sea of pillows and mania grips me unlike anything I’ve ever felt.

Heat savages me and I suddenly can’t breathe — know I won’t be able to breathe — unless Raingar enters me right now. “Raingar!” I shout. His eyes go wide as I claw at the ties on his trousers. I made them, but I suddenly can’t free the ties fast enough. “Help me. I need…need you…”

“Essmira,” he flounders, “are you okay?”

“I don’t…I don’t know…” I can’t think. My eyes are unfocusing. “I want…I need you, Raingar. I need you like I need water to drink.”

But Raingar’s staring at my mouth like I’ve suddenly grown two of them. Without warning, he sits up, reaches past my teeth with his fingers and pulls my tongue out. “Whad…whadarreooo…” I can’t talk with him holding onto my tongue like that and I start to laugh as I slobber all over his fingertips.

But he doesn’t answer me, instead, he shouts, “I’M YOUR XIVERI MATE!” He screams.

A burst of pebbles sends a light show careening towards us. It explodes high over our heads in bright white-yellow and looks exactly like the physical manifestation of the sensations blasting through me. I’m so hot, I start to sweat. I blink over and over, frustrated and angry with my mate that he hasn’t pulled his cock out yet.

“What…what do you mean?” I heave, nails scraping over his chest. He’s polished it. He’s polished it so the rough texture of his skin will hurt me less. The pressure in my abdomen becomes too much to bear. I’m going to explode. I’m going to die if I don’t… I need…

“You are half-Drakesh!” He shouts as if that’s all the explanation I need.

“Pagh!” I huff out my frustration this time and somehow find the strength to stand, but only enough to undo the tie at the back of my neck and let my dress fall to my feet. “Raingar, I need…”

“Your tongue,” he exclaims as I fall onto him in only my small under garments hiding my sex, the places where I desperately need relief. I rub myself ruthlessly all over his body even as he tries to hold me back.

“Raingar!” I mewl loudly.

But he shakes his head. “The Voraxians and the Drakesh wear their emotions in their ridges. They turn bright colors whenever they feel emotion and, when they meet their Xiveri Mates, they turn every color. All of them at once. You don’t have any ridges though…except for these, in your tongue.”

I pant, stretching my tongue out as I dive forward, not giving an ohr about ridges, just needing to taste. Raingar opens his mouth, but I’m stalled momentarily by the lights reflecting off of his lips. And they have nothing to do with the Dark Flats beneath us.

I blink in rapid succession while flares of energy zap my thighs, making them quiver. I reach down and grab my own sex, terrified it’s going to run off on me. I feel everything and moan, “I’m your Xiveri…”

“Yeffa,” he says, with a wild whooping laugh.

I can’t find the situation funny. I can’t find anything funny. I’m going to cry if he doesn’t spend inside of me immediately. “I’m hurting…please, Raingar, please…”

Fever grips me every place Raingar touches. He grabs the back of my neck in one of his enormous hands, flips our bodies over and places me on my back beneath him. He kneels over me with one hand planted on the mattress by my face and his knees straddling my legs.

“This is all wrong. I need my legs spread. I need to be on top. I promised I’d guide you… You’ve never done…”

Raingar licks his lips and stands up from me quickly. He unties his pants and rips them off of his body, shredding some of my immaculate stitching in the process, but I don’t give an ohr about that. I’ll make him a thousand pants, so long as he just… “Come in me!”

His expression is firm, but soft, just like his grip as he takes my knees in each of his hands and spreads my legs, exposing my sensitive, electrified flesh to the harsh elements.

He trails his fingers up against my inner thighs but I spasm in pleasurepain as another wave of intensity hits me. “Raingar!”

“Agh!” He grabs the undergarment caging my lower lips and rips it in between his hands, careful not to jostle me, let alone hurt me. He does the same to the contraption caging my breasts before he covers my body with his.

He kisses the side of my face and it sends magical waves careening through me that make me tremble. He says, “The red…the red is beautiful, but I care for the heart beneath it more.”

I moan, his breath a thousand feathers descending on me at once. I can’t breathe through their softness.

“It’s everything. You are, Essmira. You’re my whole universe.”

“Raingar,” I moan. His words send clouds parting above me. More explosions dance across the sky while I hurtle into another universe. I can’t control my limbs. I’m terrified, genuinely frightened by the change that’s come over me so suddenly, but I trust him. I trust him more than anything.

“I’m going to show you what I mean, Essmira,” he says roughly as he shifts on top of me.

“I should be…I am a pleasure female…I should be guiding…”

“I am your pleasure male, Essmira. This is my honor, my duty.”

He lowers himself onto one elbow, but it isn’t enough. He still isn’t covering me, smothering me completely. Instead, he pushes my hair off of my forehead while his erection bounces angrily against my belly. I try to reach for it, but he cages both of my hands above my head in just one of his.

He meets my gaze and I fall into those colorful depths. “Please let me carry you through this. I promise…I won’t drop you.” His voice breaks.

Colors, wild and radiant, explode against his face when I release a feral moan. All the colors. Every color of the Lemoran countryside. My back arches, but I can’t move my arms. He has me pinned.

“I know you won’t. I adore you,” I gasp, breathless.

Raingar winces as if struck and clutches one hand to his chest. He closes his eyes and when he blinks them back open, he holds my gaze with determination and rolls his hips to meet my hips. He reaches between his legs and looks down, careful as he lines his erection with my opening.

The heat of his cock is searing and painful. I release a wild shriek as a blue bomb erupts hundreds of feet above me. Wind whistles over the Dark Flats, creating delirious melodies. It’s like I can touch the universe through so many competing colors — they’re disorienting, so I focus on the ones I know best.

His black and blue and purple and orange and yellow and, in the very center, iridescent green, gaze. “Are you ready, my Essmira?”

“Raingar,” I moan, pained. “Please!”

He pushes forward and I gasp and thrash against his grip. My body wants him all the way inside, but my rapidly disintegrating thoughts are grateful for his painfully slow march to madness. He’s huge. The male himself is four times my size at least and though Igmora, the female who met her untimely end, and Tyto, the male who killed her, taught me that I would stretch to accommodate any size, right now it doesn’t feel like it.

His eyes are open, even if his jaw is clenched so hard I can hear his teeth grinding against one another. Muscles spasm in his neck and he has to release my hands in order to prop up more of his weight as he shuttles his cock into my sopping, sensitive heat. My lower lips open to him as he shoves the head of his erection inside of me, tickling a pleasure spot at the top of my core. It’s that little pressure that has me spiraling even though we haven’t even gone all the way…

I scream and convulse, and I know exactly what to grab as he drops onto both elbows. I grab his horns, squeezing their base and Raingar releases a throaty moan. His hips freeze and I feel the muscles of his thighs flex as I squeeze his waist between my shaking inner thighs. His cum rips through me. I can feel its heat like an extension of him and it feels ohring great.

“Essmira,” he chokes, disbelief coloring his tone.

“Raingar!” I scream. But my orgasm isn’t sated. It isn’t even close. I need more. I need everything. I need his body to wage a love against mine that matches the love that’s fought the battles in my head and heart and conquered both. “Don’t go,” I beg him.

He huffs out a laugh. I can see sweat glimmering around the base of his horns when I finally manage to get my eyes to open. “I won’t. Not ever and certainly not when I haven’t even made it all the way inside you yet.”

He stiffens again and I feel his belly relax further onto me as he pushes up again, a move that would have sent me hurtling across the bed if his hand hadn’t hooked around the back of my neck to anchor me.

My eyes roll. “I want you…want you…Raingar…”

“Well, my selfish little hybrid. I’m your Xiveri and right now, I’m your pleasure male. You’re going to have to do what I say. You’re going to have to wait.” He sounds so happy and it’s all at my expense. I want to war against him, and I have a few tricks myself.

I squeeze the inner walls of my core around his length and he moans, collapsing further forward until he’s inside of me halfway, where his erection bulges thickest. Pain tears through my vagina, inside and outside, but it doesn’t matter, because I want more.

“Augh, Essmira…” His head rolls on his neck. He blinks down at me and his green pupil is wildly blown. “I’m going to try to seat myself all the way. Tell me if I hurt you in any way. Please. Please don’t let me hurt you.”

Tears blur the sight of him as I gently stroke his horns up to the tip, at least, as far as I can reach. I nod. “I trust you, Raingar.”

“I love you, miriga.”

His mouth crashes against mine as his body moves slowly, slowly, slowly, pushing past invisible walls neither of us can feel. It takes us half a lunar — or it takes us only instances — for him to finally stretch me wide enough to take all of him. We both cry out when his hips come flush against mine…and then I feel the barb poking at my butt.

“Are you okay?”

He barely gets the words out before I shout to the heavens, “YEFFA!”

He chuckles momentarily, his hand smoothing my hair away from my face before he reaches beneath me, fingers sliding over the smooth curve of my ass that’s half red, half brown. “I will put my lower spur in you now…” he croaks, sounding like a male dying of thirst. “I won’t easily be able to retract it, so if you want it out, please tell me right away. It’ll hurt if you try to pull away, or so I’m told.” He sounds desperate and pained, but I nod vigorously.

“Please…I want it in…I want you in everywhere.”

“Augh, stars, Essmira. You’re a perfect thing.”

He kisses my forehead and closes his eyes and my toes curl when I feel him prodding at my second hole…the tight one that isn’t nearly ready for what he’s about to insert into it. Raingar must sense this when he pushes his finger inside, because he gathers some of the fluid that’s dripped down my crease and massages it inside of me. Then he replaces his finger with the small protruding appendage all Lemoran males are born with and I feel the tip, which is neither spiky nor furry but a combination of both, enter inside of me and lodge there with frightening permanency.

I wince at the fullness and the painful sensation when he shifts, and then my eyes roll back when Raingar sits up, changing the angle enough that the smaller barb on the top of his penis can flood my core while his thumb works the small bundle of nerves outside of my body. His hands are so much more gentle this time, and I can’t stand it.

“Ohr!” I shriek. The sensations are overwhelming. I slam both of my hands down beside me on the sheets.

“Is it too much?”

“Comets, yeffa! Yeffa, Raingar!”

“I’ll pull out…just give me…”

Threats of murder are all I can think and I lunge forward and grab his neck and crush his mouth with mine. Against the taste of dew and a thousand sunrises, I whisper, “If you stop now, I will throw you into the Dark Flats. Claim me, Raingar. Do it now.”

He laughs huskily against me and kisses me back bruisingly, but I want it. I want all of it. “Your wish is my command, miriga.”

Like he’s been given permission to truly let go, his movements turn savage in an instant. Sitting all the way back on his heels, he grabs my calves and holds them out in front of him, leaving me vulnerable and open to his invasion.

“Stars, miriga…” he gasps. “The sight of you like this…I’m never going to leave this bed.”

“Don’t. Because I want to stay.”

He moans and his eyes roll back and ripples of heat flood my body. His spurs latch inside of me and don’t let go and their pressure scrapes pleasure through my front and tighter holes, making me scream as the weight of multiple orgasms crash down on me simultaneously. Wetness leaks out of my body, surging against my thighs and plunging lower to cover the curves of my ass.

“Raingar, yeffa! Please, come close…I want you close…” But the bastard slams my legs together and ruts me like this. Closing my legs around his cock makes me feel like he’s reentering me for the first time all over again. I moan at the huge, swollen pressure inside of me. I lose sense of time. Everything tastes new and wonderful and different. I’m never coming down from this. “Raingar…”

“Miriga. I am your servant,” he grunts, his horns coming down to frame my face as he presses my knees into my chest.

“You are my king.”

“Then you are my goddess.”

I laugh and his lips find mine and I lose myself to the sound of our flesh slapping. I manage to get him to pull back enough for me to spread my legs beneath him, bringing us closer together, close enough that I can reach around and slide my middle finger into his asshole.

“Essmira!” He shouts, eyes lighting with surprise an instant before he comes again, face twisting up.

I smile until the pressure of his uneven thrusts becomes too much and my sensitive clit begs for relief…

An orgasm blitzes me and I gasp when I surface and I look up, past Raingar’s face at the thunderous sky. It’s a dark indigo, but bursts of gold and green threaten to fall down and wreck us. But I am already wrecked, lost to the magical embrace of whatever this thing is called Xiveri. Wrecked, but not lost, because I’m safe in the arms of the one I call Xiveri.

I hold him close and he clutches me to his chest as a final, terrible pressure rips the last of the breath from my lungs and every fiber tightens within me. His rear spur digs into my ass and his cock throbs inside of me along with his frontal spur, which holds our bodies locked together.

“Don’t let go,” he groans.

“I’ll never let go…” But my arms go limp and our hips buck against one another unevenly, thumping madly as we both chase our releases to the stars.

“Raingar!”

“Ohring miriga!” He howls, the cords of his neck straining before he tips to the side and explodes.

We clutch one another fiercely while the sands explode above and the ocean between my legs sends final shocks scattering through me. Our breath is mingled and shared. His chest heaves against my breasts. My inner walls ripple and his spur stays hard and knotted inside of me, owning me.

“I lied,” I gasp, leaning up to kiss him anywhere my mouth can reach. His chin, his neck, the V at the base of his throat. “I want to be your pleasure female. I want to present to you whenever you want to have me. I want more, all the time, as rough as you want to give it. I want this forever.”

He grabs the back of my head and pulls my face up to his. His spurs scrape in my channels and his erection has yet to go anywhere. I’ve never felt so full as his tongue invades my mouth and his hands reverently worship every inch of my skin. He cups my breasts roughly and I gasp, torso flooding with delight as I start to rock against him all over again.

“This will never end. You are mine, miriga. Mine.”

“Yeffa.”

“I want to hear you say it,” he snarls and I feel the tide shifts as he returns — this beast that frightened me when we first tried to rut. Only this time, kind Raingar is there holding the leash. I can still feel him curbing his touch, trying not to hurt me. Only this time, I’m ready because my passion matches his just as savagely.

“I’m yours.”

“To rut and to protect.”

“To rut…and to protect,” I gasp as he starts to pound into me more aggressively from this new position, lying on our sides just as we are.

“To hold and to love.”

“To hold and to love.”

“I love you, miriga.”

“I love you, Raingar.”

He reaches between us and his thumb gently brushes my slick, swollen nub. Between that, his words and the wet, sloppy slapping of our bodies…it’s too much. “I’m going to come again, Raingar.”

“Yeffa, you are. Come for me, Essmira,” his tone is a dark order, not to be ignored.

My head tosses back and I cry out to the sky as ripples of release claim me and bind me to this male who’s captured me in his arms. He squeezes me to him and makes a choked sound as he comes again and we spiral together, over and over again until the sky turns black and the colors from the Dark Flats burst even brighter and Raingar drags me onto his chest, pulling a blanket over my back, his spurs and cock still lodged deep in my body and I know that this thing called Xiveri is sated as alien colors leak from my mouth across his polished chest and I am happy. The happiest female in the cosmos.

His fingers tangle in my hair and he whispers, “Do not fall asleep, miriga. I will take you again soon.”

Laughter whispers from my lips across his chest. My eyelids are weighted, even as my core tingles, hot and wet for my male. My mate. My nails scrape over his chest and I coo, “I trust you.”

He rolls onto me in a flourish, and we begin anew.