The Clone’s Mate by Susan Trombley
Twenty-Five
I sought out Ilyan, briefly exploring the shuttle, which wasn’t very large at all. There was a captain’s cabin, I guess, though Ilyan hadn’t used it. Based on the condition of the cockpit—or bridge, or whatever the heck it was officially called—he’d slept in there, the shuttle on autopilot while he no doubt waited for me to make a decision about where to go.
I entered the control room with 34 on my heels, his body strong like an iron giant behind me, ready to sting the hell out of Ilyan if he caused me any problems. Honestly, sometimes his protectiveness made me nervous for other people rather than myself. After all, 34 had already technically killed Ilyan once.
Maybe he was right that even Evil Ilyan wasn’t crazy enough to risk Subject 34’s anger again.
Speaking of Evil Ilyan, he appeared to still be in control, based on the chilly glare he leveled on me as he turned in his captain’s chair to regard me.
“I want to speak to Ilyan,” I said without ceremony, crossing my arms over my chest to hide their shaking.
Subject 34’s lower hands slipped around my waist, holding onto me as if he was supporting me. I felt a rush of gratitude and warmth towards him. I’d discussed this whole thing with him for probably far longer than I needed to, before coming into this cockpit, but I’d been talking it out for myself, since Subject 34’s only responses were for me to do whatever I chose. He just wanted me to be happy.
“He isn’t interested in resurfacing,” Evil Ilyan said in an annoyed tone.
“Let him out!” I snapped, nervousness rather than impatience sharpening my tone.
“I wish I could!” he suddenly snarled, leaning forward in his seat, then freezing as 34’s stingers rose on either side of me in a threatening display.
He slowly sank back against the seat, and I noticed with surprise that his shriveled wings had grown and smoothed out until they looked to be back to their full length. They extended on either side of the thin seat back, gleaming in the bright lighting like glass sculptures of dragonfly wings.
“I told you he had a stronger will than I do,” he said sullenly, his cold glare never leaving my face though he was clearly well aware of the danger of those hovering stingers. “He doesn’t let me just drag him out of dormancy whenever I’m tired of dealing with this miserable existence.”
I lowered my arms to my sides, feeling an unexpected rush of sympathy for Evil Ilyan. “I’m sorry. I just assumed….”
“That I was the bad guy?” he asked in a wry tone. “I suppose in a narrow-minded binary view of morality, I would be considered that, but much to my own frustration, the ‘good guy’ is far stronger than I am. He keeps winning, regardless of what battles we fight.”
“Why won’t he come out of hiding?” I slipped out of Subject 34’s hold and settled in the smaller seat next to Evil Ilyan.
The green guy sneered, his upper lip pulling back from beautiful, perfectly straight teeth that showed none of the ravages of his captivity and depravation that remained evident in his gaunt face and too thin body. “He is a coward. Why else?”
I blinked in surprise at the vitriol in his tone. “You hate him, don’t you?”
Evil Ilyan shrugged. “He could have killed us when he had the chance. He could have ended us both so we never fractured. Instead, he changed his mind, still thinking he had a chance to salvage something out of his ruined life.” He made a low growling sound, his sneer turning into a full, dark scowl that cast shadows in his gem-like eyes. “I think some part of him believed he could find a way to make that woman accept him as a mate, if only he was clever enough.”
I’ll admit, I felt a little jealous. I had no right to, and clearly, things had not worked out for Ilyan in that department. Still, I felt the little bite from the green-eyed monster—who was not the one sitting beside me.
“Was she that amazing, then?”
He looked at me like I’d suddenly grown two heads. Two really disgusting heads covered with pus-filled pimples. “She meant nothing to him until the moment he imprinted on her. Make no mistake about how our biology usually works, woman. If he hadn’t caught her scent and felt the affliction take hold, he would not have felt any attraction to her at all.”
“But he’s cured from that, right? Why does he feel attraction to me?” The more I learned about this “imprinting” stuff, the more confused I felt.
I mean, I’d read my fair share of paranormal romances. I knew a lot of them had heroes who imprinted on their fated mates. I loved that kind of thing, but in the romances, it always worked out great. The heroines always ended up with the heroes in a lovely “happily ever after,” which I couldn’t get enough of in my fiction.
It didn’t seem to always work that way for the Iriduans, and I realized that things could get really messy for them if the heroines didn’t imprint the same way on them and ended up moving on with someone else. Yikes! When I really thought it over, I realized it could be terrible. Maybe terrible enough to tear a man’s soul in two.
Evil Ilyan waved a languid hand as if my words were an annoying insect. “Ilyan seems to think the cure itself does not change the strength of our emotional bond to our queens. If something attracts us to a female, be it a scent, or something else about her, we’ll develop a strong emotional attachment that is comparable to the physical imprinting. In essence, our brains are hard-wired for imprinting, no doubt to complement our body’s biological requirement for the female that afflicted us.”
I leaned forward in my own seat, my mind racing as I thought about his words. “But you said Ilyan had already imprinted on another woman. If his emotional attachment to her was so strong, why would he want to be with me?”
“Because he never emotionally bonded with that other female,” Evil Ilyan said as if the answer was obvious. “The cure would probably fail to be completely effective for a male who had already formed an emotional attachment to his queen. He would no longer die from deprivation, but he would crave her for the remainder of his life. Mind you, all of this is Ilyan’s supposition, not my own. He spent a lot of time in captivity pondering this but did not have the luxury of studying it personally, since he was a test subject rather than a researcher when he was exposed to the cure.”
“Okay, if that’s what Ilyan thinks, what do you think?”
He seemed surprised that I cared about his opinion. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open as he sat back in his seat. Then his brows lowered again, his scowl reforming.
“I think,” he said in a sarcastic tone, “that Iriduans put too much emphasis on imprinting to explain their strong emotions for their queens. My species has forgotten that we also feel affection and love just as our ‘cousins’ do. Not everything is a result of our biological imperative.”
The tone he used was combative, even condescending, but after pondering his words, I suspected it was intended to distract me from what he was actually saying.
Evil Ilyan believed in love, while “Good” Ilyan thought everything he felt was a result of a genetic imperative. “You think Ilyan fell in love with me?”
“Don’t get it twisted, human,” Evil Ilyan snarled, waving a hand in front of him as if slapping away my question. “Even if he did, it won’t be like all your human fantasies. We are not like humans, though our two species share a common ancestor. The emotions we feel manifest differently. Some of us would say more intensely than those of most humans we’ve studied.”
I sat back in my chair, crossing my arms again. I shot a quick glance at Subject 34, who had moved out of the doorway, allowing it to slide closed and now stood close to me, though his stingers were tucked away again.
“As human as I am, I feel love very intensely, thank you very much!” I said, returning my gaze to Evil Ilyan. “I love Subject 34 on a visceral level that I’ve never felt before. I would do anything to be with him.”
“How lucky for him.” Evil Ilyan’s voice dripped with sarcasm, his eyes narrow, his scowl deepening.
I leaned forward in my seat again, my hands resting flat on my knees. “You can shove your sarcastic remarks where the sun doesn’t shine, Evil Ilyan, because I happen to care a lot about Ilyan too!” I poked a finger in the direction of the door leading out into the corridor. “And I’m sick with worry about that damned scientist lying in the healing tank who I risked my own freedom and 34’s to rescue, so don’t you give me that tone and act as if your species is somehow so superior to my own when it comes to love!”
I didn’t quite realize my words as they spilled out of my mouth until Evil Ilyan’s eyes widened, then he tensed. His lids closed tight, his expression shifting to one of complete impassivity. I watched with a feeling of morbid curiosity as different emotions flicked across his handsome face. His tense body sagged a handful of seconds later, but the transformation of his features was so profound and unnerving that I felt like it had taken much longer.
“That’s eerie,” I admitted aloud when Ilyan opened his eyes again.
They weren’t much softer than Evil Ilyan’s, to be entirely honest. For the “good guy,” I got the feeling Ilyan wasn’t exactly the knight-in-shining-armor type. I would say “calculating and superior” rather than “virtuous and honorable.” I began to wonder if there was a truly “good” version of Ilyan.
Of course, there wasn’t a truly “good” version of Subject 34 either, and I still loved the hell out of him. I chuckled at the thought. Maybe in a way, I was loving the “hell” out of him. After all, he was less inclined to kill when I asked him not to, and he did that because he was devoted to me.
I pondered Ilyan speculatively, wondering if I could do the same to him, even as my nervousness ratcheted up more in his presence.
There was a definite, noticeable difference between him and his fracture. I’d picked up on it before, but now, it was much more obvious without the walls of our cages between us. It was almost like his scent itself changed along with his body language and demeanor.
“You needn’t stare at me like that,” Ilyan snapped, his brows pulling together in irritation at what he must have seen on my expression. “It’s impolite.”
“Do you… remember anything we just talked about?” I asked carefully.
Ilyan’s chin lifted, and I noted that he had a more arrogant demeanor than his fracture. “Of course not! A fracture is a serious nuisance. I have no recollection of what it does or says when it is in control. Fortunately, it rarely is.”
I smirked even though his condescending tone rubbed over my nerves. Maybe I felt like I needed to take him down a peg or two. “Rarely… except when you duck into hiding like a coward.”
That one stung him, and I didn’t need his pained gasp or reflexive flinch to recognize it. The expression that flicked over his features made me feel like a total asshole.
He could have killed us when he had the chance….
I should have considered my thoughtless words before I let my irritation speak for me. No doubt he already felt like he was a coward, and I only rubbed salt in the wound. His fracture certainly felt that way about him.
This whole conversation wasn’t going well.
I raised both hands. “I’m sorry, Ilyan. I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t think that you’re—”
“I am,” he said in a dull voice. “I continue to fail because I am a coward.”
“Hey!” I said, leaving my seat to kneel in front of his. “Don’t say stuff like that!”
He shied back when I leaned towards him, a panicked expression on his face as I rested my hands on his knees without thinking.
They were covered by the fabric of his sleek jumpsuit, but I still felt the warmth of his skin beneath my palms. I gasped and pulled my hands behind my back, my cheeks burning with a blush.
“Sorry! I shouldn’t have touched you. I didn’t mean anything by it.” My words babbled out of me in my embarrassment.
“It meant nothing then?” he asked, and I couldn’t tell what he felt from his neutral tone, though his eyes still looked a little wild.
“I mean,” I stammered over the words, “I actually came in here to tell you that I would like… that I want….”
I glanced over at Subject 34 for support. He stood immobile and impassive by my chair, though his expression appeared watchful and alert for any threats from Ilyan.
When I turned my head back to face Ilyan, he lowered his head and kissed me, catching me by surprise at his fast movement.
I had no thought other than that his lips were warm and firm, and he smelled really good. Not mind-altering, Subject 34-aroused-pheromone good, but still, he smelled like delicious-man kind of good. The kind you just wanted to bury your nose in and inhale deep. The kind of scent that clung to a man’s shirt and made you want to use it for your pillowcase so you always had sweet—and sexy—dreams.
His kiss was clumsy, and I wondered if it was his first. There was something charming about that thought that made me catch him by the nape when he made to pull away. I deepened the kiss, my lips parting so my tongue slid along the seam of his mouth.
He gasped in surprise, and I delved my tongue past his parted lips, enjoying the moan that escaped him. He tasted as good as he looked, and at first his tongue was hesitant with his uncertainty, but he learned quickly, soon mimicking my movements, his head tilting to deepen our kiss.
It felt surreal to be in this position. I remained aware of Subject 34 still being in the room, my love for him as strong as ever, yet I was also swept up in the feeling and scent of this other alien male, feeling the bond between us strengthen with each hungry tangle of our tongues.
The guilt and shame I’d worried I’d feel with kissing another male didn’t manifest. Instead, I felt the rush of arousal dampening my core, making my jumpsuit wet between my legs as I thought about his tongue stroking other parts of me the way it was now stroking inside my mouth. The more confident he grew with his kissing, the more demanding he became. His hands slid over my arms, tugging me up out of my kneeling crouch.
I climbed onto his lap, my mound bumping the erection that bulged at his groin. He moaned into my mouth, his hands clutching my arms as he rocked his hips upward to drag his length over my sensitive clit.
This tore an answering moan from me that had him burying his fingers in my hair and pulling me more firmly down on his lap. I rocked my pelvis so my clit rubbed against that firm ridge until both of us were shivering on the brink of a climax. The fact that we remained fully clothed was the only irritation I felt in that moment. I wanted him inside me so badly.
Apparently, he felt the same because he released the fistfuls of my hair that he’d grabbed to pull apart the front seam of his jumpsuit. As soon as I realized what he was doing, my hands shifted from the nape of his neck to slide down his bared chest, skating over the thin pectorals and almost concave abdominals.
His lower back arched as my fingers curled around the smooth length of his shaft, the warmth of it so intense that it almost felt like it burned my palm as I slowly stroked it. As I teased his erection, wrapping both hands around the sizable length of it, his hands worked on parting the seam of my jumpsuit.
He broke our kiss to lower his head to my nipple as soon as he freed my breasts from the fabric of the jumpsuit. I moaned in pleasure, each suckle on my hard bead pulling like it was directly attached to my eager core.
His hand cupped my other breast, while his free hand trailed down my stomach to delve between my folds. I bucked when he brushed his fingers over my clit, and he focused on that spot, allowing me to rock my hips to set the rhythm that had me coming far too soon.
He jerked the jumpsuit off my shoulders and halfway down my arms until there was enough slack in the material for him to free my soaking slit. I felt bound by the strong material, my upper arms pinned to my sides as he lifted my thighs, parting them a little further over his lap. His head lifted from my swollen, throbbing nipple as he stared down at our laps.
I stroked my fingers through his long, silky hair, tracing the pointed line of his ear as he encircled his hand around his own shaft and positioned the head of it at my slippery entrance. His other hand caught a generous handful of my buttock and pulled me closer to him as he penetrated me. The feeling of him sliding deep, thrusting into me made me cry out in pleasure.
He groaned, his head falling back on the seat of his chair, his eyes closed, his perfect jaw tight, a muscle ticking against the verdant skin of his jawline. When his eyes opened to look into mine, his pupils had dilated until only a thin halo of green surrounded them.
He buried his hand in my hair again, tugging my lips to his as he slowly drove deeper inside me until he was fully seated. As his mouth claimed mine, he used his free hand on my hip to urge me to ride his shaft.
A part of me remained aware of Subject 34 nearby, watching everything with no sounds that might have given me pause or made me feel uncomfortable. It was more like he was guarding me but letting me do this thing with another male. Again, where I’d expected to feel guilt or shame, I only felt gratitude towards him. Despite being in the room, he wasn’t making things weird or awkward for my first time with Ilyan.
I wasn’t sure if this was Ilyan’s first time with anyone. Based on his kiss, I’d thought it might be, but he certainly seemed to know how to use his body—and how to touch mine to bring me pleasure.
Still, for all his apparent knowledge, his excitement drove him to pump up into me hard even as I rode his lap, his thick length impaling me deep with each movement. His mouth consumed me, capturing every moan and soft cry that left my lips, even as his sounds of pleasure teased mine.
Then I felt something brushing my clit that wasn’t either of his hands. I made to lift my head from his lips to see what it was, but he held me firm by his fist in my hair. Whatever it was that brushed my clit pushed more firmly against it, then began to vibrate.
I rocked my hips forward with him deep inside me, the vibration against my clit and the feeling of his shaft rubbing against my g-spot sending me quickly to my peak. When my inner muscles convulsed around him as I toppled over it, he pumped harder into me. It wasn’t long before the hot burst of his seed bathed my womb, his shaft jumping with each pump as it shot inside me.
I slumped against his body in the aftermath, feeling his ejaculate slip out of me as he slowly withdrew. His hands stroked my naked back in a soothing manner that I suspected was uncharacteristic of him. His body sat languid against mine, his muscles relaxed in his seat.
“That was—”
He made a muffled sound of outrage as I clapped my hand over his mouth, lifting my head to meet his glittering green eyes.
“Don’t talk, Ilyan,” I said gently, shifting my palm off his mouth to trace his lips, which were pulled into an irritated scowl. “I’m not sure what you were intending to say, but I got a bad feeling about it, so I’d like this nice afterglow to last.”
His brows pulled together in anger, and I couldn’t resist. At least he didn’t sting me when I used my fingertip to smooth the lines between them, but his scowl only deepened.
“You don’t know what I was going to say,” Ilyan snapped, gripping me by the wrist and pulling my hand away from his face. “You’re making assumptions about me based on little evidence.”
I sighed, pulling away from him to slide off his lap, straightening my jumpsuit as I went. “Okay, you’re right. What were you going to say?”
He straightened in his seat, his hard green gaze narrowing. “I was about to say, ‘that was a disappointment’,” he snarled, then spun his chair around so that its back faced me.
