The Clone’s Mate by Susan Trombley
Thirty
I had to make an impossible decision, and I dreaded it for hours before finally coming to a conclusion. After a long time in the cleansing closet—honestly sort of hiding out while I debated—I gathered up my mates in the mess hall again and gave them my vote.
As I suspected, my vote was the only one that mattered. They immediately agreed to my plan, even though I wanted someone to talk me out of it. I knew that regardless of what decision I’d made, there were innumerable dangers and unknowns. I’d tried to consider everyone in this choice.
I really hoped it was the right one!
Ilyan retired to the cockpit to pilot the ship. Subject 34 stayed in the cafeteria, raiding the ration storage cabinet, and Nirgal, who was clearly exhausted and still recovering from his ordeal, retired to the sleeping bay after our family meeting.
The shuttle, while appearing large on the outside, had very cramped quarters, which I supposed was to be expected. In fact, my tiny cabin was the one designated for the captain of the small vessel. Ilyan explained that it was really only intended for short journeys. That was yet another reason we couldn’t delay making our decision, though I would have preferred to get a whole lot more information about all our options.
The sleeping bay provided the only other sleeping area in the shuttle, and while the room was much larger than my cabin, that was only because sleep pods packed it full, which weren’t much different from the healing tank in their design. There were fifteen of them, though I couldn’t even imagine cramming sixteen people on this shuttle.
I found Nirgal inside one of the pods, his face gaunt, his swelling flesh looking much better than it had when he’d first crawled out of the healing tank. I had intended to speak to him privately, but it was obvious he needed his rest, so after checking his vitals, which were displayed on the side of the pod, I turned to leave the bay.
As I reached the door, I heard the pod’s lid open. When I spun around to face it, Nirgal was sitting up, leaning his forearm on one edge of the pod opening. His beautiful blue eyes regarded me warily, his expression equally as uncertain.
He still looked tired. I wanted to apologize for waking him and urge him to return to sleep, but instead, I returned to the pod. I stroked my fingers over the top of his head, feeling the stubble of hair that covered it.
“I don’t understand why you make me feel this way,” Nirgal said, lifting his hand to draw his fingers along my forearm. He captured my hand in his as I trailed my fingers down his face.
His lips felt warm and soft against my skin as he kissed the back of my hand, inhaling deeply as if my scent pleased him.
“You know, Nirgie, I had the same confusion when I realized I was attracted to you.” I moved closer to the pod, my belly pressing against the hard metal hull of it as I lifted my free hand to curl around the nape of his neck.
His eyes were solemn as they met mine. “The things I’ve done to you are unforgivable, Rhonda.”
I shrugged one shoulder, a smile tilting my lips. “Yeah, probably. Lucky for you, I’m a very forgiving person.”
I bent to press my lips to his, inhaling his scent as hungrily as he’d inhaled mine. He smelled like he was fresh from the cleansing closet, his unique and exotic woodsy odor subtle, though it increased in intensity as my lips caressed his.
Nirgal’s kiss was the most hesitant I’d experienced from any of my alien mates, though his hand captured my nape when I made to pull away, uncertain if he was ready for kissing in his current condition.
“I won’t be good at this,” his breath warmed my tingling lips. “I have no experience with such things and only observations of you and Subject 34 to go on. Watching you kiss is far different from feeling your lips on mine.”
The chemistry I felt with Nirgal meant he could clumsily maul me with his mouth, and I’d still feel my core heat with arousal. I grew wet at the thought of teaching him not only how to kiss, but how to make love.
I had never been with a virgin before being abducted. The few men I’d slept with before Michael had all been experienced lovers. They’d had other women they could compare me to, and I’d always felt self-conscious that they would find me wanting in those comparisons. Had those women been more beautiful, better kissers, more skilled with using their mouths in other ways?
Now, I had three mates who were all mine. Not one of them had been with any other woman but me. There was something very appealing and exciting about that thought.
Not to mention reassuring.
Nirgal’s lips softened the longer I kissed him, tilting my head to press our lips more fully together. My tongue slipped from between my lips to tease along the seam of his. He made a surprised sound, then his lips parted. His tongue met mine and I drew it between my teeth, sucking it in a way that made him moan.
I couldn’t wait to show him how good it would feel to have my mouth on other parts of him. I knew he was well aware of oral sex, since he’d observed me and Subject 34 all this time. I hoped he was anticipating it as much as I was. I did want to take things slow, even though the hunger inside me to climb into the pod and onto his lap was great. He was still recovering, and even if he had been in perfect health, this was all new to him.
Well, he’d seen more than enough, but he’d never done anything like this.
My good intentions evaporated as he tugged open the collar of my suit. His kiss grew more demanding as he parted the front of my suit and slipped his warm hands inside to cup my breasts. It was my turn to moan against his mouth as he caressed my naked and sensitive flesh, teasing the stiff beads of my nipples with his fingers.
“I want to touch you everywhere,” he said between kisses, his breath rasping against my swollen lips, his voice gravelly with his desire. “I want to make you cry out in pleasure and climax as I lick you.”
I never would have expected Nirgal to whisper dirty desires to me, but I wasn’t about to complain. His words and the hunger in his voice had me soaked with my excitement, and I knew he’d figure that out soon as his hand slipped down my stomach beneath the fabric of my jumpsuit, further parting the opening as it sought my mound.
“You naughty space fairy,” I said with a moan as his fingers stroked over my folds, rubbing my clit with unerring accuracy.
He might be a virgin, but he knew what I liked. He’d had plenty of opportunity to observe what brought me pleasure. That should weird me out or make this whole relationship awkward, but my life had long ago past the point of strange, rocketed right through bizarre, and was now on the brink of freaky. I was all for jumping into the freak zone!
“Mm, Rhonda,” he growled when his fingers slid to my entrance, feeling the wetness of my slick. “You’ve been driving me crazy since they pulled you out of cryo!”
His thumb continued to rub my sensitive nub as he slipped a long finger inside me. He didn’t go nearly deep enough for my satisfaction. I wanted him buried inside me, not just his fingers but that beautiful tiger striped dick he had hidden under his jumpsuit.
His mouth consumed me, his kiss growing less uncertain and more skillful as he gained confidence in my responses. I could still tell he wasn’t experienced at it, but I could also tell he was feeling the same sparking chemistry that I did as his lips caressed mine demandingly.
I unhooked the collar of his jumpsuit and pulled it open, then trailed my fingers down his chest, passing them gently over his still healing skin. The fabric of his suit, like mine, parted easily when I drew my hands lower.
He slipped another finger inside me, sliding both of them deeper as his other hand replaced his thumb on my clit.
The size of his shaft surprised me when I circled my hand around it. He was far larger than I’d expected, though even flaccid, his penis had looked sizable. Now I understood why, my fingers not even close to meeting around his girth as he rocked his hips upward into my slow stroke.
He was larger in that area than my other two mates—not that such things mattered to me. Somehow, I hadn’t expected Nerdy Nirgal to be the one with the largest dick of the three. Not only in girth but in length. He would stuff me full, and my inner muscles clenched in anticipation.
“Rhonda,” he said, his voice harsh as I teased the sensitive skin of his shaft. His hand caught my wrist, tugging mine away from him.
I pulled away from him in surprise, worry creeping in that I’d pushed too far, touched him too intimately. Then I met his eyes, and they were nearly black with his arousal. He gripped the side of the sleeping pod and vaulted out of it, proving that he was more agile than I’d expected, despite the torture he’d endured.
He had a predatory look in his eyes that caused me to back away, even as my core clenched in anticipation as his feet landed on the metal paneled floor beside the pod. They were bare, the striping that marked his body extending even to the tops of his feet. I didn’t have much time to examine them, nor the impressive, bobbing erection at his groin before he caught me around the waist and drew me closer to him, his hold firm so I couldn’t escape him.
Now that we were both standing, he was much taller than me, bringing me eye level with the intriguing view of his chest and the stripes that marked it. I lifted a hand to trace one of them, my tongue swiping over my swollen lower lip, already missing his kiss.
“Strip naked for me, human,” he growled as he lowered his head to speak in my ear. “Before I do it for you.”
I shivered at the promise in his voice as I shrugged the jumpsuit off my shoulders. My hands shook with anticipation and nervousness. There was something about Nirgal that put me on a different kind of edge than my other two mates. With each of them, some dynamic existed between us that made our connection unique. In Nirgal’s case, there definitely remained a captive/captor feeling of vulnerability in me when I was around him, even as I eagerly removed my jumpsuit, and he made no move to divest himself of his.
I might have been self-conscious about my body, with all its normal human marks, freckles, moles, stretchmarks, cellulite, and pretty much everything that separated me from the airbrushed models that far too many people believed were really that perfect. The visual evidence of Nirgal’s desire for my body chased away any self-doubts. Besides, this male knew very well what I looked like nude. He hadn’t always been complimentary about my appearance either, so I was glad I could see what I was doing to him now.
His erection jutted from the opening of his suit, and my mouth watered when I glanced down at it. Either he was reading my mind, or he had his own ideas that ran parallel to mine, because he ordered me in a gruff voice to kneel in front of him.
I knew exactly what he wanted from me, and I wanted it too. After falling to my knees, barely noticing the hardness of the floor, I circled my fingers around his shaft. Even though he’d slipped into a role of commanding me, his body trembled, and I felt it radiate through the hard but silky flesh in my hand. When I licked the precum welling from the tip of his shaft, he moaned, his hands bracing him against the side of the sleeping pod.
Then I closed my lips around the head of it and sucked, drawing more of his length inside my mouth, my tongue trailing along the edge of his cockhead. My jaw stretched wide to accommodate his girth, but I was too excited to care, enjoying the sounds of him gasping and moaning as he clutched the side of the pod.
I took him in my mouth as deep as possible, using my hand to stroke his shaft in unison with my mouth pulling on the sensitive tip and what little more of him I could fit in my hungry mouth.
He tasted savory, his precum closer to a human male’s than Subject 34’s in flavor and consistency, but that wasn’t really what this was about. I wasn’t feeding from Nirgal, any more than I would from Ilyan. I wanted to give him pleasure, and based on the sounds he made, I was succeeding.
As I knelt naked on the floor in front of him, my thighs grew even more slippery from the slick that soaked my entrance. I was so aroused that I rubbed my own clit as I sucked on Nirgal, loving the way his hips rocked in tune to the strokes of my mouth on him. The clawed appendages that were normally coiled at the base of his spine extended from the opening in his suit, their tips trailing over my naked shoulders. The segmented lengths moved farther downwards, exploring my body as I pleasured Nirgal with my mouth.
When his hand fisted in my hair as he cried out a guttural command to stop, the claws of his appendages dented the soft flesh of my breasts.
“You do that too well,” he said breathlessly, his grip still firm in my hair as I slowly dragged my lips from his length, giving him one last lick on the head of his shaft. “I feel like I’m on the edge of a climax, and I want to be inside you when I come for the first time.”
It registered for me that he’d never even had an orgasm before, as crazy as that seemed. It reminded me that my mates weren’t human, as if the tiger-striped iridescent orange skin, clawed appendages, and glass-like dragonfly wings weren’t enough.
I rose to my feet without needing him to tell me to, and he freed my hair and slid his hands down my body. He caressed my curves as if he couldn’t get enough of them, grabbing a good handful of generous flesh on both my buttocks to pull me against him, rubbing my belly against his hard length pinned between us. The clawed appendages snaked over my body, vibrating like crazy, the barbs extending and scraping my soft, naked flesh roughly. Instead of hurting me, the feeling stimulated me, my nipples hardening until they were almost painfully tight.
Nirgal didn’t explore my naked body long before he suddenly turned us around so I was leaning against the sleeping pod. I realized very quickly that I would need the support, because he kissed his way down my body, pausing only briefly to suckle each of my aching nipples before trailing his mouth lower. When his lips closed around my clit, my knees grew so weak that I practically laid on the side of the pod to support myself.
Two of his fingers slid inside my slick entrance and he fingered me as his tongue swiped over my throbbing clit, dragging slowly and teasingly at first, then speeding up as my cries and pleas grew more desperate. When I came, I had to clutch his shoulders, my entire body shuddering with the force of my orgasm. He made a satisfied sound as my inner muscles clenched around his fingers, lifting his head from my mound as he licked his lips. His dark, nearly black eyes met mine as he rose to his feet.
I clutched his shoulders as he withdrew his fingers from me to encircle his girth. He positioned it at my entrance, then slowly pushed it in, my inner muscles still squeezing in the last convulsions of my orgasm.
He was so large that at first my body tightened around him, resisting his penetration as I had a sudden moment of panic. All of my mates were larger than anyone I had ever been with before, but Nirgal was the biggest, and I suddenly worried I couldn’t handle all of him.
Then I saw the rapturous expression on his face, his eyes so dilated that only a mere sliver of a blue halo remained. The tightness in his jaw, the near grimace on his lips as he tried to hold back his own orgasm, and the tension in his body as he drove himself deeper inside me turned me on so much that I let go of any fear that held him at bay.
Suddenly, he slipped fully inside me, stretching me wide and settling so deep and close to my womb that I could feel the tip of him brushing it almost uncomfortably.
Even in a standing position, he filled me completely when he was buried to the hilt. My eyes rolled back in my head when he began to pump his hips, rapidly picking up the pace as if he’d lost the last of his control.
He pulled me close to his chest, burying his nose in my hair as he thrust into me, driving my legs wider and wider apart as he pushed as deep as he could go without me tensing up and pulling back when he struck a little too deep. The sleeping pod supported me from the back, and he held me close from the front, pinning me to it as he claimed me completely.
It didn’t take long for him to come at the rate he was going, and his whole body stiffened as he climaxed. A loud moan left him as his hot seed shot into me, bathing my womb. As he thrust into me a few more times while his shaft throbbed inside me with each spurt, I had a brief moment of panic about pregnancy, then brushed it aside, too wrapped up in the moment to worry.
After all, Nirgal was a scientist. Surely, he would be more cautious if he hadn’t made certain he couldn’t get me pregnant.
Could an alien even get a human woman pregnant? It didn’t seem likely, and I had already decided that they couldn’t after Ilyan had spent inside me. Because, again, they’re scientists. They wouldn’t risk getting a human woman pregnant when she was in her forties and lost in space.
All those kinds of concerns slipped away from me as he cradled me close, slowly pulling out of me, his seed leaking from me to drip down my thighs.
“One of these days, I’m going to have sex in a bed.” I snuggled into Nirgal’s chest, smoothing my hands over the bare skin I could touch through the gap in his jumpsuit.
“I imagined what this would be like,” he murmured, his breath hot against my scalp. “To be inside you, claiming you as my queen. Sometimes, I would even be envious of Subject 34 when I was supposed to be observing you both from a clinical perspective.”
His body tensed against me, and I tried to lift my head, but he clearly wasn’t ready to release me, so I relaxed in his embrace again.
“I didn’t understand why those thoughts would even occur to me, especially as you made every effort to infuriate me.” His tone sounded wry, though I still detected the gruffness of his arousal tinging it. “I know what a ‘douche’ is now, by the way. I could have gone my whole life without knowing that bit of information. Even a powerful craving for knowledge has its limits.”
I grinned against his chest, planting a kiss on the naked striped skin peeking from the gap in his jumpsuit. “Did it work? Did I make you mad enough to break your tablet?”
He chuckled. “I only snapped one, and I had a backup. But it wasn’t your insults that caused me to do so.”
I lifted my head to meet his eyes. They weren’t dilated any longer, but they were still darker than the brilliant and icy blue I’d grown familiar with. Now they were a sparkling sapphire that was stunning against his orange skin tone.
“What made you break your precious tablet?” I grinned again, thinking about how much I’d wanted to snatch it from him, just to see him freak out.
Apparently, he could live without it though, so maybe it didn’t mean all that much to him. Or maybe he’d just abandoned that part of his life completely and no longer needed the object that had leashed him to his former masters.
His slight smile faded, and a dark scowl replaced it, driving his brows together and pulling his lips back. Even as I watched, his beautiful eyes took on an icier blue cast. “I broke it when Tilhur told me they planned to force Subject 34 to kill you and consume you just to see how he would react when the deed was done.”
I gasped and pulled away from him, not because I was angry at him, but simply out of horror. “They what?”
That had been exactly what Tilhur had intended to do to me when he and his robots had entered the enclosure, so I shouldn’t have been surprised by this revelation. It still shook me, reminding me how much I was at their mercy when it was easy to forget that fact now that I felt safe in the arms of my three mates.
Nirgal regarded me with a stark expression, the anger still present in his tight features and the tension in his body. “The suggestion shocked and enraged me, though I should have expected it. Tilhur claimed that I was losing perspective, and he was right. I could no longer ignore the atrocities we’d committed.”
His scowl deepened into a frightful expression, his eyes glittering with a coldness I remembered well. “I would not condone another one.” His gaze softened as he stroked his fingers over my swollen lips. “Least of all, such an atrocity against you, Rhonda.”
“I’m glad you tried to stop them, Nirgal.”
His lips twisted bitterly. “Tried. But I failed. Tilhur realized I would betray the empire after his suggestion and had me watched so that they detained me the moment I made a move against our mission.” He pushed my hair away from my face with both hands, cradling it as if I were precious to him—far more so than that stupid tablet had been. “I think he made the suggestion because he knew it would force me to act against them.”
“I’m sorry you got captured and tortured for my sake.” I kissed him softly.
“For your sake, I’d endure it all again without hesitation,” he whispered against my lips.
