Page 56 of Diamond

I let out a long breath, my shaking starting to subside. He's right. It was what had to be done.

There's a braid next to my hand and I shift so I can hold on to it, using it to help ground my mind, much calmer by the time he speaks again.

His body is stiff now. "I held you like a brother comforts another. It is a loss of honor," he tells me as he starts to move me off him.

"What?" I protest. "No, it was exactly what I needed. You didn't lose any honor. I thought we had moved past that."

He doesn't listen, just keeps moving us until he can place me on my feet. Then he takes a step back and my heart drops. I don't understand him, but I'm still too rattled to try to work through where I lost the thread of what was going on.

He didn't do anything wrong.

I shake my head, wishing for the comfort of human companionship and things making sense.

Instead, I watch a glowing alien rummage around the pack of another alien I just killed. Or he killed. We killed.Ya Allah, this place is going to drive me insane.

My mind is still scattered when I follow him back to Roshan and the cave, this time at a near run, though, unlike Tehlmar, he is careful not to outpace me.

When we get back to Roshan, I breathe a sigh of relief that he is unharmed. He initially runs to greet me, but shies away when I hold out a blood-soaked hand.

It makes my stomach roil again and I head straight toward the stream, no longer caring about modesty. I lie down in it and tell my suit to recede, then frantically rub my hands all over my body, desperate to get the green blood off.

Once again, I feel Kuret's hands on me, this time pulling my own away from my face and positioning himself over me so he can hold up my head with one hand and use the other hand to gently wash my face and hair.

The stream is just deep enough that I can mostly submerge myself and I spend another few minutes rubbing my hands together as he finishes washing my hair. Finally, reason comes back, and I realize that I'm naked and he's stripped himself down to just some rough woven not-quite-pants, which are currently getting soaked so he can help me.

The pants are odd, not covering the outside of each thigh so I can see the thrumming patterns, and I'm distracted by the leather lacing down his calves that lead to his bare feet. Now that his boots are off, I can see why they are domed in the front. He has thick black claws on them.

He's barely clothed and I just stripped myself naked. I might be bold, but such a sudden loss of modesty is too much, even considering my plans to get him to take my virginity.

With a hiss, I rise from the water, the suit covering me as I do it, then turn to him. My mind is panicked over what he will think of me now, even as I tell myself I'm being ridiculous. I had already thrown away all the rules.

29

Kuret

Her eyes are wide, their dark coloring a beautiful contrast to her white hair, which is very distracting.

I realize I have been kneeling here staring at her, not saying a word since she scrambled out of the water, so I clear my throat and avert my eyes from hers. The only thing I seem to excel at with her is making her uncomfortable.

Her brown-pink lips are pursed, and her eyes look a lot larger from this angle.

It causes an inconvenient stirring in my loins that makes me swallow thickly. I should not be thinking like this about a woman I am supposed to protect. I have tried to keep these intrusive thoughts out of my head, but all my efforts have been in vain.

She consumes my thoughts.

"We should keep moving."

Luckily, she doesn't argue, but I don't move yet, feeling weighed down in the water.

As much as I tried to not look, the memory of her naked body is seared into my mind. As I suspected, she has none of the hard planes and defined muscle of my species but is instead large stretches of soft flesh. Just waiting for me to press myself into it.

Then there was the patch of white hair at the juncture of her brown thighs, letting even someone as clueless as I know where to pleasure her. Males talk, and I have ears. One of their favorite topics late at night is how different it is to pleasure a female, compared to the pairings many of us have formed with each other.

I hadn't yet found my pairing among the males, though many assumed it would be with Samke. He was just a brother, though, and this… this is something far, far different. Something, if not forbidden, at least unattainable.

She said she liked when I touched her, though. I long to do so again. And again, and never stop. But it isn't right.

I make myself turn to the task of cleaning my own body, aware that she is still looking at me. Still standing there with that look on her face that I don't know how to interpret. Except that it seems like she can't decide about something.

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