Page 17 of Taken to Nobu
Sorrow. I feel shame but I do not show it.Have I failed her in some way?The sibilant hiss of a serpent could not sway me more into disbelieving in myself. I am Kinan. I am a weak boy who watched the Okkari before me slain.
“You are dismissed.”
They bow and I watch them until they disappear down the hall, taking calming breaths. They have little impact. When I turn towards the door, I am a cacophony of emotion unbecoming for a warrior and even less honorable for a leader of this federation. I feel helpless and weak in the face of a threat to my union that I do not know how to fix. I will need to be straightforward and confront her.
Clenching my jaw, I start forward, the sensors opening the door before me. The room is not large, but intimate. A cave with ioni slithering across the walls. As such, my eyes are drawn to her instantly and the threats of inadequacy I felt before are reinforced.
I have never seen anything more lovely and I feel but a pion, worshipping at an altar. Drawn forward by her to her, I wade into the space, sucked into the cavern of her gaze, which is harsh and unyielding. A warrior yes, but there is also something vulnerable in her human expression as she sees me. I wish I knew more about these humans and how to interpret their facial cues and ticks.
Her full mouth pillows fall open and she releases a small exhale that sounds like pleasure.But perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps this is the dismay Kuaku spoke of.Meanwhile, the sight of her is enough to make me shake. Entirely bare now and free of the mire she fought through, her skin shimmers. She is ioni, brought to life.
A dark jewel harvested from the depths of Nobu’s deepest oceans, calling it brown would not be doing it justice, for the outer shell may be made of eons’-compressed earth, but the inner contains small mites that burrow down beneath the layers of compressed screa sediment.
Inside, they glow, becoming brighter and brighter in color until the dark brown becomes amber and then gold before they burst. The mites, fat from the minerals contained in the stone, move on to the next until they too dissolve to dust, made brilliant by their own glutton, but also ruined by it.
My Xhea’s gaze rakes over my own body, traveling from face across my chest and abdomen to the covering I wear over my xora. I remove it and she gasps again. In pleasure? Or in dismay. I do not know and not knowing wrecks me, but as honor dictates, I allow her to look upon her Xiveri mate unencumbered by clothing, just as I look upon her.
My xora is stiff and unyielding, small tendrils of color illuminating it that I can no longer control. I am a calculating male, yet I am nothing but raw emotion before her. Deep indigo desire, blue pleasure, canary uncertainty, a darker shame. Her eyes are round again and she stares at my member unflinchingly. She seems uncertain.Perhaps dismay then.
I move forward and take the seat placed before hers at the small wooden table, medical equipment dutifully laid across it by the hasheba. They were correct in their assessment. As I take her right forearm and begin applying salve, I can already see that her cuts have begun to heal.
As I work, I feel her fidget. Her thighs clench together, knees hugging one another so tightly I cannot help but wonder if she does this to assuage the need coursing through her, or if she attempts to conceal herself from my gaze. I glance again to the thatch of hair between her thighs and inhale the faint scent of her arousal before looking to her face.
She starts and looks away quickly and I feel myself heat.Dismayed. Dismayed with her Xiveri mate. “We will not breed on this solar,” I say before I can sensor myself.
She jerks at the sound of my voice, flinching back. I wonder if she does not attempt to retract her arm from my grasp or if it is merely an involuntary response. I cannot be certain.I am certain of nothing.
“What? Why not?”
I am startled by the sound of her voice. It is so pleasing. Deep for a female, and throaty. I glance at her mouth and a scandalous vision assaults me.Her mouth on my xora, sucking it into her as she stares up at me, wet gaze full of wanting. Full with a desire to please me.
“I have been informed that my performance in the Run on the Mountain was not to your satisfaction. I will need to first inform myself of how to please a human female before I again attempt to breed you. If I feel pleasure, then so too should you. And Ididfeel pleasure.” I meet her gaze and press my meaning onto her, willing her to see this truth. “My first rutting with you was paradise.”
As I wrap another layer of gauze around her right forearm, she stares at me unseeingly, as if caught in a dream. Her lips mouth a single word, too quiet even to be considered a whisper. “Paradise.”
Clearing my throat, I speak when she does not. “I will leave you then, unless you would debase yourself by informing me how you would like to receive pleasure in the human way, and describing to me how human males are able to deliver it to their females.” The request is both selfish and humiliating, but it is what will allow me to expedite this process and remain close to her.
She blinks quickly and glances down at her bandaged forearms, then shakes her head. “Yes. I…I mean no.”Dismayed again. “No, I liked the mountain. I mean, being with you up there. And we need to do this now. I mean, don’t we? For the zah-nah-zah-nah?”
I cannot help but be pleased by the human lilt she gives our language, unable to make the clicking sounds herself.She will need to learn. But there is time for that. For now, I would like to take my time with her.
“I do not wish to displease you and I am aware that my anatomy differs greatly to that of a human male’s.”
“No, we need to do this now,” she says with some force. Her gaze is shifty. She shakes her head again. I wonder if it is the Xanaxana again confusing her. If so, I need to know the truth. I will not allow her to be blinded by it.
Leaning forward on my stool, I cup her chin with one of my hands. I see her chest inflate as she breathes a little harder, a little faster. I can smell the scent of her miaba arousal, thickening in the air. “You will tell me why you told Kuaku that you did not enjoy our first mating. You will tell me why you asked the hasheba to call you human, Kiki.”
She starts at the sound of her own name, the small black dot in the center of her eyes widening until it consumes almost all of the color. “I didn’t. I mean, I didn’t tell her that I didn’t enjoy the mating.” She licks her lips. “And I don’t understand the titles. We don’t use them back home.”
I am interested in what she says. Far too interested. And yet, something tugs at me.Something is wrong again.It is the last thing she said.Home. I am her home now just as she is mine, yet she still speaks of another place. Of her human colony.
“You will tell me why Kuaku led me to believe you were dissatisfied.”
“Probably because she’s in love with you,” she says and I realize there is so much I do not understand about humans because immediately afterwards, she looks frustrated that she has said this. I will need to speak with the human-Voraxian advisor, Svera, and learn more. Quickly.
“What is love?” I ask a question, something an Okkari does not do.
“What do you mean?”
