THIRTEEN
“THAT WAS SO good,” Taylor said, sighing contently. Her belly was full of delicious, freshly caught seafood, she was warm and dry, and once she allowed herself permission to lighten up, to not overthink everything when it came to Vikan, she was enjoying herself with him. Immensely.
“More?” he asked her, plucking a section of the hearty white fish-like meat from one of creatures he’d brought back with him. He presented it to her and he purred when she obliged him, letting him feed her.
Surprisingly, Taylor didn’t mind it. With anyone else, she would’ve balked at the thought of a man, boyfriend or not, feeding her. But with Vikan, it felt…natural. And it seemed to please him so much, to be able to provide for her, that Taylor found herself even liking it, enjoying his reactions and the way he looked at her with masculine satisfaction after every bite.
That time, however, she couldn’t help but let the edges of her tongue graze his fingers, swiping at the delicious flavors and savoring them.
Vikan stilled and growled. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his erect cock pulse, the movement so obvious, so telling of his arousal.
“I’m full now,” she murmured, holding his gaze. “Thank you for dinner.”
It had been a feast. At first, she’d been hesitant to try the odd, strange looking creatures he’d caught right off the shore, but she was glad she did. The textures hadn’t been unlike flaky fish and chewy clams and the flavors had been fresh and delicious.
“It was my honor, female,” he purred to her.
Taylor smiled. “You really liked feeding me, huh?”
“Tev,” he rasped. Then he explained, “It is an intimacy shared between mates on Luxiria.”
Her cheeks flushed. She hadn’t blushed so much in her entire life than in the past few days. “Oh.”
She watched him finish the rest of the food quickly, wondering how much he usually ate. To fuel that body, those muscles, he had to eat an enormous amount.
“So,” she started, “you said that Luxirians are warriors. What does that mean exactly?”
She wanted to know more about him, beyond what she knew about him in her dreams. Because, whether she’d chosen it or not, she’d ended up on this alien planet and she realized she knew next to nothing about it, about his race.
He dragged her closer to him, unashamed, and Taylor let him, enjoying his heat and attention.
“We aid our allies and the Uranian Federation in times of war,” he told her. “Luxirians are known across the Quadrants as the best warriors. We train from a young age, dedicate the entirety of our life spans to honing our strength and skills.”
“So you actually fight in wars,” she murmured, furrowing her brow. Why did the thought of him doing that make dread pool in her stomach? “In battles?”
“Tev,” he said. “We are summoned when needed. But I am an Ambassador now and there are other warriors that would be called upon first.”
“An Ambassador?”
“One of Vaxa’an’s Ambassadors. There are five of us. We run and oversee the outposts spread across Luxiria. My outpost is Lopixa, in the western lands. These lands,” he said, “are my responsibility.”
Her lips parted. “It is actually your outpost? I thought you just meant you lived there.”
“I do live there,” he told her, his arm tightening around her waist, nuzzling the side of his head into her own. A few days ago, Taylor would’ve never guessed how affectionate he could be. He’d seemed so…cold to her before.
Now? She could never use that word to describe him.
“Vaxa’an made me Ambassador of Lopixa shortly after Nitav died,” he admitted to her. “I have grown to love it and it is the only home I could ever imagine. I hope to show it to you, in its entirety.”
“Maybe you will,” she said softly, after a moment. “But I suppose I’ve already seen some of it.”
In her dreams, at least.
He grunted. “Tev, that is true.”
“It must be a lot of work,” she commented. “Running an outpost, I mean.”
“When I do not need to travel back and forth from the Golden City to Lopixa, it is manageable. It is a peaceful outpost. We train a section of young warriors there, but we also import food and fire fuel to the other outposts and to the Golden City.”
“Consider me impressed,” she teased lightly.
He huffed out a breath, sounding amused. Then he murmured against the shell of her ear, making goosebumps prickle her skin, “My rank gives me privileges and luxuries that you would share in. I could care for you well, luxiva.”
Taylor bit her lip, her stomach fluttering at his voice. It seemed that all he wanted was to take care of her. But what about him?
And because they were pretending, she turned to look at him and whispered, “I would want to take care of you too, Vikan.”
“You will,” he said immediately, his hand sliding down. “In other ways.”
His meaning made heat pool between her legs. Even so, she said, “That’s…that’s not what I meant. I would want to give you more than just sex.”
“I have heard that sex between fated mates is more than can be imagined,” he told her, swallowing, his eyes heated. “It is not just sex. It is the blood bond. It is companionship. It is knowing another so intimately that you are one. That is what lies in our future.”
Her breath hitched when he said blood bond because she remembered what experiencing that had been like, in her dreams. She didn’t even know what it was, but she knew how it felt, that connection, that rightness.
“It would strip us both bare,” he continued. “That is what we would give to each other.”
“That scares me,” she admitted quietly. “Doesn’t it scare you?”
“Tev,” he answered immediately, which surprised her.
“But you seem so accepting of it.”
“I am,” he said. “I am frightened of it too. But I will not let fear control my decisions. I will not let fear control my fate. Not anymore. It scares me, to be so closely tied with another being, but I want it as well. Very much.”
Taylor softened at that.
“It is like moving forward, tev?” he murmured to her, repeating what she’d told him earlier.
She couldn’t help the small smile that spread across her lips. “Yes, I suppose so.”
Taylor couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been this way with Nitav. Honest, open, affectionate, caring, protective. Everything that she’d ever thought to want in a partner.
It was hard to forget how deeply he’d loved the female before her, however. It concerned her that he still wasn’t over that relationship. And how could they even think of a future if Vikan’s mind was still in the past?
Taylor closed her eyes, telling herself that she wouldn’t think about it. Not that night. Not when she’d promised them both to enjoy it, to take advantage of whatever might happen, no matter the consequences.
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him about Nitav. About his life with her, about what she’d been like, whether she’d been beautiful, whether she’d made him laugh.
But she didn’t. As much as she wanted to know more about Vikan—because she was honest enough with herself to admit that she was becoming more than a little obsessed with the alien male—she wanted that night to just be about him and her. No one else.
If they were going to pretend, she might as well really pretend.
So, instead, she changed the subject and asked him something that had been on her mind.
“Will you tell me more about your gift?” she requested. “About what it’s like for you?”
Vikan was silent for a long while, long enough that Taylor began to wonder if he would even answer her. But eventually, he told her, “Like I said, my mother’s line was full of gifts from the Fates. It is rare, very rare. None other, besides you, can see what I see.”
Taylor swallowed. “Do you know if your mother had a gift?”
He shook his head. “It tends to run in males. My sire told me she did not, but told me about her sire’s gift.”
“The dreamwalker,” she said softly, glancing over at him. He had his arm wrapped around her waist tightly, pressing her closely to the side of his body, supporting her.
“Tev,” he said, watching the fire flicker and sway in their little cave. “But my gift has always been foresight. Truthfully, I hate it.”
She reached out to touch his thigh. “Really?”
“I have told no one that. Ever,” he said, tearing his gaze away from the fire to look at her hand before his eyes lifted to her face.
Taylor felt bare at that look, vulnerable. “Why do you hate it? I know a lot of people who would like to be able to see the future.”
He made a gravelly sound in the back of his throat. “I find it quite useless. And it brings a fair amount of pain.”
Her brows furrowed. “In what way?”
Vikan blew out a breath. “I typically only see visions of nameless Luxirians, whose fates are not tied to my own.”
“You see the futures of strangers?” she asked.
“Tev,” he said. “Like I said, quite useless.”
“Not to them maybe,” she tried. “Have you ever tried to find them?”
He jerked his head in a nod. “In my younger warrior spans, tev. I liked to see good things in their futures. It comforted me in a way. But the bad…their tragedies, their losses, their accidents, their fragile decisions made…those I did not like.”
“Like what?”
He ran an absentminded hand down her back and then said, “When I was fresh from warrior training, one night I saw a vision of a young female. She lived in Lopixa. She was no older than six or seven rotations. She liked to play and walk along the cliffs that stretch just outside the outpost. She liked to watch the light on the sea.” Taylor’s gut clenched, not liking the tone of his voice. “In my vision, I saw her fall from the cliff when she stepped too close.”
Taylor’s throat closed. “Vikan…”
“I heard her scream in my mind. I heard the wind screaming past her. I heard this…sickening sound. And then I heard nothing. Just silence.”
Oh my God.
“Vaxa’an knew of my gift. We were close during warrior training. He was my friend and even though he was not Prime Leader yet, he helped me journey to Lopixa, though we were not suppose to leave the Golden City at that time. We searched and searched for this female, long enough that I feared it was too late.”
“Did you find her?” she whispered, hardly daring to move.
“Tev,” he said. “Because Vaxa’an had accompanied me, there was a celebration the night of our arrival to welcome him, that drew most of the outpost’s population. I searched for the young female while Vaxa’an saw to his duties at the gathering.” Vikan went quiet, his hand still tracing down her back. Softly, he said, “And I found her, along the outskirts, very near to the cliff that I had seen her fall from in my vision.”
“Was she okay?” she asked, almost afraid to ask.
“Nix, she was dead,” he told her.
Taylor gasped. “Oh my God. Vikan…”
“A pack of xrivalla were drawn close to the borders. The scent of the cooking meat and game from the celebration attracted them. And the guards were at the gathering, so the outskirts were unwatched and unprotected. When I came upon her, there was not much left of her, but I recognized her just the same, like an imprint in my mind.”
Taylor looked down into her lap, her eyes filling with tears, not just because of the little girl’s fate, but because of the strained emotion she sensed in Vikan’s voice, how deeply it affected him, even still.
“So you see, it is quite useless,” he said softly. “She had a worse, more painful death, because I tried to interfere with her fate. I was punished, as was she.”
She turned in his arms and reached forward to touch his cheek. His gray eyes flickered to her, frowning when he saw her tears.
“It’s not your fault, Vikan,” she whispered. “You only tried to help her.”
He was silent. Then he said, “I always think of her when I walk that cliff.”
“You still go there?”
“Tev. As a reminder, sometimes. But now, I always make sure our borders are safe and patrolled. At all times.”
“Then maybe you’ve saved others in the process,” she told him, wanting to comfort him. “Others that could have met a fate like hers, but haven’t through your actions.”
His forehead met her own, his horns tangling in her hair.
“I can only hope so,” he said. “But I never tried to interfere again, no matter what I saw.”
“You still see them? Visions?” she asked softly.
“Tev,” he said. “They’d become worse since…”
“Nitav,” Taylor guessed when he trailed off.
“Tev,” he said, pulling back from her forehead to look at her. “And I confess that to dull the pain and keep them controlled, I turned to yikava.”
She frowned in confusion.
Then he clarified, “A drug.”
“Oh,” she whispered, her eyes sliding away from him. She bit her lip, thinking of her mother. Taylor had never touched drugs in her life because of her mother, never wanted to.
“I will not use it again, luxiva,” he told her. “I vow to you.”
And Taylor knew that he meant it. “It helped the pain? Did you get headaches?”
He nodded. “Always. I felt the visions clawing up my throat sometimes, trying to scramble into my mind. The yikava helped numb everything.”
“I can’t blame you for it, Vikan,” she murmured. Though she wanted no part of drug use, she knew why he’d used them.
He looked at her and then said, “Around you, I feel no pain.”
She stilled. “What?”
“It is like you calm my mind, my body,” he replied, cupping the sides of her head before running his fingers through her hair. “I have not had a vision once since I took you from the command center. And usually, I see many during the span, even with the yikava.”
Her lips parted.
And she couldn’t help but think, What happens if I leave him?
Would he go back to seeing them constantly? Would she condemn him to dealing with that pain all over again?
Stay in the moment, she reminded herself, trying not to get caught up in the future, just for once.
“No matter what your decision is,” he murmured, touching her hand with his, “I thank you for that.”
“For what?” she whispered, unable to resist entwining their fingers together.
“For making me feel whole, normal, for the first time in my life span.”
Tears burned the back of her throat. When Vikan had proposed that they pretend that night, pretend that she was his and he was hers and that they had all the time in the world, she hadn’t expected this. She hadn’t expected for him to open up this much to her, to let her in, to touch her with infinite gentleness, and to look at her like she was the only woman in the entire universe.
And she hadn’t expected the intense maelstrom of emotions swirling around in her chest because of it.
Taylor wanted to kiss him.
She wanted to hold him in her arms and feel his skin pressed against her own.
But not there. Not in their dark, little cave, where he’d just confessed one of his darkest memories. She wanted to kiss him under the open sky, wanted to feel the salty cool breeze across her cheeks, and feel his heat warming her.
When her gaze strayed past him to the entrance of the cave and saw the bright silver light of the moon and heard the gentle waves of the shores of Lopitax, she knew where she wanted to kiss him for the first time.
“Can we go for a dip in the sea, Vikan?”
“Rebax?” he asked, his brow furrowing in confusion.
“Right now?”
He studied her, probably trying to figure out why she would ask something so strange.
“Tev,” he finally said. “As if I could deny you anything.”