7
Later that night, with Lana gone for the evening on some EPIC assignment, Eryn brewed a cup of honeyed-tea and slipped into a warm bath, hoping, with the apartment quiet, she’d be able to fall asleep afterward. Despite this, it eluded her as she found herself replaying the probing questions asked by the women earlier today and the troubling interaction with the MP.
Change was hard, and heaven knew she’d fought it tooth and nail when she’d been captured, but now potential mates had options and, because of it, hope. Most of their leaders had accepted the idea of integrating their two species with the end result meaning salvation for the people of Earth. But they didn’t go blindly forward. Instead, they asked questions and demanded facts and proof. And they wanted the women, the ones most impacted by the treaty, to have the same information—which had spawned the informational sessions being held around the world.
Such a different lifestyle would take some getting used to. It hadn’t worked out for her, but stories had filtered back from those who’d stayed, of the happiness they’d found with their warriors and the Primarian way of life. Having come to know Roth and seeing how joyful Maggie had become from being his mate, who could say their way wasn’t better? They certainly had one up on humans when it came to taking care of the world entrusted to them.
She couldn’t imagine their Princep allowing his people to destroy their home with all its beauty and natural resources. And for the most part, in her experience, even the xenophobic Purists who represented the worst of their people cared about the citizens and took pride in their planet. Except for the mine explosion, a diversion allowing them time to escape, they’d never suggested using violence or force. It made her question if someone else had been behind that part of the plan, or if the Purist leader she’d met with had simply chosen to keep it from her. She also wondered if they had disclosed the source of the diversion to her, would it have changed her decision to go along with them.
She hoped she would have said no, but with escape the only option, she couldn’t be sure. Looking back, it came as no surprise she’d been identified as a prime target, a means to an end. Through her unguarded tongue and resistant behavior, she’d made it known she had no intention of complying or acclimating to a new life. They’d sought her out for this reason but never with violence as part of the plan.
No matter the society or how advanced and benevolent they thought themselves, a dissentious element could arise over something they didn’t accept or understand. Earth didn’t lack protestors and dissenters. Thankfully, they hadn’t gotten violent so far, not like the mine sabotage on Primaria.
She had mixed emotions about her own resistance, especially after the treaty. Never in a million years would she have thought it would end up this way. A win-win for both of their species. Through her actions, however, she’d burned bridges and made enemies. Sadly, Ram was one of them.
With a slight headache building behind her eyes from her racing thoughts, Eryn opted to turn on the vid-screen for some mindless drivel to give her besieged brain a rest.
“Guide.” Her options appeared on the multi-dimensional viewer. She bypassed sci-fi and horror; she’d had enough of the former and the latter wasn’t her thing.
“Rom-com.” When she picked one of the hundreds of romantic comedy titles at random, she snuggled beneath her soft cashmere throw on the couch. As the opening credits rolled, she settled in, determined to lose herself in a story of love, romance, and flirtation, something that didn’t exist in her world, and probably never would again.
With beads of sweat dotting her heated skin, Eryn stared with wide eyes up at the ceiling. Even in the semidarkness, she could see the ugly brown stain formed from a leak during the days of heavy rain a few weeks past. It would be an ever-increasing fixture considering the maintenance crew didn’t seem in any hurry to come repair it.
Tired and on edge, her body wound tight like a guitar string, she rolled her head to the side and peered at the clock on her nightstand.
Three a.m.
A dispirited groan mixed with an exhausted sigh as she pulled her pillow out from under her and covered her face. She vented her frustration into it, hoping, though not really caring at this point, it was sufficient to muffle her cries and keep from waking Lana or her neighbors.
When she stopped, Eryn threw her abused pillow to the side and listened to the rapid thud of her heart pounding in her ears. It raced, not from her mini fit but because of her hot and wildly erotic dream, starring a gorgeous, tawny-eyed alien with tons of rippling muscles and silky black hair.
She could still see Ram above her, his teasing mouth and tongue leaving a trail of wet kisses down the length of her body, over her breasts, her taut nipples, and in a ring around her quivering navel, before moving in a straight line down her rounded belly to her pussy. His fingers spread her wide, and while he devoured her with his eyes, her hips arched in a wordless plea for him to ease her ache with his lips and tongue. Just as his head lowered, when she could feel the warmth of his breath on her damp folds, it happened—like it always did during a steamy, sexy Ram-dream. It ended abruptly.
And whether poised over her clit or with his cock ready to slide deep inside her or if he had her against the wall, on all fours in front of him, or bent into the hottest, most arousing position ever, rather than finding release and drifting off into a post-orgasmic satisfied sleep, she woke without reaching the big finish, her mind frustrated and her body vibrating with need.
It wasn’t the first time or the tenth. More like the hundredth, and it was starting to piss her off.
“Why can’t we do it, already?” she cried out to the disgusting stain looming over her head. With no answer forthcoming, she pounded her clenched fists and her heels against her mattress in vexation.
Pregnancy hormones sent some women’s libido’s through the roof, or so she’d read. In her case, they shot clear to the stratosphere. Whether lying in her bed or standing in a crowd, both day and night, dreams of Ram consumed her, making her burn with a fire inextinguishable by any of her solo or mechanically enhanced methods. A man well beyond her reach—her fault entirely—who had become nothing more than a figment of her imagination, a fleeting memory, and an all-consuming itch she couldn’t scratch.
“Dammit!” she muttered, flopping onto her pillows. Uncomfortable on her back,
she rolled onto her side, and, staring at her nightstand, she willed her desire away. It didn’t work, and she ended up reaching into the drawer where she kept her vibrator, a pale substitute for the real thing. Her choice was to get herself off or lose her sanity from sleep deprivation.
Grabbing the device by the curved head, she twisted the other end to the super-duper instant orgasm setting. Nothing happened.
While scowling in annoyance at her Pretty-in-Pink seven-function power vibe, she did the first thing that came to mind and slapped it against her palm. Still nothing, not even a sputter. She turned the dial back and forth. When it still didn’t work, she opened the end and checked the battery, replaced only a few days earlier.
Seated with the poles in the right direction, just in case, she took it out and snapped it back in. Twisting the end once again, it didn’t even a sputter; the darn thing was simply dead.
“Long-life my ass,” she muttered.
Again, she dipped inside the nightstand again, this time searching for her spare battery. Way in the back, her fingers brushed across something smooth, flat, and wafer thin, but she couldn’t grasp it. Carefully removing her hand, she grabbed the knob and eased the drawer out more, though only a hair. If she pulled it too far—
All at once, the whole thing came crashing down with a loud bang. Miscellaneous items bounced and clattered across the floor for what seemed like forever. When the last object stopped rolling and her room became quiet once again, she lay frozen, holding her breath, listening for the thud of Lana’s footsteps in the hall, on her way to investigate the latest dead-of-night commotion from her pain-in-the-ass roommate. With silence permeating the apartment minutes later, she blew out the pent-up air in her chest and went limp, still leaning over the side of the bed.
She eyed the mess littering the circular rug, and the few odds and ends that found their way beyond the perimeter to the bare wood. Nowhere did she see the little silver disc. She sifted through the debris, cursing herself for being too cheap to invest in the thirty-year, money-back-guaranteed model with the promise not to leave you hanging on the edge of orgasm super cell.
After several minutes of searching, including crawling around on her hands and knees and not finding what she needed, she suspected karma, kismet, or whatever created luck in her effed-up world had continued to conspire against her. Frustrated with her useless toy, she flung it onto the chair in the corner and climbed back into bed.
“Maybe if I go to sleep, I can pick up where I left off,” she whispered to the brown stain
then closed her eyes. She pictured Ram’s forearms bracing her thighs wide apart, his thumbs spreading her pussy, his mouth hovering a scant inch over her heated flesh, this time going one step farther, and circling her clit with his tongue.
Eryn groaned as sleep continued to evade her, but her recall of his talented tongue did not.
The next morning, sunshine filtering through the sheer curtains covering her window awakened her. She sat up, warmth and light surrounding her, but the remnants of her dreams haunted her and a heaviness invaded her chest. A sense of loss of what might have been if she’d taken a different course. Would she have had what Maggie had with Roth, and Eva with Kerr, or what a host of her peers had found with these men? Or, would her determination, her boldness, and her damn inflexibility have earned what she’d had all along? A cold, empty bed with the only source of relief a pink vibrator—devoid of batteries—which also couldn’t do anything to ease her aching heart.
She blinked back tears which she blamed solely on the hormones, and threw off the covers, forcing herself to get ready for another tedious, unfulfilling day. As she walked to the bathroom, she couldn’t ignore how her body still hummed with longing because once she’d finally fallen to sleep, she’d done so without getting to the good part.
Damn. Most people’s sex fantasies had a happy ending. Not hers. Even while she replayed her fondest memories, they warped or skewed, leaving her unsatisfied and still incredibly lonely.