TWENTY
“Tev, female,” Devix rasped, his eyes flickering from her eyes, to her bobbing breasts, to the place where his cock slipped in and out of her pussy as she rode him hard.
A choked moan tumbled from her lips when his palm struck her ass and she snapped her hips down harder, grinding onto his cock.
Cara looked down at him, her eyes half-lidded, hands splayed across his heaving, wide chest to balance herself. Up and down, she rocked her hips, a constant moan sounding from her throat as she fucked her male on the floor of the room she’d dubbed the ‘kitchen’ a week before.
Deep inside, the ridges lining his cock hit her in all the right places and she knew she was done for when she’d barely just started.
“Baby, I’m gonna cum,” she murmured, her tone edging on a whine. “Y-your cock feels too good.”
“Cum then, luxiva,” he growled, his hands coming to grasp her hips, gripping them to take over. Her head lolled against her shoulders as he held her in place before jackhammering his hips up to fuck her harder, their flesh slapping together in a delicious sound that echoed in the room. “Tev, I feel your tight, greedy cunt.”
Cara was right on the edge and she groaned, her whole body shaking as she tried to hold her orgasm off for as long as she could. “Cum in me, Dev. Please, I need to feel it, I need to feel it.”
Her alien male was helpless against her command and she’d discovered that he loved dirty talk. So, naturally, she gasped naughty things in his ear all week as he’d fucked her. The result? He fucked her so good that her knees always shook for hours afterwards.
“You need my cum?” he growled, fucking her harder. “Need it deep inside you?”
Cara gasped, “Yes.”
Her orgasm crashed down on her, making her choke as her breath whooshed from her lungs. As every muscle in her body clenched, as intense pleasure radiated from her core, she heard Devix’s bellow, felt his hot cum shoot inside her, coating her walls.
Afterwards, Cara drew in ragged breaths as she slumped over his torso. As the pleasure gently subsided into a dull throb, she gave a soft laugh against his chest, still feeling his cock pulse inside her, a familiar sensation to her now. Feeling him inside her seemed as natural as breathing.
“I fear I’m distracting you from your work,” she whispered, leaning over his lips for a quick little nibble. His lips drove her crazy sometimes.
“I managed two hauls of the pillerva pods before I needed you,” he groaned. “That is better than the one haul I managed before.”
“True,” she said, smiling. She hadn’t smiled so much in her entire life as she had that past week with Devix. Nor had she had so much sex in her entire life than in that past week. And not just sex, but amazing, mind-blowing, bone-quivering sex.
It was no wonder why she was smitten. It was no wonder why her stomach erupted into butterflies whenever she saw him. It was no wonder why she felt like melting whenever he kissed her, or he murmured luxiva in her ear, or when he brought her new herbs and roots for her recipes he’d come across as he worked in the forest.
Between them, she felt his cum begin to slip out and she kissed him again. Earlier in the week, once she’d recovered from their first mating, she’d brought up the somewhat awkward subject of pregnancy, an already awkward subject between two humans, made more so between a human and a Luxirian.
Basically, she’d asked him if there was a possibility she could get pregnant and whether it was something they needed protection for.
Devix had said, after a brief moment of silence, “I know of no offspring that have been produced by a Luxirian and another species. I do not believe that I could sire offspring with you, nix.”
Cara realized after that the strangest part of that conversation was that she’d felt out of sorts for the rest of the day. Not quite moping around, but definitely…sad, disappointed. She didn’t know why because it didn’t make sense.
Was she upset because her alien lover couldn’t get her pregnant?
It had frustrated the hell out of her, so she’d just pushed it out of her mind and tried not to think about it. And having sex with Devix to take her mind off it had certainly helped.
They’d never spoken about it again and throughout the week, he’d filled her with so much cum that Cara wondered how it was physically possible she wasn’t pregnant already. Although…she hadn’t had a period since she’d been abducted by the Krevorags, from stress and lack of nourishment, probably.
“After I finish that last haul of pods,” he murmured then, bringing her back to the present. She was still on top of him and he was still inside her. “I will go hunting. I spotted a pack of beggawi from the ridge earlier. It is a good opportunity. I should not be long. One will be enough for at least a few spans.”
“Okay,” she murmured, tracing the lines of his muscled chest. “Do you want to try what I’ve been working on today before you go?”
“You must ask, female?” he murmured, teasing.
Cara grinned. Devix, like most males, liked to eat. And every single thing she’d made for him that past week, except for the exceptionally delicious pillerva pod dessert she’d made that was a dead ringer for creme brûlée—he’d already warned her that he didn’t have a taste for the pods—Devix had practically vacuumed the food off his plate.
She’d taken it as a compliment, especially when he hovered around the kitchen whenever she was experimenting. Rozun, for obvious reasons, had different flavors, different game, different spices and oils and edible plant life. Some, to her, were unpalatable. Others, delicious. Cara had discovered that Devix preferred liberally peppered red meats, anything that had a bite to it. Yet, Rozun didn’t have what she would consider black peppercorns. Instead, she’d substituted it with a fluid she’d extracted from a yellow-spotted leaf resembling an aloe plant. The fluid was almost an exact match for black pepper, but much more potent.
And so she experimented. Extensively. She wrote down her own versions of recipes on loose sheets of parchment that Devix had given her—which she’d bound together with cord to made a book—and she came up with names for the plants and herbs and game meat that Devix didn’t have a name for. She made sauce reductions from beggawi flank and glazes from the sap of the pillerva trees. When she boiled and strained the sap, it tasted like a tarter version of maple syrup that complimented the milder flavors of the kwarti root they’d bought from the market.
And it went on and on. Some nights, if a string of inspiration hit her, Devix had to entice her away with sex from the kitchen, which had slowly become her own space. It had been bare bones before, but over the week, she’d hung more herbs to dry, she’d stacked and labeled and sorted the spices they’d purchased at the market, and she’d worked at sharpening the knives Devix had given her until they were to her liking.
The ‘stovetop,’ if it could be called that, wasn’t like anything she was used to and she longed for her old gas ranges with a fierceness that surprised her. But she worked with what she had. She was cooking over a controlled open flame, but she maneuvered with it just fine.
Cookware, however, was harder to come by. Devix only had one ‘skillet’ that had seen better days and one pot for boiling that wasn’t nearly as large as she liked for soups and stews and stocks. But they were planning to make another trip to the market in a few days, so Cara would get by until then.
It didn’t change the fact that for the first time in a long time, she felt…right. Inspired. She felt like she was working towards something again, not just sitting on the sidelines.
She felt happy.
And it wasn’t lost on her that Devix had a lot to do with that.
For now, she gave her lover a smile and patted his chest. “Come on. Let me feed you before you go.”
His grip tightened on her waist. “Let me hold you,” he murmured, “a moment longer.”
Cara’s heart melted and it was exactly moments like that when she knew she was falling in love with him. Swiftly. Deeply.
She didn’t second guess it. She just let it happen.
“Okay,” she whispered.
And she let him hold her, but really, she held him.
* * *
Cara waited up for Devix, sitting in the living room, which her alien often called the ‘central hub.’ The fire was lit, warming the home, and Cara watched the flames, wrapping the fur blanket around her tighter, her bare toes flexing into the plush rug. Next to her was her parchment recipe book, filled with her experiments from that week. The ones that weren’t successful had notes scribbled down the margins, hopes for salvaging them or what flavor profiles were required to make them work.
She’d been pouring over it to distract herself but had long given it up. The truth was that Devix had gone hunting twice that past week. And she’d hated every second because she worried about him. Worried that he might get injured, worried that he might not come home.
Logically, she knew she had nothing to fret over. Devix was skilled in many areas, hunting being one of them. And he’d lived on Rozun for over six years, all the way out here. He knew his land and he knew his prey, like the back of his hand.
Cara just had to trust that he’d return.
It didn’t make it any easier.
Her eyes slid to the recipe book lying innocently beside her and she reached out to feel the parchment, which was already stained from splattering juices and spiced oils, just as it should be.
Another truth was that she couldn’t stop thinking about what Devix had suggested to her last week. That she could open up a restaurant, right there on Rozun, the first of its kind.
Opening up a restaurant would be a lot of work. Cara wasn’t a lazy person—the hard work didn’t bother her—and the idea excited her enough that she’d already been daydreaming about segmenting the menus by flavor, depending on what a species preferred, taste-wise. She thought about how big she wanted it to be, how she would solve the lack of gas ranges, how she’d organize the kitchen, whether one of the stall vendors at the market would partner with her so she’d have access to fresh game and vegetables and roots.
But it was more than that…
Opening up a restaurant signified permanence. If she opened up a restaurant…she would be all in. She would be declaring that Rozun was her home, that she wanted to stay. That she wouldn’t be returning to Earth, even if Devix somehow managed to find her passage to the Fourth Quadrant.
And that had been something that she’d been thinking about often that past week.
Was it something she was ready for?
Because the other thing that had been on her mind was picturing a goodbye with Devix.
Simply, she couldn’t imagine it.
If, even at that very moment, he came through the front door and told her that he’d found someone with access to the Fourth Quadrant, or that he had a Luxirian crystal, Cara honestly didn’t know if she’d accept. Ever since her capture, all she’d been dreaming about in her cage was getting back to Earth, her home, her friends, her life.
But she was slowly beginning to realize that a home could be built anywhere in the universe, if the people she cared about also called it home.
Cara ran a hand through her freshly washed hair and sighed.
With a glance at her recipes, she decided right then that she wouldn’t worry about the future, about what might happen. Devix was still worried about his employer finding them, even though he tried to hide it from her. But Cara didn’t want to live constantly looking over her shoulder.
As for the restaurant, she decided that during their trip to the market in a few days, she’d check out if there were any vacant spaces or areas where she could rent or build. She’d place enquiries with some of the vendors for supplies. She’d create a sample menu in the meantime.
And then she’d see where those paths led her.
Outside, she heard a thump and she smiled, relief pulsing through her. Quickly, she made her way to the front door and shouldered it open. Devix stood just beyond, clothes slightly bloody from carrying the beggawi from wherever he’d hunted it. He’d already cleaned the carcass from the looks of it.
“I missed you,” she murmured, not caring that her feet were bare as she stepped outside. The blue moss covering the ground was soft enough and it tickled the undersides of her soles.
She went to him, breathing him in, and leaned up for a kiss, which he gave her gladly.
“There is no sweeter welcome than this,” he murmured against her lips and she smiled, before stepping back. Then she watched as he hefted the carcass and opened the hatch to the cellar below the house, which was located along the back wall.
Below, he kept supplies, but there was also a small room for game, which he’d wired to keep cold.
When he reemerged from the cellar, sans beggawi, she led him inside the house and murmured, “Come on. Let’s bathe.”
He purred in response.
And Cara washed and caressed his body as they showered together in the washing tube. It wasn’t long before he had her legs wrapped around his waist, her back against the glass, driving home between her thighs.
“Luxiva, luxiva, luxiva,” he murmured over and over again in her ear.
And as she orgasmed, she couldn’t help but think that it was too perfect, that she was too happy.
She was waiting for the other shoe to drop even as she clutched him tighter.