Three
Catherina
I looked up as Stevan slid the door open, entered, and then closed it behind him. I rose with a smile and sauntered over to him while putting a little more swing into my hips. He smiled down at me as I melted into his arms. I’d been home for almost two hours and I had worked myself into quite a state thinking of all the things I was going to do to him tonight.
Tall, ripped, and built like a premier athlete, he had a strong chin and cheekbones that gave him a dangerous, brooding, movie star like countenance. Until he smiled. His smile was open, friendly, and warm, banishing the darkness from his face as if it had never been. In short, Stevan was a walking wet-dream. He wasn’t human, not in the traditional sense, but with the exception of his eyes, he could easily pass for a panty-wetting handsome male on Earth.
That was the thing about the Peoples. We were all descended from one long lost race, the Ancient Ones, and we all looked, for the lack of a better term, human. While all the Peoples of the universe looked the same at first glance, there was almost always something that would tip off a careful observer that perhaps all the Peoples weren’t ‘human’ after all.
The Firaspatciti, or Fires, had their red eyes. The Aquallians, the Waters I called them, their snow-white hair and oversized eyes. The Thaths’ webbed fingers and toes, and long, graceful limbs gave them away. And we ‘humans?’ Our skin changed colors, broadcasting our emotions loud and clear, something I’d seen no other People do. And right now I was a bright red as my face and chest flushed with my desire for him.
He returned my kiss, and it was nice indeed, but some of the passion that was normally there was missing. I slowly pulled back.
“Everything okay?”
He nodded and his smile returned. “Yes. A lot going on at the moment.”
I knew Stevan was under a lot of strain. There was some kind of protest growing in the universe, something to do with me and the work I was doing. Stevan didn’t seem to want to talk about it, and I didn’t press. I might be his Lady, but I was kept at arm’s length from the affairs of state. It was no slight. While he occasionally asked my opinion on a matter, there could be only one Lord, and that was Stevan. The Firaspatciti were a very militaristic society and Stevan was the commanding officer. He rarely explained his decisions and nobody questioned him. I never heard news of the protests outside the palace walls, and what little news I heard of it from inside came from Tokalas or Peval.
“The protests again?”
He gave his head a small shake as his vivid red eyes held mine. “No, not this time.”
“Anything I can help with?” I often asked, but he rarely accepted my offers of aid.
He pulled the small Biro like device that allowed him to control his personal portal and opened a communication portal to the palace staff. “I’m ready for the evening meal,” he said then closed the portal. “I’ll tell you about it over our meal. But first,” he said softly and pulled me back into a kiss.
This time the kiss spoke of his desire and I felt myself flood in anticipation. I absolutely couldn’t get enough of him. Our lovemaking had slowed, but only slightly. When I’d first relocated to his quarters, we were making love every night, sometimes two or three times. Now we were down to only six or seven times a week, but it was better than ever. We had learned what each other liked and we often devastated each other with pleasure. He was a lover of unprecedented skill and stamina, but with my new young body, I could match him, and I delighted in inventing new ways to please him.
“How was your training today?” he asked as he turned to our sleeping quarters and began to disrobe.
I followed him. I never missed an opportunity to see him in all his naked glory.
“Great! I took down Peval!” He paused in his undressing to looked at me, his eyes widening in surprise, and perhaps disbelief. “It’s true!” I exclaimed, then smiled modestly. “I had my blade at her throat, but then she tapped me on the back of my neck with her own blade. I may have had to pay dearly for my victory, but it was the first time I’d actually been able to best her, even at the cost of my own life!”
Stevan chuckled. “A victory where you lose your life is a shallow victory indeed, but still, congratulations. Taking Peval down with a short blade is no small feat. She is one of the finest close-in fighters in the guard.”
I nodded, beaming with his praise. Tokalas and Peval had been hand selected by Stevan as my two personal guards just for that reason. Their skills with the long and short blade were second to none.
He finished dressing in something less formal than he wore when being the Lord, and then reached for me, jerking me in close and holding me to his body. Stevan’s normal body temperature had to be at least ten degrees warmer than mine because when he held me like this, the passions he kept suppressed bubbled to the top, and I got all hot and flustered.
“Perhaps you can demonstrate your skills with me tonight?” he rumbled before his lips took mine in an absolutely torrid kiss.
I moaned into his mouth. I would have taken him right then and there, but the chime sounded, announcing the arrival of our meal. He pulled back, and gave my face a soft caressed, a touch that made me smile. He was still all Fire with their raging passions, but he had tempered the hard and rough nature of their mating with gentleness. I liked a take charge man, a man that knew what he wanted and took it, but now he gave as well as took, and he made me want to swoon like no other man before him.
“Come, it’s time to eat,” he said softly. “We have much to discuss.”
He knew exactly what he was doing, revving me up only to shut me down and leave me panting with desire. The bastard. But, oh God, how I loved it! The unspoken promise of pleasure to come always left me feeling tingly and excited, and the resulting release later was explosive.
“Enter!” he called as we exited our bedchamber. The door opened and the kitchen staff bustled in, the four men and two women going to their knee. “Rise,” Stevan ordered. “You may leave when you are finished,” he added, so they didn’t have to wait for him to release them, then promptly ignored them as they went about their duties.
I was still adjusting to my role as Lady, but with Kergah’s sure guidance, I was learning. I didn’t speak to the staff anymore with idle chitchat as it interfered with their duties. It also put them the difficult position of having to decide whether to stop what they were doing and give their full attention to me, as was my right as Lady, or continue with their duties as assigned. There was so much to learn and such seemly innocent actions as talking to the staff caused so much turmoil.
I was trying to fit in and adapt to the Fire ways, but Stevan had made one change at my request. Before there was always a person hovering to refill our glasses and serve us our food. I’d asked him to stop that practice because I didn’t enjoy feeling like I was being watched. It had caused some hurt feelings, the man he’d dismissed feeling that he’d failed somehow and had dishonored himself. I’d pulled the man aside one day, with Kergah at my side to help me understand, and tried to smooth things over. We’d reached a compromise of allowing the man to fill our plates initially and linger long enough to ensure we had everything we wanted or needed before he excused himself to wait out of the room, but only moments away if we were to call. It seemed to work for everyone, and I made it perfectly clear to the entire palace staff that having Gurot waiting in the hall was my wish and he was honoring me by doing so. That had put a stop to any mutterings about his failing to perform his duties and dishonor, and now he smiled at me and dipped his head slightly lower than he had before.
When Gurot left the room, I turned my attention back to Stevan. “You said we had things to discuss?”
He nodded as he cut into his turtle steak. It wasn’t really turtle, of course, but I couldn’t pronounce the real name and turtle was as close as I could come.
“You have accomplished your task too well,” he began, paused, then smiled at me as I watched him, trying to understand what he was talking about. “Firaspatciti men and Aquallian women are in much demand as mates. Many are taking mates that are not from Firaspatciti or Aquallia.”
“And that’s bad because…?”
His smile spread. “The Firaspatciti females and the Aquallia males are not happy.”
“Ah,” I grunted in understanding.
The Fires and Waters were at the most extreme ends of the range of normal behavior. All the Peoples had their little quirks, but the Fires were hyper-aggressive, tempered with honor, and the Waters were super-gentle and restrained. It had been a time consuming and frustrating task to get the Fire males and Water females to overcome their biases and preconceived notions, and I knew it was hopeless trying to get the Water males and Fire females to mate. The Fire women wanted and responded to dominate men, and the Water men were completely put off by the forward and aggressive nature of the Firaspatciti women.
I had recognized the brewing problem early one, but I’d hoped the Water men would get tired of seeing their females rejecting them to mate with others and step up their game and fight for their affections. That would make them much more appealing, not only to the Waters but others as well. It was now clear that wasn’t going to happen without some help.
The Fire women were almost as bad. They were too aggressive and off-putting to many of the males of the universe. On Earth, the Fire women would be called man-eaters or ball busters. I’d thought the Fire women that had gone through the training with the Fire men would spread their knowledge, but they’d been quickly snapped up as mates by other cultures and the knowledge hadn’t spread as I’d hoped.
Stevan had given me all the resources I could ask for, but there was one thing he couldn’t give me, and that was time. There was so much to do and not enough time to do it all. Still, I felt I owed it to these two groups to help them if I could. Besides, touring the universe and talking about mating with other cultures was fun, but it didn’t give me the satisfaction that actually pairing up people and seeing them happy did.
“Would you like me to try to help them?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yes. They would see it as a great honor that you became personally involved, and I feel it’s unfair to ask so much of them. Our two Peoples shouldn’t be punished for leading the rest of the Peoples away from the long darkness.”
“That’s going to take time away from spreading the message that interbreeding is good and necessary,” I pointed out.
I could only do so much and I wanted to control his expectations.
He smiled. “As I told Kergah, ‘The universe will just have to share you for a time.’”
I smiled, warming to the idea. “Then I’ll do it. I have an idea of who might appreciate the Fire females.”
“Oh? Who?”
“The Hedordians. They have a lot of the same traits as the Fires… strong wills, the unwillingness to quit in the face of adversity…”
I watched as Stevan thought it over. “You may be right. Any thoughts for the Aquallians?”
I flipped through my mental file cabinet, looking for a starting place, but ran out of Peoples before I found what I thought would be a good match. “No, not at the moment, but there has to be someone out there. I’ll stop by the dating agency tomorrow and talk to the staff. See if they have any ideas. At the very least, I can look through the files and see if I can find someone that might appreciate the Waters. Don’t worry about it anymore.” I grinned at him, trying to lighten his mood. “The Fire Planet Dating Agency is on the job.”
He nodded, obviously pleased that I’d agreed to help, but I could tell there was more going on.
“Anything else I can help with?”
His eyes softened. “No. You worry about saving the universe. I’ll worry about the rest.”
I giggled. He always made what I was doing sound so dramatic. Saving the universe, indeed. I was just a bird from Glasgow helping the Peoples of the universe find happiness. It was something I was good at and enjoyed doing.
It had been several months since I’d gotten my hands dirty working with the Peoples and helping them find their mates. The staff Stevan had assigned to help me was doing the heavy lifting. Most of the Peoples tended to have many more things in common than they realized, and mixing and matching the cultures was relatively easy. Just because the Volzery tended to like willowy body types didn’t mean they couldn’t see the beauty in a Xzarett and their lush figures when the idea was presented to them in the proper way.
Not every culture was a good fit for every other, and there were always the taboos to overcome, but those were more about education and solving logistical problems, and Fires were excellent managers and problem solvers. What problems they couldn’t solve they simply pushed aside, and their adventuresome nature allowed them to look beyond their initial reluctance… as Stevan had with oral sex. The Fires were slowly broadening their horizons, and they were dragging the rest of the universe along with them.
“You know, if you ever need my help, you only have to ask me,” I said softly.
He took my hand and gave it a squeeze. He was becoming a real toucher, and I was thriving on it. “I know, my love. But you already have a heavy burden. I don’t wish to add to it.”
The Fires had no single word that meant the same thing as the English word ‘love,’ and when he used it, I always felt a chill.
He shoved back from the table. “Come. Enough about state business. I feel the need to walk on Fortress Beach.”
I felt another chill. I loved Fortress Beach. It was my favorite place on Fire. “Yes. Let’s,” I said softly.
Stevan opened two portals. “We’re finished,” he said, closing the communication portal to the palace staff before he took my arm and guided me through the second portal into the darkness.
Fortress Beach was an island in the single small Ocean of Fire. The island was tiny, barely two kilometers across in any direction, and contained an ancient stone fortress that had been used by the Lords of Fire for hundreds of thousands of years. When he’d first brought me here, Stevan had explained how it was originally built as a place to mount a last stand in the event of war, but now it was a place where a Lord could go and escape the pressures of running his world. We were technically forbidden from leaving the palace without our contingent of guards, but we never brought them when we escaped to Fortress Beach.
This island was as private as our quarters and no one, other than Stevan or myself, was allowed entry here without an invitation. The island detected our presence as we exited the portal, and lights began to appear on the massive stone walls and in the small windows. The castle had been renovated many times in its long history, but it had lost none of its imposing bulk and I always felt a thrill at being here.
The island was located on the opposite side of Fire from the palace, and it would soon be dawn. We always tried to time our arrival so we could sit on the beach and watch the huge, red, Firaspatciti star rise from the ocean. Stevan and I had once spent hours mating on the beach, crying our pleasure to the world as the warm water lapping around us and the rising star bathed us in its ruddy light. It had been an incredibly romantic time and had cemented Fortress Beach in my heart as my favorite place to spend time with Stevan.
We walked along the beach, talking about nothing and everything, avoiding any mention of the Peoples or managing the planet. We were just two people, alone and in love. As the sky began to brighten, we settled into the black sand, the water lapping at my toes. Fire had three tiny moons and no tides, so we wouldn’t have to move from this spot no matter how long we sat there.
As the star rose I snuggled into Stevan’s side, his arm surrounding me. He looked down at me.
“I love you, Catherina Hume,” he said before his lips took my own in a slow soft caress.
I sighed at the kiss. It was the perfect blend of passion and restraint, so unlike how he kissed me early in our lessons.
“I love you Stevan Gerrett,” I whispered in return.
I was at peace as I’d never been before, and my smile never wavered as I watched Fire’s star slowly crawl out of the ocean.