Chapter Twelve
Zhor had not been so fascinated with the antics of the machines that he had not considered the ramifications of their presence.
If Ah-na’s people had sent them—and he saw little reason to doubt that—then her people were either already here or they would be coming very soon and they would search for her.
He knew he could not keep that from her forever. No doubt, she knew they would be coming even if she had no notion of when.
But he wanted more time.
That desire might cost him everything.
Or it might result in her choosing to stay with him.
He knew it was a gamble, but he did not see that he could do anything else and even have a chance of winning her heart.
Of course, it had occurred to him that his desires were selfish. She would have to give up a far better life with her own people to be with him, but he fully intended to do his utmost to keep her safe and to provide all that he could in the way of necessities and comforts.
He had confidence that he could provide what they needed—better than just what they needed so that they did not have to live their lives on the edge, expecting momentarily to fall off into the abyss of suffering and death.
It was not ‘things’ that brought true joy, in any case. That was a lesson he had learned in living past all of those he had once loved. He had not known joy of any kind since their passing.
Until Ah-na.
He could not bear to give that up—give her up—without a fight.
If they stayed where they were it would not be long at all before her people tracked her here.
But would he be taking her into danger if he took her away?
Was he risking losing her forever?
He shook that thought. He would not take her away from a safe place to one that was not safe.
But he had not thought of an alternative until he sat down to eat. It was alternating thoughts of showing her proof that his people had attained a higher civilization, even if it had fallen, and that he could provide at least some of the comforts she was accustomed to that led him to recall a rooke he had occupied near the city for some time.
It had been more modern than the cavern rooke but less comfortable because it had been in some disrepair and relied upon technology that was gone for habitability.
He did not even know if it was still standing, though, or unoccupied.
There had been other rookes not very far from that one, however.
And it did not necessarily have to be in wonderful condition. There were other structures nearby that could be robbed of materials to improve one of the rookes to an acceptable condition.
That was something that would have been better if he had done it already, was able to do it without dragging Ah-na along to be miserably uncomfortable while he worked on it.
Unfortunately, he did not dare leave her alone for the length of time that was likely to take. He could not trust her to stay put, for one thing. Then there was the problem that the longer she was alone the higher the likelihood that she would be discovered by the damned zorph and taken.
Or a rogue Kerrie.
Or a conkerrie.
After a great deal of thought, he arrived at the conclusion that his gut instincts had been right all along. There were no acceptable options. They could either remain where they were and wait for her to discover her people were on the plateau above them or until they showed up looking for her. Or he could take her to another place, find the best rooke he could and start working immediately on improving it.
It was the green season—a time of mild temperatures and growing things. There could not be a better season to make a move. And he would have two full seasons to lay in supplies and make their rooke not only habitable but comfortable.
He told Ah-na a partial truth to convince her to go with him. He told her he had noticed a great many zorphs and thought it safe to assume they were settling nearby and that would be a threat since the zorph and the Kerrie were enemies.
He simply left out the part where he had discovered that her people were also moving into the area and that presented more of a threat to him than to her.
* * * *
Any hope Annika had held out that she might at least get a look at the area where she’d dropped the buoy was dashed as soon as they left the cave. Either by design or chance, it was dusk by the time they’d gathered up Zhor’s belongings and set out, and visibility was limited.
She didn’t dismiss the possibility that Zhor had planned it that way although she was less convinced the decision had anything to do with her. He’d indicated before that it was safer at night, or at least that he thought it was, and that lent a lot of weight to the argument that he had his own reasons for traveling at night that had nothing to do with her suspicion that he was just trying to prevent her from attempting to contact anyone.
Regardless of his motives, he avoided the plateau, diving from the opening in what felt a lot more like a (barely) controlled fall than flight. Despite the safety harness he’d devised to carry her on his back, Annika felt herself slipping, felt like she was about to fall out of the harness and over him head first.
She’d never actually wondered what it must feel like to birds of prey—like the hawk—when they went in to an almost perpendicular dive to capture prey and she was very unhappy to be in a position to find out something she’d never wanted to know in the first place.
Thankfully, the pressure on her brain finally precipitated a swoon.
Or maybe it was the sheer terror?
When she eventually came around, she saw that he’d leveled out just above the tops of the giant trees on the plain below the falls.
An almost overwhelming desire to kill him for nearly scaring her to death washed over her.
Fortunately for him she didn’t have a weapon at hand and she was too weak from fear to wield one if she’d had a hammer to beat his brains in or a dull butter knife or spoon to cut his heart out with.
In any case, he only coasted above the tops of the trees for a matter of moments and then swooped below the canopies and started trying to see just how narrowly he could avoid a collision with the mammoth trunks.
And that instantly diverted her from evil designs on his person.
Eventually, it penetrated Annika’s terrified brain that he/they were being chased, or followed, or they’d been seen and Zhor was trying desperately to elude the threat. Nothing else made sense because Zhor had never behaved in such a way before, never done anything to make trying to scare her to death seem ‘typical’ for him. In vain, she tried twisting her head around far enough to see what was behind them. The harness held her too securely for her to move very far in any direction and, beyond that, the sun had set before they reached the forest. Dusk had already settled over the landscape and the area under the canopy was like a cave.
She didn’t know whether to be grateful Zhor had spotted the threat and was trying to avoid it or more frightened. She couldn’t see what was behind them, perhaps chasing them. She couldn’t see more than a glimpse of the trees they were heading toward at breakneck speed. She didn’t know how Zhor could see well enough to avoid a collision, but she sincerely hoped it wasn’t blind luck.
By the time Zhor finally stopped, she was ready to collapse.
She had no idea where he’d stopped. The light from the moons didn’t penetrate the area where he stopped and then climbed through an opening.
She thought it must be a cave, but the musty smell was more organic/plant-like and she wondered if it wasn’t a hollow in one of the giant trees.
At that moment, she didn’t really care.
She was so weak with residual fear that she simply collapsed when Zhor finally released her from the harness.
She didn’t try to get up. She just curled into a tight ball to try to conserve what little warmth she could generate.
She could hear Zhor moving around, but she was too miserable to have much interest in what he was doing—especially if it didn’t include building a fire for warmth.
Instead, he made up a pallet from the bundle they’d brought and moved her to it and then curled around her and pulled the skin, fur side down, over them.
Slowly, warmth began to invade her.
Most of it seemed to be coming from him and when her back was finally warm and her front still freezing, she wiggled until he loosened his grip on her and turned in his arms to warm the other side.
He tightened his embrace again once she’d settled, plastering her against his length.
It was enough to arouse all sorts of thoughts about getting warm. It almost seemed as if the heated awareness of desire invaded both of them simultaneously. They shifted. Annika lifted her head to stare up at Zhor expectantly/hopefully, holding her breath.
He crushed his mouth down on hers almost as if he expected her to try to escape.
That was the furthest thing from her mind.
His tongue was a welcome invader as he thrust it into her mouth in conquest, laying waste to any barriers with the thrill of his touch, his taste. Like an exotic drug, his essence flowed through her, alerting every nerve ending, every hair follicle until she was buzzing with awareness of him in every pore.
He rolled until she was pressed against a hard surface, half on her back, half on her side, insinuating one of his legs between hers, bringing his knee up until it was resting against her intimately.
She curled her one leg across his hips and rode his thigh upward until she could use her foot on his ass to bring his pelvis tightly against hers.
They lay entwined in that manner for some time, exchanging breaths, content to merely rub sinuously against one another while they explored one another’s mouths with lips and tongue.
He broke the kiss eventually to explore further, tearing the halves of her suit front away to expose bare, tender flesh to the tortuous movements and textures of his lips, his tongue, and the sharp edge of his teeth. Annika gloried in it, enjoyed every titillating stroke of his tongue, every pull of his mouth on tender skin, every electrifying scrape of his teeth. For a time, she was content to relish the heat he was building in her, felt the pleasure arising from his touch was all she wanted or needed. After a time, though, she began to feel swollen, achy, and throbbing all over. A sense of desperation began to invade her, to take hold of her more and more persistently, edging aside her pleasure in his touch.
She needed more!
And she began to urge him to give her more, riding his thigh in a rhythmic dance that brought her against his erection over and over until he pushed her to her back and stripped the suit from her.
Their last encounter/first, danced through her mind as he aligned his cock with the mouth of her sex and thrust. It sent a thrill through her—the memory of how he’d made her feel then, expanded the fire dancing along her skin and through her veins until she felt like she couldn’t bear the wait any longer.
A flicker of uneasiness that he might beat her to the finish line again added a dash of reality that cooled her fractionally, distracting her just enough to prevent her from reaching nirvana instantly.
She brushed that aside, curling her legs around his hips and lifting to meet his second thrust so that he slipped through her wet channel and burrowed deeply inside of her.
It felt ... wondrous! She’d never felt anything like the sense of togetherness that swept over her, of being joined to another beyond the flesh.
It almost seemed he shared her desire to simply lay together, flesh joined in heated adhesion. For many moments, he stilled.
Finally, he sucked in a harsh breath as of a drowning man and slowly began to withdraw.
Annika planted her feet on the floor beneath her and arched when he’d reached the mouth of her sex, taking him back inside of her, setting the pace for both of them.
His harsh, gasping breaths, the fine sheen of sweat that broke from his pores, the quaking she could feel deep inside him sent her senses soaring, drove her quickly to the pinnacle where she hovered seemingly endlessly. Just as she’d begun to think she couldn’t make it over the top, her body gathered itself and leapt. She gasped as the hard contractions hit her, moaned, clung to Zhor to keep herself grounded, to encourage him to move faster and deeper.
She seemed to soar forever, till she could hardly breathe for the heights of glory, and then she began to fall back, drift downward.
It was just as she felt herself begin to fall toward the ground that Zhor uttered a growl of satisfaction and began to jerk with his own release.
She sucked in a harsh breath as his climax triggered a second within her, bowing up to meet him as he drove deep and held himself still.
They fell back toward the mother world together and they didn’t stop falling until they were fathoms deep in a rapturous, dreamless sleep of total satisfaction and complete exhaustion.