Breeding Ground Part 29

Chapter Eighteen.

After bathing in water and being vigorously scrubbed down by soap and sponge, Alex was placed in a second bath, this one enriched with sweet-scented oils. There her pubic hair was shaved and oils worked into her skin. Following that morning ritual, she was led by three bathing servants back into the elaborate suite decorated of reds and golds where she spent most of her time.

Usually the king was waiting for her there so he could take her to breakfast. This morning he was not. She prayed that didn't mean what she thought it meant, namely that she wasn't permitted to eat. Her belly was rumbling something fierce.

On the cusp of working herself up into a fit of anger, Alex stilled when she noticed an ornate gold and bejeweled table on the far side of the bedchamber. There was a single chair pushed up against it and it was loaded down with all sorts of scrumptious looking foods. Her mouth began to water, hunger pangs a.s.saulting her.

"For you," one of the Xandi bathing servants told her. Handing Alex the lead to her chain, she motioned toward the table. "The king-G.o.d does permit you to eat in solitude this morn."

Alex was stunned, but appreciative. She inclined her head toward the servant before scurrying off to eat to her heart's content. She wasted no time gobbling down everything she wanted, her favorites being the sweet bread and yam-like vegetables that were part and parcel of every breakfast in Tongor.

Satiated, she sat back and reflected on what had once been an uncomplicated pleasure-eating what she wanted, how much of it she wanted, and doing so in privacy. She had no idea why Malik had given her this simple gift, but was grateful for it.

A few minutes later, a ripple of awareness pa.s.sed through Alex, a sensation that let her know she was being watched. The presence was a familiar one.

"Good morning," Alex said without turning around.

Silence.

"How did you know I was here?" His voice was deep...and convincingly surprised.

She shrugged. "I seem to know a lot about you, just as you seem to know a lot about me. What I don't understand is how. Or why."

"What manner of creature are you?" he murmured.

Alex smiled. He was coming straight to the point. Turning around, she took her first look of the day at Malik. There was no change in his ferocious-looking, reptilian appearance, but a major change in his eyes. He looked as confused as she felt. "The truth?"

"Of course."

She sighed, her smile evaporating. He had come straight to the point, so she might as well, too. "I'm over one hundred million years old."

He stilled, but betrayed no emotion.

"I suppose you could call me a human, but if so I'm an ancient one. That's why I am physically different from the Takuri."

Still he said nothing, so Alex went on. She told him where she had been born, about her career with NASA and the deep-s.p.a.ce mission, about the cryptic warning the Methuselah had received from Earth, and about how a nuclear explosion had managed to send her crew reeling through the annals of time and s.p.a.ce. At her tale's conclusion, she was well aware of the fact she had an enraptured one-king audience inching closer and closer to her.

"This is much to accept as the truth."

"Yes. I know."

"And yet do I believe you."

Her shoulders straightened. She nodded, thankful to him for simply believing...and not taking her through all the motions that Fija had.

"Perhaps you are not Takuri," he rumbled out, "yet you are their prophesized queen."

Their gazes met and locked.

"The Takuri believe that to be true. But if you believe that," Alex said softly, "then why do you keep me alive?"

Again, silence.

Finally, one side of his mouth hitched up in a small smile. "I do not know," Malik admitted.

There was something between them, some inexplicable thing that neither of them could understand. They didn't want for it to be there, but staring at each other only made it more obvious that the connection did, in fact, exist.

Alex's eyelids grew heavy when she saw his swollen erection jutting out from his groin. Arousal knotted in her belly.

"I am your enemy," she whispered, standing up.

"Yes." He walked a bit closer, the wings on his back expanding. "You are."

Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were heaving up and down, her nipples stiff and tight. "I could never be happy in your world."

"You cannot say that with all certainty." He drew nearer.

"I have thoughts and feelings and needs."

"I know." And nearer.

"I am not a doll like those other Takuri whose minds you have stolen."

Malik said nothing, just walked closer and closer to where she stood, her body naked and trembling. By the time he stood before her, towering over her frame by double the measurement, the arousal inside of her was a merciless knot of tension and desire. He ran one black reptile's hand down her neck and then lower to cover her breast. Flicking her hard nipple back and forth with his thumb, all she could do was shudder in response.

"You want me to want you."

"I do," Malik murmured.

Torn between arousal and fear of the unknown, Alex hesitated for a long moment. Out of all the crazy things that had happened to her since disembarking on Earth in the year 100,000,007, what she was contemplating doing next was the craziest.

She'd never been with any man except for Robert. Married straight out of high school, they had been together her entire adult life. Other than her dead husband, there had only been one emotionless droid that had ever touched her. He-it-was dead, too. And now here she stood, preparing to join bodies with a male that wasn't of her own species, or even close to it.

But he made her feel, d.a.m.n it. He made her feel and that was something she had never thought to know again. He sparked a sense of need and knowing inside of her she'd never before experienced...not even with Robert.

Making her decision, she held out a trembling right hand and tentatively squeezed his c.o.c.k. His answering hiss was her undoing.

"I want you," she admitted, swallowing heavily. "I'm afraid, but I want to be with you. Just once."

His smile was typical Malik arrogance. "You'll want me more than once."

A blink later, Alex found herself being forcefully, but reverently, thrown onto the plush harem bed. Another second and her knees were thrust apart, his gigantic body situated intimately between them.

"I know not what you are to me, Alexandria," he rasped out, "but I need to be inside you."

Alex felt a moment's fear as she took in the sight before her. Positing himself between her legs and guiding his huge c.o.c.k towards her small opening was the ten-and-a-half-feet-tall genetic cross between a gargoyle and a black lizard. When his bald head came up and those gold-slit eyes were revealed to her, the coil of tension in her belly responded to the obvious desire she saw in them.