need to start reproducing during this mating cycle."
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"They'll find someone else. They'll have to." Unbidden,
Caleb's thoughts shifted to a dark future. He imagined having
his symbion removed and losing his battle with Rennard's
while Zara looked on helplessly.
He'd tried so hard to keep those maudlin thoughts and
images out of his mind, but now that the symbion had seen
his fears and experienced them, its period of calm came to an
abrupt end. His wings lashed out, guttering the flames and
sending sparks skittering across the stone floor of the aerie.
Zara screamed and backed away from the embers.
"It's all right. It's all right," Caleb yelled, but he wasn't
talking to Zara. "I didn't mean it. Everything will be all right.
You have to trust me."
Fear overtook him, pumping from the symbion's brain in
wave after heart-pounding wave of adrenaline. "I won't let
them hurt you. I promise I won't."
"Caleb, you have to get control!" Zara rushed at him,
hands outstretched. His human brain knew she wanted to
comfort him and keep him from taking flight, but his animal
brain saw only a threat.
The symbion flung a wing at her, knocking her backward.
He tried to turn away, but uninjured and determined, she
rushed forward again into his arms.
"Caleb, you're stronger than the symbion. You can control
it. You can convince it that you won't allow it to be harmed."
Her urgent words soothed him, and the feel of her supple
body in his arms distracted both him and the symbion. Her
cool hands on his face calmed his anger but not his blood. His
desire flared, and so did the primal needs of the alien.
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"Zara, no!" He tried to push her away, but she held on,
one hand at the back of his neck, her face only millimeters
from his.
"You are stronger. Make it understand that whatever it saw
in your mind was not real."
"You're real." His arms went around her.
"I'm real," she echoed. "Listen to me. We will not let
anyone take the symbion away from you."
"Zara, I want..." Caleb began to sweat with the effort to
control the symbion. In a moment he would lose control again
and give in to its aching need to procreate before it died.
Desperation and selfish desire mounted in him, blocking out
any other thought.
"Stop, Caleb. Fold your wings. Concentrate on what you
want to do right now."
He was. Oh, he was. He cupped her ass and squeezed, slid
a hand into the waistband of her shorts and explored her
naked flesh.
Zara gasped and her breath came in a ragged pant against
his ear. "Fight it, Caleb. You're in charge. You lead."
He pushed her backward toward the alor pallet, one
thought only on his mind. I lead. I command.
The symbion agreed. It surrendered control to him,
knowing it was about to get exactly what it wanted.
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Chapter Ten
With Caleb's hands on her, Zara couldn't think. She
couldn't fight her own desires any longer. She let him push
her onto the sleeping pallet. She didn't protest when he shed
his shorts or reached with steady hands to tear hers from her
body.
She arched into his rough caress as he climbed over her
and helped him shove her thin shirt up over her breasts and
slide it off.
Fear of breaking the rules no longer concerned her. She'd
held out long enough while they'd spent the day talking,
speculating, pretending they didn't want each other like this.
Once they returned to the station, she'd never have another
chance to feel his perfect body poised above her or to show
him how much she'd longed for his intimate touch.
"Caleb..."
"I can't stop, Zara. I won't stop this time." Regret tinged
his voice, but didn't slow his feral exploration. His hands
roamed over her breasts, pinching her nipples until they
stood erect and dark pink, caressing her burning flesh until
she thrashed beneath him. Everywhere he touched, her skin
tingled. Her nerve endings blazed with an insatiable need for
more.
He spread her legs with his, and she didn't resist. She
moaned when the head of his cock slipped between her pussy
lips, mixing his warm pre-cum with her own. She'd never
been this wet except for the times she'd dreamed of him
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doing just this, taking her in the dark, in the heat, fucking her
without reservation until she screamed her release.
"I don't want to hurt you." He whispered the words into
her neck as he burrowed his hands beneath her ass and tilted
her hips up. His long fingers searched the crease between her
cheeks, spread the flesh and teased her anus. He massaged
her, pressing the puckered flesh to show her he could
penetrate if he wanted to, but this was only a tease. He didn't
take her there, just used the contact to heighten her arousal.
"You won't ... you can't—ah!"
His first deep thrust cut off her reassurance and left her
momentarily breathless.
He filled her, just as she'd imagined he would, a perfect fit.
She moaned her fulfillment and above her, he shuddered.
"I'm sorry."
"No, no! It's good, God, Caleb, it's good."
He thrust again, and she dared to look up into his eyes as
he began a sensual sexual rhythm. Fully dilated, his eyes
were black, fathomless, but far from cold. Hunger blazed in
them, a need so basic he couldn't control it, like the need to
breathe. She knew he couldn't have stopped now if she
begged him, but she'd never do that.
"More." Zara wrapped her legs around his back, and the
rough underside of his wings brushed her skin. The contact
was alien but perfectly erotic. All the fear she'd harbored
about what he might become faded away as she locked her
ankles over his backside and snaked her arms up under his.
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His wings fluttered and spread to the side. One stroke sent
loose tendrils of alor down flurrying around the room. Another
actually lifted their twined bodies slightly from the pallet.
"Caleb!" Zara stiffened. Would he attempt to fly with her in
his arms?
They hit the pallet a second later. Though they'd only lifted
off a few centimeters, the impact jarred the breath from
Zara's lungs and pushed Caleb's erection deeper inside her.
She gasped, and her back arched as the beginnings of an
orgasm flared in her core.
"I didn't mean to..."
"It's okay, it's okay ... oh, God, Caleb!" Zara shuddered.
Every sensation seemed to rush to her pussy. She was wet
and full a
nd poised on the verge of climax, but she held on,
reluctant to go over the edge with him and be done with this
moment she'd longed for.
Caleb seemed to have slipped away now into some primal
odyssey. He pumped relentlessly, groaning his pleasure with
each thrust. His wings ruffled, and he lowered his mouth to
Zara's nipple and began to suck and bite the painfully erect
tip. She gasped when a long pull from his lips and tongue
arrowed through her body like a bolt of electricity, shocking
her system into overdrive. Instinct took her over as well, and
coherent thought fled. She knew only one thing, that she
belonged to him, body and soul and she would let him do
anything he wanted, anything he needed to do to satisfy the
alien urges that controlled him.
She cried out and something exploded in her. Her clit
pulsed, sending waves of erotic sensation through her entire
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body. She closed her eyes and keened, while her inner
tremors forced her hips up off the soft alor pallet.
"Zara..."
"Come now, Caleb. Come in me."
to his body she thought she might break. As she commanded,
he came. His hot seed shot into her, heating her already
burning pussy. She shuddered again, the pulse of her orgasm
renewed by his.
For an eternity, they held each other, bodies still stiff with
cascading pleasure. Alor down fluttered around them in the
still air, falling slowly onto their sweat-slick bodies. The spicy
scent of the crushed leaves beneath them filled the room,
mingling with the combined aroma of their arousal.
Zara breathed the sexually charged air in deep, grateful
gulps. She'd never come like that, never felt so perfect as she
did now with Caleb still inside her, his weight above her,
holding her safe and immobile on the primitive bed.
She could have stayed that way forever, but Caleb began
to move.
He rose up on his hands and looked into her eyes. His
expression was dark, hot.
"Caleb we—"
"I'm not finished." His voice had taken on a dangerous
quality that frightened and excited her. He'd climaxed
spectacularly, judging by the sticky evidence of his orgasm
coating her thighs. What more could he want from her? It
didn't matter. She'd give it. Anything he asked was his.
"What do you mean?"
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"The symbion wants you now."
At first Arilani thought her tired eyes were playing tricks on
her, but as she circled closer to the hundredth—or was it the
thousandth?—island she'd flown over in her relentless search,
she realized she was indeed seeing the flicker of firelight.
Before she could bank on the dying wind, though, the
flame went out, leaving her wondering if she'd seen it at all.
Only a closer look would assuage her curiosity, so she
swooped in for a landing and cautiously advanced through the
alor screen to enter the half-hidden dwelling nestled at the
crown of the island.
Even in the dark, she recognized Caleb's wings spread
wide, their tips pointed upward in sexual triumph.
Arilani froze. Hidden in the shadows at the entrance to the
aerie, she remained, stunned by what she saw. Caleb knelt on
the sleeping pallet, naked, with his back to her. Before him,
on her knees also, legs spread, her backside in the air, Dr.
Abbott lowered herself to the submissive mating position.
The couple's ragged breathing filled the air along with the
distinctive scent of sex. Their whispered words had Ari
straining to hear every breathless syllable.
"Oh, God, Caleb, do it."
"The symbion is—"
"I don't care, please, fuck me again..."
The sudden stiffening of Caleb's muscles as he thrust
forward told Ari he'd obeyed his lover's command. His own
backside tightened, the sinews of his thighs straining as he
threw his head back and began to pound his lower body
against his female's exposed sex.
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Arilani covered her mouth with trembling fingers. This was
exactly what she'd feared would happen. The symbion had full
control of Caleb's actions and was claiming the nearest female
as its mate. It would continue to do so, until she conceived.
Ari's first instinct was to rush in and stop the illicit act.
Jidar hadn't sanctioned Caleb to mate, and he wouldn't until
the success of the joining had been determined. If the Icarian
leader learned of this, he would never give Caleb to Arilani.
By the time another man was chosen for her, she might be
well past the most fertile mating cycle of her life and she
could miss the opportunity to produce the offspring who
would one day rule.
She took one faltering step forward, but the cries of the
lovers stopped her. They'd reached climax, together. Ari
watched, horrified, as Caleb pushed Zara down into the alor
and stretched his sweat-soaked body over hers. She lay
beneath him, completely at his mercy, panting from her own
satisfaction. He soothed her by stroking her damp hair and
ran an appreciative hand along her trembling thigh.
"I'm sorry. Did I hurt you?"
know you would never hurt me."
Dr. Abbott rolled over to face Caleb and took his face in
her hands. Arilani retreated into the shadows just far enough
to remain out of sight of the human woman's less acute night
vision.
"Everything is different now. We shouldn't have done this,
but I'm not sorry, and I don't want you to be either," Caleb
said, his voice low and achingly intimate.
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A painful twinge between her breasts made Ari catch her
breath. She didn't love Caleb Faulkner, but she'd wanted him.
He was handsome and intelligent, a perfect specimen of
human male who would have become a strong, capable mate
for her and a perfect father to her child. Together they could
have changed Icarus, but the tone he used when speaking to
the woman he'd just bedded, told her the day Ari longed for
when they could step into the roles now held by Jidar and
Namara would never come. She could not abide this. All her
work on the breeding project amounted to nothing simply
because Dr. Abbott had been the first to find Caleb after his
joining. Had it been Arilani, it would be her now, lying
beneath him, sated and fertile, filled with his seed.
Her soft exhalation never reached the ears of the lovers.
They were too wrapped up in themselves to be aware of her
pain.
This could not continue. She could not lose her chance to
have a child of her own, a mate of her own, and save her
people in the process.
Her mind whirled with possibilities, and finally an idea
formed. She waited silently for what seemed like an
interminable period until Caleb and Zara's intimate
conversation ceased and their breathing became steady and
regular. Then she crept forward, prepared to put her plan into
action.
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Chapter Eleven
Caleb glided to a soft landing at the edge of the island
platform and strolled into the aerie, his arms full of fruit he'd
found growing in an abandoned garden on another island. He
whistled as he entered the dwelling and placed the fruit in an
alor net he'd found.
This morning he felt lighter than air. For the first time
since his diagnosis and since he'd begun his deception, the
weight of the secret he'd carried seemed manageable.
Zara had taken his burden from him. Despite all the lies
he'd told her, she'd forgiven him and accepted that whatever
time he had left, they would spend together.
He'd never been happier, and neither had his symbion
who'd been so busy preening with satisfaction, it had nearly
flown them into a rock.
"Caleb? You're finally back. I thought you'd forgotten
about me." She appeared next to him, her hair falling in
gentle ringlets around her shoulders, her skin aglow in the
morning light. His angel.
"I could never forget about you." He smiled and handed
her a small, green fruit. "Breakfast."
"Oh, good. I'm starving." She snatched the fruit from him
and bit into the soft flesh. Pale juice ran down her chin, and
Caleb swooped in and licked the sweet liquid off her skin,
then clamped his lips over hers in a claiming kiss.
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She laughed into his mouth and tried to mumble
something while their tongues battled around the honey-
sweet pulp of the fruit. "Geg yoo oon."
"What?" He managed a single word before diving in for
another deep kiss that tasted of fresh air and simmering
desire.
She pushed him away gently but with mischief in her eyes.
"I said, that was my bite. Get your own."
"My own bite? Okay." He grabbed her and sank his teeth