“Loo. I do not care even a small amount.”
“Really?”
“I have mated before,” he pointed out.
“Well, yes, that’s usually how it is. Uh. I mean, that’s how it is back home.”
“This is your home now.”
She smiled at him. “So it is. Kiss me some more. Your reaction was quite a bit nicer than I thought it would be.”
He obliged, his tongue exploring her mouth, and soon enough she had wriggled out of her mating robe and helped him out of his, and she was kissing him all over his broad chest and he was sighing and stroking her hair.
“You really don’t care?” she asked again, because she was having a little trouble believing it was this easy.
“Loo, I beg of you, can we please talk of something else? Or better, not talk at all?”
“All right, all right. Let’s talk about how beautiful you are.”
He laughed and caressed her bare hip. “Men do not have beauty. You are the beautiful one.”
“Pretty is as pretty does…not that I ever knew what that meant. And I’m supposed to be a linguist.”
“You will teach me the tongues you speak?”
“You want to learn Spanish? Or Mandarin?”
“I have interest in what interests you.”
“Oh.” She reached out and tentatively grasped him, marveling at the way he throbbed in her hand. He groaned a little and shifted so she could have better access. “Te quiero. That means I want you.” It also meant I love you, but she wasn’t quite ready for that yet.
He breathlessly repeated the phrase, then reached out and stroked the fine hair between her thighs. His finger slipped through her wetness and he gently caressed her, his thumb lightly pressing her clitoris. She felt a little breathless herself, and felt herself yearning toward him as he eased her legs apart and his other hand joined the first, stroking and teasing.
She let her head fall back and gloried in his hands, his tongue in her mouth, his lips on her throat. When he held her apart with his thumbs, she strained to meet him, nearly sobbing as his hot length slipped into her, as easy and pretty as a dance.
She clutched his broad shoulders as he surged against her, as he pulled her thighs up so her legs were wrapped around him, as he stroked so hard, and yet so sweetly, she nearly felt it in her chest. In fact, she did feel it in her chest; her heart was filling, bursting.
“Te gusto,” she moaned, and meant it the way it was supposed to be.
“Say a truth,” he murmured to her.
“I want you.”
“Say another truth.”
“I…love you.”
“I, also.”
“Please don’t stop.”
“Never.”
She had meant touching her, filling her up, but realized he had meant he would never stop loving her, and then she did weep, a little. But it didn’t feel like being weak, being a silly girl; in this one moment between them, it felt exactly right.
She felt a flower full of light open inside her and shivered as she reached orgasm, shivered and tightened her grip, and then he was stiffening in her arms and telling her that he loved her in Spanish.
After, they cuddled together in his big bed, his hand cupped loosely over her right breast, her head on his shoulder. “It’s nice to be home,” she said after a long, comfortable silence.
“It was not home for me until you came,” he replied. “I have waited for you long and long.”
“I guess I was waiting for you, too. I just didn’t know.”
“But now you do?”
“Yes.” She sighed. “Now I know.”
They slept.
He woke before she did, and she supposed she would get used to being gazed upon while she slept. On the other hand, she wondered, is that something one would ever want to get used to? She never wanted to take any of this—or him—for granted.
Although she had been here just a short time, it felt like she had been fighting forever. Now that she had stopped, she wanted to preserve the feeling of sublime contentment.
“How dull,” she commented, “that I’ve turned out to be like all the other girls, interested only in home and a family.”
“I do not think you are dull, Loo. And I do not think your interests lie only with heirs.”
She reached down, found him. Quite hard for her. The thought—the clear proof of his wanting—brought a warm flush to her body.
“It doesn’t sound like you think so,” she teased.
“Mmmm…”
“Show me what you like. Do you like this?” She slid her palm up and down, her thumb and forefinger meeting at this tip, then spreading apart at his base.
“Oh yesssss…” he groaned.
“What else? We’re married now, I’m supposed to know these things.” She heard her solemn, almost scholarly tone and smiled. “So tell me.”
“Touch…my gems…in your other hand…while you do that…that…”
She cupped his testicles, marveling at their furry warmth, their pleasing texture, while her other hand stroked up and down. (And it seemed, whatever the planet, men had valuable names for their testicles, something she would think about later, when it would be more appropriate to laugh.) He was squirming beneath her touch, his hands gripping her shoulders, and then he wrenched her down for a toe-tingling kiss.
In half a second, he had shifted so that he was leaning over her, his hands were busy below her waist, his fingers making her squirm, making her groan, making her want him more than she had ever wanted anything. His fingers stroked and dipped and teased and she writhed beneath his touch, pinned to the bed by his kiss, his hands, her desire.
He eased into her, never breaking the kiss, and she rose to meet him, looped her arms around his neck, and met every thrust. She felt his hands cupping her bottom and sighed into his mouth. Then he was stiffening over her and looking chagrined.
“I was too soon,” he said. “I apologize.”
She laughed out loud. “You’ve got the whole rest of your life to make it up to me.”
“Agreed,” he said. “I will start at once.”
And he was as good as his word.
GROOMFIGHT
Chapter 1
Prince Shakar was the queen’s own child, which was why he missed all the excitement. Unlike his brothers, Shakar could not get enough of his mother’s world, and the only way to get there from the SandLands was through stories.
As a child he had heard about The Hitchcock, The Chubby Checker, Chocolate Sodas, the Dirty Stinking Commies, and the king of the land, Eisenhower. When Princess Lois came, she regaled him with tales of Those Bastards in Payroll and the World Wide Web, marvelous updates to a world he had come to love as much as his own.
In short, because Shakar was his mother’s son, he spent quite a bit of his time wishing he was somewhere else.
Thus, hunting trips. He could never get to his mother’s world by hunting, of course, but it helped to get out of Castle Royale for a few sunrounds.
In fact, if he had not been his mother’s son, he would not have missed the dark travelers and Anne’s great cleverness, her mating ceremony, his trip, the farm, the Groomfight, and Rica.
He owed his mother everything.
Chapter 2
He had almost caught up with the herd of toans, and supposed it was time for the kill. Although he doubted he would, in fact, cull; his father had taught him never to kill unless he was hungry. He was tracking the toans to keep in practice, and out of boredom.
He sniffed some offal, judging it to be from just that morn, and thought, How I wish I were anywhere, anywhere but here, and then fell.
This was startling, to put it mildly, and he instinctively shifted back to his two-legged form. He had fallen, somehow, through the sand, and was surrounded by golden light, so bright it made his eyes water, and he fell and fell, and thought, See now, you have your wish and are you not sorry?
He landed with a tooth-rattling thud and knew no more.
He awoke and found himself looking up into a glorious face, a smiling kumkoss-colored beauty with the biggest, darkest eyes he had ever seen.
“Well hiya,” she said. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” he replied, dazzled.
“Are you sure? That was quite a fall. From the sky, if you don’t mind my pointing that out.”
“I am well.”
“Glad to hear it, bud! You think you can sit up?”
“No.” It occurred to him that his head was pillowed on her soft sweet lap, and he had no urge to move. Ever.
“Okay, take your time, get your wind back.” She brushed his hair out of his eyes, her full bosom actually blocking the sun for a moment. “I haveta say, you gave me quite a shock! Not to mention you almost landed on me.”
“I ask forgiveness.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said cheerfully. “I have quick reflexes. And it livened up what was looking to be a dull morning. D’you want something cool to drink?”
He could have thirsted on her, gazed upon her forever, but after watching his brother woo Lois, knew better than to blurt out such a thing. Although it was the tradition to explain openly about feelings the moment they were discovered, it tended to startle Earthers.
“I am fine.” And he was. Her oval face was framed by wings of dark hair streaked with silver, and she had a small nose and chin, and the proud cheekbones of a queen. Her voice was low, almost throaty, and her fingers as she stroked his forehead were cool.
“I’m Frederica Callanbra, but you can call me Rica.”
“I am Shakar, Prince of the S—”
“The SandLands, right?”
“How did you know that?” he asked, so startled he sat up.
She was kneeling beside him, and he saw she was wearing short clamdiggers, only to her knees, a plain sky-colored work shirt, and nothing on her feet, which were dirty. It was quite a bit cooler there than his home, he noticed, and there were a great many trees, casting shade over them. He could smell domestic animals and vegetation. Quite a bit of it, more than he had ever smelled in one place at once.
Never mind sky-colored shirt, he thought, glancing up. The sky here is a different color. How beautiful it is!
“My mother told me about the SandLands,” she explained, smoothing an errant strand of dark hair behind her ear.
“My mother told me about here,” he said excitedly. “About clamdiggers and sodas and all the many costumes you all wear. She came from here.”
“Well, my mom came from there.” They sat in the dirt and smiled at each other. “Prince, eh? You’re a long way from home.”
“I am glad to be here,” he said with perfect truth. In addition to trees as tall as the castle, there was a lush green covering on the ground. “My mother was a good queen and a good mate but she did miss her home. She told me about grass and oak trees and…farms?”
She gave him an odd look. “I work the land, sure. But I’m here by myself. If you’re looking for a settlement, the nearest one is a day’s ride from here.”
“I am not looking for a settlement.”
“You seem to be feeling better. Want to come in for something to drink?”
“Yes, I would like that.”
“Nice and easy,” she replied, extending a hand to help him up, not that he needed assistance. And not that he was about to refuse her touch. “You okay? You feel dizzy or anything?”
He did not know “dizzy” but forgot about it as he stood to his full height…and realized she was as tall as he was. Such a thing had never happened to him before. The tallest woman at the palace had come up to his throat. “You are large,” he replied, very surprised, then flushed as blood surged to his face. Fool! A terrible thing to say to a female. “I meant to say, you are very big. Ah…”
She laughed. And did not seem offended! “My dad was even bigger…a whole head taller than me. My mom was the shrimp in the family. And may I say, that’s quite a way with words you’ve got there.”
He laughed, too, relieved and a little surprised at how quickly she put him at ease. Rica was quite a woman.
Chapter 3
“This is very good,” he said, draining his third cup. “What is it?”
“It’s just milk from the animals. You probably saw them outside.”
“And you are here all alone?”
“Yeppers. There was a—a plague, I guess you’d call it, and my folks got exposed when they were getting supplies. We called it the Five-Minute Flu, because you had about five minutes to make your peace and then you choked to death on your own snot.” Rica said this to the amazing stranger with perfect calm, though ten years later, the memory still hurt. No chance to say good-bye; the last thing she’d said to her mother had been, “Don’t forget to bring back sugar.”
“By the time I came after them to see what was holding them up, everybody who was gonna catch it had caught it, and…well. I figure being a hybrid helped me fight off the disease. I’ve never been sick a day in my life.” She sighed. “Poor Mama and Dad.”
The prince blinked at her. She had time to marvel at his eyes—she had never seen eyes the color of grass before—when he asked, “You have stayed out here alone?”
“Well, there’s work to be done. What was I going to do, abandon the family home to…what? Go find strangers? And eventually, the town settled again. We’re like the old Colonists, you know, the ones who came to America? We get the shit kicked out of us, but we always bounce back. Besides,” she added matter-of-factly, “where was I going to go? I didn’t have any—I mean, like I said, there’s always work to be done.”
“You remind me a bit of my sibling-by-mating, Lois. She also is from here and—and is brave with her words.”
Rica laughed. She’d never heard it put so tactfully before. “Yeah, brave with my words, yeppers, that’s me. So, listen, how are we going to get you back?”
“Back?”
“Well, sure. Did a—I don’t know, a spell or something—did that go wrong back home? Or do you have machines that toss people all over the galaxy and one of those went wrong? How’d you end up here?”
“I do not know,” Prince Shakar replied. He didn’t look even a tiny bit troubled. “What matters is that I am here now.”
“Ooooookay.”
“I must earn my keep,” he told her earnestly. “I cannot lounge about your family home eating and drinking. I must help you.”
“Oh, uh, that’s not really—I mean, you’re a prince. You—”
“—must not let others take all the work on their own shoulders,” he finished firmly.
“Well…” She was weakening. Although he was fascinating to look at and talk to—she hadn’t seen skin that color since her mother died—there was always work to be done. And he looked strong. A little on the small side, but strong. “I guess there are a few things…if you don’t mind…”
He set his cup down with a decisive thump. “I do not mind. Please show me what is to be done.”
“If this was an eighties movie,” she said, grinning, “there’d be a musical montage of us working together and bonding right about now.”
“Beg pardon, what?”
“Never mind. Let’s go, Prince.”
“Shakar.”
“Prince Shakar.”
“No, only Shakar.”
“Gotcha.”
“You are strong,” she commented several hours later. “I’ve never seen anyone pick up a full-grown barnyard animal before. I thought I was in pretty good shape, but you…”
“It seemed the best way to get her into the barren so she could be with her young one.”
“Barn.”
“Yes.” He looked her over and she almost blushed—the expression in his eyes was admiring and even a little—“You are strong also. Many of our females are strong, but I do not know if they could tend to a holding this size on their own. Lois is not strong at all,” he added thoughtfully, “but her courage makes up for it.”
She shut the gate and bound it closed with the thick rope. No roaming animals tonight, thank goodness! “Yeah, I know how that goes…my mom was much stronger than my dad. It didn’t bother him, though. They used to tease each other about it. She’d pretend that the way to decide who would get a chore would be to arm wrestle, and of course she would always win, and—”
“Arm wrestle?”
“Yeppers, it’s when you—uh, here.” She stepped closer to the gate. “Here. Put your arm up like this…yeah, rest your elbow on the top…okay, and then I do like this…and now we—owwwwwwwwwwww, stop squeezing! That’s not how you do this.”
“I apologize,” he said, his tanned face coloring to his eyebrows.
She pulled her hand out of his grip and inspected the mashed fingers. “Okay, new rule, no more asking guys who fell out of the sky to arm wrestle. Lucky for you I’m—what do you call it—I can use both hands just as well.”
“Why would you not?” he asked.
“Oh, I guess everybody from the SandLands is—ambidextrous! Got it. I was afraid it would be on the tip of my tongue all day.”
“You had fear it would what?”
“Never mind. Yeah, come to think of it, my mom could use either hand…” She shook herself. “Okay, back to business. Now carefully wrap your fingers around mine…yes, like that…and now we each try to push the other person’s arm over. Get that other hand down, not like that, that’s cheating.”
“Many apologies.” He was inspecting their joined hands with interest. “Now what do we do?”
“Okay, now…go!”
She strained and even grunted, and to her surprise his arm actually went over a couple of centimeters, when she realized…
“How long should the game last?”
“Oh, for the love of…will you just push my arm over already? Ow!” She glared while he looked guilty. “Fine, great, good work. Give me my hand back, I want to make sure I still have five fingers.”
He didn’t give her her hand back. If anything, his grip tightened. “I should not play that game again,” he told her soberly. “I would never want to cause harm to your hand or—or any other place.”