His to Mate Read online

  “Thank you. I’m going to get naked now if you’d care to join me?” She gave him a saucy wink and stood up. Her clothes came off as she headed to the lake, abandoned in the grass. Then she had a thought and turned back to him, her arms over her breasts. “You all didn’t resurrect ticks did you?”

  “Ticks? Those tiny, blood-sucking horrors? No, we didn’t. No fleas either.”

  “Thank fuck for that. Last one in is a rotten egg!” She screamed the last with a laugh and ran into the water. Then she ran right back out. “That’s fucking freezing!”

  She stared at him, shocked at the coldness.

  “It’s coming out of the mountains, of course it is. Come on, I dare you.” He ran past her, his own clothes thrown away, and dove into the water.

  “How can he stand it?” She stuck her right big toe in the water and backed off. “Nope, not freezing my tits off today, buddy.”

  She went back to the blanket, her clothes in her hands, salvaged from the grass. She looked over when she heard splashing and saw him treading water, happy as a seal. “How the hell can you stand that?”

  “Our bodies are different. It doesn’t feel cold to me.” He swam out of the water, very obviously not cold.

  Her eyes went straight to a part of him that was very, very warm, in fact. “I think I can see that. Want me to take care of that for you?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.” He dropped down beside of her, his lips fused to hers with a hunger that she knew would never go away.

  5

  His fingers played across her cheek as he kissed her, a sweet distraction from the sensual slide of his tongue along hers. With a long press of his lips against hers, the supreme leader of the alien overlords pulled back, just enough to look deep into her eyes.

  “You are amazing in so many ways, Ann. I didn’t know you’d be this perfect, even when I dreamed about you.” His voice was low, but she heard him.

  A slight smile pressed her lips up, but he kissed her again to stop her from speaking. “Leave the clothes off.”

  Ann let her head fall back, a laugh of delight the only sound she made as his lips played down her neck. Fingers stroked the silky skin down along her chest until both hands kept a breast. Each tip was teased into a hard peak with his fingers before his mouth came down to circle each one in liquid heat.

  “Mm, that’s so good,” she murmured but she wasn’t really paying attention to anything but the sensation of his lips as they sucked at her nipple. Her hips pressed into him, his body between her legs. He was just as naked and ready as she was, but neither was in a rush. They rarely had so much time together that they wanted to just use it as wisely as they could now.

  Her fingers came up to his head, slid into the thick pelt of his dark hair, and she allowed herself to do nothing else but feel and then feel some more. He drove her mad with his touch, but it was a madness she happily embraced. Two months ago she hadn’t known this man really existed. She’d started to dream about him, but she hadn’t known he was real. Now she did, and the soft press of his fingers into her flesh was something she knew, but she still craved it.

  That touch reassured her, it made her feel safe, but it also set her on fire.

  Rager had taught her many things since their mating, things about sex and the adult body, but the most important might have been to take what she wanted, to demand it even. His attention was on her left breast, so she soothed the ache for attention the other had with her own hand.

  She hadn’t counted on him noticing, or on him moving his head to suck at the nipple through the two fingers she pinched it in. She squeezed a little harder as his tongue stroked over the tip, and wasn’t surprised when her hips jutted up against him. The pressure of his leg down there, so tight against her, fired an instinct to move, to seek solace wherever it came.

  “You’re going to break me too soon, angel,” he whispered raggedly when she moaned deep in her throat.

  “Then fuck me, Rager. Make the ache stop.”

  “I want to taste you, to stroke you, Ann. I want…” but she pulled his head up to hers and shut him up with her lips, and her tongue. She kissed him with so much uncaged passion that it broke his own will.

  They both cried out with satisfaction when he shifted his hips and sank into her wet heat. He was so deep inside of her that he couldn’t sink any further. With a satisfied hum, he turned them over and pushed her up against his raised legs. “Let me at least look at you as you use my body for your own needs.”

  She smirked happily but didn’t say anything else. She let her head fall back, her hair free and loose now, down her back. It teased at his thighs, but she knew he wouldn’t complain. Instead, he urged her to move, pushed up into her to start the dance that only he would ever see her dance. There was nobody else in this world she’d ever want as much as she wanted him.

  “Tell me it’ll always be like this?” she asked him, and he nodded his head, in total agreement.

  “Nothing will ever take you from me, Ann, and now that we are mated, we’ll never want another person. Not unless one of us dies, and I’m not going to let that happen.”

  She reached for his hands and their fingers clasped together as she found just the right pace, for them both. They moved together, perfectly in time, as they drove higher, to the place that only existed for them, between them.

  Ann gasped when the explosion came, deep inside of her, and she heard the hiss of Rager’s inhaled breath as she clenched around him. Her back arched, and she drove herself down onto this thick length until she couldn’t breath and the world was darkness that slithered with the coils of pleasure.

  He followed her, his own cry filled the air around them, but neither cared. There likely wasn’t anyone around to witness what happened anyway. She sank down onto his broad chest when it was over, her body wrung completely dry. She was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to languish in his arms for the rest of the day.

  Rager had other ideas. The minute he caught his breath he stood up, fetched his clothes, and got dressed. “Come on, lazy bones, let’s get back to our task.”

  “Do we have to?” she whined from behind the edge of the blanket she’d pulled over her nudity.

  “Yes, we do. Come on now. Let’s get this done, then we can stop again when the sun goes down.”

  The transporters produced their own power, somehow, and they wouldn’t need fuel. Rager’s was much better than hers, and she knew they could watch movies, prepare food, and do quite a lot more if they needed to. It was almost an RV and an airplane mixed into one vehicle. “Can we watch a movie in the transporter later?”

  “If you want. I’ve got some bedding stowed away, and if we leave it running we can keep the air cool and any nasty bugs out. Or we can pitch a tent.”

  Only, their version of tents were basically mini-rooms that expanded from a pack that was only two feet square. She’d seen them used before, to act as temporary rooms when the invaders were going to be away from their ship for a while and hadn’t been assigned quarters down here yet.

  “That could be interesting.” She put her black leather boots back on, and stood up, fully dressed now. Her black combat pants and black t-shirt were now almost a uniform when she wasn’t going to some function or lounging around the house.

  “We’ll decide later then. Ready? I love those pants on you, by the way. They make your ass look like a peach that needs to be bitten into.”

  “That’s not sexist at all,” she snarked, but grinned. She’d actually loved the compliment. When he smacked said ass, she glared but had to admit, she liked that part too.

  “It’s mine, and I’m glad you keep it in such nice shape.” He kissed her as they settled back into their seats.

  She didn’t run anymore, she used a treadmill in their home, and tried to maintain a pace that would mean she could walk for hours if she needed to. That fear of being out in the world, of having to walk far distances, hadn’t left her, and she liked to keep fit, anyway.

 
They both went quiet as they flew over the tall hill that had sheltered them and found a small city on the other side. It was flattened, nothing left, and no hint of mankind was in sight.

  “It’s so sad,” she whispered, not for the first time that day.

  “I know, baby. I’m sorry. Do you want to take a nap?” His concerned eyes scanned her face, but she refused to be so soft.

  “No, I’d like to know what we’re really facing. I’m not a child. I can do this.”

  They flew on for a few more hours but the world here was empty. There were no signs of life, despite the disappearance of the ice. There were no tent cities, no clothes blowing on clotheslines, no fires, nothing that she might have hoped for.

  They flew up the western coast of what had once been the United States but was now just more real estate for the invading aliens. Would they all end up speaking the same language, with the title of earthling as the only thing that separated them? Ann didn’t think that was necessarily a bad thing, it was about time the people of the planet realized they were all riding the same rock through space, but she did wonder how many of them were left.

  “How many have you found so far, in this part of the world?” she asked as he steered them through the air. The sun had started to go down and he turned on the navigation lights, but there were no headlights. They wouldn’t really work this far up. There were landing lights, but they didn’t need them right now.

  “A few thousand so far. We’ve only really looked around southern California and the section to the south that belonged to Mexico. We found more people down there than up here. It was cold there too, but not as bad. We’ll find more though, you people are resourceful and there was time to prepare. The really bad snows didn’t start for a few months, so we’re hoping to find more.”

  “I hope you do.” She’d often wondered who would survive, what kind of people they would be. Would they be bad people that took advantage of others to stay alive, or would they be the good kind of people?

  “Don’t worry, we won’t allow criminals into the places we’re setting up. They’ll be taken to a separate place. Where they can feed off of each other if that’s what they choose. We keep it all under control there, too, though.” He gave her a reassuring look and drove on.

  Ann scanned the darkness below for signs of life, lights, fires, anything that might mean another human being existed out there. There was only darkness, though, and she was glad when Rager finally set them down for the night.

  They had a meal of hot pinto beans, cornbread that had been kept hot in a special bag, and a salad. An odd dinner, but a part of their daily diet now. There weren’t enough animals to have a solely carnivorous diet so they were forced to rely on other means of nutrition. None of them complained, they just took what they were given.

  The spices she’d brought home had made a lot of the food far more delightful than it would have been. Even now, she could taste a hint of chili powder in the beans and smiled. That taste was there because of her, she thought with a sense of pride. She wasn’t completely useless, at least.

  “What do you want to watch?” Rager asked as he put their empty dishes and the bag back into the cubicle they’d been in. “And should we set up the tent?”

  “I think I’d like to set the tent up.” It wouldn’t take long, they just had to undo a strap and the tent would do the rest. There would even be a bed and a door once it was all set up. She was thinking about the fact that they’d have to go out of the transporter to go to the bathroom and the process for opening the hatch on that was more complicated than setting up and taking down the tent.

  “That’s cool. I’ll bring in the video viewer and we can still watch a movie if you want.”

  “That sounds good.” She went off for a minute on her own and looked around. They were on top of a mountain, covered with trees now, and she needed a place to ease her bladder. She found a spot and did her business. When she stood up, she saw the face of a woman through the trees. She gasped as she did her pants back up and stared at the woman. “Who are you?”

  “Please. Don’t tell him you saw me. I have a husband, children, in a bunker not far away. I came out to get fresh water from the stream over there.” She pointed to somewhere behind Ann and deeper into the trees. “We don’t want to go with the aliens. We just want to be left in peace. Please, don’t tell him you saw me.”

  The woman looked clean, healthy, and perfectly capable of making up her own mind about how her life went. Ann understood the sense of Rager’s words, but she could see the fear on the woman’s face and the way she glanced behind her shoulder, as if her entire world lived just beyond where she could see. Ann decided to not say anything to Rager. Let one family have a little more time on their own, before their world turned upside down.

  “I won’t tell him. We’ll be gone tomorrow, so when you get back, stay down there until at least mid-afternoon, okay?” Ann held her hands out flat, palms down, in a motion meant to keep the woman from feeling threatened. “How did you know about them?”

  “We have a radio. And my husband’s seen a few of those plane things they have. Thank you, miss. You’ll never know how much I appreciate it.” The woman melted away then, into the trees and back to her life.

  Ann stood there, guilt a rat that gnawed at her brain. She should tell him, but she remembered the fear, the terror, of being captured by the aliens not so long ago. They weren’t allowed to decide where they went, or what they did. They were told. And that still irked Ann. They were treated like cattle, even if that treatment was humane. Surely, people should be allowed to decide?

  She had a feeling the aliens would find the family, eventually, but for now, they were living in their own happy world. Ann decided to let them have that for a while longer. She walked into the tent-room and closed the door behind her. It was twelve feet square and had an inflatable bed, a small inflatable couch, and recessed lights that were battery operated but still produced a good deal of light. A small podium to the left side of the bed served as a table and a nightstand.

  Rager had set up the video viewer on it, basically a 15-inch tablet, and had one open and loaded when she crawled into bed, naked, to curl around him. The covers were soft and heavenly and smelled of her favorite fabric softener. “Lets just lay here together, shall we?”

  “Are you alright?” His arm curled around her shoulders and pulled her tight to him. She felt his warm mouth on her forehead and smiled.

  “Yeah, I’m just tired. I need quiet for a little while. To be here with you and quiet, that’s all.”

  6

  “I really don’t see why you’re objecting to the uniforms, Ann. They’re dogs, after all. Human dogs.” The woman’s shrill voice, at the height of condescension, filled the study of Ann’s home two days later.

  Ann closed her eyes for a minute and tried to wipe the look of scorn off of her face. “Penelope, you’re very stupid, do you know that?”

  The room filled with ten other women, the mates of other aliens down the rank line that stretched out behind Rager, gasped as one. Normally, they all ignored Ann because she didn’t say a lot. When she did speak, the women usually just blinked and then ignored her. She’d had enough of it and refused to let Penelope lead the group, as she usually did, anymore.

  “How dare you?” Penelope, dressed in a mint-green silk suit stood up on tacky white pumps and glared down at Ann. “I’m…”

  “Nobody compared to me, Penelope. Sit down and shut the fuck up.” Ann stood up from the chair she was sat in and looked around the room. “I’d like to remind you all exactly who I am. I am the supreme leader’s wife. None of you will ever, ever outrank me.”

  She wasn’t happy to do this, but after an hour of listening to their petty ideas and plans, she’d had enough. “The wolf-shifters are not subhumans. They are, actually, stronger than us. They are healthier than us and likely to outlive us all. These stupid ideas that we have to treat them like slaves have to go, and I will tell you right now, I will
not have this idiotic idea of uniforms spreading any further. I hate uniforms, I refuse to wear one, I don’t care how much time you’ve spent on the design for the mates of the aliens, Penelope. It’s an ugly idea. And the uniforms you’ve designed for the wolves are, frankly, atrocious. Sit down and don’t stand back up unless I tell you to.”

  She looked around the room, now firmly in her control, and hoped none of them could see how surprised she was that any of them had actually listened to her. She felt a shaking inside, like she might fall down, but she stood firm. She had this one chance now, to make the world different from the way it used to be. She was going to take it.

  “We will not be having these cute little meetings anymore, ladies, where we only talk about which of us is pregnant, or what new treasure we’ve found for our houses. We are the mates of the leaders of this new world, and it’s time to act like it. We’re going to start talking about schools for the children we plan to produce, about making sure all children in the world get an education, and how we can help our mates turn this into the kind of world they came from. I don’t know if any of you noticed it or not, but the world we lost? It wasn’t working, and well, the aliens are lightyears ahead of us. Literally.”

  Ann looked around, saw a few pouting faces, but not many. She saw that most of the women looked relieved. Some realness, at last, she could see it in their expressions, mixed with that relief. “Now, anybody have any other ideas?”

  “As you said, Ann,” a woman with red hair stood up and said, Ann thought her name was Meg but couldn’t remember for sure, “we’ve all been discussing babies and pregnancies, but where are we going to have those babies? We have no hospitals now, or clinics even. I was a nurse before this all happened, and I think we need to talk with our mates about what kind of healthcare we’re going to receive from them. If we need to make a clinic, you know?”