War Games (Alien Instincts) (7 page)

“I feel no such affection. But I will remind Markar.” Jakar responded, not phased in the least.

Rae could hear the shuffling of papers. “Looking at the information here, there has been a slight increase in your testosterone levels as well.”

Jakar did not hesitate in his answer. “I had to fight off Markar’s affections.”

Rae looked up at Markar to see that he was absolutely enraged by his brother’s words. The whole situation was so ridiculous, but his righteous anger seemed so normal, so human, that Rae couldn’t prevent the nervous giggle that started building inside of her.

With his hand over her mouth, no sound came out, but Rae’s body began to shake as uncontrollable laughter built up in her. The fact that she knew she couldn’t make any noise only made everything more hilarious. The silent shuddering of her body finally brought Markar’s attention to her. He looked down in concern. Seeing that she wasn’t hurt and was only laughing, his eyes began to brighten with his own amusement. As she saw the laughter start to build in him as well, Rae reached up to place her hand over his mouth to keep him quiet, and that was when everything changed.

As soon as her hand touched him, Rae watched as Markar’s pupils suddenly dilated till there was almost none of the golden color left. There was only fathomless black in his eyes now. She felt quick brushes of air on her hand as he took desperate breaths in and out through his nose. He pressed his body more firmly against hers. Shifting awkwardly at the pressure from the giant alien, her eyes widened in shock as she felt a part of his body growing in response to her movements.

Everything came together for Rae at that moment. She had been trying to block it all out: her attraction to Markar, his fascination with her. Retain some sort of semblance of professionalism, but the reality of the situation was staring her in the face at that moment. Markar was sexually attracted to her. Not in an alien way, but in a normal human male way. She felt him stick his tongue out and lick her hand, and a strange tingling sensation was left where his saliva had touched her. It traveled slowly up her arm and then exploded into her bloodstream, not as strong as before, but still enough to leave her trembling with the adrenaline it caused.

Not just adrenaline, she realized abruptly. It was arousal.

He was somehow turning her on even more, chemically, with his saliva. There was no other explanation for why in their current situation she would lose all sense of reality and spiral into a shadowy fog of passion. At least, not quite so fast.

She was saved from any more embarrassment when Jakar interrupted them. “Well, that was a close one! Right Markar?”

Markar’s pupils flashed back to their normal yellow, and then he began to growl. Rae heard him snarl “Mine!” before he turned towards his brother and attacked. His sudden switch to violence stunned Rae. She was left trying to recover from the state of arousal he had put her into, and the notion that she should try to help Jakar, but before she could decide on what to do, Markar stopped trying to kill his brother and turned his golden eyes back to her.

Running at her, Markar scooped her up over his shoulder and continued down the hallway. Before she could catch her breath he stopped and threw her. Screaming, she grunted as she landed on the bed in his room, and then Markar landed on her.

Markar nuzzled his face in her neck and started to rub their bodies together. Rae felt like she was being attacked, even if it was a pleasurable sort of attack. His actions and sudden mood swings frightened her. Knowing that as soon as he kissed her she would be lost, she decided to take action. Pushing at his shoulders had no effect, because he weighed a ton. So Rae pinched him. He jerked upwards in surprise, and that left him open for her to knee him in the crotch. Rae didn’t hold anything back. He was so much bigger than her that she knew this was probably the only chance she would get.

He grunted in pain and froze over her. Lifting both her feet up towards her chest, Rae kicked out and knocked Markar off of the bed. He hit the floor with a loud thud. Rae stood up on the bed and took out the small handgun he had given her, just in case. “You are scaring the crap out of me, Markar!” she yelled, while aiming the gun at him. She watched as he rolled on the ground in pain. Rae felt bad that she had hurt him, when he hadn’t hurt her at all, but she had no idea what was going on, and she needed to be in control.

Just then Jakar burst through the door. They both stared down at the injured Markar, waiting to see if he would become aggressive again. Judging by his groans of pain, he was incapacitated at the moment. Jakar looked up at Rae. “What did you do to him?”

“I… uhhh… kicked him off of me.” she answered lamely.

Jakar’s eyes widened in shock “What was he doing on you?”

Rae was reluctant to answer. She had a good idea of what Markar was trying to do on top of her, but it was awkward to say out loud. Especially to a man that wouldn’t even understand the whole thing. “He was getting too aggressive.” she decided to answer.

“Well, that is obvious.” Jakar looked down at his brother. “Why did you attack both of us, Markar?”

Breathing heavily, and still guarding his groin area, Markar crawled over to a wall and propped himself against it. He glared at his brother. “I attacked you because you interrupted me.” Markar looked towards Rae, and she saw such confusion and sorrow in his eyes that an unaccustomed pain was felt in her chest. “Rae… I am sorry for attacking you. I do not know what came over me.” Markar hung his head in shame.

“I know what came over you, all though it’s fucking ridiculous.” Both brothers turned to Rae in curiosity at her statement. At their undivided attention, she began to shift uncomfortably, dreading what she would have to explain. “You got horny, and without thinking of asking me if I want you to or not, you’ve been trying to initiate sex!”

“Do you want to?” Markar blinked at her, waiting hopefully for a response.

Rae blushed, realizing that somewhere within her she did want to. “That’s not the point. The point is you didn’t
consider
what I might want.” The piercing look Markar gave her made her afraid that he might not have missed her word play. Rae was never afraid of Markar, but she was afraid of her reactions to him. If she was honest with herself, she didn’t stand much of a chance with that crazy chemical he had. She was always the one in control, at work, and at home. She knew that chemical he had would take that away from her, and she wasn’t ready to give up just yet.

Stepping down from the bed, Rae walked over to Markar and stood in front of him with her hands on her hips. “Look, if we we’re to even think about how sex would work between our species, we would have to have some long conversations about it first. There are a lot of issues to cover there.”

“We have already discussed sex!” Markar said indignantly.

Rae waved her hands around in exasperation. “We haven’t even covered the tip of the iceberg with that subject! Or at least, the most important parts.” Rae paused. Why the hell she was even considering this she didn’t know. Perhaps it was because Markar had been so nice to her since she had met him, maybe it was because he had looked so devastated at his actions, but probably it had the most to do with her own feelings for the alien. He looked so human that she often found herself forgetting that he wasn’t, and he was the most handsome man she had ever seen. Rae didn’t spend much recreational time with men, because she couldn’t find any she either liked or respected, but she found both with Markar.

Crouching down to be on his level, Rae looked directly in his eyes. “First rule: restraint. When a woman says no, at any point, you have to respect that. Second rule: you seemed to have forgotten about the whole reproduction issue. Women can get pregnant. Third issue,” Rae hesitated, not knowing exactly how to bring this part up. “You’re saliva makes my body react… weird.”

Markar sat there in stunned silence. Finally he spoke. “React how?”

Rae blushed and narrowed her eyes at him in annoyance. It figured he’d skip over all the important issues and get right to the most embarrassing one. Rae glanced over towards Jakar, who she still didn’t quite trust. “Can we talk about this in private?” she whispered to Markar.

Instead of denying her request, like she expected, Markar nodded. He turned towards Jakar, who had been watching the entire exchange with interest. “It is time for you to leave, Jakar.”

At his words, his brother’s eyes widened. “But I want to know what the hell she is talking about!”

Markar stood up and stomped towards his brother. Shoving him out the doorway, Rae could hear the remnants of their conversation, which mostly consisted of Jakar’s protests. “I do not want to leave yet! I want to know what else she was going to say!”

“You must go back to your own ship now, Jakar. I have to continue alone, and if you keep refusing to leave I will kill you and throw your corpse into space.” Markar growled while he shoved his brother further down the hallway.

As soon as Jakar transported back to his own ship, Markar could feel a heavy weight lifted from his shoulders. The odd haze of rage and jealously completely vanished, and he felt more like himself. He realized it was because now there was no one to compete for Rae’s affection with. When Jakar interrupted them the last time, he distinctly recalled a need to mark Rae as his before his brother could get near her. Now that stress was gone, and he felt more at ease with Rae all to himself. Walking briskly back down the hallway, he made his way towards his human.

When Markar stepped back into his bedroom, he found Rae pacing anxiously back and forth. As soon as she spotted him she stopped dead in her tracks. He began to stalk slowly towards her. Rae took one step backwards or over for every step he took, till it almost seemed as if they were dancing. “I’m sorry for kneeing you.” she finally blurted.

Markar chuckled at her words. “Do not worry. I have learned my lesson.” he replied in his deep voice, as he kept moving steadily towards her. Rae felt some uneasiness when she realized she wasn’t sure which lesson he was referring to. Before she knew it, he had backed her up towards a wall.

“Now tell me, how do I make you react?” Markar asked as his eyelids lowered till Rae could only see slivers of his yellow iris glowing like crescent moons beneath them. She reached her hands behind her till they came in contact with the cool surface of the wall. It helped to keep her mind off of what had happened to her the last couple times Markar had licked her. He took one final step towards her, and she bumped the rest of her body against the wall when she retreated from him.

Looking upwards into his glowing eyes, Rae swallowed nervously. Maybe it was a bad idea to tell Markar about her strange reaction to him. He would have the upper hand, but she believed it was better to try to understand the phenomenon together, instead of ignoring it. She opened her mouth to reply, but it was as if she was frozen and nothing seemed to come out.

“Would it be easier for you to show me?” Markar murmured almost lazily, as his voice seemed to get impossibly deeper. Leaning down towards her, he moved the collar of her shirt over. Rae couldn’t seem to urge her body to react. It felt like she was waiting to see whether he would decide to devour her or not. She could feel the heat from his breath as he held his head over her neck, possibly waiting for some kind of a response from her, but Rae’s mind had frozen with the rest of her body.

When his tongue finally touched her skin it was exquisitely gentle. Rae didn’t feel anything strange at the contact, and he began to move upwards over her collarbone towards her racing pulse. As soon as he reached the vein, fire exploded outwards from where he had caressed her. She groaned as her knees gave out at the sudden rush. Markar caught her and supported her weight against the wall.

Her whispered plea was barely audible, but Markar’s acute hearing apparently caught it. He blinked as if waking from his own spell and leaned away from her. “Did you say ‘stop’?”

Rae breathed heavily as she tried to remember what the hell had just come out of her mouth. “Yeah, I think I did.” she said on a sigh. To her surprise, Markar stepped away from her. The abrupt loss of his warmth seeped from her bones, and suddenly the cold wall didn’t feel all that welcoming.

Markar’s eyes cleared of any kind of passion and he gave her a joyless smile. “I told you I learned my lesson.”

Rae looked at him in confusion for a moment before his words finally sank in. “I suppose you did.” Biting her lip, she realized the drug was still working its way through her body. Without the actual contact of his mouth on her skin, the effect wasn’t nearly as bad, and she could think coherently once again. “Maybe, now… we should see how you react to me.” Did those words really come out of her own mouth? Rae lifted her head to look up at Markar. He was staring at her with a perplexed expression on his face. Pushing herself off of the wall, she began to move towards him.

He watched as Rae placed one hand on his chest. She looked up at him, as if asking permission to continue. Markar placed his large hand over hers to hold her to him. Rae skimmed her other hand over his muscular arm, and in the wake of her caress was left only pleasure. It was unlike any physical contact he had felt before, and he began to crave more.

She rose up on her toes and gazed up through her lashes at Markar. He leaned towards her, mesmerized by her actions. When her mouth touched his, he was completely shocked at the contact. Her soft lips formed over his and Markar swallowed hard at the exquisite touch. She moved downward to his jaw and placed nibbling bites on the column of his neck. Lifting her head back up she looked in his eyes and smiled. “Now let’s go get those chemicals in your saliva analyzed.”

He embraced her in a crushing grip and groaned in frustration into her hair. “You are killing me, Rae.”

She flung her head back and laughed at that. “Welcome to the world of women, Markar!” He smiled at her joke. At least he hoped it was a joke. He frowned. Maybe it was not a joke.

A Scientific Study