“It’s a funny thing I used to think about sometimes when I was a kid. A knight in shining armor would rescue me from my evil parents—who weren’t really evil, they just punished me for something I shouldn’t have done. Not that I was happy about it. Only, in my dream my parents were dragons and the knight came and rescued me from them.”
“You had an active imagination as a kid.”
“Maybe overactive.”
He neared the small of my back and his lips were so soft I could barely feel them.
His horns grazed my shoulder blades as he continued down.
“And if the M’rora is the dragon in this scenario, that makes you the knight,” I said.
He paused in his kissing and lay beside me again, his legs interwoven with mine.
“I’m not a white knight.”
“Sure you are. You rescued me from the M’rora. And now I’m in love.”
His eyes flicked to my lips as I said the word “love” and that conflicting expression came over his face once again.
“Love. That’s what this feeling is, isn’t it?”
“Yes. At least, it is for me. You don’t have to love me if you don’t want to.”
He smiled and ran a finger through my hair and sniffed me, adding a kiss for good measure too.
“I do love you. It’s a strong, powerful emotion. I’ve never been in love before. I didn’t know what it felt like. I loved my parents when I was a kid but it’s a child’s love and difficult to remember.”
“Well, I’m in love with you and there’s nothing that can ever change that.”
“I wonder if you’ll feel the same when we leave this planet.”
“Sure I will. What difference does that make?”
“Things will be… different then.”
I eased up onto my elbows.
“Will I be with you?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’ll be okay.”
Kayal shook his head and lowered his lips to kiss me.
I took him on my lips and turned my body to one side, letting the blanket slide off me.
He lay next to me, his cock throbbing and hard, pressed into my abdomen.
“Do you think you’ll fix the ship in time?” I said.
“Yes,” he said breathily. “After we head into the storm, we’ll be in fate’s hands. Maybe she’ll send us home, maybe not.”
“I was thinking about that…”
And it really had only been an idea until this moment, but with him so close, and us tucked away in this tiny cavern, it began to make more and more sense.
“What if we stayed here?”
He paused in kissing me and leaned back.
“Stayed here?”
“Instead of taking the risk with the solar storm. What if we helped run your parents’ farm? We could make a life here. We could be happy.”
“But it means being trapped here forever.”
“Or until the next solar storm.”
“They don’t happen very often. It’s been twenty years since this one.”
“Then we’ll stay here for the rest of our lives.”
I couldn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth.
It wasn’t so long ago I was about ready to give up on love for good.
Now I was ready to give up everything I had on Earth to live with a horned alien?
Yes, I realized. I was ready to do just that.
True love didn’t come along often and I wasn’t about to pass it up when my life could end in two days.
“We can’t stay here,” Kayal said.
“Why not?”
“Because when the storm ends, the Shadow will conquer the Qyah. We shouldn’t be here when that happens.”
I’d forgotten about that.
It was easy to do when life was so peaceful and the threat of invasion was a million miles away.
“We should warn your parents,” I said resolutely. “They deserve a chance to get out of here. The same with the neighbors and everyone else on this planet.”
“We can’t disrupt the continuum.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we can’t tell them what’ll happen here if we didn’t warn them before.”
“Are you sure we didn’t tell them?”
“Positive.”
“Why not? They’ve been good to us. We should warn them if they’re in danger.”
“Because they wouldn’t believe us even if we did.”
“Your mom might.”
Kayal ran a hand through my hair and kissed me on the cheek delicately.
“I admire your courage but the Qyah don’t have a mass evacuation plan in place. Even if they tried to escape, very few would make it. If I thought we could save their lives, I would do it in a heartbeat.”
I understood his logic but that didn’t mean I had to agree with it.
His mom and dad…
All the guests from the party…
And more than them, the little boy…
Kayal’s younger self.
He would be taken and tortured to become a soldier for the enemy that had kidnapped him.
Thinking about that hurt more than I could explain and tears leaked unbidden from my eyes.
“Ava…”
I pressed my lips to his and probed at his mouth to allow me entry.
Permission came instantly, and he pressed hard against me.
I needed a distraction, something to take me away from my line of thinking.
I had the perfect distraction right here.
His kisses were as hungry and desperate as my own and when he made to slide alongside me, I shook my head and motioned for him to climb on top of me, my breasts pressed into the hard rock floor.
He did as I asked, spread my cheeks, and entered me from behind.
I’d always been a fan of doggy.
I gasped as I took his full length and felt the press of his weight on my back.
I leaned up on my elbows and shut my eyes, enjoying the sensation as he began to rock back and forth, tearing gasps from my throat.
Then he began making strange snorting noises.
It was a little distracting and not the most attractive sound in the world.
I turned my head to one side to peer up at him when I noticed the sounds didn’t come from him at all.
They came from my left.
From toward the cave entrance.
Moonlight illuminated the silhouette of a small creature entering the cave, his small red hat bobbing as he trotted.
My eyes bulged and I hastily shooed him
