HIGHLANDER: The Highlander’s Surrender Bride (Scottish Alpha Male Pregnancy Romance) (44 page)

Jon was still inside of her.  His thrusts had slowed some, but remained plenty strong.  And though the sun had set, what little light that shined in from the outside moonlight, she saw the sheen of patterned scales on human flesh cross over his body. 

And unlike the first time she had seen such, she had never thought to have seen anything more beautifully translucent before in her life.  It was a glow that Jacob also seemed to share and Tris found the sight nothing short of dazzling. 

Jon began to grunt as he thrust inside of her, his sounds keeping in time with his movements.  Tris rocked her pelvis against his, their bodies settling into a kind of synchronized harmony.  She could feel his energy within him, building to heights not yet experienced.

She encouraged him with her body, tightening her muscles inside where she could, milking him.  He fed off her enthusiasm, sweat beginning to run down his body, mingling with her own. 

“Make her night complete now,” Jacob whispered as his mouth again joined hers.  Jon’s thrusts into her began to feel as though he were near his climax.  Tris could feel her depths reaching a critical point, ready to explode.

Jon’s power built, and built, and built further still until it seemed that he might burst unless he released all of his pent up energy.  She tried to hold her breath, but the effort was stymied by Jacob’s ever present lips.  She found herself waiting for the moment, counting his thrusts but constantly losing count for the way Jacob’s tongue moved inside her mouth.

She felt Jon pump inside of her. 
Three… four…seven… no, six… er… eight… oh, damn!
 

And then she felt it.  Warmth, just as her body felt as though it were a pot about to boil over.  Unlike any she had ever felt that elicited a silent scream from her.  Her toes went numb, and then her legs shuddered, followed by her hips, her waist, her torso and finally her head.

The three of them paused collectively, as if suddenly encased in amber and frozen in this moment.  Tris tried to hold onto the feeling, imprinting it upon her mind.  Her flesh tingled with the shared sensation until inevitably the moment passed.

Jon was the first to sigh and he removed himself gently from within her, rolling over beside her.  Jacob followed, sitting up on the opposite side.  Tris rested between them, the three of them caked in sweat and breathing heavily.

“That was…” she managed to gasp out.

“Yeah… it was…” Jon managed to add.

Jacob chuckled.

Chapter 7

There was a gentle knock at her door that woke her.  When she opened her eyes and looked around, she found that Jon was still asleep on the bed next to her.  But Jacob had gone.  Jon’s arm was draped over her and he slumbered peacefully beside her, his fingers intertwined within hers. 

She heard the gentle knocking again and lightly stirred to look at the man sleeping beside her.  The noise had not roused him.  A small smile touched her lips at seeing him so close beside her and very quietly and smoothly she slipped out from under his arm and out of the bed.

She found a silken robe hanging nearby and slipped into it, covering her body and protecting her modesty.  As she moved, her body felt a little sore but the efforts she had gone through to feel this way was more than worth it.  She also noted that she couldn’t wait to do it again, were it possible.

She went to the door and opened it gently.  Light from outside in the hall peered in and she saw a figure standing there.  A woman, with short curly blonde hair and an hour-glass shaped figure.  She was dressed in a scarlet colored evening gown that flattered her figure greatly and without needing to ask, Tris knew who this was.

“Simone?” she asked.

The woman answered with a small smile.  “And you would be Tristina.  Welcome to our home.”

Tris stepped into the hall, closing the door behind her.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” the other woman said.

“No, no, no need to worry about that,” Tris said.

Simone’s smile was radiant and she folded her hands together at the waist.  “I just wanted to come by and apologize.”

“Apologize?”

Simone nodded.  “How we met today, in the court yard.  I’m sorry if we scared you.  It’s just… this whole thing is easier to accept if you see it for yourself and
then
drink from the flask.”

“Yeah, about that…” she said inquisitively.  “What was in it?”

Simone lightly shrugged.  “Blood.”

“Blood?”

“Yes.  A drop of it, to be precise and it was from Luke,” the skinnier woman replied. “It was mixed with fruit and vegetable juices that make it easier to swallow.  Believe me, drinking the blood straight is not a pleasant experience.  But it’s the only way for you to see the memories as they were intended.”

A thought crossed her mind.  “Does… does that mean… that I’m… that I’m?”

“Becoming one of us?” Simone supplied.  “No, it doesn’t.  No need to worry about that.  The process is a tad more sophisticated and we reserve the juice simply to make people understand why it’s so necessary for our lives here to remain a secret.  We wouldn’t turn you unless you asked for it specifically.  I don’t think you’re quite ready for that, to be honest.”

She felt a small sense of relief.  “That’s a lift.”

Simone smirked.  “So… you and my sons, eh?”

Tris knew that she should have felt embarrassed, but the emotion did not come.  Neither of the men she had shared her body with tonight were her biological sons after all.  If anything, she felt flattered.  “Yeah… uh… apparently a side effect of the juice is… lust?”

Simone nodded.  “It is at that.”  She looked at the door as if searching through it and then back to her.  “Are they both still in there?”

Tris shook her head.  “No.”

“No?”

“No… Jacob must have gone while I was asleep.”

Simone’s face brightened.  “And Jon?  He stayed behind?” she asked hopefully.

Tris gave a short nod, recalling how he had slept with his arm draped over her protectively.  “Yeah… he did.”

Her hostess clapped her hands together happily.  “Wonderful!”

“Wonderful?” she asked.  “Why?”

Simone lowered her hands.  “Well… it means he’s fond of you, Tris.  I didn’t expect that Jacob would stay behind.  He’s still too young for his
other
half to have settled in.   But Jon… well… he’s about the right age to want to settle.”  The elder woman’s face flushed a little.  “So… I take it that it was… uh… Jon… who…?”

She didn’t need to finish, Tris understood well enough what the other woman was getting at.  She felt herself blush a little at it.  “Yes.  It was.”

Simone’s smile lingered.  “Good.”  She bounced on her feet excitedly.

Tris thought back to the passions that she and Jon had shared only a few hours before and felt a smile form on her lips.  “You know, I think I’m a little fond of him too.”

The blonde began to turn aside.  “I’m pleased to hear it.”

“Oh?”

“Yes… it means that you’ll be staying with us.”

The words should have had a more profound and darkening impact on her heart, but Tris found that the words were less condemning and more welcoming. 
A lifetime – or more if I want – on an island paradise with a gorgeous man?
  There were worse ways to spend time. 

“Yeah…” she said.  “I guess I am.”

When Simone had gone she slipped back into the darkness of her room and let her robe drop down around her feet.  She crept back into her bed and tried to slip back under Jon’s waiting arm.  She managed it easily enough and settled back in upon her pillow.

“So… what did my mother say?” Jon’s voice asked softly in the dark.

Tris held for a moment and continued to settle.  “She was just wanted to say she was sorry for how things went today.”

“Is that all?”

She chewed her bottom lip with anticipation.  “She was excited that you stayed here with me tonight.”

He snuggled closer to her.  “
Just
her?”

She chuckled.  “Well… I am too.”

He gently pulled some of her hair aside and planted the gentlest of kisses on her neck.  “Are you sorry?  That any of this happened?”

She rolled over to look at him, and saw his very human eyes staring back at her in the light of the moon from the outside.  She held up her fingers and his gently played around the edges of her hand.  She drank it all in.  The proximity, the sights, the smells, and the sensations of having him so close to her who, impossible as it seemed, she had grown so attached to in so brief a time.  She shook her head.  “No.”

His smile outshined the moon.  “Good.  Me neither.”  He traced the edges of her fingers with his own.  “I… I like having you here… with me…” He blushed. 

She chuckled.

“What?”

She stifled her laughter long enough to respond.  “I don’t want to tell you.”

“No, tell me,” he said playfully. 

She didn’t have the energy within her to be evasive but chose to give in rather than keep it to herself.  “Promise not to laugh?”

“Promise.”

She sighed.  “The whole reason that I wanted to take the cruise… was so I could maybe meet some wild and exotic man.  Love on the boat and all that.”

He burst into laughter that bore some kind of appeal to it that she couldn’t help but join in.  Their joined laughter continued for a few moments before they finally settled back into the quiet of the room.

“Well, you got your wish, didn’t you?”

She smiled at him.  “You know what I’m wishing for now?”

A new smile formed on his features with just a slight hint of animalistic desire.  He reached for her.

THE END

Chapter 1

Shayla Umbetki strolled barefoot across the softs sands of her home country towards the waiting ocean just beyond.  The air was so warm that it was as if the sun was threatening to cook anything that stayed out too long under its hot gaze but she had little worry for it.  Her uniform was already feeling a little heavy with sweat and that it was made of dark and heat-absorbing colors didn’t help dispel the heat either. 

A thought and a smile touched her lips at the thought of perhaps removing her uniform and maybe skinny dipping.  The beach was, like usual, abandoned and it was the solitude more than anything that she craved.  And she was still on her furlough, though she wore her uniform – she had nothing else to wear.  No one would care if she disrobed and swam naked here in these waters. 

True enough.

She could feel the heat of the sandy granules through her bare feet as she walked.  The heat of the sand only lightly stung at her skin as she went along, carrying her boots and socks in her free hand.  What discomfort she felt was quenched when she arrived at the water’s edge.  The sand there was cool and wet with the ebb and flow of the gentle waves that washed up no higher than her ankles.  The soft kiss of the sea over her toes was soothing and the water was cool enough to dispel the heat of the day for a few moments.

She sighed at the soft sensation of water meeting earth.  She wiggled her toes in the moist sand and savored the sensation of it.  The sound of the rolling tide was gentle and relaxing.  The high tide wouldn’t be coming in until later tonight, turning this serene beach into a roaring stretch of white-water crashing onto the sand and rocks and making this into a place that no one would want to be.  Not even her.  Just as well, as she preferred to be here at this time in the day.  She reveled in the soft sounds and the seclusion of the beach where people had not visited in great numbers for a long count of years.

“You know, there are
other
places to spend your downtime, Shayla,” said a voice from behind her. 

And there ends the serenity of it all
, she thought, the peace of the place ruined.

She turned looked out behind her.  Standing at the edge of the beach right where the trees ceased growing was Shuri, one of the people that she would go so far as to consider an acquaintance more than a friend.  Shayla didn’t have any friends anymore.  Shuri was the closest thing that she had though, but she was the complete opposite of Shayla herself.  Where Shuri was slender and lithe, Shayla was big boned and buxom.  They shared the same shade of chocolate-colored skin and both had their hair cut in the same military fashion as was required of all citizens of Earth. 

“There are pleasure dens and sporting houses aplenty in town,” Shuri went on, stepping out from under the shade of the trees and into the open sun.  “Most people find that satisfying enough rather than…
this
,” she said, gesturing to the trees, shrubs and open sea.  She almost leered, as if the sight of the very dirt underneath her feet was offensive. 
That’s unusual behavior for a soldier who crawls through mud and bushes,
Shayla thought.

Shayla shook her head at the other woman.  “Exactly…
people
find it pleasing, Shuri.  Not me.” 

“So, what?  You’re not
people
anymore?”

Shayla shrugged.  “I don’t mind the company of a
person
.  But
people
?  They ruin everything.”

Shuri shook her head this time.  “Now I know why they keep you in the quartermaster’s corps.  You’re better at trinkets than you are with people.”

“No better than you,” she retorted.  “Your job is to kill other people.”

“
Touché.
”  She looked around but apparently the absence of other people was enough to make Shuri war of her surroundings.  “You actually like it here?  Even though there’s no music… no video boards… no other people?”

Shayla looked out and gestured to the beach, waving her arm to encompass not only that but the nearby jungle as well.  “There was a time when people actually came here for fun.  They’d swim… they’d boat… they’d picnic on the beach… did you know that?”

“Yeah… saw it in a movie once… it was about cave men,” Shuri retorted.  “Set me up with a decent holo-projector or a top-dollar simulacrum and I’m happy,” she said with a sly smile.

“Enjoy fucking holograms, do you?”

Shuri shrugged indifferently.  “Hey, it’s not like I’ll get to prong my favorite athletes or movie stars anytime soon.  Might as well take what a soldier’s pay can get me.”

Shayla rolled her eyes.  She couldn’t begrudge anyone for whatever greased their gears.  Some people visited pleasure dens for the smoke or the booze, some for the whores, others for whatever technological debaucheries they could get their hands on between firefights.  People had to do some strange things in order to unwind.  That was simply the way it was.  “Whatever fits your fancy, I guess.”

“What?  Like you’ve
never
been set up inside of a holo-massager?  I seem to recall you blowing about a week’s worth of combat pay on that one simulacrum of… who was it?  Oh, yeah… Jake Thorne?”

Shayla felt herself blush a little.  Jake Thorne was one of the few billionaires on planet that had allowed his body to be mapped and reproduced in a holographic matrix for every woman on the planet to enjoy as long as they had the money to do so.  Billionaires, even holographic ones, did not come cheap.  Though Jake Thorne – the flesh and blood portion of him anyway – had died centuries ago, he remained a viral program in pleasure palaces across the planet and was still doing what men were reputed to be best at.  Such was immortality for a rich man anymore.

“Yeah, so?”

“
So
?” Shuri asked incredulously as she crossed the sand to where Shayla was now standing on the wet sand.  “There are
real
men out there that will climb your body like a jungle gym if you drop a quarter of what that simulacrum cost if you’d just grow a pair and
do
it!  I could take you to one of those places right-the-hell-now if you want.”

That Shuri knew where the local whore houses were, Shayla didn’t doubt.  Most on-the-line combat soldiers knew such things and frequented such establishments.  Nothing made someone want to fuck like the possibility that they might die tomorrow… or in a week… or a month… or even a year from now.   That old adage about not finding virgins in fox holes was the rule on the planet anymore.  Everyone could die in their beds so many found it worth their while to have sex while they could and for that there were whores aplenty in any city that someone wanted: usually because the options of livelihood outside of military service were slim at best.  She couldn’t fault anyone for doing so either.

But in truth, Shayla had had men before.  There had been plenty of times when she’d had two or even three men bed her at once, and for nothing more than the thrill of it.  Most of them had been whores who were willing to do anything she wanted as long as they got their bank accounts fattened a little more for their troubles.  A few had been willing partners, men that she had known in the quartermaster’s corps with a couple of hours to kill and a conveniently empty room with blankets or sheets for them to lay upon. 

It had been fun the first few times she’d done it, but by the twelfth or thirteenth time, it felt like eating combat rations: she could eat it and survive, but there was nothing really nourishing about it.  And she had developed numb taste buds for it, whether the sex was good or bad, she didn’t feel it.  She had only done it for no reason other than because she’d had time to spare and nothing to do.  The whole experience of it all, after all of this time, was only disappointing anymore.

There was no thrill left in it.

“Some other time, maybe,” she said, lightly kicking at the sand.  “What’re you doing here anyway?  I thought you were supposed to be on your rotation?”

Shuri shook her head.  “The Northern Block pushed our guys back last night.  We lost the whole Ishkegi line.  Deployments were put on hold while the brass assesses the damage.”

Shayla nodded.  The Ishkegi line was in the Congo, far north of where they were in Cape Town.  She was no combat soldier, due to her size, but Shayla – like every other citizen of Earth that wanted to avoid prison or execution – had found ways to be useful.  She had managed to prove that she was gifted at being a quartermaster, securing uniforms, blankets, weapons, and other supplies for people who had been made into line-grade soldiers.  But a working knowledge of battle lines, who was friend or foe, and political ascents or descents, was critical to her position nonetheless.  But however battle lines were redrawn didn’t directly affect her apart from knowing the kind of gear that soldiers would need when shipped to different parts of the country. 

The Ishkegi line, she knew, had been held by the native tribesmen there for some years before Earth started receiving help from off-world supporters.  The line was like a kite in the wind, blowing back and forth so often that the land between it was almost destroyed.  Were it not for the capacity of the jungle to grow back so fast it would have been nothing but barren lands even now.  And the constant shifting of that line was due to the alien races that supported one side or the other.

She almost snorted at the thought.

There were a number of alien races out in the galaxy and many of them had come to Earth for a variety of purposes.  Some had come for profit, others for exploration, and others – if she were to guess – was because humans were regarded somewhat as the ass-end of a bad joke in the galaxy.  While governments the world over welcomed alien technology – weapons and other destructive forces – they had established laws for not allowing aliens to live on-world as immigrants, fearing alien influence on their society.

It was just that kind of influence that had reshaped the world in the last eight hundred years or so.  Some of the old superpowers in the world were now tourist attractions.  Some places were now unlivable though they had been thriving once upon a time.  Other places that had been uninhabitable were now overflowing with populace.  And every country had its own off-world supporters, like sponsors for sports teams.  And as a result, the new games of the recent centuries had been warfare.  Pitiful third-world countries had become mega states and the old superpowers of ages before were nothing more than ruins and ash anymore. 

Shayla had her own thoughts about why aliens had come to her home world but she kept them to herself.  None of those thoughts, however, painted their off-world supporters as particularly friendly. 

“So… what?  You just decided to come down here and enjoy the sunshine instead of spreading your legs for a guy who’s only alive inside a computer chip somewhere?”

Shuri shook her head.  “Nope, although I
would
rather be there than out here…  I spend enough time in the open as it is.”

“Fair point.  So…?”

“The battalion C.O. sent me.  He wants to see you.  Now.”

The South African Armed Forces HQ was located not far from the beach where Shayla had been.  As it was
nothing
was far from the SAAF home base in this part of the world, so walking there had taken less than an hour.  Shuri, of course, griped the whole way about how it would have been easier to get a hack or a hover pod to take them to HQ.  But Shayla had refused on all counts, seeing as how her time to get away from technology – even for a little while – had been infringed upon. 

“Might as well enjoy what little time I have under the sun,” she said every time Shuri bitched about the heat. 

It was a small sting to administer so frequently, but Shayla enjoyed it.  For as much time as Shuri spent in the field, Shayla spent indoors.  Some would have thought that to be a lush and cushy assignment and while Shayla was appreciative – to an extent – that she didn’t have to go sloshing through rain forests or crawling through muddy banks, living indoors in a country as beautiful as this certainly didn’t rank high on her list of things to admire about her job.

The SAAF building stood like a glass spire in a green landscape.  The jungle had reclaimed much of what had once been a large city – another tool provided by the alien supporters of her country’s adversaries – and what little remained of human architecture was kept in check by the technology used by the aliens that supported her country.