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Torian paced his quarters, stopping occasionally to move the table settings slightly, as if the minute adjustments he was making to a tablecloth he’d asked Avalar to rustle up would make any difference.
He was nervous. More than nervous; his nerve endings tingled with the hum of battle, even though no true battle was about to be fought. At least he hoped not.
When Quaia departed, he had lost his bearings entirely. So it went with the object of a Vokl’s desire, if his Voklha had been activated and trained upon a female. This was known; and yet, because he had never expected to experience it himself, he couldn’t see it for what it was.
Leave it to Avalar, the ship’s mental health counselor, a lone Vokl female who had, for whatever reason, never met her mate, to guess at the reason. She had appeared after Torian’s private outburst, employing her freakishly good sense of timing by catching him just as his passions began to subside and he was looking for a solution to his problems.
Dinner had been her idea, and she had taken it upon herself to speak to Quaia. Torian had misgivings about it, and almost as soon as she left, he wanted to retract the offer.
But when he had thrown open the door to search for her, she was gone. How the diminutive Vokl had moved so quickly, or known that she needed to, he would never know: the corridor was empty, and there was no taking his request back.
No matter. Avalar had appeared at his door smiling quietly, and done nothing more than nod. He now paced in anticipation, his blood up, his muscles coiled in tension, for the arrival of his mate.
Because she would be his mate. It was decided. He couldn’t live without her: he needed her. The taste of her delicate flower, the scent of her neck, the wild blue of her eyes—all these pieces of her haunted him. He would never rest until he made her his completely. Until he filled her with his seed, over and over again until it grew in her womb, his Voklha would never let him have a moment of peace. It was like an animal trapped inside him, clawing at him, invading his thoughts.
Even his training, his lived experience of being a medic, was no help when he heard the knock on his hatch. His mind was so attuned to her, so obsessed with her in every way, that he recognized the rap on the door as coming from her hand. Before he smelled her, even, which was very soon after.
When he opened the door, the world around him seemed to shift, distorting so that Quaia, his mate, was the only thing in the universe, and everything revolved around her. When the smell of her damp skin entered his nostrils, he couldn’t stop himself from inhaling deeply, his nostrils flaring.
She was clothed in a gown that he could only assume Avalar had given to her, a lovely, sleeveless dress of the kind a Vokl female might wear for an evening at her home, when the Voklish took to the beaches to meander by the water and settle the soul. It was a casual dress, but on the ship and on her body it took on a regal appearance.
It was red, long and flowing, but tight against her skin in all the right places. The shape of her body peeked from the hems, pressed against its form. It was all he could do not to seize her and strip it from her body, so that he could be inside her again.
But his Voklha had also chained him to a sense of subservience to his future mate. That was also the way for the Vokl who were lucky enough to find their true soulmate: the males could think of nothing but their mates’ desires.
Which is what he intended to tell her, to explain to her better than he had before. His sweet human hadn’t understood him, but that was because human males did not have a Voklha. She had no way of knowing how these things worked.
He extended his hand and took hers, delicately, doing his best not to offend her or frighten her as he had before.
“Quaia,” he said, relieved that she smiled and allowed herself to be pulled inside. “Please, come in.”
He closed the door, a painful act, because he had to let go of her hand. He walked around her to look her in the eyes, to take her hand in his again; she seemed to understand better when he did this.
He brought her hand, nestled between his, to just in front of his nose so he could smell her scent. His brain, he knew, was now changing; once the Voklha was activated, his brain had begun reordering itself. His olfactory senses were enhanced, but only for her; he could smell the difference between a drop of sweat excreted from her palm from one that had surfaced on her neck…
He was grateful when Quaia spoke, derailing this succession of thoughts. He was becoming aroused again, and the urge to claim her physically might overpower him before he had the chance to speak to her.
“I hope you’ll… not feel the need to discipline me,” she said, and the twinkle in her eyes made his heart pound: did her words seem coquettish? Quaia, his mate-to-be, liked his discipline. He could feel his cock lengthening.
He must have made a face of confusion as he strained to get his thoughts back on track, because Quaia smiled. “Because of the dress, I mean,” she said. Then she leaned forward, with her typical girlish mannerisms, and said in a whisper, “It’s not regulation.”
“Quaia,” he said, rushing to get his proposal, his explanations of his behavior, out of his mouth before he tore her clothing off. Human females needed explanations for things like this, no doubt; if she had been Voklish it all would have been much simpler.
His thoughts were scattered, so he started with that, because it was all he could concretely think of. “If you were Voklish,” he sputtered, “this would all be so much simpler.”
His mate did not like this. He saw this in her eyes. Her mouth turned down slightly and she stiffened her muscles. He could smell a change in her, like the one that had preceded her outburst before.
He rushed to fix whatever was happening. “Please, please, Quaia, don’t… lose yourself until you allow me to explain fully. It’s difficult to put these things into words, in a foreign tongue, to a female who isn’t Voklish.”
“Why?” She was a bit challenging, but seemed to be calming down.
He touched her chin, and felt the sensation that traveled through her. His human liked this kind of affection. He stroked her cheek, and it happened again.
“If you were Voklish, I would simply need to tell you that you have made my Voklha…” He struggled for a way to explain. The human tongues, as they required no words for what happened to a male when Voklha emerged, had none at all. “…You have made my Voklha come alive,” he finished.
He was pleased when she smiled. He took her other hand and leaned forward, until their foreheads touched. “What would I know, if you said that?” she asked quietly.
His Voklha purred inside him, thrilled with her response. “You would know, Quaia, that I will stop at nothing to be your mate, that the only thing—”
