Alien General's Bride: SciFi Alien Romance (Brion Brides) Read online

  “I will give you time to accept this,” Grothan said and strode out of the room without another word.

  Not time to think about it, not time to think of what to say to such a sudden and insane suggestion just time to… accept. Isolde was not one of those women who slammed doors and threw plates, but she sure wanted something fragile and expensive when the door shut behind the commander. Only the constant reminder that she was alone on an alien ship, very far away from anyone who could help, stopped her from using up all the curse words she knew at his stubborn presumption she would just agree.

  Would just lay back and agree, although she had dreamed of doing something along those lines very recently.

  Pride and lust went to war within her. She could not deny she wanted that man – alien, whatever – but like that? Picked off the station like something from a store? Given no choice and no say in the matter?

  Time to accept it my ass.

  Isolde’s studies had very rarely had any practical uses in her life. There were few aliens on Terra, most preferred to stay on the orbital station. But her theoretical knowledge was good. That beautiful, arrogant son-of-a-bitch had given her time, so time she’d have. Time to go over Brion culture and find a way to say no to a capricious alien warlord with an armada at his back – even if her traitorous body wanted to be conquered right then and there.

  She was entirely sure it was not what her professors had had in mind under “practical uses” in Alien Culture Studies.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Diego

  He supposed it could have gone better, but then again, it could have gone worse. In a way, Diego felt bad for Isolde. That must have been a tremendous thing to hear. If Brion women sometimes became upset at the revealing of their mates, then nothing less could be expected from Isolde Fenner.

  Diego was sure she would understand in the end. He was a formidable warrior, a leader of his men and would not have been a shame to any woman. It would take time for Isolde to become accustomed to him and to Brions, but it would happen. In the meantime, he knew his warriors loved him just as they feared his wrath, and that he could be certain of their support in the unlikely event of someone questioning his gesha.

  Not the Elders. They were wise in these matters and would not presume to call him a liar even if it meant they had to re-evaluate what they had thought impossible – a gesha that wasn’t a Brion.

  But there were others, the thought alone making his valor squares shine and hum angrily, who might. Some who might think he would lie about such a thing because it didn’t suit the way they saw the world.

  He had to calm himself. It did no good to anger over things that might happen.

  His thoughts kept returning to Isolde. She calmed his mind immediately, as he had heard of geshas doing. A smile crept to his lips again, unbidden. Yes. Finally. Now that he was whole at last, he could realize his true potential.

  Diego returned to Isolde after a while, giving orders to the bridge not to disturb him. He expected Isolde to have had time to think it over. After all, it was a certainty he couldn’t argue with and neither could she, really.

  Which was why he was so surprised when the woman said no when he approached her in her rooms.

  “No,” he repeated, over the pounding of his heart. Battle hormones reacted to his rising anger, making him clench his fists to calm down. It was alright. She was supposed to fight, after all. He approached her again. She would not hold him off for long, but she would fight and that was how it was done.

  “No,” Isolde said again, backing away. “Listen to me. Do not touch me.”

  Her voice shook. Diego could hear the fear in her voice.

  “You are my gesha,” he said cautiously, unnerved by her seeming fear. “You can fight, but that will not change.”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed, and she held up her hands in front of her like to drive him away. As if she could stop him for a second if he chose to ignore her. But this was not a way to start. He had to remind himself she was human. Some differences were to be expected.

  “Wait,” she said, slowly, as if speaking to a child. His anger flared again, but he restrained himself.

  “Let me speak,” Isolde said. “Then decide what you will do.”

  “Very well,” he replied, crossing his arms across his chest and waiting. Better to let her speak, so they could properly enjoy their binding. He had waited this long, he could wait a little bit longer.

  Isolde relaxed a bit and drew a breath. “Alright. First of all, I understand what a gesha is. I read up on it. And I even believe that you think that’s me, although it has never happened before. But you have to understand that I am a Terran and we do not do things that way.”

  Reasonable, but pointless. The binding was never wrong. Adapting to this life would simply be a bit more difficult for her than for Brion women.

  “We do not pick people off the street and say to them that we’re meant to be together forever,” Isolde continued. When she didn’t follow that up with anything, Diego realized she expected him to react.

  “I understand. But a gerion and his gesha are.”

  There was something hopeless in Isolde’s eyes as she sighed. “I know that you believe that. But it doesn’t work like that with me. I mean, you are very, very handsome and all…”

  Battle hormones took a back seat to lust. Diego bared his teeth in a victorious snarl and stepped forward, only for Isolde to back away even further.

  “No! Not an invitation! I’m still talking. Wait!”

  He growled under his breath, but backed away. He could at least give her this.

  “But…” Isolde continued, “you believe in what your culture teaches you and I believe in mine. We believe that you have to know a person before you bind yourself to them.”

  “That sounds very time-consuming. Your species has yet to evolve.”

  Isolde glared, which he found oddly arousing. Her eyes were bright, and she was clearly upset, her body tense. She was ready for the fight, yet she did not give in. Feeling himself stir, Diego labored to wait. All of it would be his anyway. Those soft lips and the round breasts and the body that just begged to be held, it would be his. Was his. He could wait to take it right.

  “We just want to, um…” Isolde trailed off. “I don’t know the word for it in your language. Humans want to know we have the right one, the one we could really talk to, the one who could make us happy.”

  “I do know that.”

  “Not just from a gut feeling! From getting to know a person. From talking to them, laughing with them, knowing each other for more than a day!”

  “You will get to know me. And I will get to know you.”

  Isolde growled now, and Diego felt his arousal so vividly it was almost painful. His cock strained in his uniform pants, begging to be freed and thrust in her. Oh, she was a fighter after all. Just a more clever one.

  ”That is not what I meant,” his gesha said and sighed then. “Alright. Try this, then. I know the Brions are noble and proud. What would you do if there came another species, stronger than you and made you their slaves? Would you bow down to them?”

  Diego snarled, “Of course not. That would be unthinkable.”

  “Unthinkable, yes,” Isolde agreed, “because you think it’s dishonorable. But it’s dishonorable for me to accept you. It goes against what I believe. Humans choose their own mates. In their time, on their own terms. Because they really, really want to be with that one person. That is honorable for us. Getting to choose.”

  Diego considered it. From an evolutionary standpoint, it was completely ridiculous. However, some of what she said made sense in its odd way.

  “I see some nobility in that,” he allowed and saw her features relax a fraction. “But it does not change this. I am not human. This is right for me.”

  “What about what’s right for me?” Isolde shot back.

  “It is right for you too. You just don’t know it yet.”

  This seemed to be going nowhe
re. Enough waiting. She could continue her fighting with her fists, and he would let her do that for a little while. Then they could consummate his binding and he would finally be whole.

  “Wait, no,” Isolde cried when he seized her waist and pressed his lips to hers. As was to be expected, her hands beat at his chest, but it turned him on more than did any damage. Her lips didn’t seem entirely sure they wanted to say no, yielding to his hunger.

  She tasted divine, like a nectar made for him alone, to be tasted by him alone. The need to have her became nigh unbearable, and he pulled back to undress her, giving Isolde time to shoot words like rapid fire at him, “You promised you wouldn’t hurt me.”

  He drew back in surprise. Had he been too rash in his desire? Had he underestimated his strength or human bodies? If he had somehow broken her, he would never forgive himself.

  Isolde didn’t seem to be hurt, however. She was panting, staring up at him with an expression he couldn’t completely understand.

  “Alright,” she whispered. “You want me to fight. As you can see, your greatest enemy in this is me.”

  “You can’t fight yourself.”

  “I can, actually,” Isolde said, still out of breath. “I already told you I desired you. But my traditions do not allow me to accept this so easily. So I have to fight myself. Take it this way. If I can no longer stop myself from coming to you, then I have lost. You’ll have won a battle over me, not just a physical one that you would win laughably easily, but a real one. Because I would fight my honor and that is a much more difficult fight.”

  Her eyes seemed to search his, waiting to see if he agreed with this strange way of seeing things…

  Diego wondered if he should take his clever gesha to the Elders, because that idea had made his heart beat so fast he didn’t remember when he had felt like that outside of an intense battle. His cock now hurt so badly he would have trouble walking, but he would give his gesha the fight she wanted. She was right, after all. He could overpower her in a second, but to have won her over from herself, to be so desirable to his second half that she couldn’t keep herself away from him with all her self-control… now that was a victory.

  He kissed her again fiercely, making her squirm in surprise. “Agreed,” he whispered against her lips.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Isolde

  That was close, Isolde thought as the door slid shut with a calming shush after the commander. So close.

  She wasn’t entirely sure if she meant that she couldn’t have held him off any more, or how close she had come to just giving in and becoming the first Terran gesha. That had definitely been on the table, since apparently they had to teach kissing in the same school where the commander had been training, because bloody hell… wow. Isolde’s legs were still tingling. Other parts of her were tingling too and protesting very loudly at her sending the general away.

  She fell back on her bed and bravely ignored her desire to share it with Grothan.

  She had bought herself some time, but she couldn’t tell how much. He wouldn’t wait on her forever, that was for sure. But Isolde also found it difficult to trust herself, given how quickly she was falling for the veni-vidi-vici commander. Mother had always told her she would fall for the bad boy type, but this one mommy dearest surely couldn’t have predicted.

  Isolde calculated. If they made it to Rhea, perhaps someone there could protect her? Unlikely. She wanted to see the person standing up to Diego Grothan and saying, “You can’t have this.” People like that usually ended up very much dead. No, she would have to find some other excuse or some such. And convince herself she really wanted to be rescued from him in the first place.

  In the meanwhile, she needed a very cold shower.

  Many, many “trying to operate someone else’s shower is like trying to operate a spaceship” jokes later, Isolde gave up. Apparently operating someone else’s shower on a spaceship was a whole other level. She got dressed again and went to see the warriors left to guard her. After some discussion over privacy and hygiene and Commander Grothan’s temper, one of them came and made the quick observation that she had been trying to wash herself with the in-ship communications system. Isolde was shown to the real shower, which appeared from the wall hidden behind a tile that looked exactly like all the other tiles and made as much sense as showers usually did. She had to make sure not to lean against anything or she might end up stabbed to death by a coat rack or something.

  Speaking of being stabbed with huge spikes… a cold shower was definitely needed.

  After making sure she was alone and would be left alone – “Commander Grothan would have our heads if we came to your room uninvited” – Isolde stripped down once more. The cold water felt nice, but after she had sneezed and turned the heat up a little, her body seemed to take that as cue to parade an endless line of images of Commander Grothan in her bed again.

  She slipped her hand between her legs, hoping aliens respected privacy and weren’t spying on her. Massaging her breasts with the other hand, Isolde had to bite her lip to stay silent – not that there was anyone to hear, but still – pushing her fingers in and deeper. They went easily, slick with water and her wetness and felt better than anything had for ages. She scissored them, bringing herself closer, impatient for the release that had been aching the whole day since she’d seen that man walking towards her, bright squares only exaggerating the leanness of his neck, with a voice that would turn her on as surely as his hands could. She pushed another finger in, imagining if he would be as thick or as warm, if he could reach deeper into her than her fingers could. Her other hand moved to caress her clit as she moaned, her hands moving faster, thinking of him plunging into her, claiming her. It wouldn’t be so bad to accept, would it, just to feel him pulse within her, his perfect muscled chest pressed against her body… she hit her head against the wall as it snapped back when she came, breathing heavily, letting the warm water wash her clean.

  There. Now she could think straight again. It would help her deal with the commander, at least for a few days, she hoped. Damn those Brions. Why couldn’t they look like stereotypical aliens – green little men, big heads and creepy eyes – that would make saying no so much easier. But no, they had to be gorgeous. Life was so unfair to her, Isolde felt.

  She became more sarcastic the more she thought on it, pacing restlessly around her room, drying her hair. Poor little Isolde indeed. The curvy little girl who only ever had two boyfriends, now wooed by the insanely hot alien lord who made the jocks in her school look like pudgy kids. The part of her that didn’t care one bit what decision she made or if she had any choices, which only wanted to do the nasty stuff with Grothan, had been a bit worried if the general would think her pretty. So alright, he thought she was his gesha and all, but did he actually – objectively – think she was desirable? She didn’t worry any more. When Grothan had been in her room, his eyes hadn’t stopped undressing her for a moment. Human, Brion, all the same. A woman knew when she was being desired, and oh boy, did the gorgeous commander want her.

  Isolde felt she was entitled to feel good about the fact. Take that, popular girls in college. She wouldn’t have minded showing up to a reunion hand-in-hand with Grothan. She even would have volunteered for the clean-up duty of sweeping up all the dropped jaws. However, Isolde felt weird about adding him to the list of her admirers. There had been Bobby Jackson in kindergarten, Terry and Klaus in her later years and now – Diego Grothan, the Commander General of the Triumphant.

  She needed to clear her head.

  Her Brion guards insisted on following her around. It was carefully explained to Isolde that naturally she didn’t have access to all of the ship, but she could walk in the communal areas. The Triumphant was a huge ship and always in air. One of her guards – Ensha – said that some Brions spent their entire lives on the ship. So while it was a military vessel, people still lived in it.

  To Isolde’s eyes, it was pretty much exactly what she had imagined. Aliens had no eye for ae
sthetics, or their understandings differed completely from humans. There was not a single thing that did not bear any reasonable, easily-understood function. Everything was useful for something or to someone.

  Isolde’s mind spun. She had never really liked scented candles or other such trinkets, but within five minutes of walking around she began to miss something with no purpose whatsoever. Feng shui seemed to exist in a separate universe to these guys.

  Oh yes, the guys. The hunks that all looked like they’d just walked off the pages of Hunks Monthly. Not to mention their commander, the conqueror of worlds and apparently, women’s hearts.

  Isolde was definitely swooning. That was very uncool. Swooning happened to teenage girls and was directed at pop stars. Now she was imagining Diego on stage, in a tight leather coat, surrounded by hordes of fan girls dying to just breathe the same air he did. Rolling her eyes at herself because there was no one else to do it, she wondered if these aliens brewed alcohol and if drinking it would kill her.

  Ensha followed at a respectful enough distance, gently tugging her away when she started to walk down a forbidden corridor. They eventually ended up in a huge hangar-like area with the same kind of screens for walls Isolde had seen on the Forger. She made her way to them at once, staring wide-eyed at strange constellations flashing by, as much as she could tell at least.

  Oh God. Space was so big.

  And so far, not what she had imagined. For one, the Brions seemed surprisingly calm and unthreatening for their reputation, even with those huge blades on their backs. Other than the obvious fear-mingled respect they showed Grothan, the warriors didn’t seem to pick a fight with everything that breathed like Isolde had been told. Ensha, for example, seemed to think her strange and her presence weird, but when Isolde asked him something, he answered politely and without any trace of negativity she could discern.

  She thought of Rhea. Isolde had only a very basic understanding of galactic maps, and the only thing she truly knew was that Rhea was far. Such a fun word in terms of space travel.