what, sweetheart?” he murmured.
“Well, you made sure that I, uh, came when you healed me,” Penny pointed out. “But what about you? Do you want me to…I mean, I can…”
She reached for his shaft and her hand came away sticky.
“Oops. Sorry about that,” V’rex growled apologetically. “Sorry, baby—it’s just that I went off like a rocket when I felt you coming on my tongue. So as you can see, I’m all good.”
Penny looked at him in surprise.
“You liked it that much? Tasting me?”
“Hell yes I fucking did.” His golden eyes flashed with sudden heat. “I’m Kindred, little girl. I fucking need to go down on my female. Didn’t you know that?”
Penny shook her head.
“No, like I said, I’ve studied some about Kindred anatomy but I’m still kind of in the dark on a lot of things. Especially about someone like you—since you’re two kinds of Kindred, uh, put together.”
“I don’t know if you can call the Kru’ell Ones Kindred.” V’rex’s face went dark, as it always did when he talked about his father’s people. “But most Hybrids carry the traits of both branches of the Kindred tree they come from. Of course, that’s also what makes most Hybrids unable to bond, but there, at least, my Kru’ell One half helps me.”
“Meaning that you could bond with a female. If…if you wanted to?” Penny asked, feeling her heart speed up a bit.
“Oh yes, little girl.” V’rex looked at her intently. “I could bond with you. I could make you mine forever.”
The possessive note in his deep voice scared her. What would she do if they wound up bonded for life? How could she go back to her normal life if she was suddenly bound to a seven-foot-tall space pirate who had been named an outlaw by the very people she was working for? Also, she still hadn’t known V’rex even one whole week yet—they needed to slow down here!
“I…I don’t…” she began, not sure what to say.
“It’s all right, sweetheart—I can tell you’re not ready for that,” V’rex told her. “C’mon—let’s take a shower and get to bed.”
“Okay,” Penny agreed and let him lead her into the bathroom.
She was relieved he hadn’t made her continue their conversation about bonding but she couldn’t help wondering if it was going to come up again, sometime in the future…
Sixty-Four
For the next several days, they fell into a kind of routine—one that Penny never would have believed would be possible with any man, let alone a huge, dangerous space pirate like V’rex.
Every morning when they woke, the big Hybrid took a moment to suck her breasts and then insisted on examining her pussy. If he detected even the faintest signs of redness or swelling, he gave her a quick but thorough tongue bath that always made Penny squirm with embarrassed pleasure. However, he almost never gave her orgasms in the morning, saying that he preferred to keep her wanting and thinking of him all day and wondering what might happen that evening.
After V’rex tended to her, the two of them got dressed and had breakfast—usually a porridge made from the dark blue svetty grains and sweetened with some of the billux bee honey that V’rex had procured from the bee houses, located right next to the greenhouse where he worked.
Following breakfast, the big Hybrid walked her to work at the Marketplace almost every morning. He said he was just keeping Penny company, but she thought it was probably his way of making certain Skrug was staying in line. He never said anything to the other male, but he eyed the big blue alien balefully and she noticed that Skrug wouldn’t meet V’rex’s eyes.
Skrug had never said a single word to her since the finger-chopping incident, as Penny had labeled it in her mind, which certainly made working beside him much more bearable. However, she did occasionally catch him glancing at her with a look of pure malice in his yellow, slitted eyes, which made her distinctly uneasy. She thought about telling V’rex about it, but she was afraid it might cause another incident. So she kept her mouth closed and pretended not to notice.
Other than the occasional dirty look, however, her work was generally uneventful. Penny had to admit she got incredibly nervous every time the loudspeaker system clicked on, but so far there hadn’t been any more Public Breedings.
It was usually a propaganda-style announcement about how much food the Compound was producing or a new survey showing that everyone was happy and content. These