Hello all.

Many many years ago, I wrote a fanfic Alien Vs. Predator story - a love story featuring my 2 characters, the P2 Elder and his human lover. AVP: Annihilation (you can find it on my profile) is available for you to read! I hope you will do that.

Below, is the start to a sequel to that story - almost 20 years later. It was always a notion of mine to write a sequel to Annihilation, and thanks to the inspiration from a friend, I decided to begin on that story. Below, you will find Predator: Darkness & Light, which follows the life of my 2 characters, K'Shai & R'chnt (kuh-sigh and ri-chaaant). Darkness & Light is still an in-process story, and it will be an extremely long completed work once done. You will find the content of this story highly mature with graphic sexual content as well as blood & gore.

This is a direct sequel to Annihilation, and much of the beginning of Darkness & Light overlaps Annihilation. While you will be able to follow along with Darkness & Light without reading Annihilation, reading the original story will help you understand how these two lovers came to be and the events that destroyed Earth. I consider Annihilation my best written work, but I do hope you will find Darkness & Light enjoyable as it progresses.

Enjoy!

Prey.

They were prey.

They were the hunted ones.

Some of them were challenging and cunning, possessed of deadly

weapons and enough of a combination of skill and insanity, with a barbaric rage to fuel their blood thirsty warring nature, that they were typically only hunted by the most experienced warriors, or those who were looking to prove they were up to the task, with lethal consequences in failure. To hunt such prey quickly and bloodily drew the line between a fool and a warrior.

They were smart and deadly enough to be worthy prey and the ones that proved to be less worthy than desired still became valuable adornments in any hunter's collection.

This is what the Yautja, what he, had always known about the creatures of this world called Earth. The oomans.

Now, they would be prey no more, by decree. It was the new way. For the damage done to the world had been so extensive, he doubted anyone, Yautja or human or any other native species was even going to survive the mass infestation of the kainde amedha, the hard meat.

Still, the decree was in place as a way to protect the world and its species and help salvage the honor of the Yautja people for their part in the disaster.

He had hunted humans before, many times. His first experience on the world, tens of thousands of their moon rotations ago, provided him with a challenging hunt of deadly though fearful prey, and a surprising insight into the human concept of honor, something he was shocked to realize was not too dissimilar than a Yautja's own view.

He had returned to the world many times since and found the hunts challenging, with ample available prey, and such trophies always served as an assured way to improve one's status and attract interested mates each new breeding season.

His aged body bore scars, a sordid history of the situations he had survived now long faded to white and barely visible against the mottled gray patterns of his skin, of those hunts. His human trophies were a matter of personal pride to him.

His very first hunt on the world had garnered him five trophies and an equal number of mates upon return home; mates that left scars of their own as he fought to dominate them.

He had learned enough from his visits to the world of Earth to understand some of the many languages the oomans spoke. The species, he found, was confusingly and chaotically varied to the point of frustrating. It was hard enough to learn one of their complex languages full of variation and nonsensical words, and yet with each new visit to the world as he studied his prey, he found himself needing to learn another and another.

Unlike lesser hunters, who had not learned from as capable of Leaders he once had, though, he knew that studying prey, learning about them and understanding their methods of communication, behavior patterns, and social structures were traits that separated skillful hunters from fools who would probably be killed.

He learned enough about the human species to pick out the most powerful and fearsome prey that would garner him the best trophies and provide the most interesting challenges on a hunt, proving unequivocally, his hard earned status as a capable warrior, a dominant force in his Clan, and a worthy Leader; an Elder who had proven himself worthy to hunt, mate, and train others.

On those hunts, he learned all he ever needed to know about the uncivilized, fear-driven, and brutal race. He learned why they were impressive prey, and he learned why they were reserved for the most experienced hunters.

He had seen others in his pack of peers, and even students under his tutelage, sent to greet Cetanu when faced off with the deadly creatures.

He never imagined, though, that all of those hunts would lead to this moment and this experience that had tried and tested, challenged and upturned everything he knew about the alien people that inhabited this world.

He never envisioned this most recent experience, the all-out war against the kainde amedha and destruction of the human world, would take on the direction that it had. In fact, he recalled thinking, that had he been told of where his Path would lead before he had ever arrived to the world, he would have struck down the fool who spoke it.

To say such things was unimaginable, he once thought. Such notions were pure disrespect of an Elder such as he.

He had earned his blooding mark centuries ago, and in the rotations since, he had proven his might time and again, taken on the challenge of training students, and bore the scars that prey and mates had left upon him.

Had any Yautja told him of where he would be on this day, he surely knew his blood would boil. Had he envisioned this day in a dream, some vague omen from the gods that he barely understood, he would have thought for sure he was going mad; to think such things, such vile things.

He was Yautja. Hardened, proud, strong, battle worn, of a dignified aged reflected in his gray skin, faded scars, long tusks, and the growth of horns that lined his jaws and crest of his head; features only of males who had survived as long as he.

He hunted well and survived due to cunning and tenacity and an accumulated wisdom that led him to change his way of thinking from the fiery and brash ways of youth to the tempered and confident ways of the Elder that had trained him.

R'chnt pondered such things only briefly as his mind filled with thoughts of his most recent experiences on this world; the experience that changed everything he was sure he knew thanks to one, little, soft skinned human, who had reached out to him with timid curiosity and reservation, who would sneak into his camp, curiously eyeing him and his group, and push the limits of his tolerance, who had challenged him in ways he had never imagined.

She challenged him to realize he did not know things he did not even know he did not know; she challenged his acceptance, and tried his patience, and by just being the curious thing she was, she inadvertently challenged him to be wise enough to step away from his centuries old, brutally reinforced Yautja ways and meet her on the same level of mutual intrigue.

Her curious and gentle nature clashed so dramatically with the weapons she carried and the angry scars etched into her soft skin.

He did not know much about how humans aged, but he knew enough to at least understand that she was far from an elder of her own kind. She was mature sexually, he could smell that much at their first encounter, but she had a childlike curiosity that made him suspect she was young.

Had she approached him, armed as she was, under any other circumstances, she would have found her fragile little body at the sharp end of his wrist blades. As it was, killing any human that was not kau'skvy-de, laden with a kainde amedha embryo, was strictly, and forever, banned as a matter of honor, unless for self-protection.

She had done nothing to instigate him; mostly to annoy him at first.

He quickly thought to the first time he really paid the humans any mind. They had warily approached a field where a fleet of hunt ships and hundreds of hunters gathered to organize their attack.

The line between hunt and war was skewed and R'chnt and many others considered the battle nothing more than an extermination, although it was debatable exactly who or what was doing the exterminating.

Still, the Yautja job was clear. The kainde amedha must be destroyed at any and all costs to salvage any shred of Yautjan honor.

But amongst the humans cowering at the field's edge, there she was, edging closer to where he stood than any of the others in her group. Over the weeks that passed and turned to months, her determined curiosity, despite certain fear on her face, struck him as most unusual, and as he indulged her curiosity as well as his own, he thought she would surely die.

He recalled thinking, the first time he saw her eyeing him wildly in fear and amazement, cowering so low and yet still so exposed, foolishly close to hundreds of aggressive warriors that could have killed her in a thousand ways before she even realized she was a target, how it could possibly even be that such a little, fine, and delicate creature could have managed to survive so long.

It was clear from the first look he shot her, from the first silent cue with his hand to direct her away, letting her know that he knew she was there and was entirely too close, that she was a typical human.

Only some were worthy of the hunt. The rest were little more than a good meal, as fearful and panicked as any prey animal that would flinch and flee like a grazing beast blindly hoping to outwit the assault of the predator that wanted to feed upon it.

So, when she first started warily approaching their camp, eyeing the hunters with a curious and fearful gaze, she was ignored.

Her endurance wore away at the entire group, though.

They called her a wild animal; a persistent wild animal, blindly willing to walk into a camp of killers. She was weak. She was foolish.

They mocked her, they laughed in amusement at her attempts to stalk the hunters like they hadn't noticed her. And he could barely find himself without thoughts of her running through his mind.

First, thoughts of her pitiful cowardly posture, then thoughts of her ever-present wide-eyed curiosity, then thoughts of her scars; proof plain as day that she had survived horrific encounters, probably worthy of retelling at any Yautja campfire, then thoughts of her endurance, her keen wariness that was keeping her alive, and her tough resilience etched into her skin.

That timid and helpless looking creature, despite wide and wondering eyes, wore the signs of battle-heavy burdens on her shoulders. Her tightly locked jaw and constantly panning gaze told R'chnt she was always calculating where she was, and just what was around her, even if her senses were not as keen as the Yautja before her.

She would flinch at sounds of animals and trash blowing in the wind, but she still pressed on with her curiosity. She bore injuries from battles so recent that they barely healed, and beneath them, scars of older skirmishes highlighted her skin.

Her curiosity of the Yautja endured, and he found his own quickly piqued. He watched her when he made camp near the human group. He ignored the rumblings of his group as they mumbled amongst themselves why camp would always be made in the area of the human group that trailed them.

R'chnt made sure to either always return to them, or ensure they did not lose sight of the hunters in the first place. He watched her interact amongst her own group, stray off on her own, and he watched her spy on his group when she clearly thought she had the advantage.

When he once watched her as she removed her coverings in exchange for fresh and unsoiled garments, he saw aged and severe scars that mangled her lower right leg and imagined it must have been a feat unto itself for such a weak little creature to have recovered from such an injury and endure on under the conditions she was in.

That day in particular, she had wandered away from her group, blindly approaching a zu'kainde, and for reasons he barely understood, he pulled her to safety, acting mostly on engrained instinct to kill the embryo-carrying creature and saving her as a mere by-product.

Yet, despite the fear she displayed; the flush of heat that coursed her veins, the rapid heartbeat and ragged breathing, she did something he did not expect. She clamped her tiny hand around his arm and spoke to him.

He could feel her body shivering and see the rush of heat from fear and panic flush her face as he watched her heart beat so wildly it seemed it might burst from her chest on its own, but she did not let go of the mighty hunter towering over her, not even as he retrieved his spear and wielded it inches away from her delicate frame, barely a third his size.

After several attempts in her tongue clearly asking him his name, he indulged both of their curiosities and responded. And in turn, she pushed further.

She tried again and again to understand him each time the hunters returned to camp for some rest. They called her his human as they trilled their voices in a subtle laughter, thinking the whole situation was amusing to the point of ridiculous.

She curiously tried to learn his language as best as her alien tongue could manage. She pushed more by trying to understand him and his people better. She listened to him and she watched his motions for guidance.

She mimicked his gestures and mannerisms and tried her paltry best to hold up to brief training sessions, a pure delight to his hunting pack as they looked on in spectacular amusement. She did everything that prey was not supposed to do, and she disproved so much of what he had known about her uncivilized, barbaric people.

He found K'Shai to be completely different than all the notions he had ever had of the race of ooman. Whereas most of the humans he had ever encountered and hunted were boisterous, brutal and deadly, she was quiet, reserved and gentle.

She demonstrated an intelligence greater than her age and cranial size would suggest she was capable, and a strength of will in addition to strength of courage that was surprisingly different than her otherwise weak and soft body would suggest.

She had a wisdom far beyond her own years. It was a wisdom that he was surprised to discover surpassed hunters far older than she. As he came to know her more, he realized it likely rivaled his own. The Yautja name he donned her fit her appropriately, strong heart.

When the great battle against the kainde amedha began, R'chnt headed to the world, unsure if he would live to return to home once again, nor could he bother filling his mind with such concerns.

The dishonor that had unfolded on the alien world of Earth had crippled the Yautja race on the whole. Individual lives mattered only so much as they were willing to fight and die.

While it was not the result he hoped for on any hunt, he did still hope to die with honor when the Paya did finally call on him to join them.

He was an honorable and honored Yautja Elder, a Master of the Hunt and a teacher of students of every level in both hunting and spirituality. He had lived his life following the Yautja Path of Honor and willingly faced deadly opportunities upholding to very Way he taught.

K'Shai had put everything he knew to the test, but never his honor. She had proven herself a capable warrior, far stronger than he or anyone in his hunting pack had initially given her credit for.

He knew she was fragile, yet she was powerful and determined. And he knew her skin was soft, yet nothing prepared him for the first time she leaned in to him and put her lips to his cheek.

He recalled rigidly stiffening, still and silent. He held his breath and froze, not sure how to gauge her actions or how he should react. The feel of her lips against his worn skin, warm and soft and wet and tender, was so foreign to him, yet it was a powerful experience that stunned and overwhelmed him.

She eyed him warily after that first moment, apparently trying to gauge him for any sign of reaction, and he hesitated; contemplating exactly how to respond without overpowering or frightening her.

The brief delay was nearly too long as she suddenly withdrew with a combination of uncertainty and disappointment on her face. A myriad of thoughts ran through his mind in a fraction of a second, from the absurdity of the situation to the intoxicating scent of her body.

Whether she knew it or not, he knew she was amply ready to receive him. She was tender, shivering softly, and she was aroused.

His natural reaction, had he caught the ripe scent of a Yautja female, would have been to bellow out his desire to mate, strip off his garments and make as public of a display as possible announcing his intention for that female to prove his worth to her and ward off challengers.

Somehow, he thought, in that quiet early morning still on that rooftop weeks ago, his natural response would have been a bit too overbearing for K'Shai. He tempered himself and allowed her to show him the way she preferred, which quickly grew uncomfortable as she straddled him, further restricting access to his own growing arousal.

That is what caught him by the most surprise.

He huffed deeply, taking in her scent in the air as she pressed her small body onto his thighs and ran her hands along his powerful abdomen. As her voice quivered while she gasped and leaned into him, caressing his face with her warm and moist lips and tongue, he found the alien sensations; the gentleness, of what he could only assume was typical for the human process of mating, completely foreign and utterly arousing.

The moment barely seemed real.

He focused in on her scent, growing more powerful by the moment. His own musk built in time with hers, and he wondered if her sense of smell allowed her to know how ready he was to have her at that moment.

Under any normal situation, he would have mated with her immediately, for a female's willingness to be a party to mating was short-lived and hot-tempered. It was best to get the act complete as quickly as possible to limit physical injury to both parties.

Delaying in such activities could sour a receptive female's mood quickly, and an unhappy Yautja female was not something any intelligent male who valued his genitals, or any other part of his body, wanted to create.

But K'Shai was not Yautja.

The very fact that he even grew aroused by her delicate touch was beyond the scope of any absurdity he could imagine.

That he found the heated scent of her receptive body stimulating was perplexing to him. That he found her soft skin enticing, that his body churned as he ran his hands along her heaving chest and caressed her exposed milk glands which clearly stimulated her further, that his erection grew and dripped, uncomfortably restrained behind an armor codpiece that would have been long disposed of for a situation like that as she straddled him and caressed him and kissed him, would have made him question his sanity had he not been so hypnotized by the sensation of it all.

As it was, that night was not meant to be.

They were in the midst of a war, and the combination of the hard meat arriving and an unexpected and very unwelcome interruption by a human of K'Shai's group brought their activities to a quick end.

The battle ensued and the situations that followed did not give any time for either of them to pick up where they had left off.

Then, a few rotations ago, K'Shai was attacked brutally by males who intended to mate with her against her will. Even in the Yautja culture this was a forbidden act, and while typically such matters were handled strictly by females, including punishment of the offenders, R'chnt carried out a typical punishment for such crimes in defense of K'Shai.

He severed the male's genitals off while he watched and shrieked in agony before being slowly skinned from the toes first and ultimately eviscerated.

Had he arrived a moment later, R'chnt knew K'Shai would have fallen victim to the unwanted penetration.

For the last five rotations, he had been hunting down a hive and every one of its occupants that ran wild in the long abandoned streets of yet another human city, further delaying the culmination of their previous interactions.

When he returned to K'Shai, injured from a high fall and deep gouge in his side, he crawled into bed with her and slept, exhausted. He woke up, decidedly embarrassed over his momentary weakness, and how he must have looked to her.

She was, just a few days earlier, ready to mate with him and instead she just watched over him warily, surveying his wounds and no doubt trying to decide if he was up to such vigorous activities.

It was natural for a Yautja, any Yautja, to gauge the physical status of another, especially if the other was older, higher ranked, and was weak enough to possibly be defeated by an otherwise incapable aggressor.

He crawled into the bed with her despite his weakened state, reminding himself yet again that she was not Yautja. For someone so much smaller and paler and softer than any Yautja, he amused himself with the thought that he seemed to easily forget that she was not one.

As her companions joined her, he knew they were surveying his injuries as well. He immediately suspected the males were gauging his ability to continue as Leader.

Perhaps they were keen on attempting to take his place, he thought while they watched him. He felt his grip tighten on the hilt of the sword on his waist, just in case.

"My friend Carlos would like to look you over, R'chnt." K'Shai had said to him as she approached him.

He grumbled a refusal once, then twice at her insistence.

"He's a healer. At least let him look. There's probably not much he can do." She tried again and again he growled a decline.

It was bad enough to be in the weakened state he was. He removed himself from sight of the rest of his group to allow some time to recover.

The thought of having yet more witnesses to his condition and to top it off to be medically evaluated by an alien was detestable.

She smiled coyly at him, pressing her lips together softly as she carefully considered the situation. She placed her small palm gently on his jaw, delicately cupping the bony tusk protrusions that grew from his lower mandible as she gazed at him.

"My friends are," she spoke softly, barely above a whisper, and slowly as she struggled to make the proper sounds and remember the word order of R'chnt's spoken language, "nervous about this. They don't really know what to make of it. About us. Letting him look you over is his way of showing that they are trying to accept this."

Humbled by a wisdom he hadn't even considered, he nodded in agreement, and as it turned out, the male human healer was able to retrieve the broken finger of a kainde amedha that had been lodged into the thick muscles of his back, deep enough that the claw was pushing between R'chnt's ribs.

It felt better immediately upon extraction and he had not even realized it was there. He could breathe easier the moment it was removed.

He assumed the pain he was feeling was from the hard fall off the rooftop to the ground some fifty feet blow when the thing knocked him off the structure. He was not about to complain about the sharp pain before his pack, or ask the healer amongst his own group for attention.

It was one thing to seek assistance for minor issues like a broken appendage or jaw, and other issues like superficial wounds were easy enough to attend to on one's own with basic field training, but for a Leader to seek out help from those under him in his own hunting pack, was a sure fire way to be presumed too weak to continue on.

He had returned to K'Shai immediately after tracking their way back through the strange alien towns only to find her asleep. Sucked in by her quiet peacefulness in the darkness of the pre-dawn hours, he simply filed into bed stealthily, smelling the sweetness of her skin and sharing her warmth with his own.

She stirred and had greeted him with a pleasant touch, brimming smile, and gentle caress. He had wanted to engage her further, but he had hunted without rest for six days straight.

Such an excursion pushed the limits of any Yautja, and despite his many intense hunts, he had trouble recalling such a time where he found so little sleep in so many rotations of the sun and moon, before he simply passed out into deep sleep under her caress, the soft weight of her head pressed against his chest as she extended an arm around his abdomen.

He found it mildly perplexing that she did not view his momentary weakness as a failure on his part. She did not make dismissive gestures or grunt admonishingly, nor did she display any desire to challenge his authority in light of his incapacitation, however short-lived it might be.

K'Shai did not view his injuries as a reflection of weakness, and neither did her companions, which was a concept hard for him to understand. They extended a helping hand to the best of their abilities, and hoped the interaction would fuel some attempt at co-existing with him for the sake of their companion.

They hoped his pain would make him more receptive to their help, and though they approached him, he could see and smell their fear.

After he rested more, R'chnt and K'Shai spent the entire day with the rest of his group. One of the others hunted some food and offered up a chance for the group on the whole to recuperate from their most recent excursion, on the roof of the very same building the humans kept their own camp in.

He sat in quiet contemplation of K'Shai's actions, and those of her companions, trying his best to work out the human mentality if he could.

It was so drastically different from a Yautja's view, that as he scanned K'Shai, lost in thought, he wondered if he would ever really understand the human kind. It seemed their males understood their females far better than he could even understand females of his own kind.

K'Shai sat close to R'chnt and as they day wound down, she crept closer and closer until her flank and hips were pressed into his thigh and his large hand and armor braced forearm encompassed her so completely she was blanketed by his warmth as the sun dipped, the air cooled, and rain clouds moved in.

She kept her eyes turned away from him, watching the group around her instead, but the coy contact, the gentle touch of her body against his, was clearly intentional and it made R'chnt's mind brew on other topics, like their last few encounters together.

It was a whole chain of realities that he found borderline insane and impossible. He wanted her and he knew by her previous advances, the powerful scent in the air of her readiness to be mated, and her absolute need for physical contact with him, that she wanted him.

How she greeted him and stayed by him whenever he was near, was something else foreign to him, as female Yautja neverpursued mates or took a singular interest in any male. It was always up to the male to make his interest known in whatever way he needed to in order to get her attention, and then hope her attention would be positive, and not bone-breaking in return.

K'Shai, while keeping her gaze away from R'chnt as her body gently graced his, thrilled him with a coy hint of desire, the scent of which filtered into his nasal passages as she sat near him. He could sense she wanted him, yet she also kept him just confused enough, by not engaging with him further to, make him stew in silent frustration.

His body still ached, though the medicines he took relieved much of the pain. He wondered if she could sense that he was still hurting and was put off by the idea of his weakness. Perhaps she thought he was not up to the physical strain of intense interaction with her.

Perhaps she was eyeing W'rsa so intently because he was younger, less injured, and his bright bold markings against his subdued yellow flesh contrasted dramatically to R'chnt's own faded grays, which once were a brilliant sea of reds, greens, and yellows atop heavy black mottling.

He glanced at his own skin for a moment and suddenly felt a flicker of anger rise up as he torqued his upper mandibles in subdued rage and confused contemplation. He shook the thoughts from his mind as K'Shai leaned just a bit deeper into him and placed her hand carefully, with a hint of reluctance, on his thigh.

The sensation of her hand, which felt cool against his naturally hotter body, had the effect of distracting him completely. He picked up on her subtle uncertainty.

In the same way as she had first touched him, pressing her lips to his cheek and waiting, shaking softly, to gauge his reaction, she likewise put her hand on the inside of his thigh carefully and he felt her take a certain pause. He knew immediately that this was her reserved way of gauging what he would permit.

Without a word, she was asking permission to touch him more.

Had she been Yautja; had she been male, the opportunity to touch him then ask for permission would never have happened.

Had she been Yautja female, it would have been R'chnt who would have waited in reservation, surveying the female's mood to try to figure out what her next move was going to be; pleasant or painful.

K'Shai was neither and he welcomed the mental distraction and deeper contact. Without hesitation, as their first encounter had caught him so off guard, R'chnt shifted his position slightly, softening into her, answering her question in silent return and she took a firmer hold, sliding her hand even more along the inside of his thigh.

She never looked at him. She simply listened to the Yautja hunting pack telling tales of their conquests old and new.

R'chnt watched her, studying the gaze in her eyes, silently understanding that she was trying to keep up with the flurry of grumbling, throaty and shrill clicking sounds of multiple conversations, deciphering whatever words she knew and trying her best to fill in the gaps as best as she could, throughout the day and after the sun dropped beyond the darkening clouds as a storm moved in.

Feeling stronger from the day of quiet rest and much needed food and drink, R'chnt let his mind drift as the evening moved on. He fell quiet for so long he had barely heard a single word of any of the conversation around him.

He moved his arm into K'Shai tighter, ever so subtly drawing her in even closer to him and she immediately responded comfortably by leaning her body just slightly further under the pressure of his direction until her shoulder pressed into his ribcage.

He turned his mighty jaws towards her, clicking softly; the first sound he had made since before the sun withdrew from its rotation.

K'Shai heard it and tipped her head to him, drawing her lips back and exposing her teeth; an action he had learned from watching her that conveyed happiness, comfort, or intrigue.

He learned that, not unlike the Yautja, humans facial expressions were often backed up with body language. It was a challenging learning process for him to begin to decipher such subtle shifts in positioning of K'Shai's face and body that conveyed her intent and emotion.

He found understanding her alien mannerisms difficult and sometimes confusing and conflicting. Sometimes he wondered how two humans interacting with each other even understood what the other was meaning.

To a Yautja, exposing the teeth in such a way, especially combined with direct eye contact, was a definite challenge. R'chnt felt himself stiffen with alarm as K'Shai had first made the gesture to him, as the facial expression had conflicted so much with her submissive body position at the time, he was actually surprised she would dare challenge him, and over what he had no idea, since they were having a peaceful interaction.

He had finally inquired, braced and defensively, about the gesture, and deflated a bit when she explained that a smile was a human expression of pleasure. He perceived it well now, and the shimmer in her eyes as a flicker of lightening in the distance caught her attention, told him she was curious about the sound he made.

She glanced around at the skies, her expression changing slightly as she took note of the brewing storm rolling in, then she turned to him with a look he had seen in her eyes not once, but twice before. Two interrupted times before.

He had seen, what he believed, was the full range of K'Shai's moods; reserved curiosity tainted with fear and uncertainty, true fear, pain, and contentment.

Every time he surveyed her, he became better at reading and understanding her moods, although, he could not tell exactly the interpretation of the newest gaze she cast at him, he could see the minor change in her features.

She shifted her eye contact down, and softly gripped her lower lip with the corner of an upper tooth while she surveyed his body, scanning her eyes over his old scars, fresh wounds, faded spots and pale gray belly.

She cast him another small smile and nudged her shoulder into him gently, carefully avoiding his injuries.

"Maybe we should go inside. It's going to rain."

K'Shai whispered the words to him as she tipped her head closer to his jaws. She spoke in her own tongue, knowing full well he would understand, and she spoke quietly enough perhaps so she was not overheard by the others in case they understood as well.

The others in his pack all spoke some of the human languages, but there were many and each hunter's vocabulary of whichever languages they knew, was somewhat insufficient to hold a conversation. Even if anyone did hear, it made no difference to R'chnt if they knew and understand where the pair would be heading or why.

R'chnt's scent changed in an instant at her invitation, informing his group through finer, highly-developed senses, exactly what his intentions were. The fact that she preferred to be inside, out of the rain was of no consequence to him, but as he allowed her to show the way down the stairs that jutted off the side of the building and down two levels to the private living accommodations where she had been staying, he could not help but presume that a public display of her intentions was not something she desired.

He assumed that was the human way as well, keeping such matters private.

She stepped through the viewing portal into the living area, scurrying just a bit faster the last few feet as the skies opened up and rain poured down on them both. K'Shai giggled as she quickened, apparently trying to avoid the rain for whatever reason.

He was sure that humans could tolerate being wet and the precipitation was not burning to the skin as it was on some worlds he had been to, but he did not spend much time considering her unusual reaction to the water pouring down.

R'chnt crawled through the narrow opening and K'Shai watched him. Though he had spent the day resting, he was still on an alien world, on a hunt, surrounded by aliens of two different species, and in the middle of a war.

He had never let his guard down and had remained fully armored, ready to go at a moment's notice. K'Shai eyed him as he crawled through the much-less-than-Yautja-sized opening into the living area without scraping so much as a lock of his thick, ropy hair against the frame of the building.

Five days had passed since she had last seen him. His absence throughout those shortened fall days had given her own body time to heal, apparently while his was out getting fresh injuries.

She had been beaten, stabbed, and nearly raped the last night they were together. The following days had given her plenty of time to reflect on his actions that night, not to mention his impeccable timing, preventing the deed from taking away her unspoiled gift she wished to bestow upon him.

It allowed her plenty of time to anticipate that moment, to imagine what it would be like to feel him.

He stood tall after he climbed through the window, a few droplets of fresh rain rolling off his head, down the length of his thick, dreadlocked hair, and dripping from the edges of the armor he wore over his shoulders.

K'Shai eyed him, softly biting her lower lip and steadying her gaze. He loomed in the dark apartment, with ceilings that offered only a few inches of clearance over his mighty frame. Towering over her by nearly two full feet, the top of her head barely leveled with the bottom of his pectoral muscles. She had quickly gotten accustomed to looking up at him long ago.

R'chnt was taller than all the others in his group. The only other one who came anywhere close to his size was W'rsa, who still was a good four inches shorter. R'chnt towered over the others in his group by a solid twelve inches and he was of a bigger build than any of them.

Unlike the human process of aging that left a body weak, wrinkled, shrunken and frail, the Yautja grew throughout their lives, and impressive height, body mass, and long tusks, were all indicative of a hunter of advancing age.

R'chnt amplified those features with the growth of additional tusks along the bottom of his lower mandibles and rows of horn-like calcifications that protruded from his skull, in addition to the loss of the once bright colors of his skin.

He was solid, sturdy, powerful, and his very posture was enough to make anyone tremble in his shadow. R'chnt commanded respect and dominance without even so much as moving.

His muscles were well defined and broad, his solid body a living monument to his strength, prowess, and foreboding aggression. He carried himself with pride, stood tall and intimidating, with his back straight, shoulders wide, large, clawed feet firmly under him, hips' width apart.

His powerful and dignified stature, grayed facial quills, weathered look, and his sharply-toothed mouth capped with four mandibles each crowned with tusks over three inches long, longer than any of the others' in his group, told the story in silence of his experience, cunning, strength, and ferocity.

The emanating scent from him was arousing; a heavy aroma that K'Shai could almost taste in the air, strong enough to be unmistakable, but also with a lightly sweet scent that drew her in and made her feel eased and peaceful as she stared at him.

His body was a magnificent totem of muscle, scars, and alien decorations of bone, metals, jewels, and beads. His lower left mandible was capped in a tusk that had been broken off about an inch from the tip.

He had a piercing through the tusk that grew downward from the same mandible. The little metallic bead shimmered softly as lightening from outside lit the room.

She eyed his chest moving ever so slightly as he breathed, noticing the lines and textures of his sculpted muscles and the thick skin that stretched ever so powerfully tight over them.

She moved into him and he held so still he might have been confused for some kind of display piece in the livingkitchen area. She could feel her own heart pounding, her nerves tingling in anticipation intermingled with just a hint of reservation and as she reached out to touch his gray skin, feeling the immense warmth of his stationary body as she laid her fingertips against his mighty chest and brushed her hand over his body, pushing it under the dangling bone necklaces he wore that dropped so low they almost looked like sashes across his chest amid the leather straps and metal buckles that secured his torso armor, she wondered idly, for a flicker of a moment, if he was at all nervous too.

If he was, his steady gaze and tightly clenched mandibles and typical straight and proud posture did not reveal any hint of it.

"Finally alone," she whispered to him as she drew firmly into him.

He was not caught off guard by her advance. Not this time. He was anticipating it just as much as she was. Her body's pheromones changed the instant she climbed into the sanctuary of the quiet and dry space.

While on the roof top throughout the day, the scent that wafted into him teased him constantly, indicating that she was most certainly cycling through a breeding season and receptive to mating.

Just when he thought the enticing scent could not possibly get stronger, it did. He watched her eyeing him with a desiring, hungry look and her scent amplified in a moment. As she stepped in to him and made contact with his body, he could smell her readiness just as instantly as he could feel his own body churning and musk building, telling her he was ready as well.

She pressed herself against him, wrapping her small hands around his torso as far as she could reach and without the slightest hint of delay, R'chnt lifted her off the ground, tucking one gauntlet covered forearm under her thighs while the other hand stroked her from the shoulder to the bottom of her back.

She wrapped her legs loosely around his waist and groaned softly. R'chnt clicked in excitement and the sound quickly turned into a deep, pleased rumble; a low growl that turned into a purr after just a few of her gentle and arousing caresses.

K'Shai was direct, unquestioning in her intentions, her scent building in his nasal passages, but she was also gentle. She melded her body into his, fondling him passionately, with clear desires for mating and yet no intention to challenge him or push him aggressively.

It was mystifying to him how she could be so submissive and aggressive at the same time and he returned the gesture in kind by controlling his desire to tackle and dominate her.

K'Shai pressed her lips into his cheek. Her warm moist lips and tongue pecked and slid over his thickened facial skin and the tusks along his lower mandibles and found their way over and past every wrinkle and scar, taking in every detail of the right side of his face, feeling so soft against him, yet so stimulating.

She reached one arm up and whisked aside a few strands of his heavily beaded hair in one quick motion and his body shuddered. The feel of her small, soft hand against his hair, however briefly, stimulated the sensitive tissues of the half a dozen or so strands that she gripped.

He preferred no one to touch his hair, save only for the necessity of having the rings and beads fused to his locks during ceremonies that recognized his hunts, accomplishments, and elevation in status and rank.

Unlike K'Shai's own soft flowing human hair, which was comprised of dead fibers, the blood and nerve filled strands of R'chnt's living hair not only conveyed heat through his body, they were a source of pain if improperly handled, and as K'Shai discovered by his aroused reaction to her touch, they provided pleasure when touched in a certain manner.

She paused only briefly at the shuddering reaction and noticed R'chnt close his eyes in the same moment, locked tight mandibles suddenly relaxing apart, his lower mandibles dropping down, relaxing open as the upper ones eased up to release them. His growling purr amplified and K'Shai immediately pressed her lips further back along his jaw.

Her lips and tongue traced over the small quill-like hairs that protruded from the side of his lower mandible, a beard of sort. The quills also sparsely grew over his temple, above his eyes, and along the ridges of both side of his head, intermixed with fine rows of bony horn protrusions that extended from his temple to nearly the back of his skull.

R'chnt's entire body suddenly eased up at the stimulation of the fine quills. His purr changed for a moment to a subtle groan of complete delight as her touch sent waves of pleasure through him.

He shifted his hold on her only slightly and moved his hand that had slid down her back to caress just under her butt, to his own belt buckle. He moaned uncomfortably at the growing pressure behind the protective cod piece that sat atop his leather loin cloth as he reached in to unlatch the belt.

K'Shai whimpered and moaned in delight and as she moved her hands back along his body, she leaned in tightly against him and whisked his hand away from its intended destination before it got to where it was going.

She leaned at an angle into his free hand, fully supported by his unfailingly firm grip he had under her thighs with the other hand, and pressed her chest into his palm as she moved both hands across his chest and feverishly fingered at the buckles of his awu'asa, his hunting armor.

R'chnt clicked and trilled and purred, echoing K'Shai's own soft and light vocalizations. Distracted for a moment from relieving himself of the growing pressure at his waist, he watched her eyeing the buckles and connections to the chest plating of his armor as she stroked her hands along the wide leather straps and tried to fumble with them like they were some kind of complex puzzle pieces that had no way to come apart.

He guided her hands, showing her without a word how to unclasp his armor, starting with the support arm and control connections and power supply for the shoulder mounted plasma caster that he wore over his left shoulder and down the left side of his back.

Their hands moved together, briskly removing the pieces and he gripped the entire unit as a whole in his left hand, dropping it with a thud to the ground at his feet, the cannon making a small, fading whirring sound as its connections to its power source were cut.

Without delay, he helped her understand how to take apart the next connection and judging by her sudden and emphatic shriek of pleasured delight, she was surprised to see that a single connection released the entire rest of his chest armor which he quickly dropped to join the shoulder weapon.

She slid her palms over his bared shoulders and once more tenderly groped the back of his neck, running her hand through his hair, stimulating him into a deeper purr, distracting even more completely from removing his belt as he had intended.

As the sound of his own low rumble filled his ears, he barely even realized he was distracted from just about everything except the scent her body and the surging of his own body, which was becoming more difficult for him to keep in check as she made light moaning and cooing sounds which grew more intense with every passing moment and caress as she succumbed to her own body raging.

Without effort, she found the clasps to his trophy necklaces and ribbed black neck seal, releasing them all in a few feverish passes of her hands and allowing them to drop out of her grip and onto the floor.

Leaning back in the firm support of his arm, she removed her upper coverings in a single swipe, crossing both hands in front of her body, and raising her elbows in the air as she pulled her garments free.

Her hands dropped again and she removed an additional garment that adhered tightly to her body in support of her milk glands.

R'chnt's body churned and moaned to him, both in constrained discomfort and heightened arousal. K'Shai pressed herself against him again and his hands slid along her body, around her chest, up and down her sides, across her neck and under her hair, taking in the light, soft feel of her smooth skin under his heavy fingers and palms.

His claws trailing more than an inch past the ends of the skin of his fingers, glided smoothly over her delicate skin.

Though thoroughly distracted by the discomfort of his own pressure he was enduring at the expense of her pleasure, he remained aware of exactly how much pressure he applied to her skin with his claws and his firm grip.

He caressed her and embraced her, but he paid careful mind not to puncture her or crush her against his solid body as she leaned and rocked and licked and kissed him, her hands rubbing everywhere they could reach.

His purr changed momentarily to a rumble as K'Shai elicited further arousal, rubbing her hands teasingly low, brushing over his belt buckle, allowing her fingers to whisk over the cod piece, reminding him of the discomfort of the restriction he was enduring while he clenched her close to his body.

Her softly tipped fingers, with only short, broken, and dirty fingernails and no damaging claws, glided easily along the horizontal tracts between sections of the dlex metal codpiece and her hands flowed smoothly in opposite directions, brushing over the loincloth, ever so lightly igniting the inside of his thighs.

Just then, she quietly indicated for him to release her back down to the ground. He eased her back down the distance to the floor and she landed easily on her feet, eyeing him with an inviting smile and a light laugh before she turned and started slowly moving away from him.

She paused to remove the large, protective coverings over her feet and a liner that covered her skin, and then swayed quite deliberately as she strode away delicately removing the long garment that covered her waist and legs.

R'chnt could feel the pain of his arousal as his body screamed at him to ease the pressure. Without delay, accompanied by an intrigued rumble somewhere between a growl and a moan, he unclipped the belt that supported the cod piece as well as the armor plating that protected major muscles of his thighs from serious injury.

He removed an additional belt he wore, which supported more weapons, a food satchel, and a pack of other supplies.

K'Shai made her way down a short corridor and into the room with the sleeping platform which was not too dissimilar from his own, only smaller, lower, and less substantial in appearance and firmness and slid onto it, still facing R'chnt.

She pulled herself backward and waited, heaving excited breaths as she did, while he paused to unlatch the armor plating that protected his forearms and lower legs from the knee down and finally removed the sandals under his feet.

He had barely even noticed that the edges of the armor had actually begun to impress into his skin along his forearms, knees, and lower legs from constant use for such an extended period of time.

It felt good, though colder than he preferred in the tiny space of the dwelling, to be removed of his armor. He only briefly tried to even remember the last time he even had it all off.

Sleeping in his armor, especially while on a hunt, was something he was certainly accustomed to, but he could not recall any time in his life when he wore the equipment non-stop for so many rotations.

Though the cycles of the sun and moon on her world were shorter than his own, he knew he had been on the alien planet for two-hundred-fifteen of them, and had come to know K'Shai through most of them.

He moved into K'Shai, who reached forward to greet him eagerly with her hands immediately gripping both sides of his hips.

He leaned over towards her, one hand propped on the soft mattress, his face near hers as she greeted him again with her lips. Her hands left his hips and traced his body softly as she laid back under him and scooted backwards onto the bed more and removed the final piece of garment she wore, which covered her groin.

R'chnt kept his gaze on her body and watched her slide under him, his tusks teasingly dragging along her chest and abdomen as she did, eliciting panting and moaning, making her smile with delight as she returned to touching him delicately.

And she was delicate. Everything about her was fine and fragile, yet she was deceivingly powerful and strong.

She was a gentle, curious creature, with thin and easily damaged skin that felt soothing and arousing as she pressed it against his. The scars and bruises and injuries that littered it told a tale of her strength, of what she had survived and the victories she had accomplished, and yet her almost passive nature, especially as she enticed and submitted to him, wet and heaving before him, reminded him of her fragility.

As she stretched her body under him, he surveyed her, noticing the details of every bone easily visible under the thin layer of skin; a reflection of her struggle to survive and find consumable food.

Even for the Yautja, the hunting was challenging. The kainde amedha could destroy any eco system fully, killing all forms of life by direct injury, impregnation, or simple starvation.

She smiled and cooed, and he savored every detail of her small body. The nude human form was hardly something he had never truly paid attention to before, but he had also never associated with a human on such a level.

He found K'Shai captivating, her scent enticing, her touch arousing, and her strength and spirit appealing; and he had had more than enough delays in taking her.

He reached his other hand down to finally remove the last piece of his own coverings, his loin cloth of thick, well-tanned, fine hides that were braided and fringed in the traditional methods he preferred.

Though he immediately had a rush of relief from pressure with the cod armor removed, he was still eager to devoid himself of the loin cloth as well. He was already partially mounted over K'Shai as he leaned over the bed, feet still on the floor.

She watched his hand move to undo the wrappings and she inched back closer to him, extending her hands to meet his.

"Let me." She whispered intently.

R'chnt purred as K'Shai, breath held, unwrapped the loin cloth from around his waist and exposed every inch of his body to her full view. She heaved her chest and panted as she ran her hands along his abdomen and took in all the details on his body with her fingers and eyes.

His body shuddered again, slightly withdrawing defensively as she placed her softly shaking hands along the hard shaft of his erection and caressed it firmly from the tip to his body and underneath, between his thighs and back again a second and third time.

R'chnt growled deeply, overtaken with the unusual sensation to his most delicate and guarded area. She eased the tension out of his body with every gentle stroke and lulled him into such a deep ecstasy that he had relinquished control of his own body purely to her touch, trusting her on a previously untapped level of innate acceptance.

K'Shai cooed and groaned, slowly running her hands back and forth along his shaft, familiarizing herself with every fold of skin, every ridge that provided grip and texture, every quill that grew along his skin at the base of his now dripping rod, every curve of the bulge of testicles that sat below.

She gripped him tightly, and opened and closed her hands as she groped him, allowing her fingers to trail purposefully along the entire middle seam of his testicles and along the bottom of his shaft right up to the tip, slowly caressing him and building his arousal so much it almost hurt.

Dripping wet and filled with delight, R'chnt chuffed, growled, and purred, catching the ever heightened scent of K'Shai's lubed up body screaming its readiness to be taken. He slid his free hand along her face, delicately caressing the details of her lips as her mouth gaped and her eyes closed.

His hand guided itself down her chest, over her breasts, along her ribcage, smoothly gliding along the bony line of her hip until it found its way between her legs. He fingered her wet entrance and K'Shai howled in delight.

Her breathing quickened and her entire raging body surged with a single touch as she dropped back against the mattress to allow him better access. He could see her temperature raise and the sounds she made thrilled him, driving him wild.

K'Shai moved back further onto the bed, centering herself on the mattress completely and R'chnt crawled on top of her, knees on either side of her, palms down near her shoulders, stiff erection at the ready, dripping over her.

He lowered his mighty head and caressed her body again with his tusks, heaving a deep breath, drawing in all of her scent as she huffed and moaned below him.

He could feel his raging body, dripping with readiness, screaming to him to take her as his instincts were driving him to do. It was the first time in his life that he had a willing partner laying submissively before him, wet, heaving, and ready for mating, that was not challenging his dominance, threatening or inflicting physical harm, or displaying anger at his advances.

She trusted him fully and she waited, with quickly depleting patience, judging by the sudden increase in her heart rate, temperature, respiration and moaning sounds, for him to take her.

Naturally, his instincts told him to wrestle her down, bite into her neck, force her into enough submission to allow him access to her to get the job done as quickly and aggressively as possible. He assumed humans mated in similar ways; he could not imagine any species that did not.

But, he also observed K'Shai and her behaviors for long enough to know that she was not a female Yautja. She laid before him eyeing him invitingly, scanning his heaving chest and flared tusks as he repositioned himself above her, raising and lowering her own chest and moaning as she stroked the curving and flowing muscles that comprised his forearms with her tender touch.

R'chnt exhaled a long, slow breath, and shocked even himself to find his body reacting almost out of his control, doing something he never imagined. He slowed down, calmed himself and listened to K'Shai's wild heart beat pounding away.

He shifted his position and wedged one knee between her legs, which she readily spread for him and then brought his other knee between her thighs as she readied herself.

He scanned her body, watching her throb and pant and coo as his own erection pulsed. He wanted to take in the full effect of her body and he wanted to do it carefully and slowly. He surveyed every detail of her body, from her long dark hair to her fine skin streaked with still healing bruises and scars of old injuries intermixed with the damages from her most recent incident.

He dropped his head and brushed his tusks against her carefully, taking in her scents again, savoring them, so strong he could taste them as he absorbed every inch of the texture of her creamy soft skin with one more caress of his hand, eliciting more of the sounds she continued to make.

He moved his waist closer to hers and his erection, almost painful as it awaited the opportunity to find release, found her moist entrance easily. R'chnt reached a hand along the back of K'Shai's thigh and subtly repositioned her before he pushed himself into her.

To that point, every indication K'Shai offered R'chnt, from her gentle touches, to the warm feel of her lips, and the overpowering scent her body emitted, told him on an instinctual level that she was ready for mating. When he entered the tip of his shaft into her, she reacted in an unexpected way.

Her body, so loose, soft, and wet and inviting, suddenly went tense. She kicked her legs rigidly, sucking in a ragged and sharp breath and held it; an immediate and powerful reaction to an unfamiliar event happening to her body.

The reaction was almost similar to the way she experienced the pain of injury, but he knew he had not hurt her; he had barely even managed to put the tip of himself inside of her tight little entrance.

He realized she was reacting not out of challenge, defiance, or sudden change of interest, but from uncertainty and unfamiliarity, having never before been entered.

The male Yautja's body was built for keeping his mate in place. The nodules on his shaft ensured a secure hold when it was time for release into a female, and it was in a male's nature to plant his tusks firmly into the skin of his mate, to mark her body with signs of mating and to make her think twice about trying to fight away.

Despite his almost immediate reaction to respond to her aggressively, R'chnt restrained himself. He saw no sign that she was trying to go anywhere or put up a fight. Her sudden change in breathing, her increased heartrate, and the flush of heat that blossomed in response to the stimulation all told him she was simply uncertain and nervous.

"Relax, K'Shai," he said in a quiet whisper in his own language, for he knew she knew those words. He leaned down closer to her and nudged her face gently with his tusks, offering a reassurance. "Take ease."

He wanted to penetrate further into her, but he stopped and waited for her to relax.

"I will not hurt you." He assured her again.

She was ready, he knew, but she was apprehensive about the new sensation her body was experiencing.

Although it was not new to him to be the first to enter a female, it was certainly a new experience to be with an alien female barely one third his size. She was small and so was her entrance and when her body tensed, so did her tract and he felt her clamp down upon him uncomfortably.

He was comparatively much larger, but he was sure she would stretch to accommodate him, assuming he could get her to relax enough to allow further penetration without hurting her.

He waited, encouraging her again with gentle caresses of his tusks against her cheek and chest until he felt her body release the tension. Having never removed himself from as far into her as he made it, he simply waited until the moment presented himself and he penetrated slightly further, pausing again as she moaned in a high pitch and clamped her hands down hard onto his forearms.

She gaped her mouth and tipped her chin towards the ceiling, pressing her head back into the pillows below it as she stretched under him, clenching and releasing her grip to the sound of synchronized moaning with every slight pressure and release.

When each opportunity of relaxation offered itself, he pushed deeper into her, slowly and carefully, knowing for as delicate as her outer skin was, having been exposed to the wear and tear of war, the untouched skin inside her was far more delicate.

R'chnt became acutely aware of the pressure returning to encompass his erection once again as he penetrated deeper into her tight tract. Every ripple of skin that provided texture and sensation through the lubricating juices both bodies were releasing suddenly felt unlike anything he had experienced before.

As his shaft slowly made its way into the foreign and tight territory, the soft and warm skin of K'Shai's entrance tract clutched onto him as he pressed every raised nodule of skin along his rod deeper into her, an inch at a time.

K'Shai moaned and squealed and stretched her legs and changed the angle as he guided her. Her panting and groaning was matched in intensity by his own heaving breaths as he flared his tusks and pressed himself deeper and deeper, pausing less and less between each new thrust as he became more fully coated in her secretions and she relaxed more, allowing himself to slide more easily into the tight tract until he was fully engulfed into her.

He paused, watching her carefully for signs that he may have inadvertently caused her pain. He wanted to be careful with her; gentle as she had been with him, but he also did not truly know just what the threshold of her tolerance would be.

He knew he would need to always need to be careful how he handled her. When it came to activities like sparring, he had a much more natural sense of how much force he could use against an opponent such as K'Shai, however when it came to mating with her, he was in an uncharted domain.

He saw no signs of discomfort as she relaxed and held her breath for a moment. Only the sound of the rain outside beating down against the window filled the room over the joined beating of their hearts before he whispered to her.

"Sei-h'tu?"

She pressed her lips together in a thin smile, tipped her head back and stroked his arms, up to the shoulder delicately with her fingertips.

"I'm ready," she responded.

"Do not tense up, K'Shai." He said in a quiet warning.

She nodded and licked her lips, biting down so hard she almost drew blood, but said nothing. With that, R'chnt slowly withdrew, eliciting a simply overpowering rush of sensations through both of them.

The feeling of his shaft dragging backwards through a space it barely fit into in the first place was like nothing he ever experienced and the deep bellow that he rumbled came immediately, and rivaled the intensity of K'Shai's own sudden, high pitched moaning.

R'chnt flared his tusks wider than he was quite sure he had ever flared them, even in direct challenge to the death of an opponent, for even nothing he had ever hunted had stirred him so wildly as the soft and tight little body of the human he chose to mate with did now.

He groaned in delight as he retracted himself nearly to the tip and paused only for a moment to allow his howling mate to adjust to the sensations she just experienced for the first time in her life, before he slid forward again to her high pitched whimpering, dripping wetness, and rocking hips.

To the tune of their joined moans, R'chnt retracted and inserted himself repeatedly, slowly, letting the both of them adjust to the rush of sensations that flooded them. With each new labor on his part, K'Shai seemed to relax more.

Her body, well coated in lubrication, was slowly beginning to adjust to his width and length and as it did, he thrust himself forward a little faster, a little harder, a little more feverishly each time. K'Shai raised her hips to meet his thrusts and rocked back just enough on each withdrawal to send a wave of ecstasy surging through his body each and every time.

He chuffed and grunted as she moaned and panted below him while he worked his pace into a steady rhythm, pumping and thrusting into her as their pleasured breathing matched in perfect synchrony.

After a short while, he shifted his hip angle ever so slightly and continued on. The effect was immediate and made them both bellow louder than before, as he tipped himself enough to penetrate deeper into her. His body built a thin layer of sweat as both their temperatures rose to elevated levels.

K'Shai moaned louder as R'chnt held his breath for a moment, listening to the sounds she was making, gauging her comfort level to the best that he could sense.

Her high pitched squeals, muffled by her clenched lips, were somewhere between pain and pleasure. Not so pain filled that he suspected he was hurting her or needed to stop, but yet overwhelmingly pleasurable enough to cause euphoria that was borderline paralyzing.

He pushed himself deeper into her and pulled himself smoothly back out, watching her flex and clench her hands highly around his arms and shoulders and release in rhythm with his actions as he felt his body churning to its culmination.

He was aware of the sound of his own hearts beating tremendously in his chest, so much so that he could practically feel them pumping the blood into his working erection, fueling it for the moment of release.

He was also intently aware of the sounds of his mate, paying careful mind to the amount of force he used and the sounds it elicited from her. Beyond that and the sound of the rain beating the portals to his right side across the small room, he was only vaguely aware of a light rap on the door to the dwelling; vaguely aware, and mostly uncaring, about the sound of the door opening and of the foot falls of K'Shai's companions in the apartment.

It mattered not to him. She was his and it would be known, by his scent all over her inside and out and by direct observation if need be, for he was being careful to leave her with no physical injuries from the experience to serve as visual markers of his conquest.

K'Shai, with her eyes shut, her body heaving in synch with his and her hands stroking his muscles, was too bound in ecstasy to notice or care about anything beyond the bed.

He wanted to keep her sustained in such a way for hours. He wanted to make her coo and moan and flex her small hands against his arms for as long as she could possibly stand it. He wanted to feel himself penetrating deep inside her, faster and more powerfully each time, until neither of them could breathe properly after the exertion.

He had succumbed fully to the sensations of her small fingernails dragging across his tough skin, barely leaving a mark, but tingling his body fully none the less. He felt her body shudder and tense and contract with raging orgasm as she reached her fullness and moaned and panted, matching his own chuffing and rumbling purr.

K'Shai's thighs tensed against his, her back arched, her body stretched, her fingers tightened just around his upper arms near the elbow, as her thumb dug into one side and her other fingers clamped down on the other side, and her head stretched back under him.

Her body bloomed with a surge of heat and her already tight tract suddenly swelled, compressing his ready and pulsating shaft so much it was almost painful as she orgasmed.

R'chnt's body could hold back no more. The feelings he experienced had lit a fire in him and through a rush of unfamiliar sensations that overwhelmed him, he released his load deep into her, the tiny nodules on his shaft getting decidedly firmer in the moments before orgasm, locking himself into K'Shai for assurance that he would successfully deposit his seeds as deeply as possible, and stimulating a heightened response in the both of them as he pumped a few dozen little forward thrusts during the process.

He huffed deeply once complete and held his position still, remaining inside her until she settled and eased herself back, melting into the bedding below her with a long, low, fully satiated groan as she relaxed from the climax.

R'chnt's body shuddered as he watched hers slink down and stretch loosely. She released her grip on his arms and he continued his purring, dropping his tusks to once again grope her bare chest before he retracted out of her once she had wound down enough. K'Shai moaned and winced, feeling the length of him slowly pull fully out of her.

R'chnt lowered himself over her, pressing his body into hers, but still supporting himself above her so as not to crush her. She caressed him and kissed him, fully relaxed under the overshadowing bulk of his body, warm and soothed by the purr rising from him, the emanations of his body heat and the slowly dissolving throb of his passing orgasm.

He pulled away from her, tucking in tightly next to her on the sleeping bunk and she immediately pressed herself as close into him as she could, wrapping her arm over his body, feeling his warmth, expressing her contentment and pleasure with a soft, relaxed groan and gentle stroking of his abdomen and hip, before she fell asleep.

He watched her sleep, wrapped up against him, for hours, not daring to move or disturb her until he had to.

When he did slip out from under her, she was sleeping so soundly she never flinched. R'chnt gathered up the armor he had strewn throughout the small living accommodations and as he did, he glanced at the pieces once piled on the floor next to the elevated sleeping mat.

He suddenly realized he was more relaxed than he had been in a long time, even though he was removed of his armor on the alien world for the first time since he had arrived to it.

Again without rousing her from her clearly much needed rest, R'chnt returned to K'Shai's side, slipping himself under her small arm, though he remained awake as he reviewed a map of the area that his computer displayed.

He assured himself that he and his group, along with the other two packs working in conjunction with his own in the region, had managed to clear the area completely of the vermin they warred against. He had intended to give his group a much needed rest before they headed out again, for all were weary and need of a break.

He tipped his head to glance at K'Shai again, stroking her bare back and side gently and purred quietly. He had already planned to ensure her place amongst his clan, and over the break, he would finalize that necessity to assure that she would have a chance amongst his people if he were to die on this hunt.

He sat in quiet contemplation for hours, until the pre-dawn light began to chase away the darkness and, relaxed in the still and silence with only the sounds of their breathing to focus on, R'chnt also shut his eyes for some sleep.