Alien Legion: Arrows of Artemis

By C.S. Hayden

Alien Legion is the trademarked and copyrighted creative property of Carl Potts as published by Epic Comics/Marvel Entertainment 1984-1993. This is a work of fiction loosely based on the characters of Alien Legion and is unauthorized by its creator Carl Potts.

Plot and additional original characters copyrighted 2002 to Christi Smith Hayden

This chapter is rated for Mature Readers Only -- if you are easily offended by adult content, please skip ahead to "Part X: Barracks Life" -- thanks!

Arrows of Artemis

IX. Night Maneuvers:

Lingering in the civilian zone, they arrived back in the barracks long after lights out. The wine had made them as giddy as teenagers and they took turns pulling each other into the shadows for long heated kisses. Sarigar finally sobered up by the time they reached the corridor to Jaikira's quarters but couldn't seem to get enough of her.

"Gar!" She squealed as he wrapped his arms around her and nuzzled her ear. "Stop that! I can't think to punch in my number."

"I'll do it." He reached under her arm and punched it in.

She craned over her shoulder and made a face at him. "You memorized it?"

"I looked it up."

"Then you might as well come in," she said and tugged at his hand.

He looked around warily. "I don't know, Kira. We might wake somebody up."

"Impossible," Jaikira said as she looked back at him invitingly, "F'marrl took Artemis out to do night maneuvers."

"Then we're alone?" Sarigar let her lead him into her quarters.

"Completely."

Sarigar smiled slowly to himself and set the privacy lock on the door. When he turned around, he got to see Jaikira slipping her jacket off a pair of bare shoulders. She had been wearing a backless gown beneath it and her blue skin had a neon glow against the dark fabric. His mouth went dry.

"Well?" She struck a glamorous pose, throwing her hips forward provocatively and tossing her hair back.

"That outfit will get you a uniform violation, captain."

"You're one to talk." She sauntered into his arms and ran her hands down his chest. "This is certainly not a regulation skinsuit, major. No armor underneath, just you." She deliberately traced the outline of his pectorals under the fabric. Her fingers left goosebumps on his skin.

"I'm off duty tonight," he murmured as he kissed her. "It's allowed."

"Lucky me." Pulling his jacket from his shoulders, Jaikira tossed it across the room. She sighed as he continued his kisses and craned her neck invitingly.

He moaned and ran his mouth along the swanlike arch of her throat. She turned in his arms and pulled her hair away to bare the delicate markings on the back of her neck. Sarigar caught his breath - it was the most intimate thing a Jentekian woman could do. Baring the neck was often a precursor to a formal mating because it was the most easily aroused area on a female's body. Touching her there stimulated the pheromone glands that not only made a female sexually receptive but also brought a male to peak arousal.

"A-are you sure?" he managed to rasp out. "I'm due to ship out at any moment."

"I know -- chances are as soon as I'm back on the active list, they'll have a new field assignment for me." She pulled his arms around her and nestled back against him. "I don't know about you, but I don't want any regrets. I don't want to wonder what it would have felt like to make love with you."

"I won't deny that I've thought about it too." Sarigar fought back the urge to lower his lips to her skin. "I don't want to rush it -- a formal mating is something that has to be built up to." His tail caressed hers, winding around the hem of her dress. "It can take hours if you do it right." He kissed her bare shoulder. "And I'd want to do it properly for you."

"We have the time," Jaikira said as she slowly let her hands run along his arms. "We have the opportunity." She flexed her hips back to slowly rock against him, fully aware of the effect she was having. "And, from what I can tell, we certainly have the motive." She took his hands and guided them along her curves. He needed very little encouragement to continue.

"Criminal minds think alike," he said as he caressed her body in ways he'd only imagined during the long nights spent alone in his bunk on the Piecemaker. "Kira, this is a big regs violation."

"Frankly, Gar, I don't give a damn." She gasped as he slipped his hands inside the deep cut sides of her top. Her voice rose up in tonal increments, sending an erotic thrill along his neutral synapses.

His teeth chattered. "Kira-- "

She let the croon drop into a low purr that sent him rocking back on his coils. Instinctively, he kissed the nape of her neck and was lost in myriad sensations. Jaikira tasted the way she smelled - an intoxicating mix of sweet tartness that rivaled the rarest spirits that Sarigar had ever imbibed. He ran his tongue along the scarlet chevrons trailing up the back of her neck to disappear in her hair. Hissing through her teeth, she writhed in his arms, a sensual shudder rippling all the way down her body to her tailtip. He let his hands glide along the tops of her shoulders as he continued to slowly nuzzle her neck.

"G-gar?" Jaikira's voice trembled, clearly shaken by her physical response to him.

"Ssssh," he whispered. "Patience." Lightly, he nipped her earlobe. "I want to do this right for you."

"No." She turned in his arms and looked directly into his eyes. "We do this right for both of us - or what's the point?"

Her boldness went in the face of Jentekian propriety, but then, that was what had first attracted him. Sarigar merely leaned forward to kiss her and was thrilled to feel her hands exploring his body - it had been years since anyone had done so. She pulled his shirt free and slid her hands underneath the material to ghost around on his bare skin. Impatiently, he pulled it over his head and was captured with a kiss while his arms were still pinned inside his shirt. Jaikira took full advantage of the situation and promptly toppled him over onto her bed, her hair falling all around them as they kissed with greater abandon.

Her hand unbuckled his uniform belt and opened his trousers. Sarigar nearly came undone when her fingers glided over the thin skin of his belly and skirted dangerously low towards his erogenous zone.

"Don't tease," he admonished breathlessly.

"Who's teasing?" she whispered back and raked him lightly with her fingernails. If you don't like it, then make me do something else."

"Take off the dress then," he ordered, pushing her up off him. "I can't guarantee it'll stay in one piece if I do it."

Jaikira raised her brow ridges with a sultry look and eyed his pants. "Those have got to go then."

Sarigar returned her smile and tugged off his trousers as he sat on the edge of the bed, unwinding several feet of tail as he kept his eyes on her. Slowly reaching behind her to unfasten it, she let her dress drop, revealing firm, athletic breasts as the material rippling around her slim waist. He reached out for her and pushed it down her sleekly muscled body, curving his fingers around her waist and cupping them around her buttocks as he pulled her to him. His mouth was at just the right angle to swirl his tongue around her nipples. She shuddered and arched her head back, leading them both into a long spiraling twist as he pulled her down onto the bed.

The silken caress of their skin rasping softly was a seductive serenade as they satisfied their need for tactile sensation; skin-to-skin contact was an integral part of Jenekian intimacy. Confined as they normally were in full body skinsuits, Sarigar and Jaikira both reveled in coiling and uncoiling their snake-like bodies around each other, each twist and turn intensifying the sensation. It was better than Sarigar had ever imagined as he ran his tongue back along her neck, becoming drunk on her pheromones.

Jaikira loosened her coils and for an irrational moment, he'd thought he'd done something wrong. She laughed at him gently. "It's okay," she whispered as they slowly unwound. "I want to see what I'm touching, don't you?"

"Yes," he answered hoarsely. They sat up for moment, just drinking each other in as their hands traced erotic patterns on their skin. He paused in his explorations of her body as his hand lightly caressed her intimately, glancing at her to see her reaction.

"Yes, touch me there." she breathed with the ghost of a smile. "And I'll touch you... here."

Sarigar's eyes widened as her deft hands encircled him and squeezed gently. He stroked the back of her neck as he watched Jaikira lean over him and groaned as she manipulated him orally. Her eyes glittered mischievously as she looked up at him. She mouthed him and pitched her voice in a low vibrato.

"Eye of Ayal!!"

The sensation rippled right up his spine and fired directly into the pleasure centers of his brain, making his senses reel. He resolved not to let her take complete command of their night maneuvers and glided his hands firmly down her lithe body. He dipped down to the triangular cleft where their humanoid torsos joined their saurian lower bodies and returned her teasing in kind. Her flavor was even more concentrated here and her reactions were both delicious and direct as her tail flicked whip-like across his shoulders before curling lovingly around his neck. He dove in like a starving man at a banquet, reveling in their passion.

Gradually, her scent changed - a slow, sweet spiciness that sizzled on Sarigar's tongue. His body responded to her surge of pheromones and he forced her warm mouth away. Jaikira looked up in a daze of lust and hurt confusion that he immediately began to kiss away as he gathered her to him.

"Kira," he rasped, "mate with me." He slid smoothly into her warm depths and the wave of euphoria that swept over him nearly made him pass out with its intensity.

Jaikira answered with a desperate whimper as they began to twine their bodies around each other. Each twist of their tails forced him deeper inside her warmth and built an incessant pressure. He felt punch drunk and dizzy from the oxygen being deprived from his brain and he could see by the glazed look in her eyes that she was feeling it too.

"Kira," he whispered. "Breathe with me, come on."

Her eyelashes fluttered. "It's never felt like this," she murmured back. "Never."

"Told you," he answered as he rocked over her on his forearms. "We lose ourselves in mating." His mouth roughly covered hers. "It's more than the joining of our bodies. More than just passion." A powerful spasm jerked his tail spikes out, ripping the sheets. "Eye of Ayal!!"

Her fingers dug deeply into his back as Jaikira clung to him, weeping. Sarigar lapped up her tears, worried that he might have inadvertently hurt her but he underestimated her. Jaikira turned them over with a twist of her tail and took the top position, pushing up from his chest into a high curving arch. The pressure made his frenulum flare its barbed edges and implant itself inside her. The adrenaline rush blasted through him like a hel-bomb and he gave up all pretensions of military decorum as he let his baser nature take over.

Jaikira gave a guttural cry and fell across his chest, sobbing. Startled, Sarigar pushed her masses of hair away from her face. "What's wrong?" he asked anxiously. "Did I hurt you?"

"I don't know," she whimpered. "I never -- I never--" Taking deep breath to settle herself, she wiped the tears from her eyes. "I didn't know it would feel like this. I've had other lovers but never --"

As distracted as Sarigar's mind was, he suddenly realized what was upsetting her. "You've never had a Jentekian lover, have you?" He began to smile. "This is your first formal mating?"

"Yes." She bit her lip and hissed breath in through her teeth as he continued to pulse within her. "This is so intense--"

Her voice had a strange vulnerability that he found appealing. "That's what happens when your pheromones change scent - it heightens the sensation for both of us," he said softly. "We have a reputation for being cold-blooded snakes because we're a pragmatic race but the truth is that when we make love, we do it so deeply and so thoroughly, it feels like we might die from sheer bliss."

"It feels like I'm floating," she sighed. "I'm tingling all over."

"Me too." He lifted his head up and began kissing her until they both fell over on their sides. "It gets better." His tail rattled, sending a shudder through both of them. "The reptile side of our nature makes mating a little peculiar in more than the pheromones. Sex is linked to our autonomic nerve systems; now that I'm implanted in you, we could even drift off to sleep and we'd still be doing it on auto-pilot."

Jaikira made a face. "I'd hate to think I was that boring."

"No, you'd be surprised," Sarigar told her as he cupped her hip and pulled her more snugly to him. "I've always had the most vivid dreams while mating. I almost never dream when I sleep."

Another wave of pleasure crested over them and they both cried out at the same time, twisting and tumbling over the bed and onto the floor. Sarigar backed his shoulders onto the edge of the bed and pulled her on top of him to continue thrusting upwards, his tail winding under him like a spring.

Jaikira tossed her hair back in a glorious dark cascade. "Did you write any more of those erotic poems?" she asked as she planted her hands on his shoulders.

"I had to do something with my nights," Sarigar admitted as he reached up to nuzzle her breasts.

"Tell them to me."

"Too late." He kissed his way up to her mouth and devoured it. "I'm already showing you."

"Mmmm."

It was early in the morning when an unfamiliar noise shook Sarigar out of a dead sleep. He needed a few seconds to register where he was and he smiled drowsily as he remembered how he had got there. They had both collapsed in each other arms, too tired to do anything else but drift off to sleep. It had felt good to let go of his self-imposed discipline and to just make love to her. Voices rose from the barracks as the members of Artemis staggered in after a night on the training grounds. Jaikira's hair was spread across his chest like a blanket and he combed his fingers through it idly, reluctant to let the night end.

"Kira?" He winced -- his voice sounded almost too loud in the quiet of the room. "Sweetheart, you need to get up. Your squad's back."

"Who are you to order me around, major?" Jaikira teased as she propped her chin up on his chest. "You're out of uniform." She grinned. "You don't even have your dogtags on."

"And whose fault is that, captain?" He closed his eyes and enjoyed the sensation of running his hands along her bare back. "You're guilty of assaulting an officer."

"I think that it was mutual assault." The tip of her tail rose lazily in the air. "I'd put you on report if it meant we could be put under house arrest together."

"Unfortunately, I've got to get back." Sarigar smiled ruefully and rolled them over on their sides. "I only meant to be gone a few hours, not all night."

"You were busy." Jaikira tightened her coils around him and hissed. "Mmm."

Sarigar groaned as pleasure rippled up his spine. "Don't do that, Kira, please..."

She laughed. "Spoilsport."

"Later," he murmured into her mouth. "Do that to me later in my bed."

"Mmm... whatever will the guys say?"

"They'll mind their own business."

To be continued in "Part X: Barracks Life"