“I never did stand a chance, did I?” he asked, looking at me with those violet eyes of his as if I was the villain in our story. I wasn’t. I was doing the logical thing in my situation…

Keeping them both; for a short time, of course. Kastik for the money and social standing and him… because my heart raced every time he looked at me. Because my body tingled with his touch. No, I was keeping him because I couldn’t see my life without him.

But how could I make him see the truth?

“I married Kastik only in papers. I mean nothing to him and he means nothing to me. You on the other hand…” I paused to gently stroke his cheek. The black skin that marked him as a nokteres was the reason my mother didn’t want us together. “There’s nothing over this frozen planet that will stop me from meeting you away from mom’s eyes.”

“So I’m going to be your lover,” Oderius stated, giving me such a cold stare I felt frigid fingers squeeze my heart.

Why was he acting in such way? Dolphares weren’t possessive with their bed partners so why was he behaving like our tree-loving enemies?

“Being my lover isn’t a bad thing. What…?”

“I want you for me and only me.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Don’t you see?” Another pause that felt like an eternity and then his plump lips moved again. “I love you, Bleis.  Can’t stand seeing you with another male.”

I froze. He was putting our relationship in jeopardy for some chemical induced feelings that his body created?

“You have been spying at the Samerkteus for so long their ideologies are rubbing off on you,” I said, fisting my hands and turning away from him. “I’ll talk with the Triumvirate to give you some urgent vacations.”

“I confess my feelings and you walk away from me?”

My blood rushed through my veins like molten lava and I bit my tongue to keep the insults inside my mouth before turning to face him. “Love isn’t real; it’s only an illusion created when our brain orders the production of Dopamine! Even a child knows this for a fact.” I took a deep breath and slowly released it. “We’ll continue our little chat when you start talking like a sane Dolphare.” Angry and fighting against the mist forming in my eyes, I turned around and made my way to the door.

“You want me to talk like ours? Fine! That way you won’t be able to deny my feelings.”

My hand stopped short of reaching the door’s control pad but I refused to face him, not when my tears were about to spill down my pale cheeks.

“You’re like the ocean to me, beautiful and dangerous but always inviting me to dive beneath your waves.” His voice began hard and biting but with each word that rolled over his tongue it slowly turned into honey. “I need you by my side like I need air to breathe. My body aches for you when we are apart and my heartbeats quicken just with the prospect of seeing you.”

Out of the blue his hands grabbed the sides of my waist causing me to yelp. How in the name of science had he reached me without my notice?

“You’re the only one that can melt my cold heart, Oderius, but you know no one can refuse an order from their family’s matriarch… and she didn’t give me a choice.” I blinked away the remaining mist from my eyes and faced him using my hands to keep his around my waist.

Snow white over pitch black. A nevaris and a nokteres. Both of our races were children of the dolphins and yet society treated us differently because of our skin color.

It was a scientifically proven fact that my race, the nevaris, had evolved from albino Bottlenose dolphins while Oderius’ race had mainly evolved from Orcas. The rarity of my ancestors gave a reason to some of my people to feel superior to the rest of the species.

My mother was one of those white-supremacy-assholes, henceforth my marriage predicament. Mom wanted me to give birth to a snowy-skinned baby she could be proud of calling her grandchild not a mixed creature that would taint her pure bloodline.

Crassus forbids that ever happened!

Banishing my mom’s racism out of my mind, I focused on how good it felt to be touched by my nokteres. His hands alone could warm my body, making it secrete pheromones that only fed his sexual appetite.

It appeared Oderius read my mind because his fingers slid under my shirt and, while one hand remained over my ribs, the other reached my back, bringing me closer to his torso in the process. The hand in my back began to crawl higher, searching.

My breath hitched and I fisted the stretchy fabric of his t-shirt. I knew what he was searching for: my rectia; the vestige of our marine ancestors’ dorsal fin and an erogenous zone for our species.

He wanted something and was trying to use sex as a bargaining chip. At least my naughty lover was acting as a normal Dolphare again.

The thing was: did I want him to stop?

My male took that moment of indecision as an invitation to continue and leaned over me until his lips brushed the curve of my neck. His breath tickled my skin before I felt his long conical teeth nibbling the spot while his hand rubbed my rectia.

I began moaning but somewhere along the way the sounds became a low frequency song that my partner followed in chorus. His hands left me for a brief moment to unbutton his trousers and free his stiff member. The thing was already erect and leaking pre-cum as if begging to be touched or used.

Without taking my eyes from his dick, I bit my lower lip before rubbing the palm of my hand against his slick head. He grunted and pushed my hand away as the air filled with the characteristic click-laughter of our ancestors.

I arched a white brow.

He laughed harder and then pulled my pants down my legs along with my panties. The roughness of his actions surprised me.

“Do you desire me?” Oderius yanked me toward his torso and began rubbing his erection between the drench lips of my vagina.

Another moan escaped me before I nodded, wanting him inside me.

A male being demanding and needy wasn’t the Dolphares way but I enjoyed the change. Sometimes being dominated had its perks.

Without giving me time to reconsider my answer, he backed me against the door and lifted my body so I could wrap my legs around his thin waist. His hands grabbed my waist to secure me in place and then he pushed himself deep within me, making me sing a second time.

Goosebumps appeared all over his silky skin and a whimper escaped his plump lips as he slid almost all the way out to then push back inside. He gripped my waist tighter before his thrusts began taking speed and depth. I moaned. The rocking of his hips got rougher, pushing me harder against the door and making the damn thing cry in protest. My nails found their way into his back, leaving red trails that ripped a loud moan from his throat.

Both were so close to release.

“Oderius…”

“I know, babe,” he murmured to my ear before he impaled me one more time and burst, filling me with his hot seed at the same time I screamed with the force of my own release.

But when my brain came down from the hormonal high I remembered what had led us to our delicious quickie. “What do you want?” I asked out of breath.

“I beg your pardon?” My male arched a brow before lowering me to the floor.

The Triumvirate should give him the award for best actor. I could almost believe his indignation at my question.

“I know you, Oderius. It’s not a habit of yours to seduce me after we have a fight so spit it out already.”

One of his hands moved from my waist to grab my chin, gently keeping me in place. Leaning closer, he almost brushed our lips together, giving me the opportunity to see all the little blue and black specks that mixed in to give the violet hue to his irises. They were gorgeous but too hypnotic to be called normal. Strange just like their owner.

“Escape with me to the tropics,” he pleaded, caressing my lips with his tongue. “Your mother wouldn’t be caught dead in a known nokteres territory so we’ll be able to live happily there.”

I pushed him off me and was surprised when he allowed it. Part of me wished he pulled me back to his arms but Oderius always knew when to give me the space I needed even if I didn’t want it.

“You know I can’t do that.” My voice came out as a barely audible whisper and I looked at the floor. I couldn’t watch as his eyes lost their light to become dead pools of plain violet. “I’m going to be the next matriarch so I have a duty to fulfill. I can’t simply walk out on my family like that.”

“I knew you would say that but I wanted to try,” he whispered, turning his back to me and passing a hand through his white hair with black roots.

My heart began hammering inside and I felt a chilly air wrap around my body as my brain screamed at me to move. I knew that if he took a step toward the backdoor I would lose him forever but my feet were rooted into place, keeping me from reaching the male I deeply cared for.

Oderius put his trousers into place and tilted his face to the right as if he wanted to look behind but instead he shook his head and sighed. “I can’t do this anymore.”

No. No!

My heart skipped a beat before pain exploded and my lungs had trouble filling with the so much needed oxygen. “Don’t… don’t leave me please,” I begged for the first time in my life as the tears I fought before spilled down my cheeks. “Scream at me, insult me but don’t leave me. I need you as you need me so please… please give me time. I swear you’ll have me for the rest of my life if you wait for me.”

“For how long?” my male asked with hands fisted at his sides and pain seeping into his voice.

“Until Kastik and I can give a pure heir to our families. Then we will divorce and be free to unite with whomever we please. Like me he also cherishes another.” I walked to my grumpy nokteres and embraced him, resting my head between his shoulder blades.

His breathing relaxed along with the wild thumping of his heart.

“I don’t like that your first baby will be his, it should be mine, but I’ll wait for you. Then you will be mine forever,” he said without looking over his shoulder to address me.

“Silly male. I’m already yours in body and soul.”

Finally he turned and looked at me. The blue and black specks had returned to his irises, breathing life into his beautiful eyes again. How I loved to loose myself in them!

Without another word, Oderius pulled me into his arms and leaned until our breaths mingled. My arms reached around his neck while the edges of my mouth curved in a smile. His lips parted but I silenced him with mine before he could ruin the moment.

In the end I always knew.

I knew that I was home the minute my lips touched his.

********************
A/N: This one shot was created for the Scarlet Letter Anthology contest hosted by WPAfterDark and was the 1st place winner. My Dolphares are a very intelligent, humanoid species that lives in Earth but at the time of the last Ice Age. They unwillingly share the planet with the Samerkteus (what we call Neanderthals). In this Earth the Homo sapiens never evolved because the planet got stuck in the Ice Age.

Word count: 1,996