Burning for Love (Kindred Tales)

There was so much other information in the book too. It chiefly interested her to find that it was not necessary for her to have a man with Royal blood in his veins to slake her Heat. According to one of the footnotes, an ancestress of hers—Queen Lenore the Headstrong—had actually fallen in love with one of the gardeners from the Royal gardens and married him. They had been blessed with six children, all of which had the Sheen to their skin and had carried on the bloodline of the Very First Family with no problems.

If Queen Lenore could do it, why couldn’t I? she found herself thinking, as she looked at James. But no—he had no emotions for her. Or did he? Rissa was beginning to wonder about that…

“Do you feel better now?” James asked her, interrupting her thoughts.

“I am beginning to,” Rissa said cautiously. “It’s only that my Moon Blood has never been late before and the way the Duke kissed me—”

“You’re going to have to get over the idea that a kiss can get you pregnant,” James said flatly. He switched off his scope and looked at her. “The normal, biological method of procreation involves more than just a kiss—at least in most species of humanoids,” he added.

“What does it involve then?” Rissa demanded. “How does the man’s seed get planted in the woman’s belly and grow into a baby if not by him sticking his tongue in her mouth?”

“First of all, your womb is not connected to your mouth in any way,” James lectured. “That’s a whole different organ system. And secondly, a male’s seed does not come out of his tongue, it spurts from his shaft. So you cannot get pregnant from a kiss. You get pregnant when a male puts his shaft inside you and fills you with his seed. Incidentally, that is also the way your husband is supposed to ‘slake your Heat’ when you are finally Joined to him,” he added.

Rissa was still skeptical. She had never had any kind of lesson on humanoid anatomy—it was considered an indelicate topic for a young lady. And Alyssa had seemed so certain when she had given her the forbidden information. She wanted to believe that the big Kindred was right, but he was contradicting “facts” that she had known since the age of fifteen—it was difficult to wrap her head around.

“Prove it,” she said to James, frowning up at him.

He frowned back. “Prove what?”

“The part about the male’s seed coming out of his shaft,” Rissa said. She looked at the crotch of his tight leather trousers—he still persisted in wearing his Kindred uniform of a black shirt, trousers, and boots with a more colorful frock coat over it for appearances sake. In fact, some of the other, more fashionable males in court, had begun to copy him. They had even started wearing silver gloves on their right hands in imitation of his metal arm.

But it wasn’t his fashion sense that Rissa was interested in now. She wanted him to prove that everything she’d thought she knew was wrong. She wanted to see his shaft for herself.

“You gave me a lesson on female anatomy, in a way, when you, er, ‘introduced’ me to my own forbidden areas,” she said to James. “Now I think I need a lesson on male anatomy. And since you happen to be male, you can show me, James.”

He frowned, his brow wrinkling.

“Princess, I don’t think that would be appropriate.”

“Yes, it would!” Rissa insisted. “I want to see if your information is correct! Please, James…” she added, giving him a pleading look. “If I can just be certain that you are right and I am wrong about how babies are made, I shall feel so much better. Also…” She stopped, nibbling her lower lip.

“Also what?” he asked, making a go-on motion with one hand.

“Well, eventually I am going to get married,” Rissa said haltingly. “And, well…I want to know what to expect on my wedding night. Please, James—do not leave me in ignorance.”

She wasn’t sure if it was her words or her pleading looks but at last the big Kindred nodded reluctantly.

“All right,” he said at last. “What do you want me to do?”

35

“Take off your trousers,” Ka’rissa said at once, her lovely eyes alight with curiosity. “I want to see this ‘shaft’ you say all men have between their legs.”

James groaned inwardly. He still thought this was a bad idea, but the Princess had been so distraught and she was so certain that the misinformation she’d been given was true, he felt he had no choice other than to prove her wrong. He could show her text books and anatomy diagrams all day, but it was clear she required more visceral proof.

Also, she had been kept in ignorance long enough, he thought. Even though the Collective had ruled his home planet of Zeaga Four with an iron fist, they hadn’t forbidden knowledge of anatomy and the basics of biological procreation.