When she could open her eyes, she saw him staring at her, licking his fingers. Watching his tongue lap up her juices set her body aflame, and she wanted him so badly she shook with the force of it.
“I’m going to fuck you, Mara.” His gaze burned her. “Here. Now.”
“You’d better,” she managed to gasp, and was rewarded with his low laughter.
“All 8th Wing get the xalina vaccine.” Which meant that he couldn’t carry or transmit any of the social diseases that once plagued soldiers.
“And I have the Tawaret chip implant.” No children for her, thank you very much.
Their gazes locked, both understanding at the same moment that there would be nothing between them, only his skin to her skin.
They both tangled with the button and zipper on his pants, and he moaned in relief as his cock sprang free. She licked her lips. His cock was thick, curved and perfect. She reached for it, but he batted her hand away.
“I’m in command here.”
“Are you sure about that?” Deliberately taunting, she leaned against the wall and angled her hips up so he could see her slick pussy.
He cursed, something crude and raw, and she loved it. This was the man without control, and she was the woman who made him lose it. Power coursed through her.
His hands gripped her thighs, lifting her up. She felt the slight raised square on one of his palms —the chip that allowed him to fly a Black Wraith ship. That detail fluttered away as he braced her against the wall, his strength taking all of her weight. Then he drove into her. Gods. He filled her almost to the point of pain, but that gave the sensation an extra edge, and already she found herself at the very beginnings of another climax. When he started to move, thrusting with deep, hard strokes, the orgasm broke in long, liquid waves.
“Can’t…stop…coming.”
“Won’t let you stop.” He spoke through clenched teeth. His hips drew back and then surged forward.
She moaned, the wall hard at her back, Kell hard against and within her. Her legs wrapped around him. She barely noticed that she was almost completely dressed, from her gauntlets to her boots, but what consciousness she could spare for this element pushed her orgasm even further, longer. It felt as if pleasure burned her from the inside out, until nothing would be left but a charred shell—and she didn’t mind that at all. This was the best way to meet eternity.
He was fierce and relentless, his strong body moving, words of praise and demand tumbling from him as he fucked her with brutal, tender purpose. No one had made her feel this way before. No one touched her as he did now, knowing what she needed and what she craved without having to say anything.
“Come.” She dug her nails into his shoulders. “Come inside me. I want that, Kell.”
“Yes…Mistress.”
She almost laughed, but the sound was lost as he groaned out his release. She felt it, the heat of him spilling within her, shockwaves moving through him, through her.
For some time, they remained as they were: panting, sweat-slick, Kell still deep inside her,
holding her tightly to the wall as her arms and legs wrapped around him. Clasping him to her as if she feared letting him go.
They draped across the bed, still partially dressed. Neither had the strength to adjust their clothes or take them off, so all they could do was lie there, temporarily sated, as evening began to fall.
She lay on her stomach, he on his back. Their hands drifted, brushing against each other, creating little fires of sensation. It was warm and comfortable and intimate.
“I was a princess,” she said.
He turned his head to gaze at her, expression opaque. “On Argenti.”
“The Skirens are one of Argenti’s finest and oldest families.” Faint ridicule shaded her words.
She had heard that phrase most of her life, and almost believed it was inscribed upon the family’s crest. “Involved in all levels of the government. Upstanding citizens. One of my great-great-grandmothers is on a cred card. Our annual Solstice Gathering is broadcast to every corner of the planet.”
The cameras had always been there, as the Skirens made offerings to the Goddess, as they danced. Years went by before she realized other children did not have cameras at their Solstice Gatherings. For them, it had been about family and celebration, not presenting an image of honor to an avid public.
“From the moment of my birth, I was groomed to create alliances. That’s what children are to the first families of Argenti. Pawns used to further ambition. It was no different for my siblings and me.
Before I learned how to speak, my future mate had been selected.”
He shifted on the bed, but said nothing. The idle brush of his hands had stopped. She had no idea what he was thinking, but she couldn’t stop the words that came from her now, too long held inside.
“A good match. Even I knew that. Piers was a Gavril. An alliance with his family would have profited everyone. And he was growing up to be a decent-looking man. A little quiet, a little easily manipulated, but there was nothing terrible about him. He and I were supposed to join in the mating ceremony the day after my sixteenth birthday. The planning of the event began two years earlier. ”
Kell touched her then. He picked up her right hand and examined her wrist. “No mating band.”
“About six months before the mating ceremony, I went to my mother. Told her I couldn’t go through with it. I needed to make my own decisions, chart my own course.” A rusty laugh scraped from her. “That wasn’t well received. My family tried everything to get me to change my mind. Pleas, bribes. Threats. Punishment.” She still had the marks on the soles of her feet.
His grip on her wrist tightened, the slightest increase of pressure.
“Finally, my father said I did not have to mate Piers.”
His grasp eased until he released her.
“But if I didn’t, I would be cast out. Not just from the family, but from Argenti. The Skirens have enough influence to have someone banished.”
He rolled over onto his side and stared at her. She couldn’t meet his gaze, just kept staring at the silk-draped walls, dappled with colored light from the lamps. Shabby attempts to make the room elegant, so different from the jewel-encrusted columns and lavish tapestries that hung on the walls of her ancestral home. Her home that wasn’t her home. It never had been. Everything had belonged to her family, even her.
“I spent my sixteenth birthday on a freighter heading off-world. Didn’t know where I was going.
Didn’t know anyone. I knew nothing about how to live on my own—being a princess does that to a girl. All I knew was that I could never go back, or else face execution.”
“You must have been terrified.”
That was a mild way of putting it. She had never felt fear like that, not before and not since.
Instead of saying this to Kell, though, she made a dismissive wave of her hand. “Found myself in the Makell System.”
“That’s a rough solar system.” Surprise tightened his words. “Another place ‘liberated’ by PRAXIS, with predictably appalling results.”
“It was definitely different from palace life.” Understatement, again. The anarchy and brutality of the Makell System had burned lessons into her, lessons she could never forget. “I learned,
eventually. How to take care of myself. How to…protect myself.”
“Mara—” But she shook her head, determined to banish the memories of those horrible months, and what she’d had to endure. It had taken years before she could sleep with the lights off. “I talked my way onto a scavenger ship, becoming one of the crew. Eventually, I became owner and pilot of my own ship.” Thoughts of the Arcadia helped push away the memories, and she knew there was pride in her voice when she spoke of the ship. “It’s not a plush life.”