The Claiming

by Imogen Keeper

  “What’s that like? Being a Prime for a felana in heat?”

  “Answer me a question. And I’ll answer yours.”

  “You give nothing away for free, do you?”

  “Why would I?”

  She puffed a gust of air along his neck. “What’s your question?”

  “What did the Boss do to you?”

  She went still, which he was coming to learn was a tell of hers. Constant motion, never stopping, until something got painful. Then she froze. The muscles of her long neck rippled. “He killed the only person who ever liked me for who I am.”

  He caught his thumbs digging into the skin of her thighs and forced his grip to slacken. “A lover?”

  “My brother, Jonan.”

  “Not possible.”

  Her nostrils flared slightly. “What makes you say that?”

  “He doesn’t kill people.”

  “He has minions who do his dirty work.”

  He bit down on the inside of his teeth to keep from smiling. “Something like that.”

  He pulled her down by her hair, so their faces were close, their lips only inches away. “What will you do if you find the Boss?”

  “Kill him.” No hesitation.

  “Vengeance,” he whispered. A desire he understood with every breath of his body, every beat of his heart.

  “Justice,” she hissed back.

  He could tell her. Right now. Just get it all out in the open. Tell her all his truths. Why he was here. What he wanted. Who he really was. But he couldn’t bring himself to go there. Not now

  “And after?”

  She blinked. “Whatever I want.”

  He toyed with the strands of her hair. After. What would he do after Manivietto was dead? He’d never thought of it. Never imagined he’d live through the war to see it. Never saw any reason to care. “And what do you want, Tessa?”

  Her breath fanned over his lips. “I want you to answer my question. What do you feel like as a Prime when you fuck me?”

  He grinned. “Humble.”

  Her face lit up like the sun when she smiled like that. Pure happiness. “You feel humble when you shove your cock inside me?”

  “There’s a sense of responsibility, honor. Humility.”

  “Humility when you slap my ass?”

  Just remembering had his dick rock-hard against her. They moved in tandem, working their hips together, so he slid inside all that slick velvety skin. “Definitely then.”

  This rut was pulling out all the old shit again, spinning it around. Making him say stupid thing he shouldn’t say, demanding she say it back to him, own it, give herself to him. You’re my Prime, Sanger. His whole body had rejoiced at the words.

  Too much to deal with right now, with the Alliance set to vote, Tor ready to invade, the Argenti set to land, Vangeline acting like a question mark, Manivietto making a move, and her riding his dick like that, rolling her hips, clenching tight around him with all the wet heat.

  “And when you come?” Breathless, her voice went husky, deepening to something that opened himself up.

  “Coming… like with my dick?”

  “You have one, don’t you?”

  A surprised laugh burst out of him, and again, she sent him that glance, like she’d expected him to be offended, was surprised he hadn’t chastised her.

  He frowned. “I always figured it felt the same for everyone,” he said musingly, trying to come up with an answer. “It’s like… getting a glimpse of the universe, the creator itself, staring the big bang in the face and coming out on top.”

  She grinned up at him. “So, coming for you is like killing gods.”

  He thrust upward, palming her ass. “A little. It feels unstoppable, heady, like victory and power, and right when the battle’s almost over, right there at the top.” He lost focus when she bit his neck and sucked at his skin.

  She lifted up, pressing a palm to the center of his chest, her legs on either side of him, locking her eyes on his, so she could see him. “And if she comes with you?”

  “Then in that moment…” When she came apart with him inside her the first time, he’d have done anything for her, built whole worlds, destroyed them and done it again. He pressed his finger against her ass and she squealed, her pussy clenching.

  “Mostly, I feel aware of your body. Like you’re humming a tune, and only I can hear it. Like you need me to hear it. Your life depends on my answer, and so does mine.”

  The press of her hand on his chest got stronger for a second. “That’s how I feel, too. Like if you stopped listening, I’d die. Like I need your body and your voice and your smell but…” Her voice caught, and the vulnerability, the raw honesty of the statement stripped away something inside him. “I don’t even know you.”

  The words cost her. She wasn’t one to admit to weakness either. Defeat. And yet that’s how she must feel. Defeated by her own body.

  He would hate that, if the situation were reversed. “You know where I live, where I sleep, how I eat and fuck. That’s more than anyone else living knows.”

  That did nothing to dull the broken look in her eyes.

  So, naturally, he shoved his finger deeper into her ass with one hand, got a fistful of her hair with the other, tugging so her neck was bared. He dragged his teeth along the thin skin until she was shaking and shuddering. He softened his grip, went back to her lips, whispered against them. “I won’t stop listening. Not until you don’t need me anymore.”

  Her eyes got wetter. It was like the warning signals firing before a rocket crashed. He just didn’t know what to do about it. He wasn’t going to keep her, he couldn’t. Wouldn’t go back to that again.

  And she was looking like she was starting to get ideas. Lots of them.

  He braced himself.

  But as usual, she surprised him. Her eyes went soft and she touched his cheek. “What were you thinking when you walked in the house?”

  Even showing her that single weakness had cost him something. He wasn’t a man who shook for anything, let alone let them see him shaking.

  “You were naked in my house insisting you didn’t need me while dripping on my floor.”

  “Don’t rub it in. I mean as a Prime. What do you feel in that moment?”

  “Big on feelings, huh?”

  She flexed her pussy tight, her ass clenching around his finger. “You’re a robot nine tenths of the time. I’m just trying to decide if there’s a real human in there.”

  He pushed the heavy fall of her hair over her shoulder, staring up at her. She had great lips. Full, the upper one just a little thicker than the lower one.

  “I’ll save you time. No. There’s no human inside me. But I still have thoughts. You want to know what I was thinking?” His voice came out as a snarl. She’d touched a nerve, some nerve he didn’t even understand. He just knew he was aroused and infuriated and…stimulated…in a way he hadn’t been in a long time. “I walked into my house and smelled you there…” He spun through the memory. “Your body was pumping out pheromones like smoke from a bonfire. It was like…” He paused, trying to find the right words. “Like I’d taken a hit of coca. My head was spinning, clouding out the ability to focus on anything but you, that’s why I said battle. There’s a singularity of focus that comes sometimes.” The words were coming out wrong, and something in her face spurned him to keep going. “My cock was so hard I could barely walk, throbbing, and the only thing I knew was that I needed to stick it inside you more than I needed to breathe, like the only thing that mattered was stuffing you as full as I could, filling you up with me and my cum, so I’d still be there, leaking out of you for a month.”

  She bit down on her lower lip, her sleek muscled thighs, panting, grinding into him, taking his finger deeper, his cock farther, getting faster, gushing all over his thighs.

  This was turning her on. She liked the angry side of him, the fury that lurked under the surface, that she drew from him every time he was inside her.

  This he
could give her. She liked angry words. No problem.

  “I looked at you and wanted you on your knees for me, my cock shoved in your throat. I wanted you to swallow me down, rub your face in my balls.”

  Her pussy was fluttering, the muscles tightening. She was right there on the edge.

  He trailed his free hand down to her clit. She gasped when he found it, slippery and hard between her folds.

  “I wanted you on your hands and knees, my cum dripping from your cunt, while I worked myself into your tight ass. I wanted everything you had to give. I wanted to fuck you into oblivion, until you forgot every man but me, until I became your whole reason for existing.” He picked up his tempo, swirling faster with his fingers, his balls tightening, the tip of his dick tingling, and so did she, rising up and down, her thigh muscles gleaming in the low light.

  He was getting close. His voice was raw now, breathy, almost angry. “I wanted to fuck you until you forgot there’s even a world beyond me and my dick.” His voice hitched even lower, and even as he said it, he knew he was speaking truths that came from a place deeper than mind, deeper than heart. Some place where the true core of him existed, the one that wasn’t broken, the one that still clung to hope despite everything he’d lost. “I wanted to own you.”

  Her pussy clenched tight around him, and finally he released her, so her hips could go wild, gasping and writhing. The orgasm rolled through her like wildfire, the muscles of her face contorting and twitching, her moans rising along with her breathless pants, and the sound of the sheets beneath him, it tugged it right out of him.

  He’d meant to hold back, but he couldn’t, not anymore. Not with her chanting his name, her tits bouncing as she rocked above him, that long, long neck arching. Sanger. Sanger. Sanger.

  The only time she called him Sanger was when she was about to come. The rest of the time he was Prime.

  “I wanted to fuck you until I forgot too.” He came hard, cum blasting out of him to fill her in a series of spurts so vicious and powerful they bordered on pain. It left him sputtering and shaking and grasping. He sat up, grabbing her by the back of her skull, to hold her there, so he could get his lips on her neck, driving up with his cock, like he could shove up against her cervix, the final spray of his cum flooding inside her. Her hands found his hair too, pulling and tugging.

  She sputtered her way down from the high, breathless, limp, and sagged against him. “That’s what it was like for me too. Minus all the stuff about cum and your ass.”

  That surprised a laugh out of him. He’d just said the single most honest thing he’d said in years. He tugged his hand out of her ass. “Keep humming, felana. I’ll listen.”

  20

  murder, theft and enslavement

  must pay well

  IT WOULD BE NICE to pretend that all Tessa thought about was finding Leyla and saving her. Or that she hated every minute she spent with Sanger. Or that all she wanted was to manipulate him into caring enough about her that he’d help her find Leyla and kill the Boss. Or at least give her a damned gun.

  But each of those statements would be a lie.

  Every time he kissed her, or smiled, or looked at her, or just existed, all logic faded, her brain shut down, reason fled, and her body just melted into him, opened for him, compelled by the powerful onslaught of her own intrinsic nature. Her body was programmed to want him.

  She could no more refuse him than a flower could refuse the sun.

  She came alive in his hands. Dissolved into him. Total surrender. Pathetic.

  Even now, she was just lying here, staring at him, her body coated in his seed, her muscles aching from his presence inside her, her skin chafed from his beard and hands and teeth.

  It wasn’t just her body he was invading. It was her soul.

  Her heart beat for him.

  It would kill her when her heat ended.

  The separation would burn.

  The hours had floated together. Sleep. Sex. Sleep. Sex. Sleep. Sex. A happy haze of sex and cuddling.

  Punctuated by fleeting moments in which he talked to her as no one had ever talked to her in her life. Honest. Open. No scorn or judgement. No sense that she was somehow wrong.

  Her mother had never stopped haranguing her about her posture, her gait, her tone of voice.

  She loved Leyla, but even she tended to spend most of her time rebuking her. It was like there was some invisible rulebook everyone else had been given at birth, that Tessa didn’t understand, some way she had of offending everyone, no matter what she did, just by being herself.

  Jonan alone had encouraged her to be brazen and silly and loud.

  Until now. Sanger—he seemed to like her best, respect her the most when she was rude, unapologetic and bold.

  His eyes snapped open right on queue. She’d be embarrassed to be caught staring, but his face, was as bland and expressionless as ever.

  He hefted her up, all flexing biceps and rippling abs.

  Vanniya di mammia, she could get used to him. “Where are we going?” she asked, resting her head on his shoulder and tightening her legs around his hips.

  He left the dark bedroom, padding down the hall. “We stink. And you’re crusty.”

  They passed an empty room, cloaked in shadows. He walked through the main floor. An office sat to the side, off the entry room—she’d missed that last night. Had the Boss been here? Met with Sanger in that office maybe?

  Her blood thinned. What if he reported back to the Boss? He hadn’t turned her in yet. Maybe this was new for him, keeping secrets from the Boss.

  He crossed through the back door and into a tammin-filled courtyard draped in the silvery-gold light of two of the five Vestan moons.

  A bathhouse sat in the center of a massive yard. From here, none of the other houses were visible. He must have combined multiple backyards, all of them ringed with trees and vines, thick with foliage. The bathhouse was made of quartz stone but had a tiled roof. In the dark she couldn’t make out the colors, but it sparkled like the night sky.

  Of course, he had his own bathhouse.

  “Murder, theft and enslavement must pay well,” she muttered.

  “It does.” He didn’t even break stride. This man never hesitated, with anything. He was half machine. Always analyzing, weighing, thinking, calculating. Except the rare times when she got him to smile, or once truly laugh. Or during sex. That’s when the robotic exterior slipped and she saw the real Sanger, the vibrant, carnal beast inside the man.

  He shifted her weight briefly, so he could open the door. Lights activated along the edges of the room, illuminating the floor and ceiling in low, warm light.

  Inside, the air was so thick and humid that steam settled on the walls, gathered into droplets that fell with irregular, pittering echoes. Mosaics of stylized tammin leaves, in gold, aqua and cream covered the dome. Columns met white tiled floors. But there were older stone walls too. As if it had been changed over the centuries, and still bore traces of the past. The pool itself was raw lichen-covered stone. Cave vines climbed along the deepest walls, trailing pale white blossoms.

  It felt old. Stately.

  The bathhouses at home had been opulent, new and luxurious, flagrant, in-your-face demonstrations of wealth and power, covered in gilt and quartz.

  This was better. It spoke of the past, of a hundred other lovers who might have bathed in this same pool.

  He was luring her in with comfort, luxury, seduction. And food. Fucking food.

  It would be all too easy to fall for the allure of it, imagine a life with him, letting him care for her, provide for her, fuck her into oblivion, feed her till she was fat and happy. Breed with him.

  Except for one thing…

  “Why do you work for him?” she asked.

  He walked right up to the lip of the pool and dropped her in.

  She scrabbled, flailing her arms and legs, trying to take him down with her. The last thing she saw was his laughing face as she broke the surface.

  Whe
n she came up again, he was in the water with her, face as expressionless as ever. She shoved her wet hair out of her face.

  A bloom of herbal soap filled the air, and he spread soap across his chest, around his neck, under his arms. She didn’t bother to hide her scowl at the loss of his delicious Prime mating scent.

  He had to be telepathic or something, because he said, “It’ll come back.”

  “I wasn’t worried.” She’d meant to grouse, but it came out all soft and stupid and syrupy. Because it annoyed her, she splashed water at his face.

  His lower lip dropped. His eyes narrowed.

  “What? No one ever splashed the big bad Sanger?”

  He wiped blandly at his eyes. “No.”

  “What about your Boss? Does anyone splash him?” She did it again, laughing loud enough to send the echoes bouncing around until it sounded like they were having a raucous party in the empty bathhouse.

  “No.” He splashed back this time, grabbed her by a toe and hauled her back against him, that hard, delicious, mesmerizing part of him pushed hot against her belly. Every movement was calculated, precise, economical. Mechanical.

  But he wasn’t a machine. Inside…he was a Prime. And a smart one, and so far, a decent one.

  She’d never been good at manipulations anyway. Better to just be honest. Trust. And hope that trust wasn’t misplaced. And anyway, they were running out of time. Her heat was only one more day, maybe two. She pulled away. “I need to ask you for a favor.”

  He tugged her hair, pulling her face back, forcing her to meet his eyes. Droplets of water clung to his skin, slowly sliding down his hard jaw, firm chin.

  “Stop doing that.”

  “Doing what?” He wasn’t smiling, not with his mouth anyway, but it was in his voice, and his eyes.

  “Yanking at my hair.”

  He only pulled it harder, and this time, with a lazy grin that made her gush between her thighs.