I need more, she thought hazily and a memory from the night before flashed into her head. The hard ridge of flesh that encircled the base of his long, thick shaft—the feel of it under her fingertips as she had explored him.
“That’s my mating shaft,” he had told her and explained that it could somehow fit inside a woman when he made love to her and tie them both together.
The night before, Whitney had been amazed and a little bit scared of that huge ridge of flesh. There was no way in hell, she’d told herself, that anything that big would ever fit inside her.
And yet now it was exactly what she wanted.
It’s more than what I want—it’s what I need, she thought deliriously as the big Kindred pounded into her from behind, sending flashes of pleasure through her entire body and making her full breasts sway like ripe fruit with every deep thrust. I need his mating fist inside me—and I need it now before he comes!
She had no conscious idea of how she was going to get it inside her and if she had been fully rational, she never would have even tried. But she was acting purely on instinct now—and her instinct told her she had to get the big Beast Kindred all the way inside her before he filled her with his seed.
It was the only way she could be satisfied.
Rafe dug his fingers into her full hips and tried to keep from thrusting too deeply. Gods, she was so tight and wet and hot and the sight of her moving against him—arching her back and backing to meet his thrusts—made his shaft surge inside her.
But part of him knew this wasn’t right—part of him cried out that he wasn’t doing what his body needed—what hers needed too. He was holding back the most important part of himself—he wasn’t filling her with his mating fist.
Don’t want to fill her with my fist, he told himself grimly as he continued to thrust. If I do, I’ll bond her to me. She never asked for that—we never even discussed it.
And besides, if he did it—if he took her all the way and bonded her—he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from giving her his heart. He had to avoid that at all costs, he warned himself. He couldn’t let it happen.
And then it happened.
Whitney braced herself on her hands and knees and pressed backwards, meeting an especially deep thrust with a movement of her own which could only be intended to engulf him. Rafe watched with a mixture of despair and desire as her sweet, sucking pussy—well lubricated by his precum and her own honey by now—sucked the ridge of his mating fist deep inside, taking him down to the root and tying them together for as long as the Bonding should take.
God, yes! Whitney threw back her head and cried her triumph aloud. Finally she had what she needed—finally she had all of Rafe inside her, filling her pussy to the brim, tying the two of them together as he opened her and owned her at the same time.
She had never felt so full before—so widely stretched. And yet she welcomed the sensation—welcomed it and begged for more. Because she didn’t just need his cock inside her—she needed his cum—his seed.
“Whitney, no!” she heard Rafe hiss, trying to keep his voice down and speaking in English as they had been, to keep the Tuskers from suspecting them. “No, don’t move any more,” he warned her.
“Wh…why not?” Whitney panted, once more having to force the words out. Gods, she was so needy inside still—so empty despite being filled. He needed to shoot inside her, she thought. Needed to make her his completely. Only then would the lust be satisfied.
“Don’t.” Leaning down, he cupped her breasts and murmured in her ear. “My mating fist slipped inside you—inside your pussy. If I come in you now, I’ll bond us together for life. Don’t you understand that?”
“Understand it? I want it!” Whitney told him recklessly, the words coming more easily now. “I’ve wanted you from the first minute you were assigned to me as my Protector, Rafe. I never stopped.”
His golden eyes were wide with shock.
“You really feel that way?”
Whitney nodded and moaned, pushing back against him, trying to get him deeper inside her already-filled pussy.
“Please,” she gasped, looking him in the eyes. “Please Rafe—take me! Fill me up with your cock and your cum. Do it now!”
“Gods, mon’dalla, you don’t know what you’re asking,” he groaned but his hips began to move again, almost of their own volition.
Whitney moaned and backed to meet him, eager to feel his thickness taking her completely, desperate to feel his hot seed shooting deep inside her and tying the two of the together for life.
Rafe didn’t know how long he bred her—or how many loads of cum he shot deep in her pussy. He closed his eyes and cupped her breasts, rolling her ripe nipples between his fingers, tugging their tender tips as he bucked inside her, letting himself fill her again and again with his seed.
Whitney moaned in pleasure and pressed back against him—eager for every stroke of his cock, every spurt of his seed. And for his part, Rafe couldn’t seem to stop. He knew that bonding took a long period but he lost all track of time as he and Whitney melded together until at last the two of them collapsed panting on their sides.
“My goodness—well, I suppose the show is finally over.” Mama Tusker’s voice broke through his weariness and Rafe opened his eyes to see that the huge alien was standing over him and Whitney.
Instinctively, he drew Whitney closer. Though he hadn’t wanted it, she was now closer to him than his own skin. Even now he could feel their bond inside him.
The knowledge of this new intimacy filled him with despair and vulnerability. Once before he had allowed himself to love a female so completely and it had led to disaster and ruin. How foolish he had been to do it again! Letting himself love so completely was like wearing his heart outside his body and being helpless to stop any attack.
Why did I do it? he wondered to himself miserably. Why did I allow myself to bond her to me? Now we will never be free of each other.
Whitney’s eyes opened too and she looked up at him, frowning.
“Why would we want to be free of each other?” she murmured, speaking from the corner of her mouth. “Why would you say something like that when we just got together?”
Too late, Rafe realized that she had heard his thoughts through the newly-forged soul-bond. And she could probably feel his emotions too.
“Yes, I can damn well feel your emotions!” Whitney shot back, using the bond for communication this time. “I can feel how sorry you are that you let yourself be bonded to me in the first place!”
She pulled away from him with quick, jerky motions and he felt the hurt radiating from her in waves—an ocean of pain inside her that he himself was responsible for. Gods, why had he not been more careful?
“Whitney…” he murmured and reached for her but she pulled away from him.
“Don’t touch me!” she sent sharply through their bond. “You’re sorry we’re bonded and you never wanted to be with me in the first place. Don’t deny it—I can feel it through this damn bond we have now!”
Rafe didn’t try to insult her intelligence by lying.
“No,” he sent back heavily. “I do not deny it. I never wished for a bond with you.”
This seemed to make things even worse than if he had tried to lie. Whitney’s big dark eyes were suddenly swimming with tears and she got up and moved away from him, as though trying to put as much distance between them as possible.
“Bastard!” she shot at him like a mental slap. “If you didn’t want me the way I wanted you, then why did you do it? Asshole!”
Rafe didn’t dispute any of the names she called him. He felt he deserved them for hurting her so badly. But still, he wished to ease the pain he had caused somehow.
“Whitney, please…”
“No—stay away from me. Don’t talk to me anymore.”
She turned her back on him and when he would have gone to her, Rafe heard Mama Tusker speaking again.
“Well, it seems that is that. So let’s get these two
back to their cages and get on with the rest of the show,” she said.
With that, her long blue trunk curled around Whitney’s waist and she was carried away and put into her cage. Seeing her go made Rafe feel as though his heart was being torn from his chest, but there was nothing he could do about it—no way he could hide the truth.
Though he loved her desperately, he had never wanted to be bonded to her. And she would never be able to forgive him for that, he was sure.
Thirty-One
Whitney cried all the way home. The whole time they had been here, held captive in a giant world and treated as pets, she had been keeping her spirits up and telling herself that at least she and Rafe had each other.
Now she felt she had nothing and the homesickness which she had been holding at bay through sheer force of will came crashing down on her head. She missed her mom and her sisters—all her nieces and nephews and her Grannie. She missed her friends aboard the Mother Ship—Kat and Liv and Sophie to name just a few. She missed her lab and her suite with its luxurious bathing pool.
But most of all, she missed being treated like a person instead of a pet.
I just want to go home, she thought miserably. I need my sisters or Kat—someone who will let me cry on their shoulder and watch bad Rom-com movies and binge on ice cream with me and tell me I’ll get over it and it’s going to be okay.
But there was no way any of that was ever going to happen here on this horrible giant world. She didn’t know anyone here intimately except Rafe—and he was the guy she was trying to get over!
Only…could you get over a break-up with a Kindred, Whitney wondered doubtfully? Didn’t they bond for life?
“The bond is a life-long commitment,” she heard Rafe speaking in her head loud and clear, even though they were in two separate traveling cages. “Which is one reason I did not want to enter into it with you. I felt we had not discussed it well enough and—”
“Shut up and get out of my head!” Whitney sent rudely. “In case you didn’t notice, you basically broke up with me and broke my heart at the same time, right after you had sex with me. So bond or no bond you do not have the right to be in my head, asshole!”
“Understood,” he sent briefly and then there was silence from his end—though Whitney could still feel his mental presence lurking in the corner of her mind, like an obsessive thought she couldn’t quite forget, damn him!
Never mind about him, she told herself grimly. The main thing now is getting out of here and getting home. That’s what I have to concentrate on because there is no way I’m spending the rest of my life in a cage!
* * *
But there didn’t seem to be any way to get out of the cage either. After they returned, Mama Tusker put them both back in their old enclosure, cooing about how she couldn’t wait to see their litter, and there they stayed, with no way to escape.
Whitney gave Rafe the silent treatment—both mentally and physically— meaning she didn’t speak to him with her mouth or through their bond for three whole days. They slept in separate places—she in the giant doll’s bed and he near the front of the cage on a pile of grass—and stayed in different parts of the cage during the day. They never ate together, never even sat near each other, and of course, faking sex for Mama Tusker’s benefit in the morning was completely out of the question. Whitney absolutely refused to get near the big Kindred and let him touch her in any way after the way he had treated her.
She spent her time talking to Yancy and Yarrow but not Dood. The male tweedle with the mane of auburn hair had been moved into Beauty’s cage, on the other side of Yancy and Yarrow, so she wasn’t close enough to talk to him anymore.
Whitney didn’t consider this any great loss. Dood had been kind of a jerk. Yancy was much nicer, but the tweedle girl had become quiet and withdrawn and she barely spoke even though she came to sit by the bars and spend time with Whitney sometimes.
All in all, it was a dismal way to pass the days, which dragged horribly in what Whitney now considered her prison. She supposed she could have gotten high on tweedle weed, but she was afraid of the after-effects. She didn’t need a repeat of what had happened with the special food at the Tweedle Beautiful show. Not that things could get much worse than their accidental bonding. (Or so she thought, anyway.)
It was like she and Rafe had gone to Vegas and gotten drunk and gotten married, she told herself resentfully. Only there was no way to get a divorce the next day. Because you couldn’t divorce a Kindred warrior—once you bonded with them, they moved into your head permanently and there was no way to get them out again.
It only made her more determined than ever not to go anywhere near Rafe—unfortunately, it didn’t take long for her determination to backfire in a big way.
After the third morning when the two of them hadn’t been seen “copulating” for some time, Mama Tusker frowned as she looked into their cage.
“Now this isn’t right, my dears,” she remarked, seeing Rafe running on the exercise wheel while Whitney was across the cage, sitting disconsolately on the bed. “Whatever has happened to the two of you? Has your pairing been broken?”
“Yes, it has!” Whitney shouted mentally, knowing that Rafe would hear her and not giving a damn. “This pairing is damn well over.”
Mama Tusker gave them another long look and shook her head.
“Such a shame when tweedles go off each other. Nobody knows why it happens but what can you do?” She sighed and looked at Whitney. “I suppose I’ll just have to move you into a cage with Brutus or Gouger.” She indicated the two mindless tweedle males whose cages were on the other side of the matching pen. “Maybe you’ll get on better with one of them.”
What? Whitney felt panic bloom in her chest like a thorn bush as the long blue trunk opened the door to their cage and reached in to curl around her waist.
Suddenly Rafe was in front of her, blocking the trunk, his golden eyes glowing red as he glared at the huge alien.
Whitney didn’t know what else to do—she cowered behind him, peeking out at Mama Tusker who now had a look of surprise on her strange alien face.
“Well, well—so you still defend your mate, do you?” she asked, speaking to Rafe.
In answer, the big Kindred opened his mouth and growled at her—a low, rumbling sound that would have put any Pit-bull back home to shame, Whitney thought wildly.
Through their bond, she could hear him thinking—if you could call it that, anyway. She seemed to see a red haze of Rage surrounding his mind and only one coherent word was coming through it—repeating over and over and over again.
“MINE…MINE…MINE!”
The world blared in her head like a claxon—a warning that if anyone tried to touch her—to take what Rafe considered to be his to protect—he would kill or die to defend her.
His state of Rage seemed to take the giant alien aback.
“Well!” Mama Tusker drew back her trunk quickly, as though afraid he might bite it. “Such a temper! You look positively vicious.”
In answer, Rafe’s growl grew louder and he glared at her even more fiercely.
“MINE…MINE…she is MINE!” Whitney heard him shout in her mind.
“All right then—all right. But if you still want her, you have to treat her right,” Mama Tusker lectured, her huge, lipless mouth tightening at the corners in disapproval. “You’ve been neglecting her scandalously, you know! I can’t have tweedles together who won’t mate—it simply will not do!”
With a frown, she shut the door to their cage and moved on, pushing stalks of some long, leafy vegetable into Yancy and Yarrow’s cage and telling them what good little breeders they were.
But still Rafe didn’t relax. He held his protective position in front of Whitney until Mama Tusker had tromped back upstairs, leaving them alone again. Only when the giant alien was completely gone did his broad shoulders lower and the red glare leave his eyes.
When he started to go to the opposite side of the cage again, Whitney caught
him by the arm.
“Wait, Rafe—we have to talk.”
It was the first time she had touched him voluntarily since their bonding and she couldn’t ignore the tingle that shot through her, even at such limited contact.
Rafe seemed to feel it too, because when he turned to face her, the expression on his face was like an ache in her heart. But when he spoke, his voice was perfectly flat.
“What is there to talk about?”
“What is there to talk about?” Whitney echoed. “What just happened! Or almost happened, anyway. Thank you for protecting me,” she added grudgingly.
He shrugged, his broad shoulders rolling.
“It is my job.”
His words, as much as the bland tone they were spoken in, pissed Whitney off. They would have hurt her enough to put her off completely if she hadn’t felt the fierce possessive protectiveness radiating from him like heat only a moment ago when she had been threatened.
He cares, she thought, staring up at the big Kindred. He still cares, no matter what he says.
“Yes, I care.” Rafe passed a hand over his face wearily. “I cannot help caring, Whitney. We are bonded—you are my life now. I cannot stop myself from reacting when you are in danger. I cannot keep myself from caring for you, no matter how I might try.”
His words made her think of an old Crosby Stills and Nash song—a line that had stuck in her mind the first time she heard it.
Your love is an anchor tied to me
Tied with a silver chain.
The thought that he felt that way about her—that his feelings for her were an anchor, dragging him down—that he cared for her even though he wished he didn’t, somehow hurt her more than anything else.
Whitney put a hand to her heart, feeling an ache so fierce it nearly drove her to her knees. But they couldn’t go on like this—no matter how much it hurt, they had to talk.
“We have to get out of here,” she told him, lifting her chin. “And we have to work together to do it—there’s no other way. We have to get back to the ship.”
Pairing with the Protector Page 18
