Too tempting, he thought as she unfolded her long legs from beneath her and pushed off the bed. She walked over to him in distinctly placed steps. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say she was being coy. There was an almost blatant flirtation in the way she moved, oh so slowly, toward him.
“I thought you were working all this time on the bridge. What will you do here that you could not do there?”
Never lie to a Chosen One, Bronse advised himself. They were too hard to trick.
“That’s not your business,” he said sharply, suddenly surging to his feet because he simply could not be sitting down while she sidled up to him. It made him feel completely off his mark. Almost subordinate. Like she was the one with all the power.
But she didn’t have power and neither did he. Didn’t she see that? Didn’t she appreciate how much danger the worlds had to offer?
“Very well.” She paused for only a beat. “I spoke with the Chosen Ones. We have all agreed that, for now, we will offer our services to the Interplanetary Militia. This solves both the problem of what to do with us and how to explain our presence on this ship. You found an excellent resource for the IM to use and brought it to them.”
It sounded so perfunctory, so coldly matter of fact. So simple when it was anything but.
“It also allows you and me to remain close so you can satisfy your desire to protect me,” she added.
That wasn’t the only desire he wanted to satisfy, damn it, and he’d bet big money that she knew it. Well, he had to shake that notion out of her head straight off.
“See, that just proves how naïve you really are,” he said in hard bursts. “I won’t be around. I’m never around. I’m either on-mission or I’m training my troops for being on-mission or I’m being briefed on my next mission. I’m never, ever around. If you think we’re going to play house together and have romantic dinners every night, you’re sorely mistaken.”
Bronse reached out to grab her by her shoulders and shake her when she gave him a serene smile. Wasn’t she listening to him? Didn’t she understand? He was an ETF First Active soldier. The best of the best when it came to soldiering and the worst of the worst when it came to relationships.
“I don’t recall ever asking for romantic dinners,” she mused blithely.
Bronse snapped. Maybe it was anger, maybe it was frustration, but whatever it was it was powerful and unstoppable. He spun her around hard and shoved her across the room toward the door.
“Do yourself a favor and get out!” he barked at her.
“I’m not leaving.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Well, you just said you’re never around.”
Bronse tried not to growl out in frustration. “You’re not making any sense!”
“No. I make perfect sense. If you are never around, that means I should take advantage of every moment that you are around. But I think my being here is making you very uncomfortable, and I am curious as to why that is.”
“Maybe it’s because you’re in my fucking bedroom when my crew is marching watch in the corridor only a few sheets of metal away! I’ve compromised the integrity of this ship and this crew enough for one mission, Ravenna. I’m not going to compound the issue!”
He grabbed hold of her arm and tried to march her toward the door, but she ducked and slipped right out of his hand, moving back toward his bed. Bronse had to stop her. He didn’t think he could stand the sight of her in his bed again. It would play tawdry tricks with his imagination—more so than the scent of her perfume was already doing. That intoxicating Ayalya spice was just about killing him. Just breathing it in was making him hard. He had to get her out of his room. He refused to force his crew to “pretend” to not see or know any of this. He’d disgraced them enough. He needed to take back control. He needed to prove to himself that he could.
“I want you to leave. Can I make it any clearer? Are you going to make me use force?”
“Hmm.” She hummed that as if contemplating the possibilities, and abruptly he was contemplating them too.
Then suddenly he wasn’t just contemplating. He all but pounced on her, grabbing her by both arms and slamming her up hard against his chest and body. So hard that the air left her lungs in a sudden gust.
“You’re doing this on purpose,” he gritted out between his teeth, trying not to notice how her body heat seemed to burn so much fiercer than his own. She was so hot in so many ways.
“I never made a secret of that,” she said. “Do you want to know what I see?”
As she asked the question, she reached to place one hand over his heart and the other around his neck. He squeezed her hard between his hands.
“Is it the same thing you saw when you read me before I went back to find out where the Nomaads were?” he asked. “Don’t you see? You’re afraid of me. Afraid of what I do. You can’t read my fortune every time I go off on a mission just to see if it will turn out okay!”
“Why not?” she asked simply. “I have a power and I’m going to use it. If it benefits you, I see no wrong in it.”
“It’s the fear that I see is wrong,” he said with intensity. “You’re afraid of what I do. By the Being, could you see yourself if this ever really went anywhere? You’d be a basket case, afraid of what I might be doing or how I might be trying to get myself killed!”
“Think that if you must. If it gives you comfort. But you don’t look comforted, Bronse,” she said softly. “You look like you’re the one who’s scared.”
Bronse’s brain hazed over with emotion, more than he could identify right then all at once.
“You have no idea what you’re getting into,” he hissed softly. He lurched forward, just a single hard step, and she hit the side of his bed and fell down onto it.
No. He actually threw her onto it, he confessed to himself as he flipped her hard onto her belly and followed her down with a fierce caging of his body over hers. He pressed down over her, his whole body screaming with the relief of feeling her beneath him again. There was a way, he realized, of making his point to her and satisfying this unholy craving he had for her. As he yanked her onto her knees and against his chest, he groaned with uncontrolled pleasure when her bottom rose up against the fly of his uniform pants. He rubbed up hard against her, trying to relieve the pressure of his swiftly growing erection and serving only to make it worse. His hands were nothing less than harsh on her as they swept to embrace both her breasts through the fabric of the shirt she was wearing.
That was when he realized that it was his shirt. She wore only his shirt. Like some kind of brand he’d stamped there himself, his mind swam with a possessive fury that rushed through him. She looked incredible like this. So curvaceous and feminine in an article of clothing meant for war in the desert. The blackness of it was stark against her soft skin, making it seem paler than it was. Making her seem somehow more vulnerable and more womanly all at once. No wonder the sight of her had been driving him crazy ever since he’d walked in the door.
Normally he’d have been more considerate, more patient. He’d have preferred to shower to wash away the long hike they’d taken to get to the ship. But he didn’t care about niceties. In fact, lack of gentility was his very goal. She needed to learn more about him than just the gentleman she had seen last night. She needed to know just what she was getting herself into.
He shoved the hem of the shirt up over the round curve of her backside, baring her creamy smooth skin and that delightfully naughty curve of flesh that he was stroking in stronger and stronger passes of his hand. He wanted her to feel the rough calluses of a soldier’s hands, to feel how uncivilized and coarse he could be even in the smallest details.
The problem was the way she pressed back against him, teasing his cock with the curve of her butt and taunting his sense of smell with the sudden wash of aroused female scent that drifted up between them. Unable to help himself against even the slightest impulse, he stroked her down between the split of her cheeks and straight into t
he hot and ready wetness waiting for him. His fingers were working inside of her an instant after that, testing her heat and tightness for what would come next.
Then he was ripping at the front of his trousers with growling impatience, freeing himself in just a few temperamental tugs until his swollen cock was lying hot against her. Without any preamble or anything even remotely resembling foreplay or gentlemanly behavior, he thrust himself into her, shoving into the dark liquid fist of her body and sinking deep and true to the hilt.
She gasped in a staggered breath, but at the same time she pushed back against him to make certain that she had him as deeply as she could. Bronse rose up to balance on his knees, digging them into the mattress even as he dug a bruising grip into her hips. With a surge of power he undulated into a deep, body-crashing thrust that sent an impact completely through her body. The next thrust was harder still, the sound he made raw and savage. But as rough as he was, as brutish as was his technique, she reached back to grab him by his shirt, fisting her fingers in deeply, holding him to her and telling him she wanted exactly what he was giving her.
But all he had for her was savagery, one blind and banging thrust after another until he finally heard her moan in an attractive breath of pleasure. He had meant to give her nothing, meant only to take, but that changed as he vented his frustration in passionate thrusts. Now he chased her. Chased her satisfaction down, fucked her to the very edge until she was forced to press her face down into the mattress and muffle the shouts ejecting from her body. He felt the very instant she broke into orgasm, felt it because he’d never known anything so tight and wrenching to his soul. Then he was just blindly thrusting, taking her up off her knees with every impact until his chest was on fire for oxygen and his gut was clenched forever in anticipation. He finished with a ripping roar, the ejaculation streaking out of him in vicious pulses that were pain and pleasure combined. Only the clench of his teeth kept him from shouting down the ship, and only the sudden brace of his hand kept him from falling down over her and crushing her flat beneath him.
Bronse kneeled there, propped over her, for several long minutes as he sucked hard for breath and tried to focus. He’d never felt anything so incredible in all his life, and had never done anything so damning. His behavior had been appalling, had gone against everything he’d ever trained himself to be when it came to women. The worst part was that he couldn’t see what she had done to deserve it. What had seemed to have logic in the heat of the moment was now lost on him. It was one of the most horrific moments of realization he’d ever had.
Drawing himself from her, he fell back onto the bed, his hands scrubbing up to cover his face as waves of shameful guilt rode over him. Why had he done this? Why had he been such a bastard to her?
“Bronse.”
She said his name, still breathless with her exertions, and then slid herself over him. She straddled his body, her hot, wet core slipping over his relaxed penis and lower belly. He looked at her, the sight of her astride him so painfully wonderful that he could hardly stand it. She was driving him insane. He’d utterly lost his mind. And yet she had the sweetest little smile playing at her lips as if he weren’t the worst kind of jerk on the planet.
“Bronse, you don’t have to be afraid of me,” she said softly to him, bending forward to give his lips a kiss too warm and affectionate for him to have deserved. “You don’t have to be afraid I’m going to ask for too much. Take too much. Be too much of a liability. That isn’t what I want.”
“It’s too late for that,” he said hoarsely. “You’re already a liability. I haven’t made a single right step since the moment I first laid eyes on you.”
“That’s not true,” she soothed him softly, kissing him again until he was compelled to kiss her back. He started it off with confusion and compulsion, but by the time his tongue swept in to touch hers, he was starting to settle, starting to concede to the inevitability he saw before him. “You are doing much better than you think you are. But tell me,” she coaxed him, “why you are so afraid of me.”
Not of her, he realized, but of himself when he was with her. He was overwhelmed by how quickly she was getting under his skin. When he looked up into her beautiful face, he started to see cravings in himself that had no place in his life. He had already proved to himself that he wouldn’t be able to have what his father and his uncles had had. His career choice had made it impossible. And he was afraid she would get too attached to him too quickly and would be hurt badly when he inevitably failed to satisfy her needs.
“Why,” she breathed softly against his mouth before kissing him, “are you assuming that what you feel for me is wrong?”
Put like that, Bronse felt his heart hiccup in his chest. What he felt for her? How could he feel anything for her? He hardly knew her! And she hardly knew him. Wasn’t that what he was trying to prove just now as he had taken her so roughly and crudely?
And yet she had accepted it. Every minute of it. Hell, she’d even taken her pleasure in it. She’d kept pace with him every single step of the way. How could someone so new to these sorts of things take to them so easily and with so little confusion? How was it that she always seemed to be thinking so clearly when he was a jumble of disorganized thoughts and feelings? He was supposed to have the coolest head in the business.
At least, that was true when it came to his work.
This was something else entirely.
But he kept confusing the issues because at the moment the issues were lying on top of one another just as surely as she was lying on top of him. Of course, they weren’t reaching to strip off her shirt the way she was right then.
And just like that he was distracted from the turmoil of his thoughts by the creamy perfection of her skin and the startling dark points of her gorgeous nipples in full thrust and in full reach of his hands. Like metal to magnet, he stroked bold hands over her breasts, catching the nipples between his knuckles and tugging on them again and again as he kneaded her in leisurely pulls of his fingers and palms. She fit him so well like this, filling even his very big hands. As with everything else, it was as though she’d been made to match him perfectly.
“I don’t think it’s wrong,” he said at last, speaking the words aloud and realizing that he believed them. She was anything but wrong for him. “It’s just that I know how hard it is to be part of my life. I’m not sure someone who is so strongly centered in home and family could ever find happiness waiting for me to show up.” Leaving her breasts, he stroked down over her ribs. “Ravenna, you need a strong partner. Someone who can help you raise those kids and keep Kith and the others in line. That means someone who will be there for you.”
“And you think you are not strong? That you could not help to raise these kids? That you could not keep Kith in line?”
That wasn’t true, he realized as she reached to push his shirt up his body. Distracted by his thoughts, he had lifted up for her without even thinking about it and helped her free it. Now she was at liberty to slide her hands up and down his bare chest and was able to scrape teasing nails over the flat disks of his nipples. The sensation shimmered right through him, both clouding and clearing his mind as he talked with her.
“I could do all of those things,” he conceded, but then added his caveat, “if I were around. But—”
“You’re never around,” she supplied for him helpfully. “I see. But did it never occur to you that I have done just fine ruling my roost all on my own, long before you came into the picture? I’m used to fending for myself. I’m used to defending my Chosen Ones. You continually mistake me for having need of you in a way that is heavily dependent. I had need of you in this particular situation, yes, but this was once in many years. Don’t you think having you available to me only once in many days would not be anything but an improvement?”
It was far too logical and making far too much sense for him to be staggered by the spell of her touch. Bronse reached out and caught her hands, stilling them against himself.
“You say this now,” he said warily, “but how do I know that it will not change once you’ve gotten a real dose of what it’s like to be involved with me?”
“You don’t know. No more than I do. But I can tell you a very certain way of finding out.” Her smile was teasing and went straight to her eyes. “If you want empirical evidence, Bronse Chapel, you must carry out the experiment.”
Bronse caught his breath at the very idea of what she was suggesting. She was saying that she wanted to try out a relationship between them. Like dating. Like normal people. The idea made him nervous, but he quickly realized that it wasn’t because he was afraid of the experimentation; it was because he was afraid he would fail at it. Fail miserably. Just like he had once before.
But Liely had been a very different kind of woman. One who had been less than honest with him about her expectations. How could he be certain that Ravenna was telling him the truth? Once again, the answer was as she had said. The only way to know would be to throw himself into the situation and find out the hard way. What he couldn’t believe was how strongly his psyche balked at the idea. Perhaps, he thought, he had been more damaged by his ex wife than he had given himself credit for.
The idea left a sour taste in his mouth. Would he really pass up a woman as incredible and unique as Ravenna just because of his failure with one messed-up female?
The answer was no. And just as soon as he realized that, he also realized that Ravenna had already understood this. She’d understood everything. His confusion, his fear, even what had bordered on barbaric behavior.
“Rave,” he whispered softly, reaching to cup her whole head in his hands as regret filled his eyes. “I didn’t mean to be so crude with you.”
She had the temerity to shrug a single shoulder, as if it meant nothing at all to her. “I rather liked it, to be honest.” And Bronse could tell by the excited lilt in her voice and the shiver that shimmied down her spine that there was no way she was lying to him. She really had liked seeing that coarser and ungentle side of him. “I like every single aspect of you I discover, each in their turn”—she suddenly scooted back onto his thighs, exposing him to the cold refined air in the cabin as she pulled his pants down over his hips—“each one slowly coming to light as I uncover them.”
Three Worlds 01 - Seduce Me In Dreams Page 23
