by Nina Croft
“Right now, I don’t care about love. I care about stripping those tight pants off you and filling you so completely you forget whatever schemes are going through that devious little mind of yours.”
Shock jabbed her in the gut. What did he know of her schemes? He was guessing. Nothing more. But still, he saw too much. Maybe he was too dangerous to have around, and she should eliminate him now. Her whole mind balked at the thought of killing Devlin—she obviously wasn’t quite as ruthless as she’d hoped. But she could incapacitate him, knock him out, drug him—she had supplies she had brought from Earth that would render him unconscious until it was too late to be of any consequence.
“What do you say?” he murmured. “How about we take a little time off for ourselves and go find out if it’s as good between us as I remember?”
She hadn’t realized he was so close. He stroked a finger over her cheek, the line of her throat, over her collarbone, then lower to cup her breast in his big hand, and she almost swooned.
What was it about him? No one had ever affected her this way—so hard and so fast. Maybe she was still under the spell of those visions. Visions of a future that would never happen now.
He rubbed the pad of his thumb over her nipple. It stiffened immediately, sending jolts of sensation to her groin, and she breathed in sharply.
Whatever the reason—she wanted him. One last time. Because it would be the last time. If she failed, the Blood Hunter would fly away without her, and she’d never see him again. If she succeeded, she was quite sure that Devlin would want nothing more to do with her. Except maybe to kill her.
So why shouldn’t she take this last chance?
She swayed toward him. His hand fell from her breast to stroke the line of her hip, around to cup her ass, and he pulled her against him. He was already hard and, at the feel of the solid heat of him pressed against her belly, desire exploded, tightening her breasts, flooding her sex with moist heat.
He squeezed her buttock and she pushed closer, rubbing her hips against him so he groaned low in his throat.
She pulled free. “Let’s go.”
Neither of them talked or touched as they took the transporter bubble to Devlin’s cabin, but she sensed the tension growing between them.
As soon as the door shut, he spun her around and pressed her up against the wall. His hands went to the hem of her vest. He gripped the material in his fists, tugged it over her head, then stepped back to stare at her bare breasts. He swallowed. “I’ve been imagining this since you walked onto the bridge. You are so beautiful.” As he spoke, he dragged his own shirt over his head, so he was naked to the waist. Her fingers twitched to feel all that masculine strength, the satin of his skin, the bulge of muscles. She shook with the need, and the intensity scared her.
She wanted to grab control from him. Needed to, or she had an idea that he would take her over, wipe the last five hundred years from her mind, and turn her into the naïve fool she had been at twenty-one. She never wanted to be that vulnerable again. This would be exactly what he had said when he took her virginity. Just sex.
“So, do you want to know what I’ve learned over five hundred years?”
When he didn’t answer, she allowed her gaze to slide over his body. Reaching out, she flicked open the weapons belt at his waist so it fell to the floor. She could see the telltale bulge of his erection pressing against the fabric of his pants. Then she looked up at his face, the heat overlying the cool detached expression.
Her eyes narrowed—she didn’t want him detached.
She considered her options. Then she held his gaze as she sank down to her knees in front of him. Licking her lips, she traced a finger over the length of his shaft, and it pulsed beneath her touch. His cheekbones were flushed, and his nostrils flared, his whole body tense.
She toyed with the fastener of his pants, teasing him, flicked it open, and eased them over his hips. He pushed them down, hopped on one foot, tugged off a boot and tossed it away, did the same with the second, then kicked off his pants to stand naked before her. His shaft was level with her face, and her nostrils filled with the musky scent of aroused male. He was huge and hard and stood up almost vertical against the pale blond fur that dissected his lean belly. She swayed toward him and touched him lightly with her tongue, then licked a long, slow stroke from his balls to the tip, swirling her tongue around the head, reveling in the salty taste of his arousal.
He didn’t move, but she sensed the tension in his body.
She couldn’t wait. She needed to feel his power, and she took the tip in her mouth and suckled gently, heard his low groan above her head. Sliding her mouth down over the length of him, she relaxed the muscles of her throat so she could take him. Then withdrew and repeated the process over and over until he was slick from her ministrations.
He was jerking toward her now, his hips pumping as though he couldn’t help himself, and one hand came up to tangle in her hair. She choked slightly, unable to keep the rhythm, and shifted to suckle the head, alternating the pressure, now hard, then soft.
She cupped his balls in her palm; they were tight, and she knew he was close. She wanted to feel his release, make him lose control, but at the last minute, he pulled free and stepped back.
She eyed him. If anything, he looked even bigger, the head flushed with blood, the length marked by dark blue veins that stood up against the smooth, satiny skin. As she leaned toward him, he took another step back.
“You’ve learned a lot. Not the shy virgin anymore.”
“I was never shy.”
“No.” He held out a hand. “I want to be inside you.” She glanced again at his cock and her sex clenched with need, the desire swelling to a heavy weight that filled her belly with heat.
Taking his hand, she allowed him to pull her to her feet, but then she tugged free. Bending, she pulled off her boots and wriggled out of the black leather pants.
Devlin stared at her for long hot seconds, heat filling his eyes. Then he closed the space between them with one step. His hands went to her hips and he lifted her with ease. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and he backed her up so the smooth metal of the door pressed against her shoulder blades. One hand left her hips, and she was balanced between him and the door. His hand slid between their bodies, into the curls at the base of her belly and lower, to slip inside the sodden folds of her sex.
He groaned as his finger entered the moist heat and her inner muscles convulsed around him.
“You are so wet. I like you wet. Hot and slick and perfect.” As he spoke, he shifted her slightly, until the head of his cock nudged against her. He held her open with his fingers as he plunged into her, filling her with one hard thrust of his hips.
She gasped and he went still. It wasn’t from pain but the feeling of rightness. She wriggled, loving the feel of his huge cock inside her.
“Are you all right?” he murmured, and she glanced up into his face. “For all your talk of experience, I’m guessing it’s been a while.”
“You are?”
“You are so tight, sweetheart.”
“I am?” He flexed his hips, pulling out so she felt the ripple deep inside her and gasped again.
“Well?” he said.
“A hundred years, give or take. A bad breakup and I lost the urge, and then they invented vibrators and…”
“Shut up,” he said. “I don’t want to think of another man with his hands on you.”
She liked that and hated that she liked it. Then he lowered his head to hers and took her mouth in a fierce kiss while he shoved back into her hard.
She lost the ability to think and gave herself up to the pleasure coursing through her. He was hard and fast and furious. All she was aware of was his shaft moving between her legs. He moved easier as she accustomed herself to his size, his hips pumping as his tongue thrust into her mouth and his fingers bit into the flesh of her hips, holding her in place.
The pleasure was building, unable to withstand the ferocity o
f his lovemaking, spreading out from her sex, pulsing through her belly, up to her breasts, so she rubbed them against his hair-roughened chest.
He changed the movement slightly, rotating his pelvic bone against her on each inward stroke, grinding against her engorged clit until she was whimpering with need and couldn’t hold the pleasure inside her any longer.
It burst with an explosion of sensation, shattering her into a thousand pieces. She was vaguely aware of him coming inside her as the pleasure rippled through her body.
Then he was moving, still inside her, still holding her against him, and she was lowered gently back to lie on the bed, her legs still locked around his hips as though she would never let him go.
Staring up at the curved ceilings, her body throbbing with residual pleasure, she tried to pull the tatters of her mind back together. How had she managed to persuade herself that she had forgotten him, that he was a distant memory who meant nothing?
She loved him. Better to accept it now and deal.
Because it didn’t matter. He’d proved already that he wasn’t on her side. And if he wasn’t her ally, he was her enemy. She’d decided a long time ago what she wanted in life, and she wouldn’t back down now because of some soggy emotional crap. And some man who had his own agenda that would always come before hers.
One day maybe he would speak those words of love. But it wouldn’t be today. And she couldn’t wait.
He pulled out of her, sending a shiver of pleasure through her body. For a few seconds her legs tightened around him, to hold him close, then she forced her muscles to relax and let him go. He rolled onto his back beside her.
“That was…”
“Great sex,” she said flippantly. “A big…” She came up on her elbows and stared at his groin, his cock was already filling, thickening, “…and I mean huge…improvement on my vibrator.”
He turned to lie on his side and study her, and she had to fight the urge to twitch and take cover.
For a moment, she thought he was going to get all stupid and emotional, but she should have remembered him better. “Tell me,” he said. “How did you do it? And what the fuck’s with this Founder of the Church of Everlasting Life crap? Don’t tell me you found religion back on the old home planet?”
She shrugged. “Does it matter? I did it. I saved mankind.”
“Hurray for that. But humor me.”
She pulled herself up into a sitting position and hugged her knees to her chest, rested her chin on one knee as she watched him and decided what to say. She could spend eternity staring at a naked Devlin. How much to tell him? In the end, she decided on the truth.
“At first it was hard.”
As she started talking, he pushed himself up as well and sat cross-legged facing her so he could watch her face while she spoke. His cat-like eyes studied her with feline intensity. She had seen jaguars in the zoos back on Earth. Now the resemblance was clear.
“Go on,” he said.
“Where you left me…Spain, 1499. It was a dangerous place for a stranger. I had to hide. Later, I learned a little more, how to blend in. They were intolerant of anything they didn’t understand. Anything different from themselves. I nearly died so many times.”
“How?”
She pursed her lips. “Hunger, thieves…once I was nearly burned at the stake as a witch.” A tremor ran through her. “Did they tell you that we saw someone burned before you left?”
“No, they never mentioned it.”
“She was a Jew who wouldn’t repent her religion. Rico shot her before the flames got to her. I can remember her expression so well. Dying for something she believed in and regretting it when it was way too late.” She shuddered at the memory; she would never do that. “They thought I was a witch.”
“You are a witch.”
“Well, yes, probably, by their standards. It didn’t help that in the beginning I turned blue every time I got emotional. Hardly normal.”
“You don’t anymore?”
“No, that stopped after about a hundred years. And my eyes faded from purple to this, along with my visions of time—they almost disappeared from my life—just occasionally I’d dream. Anyway, I survived. Even saw some wonderful things. It wasn’t all bad.” But it had been lonely. So lonely that she’d made the occasional error of getting close to people, revealing who and what she was. Always she’d regretted it, and it had never turned out well. Had even resulted in a very unpleasant stay in Bedlam in the nineteenth century.
She’d learned, eventually, to trust no one. Occasionally, she had relationships but never allowed them to see the real her.
“I had a lot of time to think. I knew when they had to leave Earth, and I worked on a plan, then spent years getting everything in position. I wanted to get back. At first…” She glanced across at him, so stern, so beautiful. In the beginning, she’d wanted to get back for him. Later, that had changed and she’d wanted to get back for herself.
“At first?”
“It doesn’t matter. Anyway, I remembered the Trakis One and realized that was my way home. But I couldn’t conceive how it could work because that would mean that all my life another me had been floating around above my head.”
“It does seem a little farfetched.”
“Very farfetched. But I knew the Trakis One was my ticket home. And I knew somehow I had to get myself a place on that ship, and the only way I could guarantee that was by being close to the president. I thought about seducing him, but ugh…if I could find an alternative. So I learned everything I could about him from the day he was born.”
“You knew who he was?”
“Oh yeah, I’d seen him in visions. In the early years, I kept a journal of everything I saw in case it might be of use. Anyway, I followed his progress. Turned out he was a religious type.”
His eyes narrowed on her. “And that’s where the Church came in…” He shook his head. “I still can’t believe you did that.”
Her lips twitched. At the time, she’d thought it amusing, and she’d needed a few laughs in her life. “Well, someone was going to do it—it might as well have been me. So I became the founder of the Church of Everlasting Life and the soon-to-be President of the Federation of Nations became one of my first converts. From the start, I primed him with little snippets of the future so he’d be a believer when it came to my major reveal. The only other thing I had to do was make sure they had the technology to leave the planet. I’d taken the plans for the Blood Hunter with me, so I had the information—I just had to feed it to the right people and make them believe that they’d discovered it themselves—I was a quantum physicist for a while—that was way more fun than the Church.”
“So it was that easy?”
Shit, easy hadn’t come into it. Her whole life had been like juggling with fire. Making sure she didn’t drop anything, that everything fitted together. And all the while, she’d been busy making her own plans for the future.
But she had never really believed it would happen, not when she first met the president, or saw the completed ships that would take the Chosen Ones away from Earth, not even when they had closed the lid of the cryo-unit and she’d felt the waves of sleep wash through her.
Only when she’d woken and seen Devlin standing above her had she known finally that she’d succeeded.
“I thought you were gone,” Devlin said. “I woke after you had that henchman of yours knock me out, and I knew I would never see you again.”
“And did you care?” she asked. “After all, you’d told me you didn’t believe in love.”
For a moment, she thought he wouldn’t answer. “I cared. Way more than I wanted to care. And I didn’t like it. I pushed it from my mind. You were gone, but I already had too many people to avenge and, besides, it had been your choice. You chose to leave me behind.”
“You would have come to hate me, and you would have died. Long before now.”
“Maybe. Then we got back here and I looked up into the sky, saw the Trakis On
e orbiting the black hole and had the weirdest goddamn thought.”
“I bet.”
“And so here we are. What happens now?”
She shrugged. “You return to your own universe and get your revenge. And I have no choice but to return to the planet and try and help my people.” Her words were a lie but, all the same, she had every intention of returning to the planet.
“And what about us?”
For some reason, his words shocked her. She didn’t know why. Maybe because she’d thought when they had parted that his feelings had been superficial. “Is there an ‘us’?”
“You made me believe.” His words were an accusation. “You told me one day I would tell you I love you.”
She shrugged. “Who knows what will happen in the future? Maybe we’ll meet again.”
“And if that’s not good enough?” He was silent for a moment then took a deep breath. “Not so long ago—after Tris died—I never thought of the future. I never thought of anything beyond getting my revenge. After that, I didn’t care what became of me. Rico asked why I didn’t go for immortality, but the whole idea was sheer stupidity. I didn’t want to live forever.”
“And now?” She held her breath while she waited for his answer.
“Now, I don’t know. But let’s just say that the idea of living past killing Temperance Hatcher no longer fills me with dread. Maybe I could be happy with a different life. Give up the killing. The truth is, I don’t know. This has all been so fast.”
“Really?” she said dryly.
“Well, maybe not for you.”
“Tell me,” she said. “You voted against taking me back to the planet. But if I asked, would you come?”
“I wouldn’t betray the captain.”
“No, I was thinking just you, me, and a shuttle, and we’ll see what the future brings.” If she could just get some small commitment then maybe she would open up, risk telling her plans.
“You want me to forget my revenge? I’ve dedicated my whole adult life to one thing and now I’m close.” He ran a hand through his hair, tousling the black and gold stripes. “Why don’t you come with us instead? Stay on the Blood Hunter. There’s nothing you can do for your people down there. Come with us and maybe one day we’ll find a way back. Take them out with us.”
