Starlight Passion
The Starlight Series
Book 4
By
Astrid Cooper
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Starlight Passion
Copyright ã 2008 Astrid Cooper
ISBN: 978-1-55487-102-5
Cover art by Martine Jardin
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.
Published by eXtasy Books
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For Sam, a beloved felinus who died on 2nd July, 2008 after twenty-five years of loving companionship.
May Starlight guide your Path to the Blessed Realm!
Starlight Passion
“And just when exactly, John-Kuno, were you going to tell me?” Sam glared at him, her hands on her hips. His gaze matched hers, coldly furious.
“On a needs to know, Samantha,” he snapped.
“Well, cat-boy, I needs to know!”
“And damn you, too, Taren!” John rounded on his wing-brother. “Stop laughing. Now is not the time.”
The cat-wing spread his hands, palms open to John. “You know your kitten has the right of it, that’s why you’re so angry. That and your hormones!” He strode towards the door and turned. “Bite him on the bum, Samantha, then feegle him.”
She tossed her head. “I’m not going to do either.”
Taren’s black brows lifted. “Truly?” The door slid closed against his smirk.
“How can he laugh at a time like this?” Samantha wanted to pitch a cushion after him. Or something that broke. Breaking things would be good. Maybe John’s neck for starters.
“He’s just a bird-brain!” John stalked across the room, heading for the glass atrium.
“Well, at least he has one, and thinks with it!” Sam’s cutting retort halted him mid-stride.
She held her breath. His rigid naked back was straight, unyielding.
He spun to face her and Sam gasped to see tears glistening in his eyes. She reached him in moments, flinging herself against his chest, holding him hard.
“Kitten-mine,” John whispered.
“Our arguing isn’t helping Hari.”
John’s shiver swept the length of his body. His inner chill seeped into her.
“I’m sorry kitten-mine. I should have told you. I wanted to spare you.”
“Well, I’m not spared. Being unprepared is worse. Hurts worse.” She lifted her chin and John’s mouth touched hers. A fleeting kiss full of regrets and apologies. “So someone is collecting and killing shifters? Who—someone?”
“If I knew that, I’d be on his trail not standing here arguing with you.”
“I’m not arguing.” Sam’s hands slipped between the folds of John’s sarong. She heard his breath catch in his throat as her fingers fastened around his hot, hard length. The ridges were splayed, flesh straining. Even the slightest touch caused him to tremble. She glanced up at him. “Does this hurt?”
“The worst pain,” he whispered. “Ahhh, the best.”
“Then let me help you.”
John edged away, shaking his head. “If I do what I want to do, here and now, I’ll lose control. I have to reach Chizan and then…”
“That mutatis thing.”
His smile almost reached his eyes. Eyes, as cold and harsh as the deepest reaches of space. “Yes, that bloody thing.” He retreated a few steps and held out his hand, palm up in the felinus gesture to appease. “I know it’s hurting you and I can’t do a damn thing about it. I can’t. But honey-cat, another could.”
“What do you mean?”
“You need to be held, to be loved. Taren is my clan-brother. I trust him. He would be gentle.”
“No.”
“Sam—”
“I like Taren, but I could never…not with him.”
“Then another? Someone who has taken your fancy?” The edge to his voice told her exactly how much it cost him to suggest she seek her release with another.
There was no one. The closest she had ever come to contemplating a lover besides John was Hari. Her chest tightened. Hari she loved, but not in that way.
“I’ll manage, John-Kuno. I’m not interested in feegling anyone.” She held up her finger for silence. “Not another word, or I will bite you on the bum.” To give emphasis to her words, she used the assassin hand-signal.
John’s cheeks reddened. “Where’d you learn to swear like that?”
“Taren taught me, when you were busy arranging the flight plan to Chizan. When are we leaving? I need to pack.”
“Soon. The least anyone knows the better for us all.”
“You think there are spies around?”
“Outside this apartment, I’m always under surveillance by GTC. But inside we’re safe enough with the security shields.”
“That’s all I need to know.” Sam shrugged off her robe. “Stay just where you are.”
“I told you, Sam, I can’t. I must not.”
As she wrapped her arms around him, pressing her cheek against his chest, she heard his heart pounding, felt its vibrations through her skin. She twirled her tongue tip across his taut nipple, biting gently. His fingers splayed across the back of her head, holding her still.
“Noooo…”
The ties of his sarong unraveled, the material sliding down his legs to pool at his feet. Sam pressed her body against his, the burning length of him hard against her stomach. “Let me ease your pain, John.”
Smiling, he gently guided her backwards. With a sweep of his hand, he cleared the table of papers and files. He nudged her down with his thighs.
Holding her gaze with his, he teased her curls, parting her netherlips with a finger. She shuddered. Just one finger and she was a shivering mass of goo. The thought made her smile. He angled each finger stroke, deliberately finding the hidden pleasure centers. He leaned over her and she folded her legs around his waist, crossing her ankles at the small of his back. Her heels pressed against the base of his spine. Another of John’s favorites, and she teased him mercilessly.
“Sharille,” he whispered her felinus name, given to her only days ago. It was a part of her, as much as breathing, which, at the moment, was very hard to do. John’s finger worked miracles, sending ripples of pleasure to every part of her.
“Please, Kuno.”
He leaned forward, the tip of his erection touching her. “Please, what, kitten?” Slowly, deliberately, he entered her, his gaze holding hers, his hands on either side of her head. Intimately joined, he rested there, filling her completely, teasing apart her muscles. The felinus ridges of his cock rippled, stroking her, sending a frisson of pleasure racing from her core to her every cell. He continued to stimulate her with his cock, while his body remained immobile.
This was another loving, a new strategy, aimed for her pleasure and hers alone.
“My name is Kuno and I exist fo
r you. Your pleasure is mine.” His mind touched hers, a loving caress, thoughts entwining. The starfire traveled her body, from inside to out, engulfing her, lapping her skin with sultry light kisses. John followed the swirling trails of light, lips kissing, tongue lathing, teeth nipping.
“The…ahh…”
“What, honey-cat?”
“Would you do the pleasure point to the left?”
He pulled back slightly inside her, the friction of the movement deliciously slow.
Sam lifted off the table as his cock rippled against the pleasure zone which no human male could ever reach. Stars erupted behind her eyes and a scalding flush raced through her body.
John withdrew and returned in slow languid thrusts, tormenting her gently, thoroughly.
“My name is Samantha-Sharille and I exist for you. Only for you,” she whispered the felinus pledge.
“You just love me for my body, honey-cat.”
She snapped open her eyelids and saw his teasing grin. Wrapping her legs around him, she held him tightly and slapped his ass. His grin deepened.
He aimed for the central pleasure point and Sam writhed beneath him, her thighs quivering against his hips.
“You wanna hit me again?” He aimed for the left point.
“Kuno…”
“That is my name.” He pulled back to her entrance and bore down, a little to the right, then a thrust took him all the way to her core.
He repeated the motion again and again.
Sam squeezed her legs, holding him, savoring the moment, savoring the climax as it engulfed her. She channeled the pleasure as he had taught her, heightening it, then casting it over them both.
Starlight flowed between them, then Convergence.
* * * *
Hari woke slowly, lethargically. He tasted the bitter residue of drugs. He had been drugged…when, by whom? He struggled to remember.
His felinus senses kicked in. He was lying in a room, naked, cold, hurting. There was a tight band around his throat. His right hand was manacled. Both his feet were shackled.
He cast out his senses, frustrated that the drugs inhibited his mental probe.
“I know you are awake, felinus, so do not play games. Games will come later. For now, I want to talk to you.”
Hari snapped his lids open. He was in a room bare of all adornment, the walls white, the bright light coming from one aperture in the ceiling.
He managed to raise himself on an elbow, groaning against the weakness, the pain. He glanced down at his body, noted the bruises and scratches. How had that happened? When? It was obvious that days had passed…
Harimal struggled to remember. The restraints were attached to a ring on the wall and he tested the strength of each. Odd to be chained like something out of the dark ages, when the room was modern. Someone was making a statement.
Part of the wall opposite him slid open and an electric chair powered in. Harimal stared.
The grey-skinned creature in the chair, affixed to numerous devices had a human body, but the face was a mix of human and cat. Black eyes, yellow-slitted studied him dispassionately.
Hari’s blood ran cold as memory returned.
The ship intercepted, the draconis and he fighting side by side against the pirates…the draconis going down protecting him, dying for him…the disruptor beam over him, rendering him immobile, but not unconscious…not enough mercy for that to be done to him. The ship blasted to smithereens.
He started to push himself to his feet. The collar about his throat tightened and pulsed. He stifled a cry.
“Felinus, remain on the floor, until I order otherwise. Welcome to your reality.” The creature smiled mockingly.
“Forgive me if I don’t exchange pleasantries. What do you want?”
“Very little, now that I have you.”
“You do not have me,” Hari snarled.
“Ah, but I do, felinus.” The creature’s head was supported by a metal skeleton extruding from the chair. Other parts of his anatomy were also attached to apparatus. Hari tried not to look.
“Where am I?”
“My base. Its location is not important. You won’t be leaving. Suffice to say, you are a long way from home.”
“Who are you?”
“I will indulge your questions because I know curiosity killed the cat—that’s what humans say, isn’t it?”
“You tell me.”
“As for who I am. You do not know? How disappointing! I am a starlord.”
Hari snorted. “The last starlord died during the wars.”
“Ah, presumed killed. I survived.”
“Less than more,” Harimal countered. Judging by the attachment of apparatus to the creature, it was on life support.
“All you need understand, felinus, is that I control you from this moment on. You exist for me, only for me.” His words made a mockery of the felinus love pledge.
“Go to hell.”
The alien eyes narrowed. “Hell is a human invention. A starlord recognizes no hell.”
“Except the ones you make yourself—for others.”
“Exactly so, felinus, exactly so. Your life here can be hell, or it can be relatively pleasant, provided you acknowledge your master.”
Harimal lifted his head and flicked back his hair. “I have no master.”
“No? Just so that you are completely clear about your position here, I will give you a small demonstration. A small one. Defy me and the lessons will increase exponentially in severity and length.” The starlord’s six-jointed finger flicked a switch on the arm of his chair.
The collar around Hari’s throat tightened, almost strangling. Hari’s gaze was lethal, he intended it so—his own warning to the obscene creature before him.
The starlord merely smiled.
From inside the collar, Hari felt a row of needles erupt into his flesh. Tiny pricks, annoying, hurting, but bearable. Just.
He gasped.
The needles discharged a tiny jolt of power into his skin and in answer his every nerve ending spiked in pain. As if stripped raw. Agony sliced him from head to toe, inside out and into his brain. He bit his lip against crying out and tasted blood in his mouth.
The torture ceased and Hari pitched forward onto the floor. Shuddering, he forced himself to his knees.
“That, felinus, is just first level. There are twenty more. You don’t want to test them. I assure you by the time you reach the tenth you will be insane. But even crazy, you will still be useful to me.”
“What do you want?”
“Convergence.”
“Impossible. Even if I would grant it, I cannot do it alone.”
“Watch felinus and understand.”
A VDU flickered to life on the wall. On that screen Harimal recognized the interior of Rendezvous. He saw Samantha and John and Taren and many others in the Desire ceremony. The image altered and Harimal watched Kuno and Samantha making love in a temple in the holo-room. Then he saw himself and Kuno and Sam and their dance…
He gazed, horrified at the starlord.
“Yes, I have breached the security and I enjoy these…ah, stimulations. But I need more. I want the real thing. I have used many, but none have the essence I require. When I saw you and the woman, and the level of passion you attained—at last, I thought, creatures worthy of my attention!”
“You’ve been collecting?”
“Harvesting. As is my due.”
Harimal flinched, his gut cramping. “You’re insane.”
“My race is all but extinct, but we bequeathed an interesting legacy to the galaxy. We created the felinus. Every shifter species is our own grand design.” The alien paused. “I see doubt in your eyes, felinus. That’s to be expected. No other race has the power, the knowledge. The starlord is supreme.”
Harimal swallowed down hard, panic tightening his throat. There had been endless debates as to the origins of the felinus and the other shifter species. They had not evolved, at least in the true sense. They had suddenl
y appeared in the galaxy in all their infinite diversity and beauty. Some insisted by genetic mutation, but others said, created. And that being so—he quashed that thought.
“No,” Hari whispered.
“No?” The starlord sighed. “Are you going to be difficult? How tedious!” His talon hovered purposefully over the pain trigger. “The felinus were created for starlord pleasure. Dig deep into the cat memory, Harimal. You know I speak the truth. The blood of the starlords runs in your veins.”
“No.”
“I assure you, yes.”
“Well, if it’s the truth, then your creations exceeded your expectations. We fought you in the wars and exterminated you. We are free.”
“Is that so? May I point out that you are chained to a wall and I am not.” The starlord stroked the cord attaching his ridged cocks to the chair’s main frame. “Your life is mine and you have no other reason for existence, other than to please me.”
Harimal lifted his chin. “I please no one except of my own choosing.”
“We shall see, once the woman is captured. She is already under surveillance by my agents. It is only a matter of time before she is brought here to be your partner.”
“I will not.”
The starlord waved a dismissive talon. “And do not think you can escape me by using the felinus death ritual. The collar has sensors to alert me to any thought processes I do not approve. The pain for such a thought…a taste, felinus, just so you aren’t tempted.” He flicked a switch.
Harimal screamed.
* * *
Sam watched from the doorway as John thrashed on the bed. One moment he burned with fever, the next shivering with cold. She had tried to rouse him, but no matter what she did, or said, he remained oblivious, lost in a dream.
The doorbell chimed and she used the remote to deactivate the lock. Taren strode into the bedroom, followed by Kareena and Lenar.
“He’s in the first stage of mutatis,” Taren said, touching John’s forehead.
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