by Cara Bristol
I suckled one breast until the tip grew pebble hard and red then treated its twin to the same. Starr reached between our bodies to grasp my manhood. Sizzling sensation shot into my belly as she pumped.
She pulled away from me then and shimmied down my body, teasing me by dragging her nipples over my skin. As she hovered over my cock, my essence beaded in anticipation. Starr smiled, and swiped at the liquid pearl with a fingertip then raised the digit to her mouth and licked it clean.
She lowered her head to trail her tongue from the ridge around my cockhead to my scrotum. With featherlight flickers, she teased my testicles before meandering to my cockhead, whereupon she circled the corona again.
Take me in your mouth. I thrust my hips upward. Hints were ignored, and teasing continued.
I twined my fingers in her hair. “Starr, suck me, dammit!” I stole one of her epithets to convey the seriousness of my need.
She gave a little snort of laughter and traced a leisurely trail to my manhood.
“Starr…” I gritted my teeth.
“Lie still and let me handle things. That was the deal.”
“I don’t remember making that deal.”
“It was negotiated between ‘you can do all the work’ and ‘all’s fair in love and war.’”
I hated to have my own words thrown at me.
Disgruntlement evaporated when she engulfed my erection and drew me deep into her hot, wet mouth. Her lips closed tightly as she pulled on my cock. Nerves lit up like lightning flashing across a stormy sky as pleasure rained through my body.
I was at her mercy, but I always had been. The moment I spied my straw-haired alien mate, I’d been done for.
Employing her hands, her lips, tongue, and teeth, she pleasured me to the brink of ecstasy and, while I writhed, she pulled back to let the feeling subside then whipped my desires into a frenzy again. This time, I refused to be denied, and I grabbed her head, and thrust my cock deep into her mouth.
Muscles contracted as rapture pushed me over the brink, and I spilled myself with convulsive shudders, emptying and filling myself at the same time. Taut muscles went slack. Had I been on top, fucking her, I would have collapsed and landed on my injured shoulder. It would have been worth it, though.
Starr released my cock, licked her lips, and crawled upward to curl against my good side. I welcomed her into my embrace. She wedged her leg between mine, and her womanhood pressed against my thigh. Her sex was wet against my skin. I’d been selfish in taking my release; I’d done little to please her.
“I apologize for my selfishness. Give me a moment to recover and—”
She shook her head. “No, it’s all right. You’ll hurt yourself and start bleeding again.”
Perhaps, but a man didn’t claim his pleasure at the expense of his female. “I still want to join with you. I’ll be careful.” I would be dedicated and focused. I would make her scream with pleasure if it killed me.
“No.”
Females could be very stubborn, but they rarely refused a pleasuring. It was their right and our duty. We protected them, cared for them, and pleasured them. Our needs came second. I had an alien mate, but I couldn’t jettison everything I’d been raised to believe.
“What if I could pleasure you without hurting myself?” I asked.
She peered at me with narrowed eyes. “How?”
I nudged her. “Scoot up.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just scoot up!”
Starr shifted and straddled my body. Momentarily distracted, I palmed a breast, stroking the nipple, before cupping her ass cheek with my good hand. “Straddle my face,” I ordered.
Her eyes widened.
“Come on!” I gave her ass a light slap.
She squealed.
“Do it.” I slapped a little harder.
She complied and positioned herself so I had a perfect view of her luscious womanhood, its petals dewy with moisture, swollen with need. The scent of her desire raised my hunger again. Such sweetness, and mine, all mine. In this, I could indulge myself to my heart’s desire and bring my mate to climax. How could it get any better?
I pressed on her thigh, and Starr obediently lowered herself to my mouth.
Chapter Seventeen
Starr
Bare to the waist, Torg had finished washing, and I had just donned my tunic when Groman and Andrea pushed through the flap. The next time we got on the computer, I would order some bells or solid doors to force people to announce themselves.
“How are you feeling?” Groman asked.
“On the mend.” Torg winked at me. If Andrea and Groman had burst in ten minutes sooner, they would have discovered me riding Torg. So, yeah, he was fine. Healing fast for a man who’d been shot through the shoulder with an arrow. Either he had exceptional stamina and constitution, or natural evolution had come into play. The fittest had survived.
After licking me to the most stupendous orgasm of my life—twice—Torg slept through the night. I’d checked his injury once during the wee hours and found the bleeding had indeed stopped. When he’d awakened me this morning—horny again—he’d seduced me into intercourse.
While Groman examined him, a smirking Andrea sauntered over and whispered, “It smells like sex in here.”
My face flamed. “Good gods! It does?”
She chuckled. “No. I wanted to see if you’d cop to copping a little.”
“Now you sound like Tessa!” It was the sort of thing she would have said.
“The injury is healing nicely,” Groman reported. “Don’t do anything strenuous.” He looked at me. “Clean it every now and then and apply fresh bandages.”
I nodded. “Will do.”
Stiff with dried blood, Torg’s tunic was unwearable. He pulled his kel over his bare chest and did up the toggles. “Has Loka arrived yet?”
“Yes. He brought six men. They are combing the area.”
“I’ll go help them.”
“No.” Groman and I spoke in sync. Thank goodness I had someone on my side. Torg was incorrigible.
“Did you not understand what I meant by strenuous?” Groman scowled.
“That’s not strenuous.”
“To sweep through measures of snow with a staff will disturb your healing shoulder.”
“Bah!”
“We have a long hike. Do you want me to worry the whole way home?” I dealt him a guilt card and didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty for doing so. If the stubborn man wouldn’t take care of himself, then I would have to do it. I regretted having caved to his seduction this morning.
He sighed. “What am I supposed to do, then?”
“Talk to Enoki,” Groman suggested.
“He’s here, too?”
The healer nodded. “Arrived with the others.”
* * * *
Torg and I tromped through the forest. A forked tree with a notch in the trunk caught my eye. “I recognize that tree!” I snapped my fingers and grinned.
I tried to remain alert and pay attention to my surroundings, rather than training my gaze on Torg’s back. Since I would live on Dakon for the rest of my life, I needed to learn the terrain. Subtleties emerged and stood out from the sameness: the forked tree, a thick fallen log, a stand of four precisely spaced conifers. I probably could find my way to the meeting place on my own.
Not that he would let me go alone.
Not that I wanted to.
I enjoyed his company and conversation, and I felt safer with him around. He’d heard the whoosh of the arrow releasing and pushed me out of the way. Any one of us could have been killed. Tessa or Andrea could have triggered the trip wire. Would their mates have been as fast in saving their lives as Torg had been in saving mine? He was powerful and fast, his stamina amazing. He acted like his injured shoulder didn’t bother him at all.
Of course, Groman had tended him. He was obviously a gifted healer. Imagine what he could do when he got real medical supplies! Andrea, Tessa, and I had the power to mak
e that happen. We could catapult Dakon out of the Stone Age, and, in time, restore them to their former glory. They weren’t a primitive people, but an advanced civilization that had lost everything in a cataclysm.
Now they had a homegrown terrorist hell-bent on making things worse. On Terra, that type of person would have detonated timed explosives to eliminate whole groups. The only benefit to Dakon’s primitive state was that their sociopaths didn’t have the technology to wipe out a crowd.
Although he’d tried. Booby traps had been set at the apothecary, the trading post, and two emergency shelters. Fortunately, when Loka and his men had combed the entire compound, no more trip wires had been found.
“Why do you suppose the traps were set outside those specific locations?” I mused aloud. “Why not the tavern? The main meeting lodge?”
“Maybe they intended to set more traps but weren’t able to finish.”
“I think we were all targeted. He tried to hurt as many of us as he could.”
“You might be right.” Torg agreed, contradicting his previous assertion he’d been the focus. “Enoki believes the act is a protest against the exchange program, although he doesn’t know if the perpetrator is angry because he wasn’t chosen to receive a female, or if he opposes it in principle. The meeting place is where the females arrived. Maybe the perpetrator is making a statement. Some had argued against taking off-world mates on the grounds it would taint our bloodline.”
So I was tainting a bloodline now? I took that personally.
“Most men recognized that while our genetic makeup would change, taking alien mates offered a chance of survival. Better to be half Dakonian than to cease to exist.”
So Terran women ranked slightly better than death. Well, that made for a warm and fuzzy welcome. Torg didn’t mean it that way, though. I knew that. The grins of the men when we’d entered the lodge after disembarking the ship had revealed how thrilled they were to see us.
And Torg was the best guy a girl could ever have. He took my hand. “I desire a mate to curl up in front of the fire with, to share my bed, to walk with me.” He looked at me. “I am sorry this happened, and you were frightened. I promise, we’ll find the perpetrator.
“Enoki has assigned a patrol to regularly inspect the compound for booby traps. He also has his master bowyer examining the weapons for clues. Each bow is as unique as the craftsman who created it. Though we all use a similar process, we can’t help but leave our mark. It’s like writing your name. The same people can write the same name, but their signatures differ.”
“If you locate the man responsible, what then? What will happen to him?” Thus far, alien justice had amounted to kicking the perpetrator to the next camp down the path, although that hadn’t been all that different from what Terra One World had done. They’d kicked a shipload of female felons to the next planet down the galaxy.
“The council will decide. New punishments will have to be established. Nothing like this has happened before.”
“We women were supposed to be your solution, but we’re causing trouble.”
“You are the solution. Protestors will have to get used to the new Dakon. When they see the difference having mates makes in our lives, they’ll come around. You and the other females brought us hope.” He wrapped an arm around me and pressed a kiss to the side of my head. “You, Starconner, gave me a reason to live,” he said, and then halted and stared off to the side.
“What is it?”
He pointed. Footprints came from the side and headed down our trail toward camp. “Somebody is visiting.”
I eyed the depressions in the snow. “Two people.”
We were almost home when Darq intercepted us. “I’m glad I caught you.”
“What’s wrong?” Torg asked.
Darq glanced at me then looked at Torg. “Icha arrived with a new mate. He’s the chief of his tribe.”
So Icha had mated up and bagged a tribal chief. Maybe now she’d leave me alone—or not. Like the proverbial bad penny, she’d shown up again.
Torg scowled. “Why is she here?”
“She has been visiting the camps with information.”
“About the traps?” I asked. Word of mouth did travel fast.
Darq refused to meet my eyes and looked at Torg instead. “No, nothing about any traps. It’s about the females…and Starr.”
Torg glowered. “What about her?”
Darq’s gaze touched on my nose then skittered away again. “Um, we should talk about this privately.”
“I want to know what she said! I have a right.” I glowered.
Torg nodded. “If it involves Starr, she should be told.”
“She said Starr is a murderess.”
My stomach plunged to my soles of my kel boots. I’d hoped I’d have more time, but there it was. What should I do? Lie and deny? Or come clean? Act shocked? Outraged? How solid was Torg’s love? His abhorrence of violence was clear. Would he still support me if I admitted the truth? Could he forgive my conviction and my lies?
“That’s preposterous!” Torg bit out. “Tell him, Starr—” My expression must have betrayed my thoughts. “Starr? It’s not true, right?” His hopeful, pleading gaze almost unraveled me.
The truth would devastate him. But how could I lie to a man who deserved honesty? He cared for me. Icha was a notorious troublemaker. He would believe me because he needed to believe I wasn’t a murderer.
There was no holding back the tide. If Icha went from camp to camp… I dug my fingernails into my palms and nodded. “It’s…it’s…true.”
A silence so absolute descended on the wood, I could have heard a leaf fall.
“It’s true?” He’d been shot with the arrow and hadn’t been this stricken.
“I killed a man, but it wasn’t murder. It was self-defense, only I got convicted. I was an informant for the government. They planted me inside an organized crime ring to get the evidence to convict the boss.” Carmichael’s tentacles burrowed deep into the judicial system. After my farce of a trial, I suspected Jaxon had guessed I was a plant from the beginning and gave me enough rope to hang myself.
I’d been placed to listen in and pass on conversations, movements, schedules. I’d discovered that Jaxon kept full records on a microdot. I’d already passed on a lot of information to the government, but they insisted on getting the microdot. It took months before an opportunity arose to search his office. One afternoon, I got a chance. Going item by item, centimeter by centimeter, I examined every speck on the walls, his desk, the windows. I found it underneath the granite service award he’d received for his contribution to an orphanage. I slipped the minute computer chip inside a tiny secret compartment of the necklace the government had given me and continued searching in case I found something else. That was my downfall. I must have triggered a hidden sensor because I turned around and there he was. I’d never heard him enter.
Jaxon said nothing, just stared at me, his eyes devoid of expression. Then there was the tiniest little flicker. His hand shot for his pocket. I grabbed the granite service award on his desk and swung it at him. He went down, and a laser revolver fell from his pocket and clattered to the floor. He scrambled for it. I ran.
To the outside world, Jaxon and his family had it all: wealth, influence, and a community-minded spirit that got them lauded over and over. But they derived their real power from operations outside the law: drugs, extortion, human trafficking.
That orphanage Jaxon had contributed to? At least half the children were the offspring of mothers who’d disappeared after being kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery by Jaxon himself. He owned a brothel on a space station orbiting Mars. The Red Room served a clientele with more money than morals. The girls didn’t work there by choice and had no chance of escape. That was one of the little tidbits I’d uncovered. What twisted pleasure had Jaxon derived in accepting an award for his service to the orphans he’d created?
I’d been a low-level civil servant key-tapper when the government
had approached me. In the old days, they’d called us pencil-pushers. The organized crime unit had recruited me because—get this—I was a natural blonde without tattoos. Jaxon hired only fair-haired assistants, and he hated tats on women. The authorities created a new identity for me, gave me a makeover and a crash briefing, and sent me to interview with Jaxon. It was like going into Witness Protection without the protection.
Although Jaxon had been alive when I’d left him, he later succumbed to the head trauma. I hadn’t intended to kill him, and if I hadn’t hit him, he would have killed me first. My government had sent me to work for a notorious, dangerous crime boss with no defense except my wits and reflexes.
As soon as I escaped the Carmichael building, I turned the microdot over to my government handlers. The next morning, I was arrested for homicide by a different branch of the same organization that had recruited me. I wasn’t worried at first, certain the misunderstanding would be cleared up as soon as one department talked to the other department. Jaxon would have killed me! I was an informant, not a criminal!
Confidence turned to doubt then shock and horror as my case zoomed through the normally clogged and lethargic legal system like a case of judicial diarrhea: I was arraigned, indicted, tried, convicted, briefly incarcerated, and then exiled to Dakon. That I’d been an informant for the government had been ruled inadmissible in court. Jaxon’s weapon had disappeared, although holographic vids obtained by the defense showed it skittering across the floor.
“I asked you about the rumor when you first came. You lied to me.” Betrayal and accusation swirled in Torg’s gaze.
“I’m sorry. I was afraid to tell you.”
“So Terra got rid of its criminals by shipping them here. What about the others?” Torg said through tight lips. “Are they murderers, too?”
“No. Their crimes were minor. Their participation was voluntary. They chose to come here. They wanted mates.”
