by Elsa Jade
The slight stickiness of the ghost-mead sealed the kiss, and they both parted their lips at the same time, inhaling the same breath so that the sensation of vacuum seemed to suck the fear and embarrassment and loneliness— and rational thought itself—right out of her.
There was only this moment and this man and the promise of more.
She raked her hands up into his hair, undoing the tidy club bound at his nape. When she speared her fingers to the back of his head, the honey-brown strands were every bit as thick and luscious as she’d suspected. He groaned deep in his throat, and she tilted her head to slant the kiss, their tongues finding each other in a sweet, hot caress. Sensation licked through her all the way to her core, and she couldn’t hold back her own tiny moan.
His hands settled on her hips, and then she was flying as he lifted her. Her eyes widened in surprise, and she thought he would spin her down to the couch—he was very much the sort to dominate a kiss—but instead he plunked her down straddling his lap. The night robe she’d pulled on when the dat-pad had announced his message parted around her knees, and the thin sleep shirt she had on underneath slid up, baring her thighs and leaving her achingly aware of her nearly exposed sex. Thorkons living at the estate loved their plush, elaborate robes and gowns but they didn’t seem to have much use for underwear.
But Nor didn’t dive for her naughty bits. Never breaking the kiss, he slid his hands over the robe to where the hem crumpled against her calves. His long fingers loosely manacled her ankles, making her toes twitch with an almost-tickle. Since when were her ankles so sensitive? But she swore that between his touch and his kiss he sent an electrified current pulsing through her body, end to end. The amplifying waves met deep in her middle with a throbbing need.
She pressed a little closer to him, not quite grinding on his thighs. A growing bulge in his pants told her he wasn’t fooled.
When at long last, their lips parted with a tiny vacuum pop, he nestled her back in the cradle of his arms. His blue eyes were ardent with desire. “You want more than kisses?”
She bit the center of her lower lip, tender and aching from their mutual assault. Her hesitant nod didn’t seem to impress him.
“You’re going to have to take it,” he told her.
She squirmed with embarrassment, then froze when her bare thighs chafed on the fabric of his pants—pants that she’d already seen down around his knees once. “I know you know what to do,” she reminded him tartly.
His mouth curved in a mocking smile. “And you shot at me because of it.”
“You have my permission now,” she said, trying to keep the desperation out of her tone.
Releasing his grip on her, he leaned back on the couch and linked his hands behind his head. “And you have whatever you want from me.”
Her ankles felt chilled without his touch, and she would’ve wobbled a little at the loss of his support, but he spread his legs, anchoring her with that wider base.
She fisted her hands in the front of his shirt. “Why are you making this harder?”
“Because while you make me hard”—he canted his hips upward, nudging her with the bulge behind his pants—“I’m not sure what you want. Or if you know what you want. And you still have that recharged blaster somewhere…”
She frowned at him repressively. “I missed you.”
“I missed you too. That’s why I came over here tonight.”
She hadn’t meant that, and she knew he was probably teasing. And yet…
He wasn’t wrong. For a charming rogue who admitted he was still bad at heart, he was being awfully slow to take advantage of her. So she’d have to show him.
She clambered off his lap, almost painfully aware of the robe sliding across her sensitized skin.
Nor angled his hips to protect that impressive bulge of his, and disappointment creased his brow. “Trixie…”
He thought she was rejecting him? She grabbed the bottle of booze and his hand. “Come to the bedroom.”
For a second, his weight was a rock, holding her in place, but then he sprang to his feet, so fast she stumbled a step back.
He swung her up into his embrace. “Point the way.”
She gestured with the bottle before taking a swig. The potent burn made her gasp. Or maybe that was the feeling of being held so high above the ground.
“I won’t drop you,” he said when she tightened her arm around his neck.
It had happened before, though not actually physically. And she’d survived.
She wasn’t sure she’d make it through again. But it wouldn’t matter because tonight was about forgetting. She took another drag from the bottle.
At the threshold, she gasped, spewing a fine spray of ghost-mead. “Stop!”
He did but he groaned. “Mishkeet, you’re killing me.”
“Well, I’m trying to not. Uh, there might be boobytraps in the bedroom.”
He took a slow step in reverse. “Why?”
“So I can sleep.”
His lips quirked. “At least you warned me.”
“I got sidetracked,” she said defensively. “By the booze.” When he angled a wry stare down at her, she felt obliged to confess, “And the kisses.” She squirmed in his arms. “Let me down.”
He allowed her to slide to her feet and plucked the half-empty bottle from her hand. “No more of that for you, in case you forget to tell me about any plasma cannons or concussion grenades you have tucked away.”
Taking a shallower draw of the ghost-mead himself, he watched her disable a proximity alarm and a sonic stunner she’d, er, borrowed from the gardens that was used to chase vermin from the shrubbery.
“Okay, it’s all good,” she said hastily. “No more traps.”
His gaze glittered silvery in the unfocused nightlighting that had come on as they entered when he deposited the bottle beside a vase of sculpted greenery on the delicate side table by the door. “No more of forgetting anything,” he chided. “I want you, but I want all of you, here, aware, and wanting me back, not drifting like a ghost in mead.”
Her throat tightened with the urge to yell at him. He didn’t get to have any part of her she didn’t want to give. She’d told him that already. If she only offered her body, that was it. But of course he was a pirate, so she shouldn’t be surprised he wanted everything.
No, what horrified her was how much she wanted to give it all. Had she learned nothing from her mother’s terrible experiences with handsome, charming devils?
But even as almost everything inside her raged against his possessiveness, a hidden part—the part that had refused to be cowed by verbal scorn or a drunkenly raised fist—knew she wasn’t being fair. Unlike the men she’d grown up with, Nor had never pretended to be something he wasn’t. He’d told her who he was. And what he wanted.
He wanted her.
And after her long, mostly blacked-out nightmare on Blackworm’s derelict space station, she wanted to put a new spin on the stars, one that she chose.
When she took a deep breath that should’ve made her steadier, the taste of ghost-mead and him in the back of her throat only made her knees wobble under her robe. But if she was taking back the night for herself, weak knees weren’t going to stop her.
She took the step that closed the small distance between them and flattened her palms on his chest. The heavy thud of his heartbeat matched the pulse between her legs.
“I do want this,” she whispered. “I do want you.”
His mouth crashed down on hers, as if her words were the only thing he’d been waiting for.
With a breathy moan, she snaked her arms up around his neck. He was so much taller than she was that he had to contort himself to reach down for her.
In the interest of saving his back, she murmured, “Take me to bed.”
But he shook his head slowly, dragging his lips with velvety seduction over hers. “No,” he murmured throatily. “We’re not there yet.”
“Right there,” she complained. The guest qu
arters in the estate were beautiful—as everything here was beautiful—but pretty self-explanatory. The bed was square and liberally strewn with various sized cushions that she assumed could be used to customize the comfort for various configurations of alien bodies. It wasn’t like they were sleeping in zero-G or anything. “I can steer us if you’re not very good at this captaining stuff.”
His low chuckle rumbled through her. “Pirate, remember? I thrive on buried treasure. But I might need to do a little exploring first, identify any more threats—black holes, quicksand, poorly aimed blaster, you know—and I wouldn’t mind a navigator.”
She rolled her eyes in mock exasperation. “I’m no brave new world.”
He brushed his lips across her temple. “You are to me,” he murmured. “Taken from your home, imprisoned against your will, and yet you fought back, and you want to see what else is in this vast universe that must seem so odd and threatening to you.”
The note of admiration in his voice shivered through her, sloughing off a layer of defensiveness she hadn’t realized she’d been clinging to. She’d tried not to think of herself as a victim, but being merely a survivor wasn’t enough either. Maybe Rayna and Lishelle were right, and she had to reach for everything she desired.
Which right now was him.
She unsealed the edges of the black officer’s jacket he wore and skimmed her hands inside, reveling in the smooth ridges of muscle defined by the tighter undershirt. He angled his shoulders back, letting her strip away the first layer. Which probably meant she should take off a layer too.
For a moment, her restless strokes paused as uncertainty crept in around the edges of her robe. “Um, is there anything, uh, special I should know about alien sex before we get naked?”
Rather than laugh aloud as she feared, he tilted his head thoughtfully, the sun-kissed locks of his hair darkened to dusk in the low light. “For all our differences, nearly every sentient species in the universe has a few things in common.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “We all invent fermentation and distilling. We are discontented and look to the stars. And we wonder secretly—or not so secretly—whether we are physiologically compatible with every other species we meet.” When she chuckled, he hooked those three fingers through the sash of her robe to tug her closer. “And you know what we found?”
She gazed up at him. “We really like booze?”
“We are mostly”—another tug loosened the sash—“curiously”—the front of her robe parted—“some might say cosmically”—one more tug and the robe slipped down her shoulders—“compatible.”
As the robe pooled around her feet, she caught her breath at the delicate rasp of the silky thin nightgown over her swelling nipples. Nor made a low noise in his throat, not quite a growl.
“In fact,” he said in a husky voice, “you might be perfect.”
A flush of yearning—not just physical but deeper too—made her squirm, and a flash of anger followed immediately after. She didn’t believe she was perfect. She didn’t need or even want that sort of lovers’ lie, not from him. Maybe his universal translator was on the fritz, burning up from the combustion between them.
Aggressively, she flipped up the bottom of his shirt. “Let’s see what you are.”
With an obliging grin, he reached one hand over his shoulder and yanked off the snug layer. It peeled free inside out and grudgingly, as if it didn’t want to leave him.
She supposed she could see why.
Lord almighty, he was fine. Thanks to the fit of the ships fatigues, she’d already known he was a hard body, but…
The triangular shape of his torso, from wide shoulders to trim waist, looked like the most expensive ad from an upscale men’s magazine, and the carved blocks of his musculature fit perfectly with the sculpted geometric forms of Azthronos. But there was a roughness to him too, an edge to his maleness that defied the aloof beauty all around her. He tossed his head, resettling the waves of his honey-brown hair down to those shoulders she so admired.
Shoulders that were hers to touch.
Just at the moment, she hastened to add to herself mentally. She wasn’t a pirate to steal and keep what didn’t belong to her.
“Good enough?” The corner of his mouth quirked up with a little too much intensity.
He cared how she answered.
She knew it was just because he’d been rejected before, not because he specifically cared about her opinion. But her nervousness evaporated at the thought of undoing some of that old damage that had left no visible scars, unlike the crescent beside his eye.
“You make my heart race,” she admitted. “Maybe not as fast as light, but faster than I can catch my breath.”
His own breath seethed out in a hoarse curse and he hauled her up against the breadth of his chest for another scorching kiss.
With only her thin nightgown as a barricade between their heaving chests, his skin was hot and her nipples as hard as carved crystal. The silky material slithered under his hands as he held her up to his devouring mouth, and his curse this time was both impassioned and impatient.
“Take it off,” he growled as he finally spun her toward the bed.
She sprawled across the mattress, doing a bit of devouring of her own with her hungry stare. Oh, he was so fine with the wild toss of his hair and the lean glide of his muscles as he stalked toward her.
“You first,” she challenged. “I want it all.”
He smirked at her, toying with the closure of his pants. “You gave me a hard time about being undone before.”
“Well, now you get to give me a hard time.” She reached out to trail her fingertip down the front seam.
He shuddered, and all the muscles of his abs bunched tight—including the bulge where her fingers paused. She ticked her fingers up the rippling eight-pack then down again to flick the seal of his fly. The closure split wide, releasing the swell of manly flesh she’d been thinking—okay, fantasizing—about since seeing his butt.
She choked on a muffled exclamation.
Aw yeah, they were very compatible.
With taut anticipation, she closed her grip around his erection. It had been so long… Not his cock—although that was plenty long—but since she’d had one in hand. Even before getting abducted by Blackworm, hooking up in Sunset Falls, Montana, had sometimes been more trouble than it was worth. The hikers, hunters, and cowboys who’d passed through town were always up for a one-night stand, which had been fun for a while, but maybe she’d gotten lazy about finding satisfaction for her heart as well as her body.
Not that she was seeking anything from this ex-pirate captain beyond this night, she reassured herself hastily.
Even if he seemed to have more than enough to last the night
Holding lightly to his cock, she pulled herself upright and knee-walked across the mattress to face him. With the boost of the mattress, she was almost eye to eye with him despite how tall he was.
The intensity of his half-lidded gaze was nearly as bright as the plasma charges from their blasters at the firing range had been. “It’s been only my hand for too long,” he murmured. “Yours feels better.”
She shook her head, not sure she believed him after seeing him with the Grandy’s engineering officer. She scowled to herself; maybe dropping his pants for an alien vampire was proof he’d been as needy as she felt now. She wasn’t sure if the internal thought made her a bitch or a fool or just someone who’d been lonely more often than she cared to admit.
But she had her hands full now. She stroked him once, watching the expressions flicker across his face as she learned what he liked. The way his hips canted yearningly into her hands told her he liked everything, and the darkening flush across his cheek made the crescent scar at his temple shine silver in the low bedroom light.
He leaned forward, but instead of giving her another of those irresistible kisses, he lowered his head to set his teeth against the side of her throat. Her head listed helplessly to one side, giving him full access to
the vulnerable pulse at her throat. He nipped his way along the straining tendon and licked into the hollow of her throat once before returning to the tender spot below her jaw. She shivered when the gentle suction of his mouth made her blood throb as if he was calling directly to her heart.
Her heart was part of her body, she reasoned, and it deserved to feel good too. And while the universe might be vast and mostly unknown to her, she wasn’t dumb enough to fall for kisses—no matter how irresistible they might be.
“May I?” His fists bunched in the hem of her nightgown, lifting the edge inexorably higher. A whisper of air—not cooler, hotter if anything—breathed through the juncture of her thighs.
When had she locked her fingers in his hair again? She was holding him so tight, she must be hurting him, but he never made a noise. She forced herself to release him and lifted her hands straight up. “Please do,” she murmured. What she meant of course was please do me.
But he took his time, as if he had an eternity to strip her. She squirmed impatiently as he lifted the hem to her crotch and then her breasts and then over her head, breathing heavier with each revelation. Each rasp of his breath and inching drag of the silky fabric chafed on her skin until she was trembling with desire.
When the nightgown was almost free of her outstretched hands and bound around her wrists, he twisted the material once in his fist, holding her strung up tight before his hungry eyes.
She gasped and swayed toward him. “Wait…”
He stilled. “Too much?”
For a long moment, she listened to her throbbing heart. She had never been physically restrained before. Even on that dreaded space station, she’d been drugged and held in stasis, but never tied up. Waves of shivers passed down her spine, but…not fear.
“I can’t touch you like this,” she complained.
He laughed softly at her whining. “You already did. And will again, soon. But it’s my turn now.” His voice dropped an octave. “After you say yes.”
He had her captured, at his mercy, quivering…and she’d never felt herself in safer hands. “Yes,” she whispered. “Oh yes.”
