by Alison Aimes
He’d intended this interrogation to prove he was back on top. Instead, he’d ended up raising more doubt and making his superiors consider past shit he didn’t want considered.
Still, he knew enough to pretend not to be bothered. “Actually, it makes this easier. I see my sister’s eyes and I remember I don’t want those missing females going through what she did.” He unclenched the fists he hadn’t even noticed he’d made. “I wasn’t able to save her, but I’m not a kid anymore. I’m stronger and meaner. I won’t fail those women. I won’t fail Melody and Hope.”
“Got it. Right. Grif to the rescue.”
This time, it wasn’t so easy for him to keep the glare from his face.
Ryker lifted his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “All I’m saying is, I’ve seen you break a hostile in a few heartbeats and then sleep like a baby right after. Seems like this situation might be more complicated.”
“She’s a flesh trader who abducted Hope and Melody’s mom and put me in 223’s prison camp. I think I’m okay.”
“Jade was a fucking Council assassin and I still fell for her. Ava was the breeder of the Commander’s worst enemy. Things get messy.”
“I don’t do messy.”
“Right.” Ryker grinned. “How could I forget? No gray for you.”
Grif didn’t smile back. “I fucked up with you, but I won’t be doing that again.”
Ryker’s expression shifted to a scowl. “What are you talking about?”
“I was so busy trying to protect someone I thought was helpless, I got us both put in the enemy’s hands back at 223’s camp.” The admission had been a long time coming. “I’m sorry.”
“You take way too much on yourself.” Ryker waved his hand in dismissal. “Jade and I did that all by ourselves. We were out to kill each other when we should have been watching our backs. We all made mistakes on that mission, but it was also the way I met my reason for living.” His expression softened. “I will thank you for that until the rotation I die.”
Grif doubted Melody and Hope’s mother was feeling as forgiving over his inability to save her. He knew his sister hadn’t.
But he appreciated his second letting him off the hook. Didn’t mean he did the same for himself, however.
“Well, all I know is, I am not making the same mistake again.” And because he refused to give up on the promotion he added, “That strategy works for me. My mission success rate is the highest of the crew.”
“True enough.” Ryker’s agreement came easy and fast. “You’re one of the best we have, but just remember, the harder the line in the sand, the easier it can be to trip over.”
“Not me.” He pointed to his boots. “Both feet planted firmly.”
“Lucky you.” Except Ryker didn’t sound as if he meant it. “I’ll leave you to it, then.” He walked backward, heading in the same direction the others had gone. “We’ll be back sooner than you want, so work fast.”
Grif waited until his second was long gone to let the scowl return to his face. For a short period there with his crew, it had felt like things were finally getting back on track.
Then, he’d gone all squirrelly and screwed himself over. He wasn’t sure where the hells the surge of protectiveness and possessiveness for his captive had come from, but he was damn well going to grind it to dust.
If he didn’t get the information he needed, his commander would send Malin, and that was unacceptable.
He could not afford to screw around, or let himself get confused. He’d learned firsthand that his captive was the enemy during their first two run-ins, and he wasn’t sure why he was suddenly acting as if he’d forgotten.
There was only one way for this to end.
11
“N-no more.” Sweat plastered her hair to her neck. Her wrists rattled her chains. Her body so hot and desperate she could barely form words.
A thousand times he wound her body to a fever pitch.
A thousand times he brought her to the edge of white-hot need.
A thousand times he took his touch away, hurtling her back to the ground with a brutal crash.
“Begging won’t help.” Like before, his fingers moved faster, his caresses relentless.
She’d hoped to become used to the sensation of touch by now. Instead, the opposite was happening. Her hunger was growing.
She’d woken from her daze to find him staring over her, his expression hard. It almost felt as if something had changed, but what could have? She’d been out for mere moments.
He’d given her water—an unexpected surprise—and felt her pulse and she’d almost begun to wonder if she had somehow gained a respite, until he seized her wrists and strung her up once more, so high she balanced on her tiptoes.
He’d rearranged his ropes around her body—and so the sensations were different, too. This time, he’d overlapped the fibers across her breasts so they lifted upward and out, the press of the ropes and the rush of blood flow making her breasts exquisitely tender, and shamefully sensitive to every tug and caress. He’d roped her bottom too, spreading her cheeks wide and leaving her rosebud open to the air, and the brush of his fingertips.
She shivered. It was bliss. It was torment.
“You ready to tell me what I want to know?” One finger gently traced the curve of her jaw.
His other hand pumped between her thighs.
Panting, frantic, helpless to resist, her hips moved to the rhythm he set. Her body primed, her woman’s center so wet and slick, his drenched fingers slid easily through her folds.
Every muscle tightened, the base of her spine tingling as pleasure coiled in her belly and—
His hand lifted away.
“No!” Like a rope snapped, her body twitched and shook. Emptiness filled her.
The need to end the agony gripped her hard. The words he demanded to hear—the location of the females and information about the weapon—rattled in her throat.
She forced the confessions back down.
A rough hand grabbed her chin, forcing her head up. Her hair fell away from her face and for an instant she thought she saw sympathy, maybe even regret in his stare, but it disappeared, replaced by the same cold glare. “So stubborn. Even the strongest of creatures have their breaking point, and I can tell we’re close to yours.”
His hand left her chin. Her head dropped, her neck too exhausted to hold her up.
Except, before she could recover, his hands were back, toying with her nipples. Ratcheting her need higher.
“So thirsty.” The water he’d given her had long since ceased to suffice.
“You want to drink more. Tell me where the females are.”
“I-I need make water.” A small flash of shame shot through her at the admission, proving she hadn’t lost all her sense of pride. Yet.
“Hold it. The urge to pee only makes the arousal more intense.”
She bit back a howl. “You are as bad as Talg say. I wish you to the Void.”
“You respond like this to everyone you wish dead?”
“I-I don’t know. I never feel anything like this. No one ever touch me skin-to-skin before.”
Strong fingers tangled in her hair, jerking her dazed gaze to his. “What did you just say?”
Panic slammed through her. What had she said? She was so dazed and lost to the hunger, she hadn’t even realized she’d spoken aloud.
His hold tightened. “Explain the meaning of your last statement.”
She shivered in her binds.
His gaze narrowed, that probing glare taking in everything she fought to hide. “That sounded like truth.”
Horror slammed through her.
She wasn’t a good deceiver. She had no practice at it.
Because she was Gazi, Talg kept her isolated. Pack was not supposed to look at her or talk to her without permission. The anazi a reminder to all that she was not one of them.
Only Talg, strengthened by the Ancients, spoke or interacted with her directly, and even he had never tou
ched her skin-to-skin. He slapped, pinched, and forced himself inside her, but always with some block between his skin and hers.
“Shit.” Her captor reared back, whatever he read in her expression shifting his to shock. “You’re not lying. It is true.” His hands fisted by his sides. “I knew something wasn’t adding up. But to never have been touched… Who would do that to you?”
He knew nothing. Understood nothing. Swallowing hard, she looked away.
There was a long pause. Then a curse. “Dragath hells.” He spun. Paced to the end of the cave.
It was enough to pull her from her own shame and fury.
She watched in fascination. She’d never seen her captor in anything but complete control before.
He stood with his back to her, shoulders tensed. He plowed a hand through his hair, blowing out a long breath. Then, without warning, he swiveled, his long legs eating up the distance until he was looming over her. “Tell me who you are.”
“W-why you care? N-nothing to do with females or weapon.”
“Tell me.”
She could try and lie, but he always seemed to know. Plus, no one had ever wanted to know before. No one had ever cared.
“I am Gazi.” There. She’d admitted it aloud.
She waited for his recoil.
His forehead wrinkled instead. “Gazi? What is that?”
Her heart beat fast. Could he truly not know? Was it so easy to leave her shame behind?
The silence stretched.
Jaw tight, he studied her. “You’re telling me something important, but I don’t know enough yet to understand.”
If it was up to her he never would.
His nostrils flared as if he scented her veiled defiance. “If you don’t answer the fucking question, I’ll start back up and I won’t stop until you’re so riled up you beg for my cock.”
She shivered at the thought, and the part of her that ached for him to do just that. “Gazi means unnamed.”
“Unnamed?” A muscle ticked in his jaw as he turned her words over in his mind. She could tell the exact moment he put two and two together. Two red spots flashed high on his cheekbones.
“Are you telling me you don’t have an actual name?”
“Yes.”
His chest rose and fell faster. “What did your pack call you when you were born? What do your friends call you now?”
She could tell he was looking for a way to discount her claim.
Her tongue ghosted over lips gone dry and cracked. She did not recognize the word friends, but she knew the answer to his first question. “I always known as Unnamed, or Gazi.”
“Are you part of some religious order?” His questions came quick. “I remember reading about one back on Old Earth that didn’t speak the name of those they worshipped out of respect.” He shook his head as if displeased with his own idea, his voice dropping as he spoke to himself. “But if you were so precious to them, why would they leave you alone and unprotected? That can’t be it.”
It was too many rushed, rumbled words at once. She’d lost the meaning.
He didn’t seem to notice.
He paced the length of the cave before returning to grip her chin, his gaze drilling into hers. “There was also a tribe that required several rituals through adolescence before they allowed their people to take an official name.” He blew out a breath. “I’m reaching here…”
“My origin fixed.” From the way her captor and the others were chained, beaten, and used at 223’s camp, she’d been certain they must have a Gazi caste or something similar among their pack, just as existed in hers. “Never be changed. I never be other than Gazi.”
His gaze drilled into her, his frustration obvious. “We’re talking in circles.”
She shrugged. It seemed clear enough to her.
But something was changing in the air, something that left her captor agitated, and she didn’t understand it at all.
He ran another hand down his jaw, his movement brisk and troubled. “You’re not at all what I thought you were, are you?”
How could she know what he thought she was? It was so nonsensical it made her wonder if the curse was actually working now. Was her capture finally succumbing as Talg had predicted? The thought did not please her as much as it should.
A loud click. One manacle slid open, then the next. Her arms were no longer suspended. Her feet landed fully on the dirt.
She could barely absorb the shift. What had happened?
Firm fingers dug into the tight flesh at her shoulders. “This will feel good.”
Since when did an Other want that for someone else?
She bucked against his hold, but with her ankles bound and her body spent, there was little force behind it.
He stilled her easily, one corded forearm wrapping around her waist and checking her in place. “Behave, wild thing.” His gruff voice was all command. “This is not meant to wind you up, but to bring you down.”
She had no idea what half his rumbled words meant or why he was suddenly being gentle. Still, closing her eyes, she surrendered to the firm pressure of his touch, trying to distance her mind as his thick fingers worked away the twinges at her shoulders and the steady pressure calmed the fire between her thighs.
Despite herself, her breathing slowed, the throbbing heat mellowing with every forceful knead. Even now, he knew exactly how to touch her.
“Better?” His warm breath rasped against her cheek.
She bit back a howl. Because no, nothing about this was better.
Yes, the terrible mind-stealing burn was dulling to a low flame, but something equally as troubling was filling her chest instead.
No one had ever tended to her before. His caretaking marked her deeper than the rough snap of his rope or the devastating touch of his hand.
The starving, half-mad part of her surged, trembling and needy, toward the new experience. She craved more.
Unmoored, she tried to pull away. “I-I am in comfort now.”
“Good.” Crouching, he released one ankle chain. “I like your phrasings. You make my language sound a lot prettier than it is.”
A swell of something unfamiliar. Pride. It hadn’t been easy to learn the Other language. No one in her pack spoke it as well as she. They thought it was beneath them to learn. She’d had no choice. Not if she wanted to survive trading with the Others and save her people. “Th-thank you.”
That single word seemed to push him over the edge.
He shot back to standing, looming above. “Fuck protocol. Everyone should have a name. Choose one.”
Her startled gaze flew to his. “A name only for those who—"
“Choose or I’ll do it for you.” His voice snapped with command.
“Why you do this?” She might have been trained to obey without question, but she’d always had rebellious thoughts running through her mind, and for once, here with a non-pack-member, she would find the courage to voice them.
“Maybe it’s just what we savages do.”
In truth, she had always wanted a name. She’d given Sharluff one in a show of defiance and with the secret wish that, like her ostracized pet, she would one rotation have someone defy the curse and call her something besides Gazi. See her as something besides an abomination. After touch, after acceptance, it had been her greatest longing.
How strange that, like so many wishes she’d never voiced out loud, her captor would end up being the one to provide her with it.
“Decide.”
A far-off memory prodded her mind. “In…in early seasons” the image flickered and solidified, “the sister of my birth-bearer give me name Nayla. A secret between us, unknown to Talg.” The reminder that someone had once cared enough to believe she was worthy of a name squeezed her lungs and pressed down on her chest. It…been long time, but I like that. I only few planetary seasons old when sister join birth-bearer in the Void and I alone again.”
Her captor’s scowl deepened and she feared she’d displeased him. When he spoke,
however, his words were kind. “I’m sorry about your birth-bearer and her sister. Sorry you were left alone.”
She looked at the ground. No one had ever said such things to her before. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Nayla.” The name sounded exotic in his guttural tones. “Your birth-bearer’s sister gave you a beautiful name.”
She swayed on her feet. Acknowledgment. Recognition. Respect. She had not understood how much it would mean to be greeted with a name until it happened.
His palm smacked his chest. “I’m Grif.”
Still in a near daze, she mouthed the strong, sharp sound. A name as aggressive and guttural as the man himself.
“Say it out loud.”
Her gaze flew to his. His hard stare was locked on her mouth, his look no longer gentle.
She swallowed. “Gre-ff.” The sound came out huskier than intended. She liked saying his name. As Gazi, she did not usually have the privilege.
He growled, the circle of black in the middle of his eyes expanding so wide it nearly swallowed the green whole. She recognized the look. She’d seen it enough on Talg’s face before he commanded her to her knees.
Shock slammed through her. Until now, she’d thought she was the only one lost to the fires her captor ignited.
She’d been wrong. The savage wanted her. Just as much as he’d made her ache for him.
Her body swayed toward her tormentor. “Gre-ff…”
He stiffened, dropping the hand that had been rising toward her.
“Fuck me.” He took a step back. “You, wild thing, are a complication I don’t need.”
12
Grif set the last bit of camouflage on top of his snare and stepped away, his future dinner—a creature that reminded him of a cross between a New Earth rat and a chicken—dangling over his shoulder.
He’d left Nayla chained back at the cave with the excuse that he was going to look for dinner and her beast, Sharluff. In truth, he just needed some fucking air.
