by Emma Castle
“Like sweet wine.” He lowered himself over her, and before she was ready, he laid his mouth over her core.
His tongue teased her, keeping her prisoner to the sweetest pleasure she’d ever felt. He licked her clit as though it were a ripe berry and swiped boldly at her with his tongue. She’d never really understood why they called it being “eaten out,” but she felt it now, the way he was consuming all of her in that moment, heart, body, and soul. All of it seemed pulled together into the epicenter between her thighs. Her fingers roamed through his hair, the silky thickness of the strands tickling her skin.
“You like that, honey? You like my tongue inside you?” His eyes met hers, and her body leaped with a sharp pang of hunger, and then at something more.
“Oh fuck!” she hissed as a climax shot through her, shattering her. She went limp on the desk, with no strength left in her thighs to pull them together.
“Still want me?” Seth asked in a husky voice.
She nodded weakly, wanting to die from pleasure as she imagined how good it would feel to have him ramming inside her while she still quaked with the aftershocks of an orgasm. “Yes. God, yes. No condom. I’m clean and on the pill.”
“I’m clean too.” He unzipped his jeans, and her eyes widened at the sight of him. He wasn’t just big. He was too big.
She tried to sit up. “Wait…”
“Easy,” he whispered and chuckled as he moved between her thighs again. “We’ll go slow. You can take me, Queenie. Trust me.”
“Okay,” she sighed as he cupped her face with one hand, and then he captured her lips with his. He guided his cock with his other hand and pushed inside. She didn’t mean to, but she tensed and panted as the stretching invasion made her whimper, and she bit his lip by accident.
“Sorry!” she gasped, but he moved his mouth to her neck and murmured for her to relax.
There was a sharp pain as he gave her a love bite. No, wait—it was more than that. And then…then the world was spinning, and she fell over the edge into bliss as Seth thrust deep inside her. Their hips collided as he sank deep into her. She screamed in ecstasy, but he silenced her with a dirty kiss that only made her need him more.
“Hang on, honey,” he warned, then started fucking her, raw, hard, like he needed to pound them together like two metals burning hot against one another in a blacksmith’s forge.
She struggled to breathe, but each breath escaped her lips as a desperate cry for more. She dug her fingers into his shoulders, clawing at him as he plunged into her. This primal joining seemed to go on forever, and she didn’t want it to stop. Her muscles clamped down around his shaft, trying to draw him in deeper. Each stroke, each piston of his hips was better than the last, until it was all too much. Her body overloaded and she came, stars in her eyes. For a second their faces were inches apart. His blue eyes seemed tinged with gold, and he licked his bloody lips. Why was there blood on his lips? Wait, the bite…
He bucked and roared her name as he released himself deep inside her. She shuddered beneath him as he thrust into her a few more times, his body shaking, before she drifted to sleep on the desk. The last sensation she had was of him leaning over her, still buried inside her as he licked the tender throbbing spot on her neck.
5
Harper’s blood on his tongue was the most intoxicating rush he’d ever experienced. It felt like his body was vibrating with new power and deep, carnal longings that were a mix of lusting for blood and the intimacy of Harper’s body. But a small part of him was being ripped apart with guilt as well. Between claiming her body and tasting her blood, he had made a terrible mistake. He knew many Krinar could taste human blood and enjoy the highs given from human strangers, but now that he knew Harper, and was fascinated by her taste, touch, and thoughts, she was irresistible. There was no way he would ever let her go now.
She belonged to him. Sef would just have to face that new reality.
He would take her as his charl, and if she tried to resist, he would fuck her just like this, giving her such pleasure that she would never want to leave him. He would spoil her rotten, give her everything she wanted. How could she say no to that? The thought made him grin as he placed a kiss on her neck. She sighed and murmured something dreamily as he pulled out of her, but he knew his saliva was now in her bloodstream, making her high, for lack of a better word. She would be tired for a few hours and need to rest.
The drugging effects of Krinar saliva had evolved as a means to subdue the lonar, a primate species on their home world of Krina. The lonar possessed a crucial hemoglobin in their blood that the Krinar lacked in sufficient quantities but needed to survive. And the Krinar had survived, excelled even, as the lonar had declined. They had developed a synthetic substitute, but other contingencies had been planned for long ago, including interfering in the development of other species. Humans had evolved from one such mission, perhaps their most successful one. The similarity in lonar and human blood made sucking from a human an intoxicating rush.
He swore he could feel his own blood sing as he licked his lips, but he forced himself to focus on caring for his female. He carried her off the desk and over to the couch that stretched along one side of the office wall perpendicular to her desk. He covered her with a fleece blanket and placed a small pillow beneath her head. Her strawberry-blonde hair had escaped her ponytail during their frenzied mating, and he brushed it out of her face.
“Seth,” she murmured, though her eyes remained closed.
“I’m here.”
Her eyes opened, and he knelt down by her face.
“What we did, I’ve never done that. I mean sex, sure, but we’re strangers. I don’t just do that, you know?” She yawned, covering her mouth with a fist. Fuck, she was adorable.
“We aren’t strangers, Queenie. We’re friends.” He had rarely used that word to describe a female, but it was true. She was a friend. In this short amount of time, he’d been more himself than he’d ever been, even though he was pretending to be someone else.
She yawned again. “Friends?”
“Yes.” He stroked a fingertip down her nose, and her lips curved in a smile.
“Wake me in an hour then, will you, pal?” she asked, her eyes closing again.
Sef smirked. “Of course.” He had no intention of waking her. She still needed time to get over the effects of his saliva. The first exposure was always the strongest. He had also felt the calluses on her hands and seen how exhausted she had been last night. No, he was going to let her sleep. He would finish her work for her so she might have the evening off.
He left her in her office to sleep and returned to the auto shop.
“Where’s Harper?” Ruby stood from her desk, giving him a clear once-over.
“In her office resting. Please don’t wake her. I’ll take care of her work today.”
“I bet you will, handsome.” Ruby chuckled and sat back down at her desk. Ruby was quiet for a long while, watching him as he finished. The press of her gaze on the back of his head put his nerves on edge. Finally, when he faced Ruby, instead of smiling she was coldly serious.
“See, the thing is, if you hurt her, in any way, it won’t be her brothers you have to worry about. Harper is special.”
Sef wiped his hands, dropped the hood down on the Ford F150, and came over to Ruby’s desk.
“I know. I’ve never met anyone like her.” Not on Krina or Earth, he added silently.
He eyed the paperwork on the desk in front of Ruby and saw several notes scattered with poorly scribbled handwriting. It didn’t match the clean-cut precision of the paper Ruby was writing on. Sef picked up one of the notes, trying to read it. It looked something like human shorthand, but it wasn’t.
“Ruby, is something wrong? She didn’t want me seeing her handwriting last night. I sensed it really upset her.” He stared at the human woman before him, unleashing the full intensity of his focus on her.
Ruby’s gaze darted away from him. “She…doesn’t like talking abou
t it.”
“Ruby, I don’t want to hurt her, but if I don’t understand this”—he waved a little scrap of paper in the air—“then I might hurt her accidentally.”
Ruby exhaled, and then in a very quiet voice she said, “Harper has a severe case of dyslexia. She’s always had trouble reading and writing, but she’s a genius.”
“What do you mean by genius?”
“Well, like this for instance.” Ruby opened her desk drawer and pulled out several rolled-up blueprints. She unrolled one on her desk, and it set his heart racing. The blueprint showed clear designs for a flying spacecraft. It was similar to the technology used by the Krinar. Harper had written some equations, messily, that relied on antigravity force field technology.
“She’s been working on these the last few years, based on what little information she’s been able to get about the Ks’ ships. I mean, there’s a whole station that does nothing but theorize and speculate about how their stuff works. She has an instinct for what bits are bunk and which are on the money. She understands the science, but she can’t write the formulas without help, and no one in Lawrence is smart enough to help her. And because of her condition, she can’t exactly chat with other folks on the forums about it. That’s why she’s stuck in the shop all day. I do my best to help, but I never got past calculus in school myself, so…” She blushed. “But Harper, even though she faced tough times growing up, she’s really intelligent. I bet you anything she wished she was working on these all day instead. But it’s just not in the cards, you know?” Ruby waved at the little Post-its scattered on the desk. “I swear I can’t read what she writes most of the time. I think it hurts her too much to even write these few notes.”
The image of her face, the look of terror when the asshole from the bar had demanded she write his order down, and her reluctance to give him her notepad all made sense. She didn’t want him to know about her dyslexia.
“But she can draw?” he asked, looking down at the blueprints again.
“Yes, quite well.”
Sef examined the ship’s sleek design. The mechanical components were simple, uncomplicated, and full of understated brilliance. Granted, there were gaps in her knowledge, assumptions that had been made on how K technology worked, but still… If she didn’t suffer from dyslexia, she might make some incredible inventions, ones his people would be thrilled to help her bring to life.
“These look like Krinar ships.” His guardian training put him somewhat on edge, wondering if perhaps she had been given access to forbidden tech to be this close to being right.
“She’s obsessed with their tech, watches everything she can on YouTube about it. Harper can’t stop talking about their designs. She watches all of the news on them, though she has to turn it off when Mason and Liam are around.”
“Not K friendly?” he asked, keeping his tone casual.
“Mason and Liam?” Ruby snorted. “You could say that. Can’t blame them, though, what with losing their parents the way they did. Boys don’t handle tragedy well. Women, we either cry or we bury it so deep it never surfaces again. Boys, they bottle it up in a way that when they get shaken too much they just explode.” Ruby made an exploding motion with her hands.
“I suppose that’s true.” Sef couldn’t help but think of the way Harper had clung to him last night, the way she’d cried.
It was so clear to him now that something inside her had finally struggled to the surface, all because she’d responded to him. He’d wanted to show her tenderness, show her that he was capable of protecting and caring for her. Her tears would have been viewed as a weakness to most males, especially humans, but to him, it was evidence of a strong heart, one which bore such great pain but could also feel great joy. Sef wanted to give her a million reasons to feel such joy—he just had to find a way.
Ruby hastily rolled the blueprints back up and tucked them into the bottom left drawer of the desk. “I should put these back.”
“Thank you for showing them to me.” He glanced at the door that led to Harper’s office. “I suppose I should wake her up.”
Ruby chuckled.
“Do what you need to, handsome. I’ll be heading home. I’ll lock up.”
Sef thanked her again and entered Harper’s office. She was still asleep, and would be for hours. He grinned and carefully scooped her up, blanket and all, and carried her back to her apartment.
He then went to shower and change for tonight’s shift at the bar. Once he was clean, he sat down in a chair and pulled up the hologram footage of the bar. He sped through several feeds until he saw Mason and Liam entering the storeroom alone. He slowed the playback down to real time. The brothers were speaking quietly, so he increased the volume.
“He wants to meet tonight?” Mason asked. Liam double-checked that the storeroom was empty before he answered.
“Yeah. He sent an encrypted message an hour ago. But…” Liam’s face darkened.
“But?” Mason asked.
“But this feels like one step too far for me. He’s a radical. We want freedom from the Ks. He wants them dead, and he doesn’t care about collateral damage. I don’t think we should work with him.”
Mason crossed his arms and leaned back against the storeroom door. “That bad, huh?”
“Worse.”
“Then fuck him. We aren’t going to get rid of monsters by becoming monsters. But…”
“But?” Liam prompted.
“What if it turns out there is no other way? I don’t want to speak lightly of it, but what if we have no other option?”
“You can’t be serious.”
“The Ks have no reason to listen to us waving signs and distributing leaflets. They can do pretty much whatever they want, whenever they want. The only way they’ll leave is if we’re too much trouble for them to bother sticking around.”
Sef zoomed in on Mason, seeing the concern on his face. For a moment Sef wavered in his determination to expose and capture them. These men simply wanted freedom, but they were going to align themselves with far more dangerous men.
“Thing is, if we’re on the inside, we can steer them away from their crazier ideas. Try to get them to focus on the chaos and not the casualties. Let’s just hear them out before we decide to give them the boot or not,” Mason said to Liam. “He’ll be here at four in the morning.”
Liam frowned. “I don’t like it, but fine. I’ll tell the others.”
Sef stopped the feed and sent a copy of the conversation to Arus. A few minutes later his friend contacted him, his face hovering in a crystal-clear hologram.
“I viewed the recording. How do you wish to proceed?”
“I wish to monitor the situation further. We need to know the identity of the man the King brothers intend to meet. He sounds like a far more dangerous threat, and we need to know how many others he has ready to support his cause. I will keep you informed.”
“And their sister? You’ve made no reports on her.” Arus’s astute observations made Sef frown.
“I am monitoring her as well, but she doesn’t seem to harbor anti-K tendencies like her brothers. Her file stated her parents died during the initial resistance when we arrived on Earth. A bridge was bombed with them on it. Can you find out more about them? It may help me with the brothers.”
“I can look into it,” Arus said.
“Good.” Sef paused, thinking of Harper’s blueprints. Arus didn’t miss his hesitation.
“What else do you want to tell me?”
“It’s the girl. She’s…” How could he describe Harper? She was brave, brilliant, compassionate, tempting…
“Yes?”
“She has a neurological condition called dyslexia. A rather severe form, I understand. Could you have someone research it? She is a brilliant mechanical engineer. I think we could find her useful.”
“For a human, I’m sure she is. But useful to us? How?”
“She seems to have an uncanny understanding of our technology. Some of her insights are s
o accurate I assumed she somehow had gained access to our ships, but they’re based on little more than secondhand observations.”
“That seems highly unlikely.”
“I agree. But there is an untapped potential there worth exploring. I believe that if I could help her with her dyslexia, she might be able to work alongside Korum.” Korum was a master inventor and a good friend of his. If it turned out Harper could be trusted, she might be of value to his people and hers.
“Interesting.” Arus stroked his chin. “I suppose if she’s as gifted as you say, she could help bridge relations with the humans. I will speak with our doctors about what we know about dyslexia and forward whatever information I find about the King parents.”
“Thank you, Arus.” Sef ended the call and readied himself for work.
Tonight he would find a way to distract Harper while his cameras recorded the meeting her brothers hosted. She would be none the wiser. While this should have put him at ease, instead it left a lingering tension coiled like a snake ready to strike. He was not betraying Harper, he told himself. He didn’t owe her anything…or did he?
He’d drunk her blood, had claimed her body in the most primal way possible, and an invisible bond had begun to form between them. The thought scared him, but it also fascinated him. He suspected this was why his brother had reacted so madly when it came to his human, Bianca. The need to protect, to possess, to pleasure Harper grew steadily stronger within him, and he could not see a way to stop it or even slow it down.
We are bound, Queenie. Bound by the body…and perhaps much more.
6
Late-afternoon sunlight warmed Harper’s skin, and she stretched out on her bed and smiled. The fragments of the most wonderful dream still clung to her, shimmering like the effervescent strands of a magical web.
She lay on the back of the truck bed, the sun heating her body as she watched the clouds move above her. They changed and morphed as she watched them. Soft, sensual lips were at her neck, pressing teasing kisses against her. Her lover chuckled as she squirmed beneath his tender seduction.
