by Lynnea Lee
A Promise for Vore - Tallean Mercenaries
Book Three
By Lynnea Lee
Copyright © 2020 Lynnea Lee
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, or used in whole or in part, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction and the characters and incidents found within are products of the author’s imagination and are used fictiously. Any resemblance to persons, living or deceased, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Contents
Contents
Promise for Vore
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
EPILOGUE
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ALSO BY AUTHOR
Promise for Vore
She hated him the moment they met.
Burned by love, Lettie is finally ready to date again after a long, self-imposed hiatus from men. But Vore is everything Lettie abhors. The arrogant prick with his big—um, ah—ego is a self-proclaimed ladies’ man and totally not her type. And her body totally doesn’t tingle every time he flashes her his fangs. Nope!
“Love them and leave them.”
That’s what Vore has always said. Why play with feelings when the females he meets only think of mercenaries as one-night stands? Vore lives for the chase, so when the tiniest human female he had ever met tells him off and claims he’s not her type, Vore takes it as a challenge to get her in his bed. And Vore always gets what he wants!
With only a few days before his ship leaves the colony for the next mission, will Vore be able to win Lettie’s heart and teach her to love again? Or will he steal her away and force her to satisfy the mating bond?
CHAPTER ONE
Lettie knocked her head on the soft side of the cubicle in frustration as she tried to make sense of the alien glyphs on the screen. Whoever created this language must have been drunk. Her translator took care of the spoken language but did nothing for written words. Many of the jobs available on Reka 5—the colony she was dropped off at after a lucky escape from a Dominion slave ship—required basic literacy. So, she was stuck learning to read a new language the old-fashioned way.
The deep, sexy voice sounded again from a few cubicles over. Lettie closed her eyes and huffed. How was she going to learn anything when lover boy over there was trying to get his mack on in the middle of the public computer lab? She didn’t know what he looked like, but Lettie hated him by his voice alone. That growly voice was much too distracting! Besides, who the hell picked up girls in a computer lab?
Wishing she had her iPod and some noise-canceling headphones, Lettie tried to focus back on the icons on her screen. She recognized the numbers that made up her comm contact and her personal id; she had memorized them on her first day here. But the rest looked like gibberish.
A deep, core-tingling chuckle sounded, distracting her from her task. God! How could a little laugh be so maddening? Lover boy was steadily dialing up the charm. Lettie took a few deep breaths, counting to ten.
Thou shalt not tell him off. Thou shalt not tell him off, she repeated to herself.
A light hum followed by the faintest of growls reached her ears.
Okay, I’m telling him off.
Against her better judgment, Lettie stood, clearing her throat. “Hey Casanova, will you tone it down with the flirting? Some of us are trying to work here.”
Casanova stood and gave her a questioning look. Damn, he was hot, too—broad shoulders, tall, and extremely well-built, even for a Tallean male. Thick lashes framed his green eyes. Most Tallean men—Lettie found it hard to refer to them as males, though she knew they preferred it—wore their dark brown or black hair long and tied back, but Casanova’s caramel brown hair was cut short. One strand tousled carelessly forward to frame his tanned, chiseled face. He was the epitome of sex-on-a-stick. Lettie hated him even more.
“Yes you, pretty boy, who else is trying to pick up chicks here?” Lettie placed her hands on her hips and adopted her best yes-I’m-being-a-bitch stance. “Why don’t you go to a bar or something? I can’t concentrate with you growling and chuckling every few seconds.”
Instead of getting pissed at her, Casanova smiled, rounded the corner, and took the few steps over to enter her cubicle. Damn, he was big! A thrill of excitement pounded against her chest as he invaded her personal space. His powerful body towering over her was both frightening and arousing. It wasn’t fair! Why did her body react to the worst of men!
Lettie ignored the involuntary instinct to retreat and ordered her feet to stand their ground. She wasn’t about to let a little posturing get to her, even if a perfect body did that posturing.
He took a sniff, and his lips twitched up at a corner. His eyes turned predatory.
Shit. Didn’t they say that Talleans had a fantastic sense of smell and could easily detect both fear and arousal? What did she get herself into now? The last thing she needed was Mr. Sexy-Voice-Hot-Body to make a play at her. Lettie had no trucks with players. She avoided them like the plague.
“Look, boys!” an angry voice boomed in English. “It’s that alien freak that’s been fucking around with our women!”
While many of the humans already living on Reka 5 were alien friendly, some new citizens were not. The latest bunch of displaced Earthlings had been taken from Earth recently and freed before they could experience a life of slavery. Being from this group, Lettie was grateful for her narrow escape. She appreciated the opportunity to rebuild her life here on Reka 5. But it seemed some were less enthused and just wanted to start trouble.
“Yea,” another voice retorted. He pounded his fist into his palm like he was some bad guy in a movie. “That’s him. Let’s waste him!”
Casanova rolled his eyes. But before turning to face his opponents, he grabbed Lettie’s jaw softly in his hands and tipped it up towards his. A shiver went through her with the intimate gesture, and her mouth went dry. The skin where his fingers touched burned with awareness.
“Let me take care of these troublemakers. I’ll take care of you later, beautiful. I promise.”
He flashed her a grin, displaying his fangs. They looked simultaneously sensual and deadly, and Lettie felt another stirring in her center. Yup, she hated him. This Tallean was nothing but trouble.
“Don’t bother, Casanova. You’re not my type.”
Stepping away from her cubicle, Casanova turned to face the new contender. He stood a little taller and looked down cockily at the three men that challenged him.
“We don’t take kindly to your type stealing our women!”
“Why don’t we take this outside? I love a good fight, but let’s not destroy this equipment. And I’m sure you wouldn’t want these females here to see me beat your asses.”
The first man who had spoken didn’t wait. He took a swing at the alien, trying to draw first blood. Casanova evaded the shot readily, moving away fr
om the computers.
And the fight was on. The other two men jumped into the fray, quite literally. They charged at Casanova and jumped on him simultaneously. He swiped one aside and ducked to avoid the other.
By now, many of the others in the lab were vacating the area to avoid getting caught up in the fight. Lettie signed out of her terminal and joined the mass exodus, eager to leave the violence behind. She knew she should have left the area entirely, but she couldn’t help but watch the fight from behind the glass once outside the lab.
Evolved from predators, Talleans were a sight to behold when fighting. The three men who had picked the fight were no spring chickens, either. They were big burly men, most likely thugs and brawlers back on Earth. They had thought three on one was a fair fight. But next to the lethal grace of the alien fighter, they looked sluggish and untrained.
One attacker circled behind Casanova, trying to find a better vantage. Another produced a piece of metal from behind his back; they had come ready to cause trouble. The man with the weapon attacked first, running in with the pipe swinging. He aimed for the alien’s head. Casanova dodged easily and grabbed the arm holding the offending weapon. He twisted the man’s arm behind his back and held his attacker in front of him. Just then, another man swung out wildly with a fist. Instead of landing on its intended target, the punch hit the first man in the face, knocking him out. The weapon, already dangling uselessly behind his back, clattered to the ground.
“It’s not very sporting bringing a weapon to a fistfight,” Casanova admonished. He danced to the side, avoiding a kick from the third assailant. Then the alien kicked the weapon away and dumped the unconscious man on the ground.
“You nasty aliens are tainting our women.” The man spat on the ground. “We should kill you!”
Clearly, Casanova had been busy with the human women on Reka 5.
The man picked up a chair and swung it at the alien. Again, tall, dark and handsome dodged it effortlessly then directed the momentum of the chair and man towards a wall. They landed with a crash. A bystander, a younger human man, went to straddle the thug.
“I’ll keep this one down, you take care of the last asshole,” the young human shouted. “I hate when other humans give us a bad name.”
The last troublemaker, seeing both his friends down for the count, made a hasty retreat. But Casanova was faster. He blocked the escape route and immobilized his last foe.
“Security will want to have a word with you. Keep this up, and they’ll kick you off the colony.”
All threats neutralized, Casanova glanced towards the window to the lab, searching for something. Their eyes met, and he smiled a satisfied smile.
Oh, crud. Instead of using the distraction to get away from Casanova, Lettie had wasted her time watching the display of raw athleticism. Now he knew she stayed to watch him.
A Tallean in a security guard uniform pushed past the crowd at the entrance and into the lab.
“Aw shit, Vore. Why?” the guard exclaimed incredulously. “You know how much I hate paperwork!” He didn’t look particularly upset, though. “You need to stay to fill out a statement. We’ve been having trouble with this group recently, and the more we have on them, the faster we can boot them out of the colony.”
Casanova had a name: Vore.
With the guard keeping Vore busy, Lettie made a quick escape. She didn’t plan on sticking around to be the next notch on his bedpost. Lettie was done with players and womanizers, especially the good-looking ones who knew their effect on women. Those were the worst.
She’d fallen for that type once and lost six years of her youth to a supposedly reformed player. It turned out he wasn’t very reformed at all. Her ex had cheated on her the entire six years they were together. After that revelation, she had taken herself off the market. She’d been voluntarily single for two years.
Lettie had horrible taste in men. She knew this and didn’t trust herself not to fuck up again. Take her body’s reaction to Vore just now, for example. It was unacceptable. He was a man-whore, plain and simple. And despite knowing this, her body still reacted like a sex-starved hussy. Totally unacceptable!
But now that she was out of sight, Lettie was sure she was also out of mind. Vore would forget about her soon and focus on the next pretty girl that walked his way.
Deciding to have her dinner early to avoid the dinner time rush, she made her way to the cafeteria. Reka 5 provided new colonists with essentials, such as food and housing, for the first two years, as long as they worked on becoming functioning and productive members of society. She had lucked out when she was rescued and dropped off here instead of at an auction.
When she’d first been taken from Earth, she’d gone through the same thing everyone else had. Anger, denial, tears. But tears, she knew, wouldn’t get her anywhere. Lettie was a realist.
Lettie took her meal to-go and made her way to a quiet spot behind the new colonist dorms. After the excitement of the fight, she needed some quiet time alone to recharge, a luxury when living with a roommate inside a busy dormitory. She had found this little oasis of calm behind the dorm on her second day here. Shaded under the canopy of a tree, she sat to eat her dinner.
Vore cursed to himself as the little female took off. He would have to catch up with her after he gave Holden his statement.
The female he had initially been talking to was pretty and reacted well to him. But her reaction was nothing like the wall of passion and energy rolling off the firecracker who had told him off. The first female was a single flower, faintly enticing. The second was an entire field abloom, asphyxiating him with desire.
He had gotten right up close to her, and she hadn't backed down despite the scent of fear hitting his nose. The smell of fear mingled with arousal. Scarlet. Her name was Scarlet. He had leaned in to read the id displayed on the screen of the public terminal she was using.
Scarlet was tiny. She was the smallest grown human he had ever met, and humans were already little compared to Talleans. His friend, Arus, was seeing a human female. And while Mia was short, she could still look over Scarlet’s head. Vore had gone to the bathhouse yesterday with Arus and Mia. Mia had brought her friend, Sala, along, and Vore had gone over to Sala after. But as always, it was clear that Sala was only looking for a one-night stand.
Vore was used to that. Females usually had no interest in a mercenary beyond a casual fling. Unless, of course, the mercenary had already made his fortune. Then the females flocked in, ready to settle with an older male for a partnership of convenience. That wasn’t Vore. He still had many years left and didn’t plan on quitting anytime soon. So Vore had come to terms with the reality that his life would be filled with flings and one-night stands—never more.
He leaned into the lifestyle, acting for all the world like the stereotypical playboy, always on the hunt for new flesh and new fights. Vore was good at it. Too good. Sometimes he didn’t know if the person was indeed him or if it was just a facade.
“That’s about it.” The human male who helped hold Vore’s second attacker down finished giving his statement.
“Anything you need to add, Vore?”
“No.” Vore just wanted to get out of here and find Scarlet.
“Next time try to get them outside before you fight them. You are lucky you missed all the terminals.”
“It wasn’t just luck that none of the terminals were destroyed. I made an effort to throw them away from the equipment. As for getting them outside, I tried. They weren’t keen on the wait.”
“They never are. Alright, we are good here. Thanks for your help.” Holden waved him off.
Vore left the computer lab, following Scarlet’s scent. The trail went into the cafeteria, but a quick look inside showed that she was no longer there. She must have taken her meal to her room. He picked up another trail and followed it out of the dorms and around to the back of the building.
Scarlet was sitting alone in the shade of a tree, eatin
g her meal. A pair of plastic glasses perched on her nose; they sat a bit crooked and looked adorable. She wore her dark hair bundled in a knot at the back of her head. Instead of using the fork that many humans preferred, she used Tallean-styled tongs. She was utterly oblivious to his approach, and Vore snuck right behind her before he spoke.
“Hello, beautiful.”
“Eeeeek!” A morsel of food in her tongs flew up into the air. “Holy crap, you scared me!” Then she turned to look at him, and she seemed to deflate. “Oh, it’s you again.” She picked up another piece of food and continued to eat as if he wasn’t there.
Vore didn’t like the way she drooped when she recognized him. Perhaps he was mistaken, and she was not interested in him after all. “I promised to take care of you afterward, didn’t I. I always keep my promises, Scarlet.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “How do you know my name?”
“It was on your computer screen.”
“Oh. So, let’s not waste each other's time, okay? I’m not interested in you, Vore. You aren’t my type.”
Now it was Vore’s turn to narrow his eyes, but she continued, “And before you ask, the guard called you by your name.”
Scarlet had stayed long enough to watch the fight and catch and remember his name. This was promising. Her words said she was not interested, but her actions proved otherwise. Bolstered by this knowledge, Vore settled down casually next to her. Just a little too close.
He leaned in and said in barely more than a whisper, “You don’t smell uninterested. You can’t lie to me. You smell like you want me to push you down right now and have my way with you.”
A shiver went through her as she reacted to his words. Vore was fascinated by the little goosebumps that formed on the skin of her arms. He smoothed a single finger over her pebbled skin. She did not pull away, but her breathing became shallow and more erratic. He definitely had an effect on her.
Lettie took a moment to compose herself. Then, she cleared her throat and brushed Vore’s hand off her arm. “I believe you are mistaken. As I said, I’m not interested. At all.” Having reclaimed her cool, she became more commanding. “You are the last person I’m interested in.”
