She’d noticed his reaction to this touch way back in the terraform lab, but had no idea how raw the sensation could be. “So I see.” Her fingernails scraped lightly on his stripes. His moan answered hers and she smiled against his lips. “Works on you too, then.”
“You know it does.” His words ended in a growl and she found herself tossed in the air to land in the center of their large bed. “It was very nice of Destiny to upgrade your room to a suite.” He took off the ceremonial robe and let it fall to the floor in a whisper of silk.
Kendra’s mouth grew dry at the beauty of her mate. Her consort. Every scar proving his ability to fight, to protect. Her warrior prince. “You are an incredibly built man, my love.” She rose up on her elbows and appreciated the raw male beauty stalking to the bed.
Every muscle moved with efficiency and power, like the predator she knew him to be. Her heart clenched with the knowledge of how much he’d given up for his people.
“You are beautiful to me, Kendra del Mar.”
The new name twisted something deep inside her heart, opening it to the final belief. “Show me.”
“It will be my pleasure.” His lips and tongue began a torturous path up her ankles and legs, teasing and tormenting her until she writhed on the bed. Her fingers dipped between her thighs and stroked the aching nub, desperate to ease some of the need.
His tongue licked at her fingers, nuzzling them away from her moist flesh. He spread her thighs wide and lapped at her juices. Deft fingers slid into her aching channel and stroked her higher. She let her legs fall open in ecstasy, knotting the sheets in her fists and crying out her pleasure.
“You taste like summer wine.” His breath fanned across her pussy, and his fingers slowed their pace.
Kendra cried out in denial.
“Shhh.” His fingers twisted softly inside her. “Let me take you higher. Will you be mine forever?” His fingers scissored and she jerked in pleasure.
“Yes. For as long as you’re mine.”
His gaze burned back at her. Fierce. Loyal. Her heart and soul. “Make me yours, Azros. Forever.”
His fingers slipped free of her pussy. He came above her and she wrapped her legs around his waist. The head of his cock rubbed against her soaked entrance. “I love you, and will always love you, Princess.”
“I will always love you, my prince.” She wiggled against him. “Now, will you please fuck me?”
He laughed and slammed deep. “Stubborn woman.” She took some satisfaction in how breathless his voice was.
His tongue lapped at the mark on her shoulder. Pleasure shot to her core and she arched against him. His mouth suckled at the point and she cried out.
He set a pace that had them both gasping. Sweat slid down her back and throat, soaking the sheets. She cried and begged, but he kept her just on the edge of oblivion.
“Go wild for me, kitten.” He nipped at her throat. “Let it go.”
She writhed and ached. Something built in the back of her mind, a pressure, causing her eyes to glaze over. She wanted to bite him. To taste him. Her teeth nipped at his shoulder.
“That’s it, princess.” His muscles strained and every thrust of his incredible cock sent her spiraling further into pleasure. “Bite me.”
He pinched her nipple and rolled it. The pleasure spike released the dam and she bit, hard. Mine! Her lips suckled against the fresh mark and Azros lost control. He pounded into her. The sound of wet flesh and the spicy scent of wild sex surrounded them. Pleasure built at the base of her spine until finally she crested, crashing over. Distantly she felt Azros follow behind her, his face buried against her neck. They struggled to regain breath, and his arms surrounded her with heat, and love. “Don’t ever scare me like that again.”
Kendra brushed her fingers through his sweat-soaked hair. “Azros…”
“I almost lost you, Kendra. My heart. Don’t ever leave me like that again.”
It was the raw pain in his voice. The same pain that echoed in her heart. “I won’t.” She held him against her heart. Her fierce warrior. Her Valorian Prime. Forever.
Epilogue
Shyla watched the entwined lovers, patient, calm. Her fingers gripped the barrel of her weapon with only the slightest tremor. The setup was perfect. A hidden alcove. No one aware of her true purpose. All she had to do was pull the trigger. Shyla scanned the room. She screwed on the suppresor, and watched her target rise from the bed. He had finally left the room. It was time.
She held up her weapon and fired one shot. Then another.
Her body slumped to the floor, and Shyla walked over, observing the life drain from her once-expressive eyes. Dark fluid stained the carpet, and Shyla tilted her head. It was over. She walked back into the hallway.
“Is it done?”
Shyla jerked to a stop, her weapon aimed at Destiny’s chest.
Destiny’s voice held no anger, no cruelty. Just a quiet question.
Shyla’s hand trembled and the weapon dropped a bit. “It’s done.” She cursed the wobble in her voice.
“Killing in self-defense versus cold-blooded murder takes its toll on a soul.” She stepped closer. “Let them be, Shyla.”
Unshed tears burned her eyes. “I can’t. My cousin will never be safe with them out there.” She looked back toward the door, and the dead assassin she’d taken out. A woman she’d once called friend. A loyal servant to the Sheon cause. One more casualty in the perversions her mother had wrought on her people.
“Stay here. You can be part of the security staff. You know she’ll want you with her.”
Shyla shook her head. “There is too much bad blood between us. Too many years I have to redeem. I have a mission to fulfill.”
“You’re the one who saved her life all those years ago, aren’t you?” Destiny’s voice was melodious. “The little girl who dropped a single dagger on the ground, in spite of her mother’s orders. Just a little thing.” Destiny touched the barrel and gently pushed it down and away from her body. The man called Jackson stepped from the shadows.
Shyla holstered the weapon, ignoring Destiny’s assumption. “This one was mostly human, so the body will remain the same. Only the face will smooth over.” She watched as Jackson stepped into the room. So many years wasted. So many times she skirted death at her mother’s hands. She gave a rough laugh. Skreeta may yet get the chance.
“My mother will kill me for this.”
“She won’t be able touch you.”
“She had to have a rendezvous set up.” Jackson’s voice was quiet, unobtrusive as always. Shyla wished for that kind of stealth.
“If the assassin had succeeded, what was it supposed to do?”
Shyla sighed. She was bone weary of her mother’s tricks and traps. “It was supposed to bring her proof of their deaths. She would have rendezvoused with the ship my mother had escaped in. I was lucky to find the kill orders in the Calypso database. It’ll take me years to comb through the information Skreeta had compiled.”
“Can we get the information from the assassin?” Destiny’s gaze grew hard, and Shyla wondered just how far Destiny was willing to go. Would it be enough?
“Yes. Since I have no idea how much information she could gather from the assassin, I was careful to keep the module intact. I just disabled its optics and motor function nodes.”
“Good.” Her smile was not a pretty one. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to give her different coordinates…”
* * * * *
“This is the very spot you left your own princess, isn’t it?” It was the way she said it, the ice-cold nothingness in Destiny’s eyes. Skreeta knew her life was at an end. And it pissed her off.
“I was obviously too merciful.” She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, unsurprised to see the crimson stain of blood smeared across the skin. “She sent you to do her dirty work, did she? One whore is the same as any other, I suppose.” It was a joke how easily they’d overtaken her crew. Humiliating to have fallen
into the whore’s trap.
Destiny’s gaze burned and Skreeta laughed. She eyed the ground support team and gauged her chances. Slim. Slim was better than none. She’d survived the blood wars. She was Skreeta, future queen of the Sheon Empire. Fuck this backwater rock and its wastes.
“All those loyal to your princess heir have one chance. Board the ship now.”
Several moved. Rage launched in Skreeta’s gut and she let loose a cry, making a cutting motion in the air. All but Destiny froze. “I will not have a whore undermine the strength of our empire.”
Skreeta watched sudden fury leap into the bodyguard’s eyes. A light touch by Destiny relaxed his muscles, but it was enough. Skreeta smiled, showing sharpened canines. Even the whore had a weakness.
“Hold her.”
Two guards grabbed her, locking her arm joints before she could blink. Pain flared across her shoulders and down her back. She sucked a breath through clenched teeth.
Destiny strode down the path. “You should really expand your vocabulary. Better a whore than a warmonger and child killer.” The bitch jerked the Sheon royal emblem from her cloak. Shadows moved in her peripheral vision. They were abandoning her!
“What I did, I did for the empire!” She launched at Destiny but the blue-skinned bastard twisted her arm until she dropped. Pain raced along her arm before it went numb. Any further pressure would break the limb. Skreeta was pissed, but she wasn’t stupid.
The touch of Destiny’s fingers on her chin made her skin crawl. “What you did, you did for greed. Now you’ll have the same chance you gave Kendra so long ago.”
Skreeta spat blood on her perfect face. “I made her who she is today. It was my choices that made her the strong warrior she has become.”
Destiny smiled. It was not a lovely smile. “She is the heir, and you are the slag waste.” Destiny grabbed a corner of the fallen cloak and wiped her face. Blood smeared across the skin. “Dawn is coming.” She gestured toward the rock formation in the distance. “I’ll even make it easy. No ropes on your limbs. Make it to the rock, and you’ll live.”
Skreeta sneered at the hope that leapt in her heart. “How long do I have?”
Destiny dropped the cloak to the mucky ground in a whisper of fabric. “As long as it takes.”
The bitch walked back to the ramp and gazed around. Skreeta took stock. Three of her team remained loyal enough to stay. “No weapons?” A sixth sense had kept her alive, one that told her when someone was lying, when danger was close. Her skin crawled. Something was coming.
Destiny gave an unladylike snort. “A seven-year-old child raced across this very land without boots. Be thankful I allow you to keep yours.” Her guard handed over a wet towel and Destiny wiped down her face. She paused, as though considering. “It wouldn’t surprise me if she could beat you even then.”
She turned her back and Skreeta raged, fighting against the hold of her armed guards. When Destiny reached the top of the platform, she turned and stared down at Skreeta with eyes as cold as deepest space. “You will never hurt another soul.”
The guards dropped her arms and danced out of her reach when she tried to take their weapons. The dark-blue one grinned. “I’d run if I were you, your highness. Dawn brings some interesting critters around here.” He laughed and walked backward until they reached the safety of the ship.
“Highness.” One of her loyalists touched her arm. “We must run for your survival.”
Skreeta didn’t speak, she just turned and sprinted. The buzz of danger surrounded her, tapped deep into her reserves. Years of training, preparation for a throne war coalesced on this one point in time.
She’d show them. The sound of her ship’s launch set her teeth on edge and she used the rage to push her body further.
The fight with Kendra replayed in her mind. Every move. Every calculated maneuver. A tinge of red pierced the sky and Skreeta winced away from the light’s glare. How had that bitch survived the poison? A sickly sweet stench rose around her. The reports had given no indication of carnivore activity in this area, so why was she running?
A scream pierced the morning and Skreeta turned. A red slime had engulfed a soldier, trapping her, devouring her. Skreeta swallowed back the bile rising in her throat.
“Run. Highness!” A shove on her arm had her running. “Run!”
Another scream fell behind her but she dug deeper, running harder. Slime oozed out of the cracks in the ground, sliding over the muck.
“Don’t let it touch you!” the woman screeched in her ear, rattling her eardrums.
“I have no intention, I assure you.”
The dark shadows of trees drew her gaze and she raced in that direction, ready to climb the haggard branches for safety. She heard the dogged steps of her companion. Crimson slime oozed around them, coming up through the cracks. She wished for a gun, any kind of weapon. The trees grew closer and the twisted branches offered a small shimmer of hope. Her lungs burned and her breaths came in ragged gasps. A slime sprang at her and she rolled, desperate to escape its touch. She reached the tree and launched at it.
“Highness, no!” Her companion’s cry came too late.
A tar-like substance held her fast against the trunk. She jerked her hands away from the black muck and her skin ripped. A scream tore from her lips. The black substance oozed down her arm. The scream of her companion tore through the silent woods. An overwhelming sickeningly sweet odor permeated the air and Skreeta dragged in a breath. Yellow slime oozed around the trunk, sliding toward her.
A rugged laugh tore from deep within. “I hate this fucking planet,” she screamed.
* * * * *
So that’s the story of how I got the Valorian Prince and the Sheon heir to the throne on my staff. They found each other. I got an extra-hunky body and efficient fighter on my security staff. The would-be queen never made it to the rock, and not a sign of her was ever found.
We made quite a profit on the arena fight and have consolidated our gain with the Abject Mining Corporation to make the pit fights a regular event. Apparently, the grunts like to watch scantily clad women wrestle.
I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.
Of course we’ve sexed it up a little. Gotta give those deprived men and women a little heat to offset the frigid cold of deep space. Incidentally, our business is booming.
Every day is an adventure at Destiny’s Palace. Thank you for your patronage and it will be our pleasure to serve you again.
About the Author
Dawn writes to give her mind a break from the voices clamoring to tell their stories. She has traveled the world twice over. While her days were filled with long hours and hard work, her nights were left for dark, lustful fantasies in and out of strange hotels and cities.
Alaska and Texas are the places she calls home. She currently resides in the frigid north with her family, neurotic dog, and the moose and bear that encroach on her land.
Dawn welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email addresses on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.
Tell Us What You Think
We appreciate hearing reader opinions about our books. You can email us at [email protected].
Discover for yourself why readers can’t get enough of the multiple award-winning publisher Ellora’s Cave. Whether you prefer ebooks or paperbacks, be sure to visit EC on the web at www.ellorascave.com for an erotic reading experience that will leave you breathless.
www.ellorascave.com
>
PrimalHunger Page 22
