Liberation Origins: SciFi Romance (Robotics Faction - Origins Series Book 1)

by Wendy Lynn Clark

  “Yes.”

  The confusion wiped from his face. Something feral crossed his features.

  She rose to full awareness.

  The two of them, alone, in an upper lounge, stood together with nothing around but his own staff and an infinitely tall balcony.

  Right now, her precious memories could not be taken from her. For the first time, perhaps ever in her life, she needed to live.

  However, Domingo reacted from his own place of defensiveness, and did not attack. He masked the discomfort quickly, even though her alarm bells continued to ring.

  “Is it something I’ve done?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” She matched his tone. “Is it?”

  His eyes narrowed.

  She faced him. Her most unassailable, fearless, unconquerable self. Standing firm against any challenge. Holding back a tsunami with the force of her gaze.

  He broke first.

  “Well,” he picked up his coffee like an actor recovering his prop, “with a broken engagement, that could get expensive for you.”

  “Remove all references to marriage and change it to a trade contract only. We can both leave happy.”

  He raised a brow. “Interesting choice of words. Regarding our trade contract, I will not sell the ports, but I could allow you a free pass through. How would I make up the extra revenue?”

  She crossed her arms. “Charge the Corleons.”

  His eyes narrowed. “They’ve done nothing to distinguish themselves.”

  “Aside from embarrass you by breaking your security and attacking me, a guest, at your own garden party, you mean.”

  He studied her for a long moment. “I assume, from your request for a pilot, you won’t be staying here to negotiate the delicacies.”

  “My luggage is already packed.” She searched beyond him, down the hall. “Where is Kaolin?”

  “Oh, I’ll have one of my pilots take you. I don’t usually force my guests to do the work, but your arrival coincided with low staffing. We’re preparing the mainland for a centennial celebration, it turns out.”

  Now he was wasting her time.

  “Excuse me.” She turned away. His body language implied Kaolin had already left. She would find him at the port.

  “Emprezia.” Domingo arrested her with his tone. “I don’t know that I approve of your newfound interest in Kaolin. He’s a good, honest, normal person. He won’t allow you to use him the way you tried to use me.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” she said drily.

  His gaze narrowed. “You can’t honestly pursue him.”

  “No?” She tilted her head. “Should I purse him dishonestly then?”

  Domingo set his coffee aside with a hard clink. “He deserves a woman who loves him. Not an icy bitch.”

  His honesty was as refreshing as a swift breeze. She finally looked at the man, and not the façade. This Domingo smoldered with wounded passion. He feared for his friend, and the wound of his own heart bled in his chest.

  “I didn’t realize Valorious had affected you so much,” she said.

  His vulnerabilities snapped shut. “All our contracts are cancelled. Take your rubilum and get the hell out of my house.”

  “I lied.”

  He clenched his coffee cup as though to stop himself from throwing it at her. “Out!”

  “She’s not happily married.”

  “What?”

  “Valorious. Her marriage is a business arrangement even less civil than ours would have been.”

  Domingo rocked back on his heels. “Which means?”

  “Her parents arranged the marriage. He manufactures the clothes and handbags for her fashion lines. They’ve met once in five years. She has no interest in him.”

  “Valorious also has no interest me,” he said finally. “No feelings.”

  “You are the only man whose name she has never spoken in public.”

  He studied her for one long, penetrating moment. Wondering whether or not to believe her.

  Interesting.

  “You’ve missed it,” he said. “She’s spoken of me. Badly.”

  “My research is flawless. Tabloids pushed her, but she dodged or refused every answer.”

  Obviously Domingo did care for Valorious. Kaolin’s immoveable integrity had not only prevented her from making a critical error, but had, in fact, saved all of them.

  “Whether she cares about you is a separate question,” Emprezia said. “But whether she has feelings about you, any feelings at all, is clear.”

  “Kaolin left last night.” Domingo set his coffee on the table. “He’s going to the Red Line. His shuttle leaves at noon.”

  She was already moving. “I’ll meet your pilot at the landing pad.”

  “Your luggage—”

  “Have it sent.” She strode past him.

  “Emprezia.”

  She glanced over her shoulder.

  He seemed so small in the distance of the long hall, a single man alone in a giant castle. “I will publish the rubilum contract today. The Corleons may hold you personally responsible for no longer being able to use my ports. Good luck outrunning them once you leave this planet.”

  “I don’t need luck.” She lifted her chin. “I’m marrying a race pilot.”

  If he would still have her.

  Chapter Eleven

  Kaolin took off his shirt, his shoes, and his pants, and settled in for a miserable morning.

  He had his shuttle ticket. He had his leaving time in the afternoon. He had his vile dockside beer, which he only drank from nostalgia. It tasted bitter and awful, like a youthful four decades old, and leaving home for the first time, and not knowing any better.

  He also had a pretty bad headache from not sleeping, and he had his memories.

  Wonderful, heartbreaking, sexy memories.

  He was going to drink his beer, wank off, and try not to cry himself to sleep.

  Exhaustion always made him more emotional.

  He was the better man for having turned a goddess down. Definitely, he would continue to feel that way for the rest of his long, lonely life. He was not already obsessing about what could have been, and, at her insistence, almost was.

  He flopped in his seat, clicked on a racing holo, and cracked his beer.

  His hotel room door chimed.

  He set the beer aside un-tasted and opened the door, squinting in the bright shaft of light. “Yeah?”

  The goddess stood in his doorway. “Hi.”

  His brain short-circuited.

  He stared at her. She stared at him.

  He shifted in the doorway, looking behind her for Dom, but no one was down the hall or otherwise around.

  Had he forgotten something? Had she?

  “What’s up?”

  “I wanted to talk.”

  “Okay.”

  She shifted from foot to foot. “Can I come in?”

  He stepped back.

  She entered. “You look terrible.”

  He yawned and scratched his unshaven face, closing the door behind her. “Yeah, I need my beauty sleep.”

  She looked good though. Of course she did.

  A loose jumpsuit still clung to her curves and flared at her feet. Her tousled hair looked careless but had probably taken hours. And, of course, her.

  She saw his beer, frowned, and stepped closer to him, smelling his breath.

  He waved her away. “I didn’t start.”

  “Good.” She looked relieved.

  “So.” He crossed his arms, before he did something stupid, like throw them around her and beg her to change her mind. “Talk.”

  She took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and faced him. “I’ve broken up with Domingo and prepared a marriage contract for us. Get dressed and let’s go to the port authority now and register our signatures. But don’t drink that beer or they’ll make you wait forty-eight hours and we won’t be able to do it before your Red Line Race.”

  He processed one thing at a time. “You’re
proposing to me?”

  “Yes.”

  She held out her screen. The title said “Marriage.”

  The floor shifted.

  He scratched his suddenly itchy head. “You’ve broken up with Dom?”

  “We are no longer engaged, correct.”

  “And you want us to get married right now.”

  “I want to have sex with you right now,” she said, “as a continuation from what you did to me last night, but I think you’ll prevent me again unless you feel some security in our future together. I am accepting all of your marriage conditions without alteration, and I want to move forward, have sex, win races, and start our own family. Now.”

  He started laughing.

  He couldn’t help it. His incredulity hit the wall of possibility and he lost it.

  She crossed the room in two strides. His tiny hotel room was so unlike the sprawling floors of the castles she was used to. She peered up into his face.

  Her quiet solemnity brought his mirth down to a manageable lightness in his chest. His heart, reinstated there, glowed with a shining golden light.

  “Did you have an addendum?” she asked.

  “Would I be your first rejection?” he asked, wiping tears from his eyes.

  “No.”

  “Am I your first proposal?”

  “Also no.”

  Damn. “Am I your first anything?”

  “You are the first man I have ever wanted.”

  Oh. Well that was okay.

  “—who showed me an entirely new side to myself, who gave me a vision of the future filled with such happiness it terrified me to pursue it, whose absence shows me how empty my current life is, and who taught me love is the only desirable object in the universe.”

  He stopped teasing her.

  She faced him as she always faced any challenge. Head on, no backing down.

  “No addendum?”

  “Only that you didn’t have to do this.” He gestured at the contract. “The promise is enough. You’ve never lied to me before, right?”

  “I’ve lied to you before.”

  “Oh. Well.” He picked up the marriage screen. “In that case, let me put on a shirt.”

  They headed to the port authority and she told him about her lie. “My cousin is not in a happy marriage. However, I told you and Domingo she was to make him turn to me. I’ve told the truth to Domingo, for better or for worse.”

  “Why would it be worse?”

  “Because Valorious has been very careful, for several centuries, to keep her parents happy. My aunt is nightmarish, and my uncle is worse. If Domingo upsets that balance, I may have ruined her life.”

  “You should help her.”

  “I’ll pass along a warning.” She shook her head. “I’d rather take out a hit on myself than go through life fearing everyone close to me.”

  She was crazy. “What if it succeeded?”

  “The last time I took out a hit on myself, it did succeed, and the rather embarrassed crown prince of Villease owed my family two tons of rich ore. I didn’t even have to marry him.”

  He stopped her. “You’ve honestly taken out a hit on your own life?”

  “It’s a trick that has sealed more than one contract. The ones who fail to protect me in their territory owe me, and the ones who succeed feel a battle-hardened camaraderie from the experience. It’s a very useful tactic.”

  “Well, it’s the last time,” he said firmly, and took her hand. “You’re forbidden from putting yourself in danger.”

  “I intend to co-race with you.”

  “You are forbidden from taking out another hit on your own life,” he amended. “Did Domingo ever catch the Corleon assassin?”

  “Thanks to your phrase promising me safety, Domingo must protect me until I am off planet.”

  “If you’re sure….”

  They reached the port authority.

  After they recorded their signatures, stepped into the surgical machine, and had their identification chips changed to match names, they were married.

  Her eyes grew misty as she typed in their new name, and his heart swelled so bad he mistyped twice before finally doing the same.

  Now married, they continued back to the hotel at a decidedly faster pace, ready to begin their first night as the mister and mistress Sarit Antiatas.

  “I’m unlikely to need to take out another hit on myself,” she continued their conversation, squeezing his hand. “So long as I have someone who brings out the best in people around me.”

  “Who’s that?” he joked.

  She rewarded him by stopping outside his hotel room, gazing into his eyes, and sharing that intense study that first hooked his heart and drew him to her.

  “I hope you know it’s you.”

  He gave in to his burning desire and pulled her into his arms, walked her backward over the hotel room threshold, and lost himself in their first wedded kiss.

  Ignoring every possible danger, including the people watching them, as it turned out.

  Kaolin set her soul free.

  She melted into his confident embrace. Their tongues tangled, hungry, and his rough jaw scratched in an entirely new sensation against her skin.

  He was the very definition of male. She loved him for all that he was, his past and their future, their togethers and never-ends.

  Carried away by him, she lay back gently on the bed as he stared down on her.

  His gaze glowed. “I love you, Emprezia Sarit Antiata.”

  He pulled his shirt over his head with one hand and flung it behind him, baring a wide, smooth chest that she couldn’t wait to caress.

  “Let me show you.”

  She lifted her hands to him.

  He clasped them and met her for a soul-binding kiss.

  Yes. She was home.

  She explored the width of his back. These were her powerful shoulder blades, and this was her immobile spine. Here was the heart that beat, unwavering and true, in his iron-hard chest and here was the quiet rumble of amusement that tickled and pleased her. Here were the lips, whose smiles always brought the same feeling to hers, and here was the tongue licking her erogenous zones and reminding her not everything of importance is in the mind. Some were in the body. Which she opened to his languorous exploration.

  He kissed her jaw, tickling her with the scratches, and onto her neck.

  She gasped at the unusual sensations, as he learned and discovered her, just as she learned and discovered him. Finding their compatibilities. Reading the first page of a book that would turn together their entire lives.

  He rolled her onto her side, facing the wall, with his body curved protectively behind her. His arousal pressed, hard and insistent, against her thigh.

  She snuggled against it. This was what she wanted.

  His fingers knotted into her hair and tugged.

  Pleasure burst in her center and tingled between her legs, delicious.

  She gasped. “Kaolin.”

  He rose onto his elbow, the smile she loved teasing his lips. “Oh? Did you feel that?”

  She nodded, not trusting her voice.

  A hot, molten pounding followed the tingles.

  His clever fingers worked into her hair further, lifting her head off the bed and finding the right spots to tangle, twist, and sensitize her.

  Tingles burst, shivering delicious sensations, pooling in her center. “What are you doing?”

  “I learned two kinds of scalp massages. The other one was supposed to be relaxing.” His smile turned lazy. “I haven’t had as much chance to practice this one. Is it working?”

  Another unstoppable wave of goodness rolled through her body.

  She clenched her thighs as the pulsing in her center throbbed, hot, and then ached. “I was planning… to pleasure you...”

  “Really?” He laughed happily. “Next time, then, you can start it.”

  And he performed his mastery on her, delivering luscious tides of growing uncontrollable pleasure until her whim
pers turned to moans, her undulating desire grew in urgency, and they were both sweating, hot and naked, in the room.

  His long, hard arousal pressed against her wet opening, sliding back and forth, slippery, as he palmed her breast.

  She begged for him, she writhed for him, and still he unleashed new heights of pleasure. More than she had ever thought herself capable. More than possible with any human being.

  His mouth sucked on her sensitive neck, and his other hand caressed the wet bud between her legs pulsing with desire for him.

  She reached her absolute peak.

  Emprezia reached back and gripped his shaft. “Kaolin. Now. Please. I need you.”

  He tugged her earlobe with his teeth. His smile tickled her ear. “That’s all you need to say.”

  The head of his shaft pressed into her wet entrance.

  Oh. Yes. Finally.

  She gripped his thigh and dragged him closer as he eased into her.

  His breath gusted past her ear. “You feel amazing.”

  Her chest squeezed. “Don’t make me cry.”

  “No,” he agreed, filling her to the hilt, “unless you want to, and then it’s okay.”

  She twisted, trying to face him.

  He rose onto one elbow again, the other arm protectively over her, and contorted to meet her desperate kiss. United as one. The gorgeous, virile, rock-hard man with surprising depths and an infinite heart.

  He kissed her, and shifted his hips to press his shaft into her sideways, testing and teasing.

  She wanted to laugh at his vigorousness, his playful kindness in this ultimate moment of tender vulnerability.

  And then his playful thrust found an unexpected peak of pleasure. She sucked in a breath and moaned.

  “There?” He watched her. He always watched her. “Or there?”

  “Everywhere.”

  The urgency returned.

  He thrust into her, and her pleasure exploded uncontrollably, and he gripped onto her shoulder, chasing and driving it into the one last trembling, uncontrollable, shared release.

  The hotel room turned to a starry night and rotated around them. Her eyes filled with tears, and she held on to the man who loved her with his whole heart, and she cried.

  “It’s okay.” He caressed her brow and wiped her damp cheeks. “You can feel anything. It’s fine.”