by Nina Croft
“Off planet. I was always off planet.” He leaned across and topped off his drink. “You know, me and Alex, we aren’t that much different. Both yearning for the stars. Both of us running away from our responsibilities.”
“Except Alex didn’t choose her responsibilities, whereas I’m presuming you did choose yours.”
“Maybe. I did kill the old Alpha.”
“Why?”
After all these years, he still experienced the same rush of hatred. “Because he was a fucking bastard, and he deserved to die.”
“He was the one who changed you?”
Jon nodded curtly. “He was a bad leader, and there was a lot of infighting in the pack. He encouraged the younger wolves to fight among themselves, and he killed any potential alphas himself. The numbers were dwindling, and they needed new blood. They picked on me, because I was a sheriff, and they thought I might be useful.”
“You were a lawman?” Rico sounded incredulous.
“Yeah, so?”
“Well, from sheriff to alpha werewolf to assassin. Quite some career changes you’ve had there.”
“Whatever—he made a mistake picking me. The only way to get rid of an alpha is to kill him. I’d never killed anyone, so it took me a while to work up to it, but I got there in the end.”
“So this guy was presumably responsible for the death of your wife.”
“Yeah, someone else I failed to protect.”
Rico grinned. “Dios, you are one miserable, self-pitying bastard.”
“It’s not self-pity, it’s the goddamned truth.” Jon shrugged and turned away. “Okay, maybe a little bit of self-pity.”
The whiskey was loosening his brain. If he lowered his lids, the room swayed around him. He liked the sensation. Maybe he would keep drinking, then he wouldn’t even know when the Collective turned up and killed them all.
He shook his head and placed his glass on the table. If he was going to die, there were one or two things he wanted to do first. And he didn’t want to be unconscious when it happened. He wanted to be with Alex.
Rico was watching him with that same lazy smile, and he realized he felt comfortable with the vampire, as he hadn’t done with anyone else in a long, long time.
Jesus. A vampire.
He had no idea why vamps and weres were enemies; it was one of those things entrenched in pack law, probably brought from Earth, and the real reasons lost with the planet. But packs were territorial, they didn’t like sharing their land with other predators, while he’d always believed vampires were natural loners who didn’t like sharing anything with anyone. Rico was obviously an exception.
“So why the interest?” he asked.
Rico shrugged. “I’m figuring out how much of a liability you’re going to be. We need people who can keep a clear head and not rush in the first moment someone looks in need of saving.”
“I don’t go in for the saving stuff anymore.”
“Except with Alex.”
“I told you—” He gave up. Who was he kidding? “Yeah, except for Alex.”
If he’d ever considered the sort of woman he might fall for, Alex was probably the complete opposite. Always before, he’d gone for strong, athletic types who could take care of themselves and wouldn’t be too much of a burden on that overdeveloped protective streak of his. Alex was so small. Even in those ridiculous heels, she only came up to his chest. But while she was small, she wasn’t weak. Maybe a little thoughtless occasionally, but he reckoned that came from too many years of having other people do her thinking for her. And her breasts weren’t small. They were perfect. He closed his eyes again and pictured her naked. Pale skin and freckles. His mouth pulled into a smile. The sensation was odd. He didn’t smile much these days.
“You are in deep shit.”
Rico’s words interrupted his mental image, and Jon’s smile turned into a scowl. Rico leaned forward and filled Jon’s glass. “I’m looking at a man who has given up the fight.” He pushed the full glass toward him. “You need a drink.”
Had he given up the fight? But Rico had no reason to talk. “What about you and Skylar? I hardly see you fighting.”
A slow smile spread across the vampire’s face. “Yeah, but the difference is—Skylar could protect me, not the other way around. She’s one scary woman.” Rico seemed far from displeased with the idea, and Jon felt the need to defend Alex.
“Alex has killed two men in the last few days.”
“Yeah, she’s a hardened killer all right.” Rico relaxed back in his chair, closed his eyes, and sipped his drink.
His little hardened killer. But she wasn’t his. And he had no right to try and make her. What could a miserable bastard like himself offer her? She was young and still excited about life. If they did somehow manage to survive the Collective, he must do the honorable thing and walk away.
“Dios,” Rico muttered. “I can feel the self-pity oozing back from over here.”
Jon ignored the comment, and they sat in almost comfortable silence for a while.
Would Alex be in bed now? Naked perhaps. Would she be lying awake, worrying about him? Should he go tell her he was okay? Then tell her why she should forget him?
He swallowed the last of the whiskey and slammed the glass on the table. That’s what he had to do. Go see her. Tell her why he shouldn’t be there. He pushed himself to his feet. Swayed a little but balanced himself with a hand to the back of his seat. The room swam.
Rico opened one eye. “Where are you going?”
“To see Alex. I have to tell her all the reasons I’m bad for her.”
Amusement glinted in the vampire’s face. “Is that wise, right now?”
“Probably not.” He let go of the seat to see if he could stay upright. “But a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.”
“Yeah, but you’re a dog.”
“Ha-ha. So?”
“Well, the same rules hardly apply.”
Jon tried to think that one through, but his brain had turned to treacle. He nodded to the flask. “I like it. We must do this again sometime.”
“Next time I save your life,” Rico said.
“Or I save yours.”
Rico grinned. “Never going to happen.”
No, probably not, considering they were all about to die. He took a tentative step and found he could walk after all. Rico spoke again as Jon reached the door. “Good luck.”
…
Jon had never been in Alex’s cabin, though he knew where it was. He leaned on the door buzzer, half expecting her to ignore him, but a second later, the door slid open.
He looked around. “Christ, this place is a mess.”
Alex sat up in the narrow bed, a scowl on her face. “I like it like this.”
A sheet was pulled up to her breasts, her fingers knotted in the material, holding it tightly against her chest. Above it, her slender shoulders were bare. Oh yes, he reckoned she was naked under there.
He lurched into the room, holding onto the wall for support.
Her gaze shot to his face, alarm flashing in her eyes. “Are you all right?”
He shook his head, and the room shifted under his feet. He waited until it stopped moving. “I have been drinking whiskey with a vampire. Lots of whiskey. So I doubt ‘all right’ describes how I am right now.”
Her arched brows drew together and her huge eyes narrowed. They were gorgeous eyes.
“You have the most beautiful eyes,” he mumbled.
“What do you want, Jon?”
“I’ve come to tell you all the reasons we shouldn’t be doing this.”
“What are we doing?” Her eyes narrowed further. “And why shouldn’t we be doing it?”
He shook his head again, taking care to hold onto the wall first. “I cannot remember. But it will come back to me. I just need to lie down for a little while.”
After fumbling with the buttons for an age, he finally managed to unfasten his shirt, then shrugged out of it and dropped it on the floor
on top of the pink jumpsuit she’d been wearing.
As he stepped closer, he heard a hiss, and a small, black furry animal disappeared beneath the bed. He ignored it; he wasn’t interested in anything under the bed. Holding her gaze, he unfastened his pants and kicked them off. For once in her presence, he didn’t have a raging hard-on. He gestured at it. “Sorry, it’s been a long day.”
She didn’t speak, just drew back the sheet that covered her and he saw that he’d been right; beneath the thin covering, she was naked. Small and perfectly formed and so sweet. He needed to hold her, so he lowered himself down beside her. The bed was narrow, and he shifted onto his back, put his arms around her, and pulled her tight against his side. She didn’t move, but then her arms wrapped around him, held him tight.
With her head resting on his chest, close to his heart, Jon closed his eyes, feeling safe and protected for the first time in as long as he could remember.
…
“I love you,” Alex murmured the words against his skin.
He was asleep, his breathing slow and steady, but at her words, his arms tightened around her. She breathed in, loving his smell, musky and salty, and now with an added sweetness of the whiskey he had drunk.
The heavy weight of one muscular leg lay partly across hers, but she didn’t try to move him. She wanted to hold him, keep him safe. Who knew how much time they would have before the Collective found them? While she had great faith in the crew of El Cazador, she had no illusions that they could take on the Collective and win. But this would be enough.
Well, maybe she wanted something more. She shifted a little so her nipples rubbed against his hair-roughened chest, and a delicious ripple of sensation quivered through her. He needed to sleep, but soon he would awaken.
When they didn’t move the lights dimmed, and they lay in semidarkness. Beneath the bed, she could hear Mogg’s deep rumbling purr. She didn’t want to sleep, she wanted to savor every moment of closeness, but her eyes eventually drifted closed.
She awoke to a sensation of pure bliss. Jon’s mouth was at her breast, his hot, wet tongue lapping at the distended nipple. His lips tugged, his teeth bit down gently so the sensation burned right down through her belly. She was melting from the inside.
The length of his erection pressed hot and hard against her thigh, and he thrust it against her and groaned. Her hips arched against his, and he went still for a second.
He pushed himself up onto his elbows and stared down into her face. “You’re awake.”
She nodded.
“Good.”
“Good?”
“I’ve been lying here, thinking how to wake you. Sorry.”
“Sorry?”
He slipped one of his knees between hers to part her thighs. “I can’t wait. Who knows what the hell will interrupt us this time.”
She raised one hand and curved it around his face, staring into his golden eyes with their thick, dark lashes, his beautiful, passionate mouth. She needed to tell him she loved him but was unsure how he would take her words right now, and she wanted nothing to spoil this moment. Later, if there was a later, he would have to come to terms with her love. “I don’t want you to wait.”
He lowered his lids for a breath. When he opened them, his eyes glowed with passion. He kicked off the sheet that covered them both and shifted her so she lay on her back beneath him. One hand slid down between their bodies, stroking the skin of her belly, then ruffling through curls at the base. Alex held her breath as he pushed one finger between the folds of her sex. She was already drenched with desire, and he rubbed the moisture over the sensitive flesh until he found the engorged little bud between her thighs, then slipped lower to push inside her.
He flexed the finger, and her whole body jolted with the shock of pleasure. He shifted her again, widening her thighs, positioning himself between them. “You’re small,” he murmured.
“And you’re not. I know, but I want this, Jon. I’ve wanted it from the first moment I saw you. Please, don’t go noble on me now.”
He lowered his mouth and kissed her. She parted her lips for the thrust of his tongue as his shaft nudged at the entrance to her body. Then he was filling her slowly, stretching the tender flesh until he was lodged deep inside.
For this first time, she was content to follow his lead, let him show her the way. There would be time to show him other ways later—she hoped. Pushing the thought aside, she concentrated on the new sensations coursing through her body.
He withdrew, and she shivered at the exquisite drag of his sex against hers.
“More?” he whispered.
She nodded, unable to speak, her throat closed up with emotions building inside her. Jon flexed his hips, filling her again. He leaned in close and kissed her mouth, parting her lips so the languid thrust of his tongue kept time with the glide of his shaft. The world shrank until it was nothing more than the feel of his hard body, the velvet caress of his tongue. The taste of him.
Heat washed through her. She was out of control. Gripping his shoulders, she pulled him harder against her, widening her thighs, needing him closer. He pressed in to her, all the way, then rotated his hips in tantalizing circles against her core, grinding into her, then backing off so she wrapped her legs around him and held him to her. The world shrank further, distilled to that one place between her thighs. The pleasure built to an unbearable crescendo, and she whimpered into his kiss.
He raised his head, held her gaze as he pushed one hand between their bodies, between her legs, gently massaging that mass of swollen nerves, and Alex shattered into a thousand pieces.
Chapter Eighteen
He’d been an idealist once, long ago, before a half-crazed werewolf had decided he would be a useful addition to the pack.
Even after the change, he’d known what was right and wrong and had a code of ethics that he’d stuck to in his own way. When he’d killed the old alpha, it was partly because he’d hated him, but also because he was a bad leader, and Jon had thought he could do better.
When he’d gotten back from that trip, found his people slaughtered, their bodies burned on a huge pyre, he’d abandoned those ethics.
He’d reckoned that killing was the one thing he was good for. So he’d devoted himself to it, first for revenge and then for money.
Now he lay beside Alex and knew it was time to make some changes.
The comm unit by the side of the bed blinked. He tightened his arm around her, leaned across with his free hand, and pressed the unit. “What is it?” he asked.
Tannis answered. “I’m alerting everyone. Janey has picked up the Collective on our tail. They’re still a good way off, but closing fast.”
“How many?”
“Janey says it looks like all of them. Enough anyway.”
“How long?”
“Three hours at the most.” Tannis paused. “Is Alex there?”
“She’s asleep.”
“Let her know. We’ll have a meeting in an hour’s time. I want us all present.”
He rested back against the pillows. While he’d known they were coming, he’d hoped for more time. Alex was still deep asleep, but as his arm tightened around her, she blinked and opened her eyes.
“What’s happening?”
He opened his mouth to tell her and shut it again. He needed to think this through. He’d thought he had no options, but maybe he did. Maybe he could do something right for once. “Nothing,” he murmured. “Go back to sleep.”
She laid her head back on his chest, and her breathing slowed. He held her small body so tightly he could feel the blood pulsing through her veins.
There was no way they could beat the Collective. Rico might get lucky and evade them again, but eventually they would catch up, and they stood no chance in combat. They would all die. His grip tightened.
If it came to a fight, they were done for—Alex included. There had to be some way to convince them to back off. That the others were no threat and didn’t know anything that cou
ld harm the Collective.
Gently, he picked her up, laid her down on the sheets, and slid out of the bed. He pulled on his pants, picked up his shirt, and headed out.
“Where are you going?”
Alex’s sleepy question halted him at the door. Wiping all expression from his face, he turned to face her. “That stuff of Rico’s is lethal. My head’s killing me. I’m going down to the sick bay to see if I can’t rummage up some medicine.”
“You’re coming back?”
He nodded and forced a grin. “Get some sleep. You’ll need it.”
“Okay, but don’t be long.”
“I won’t.”
Once outside, he pressed his fingers to his forehead. He hadn’t been totally lying to Alex—his head throbbed and the occasional sharp pain spiked the base of his skull.
There was no answer at Skylar’s cabin. Jon swore softly—he’d been hoping to speak to her alone. Chances were, she was already up with the captain. Or she might be one other place. He’d try that first.
He came to a halt outside a door and placed his palm to the panel.
“Who the hell is it?” Rico sounded annoyed. “I’m busy!”
Like Jon gave a shit. He pressed the panel again. “It’s Jon.”
There was a moment of silence, then the door opened. Jon peered inside. Rico’s cabin was large compared to Alex’s, and decorated in the expected black and silver. Across the room, Rico sat in the huge bed, leaning against the wall, chest bare, black sheets pooled around his hips. A scowl on his face.
Skylar stood beside the bed. She was dressed and strapping on the weapons belt at her waist. Her face was expressionless, but tension filled the air between them.
“We’re in the middle of an important argument,” Rico said. “So tell me what the fuck you want and get the hell out of here.”
“Actually, I want Skylar.”
Rico’s eyes narrowed. “Well, you can’t have her—she’s mine.” He ran a hand through his hair, muttering under his breath.
Jon shoved his hands into his pockets. Despite the headache still pounding in his temples, he had to stifle the urge to smile. It was good to know the vampire’s love life wasn’t perfect after all. “So what are you two arguing about?”
