She must not know what Rees was, or she’d have run away as fast as her high-heeled boots would let her. She should have picked a level-one Shareem to follow. Level ones were pretty harmless. Even level twos could be fun, if a lady enjoyed, say, a little spanking.
Level threes could get even more creative.
Rees was a level all by himself.
Even ladies used to Shareem said Rees was dangerous. They said it with an excited tremor in their voices.
Rees was one of the reasons Shareem were taboo now. He’d been an experiment, a risk, a step too far.
One day Rees had heard the scientists say that they needed to terminate the dangerous experiment. He’d been pretty sure how they were going to do that.
He’d gotten away, and the next week the company had gone bankrupt. DNAmo, which had thrived for a hundred years breeding the perfect servants and then the perfect males, disappeared overnight.
People had looked for Rees at first, then had forgotten about him. They believed the DNAmo scientists had fled with him. No one even knew what he looked like.
Rio knew. Rees knew. A few women thought they knew, but couldn’t be sure.
And here he was.
Rees could taste the lady’s pheromones on the air. She was wet and wanting him. Well, she’d get what she came for. She should learn not to play with fire.
He turned around and made for her hiding place in the greenery. He’d give her a chance to leave. That was only fair.
Rees stopped right in front of her. Between the broad, flat leaves behind which she crouched, her fire-colored hair and translucent veil nestled like a flower.
“Come on out,” Rees said.
The figure didn’t move.
“You’re not really hiding,” Rees said, trying not to laugh. “I see you.”
She quivered a second, then slowly stood up.
Rees took a stunned step back. Did he say cute? She was gorgeous.
Red hair framed the round face of a woman in her early twenties. Thick, black lashes enhanced the bluest eyes he’d ever seen. He imagined her fluttering those lashes over his lips, over his balls . . .
Her robes mostly hid her, but he could see the swell of breasts and the round of her hips and backside. He liked imagining what she looked like under all that fabric. He’d like to take off those robes, layer by slow layer.
“Well?” Rees said.
“Well, what?” She was trying to be snooty, but she was too nervous.
“Why are you following me?”
The woman got more nervous. “I thought this room was empty.”
Liar. He laughed. “No, you didn’t.”
Another thing enhanced on a Shareem was his voice. He could soothe a woman just by saying hello, make her shiver by speaking her name.
The woman looked anything but soothed. “I thought ... I didn’t mean ... It’s all right, I’ll leave.”
She swung around, robes whirling in the tropical breeze. Rees caught her arm, and she turned, startled, then glared at him.
A Shareem never touched an upper-class woman without her permission. It wasn’t done. His friend Rio, a level three and not ashamed of it, did it all the time.
“I’m just a bad-ass,” Rio would say. Rio would have already lifted this lady’s skirts and showed her what a level three could do. Rees was a little kinder.
“I can think of only one reason a celibate woman would follow a Shareem,” Rees said.
She blinked. “Oh? Why?”
He lowered his voice, made it still more seductive. “Because she wants her first fuck. Why else?”
She stared at him in amazement, and her face turned bright red. “Of course not.”
“You didn’t follow me to play hide and seek, sweetheart. You’re celibate. You want me to make you un-celibate.”
“No, no,” she said. “I’ll go to a clinic for that.””
Upper-class women had clinics for sexual health and for donating DNA to make children. None of them had anything to do with sex. Not swollen cock in hot, slippery pussy kind of sex anyway.
“Then what?”
Her blush spread. “I just wanted to see a Shareem.”
Rees spread his arms. “Here I am.”
The woman made no pretense of not looking. Those blue eyes moved as she examined him from his blond hair all the way down his muscled chest and flat stomach, his thighs, calves, and bare feet.
Her gaze rose again, lingered on the loincloth, and landed on the black chain on his biceps.
“Do you mind being a slave?” she asked.
“Shareem aren’t slaves,” Rees said quickly. “We do what we want.”” Mostly.
“But you were made in a factory.”
“Grown in a vat, yeah. But here we are.”
She looked him up and down one more time. “You’re not what I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
“You’re human,” she said, in wonder. “I didn’’t think you’d be so human.”
That stunned him. Most women looked no further than his huge cock and didn’t much care about anything else. Rees wasn’t considered human. Humanoid, maybe.
Something in his heart warmed a tiny bit. He should be kind to her. Let her get away.
No. Hunt her through the brush and out into the waves--
Rees stopped the thought. “You shouldn’t have followed me. A level one, maybe. But not me.”
Her brows rose. “Why not?”
“Because I’m Rees.”
Her look told him she’d never heard of him. “What’s a Rees?”
She made him laugh, lucky for her. The rest of his body screamed at him to throw her down, fuck her, get it over with.
“Rees is my name.”
Her cheeks got red again. “Oh.”
He laughed out loud. “Don’t worry about it, babe. Come and swim with me.” He pitched his voice to seduce. “The water’s nice.”
Her breath came fast, her delectable breasts rising. “I can’t. No. Thank you for asking, but I’m not ready.”
“Not ready for what?”
“For swimming. Or anything else. My research isn’t complete.”
“Research?”
“On Shareem.”
He stared at her. “You’re doing research on Shareem? What is there to research?”
“Oh, many things.”
Rees wanted to laugh again. He wouldn’t mind helping with a little research. He’d pull off his loincloth, lay her on the sand, lace his fingers through her warm, red hair. Then spread her legs, thrust his tongue inside her fine pussy. Yes, any research was fine with him.
“I wondered if you would . . . ah . . .”
Her stammering broke off as Rees leaned closer. She had a sweet scent overlaid with the tang of excited woman.
What do you want me to do, love? Fuck you? Lick you? Fill your mouth?
Bind her hands, part her legs. Take . . .
Again, Rees stopped his runaway thoughts. She was celibate and clueless. She had no idea what he could do, what Shareem could do, what Rees could do.
The woman drew a calming breath. “I wonder if you’d give me a sample of your DNA.”
Rees stared at her. “I’ve had bizarre requests before, but . . . What do you want to do? Grow your own Shareem? That’s illegal, darling.””
“No, no. I only want to look at it. To see what’s different about you.”
“What’s different is I don’t have parents. Or, maybe I have multiple parents. Or scientists with nothing better to do.”” She frowned as she listened, as though she didn’t know what he was talking about. “What’s your name?”” Rees asked her.
She wet her lips. “Talan.”
“Pretty name for a lady researcher. Okay, Talan, you can have my DNA. Mind if I think of some fun ways of giving it to you?”
“That’s all right, I’ll just take cells from your finger.” Talan reached into her robe, pulling out something that looked like a sharp knife with a tube attached
to it.
Rees took an instinctive step back. Clinics, tubes, and knives always bothered him.
“Ready?” she asked.
Rees made himself hold up his finger. The holo-block sunlight glittered on his tanned skin and the black chain.
As though she saw nothing but his finger, Talan scraped a little of the skin from his fingertip. She closed the tube over the knife and put it back into her pocket, looking satisfied.
“Is that it?” Rees asked.
“Yes, thank you. Thank you very much.”
“You’re welcome.”
Rees shouldn’t touch her, he knew that, and not just because it was taboo. This little sweetheart stirred him up, and stirring up Rees was dangerous.
But he wanted to touch her. He needed it. One touch, that was all, and then he’d let her go.
He reached out and brushed a strand of hair from her forehead.
Talan stared up at him in amazement, then her eyes softened. Rees’s Shareem touch, his voice, his gaze, were all created to melt a woman.
“You’re putting a spell on me,” she said softly. “I read about that.””
“I know. I can’t help it.”
She swallowed. “I have to go.”
“So you keep saying.”
Rees withdrew his touch. She sucked in a sharp breath, gave him another startled look, turned with another flurry of skirts, and made for the door.
“Sure you don’t want to stay?” Rees called to her.
“I am already very late. If I have to explain . . .”
If her friends were the upper-class elite--women who’d decided that good old-fashioned screwing was bad, women who’d made laws restricting Shareem--Talan would be in for it, all right.
“Tell them you were researching,” he said.
“Good idea. Good-bye, Mr. Rees. And thank you.”
She turned again, walking straight for the wall. Triggered, the door materialized in front of her and opened. Talan ran through, the draft swirling her robes above a pair of legs that made Rees’s blood sing.
The door whooshed shut again, leaving Rees alone.
He stood there a moment while the tropical air caressed him, the palm trees whispered, and the ocean slithered up the beach behind him. Then he ripped off his loincloth and ran across the beach and into the waves.
His blood pounded, and every cell in his body burned. He was like a lava flow in the water--Rees was surprised the holo-sea didn’t start boiling.
It was all Rees could do not to run after the woman, haul her back in, lock the door. He’d lay her down, thrust his cock inside her, keep pounding until he came. And she came. And he came again.
But he didn’t.
She’d said thank you.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Rees’s cock, enhanced like the rest of him, stood out straight, even in the cool water. Thank gods he’d decided to do an ocean. If he’d picked the garden with the fountain, he’’d be dead, because no way a little trickling fountain would cool him down.
Rees plunged underwater, letting the waves slither over his naked body. It helped--some. He pictured Talan coming back in, throwing off her robes, swimming out to him, twining her arms around his neck. Rees would lower his head and kiss her lips.
Wasn’t helping.
When Rees surfaced, blood still pounding, the pheromone levels in the room had decreased slightly--probably saving him from an early death. His heartbeat finally settled down. It took his cock longer to deflate, but disappointment helped.
He floated on his back, thinking. He’d remember her face. He’d see her again. Once he’d finished helping Rio, he’d seek her out. An upper-class woman called Talan wouldn’t be too hard to find.
And when he did find her, Rees would remind her of the lost opportunity they’d had here on the tropical beach.
The fucking will be good. His cock moved again. It will be very good. He knew it in his bones.
End of Excerpt
Books by Allyson James
Tales of the Shareem series
Rees
Rio
Aiden & Ky
Calder
Braden
Justin
Kieran
Maia & Rylan (short story)
Eland & Jeanne (forthcoming)
About the Author
Award-winning author Allyson James is a pen name of New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Ashley. Allyson has written more than 75 published novels and novellas in romance, urban fantasy, and mystery under the names Jennifer Ashley, Allyson James, and Ashley Gardner. Her books have been nominated for and won Romance Writers of America’s RITA (given for the best romance novels and novellas of the year), several RT BookReviews Reviewers Choice awards (including Best Urban Fantasy, Best Shapeshifter Romance, and Career Achievement in Historical Romance), Prism awards for her paranormal romances, and Passionate Plume and CAPA awards for her erotic romances.
More about Allyson’s books can be found at the website:
http://www.allysonjames.com
Or email Allyson at [email protected]
Join her newsletter at: http://tinyurl.com/8mfgded
Kieran
Tales of the Shareem, Book 7
Copyright © 2014 by Jennifer Ashley and Allyson James
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All Rights are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Excerpt of Rees copyright © 2004; 2013 by Jennifer Ashley and Allyson James
Cover design by Kim Killion
Kieran (Tales of the Shareem) Page 20
