For a second, he froze. “He bought you?”
“Yup. It was the only way he could free me from the slave holder.”
“Oh, maja, if I could have spared you that experience, I would.”
She smiled, and it was a beautifully tender quirk of the lips that had his heart melting. Griljerrd, what this woman could do to him.
“I’m happy now, Rafer. I’m not that woman anymore. I can’t be traded. As soon as he bought me, Knox gave me my ownership papers. I’m a free woman.”
“Did they…did they hurt you? When you were a slave?”
She sighed. “I want a really good truth out of you when it’s your turn.”
He winked. “I have one waiting. Just answer me first, maja. I need to know if I have to go and kill some slave holder before my career in the Fleet ends.”
She cocked a brow. “Before it ends?”
“The immunity my rank bestows on me ends the minute my contract does.”
“Well, you don’t have to go out and kill anyone. I was beaten a few times, no more than most. I was pretty well behaved. And once they found out I was a virgin”—she shrugged—“they left me alone on that score as well. That upped my price on the block.”
“Thank fuck Knox saw you. Although, what he was doing at a slave auction, I don’t lukcin know.”
“I don’t give a damn. I’m just glad he was. Think of how all this could have turned out if he hadn’t have been there.”
Rafer blew out a slow breath. “You’re right. I’m relieved to olan he was there. We’d have found you, somehow, and some deya, but only Griljerrd knows what might have happened to you in the interim.”
“Well, that isn’t something we need to worry about. Go on, it’s your turn to spill the beans.”
He shook his head. “I think it will take a lifetime to get used to your phrases.”
She snorted. “Longer. Knox says he’s about seventy percent there with most of the ones I come out with. And that better not be your idea of a revelation.”
“Lukcin, of course not,” he retorted with a sniff. “Since that Lubik, when we first discussed the mate bond, I haven’t touched another woman.”
Parker gasped at his words. It made his stomach twist to see the moisture in her eyes. “Do you really mean that?” she asked in a wobbly voice.
“I really mean it.”
She pulled in some air. “Why? How? Twenty annals. My God, I wouldn’t have expected you to…. Not that I’m not glad. Hell, anything but. If you wanted to go all assassin on my slaveholder’s ass, then I’d want to do the same on any of your exes.”
He grinned. “I’d like to see you in head-to-toe leather.”
“Because that’s standard assassin wear?” she mocked.
He just smirked, then admitted, “At times, I felt like I’d go insane if I couldn’t find release. But I couldn’t fuck the simulators. I just couldn’t. It felt like cheating, and if they felt like cheating, then being with another female sure as olan did.”
“What’s a simulator?”
“They’re creepy but effective robots.”
“Robots?” she asked disbelievingly.
“Yeah. They look like humanoid males and females, whatever your preference is.”
“They have cocks? And pussies?”
He nodded. “Sort of. It’s like a virtual reality simulation with a sex aid thrown in. It shouldn’t be in any way stimulating, but you can program in the person you want to fuck.”
“Did you program me in?” she asked with a blush.
It charmed him that she could admit all she had, tease him the way she’d done, and still blush at that question. “Felixi, I programmed you in a long time before Lubik.”
“You did? Oh, Rafer, that’s so sweet.”
He quirked a brow. “It is? Seriously?”
“Well, no, I guess not. But I’d prefer you to be fucking me in a simulation than some sex star from the holo channels.”
“And they say romance is dead,” he teased.
“Give me that admission over a bunch of flowers any deya of the semanal,” she retorted. “Thank you for telling me that, Rafer. You’ve no idea how that makes me feel, knowing that even though things were so up in the air between us all, you still felt you were a part of our relationship. Enough so you couldn’t cheat.”
“It wasn’t that I couldn’t, Parker. I just didn’t want to. No other female was you. I didn’t want anyone else. Just because we hadn’t gone through with the Ceremony, didn’t make you any less my mate.”
She blew out a breath. “I think you just made me fall in love with you a little bit.”
He smirked. “I’m so easy to love, maja.”
“Okay, I just fell out of it again.” She grinned at his grimace. “Want to have another truth for a truth?”
“Why not?”
She pursed her lips in thought. “I’ve killed a man.”
He blinked. “Are you being serious?”
She nodded. “Knox knows. And I don’t see why you shouldn’t either. I did what I did, and if I had to re-live that time over, I’d do it again. In a heartbeat.”
“What happened, felixi?”
“On Earth, when the Federation started its evacuation of humans to other parts of the Union, the Fleet were very…the only way I can describe it is, cruel. They did things, horrible things to us. They raped some women, beat others. But it was more like torture. And they got off on it. My mom saved me from being raped by letting the soldiers use her instead. They got off on—” She sucked in a hard breath, then quickly blurted out, “Making me watch.”
When she looked at him, he saw the nightmare of that time in her eyes. He gritted his teeth against the agony that his own people had caused, stopped himself from saying anything until she’d made the total admission and got it off her chest. All he could do was reach for her hand and press it to his lips, hoping with that one move to remind her he was Rafer. Not just the long arm of the Fleet.
“My dad was sent to a prisoner camp because he tried to attack the officers who raped and did…things to my mom. She died from what they did to her.” She looked down at the sheets. “I’m trusting you now, Rafer. Please, don’t let me down.”
He reached for her hand and pressed it to his chest, just over his heart. “You killed a soldier of the Fleet, didn’t you?”
Her eyes were awash with tears as she nodded. “He cornered me in the unit I was in. I couldn’t let him rape me, not when my momma had done what she’d done to protect me. Not when she’d died to save me from that. I grabbed his weapon, and he was so busy trying to get between my fucking legs, he didn’t even notice.”
“How did you…?”
“What? How did I get away with it? Why wasn’t I sentenced to death?” She huffed when he nodded. “Because I’m smart, Rafer. That son of a bitch had been eying me ever since he’d put me in that unit. I knew he’d come, and I knew I’d have to do what I ultimately did. I pushed him away from me, but unbuttoned his breeches so he was all on show and no one could misunderstand his intentions in being where he was with me. You see, he’d taken me out back, where he shouldn’t have.
“I unfastened my dress, tore it at the neckline until my boobs were half hanging out, and I started screaming. I screamed like I’ve never screamed before. I yelled until I nigh on lost my voice. The patrol came ‘round, found the guy half-naked, saw me as I was, and the Federation arrogance came into play. A weak and puny human couldn’t have got the better of a strong soldier of the Fleet. They didn’t even contemplate for one minute it was me.
“It helped that there were a shitload of deserters at the time. Soldiers who were too busy torturing and raping, looting the goddamn planet to do their jobs. Too fucking stupid as well to realize the only way off the fucking planet was via the Federation ships.” She sighed at such stupidity. “Your Fleet might be all high and mighty, but there are some dumb folk in charge and in the ranks. I blamed a guy I knew had deserted the deya before. I’d heard the
bastard who’d tried to rape me gloating about the guy who’d gone AWOL with one of his buddies. He was real proud because the SOB had lent him some money and his deserting meant he wouldn’t have to pay it back.”
“And they believed you?”
She snorted. “Yup. When I grabbed hold of his weapon, I shot him through the back. I knew that would make it easier for it to look like someone else had done it to him. The laser might have sliced into me as well, but it would have been worth it. In the heat of an attack, I thought it would be more likely to aim for the chest, not the back. On top of that, I was hysterical. I really played it up.” For the first time, there were no tears in her eyes, but pride.
“I deserved a goddamn Oscar that deya—not that you know what that is. It’s an award for acting. I just kept on mumbling and screeching until they shoved me back into my unit just to get some peace. They believed me when I told them the guy had come back for his money, and when my wannabe rapist had told him to go to hell, he’d shot him.”
Rafer sucked in a breath. “No wonder you hate the Fleet.”
“I have oh, so many reasons,” she murmured, a glint in her eye. “So, come on. Tell me what you think? Am I scum now? Are you going to turn me in?”
“Maja, if you think I’m going to mourn for a bastard who tried to rape you, then you’re sorely mistaken.”
She pursed her lips. “How do I know you won’t betray me?”
“You don’t. Not yet. But you’ll learn that I’d do anything to protect you. Anything. You think that shocked me? Griljerrd, you don’t know what I’ve done or seen in battle, Parker. If you think that’s bad, then you’re sorely mistaken.”
“War is war, Rafer. Do you think I could kill someone? Now? Or before the invasion?” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t even know what to do. The idea of hurting anyone like that makes me feel sick to my stomach. But when you’re battle ready, things change. Maybe that bastard who tried to fuck me, or the men who did what they did to my people…maybe they wouldn’t be like that in daily life. But war and battle changes people. Makes them do shit they’d never ordinarily do.”
He could tell, and he wasn’t exactly sure how, that she was trying to excuse him. Trying to salve both their consciences just in case he’d done anything to some other woman on another planet that had happened to the females in her ken back on Earth.
He could have been offended by it, could have gotten angry, but how could he? Not when she’d seen the Fleet behaving like animals.
“I’m a Shuzon to my core, Parker. I never did anything like that, and as I moved up the ranks, I made sure the men in my unit didn’t either. Some of the other leaders, they wholeheartedly believe in the whole steals of war shit, but not me.
“I was assigned to the evacuation of Earth, but I turned the assignment down. Those were not honorable deyas in the Fleet’s history. The systematic destruction went against every moral in my personal code. They redeployed me to Krypston instead. As punishment. That place is so close to its sun, your skin feels like it’s going to bubble off.” He rubbed a hand over his arm in memory.
She nibbled her lip. “I–I won’t hate you, if y–you…”
He shook his head. “I never did anything like that. To anyone. I always behaved with respect to anyone in my custody. I swear it. On my ancestors’ lives.”
She blew out a breath. “I’m glad. I’d have forgiven you, but I’m relieved nonetheless.”
His smile was gentle. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”
“You’re welcome.” She peeked up at him, almost shyly. “You don’t think bad of me?”
“No. Not at all. You’re a survivor, Parker. You just did what you had to do. Just like I did what I had to do on the battlefield.”
“Why did you join the Fleet, Rafer? Really?”
“My truth?” he asked, and at her nod, murmured, “Because I wanted peace.”
“You joined the army for peace?”
He grinned. “I know. Strange, especially considering how aggressive the Fleet is. Even as a kid, I knew I couldn’t be like my parents or Knox. They were born to be merchants. Born to just make money. But I wasn’t. I hated being cooped inside and having to sort out the paperwork for some of the businesses. Companies that just existed to make more money…it was like a lesser kind of torture. It was all so pointless.
“And then, I learned my parents wanted Knox and I to become members of a political party on Shuzon. They wanted us to get a foothold in the ranks and work our way up. My mothers, as you’ve already said, are quite blood-thirsty. They’d have had us aiming for the presidency. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t let them take over, and I had to get out.
“I sneaked away that very notte. The idea of all the annals of work before we got into any position of power just killed something in me. All the political bullshit and all the lies we’d have to spout just to get any power, made me realize the only way forward was to join the Fleet. If I wanted peace and without all the bullshit of politics, the only way to go was the army. I knew I could make changes there. It was like an instinct of mine. I knew I’d go far and quickly, and I did. I just had a feeling, that’s all, and I went with my gut.”
“Do you have any regrets?”
His answer was immediate. “I regret reenlisting when I did. I regret that it meant I missed out on so much time with you. Apart from that, I loved my career. If it wouldn’t take me away from you so much, then I’d still be a part of it. I know you saw the bad side of the Fleet, but they’ve done some good, maja. I know. I’ve been a part of a lot of peacekeeping missions.” He wrinkled his nose. “Which you probably shouldn’t know about, so forget I said that.”
She grinned at him. “You’re lucky you’re cute.”
“I was born lucky,” he teased.
“You know, I don’t even have to question that. Because look how it turned out? You got me for a mate.”
With his free hand, he smoothed his thumb along her jaw. “Truer words have never been spoken.”
She raised a hand of her own and clasped it around his wrist in welcome as he moved the pad along the gentle curve of her bottom lip. Back and forth he moved, his eyes staring down intently at the rose-hued morsel. When her tongue peeked out and slipped over his thumb, he groaned.
“Don’t tease, maja.”
“Who’s teasing?” she asked, cocking a brow. “I need you.”
“I need you, too, love. But I’m not much use to you in this lukcin state.”
Her smile widened, and he saw a side of Parker he wasn’t used to seeing as her confidence spilled out, bathing him with her power. They tended to meet up at family events, at all of the Shuzon’s most important religious gatherings, to which he could usually get unquestioned leave. Around his mothers, Parker was in no way dominant. A character to be reckoned with.
But, and he felt like a real olan for admitting this, having seen Madison Hotel, having seen what she and Knox had built together, the ideas of hers that had made this place a legend, he realized he only knew one facet of his mate’s nature.
The cowed female who was fully aware her mate’s family hated her was not who Parker was. This creature here was. She was the one capable of urging a man steeped in tradition like Knox to heel, of making him break all of the rituals of his culture just to have her. She was the vixen who could make Rafer dream of her for decades on end. With such power over him that he couldn’t even have visited when he was off duty, because he knew he’d never be able to leave her.
She was strong, a businesswoman with a smart eye—Knox had told him she’d been the one to discover the discrepancies in the ledgers. This woman, this underrated Earthling, disrespected by most of the Federation’s peoples…was perfect for him.
Her multi-faceted nature would rub nicely against his own. And Griljerrd, he couldn’t wait for more than just their personalities to be rubbing up against each other.
Cocks twitching at the thought, he grunted when her hand slid down his arm, and traile
d along his torso to reach his groin. She shaped his primary shaft through the hemp blankets covering him, and the purr of pleasure that escaped her as she explored his shape had every single molecule in his ego leaping to attention.
The sheets slowly slid down, baring his lower half to the room. She worked at the knot of the belt he’d wrapped around his waist, keeping his toweled robe together, and parted the sides when she managed to untangle the two pieces. His cocks, finally able to lift free, slowly rose and fell back to touch his abs. He felt the wet kiss of cum against his skin, and knew it would take very little to make him shoot his load.
Lukcin, he was about to make a virgin look like a good lover if he wasn’t careful.
Not that Parker seemed to be aware of how powerful her each and every caress was. She trailed a finger down over the bobbing curve of his primary shaft, and all the while, her heavy, slumberous eyes trapped his in their net.
The muscles in his belly clenched down as she gripped him in her fist, and the soft, soughing release of air from between her lips seemed to say a lot as she began to slide her grip along his upper cock.
She worked him fast, hard. He could tell Knox had taught her how to please him, how to work a man’s shaft just how he needed it to be touched. And that thought was only confirmed when she opened her fist and grabbed both shafts, pushing one against the other to create an unbelievable pressure.
Her grip was sloppy from the pre-cum leaking from his dicks, and the sound of her palm slipping up and down filled the otherwise quiet room, as did his groans.
When she rimmed the tip of his primary, thumbed the little slit pooling with cum, he couldn’t help it. He closed his eyes and allowed his head to fall back as his felixi’s glorious hands finally touched him in a way he needed most.
Like a goddamn liksa cat, he luxuriated in her stroking, every part of him rumbling with the delight of having her so close, of having his mate bring him to pleasure after so lukcin long in waiting.
He licked his lips, the need to taste her imperative to his senses. “Help me, Parker.”
A Menage Made On Madison [The Federation 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 12
