Wicked Empress:The Onic Empire, Book 4
Page 33
By the time she finally managed to open her pleasure-drugged eyes, he was gone.
A short time later Sirena stepped outside the pilot’s stateroom and stopped short, startled to see her co-commander of the Serpentian guard walking toward her. Walk—such a colorless word to describe the way he moved. He strode, he prowled like the magnificent male creature he was. His tall, heavily muscled body erect and graceful, his beautifully shaped head held high, he surveyed her with narrowed eyes.
His sculpted jaw was still clenched, his nostrils flared. Pushing back her hair, she eyed him cautiously. Great serpents, he wasn’t embarrassed. He was furious.
Perhaps it would teach him a lesson. He could have been the male groaning with pleasure beneath her.
Her own body hummed with satisfaction. She’d left her latest lover sprawled across the bed in the stateroom behind her. He wouldn’t wake for a long time, but when he did, it would be with a smile. As she recalled some of the things he’d done to her and with her, the corners of her mouth curled up with satisfaction.
If she’d sighed, feeling detached even as he groaned his eternal devotion, that was no one’s business but her own. As was the fact she’d come most deliciously of all with Slyde watching them.
“Commander Stone,” she said now, ignoring the way his narrow gaze made her want to touch her flight suit to see if it smoldered. Even after coming several times in the last hours, she still felt the usual low curl of desire at his nearness. But she’d resolved from the beginning that she wouldn’t hang on his sleeve. That was for dewy-eyed ingénues. Let the great beast tell her what was wrong, if he wished.
Otherwise, she was headed straight for a hot shower-dry.
Slyde berated himself in savage silence. What had he been thinking to confront Sirena here outside her lover’s door? Nothing coherent, that was certain. Since the instant he first saw her, he’d been thinking mostly with his cock.
After he’d refused her in the bar that first night, he’d seen the fighter pilot preen himself before her. Had known how it would end when the fellow swaggered out of the bar after her. And he’d watched the scene repeated several times in the last two months. The lovely, sensual Sirena was a typical Serpentian, sharing her body with any male she chose. And he was nearing the end of his patience. He’d done his best to show her how well they got along as they trained, planned and worked together, had even resorted to showing off in sparring. But still she turned to other men.
Tonight, he’d overridden a prime rule of courtesy on board ship and opened a com-link between them. He bitterly regretted his decision. Because now he had to do more than imagine the things she allowed her lovers to do to her—the things he dreamed of doing to her, with her, himself.
Now he’d seen her. Her lovely body naked, kneeling astride another male, riding him with perfect, sensual grace. Had seen the other man’s hands on the taut swell of her ass, his mouth on the perfect globes of her breasts.
Now he knew her skin was the same silken gold over her entire body, save for the dusky peach of her nipples and the delicate line of auburn that limned her mons. Knew how those scant curls looked soaked with another man’s seed, how the pink lips of her labia stretched taut around another man’s glistening cock as he drove it in and out of her.
Now he knew her soft, escalating moans as she enjoyed her orgasm. And the look in her eyes as she came, because their eyes had locked and he’d been unable to break away, drowning in those emerald depths.
Controlling his anger with a supreme effort, he stopped before her. Her golden cheeks were flushed, emerald eyes sleepy, her auburn mane tousled. Even the collar of her sleek top was crooked, which she would never allow on duty. It was obvious she’d just come from her lover’s arms. Arms that Slyde wanted to rip off and feed to the bastard.
He grimaced as her fragrances mingled with the stench of another male ripped at his sensitive olfactory glands like rotting Pangaean fruit.
She raised an arching brow at him.
“Commander?” she asked in her throaty voice. “Are you well?”
“That’s a question I might ask you,” he answered, his deep voice as rough as mountain stones grating together. “Were the answer not so obvious.”
She straightened, frowning. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Merely that a shower-dry is in order. You reek of your lover’s sweat.”
“Commander Stone. You forget yourself.”
“Forget?” he sneered. “I’m not the one who has lain with too many lovers to remember.”
She drew in a hiss of pure rage, her emerald eyes going molten.
Good—let her have a taste of the frustrated rage he’d been battling since he laid eyes on her and realized that here was the woman of his dreams—his fervid, tormenting dreams—and that she would never be his… unless she agreed to his terms, which she was unlikely to do. Why should she, when she could enjoy any male she chose, for as long as she chose, instead of pledging herself to just one?
“I presume you had an important reason for following me?” she asked with dangerous softness. “And for spying on me?”
“It will wait,” he bit out.
He’d come on this voyage to look for a woman—a far different kind of woman. The kind who’d saved herself for marriage and who was chaste. Instead, he’d taken one look across that hellhole of a bar on Solaria and fallen like a space rock for this beauty, a warrior who could fell a man as easily with a kick or a look—and did both with regularity.
He turned his back on her before she could reply and before he could do what he really wanted: throw her over his shoulder, carry her off to his quarters and toss her in his shower-dry until she’d been through three or more cleaning cycles. And then…imprint his own touch and scent on her, so thoroughly she would never want another.
Slamming through an open hatchway, he raced down one of the many small spiral staircases, not caring where it led as long as it was away from her and what he wanted of her.