by Laney Kaye
Which, of course, was exactly what it’d meant; nothing. Gods knew why I’d even pressed her on that point, tried to get her to admit that it had meaning, as though I was unsure of my own thoughts. Cautious, careful, I’d assess facts and choose the best course of action. Every damn time. I was never unsure.
But this bond shit was really fucking with my brain. With Aren in my arms, the beat of her heart strong against my chest and the faint, soapy fragrance of raw sapponen rising from her sun-heated skin, I could persuade myself that I didn’t need to make love to her right this damn second. But the moment she was more than an arm’s length from me, every cell in my body would keen toward her, aching to draw her closer. As though I’d only be able to protect her if I could touch her.
I swatted a teezter away with enough force to send it into the next galaxy and Aren jerked around to look at me, her brow arching.
A shake of my head dismissed her silent question. What the hells had I been thinking, insisting we make time to talk like some lovelorn teens? Since when did I have anything to say to her, beyond planning our rescue strategies?
I shouldn’t have allowed that second bond. But, hells, I’d wanted her lips on mine. What man could refuse a demand like the one she’d made of me?
My constant scan of the horizon, alert for incoming as Herc raced across the sand, did nothing to slow the frantic maneuverings of my brain.
We’d be fine, as long as Aren never initiated the final bond.
Because, the way my testosterone was surging, it’d be damn hard to reject her.
I took one hand from Aren’s waist, and thrust it through the unfamiliar feel of my short hair, like I could smear away the thoughts stampeding through my brain. I needed to focus on the mission and ignore this whole damned bond business. Our actions now could spell the salvation of the Resistance, the Refugees, and what was left of our small band of cat shifters.
It wasn’t like I couldn’t control myself.
Aren shifted, and my knuckles brushed the underside of her breast. I gritted my teeth. Yeah. Control myself. Right. It was almost like I didn’t want to control myself.
Had the bonding hit Aren the same way? I’d figured the kiss had been partly a fuck-you gesture toward Lyrie, proving that Aren had as much right to be in the headquarters as any of us. But I couldn’t be sure. As always, Aren was a mystery.
The only thing I knew for certain, was that all we had was now.
I tugged her closer, relishing the feel of the hard curve of her spine against my abs. My lips against her ear, I murmured, “Y’know, I’m kind of glad Leo got hit.”
“What?” Her shoulder jutted into my chest as she swiveled to face me, her slanted eyes startled. “How can you say that?”
I knew Leo was her favorite, and damned if that didn’t twist my balls a bit, but I’d not expected the flare of anger in her tone. “Whoa, chill, babe. I just meant that if Leo hadn’t been hit, you would’ve been riding him. And that’d be too far away from me.” There was no harm in me teasing a bit. Had to do something to pass the time.
A frown creased her brow, as though she’d argue, but instead she took one hand from Herc’s fur and used it to wind the loose end of her long scarf more tightly, covering the lower half of her face and securing her hood in place to keep out the swarming teezter flies that whipped into our faces every few seconds. But it meant that I couldn’t kiss her, and she’d stolen the sweet, exposed piece of flesh I’d been happy to nuzzle into.
“You know what you were saying about us not having time to talk?” My hands drifted from her waist, over the narrow curve of her hip and along her upper thigh. Her muscles tightened beneath the loose pants she wore. “Seems there’s little we can do but talk, now.”
“Too hard to hear.”
She was right. Between the wind whipping against our ears, the pound of Herc’s feet, and his occasional grunt as he leapt a small ravine or dodged a sand viper burrow, the journey wasn’t exactly conducive to sharing quiet confidences.
Lucky I was skilled in talking with my hands.
She tensed as my hand slid between her thighs. But she didn’t clamp her knees together and deny me access. Instead, she leaned back against my chest as I stroked her leg. Her body gradually softened.
While mine did precisely the opposite. As my fingers grazed the hidden valley between her thighs, she made a low noise, a cross between a purr and a moan, that had me instantly stiff.
“Cap. We need to take a break.” My words came out unintentionally curt. “Stretch our legs.” Damn, it wasn’t my legs that wanted to stretch.
Herc slowed to a halt alongside a rocky outcrop, then crouched low to the ground, making it easy for Aren to dismount. As he straightened, he shook, his fur rippling, and his golden gaze met mine, humor glinting deep within.
“Just give us five, okay, Cap?” He’d shit-stir me later for being as quick as a teenager but, much as I needed time alone with Aren right now, I wouldn’t lose sight of our mission.
Herc tossed his head toward the distance, indicating he’d scout ahead. He knew that each of us had to live for the day, now more than ever.
As he bounded off, Aren unwound the cloth from her face and pressed against me, not hiding her arousal. The musky smell of her lit me up like a munga.
“You want this, don’t you?” I had to be sure. I’d never take a woman against her will.
She arched her hips toward me. “Yes!” she hissed. “I do.”
I yanked at the string tying the top of her pants and slipped my hand inside. Swept my palm over her warm mound, and plunged my fingers straight into her slick, wet channel. “Ah, fuck, Aren. I could get off just feeling you so wet for me.”
Aren’s nostrils flared as she moved rhythmically against my touch. When I pulled my hand away and lifted my fingers to my mouth, licking at her sweet, beejus taste, she moaned. I worked my hand inside her pants again, slid my fingers deep inside her, then withdrew them. This time, I traced the essence across her lips.
She parted them instantly, sucking my finger into her mouth.
I dragged in a harsh breath, struggling for control as my dick, harder than a sirdar pole, rode against her thigh. Her tongue flicked wickedly at my fingertip, and I groaned. “Babe. You’re gonna make me blow.”
“Then do it,” she whispered as my hand slipped back down, searching the slick folds of her hot, liquid core.
She ground down, trapping my hand between her thighs, forcing my fingers deep inside as my thumb worked her clit.
“Open your eyes,” I urged. “I want to watch you come.” I needed to see the flare of desire in her gaze, the sexy dilation of her pupils as my fingers brought her to the edge of another orgasm, balanced her there, then tumbled her over the precipice.
And, fuck, I wanted to see her come as I emptied my balls against the muscled thrust of her taut thigh.
This would be all I’d ever have.
Eyes still closed, she shook her head. “Not yet.”
“Not yet?” With little blood reaching my brain, I had no hope of understanding anything except the fact that this wasn’t going where I wanted it to. “You want me to hold off? Or you don’t want to come?”
“Both. Not until you look…like you,” she murmured.
Holy fuck. My heart slammed so damned hard it was amazing it didn’t knock her to the sand. Unless I caught sight of my pale skin, or rubbed a hand across the armored scales on my jaw, I kept forgetting that I looked like a Dragarian.
Both the pair blade bond and the two Felidaekin bonds had been formed while I was masquerading as her dead husband. Yet now Aren was saying it was me that she wanted?
“Aren.” My voice came out more urgent than I intended. “You mean you only want to get off if I look like me? Not if I look like a Dragarian?”
“I don’t want you watching me…you know…again. Not while you look like that. Like him.”
I was so accustomed to her being terse and directive, this new, uncertain Aren captivated m
e. Like I was getting two women for the price of my one operation. Not that I needed two; doubtless a few days of Aren would be enough trouble to last me several lifetimes. I squeezed a handful of the soft inside of her thigh. Well, as soft as Aren got; lean and sinewy and tight, she was lithe, like a…jaguar.
If she wouldn’t let me take her while I looked like a Dragarian, that could only mean one thing. “Aren. Did you want me before we touched? Before we kissed?”
Her answer could change everything. If she wanted more, if she wanted the third bond, I needed to run.
Jags. Don’t. Bond.
Though my parents, both full-blood Jags, managed to live together amicably. Even more than amicably, if my childhood memories of their little jokes and longing glances were any indication.
And, fuck, hadn’t I wanted Aren from when I first met her?
I took a step back, my heel hitting the edge of the outcrop. Why was I fighting this? Sure, I was a Jag. Untamed and free, and all that stuff. And legendary in my caution.
But I’d never met a woman as wild as Aren. A woman who intrigued me, who awed me with her mystery and quiet strength.
Maybe caution was overrated.
No. I couldn’t allow thoughts like that. It was the damn bond speaking. In any case, I had multiple outs; if Aren wanted me, I’d ask to make love to—no, fuck, I meant fuck—her, and we wouldn’t be bonded because she hadn’t done the asking. And if we didn’t maintain the twenty-four-hour connection, I’d also be home free.
If we made it home.
Where I’d go back to my regular life.
Without Aren.
Why the hell did that thought carve a hollow in my chest? This woman was driving me crazy, one taste of her was messing with my mind like unfiltered tamus weed.
Her lips remained slightly parted, almost as though she hoped I’d kiss her again. And I sure as hells would, just as soon as I had an answer. Maybe she hadn’t heard me. Gods knew, the blood pounded hard enough in my own ears to deafen me.
My tone rough with nerves, I repeated the question. “Aren. Did you want me? Before the bondmating?” Fuck, I didn’t even know what I wanted her to say, yet I had a feeling that our lives hinged on her reply.
“I—” She broke off, blew out a short, sharp breath, her eyes still closed. “You intrigued me.”
Not what I was after. “And?” I growled, my hands fisted as I refused to encroach on her space, though every fiber of my being wanted her in my arms.
She made a tiny mewling noise, as though she fought the words, the emotion. “And yes, I wanted you, Jag. Even back then. I wanted you because you’re like me.”
She saw the same parallel I’d noticed, we were opposite sides of the same rubik. Yet I couldn’t process what this meant, except that we were autonomous. Our desire wasn’t created or ruled by the bondmating.
I closed the gap between us, my hand resting on her waist. “I assure you, even after your witch friend has done her slice and dice magic on me, I am still nothing like you.” She couldn’t ignore my erection against her thigh. “I’ll be happy to show you, as soon as we stop for more than five minutes.”
Herc’s low growl warned of his approach.
Aren’s smile was small and tight, as though she got my joke, but had more important things on her mind. Well, hell, yeah, we both did. Entering the enemy compound, catching up with her murdering slime of an old man, a looming battle of epic proportions, and all that kind of stuff. But I’d be cautious enough for both of us when it was called for. Until then, I intended to take advantage of every second together.
She shook her head, like she read my thoughts. “I mean, you’re a loner, like me. That’s what attracted me. Because I knew it meant we could do this.” Her jaw tightened. “I knew you’d understand that we could have our fun. Fuck and then move on. Because you’re Jaguarkin. And I’m…me. Neither of us want more than that.”
Perfect. At least it should be. So why did my gut lurch? Ego, I guess. I needed her to want me, even if—though—I had no plans to take this thing any further. “Sorry, babe, but I’m not quite that easy. Not a wham, bam, thank you ma’am kind of guy, despite what you think.” Beetric shit. That was exactly what I’d always been.
She shook her head, a frown creasing her brow. “What do you mean?”
She sounded…betrayed?
“I want more, Aren. No, not the whole bond shit,” I rushed to reassure her, but it suddenly seemed the denials that tripped so glibly off my tongue, the result of years of practice, weren’t the whole truth. “But I’m so not done with you. One taste? You think that’s enough? Oh, no, babe, I have plans for us. You want me, and I want you. Always did.”
Her pupils blown out with lust, her chest rose quickly, a catch in her voice. “There’s too much you don’t understand.”
“I understand well enough. We get out of this mission alive, and we sort out what happens with us from there.” Why the hell was I asking for time, like a stay of execution?
She nodded slowly, her lips mashed together. When her words came, they were heavy with import. “If we get out alive.”
Obviously, concern about our mission—about seeing her father after an absence of two years—weighed heavily on her.
Herc padded up and dropped low to the ground again, and we remounted. Within minutes, he swung toward the east, his scouting ahead apparently having provided a new course. The change in direction stilled the wind, making our words seem overloud.
I tightened my grip as Herc’s muscles bunched and he leapt across a ravine. He wouldn’t pause again or shift back until he was beat and had to stop to sleep through the day. After putting some clicks between the massed Regime forces and ourselves today, we’d stick to traveling at night, avoiding the vipers that only hunted in the heat of the sun. Hopefully, the tactic would make locating us harder for scouts and drones, too. Still, I was no lightweight, and even with Herc’s muscles, cats weren’t built as beasts of burden.
His flanks lathered with sweat, Herc slowed as a herd of pillion startled and dashed across our front. As always, the group instinctively formed into a triangle, protecting the calves in the center of the unit. Their sharp hooves only briefly touched the baking sand with each step, their direction deliberately erratic and flighty as they kept constantly on the move to escape predators. One of the calves strayed, bleating piteously as the herd swept away like a dark streaked cloud.
Aren gasped as a sand viper erupted from beneath the gritty crust of earth, showering the fawn-coated calf with dirt and rocks. The animal let out a terrified squeal, cut short as the snake’s fangs sank deep. The viper’s worm-like torso, horizontally segmented tubes thicker than a man’s body, thrashed from side-to-side as it dragged its prey back into the tunnel it had bored through rock and sand.
As she sagged against me, I wasn’t sure whether Aren’s sigh was sorrow or weariness, despite our brief rest. The strain of hours of gripping Herc with our thigh muscles and struggling for balance was beginning to tell. Or perhaps it was a groan of unfulfilled sexual desire. Gods knew, I was balanced somewhere between euphoria and torture.
The calf’s mother broke from the herd, bellowing pitifully as she rushed back toward her baby. I tightened my arm around Aren’s waist, pressing a kiss against her scarf-covered hair. She wouldn’t feel it. “Sad.”
She shook her head. “Survival of the fittest. That’s the only thing that counts out here.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “Look how many of the Refugees you led to shelter with the Resistance. And how long you managed to keep them alive in the desert. You can’t begin to pretend they’re the fittest, yet thanks to you, they survived.”
Her back was rigid against my chest, as though she held herself together through will alone. “You’ve no idea how many I lost. The death I must take responsibility for.”
The self-recrimination almost too quiet for me to catch, still it twisted a knife in my gut. I knew how guilt could eat away at your soul.
“Without you, they’d all be dead. Trust me in this; you have to focus on how many you’ve saved, whatever the cost.” Gods knew, that was the truth. Herc, Leo, Khal, and me, we were all killers. Mercenaries, supposedly for hire to the highest bidder. But we had principles. If Herc was convinced we were fighting for the wrong side, he’d pull us from the mission, like he’d done here. Still, there was no denying that we justified killing in order to save lives. Spike was the only one of us who’d never seemed to lose sleep over how we made our living. “You can’t blame yourself for those you couldn’t save.”
Aren’s chest rose raggedly, a long sigh huffing out. “I don’t. Not entirely, anyway. It’s Smithton’s fault. This whole damn war could’ve been avoided. Hells, the Medians lived here in peace for decades, until Hartlin, Tennant and my f—Smithton, persuaded a Median-led government faction that the Royal family should be deposed. They advised that a coup would negate the possibility of any future leadership challenges, and ensure the Median’s economic supremacy. That, with their planned three-pronged attack, the takeover would be seamless and almost bloodless, giving the Medians control of yet another world.”
I frowned, swiping a hand across my mouth as grit blew in on a gust of cooler air. The two moons rose in front of us, though the sun still burned on our backs. “Hang on, wind that back a bit. What do you mean, three-pronged?”
Aren pushed her hands down on Herc’s back to lift herself up a little, before resettling. “Tennant and his cronies murdered the King and planned to force Queen Lyra to marry Prince Torsos.”
“Lyra was Maya and Lyrie’s mother?” When Maya first brought the story to him, hoping to turn our allegiance from the Regime to the Resistance, Herc had ordered Leo to research the Glian history.
Aren nodded. “Correct. And Torsos is a fool, he’s fried his brain with years of benna and tamus abuse. He would’ve been a puppet in Tennant’s hands. But when Queen Lyra rejected him and tried to flee with her people, she was captured and executed. Maya and Lyrie made it into the desert, and Tennant realized he’d never rule, even behind his puppet, while they lived. He’s been hells-bent on exterminating every Resistance fighter ever since, figuring that’s the only way he can be certain he’s eradicated the Royal family.”
