She’s mine, he thought as he leapt down before her with a vicious snarl.
“Oh gods,” Marisa whispered. Fear radiated off her and Bradi knew that it was him she was scared of. She looked around nervously as tears glistened in her eyes. “Bradi? Bradi, please help me. I didn’t mean to upset you. Please.”
Each time she called out to him, using his name, he wanted to shift back into his human form and wrap his arms around her. That would no doubt scare her more, and if the Commission ever found out that he was part supernatural then he’d be let go and possibly brought up on charges. Project Exorcism had rid the Commission of most of its supernatural problem, or so they thought. Bradi knew better, but he wasn’t about to start talking.
Bradi swiped his claws out at the large male in a show of dominance and it heeded his warning. It turned and ran toward the woods, followed closely by the rest of its pard. A piece of him longed to run with them. He missed the days when he and his siblings, well, all the ones that could fully shift that was, ran together.
He looked up at Marisa and took another step toward her. She tensed and the smell of her fear excited the beast. “Bradi, please, I’m sorry. Please, don’t leave me here. Bradi, please....”
The soft plea in her voice brought the man within him back to the surface. He was ashamed of how close he’d let his beast get to attacking her. He spun quickly around and ran off into the forest to find his clothes.
* * * *
Bradi stood silently in the shadows, watching Marisa. She sat on the beach with a large stick clutched tightly to her, wiping tears from her cheeks. He wanted to run to her, hold her, and tell her that everything would be all right, but he didn’t. Instead, he took the coward’s approach and rustled the bush next to him with his hand to alert her to his presence.
She wiped her cheeks and righted herself. “Bradi, is that you?”
“Yeah,” he said, unsure if he could offer anymore without breaking down and confessing all his secrets to her.
She sprang to her feet and ran toward him. Throwing her arms around his neck, she sighed. Bradi froze. “This huge eel came out of the water, and then all kinds of big leopards ran out at me. One knocked me down and I threw sand in its eyes. I thought it was going to rip my throat out, but it stopped and started to sniff me.” She tightened her grip on him, and he wrapped his arms around her slowly, cringing slightly at her mislabeling his breed as leopards.
“It nudged me a few times before it stuck its nose right into my crotch.” She flushed as she spoke.
This piqued Bradi’s curiosity, as he wondered what had driven them into acceptance of her. The mark had something to do with it. She was now viewed as claimed by him, but that wasn’t always a guarantee. He stroked the back of her long, layered hair and nodded to her, encouraging her to go on.
Something flickered across her eyes and she narrowed her gaze on him. “I called for you, you stubborn bastard and you never came.” Her hand came up fast and struck him square across the face. Knowing that he deserved it for leaving her alone, he said nothing, but when she attempted to strike him again, he grabbed her wrists.
“Let go of me!” she cried out as she snapped her teeth at him.
He snapped back and gave her a wicked grin.
“Ooo, forget it! If your teeth broke my skin I’d probably end up with some sort of disease considering the way you run around with the ladies.”
He resisted the urge to inform her that she was now considered one of his ladies, the only lady in fact, and that his teeth had indeed broken her skin. “I’ll have you know, Doc, that I’m up to date on all my shots, or are you forgetting how you drooled over the sight of my ass as you injected me with them?”
The Commission had instituted mandatory shots for diseases and STDs to all of their enlisted, and Marisa seemed to take great joy out of throwing what she thought was his sex life into his face every chance she got. It was pointless to give the shots to him. His genetic make up didn’t allow for him to catch any sort of human disease. The worst he had to fear when bedding a woman was getting her pregnant. The shots, while they contained population control additives, did nothing to lower his sperm count. It didn’t matter, really. The only way he could get a female pregnant was if she was his true life mate. He highly doubted Marisa was that. Besides, she was on Commission shots too, so even if she was his true mate, not just his chosen, she’d be protected from pregnancy.
“How could I forget?” She glared at him. “And, for the record, should I cut myself on a rusty eel, I’m as good as dead. I’m allergic to the binding agents they use in the shots so I have none.”
“A rusty eel, huh?” Laughing, he pulled her close to him not caring if she protested. “I’ll do my best to keep you away from any more sharp objects or rusty eels.”
Chapter Five
Bradi finished putting the last of the large leaves over the crude structure and climbed underneath it to join Marisa by the fire. She sat there rubbing her hands together with her knees to her chest. It gave him a fantastic view up her ultra-short shorts and he savored it. His cock stirred to life and he could almost taste her sweet skin as he watched her.
He reached out to the give the brula he’d managed to catch a turn to keep it from burning over the fire and he moved closer to her. She shifted and gave him a wary look. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“You look cold and I’m burning up, so I thought you might want to be close to me.” It was only a partial truth. Because I want to hold you seemed like too bold a statement.
“Oh,” she said, moving closer to him. She looked up at the meat and cocked an eyebrow. “Are you sure that’s edible?”
He chuckled. “Yes, it’s similar to rabbit.”
“I’m going to eat a bunny?” She sounded so innocent.
Laughing again, he turned the meat. “No, brula. Similar but not the same thing.”
“How do you know so much about this planet? I thought you were from Margaidia.”
He had to hide his delight. She knew, or thought she knew, where he was from. That meant that she’d paid attention to the details of his life. He nonchalantly turned the brula again and shrugged. “Well, I lived there for the last twelve years but I wasn’t born there.”
“Where were you born?”
He smiled. “Tell you what--I’ll tell you a secret about me if you tell me one about you first.”
Marisa stiffened. “I don’t have any secrets.”
“Fine, then neither do I.”
She glanced up at him and shivered. Sliding his arm around her, he waited for Marisa to scream at him or hit him. When she did neither, he assumed it was safe. They sat quietly and watched the brula cook. His gaze kept going to her legs and he wished that she’d come clean about her ability to heal just so she could mend the angry cuts on her body.
“Bradi?”
“Hmm?” he asked, not wanting to let her go and praying she wouldn’t ask him to.
“What happened to the ship? It was fine and then all of the sudden it wasn’t.”
The same question had plagued him from the moment he’d felt the first signs of distress on the ship and that had been a day prior to the crash. His gut told him it was sabotaged, but he didn’t want to believe that one of his own crewmembers would do such a thing. The meteoroid shower could have been to blame, but even that wouldn’t have caused the amount of destruction he’d seen on board the ship. “I’m not sure, honey.”
When she didn’t balk at his term of endearment, he took it as a good sign. She sighed. “I wonder if Peter made it.”
He drew her deeper into his arms and was surprised when he felt her shift her body to meet his. Kissing the top of her head gently, he rocked her slowly. Marisa turned her face to meet his and when he noticed the unshed tears in her eyes, he instantly wanted to rip something apart.
* * * *
Marisa stared into the blue depths of Bradi’s eyes as the firelight sparkled off them. It struck her how handsome Bradi was
and she was grateful for the warm glow of the fire because it masked the faint red glow she now wore. This man who she’d assumed was a pig sat so quiet, stroking her back gently and rocking her softly. How was it that he could be so thoughtful when she’d only ever considered him for the chauvinistic candidate of the year award?
Bradi’s full lips were framed nicely by his dark black goatee, and when he tipped his head slightly to look at her, she couldn’t help herself. Leaning in, she pressed her lips lightly to his. His entire body stiffened and for a minute, she thought he’d push her away from him, but he didn’t. When she felt his hand move into her hair, she realized what she’d started.
The kiss remained chaste at first and that bothered her. Was she not as good as the women he normally surrounded himself with? Marisa had never undergone any drastic body changes so her breasts were hers and hers alone, as was the rest of her body. At five foot five, she just missed hitting his shoulder and she knew that men tended to prefer the intergalactic supermodels to tiny packaged women like her. Didn’t they?
Opening her mouth slightly, she let her tongue slide along his lower lip. She was met with a moan and Bradi’s grip tightened in her hair. Pulling her head back slightly, his mouth came down hard on hers. At first, she forgot to breathe. Sure, she’d been kissed before, but never like this. Never with such raw unbridled passion. His tongue dove in and out of her mouth, mimicking mating and Marisa’s legs drew together in an attempt to quell the burning between her thighs.
Bradi began to ease their bodies to the ground and she didn’t fight him. She needed comfort, needed to lose herself in the moment. Guilt over her lust for Bradi tried to surface, but she suppressed it. Stranded on a strange, primitive planet with no hope of going home, she needed to feel something--anything, and for all the faults Bradi had, not making her feel wasn’t one of them.
His hands seemed to be everywhere at once and she realized that she too was feeling him. Letting her hands glide over his back, she bunched his T-shirt up to feel his hot skin beneath. Hard muscles greeted her and she drew in a sharp breath as her pussy quivered. She worked his shirt over his head and couldn’t believe how incredible his body was. The very thought of him fucking her damn near brought about an orgasm. She could only dream what the real thing would be like.
Bradi was always shy about letting people see him partially dressed and she couldn’t understand why. “You don’t have an ounce of fat on you.”
Bradi chuckled and she realized that she’d spoken aloud. He bent his head down and kissed her collarbone lightly. “Mmm, I have yet to find any fat on you either.”
“Oh please, my--”
He silenced her with a kiss as he ground his hips against her. The pressure of his hard shaft through the fabric of his pants was more than enough to stimulate her swollen clit. Each rub, each sway of his hips brought her closer to climax.
Needing to be closer to him, Marisa lifted her tattered gray shirt and let her bra rub against his hard chest. Bradi’s hands found their way to her breasts and in just seconds, he was rolling her nipples between his fingertips, causing her to moan for him.
When his fingers slid into the top of her shorts, she tensed a bit. He stopped and looked down at her, capturing her in his mesmerizing gaze. “Do you want me to stop?”
She bit her lower lip and shook her head. “No, but I need to tell you something and you have to promise not to laugh.”
His eyebrows arched as he nodded his head. “Yes?”
“I’ve never ... I’ve never been with a man before.”
He nodded and placed a chaste kiss on her forehead. “We can stop until you are ready, honey.”
“No,” she said, a little too fast. “I’m ready, but I thought you should know so that....”
He smiled. “So that I’d be gentle with you?”
That wasn’t exactly what she had in mind. “Well, I guess gentle would be nice, but more importantly, I think you should know that I wasn’t kidding about not being able to tolerate the shots.” The doctor within her kicked into gear. “That means that I have no form of birth control so you’ll have to pull out of me before you ejaculate. I know that you had your shot but those aren’t one hundred percent unless both parties are up to date. Plus, I think you should know that something odd may happen during this. I’ve never told anyone about this before but I come by my healing honestly. I....”
Bradi rolled off her quickly and grabbed his shirt off the ground. He turned toward the brula and gave it a hard twist.
“Bradi?” She sat up and drew her legs to her chest, never feeling more humiliated in her life. Marisa had been on the verge of confessing her gift to him and he’d acted this way. Climbing to her feet, she cast him an angry look. “What the hell was I thinking? Gods, I must be suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome to let you near me!”
She spun on her heels to go and shivered as Bradi spoke. “Don’t go far. The forest is deadly, especially at night.”
* * * *
Bradi watched her stalk off as he removed the brula from the fire to let it cool. He didn’t like the idea of Marisa roaming around in the forest alone in the dark, but he knew that she felt like he’d rejected her. The opposite was true. He’d wanted to take her more than life itself, but the moment she mentioned that she had no manmade form of birth control he knew why the panthers had taken to her so quickly--she carried his child.
It wouldn’t take her long to figure out that she was expecting and with that damned little embedded medical chip she had, she’d be able to scan the baby and know that what she carried was not human. He could jam its frequencies if she was close, but he wouldn’t always be next to her. And, when the baby did arrive, assuming they survived long enough to find his family, she’d learn one day that their child was more than met the eye, as was its father--her husband.
He knew that he should confess everything to her and tell her that he was a werepanther and that they’d made love twice on the POD, but he couldn’t. Not yet. He couldn’t stand to think about how she’d react to the knowledge that a supernatural being now grew in her womb. Humans hated his kind and he couldn’t bear to see the hurt and horror in her eyes. Granted, he’d witnessed Marisa do something miraculous aboard the POD but until she came right out and told him exactly who and what she was, he had to operate under the assumption that his wife was human.
Knowing that it wasn’t safe for her to be alone, Bradi went to find her. Before long he’d have to confess what he’d done and who he was. That would have to wait. Her safety came first. Well, that and the safety of his child now, too.
I’m going to be a father.
The thought struck him hard, leaving him doubling over and gasping for air. She’s my true mate and she hates me.
* * * *
Marisa sat at the edge of the wading pool and marveled at how the water seemed to be turquoise here. Not wanting to chance what might live in the depths, she stayed a good bit away from the water itself.
Humiliation and confusion swamped her. How could she have been so willing to give her virginity to a man she couldn’t stomach being around only days before? Sure, they’d been through hell the last couple of days, but that didn’t mean she had to give what she’d been saving for Peter to him.
Peter.
Guilt swept over her as she thought of how quickly after his passing she’d almost replaced him in her heart. She looked up at the planet’s moons and rocked gently. “Peter, wherever you are now, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen. I didn’t plan on him.”
Someone cleared their throat and she quickly wiped the tears from her cheeks. Glancing behind her, she found Bradi standing there. “What do you want?”
“I just came to check on you,” Bradi answered softly.
“I’m fine, now go away.”
He ignored her and came to sit next to her anyway. “Hmm, I see that you found a good bathing spring.”
She perked up at the sound of a bath. “Bathing spring?”
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“Yes, it’s not nearly as warm as the hot springs that can be found on the planet, but it’s safe and clean.”
“Safe and clean?”
He laughed softly. “Yes, would you like to eat first or bathe?”
She was starving, but the sound of a bath was too good to pass up. “You can go back and eat. I’d like to clean up. “
“That’s fine. We can bathe if you want to. The brula’s best served cooler anyway.”
Marisa tipped her head and gave him a funny look. “We aren’t bathing. I am.”
Bradi shook his head and motioned to the surrounding trees. “Don’t you sense the danger? We are being stalked ... or watched if you will, as we speak. It’s not safe for me to leave you here alone, and I’m in need of a warm bath as much as you, so it makes....”
Putting her hand up, she silenced him. “I get it, okay. Big bad ugly things roaming around equals you and I hopping in there together.”
“Yes, that’s the short version.”
She let her toe dip into the water and her eyelids fluttered shut with the lure of a warm bath. On the ship, they’d only had access to cleansing chambers that used artificial water supplies. And, on Earth the water had been restricted for drinking only, so each home had similar chambers. Water baths were luxuries and only the wealthiest of Earthlings could afford them. The lure of actual water was too good to pass up. “Fine, but you need to face the other way.”
Bradi chuckled and turned around. She couldn’t help but watch him as he removed his shirt slowly. His muscles rippled with every movement and she wondered if he had to get his off duty clothes specially tailored to fit his large size. When he went for his pants, she gasped.
“Why did I have to turn around if you were going to stand there and watch me undress anyway?”
Marisa stilled. How had he known that she’d been watching him? Had her eyes borne through him so much so that he’d felt her? No. That was ridiculous. “You’re so full of yourself.”
He snorted and continued to undress. As hard as she tried to avert her gaze, she couldn’t tear it away from him. When his firm backside was exposed, a smile moved to her face as she caught sight of his dimpled ass cheeks.
Force of Attraction Page 5
