by Marie Harte
“Technically, yes. But my education, physical and emotional maturation actually peg me as a female a few years from her third decade.”
He breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank Flor.”
“I was conceived in the laboratory, born, and with artificial stimulation, matured to adult stasis after one year. The past three years have been filled with tests and more tests to determine my abilities. As far as I know, I’m what they consider the only stable Creation ever developed. With the exception of my involuntary submissiveness to obey my Handler, I function independently, learn at an above-average rate, and possess the inherent skills of many of the System’s strongest races.”
“Which ones are we talking about?”
“You know most species in the System don’t mix. Genetic recombinants normally result in hybrids possessing only the characteristics of the dominant gene-type. But somehow Canunn manufactured a process by which I, and my siblings, possess the best characteristics of all of my contributors. I have the strength of a Ragga, the warring ability of a Zephyran and the physical appeal of a Nebite. And there are a few other factors in my genetic coding as well that my data discs could tell you.”
“Data discs.” Rafe studied her, trying to process it all. “We need to destroy those discs and rescue those prisoners before we take down Blue Rim. That’s why you wanted a techie.”
She nodded.
“Where are Anin and Ryen?”
Caution darkened her gaze. “Safe.”
“Good. Don’t worry, baby, I won’t press you for details.” His words eased her tension, and Rafe hugged her tight. “I’m not going to hurt you. I know it’s not easy to believe, considering we just met and all you’ve gone through. But Erin, there’s something between us... You’re new to sex, so you don’t realize how precious our joinings are. My kind don’t experience wainu—that peaceful, rich sensation after sex—with just anyone.
“Erin, you’re special.” My potential mate, he wanted to say, but didn’t want to overload her with something even he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear. “And there’s something else you should know.” He’d reasoned out that confiding in her might make her more liable to trust him. After all, she had nowhere else to go, and she needed to believe she had help. “I’m not Cheltam.”
She stared, her gaze turning from soft to hard in seconds. “Then you look just like him.”
“I do. He’s my brother, the one you put down with Dreyk in his study.”
Erin’s eyes widened. “I thought your clothes looked different the second time I took you down.” He winced at the remembrance. “You two look completely alike.”
“Mostly. But you need to know that he’s concerned about us. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Dreyk is close to finding us. Before your escape through the forest, Gar warned me he was sending him after us. And Dreyk’s a damned fine tracker, so if he isn’t already here, he soon will be. But don’t worry, he’s a loyal guy. A friend of mine, actually.”
Erin nodded, staring at him with consideration. “So Rafe is your real name, then?”
“Rafe of Mardu, at your service.” He paused. “I’m a peacemaker.”
She tensed, and he gentled her.
“I won’t hurt you, Erin. Look, if I’d wanted to take you in before now, I would have. I only want to help, but to do that, you have to trust me completely.” She considered him, and at her hesitant nod, he continued. “I have contacts I can trust. When I tell you we’ll take down Blue Rim, believe me when I say we will. But first we need to wipe out any and all references of your family from their database.” He thought about it. “And I think there’s someone I know to do the job.”
Erin sighed and leaned in to the hand now cupping her cheek. She closed her eyes, and after a moment opened them, her somber gaze fixed to his stare. “In the labs, I learned to endure,” she said quietly. “No one looked at me or my family as if we were anything more than experiments. They broke bones, injected me with awful chemicals that burned my blood and blistered my skin. I was forced to kill animals with my bare hands, to tolerate poisons and radiation, all to see what I could withstand.
“They forced me to bond to my siblings, who aren’t genetically my siblings, in the truest sense. Another attempt to monitor, to test, to see if a simple Creation could feel affection for another. An experiment that, to their surprise, worked. I love my brother and sister as much as I learned to hate my Creator and Handler. But you, Rafe, are the first person I’ve ever met who wants to help me. You’re the first decent person I’ve met outside of a laboratory, the first one I want to love.”
Rafe felt moisture on his palm from her tears. Dammit, Erin was crying.
“Please don’t destroy my trust. I can handle a lot, and I have. I’m strong, I’m quick, and I can be dangerous. But I’m also a woman with needs; I have deeply seated emotions. So please, don’t kill this wonderful feeling growing for you. I don’t think I could survive that, despite what I’ve already gone through. Even losing my freedom again wouldn’t hurt as much as your betrayal.”
Her honesty cut him to the quick, and he had to clear his throat to speak. Stroking her soft hair he answered. “I won’t betray you, Erin. And I won’t let you down. There’s so much more to life than what you’ve seen. And I’d consider it an honor if you’d let me show it to you once we take care of this mess.”
She relaxed enough to smile, and she chuckled as she blinked through tears at him. “I guess Anin was right. Good sex does have a positive effect on the male mindset.”
Rafe laughed with her. “Baby, I hate to break it to you, but it’s not just the sex. I can get a piece of—ah, a woman—wherever and whenever I want it.” The frown of jealousy on her face delighted him. “But the sex has never been as good as it is with you. And no, that’s not the reason I want to help you.” I love you, he wanted to say, but he didn’t feel the timing was right. “What Blue Rim is doing is wrong. They hurt you, and that’s not right. I can’t help wanting to fix what’s wrong in the System. That’s who I am, why I became a peacemaker in the first place.”
She said nothing for a moment, then asked, “But you don’t think I’m a wrong you need to correct?”
“No, baby. You’re the one thing in my life that’s Flor-damned perfect, and I intend to keep it that way.” No matter how many peacemakers, scientists, or brothers he had to overrun to do it.
******
Gar glared at the com unit he’d just disconnected. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have sworn Dreyk was deliberately slowing his progress, which made no sense. Gar knew Dreyk better than most. An inheritance that came with Cheltam’s cover, Dreyk provided both muscle and invaluable contacts throughout the System. He couldn’t be bought, and he never stopped on a mission. In a way, he reminded Gar of the Xema, and were it not for his large frame and unsettling gray eyes, Dreyk might have passed for one.
So why would Dreyk intentionally sabotage Gar’s efforts to find Rafe and keep him safe?
“He wouldn’t.” Gar rubbed the back of his neck, tired from his worry and the successive nights of no sleep. The nightmares had returned. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Taika and his son crying out for help. Unfortunately, the dream ended just like his reality had, with his wife and son being blown to bits.
Closing his eyes tightly, Gar willed away the images that refused to fade completely and focused on the family he had that were still alive. He had to trust that Dreyk would do his job. As Dreyk had said, the man preferred Rafe to Gar anyway. Rafe, the brother who most looked like Gar, but possessed an arsenal of charm that stayed him well in life. Hell, were it not for Rafe, Gar doubted he’d be here today. Only his brother’s dogged persistence, that ever-annoying penchant he had to get his own way, had woken Gar from a grief filled daze long enough to return to the peacemakers.
Sernal’s attitude, on the other hand, Gar could do without. But not permanently, he hastened to add, should fickle Flor be listening close. That fucking Mardu god had an odd sense of humor on Gar
’s best day. No sense to exacerbate Sernal’s problems by wishing for something he didn’t really feel. Truth be told, Gar counted on Sernal’s steadfastness. Sernal was like a rock. Good and bad had definite sides, and to his law-loving brother, a gray area between the two didn’t exist.
That attitude had propelled Sernal through the peacekeeper ranks to the head of the organization. That and his propensity toward an honest living. Little by little, Sernal emptied his forces of the corrupt peacekeepers giving justice a bad name. But the process was slow-going, and Gar thought that maybe this time Sernal had stepped on the wrong toes.
From what Gar had thus far gathered, Sernal had simply disappeared from sight four nights ago. No one had seen or heard from him since, and ugly rumors began spreading that Sernal wasn’t as honest as everyone had thought. Typical peacemaker politics. Without Sernal there to stem the accusations, his career would surely come to a screeching halt. And Gar knew how much Sernal lived for the law. To Sernal, being a peacemaker held the same importance as being Xema.
“Dammit.” Gar shoved the communicator in his belt and grabbed a pistol from his weapons stash. In minutes he found his rover and plotted a course to his nearby landing pad. As he travelled, he decided he’d put it off long enough. Taking a deep breath, he set the rover on autopilot and checked in with his youngest brother.
Mara’s Light picked up after two short pings.
“What?” The growl belonged to one of the behemoth Raggas, Nu or Set, Catam’s crewmates. Commotion sounded in the background, and then the Ragga cleared his throat. “Mara’s Light. What can I do for you?”
“Who’s this?” Gar asked, aware he came off as rude. But hell, who had the patience for social niceties?
“Nu Fas. Who the hell is this?”
Gar snorted. So much for Nu’s attempted diplomacy. “Gar. Put Catam on.”
Nu cursed loudly enough to be heard three planets away, and then Catam joined the conversation. “Gar, any word on Sernal?”
“Not yet, but I’m working on it. What do you have on Blue Rim?”
As Catam relayed his dealings with two of Blue Rim’s underlings, Canunn and Synster, Gar understood that his little brother had come a long way from the aggravating imp he’d once been. No longer was Catam the smaller boy trailing after his brothers. He had a successful career as a bounty hunter, a beautiful wife and two breathtakingly wonderful children. At short moments like these, when envy and pain cleared from his mind, Gar could appreciate his little brother and grasp how much he loved and was proud of him. But the memories always intruded, and eventual heartache wiped away any good feelings resurfacing. Before they could overwhelm him, Gar thanked Catam, promised to keep him up-to-date, and broke the connection.
Breathing hard, Gar wished he could overcome his need to distance himself from the happiness of others. Dreyk, fortunately, proved easy enough to work with. The large man rarely spoke, and when he did, it was with rancor or dismissal. Though Dreyk worked hard, he didn’t project that loving, familial tone Gar’s brothers did. That need to protect Gar simply didn’t exist for Dreyk, and for that Gar was grateful. Oh, he knew he could count on Dreyk to watch his back, but Dreyk and he operated less on affection than on mission-oriented success. A mutual respect for an end state both men wanted. Nothing more. Nothing like the seeming affection Dreyk held for Rafe, which Gar definitely appreciated considering the circumstances.
Mulling the notion that he didn’t quite fill Rafe’s shoes in this job, Gar decided to make the change he’d been debating for several months. Playing Cheltam had helped free him from a course set on self-destruction, but this job didn’t fit. Rafe needed to come back, just as soon as Dreyk pulled his ass from that troublesome Eyran refugee. Flor’s dagger, trust Rafe to land himself next to a fucking Creation.
Gar sighed. Just as soon as he cleared Sernal and settled Rafe once again behind Cheltam’s desk, he planned to pack up and head out, to where he didn’t yet know. But his instincts told him it was time to leave. Already he skirted the law more than Rafe, and definitely Sernal, would be comfortable with. The fact that his lawlessness didn’t bother Gar at all made his existence as a peacemaker a real problem in the organization Sernal idealized. No, Gar’s time as a lawman had ended.
Arriving at his landing strip, Gar left the rover and soon piloted his small craft into space, toward Sernal’s last known location—Mornio, a mining planet filled with more criminals than those populating Jintak’s jails. There Gar hoped to find a lead on Sernal, and maybe an idea about what to do with the rest of his pathetic life. But in the meantime, he planned to continue monitoring Dreyk’s progress, or lack thereof, because if his shady assistant thought to screw with Gar’s orders, there’d be hell to pay. After all, Gar lived in the gray between right and wrong. And Flor help Dreyk if he thought to sabotage any of the Mardu brothers.
******
Teleporting into the forest had been easy. And from his vantage in the crook of the tree above, Dreyk watched Rafe stroke Erin’s full breasts, his motions tender and not at all rough as the marks on Erin’s wrists might have indicated. Listening to their conversation illuminated much about Rafe that Dreyk had suspected but never actually witnessed. Dreyk respected the hell out of the peacemaker even more, and the fact that Rafe knew about Erin and still planned to help her cemented Dreyk’s decision to give them more time alone together; screw Gar’s orders. With Rafe, Erin would be protected. The Mardu would help her and her siblings, no matter what. As would Dreyk. And part of that help meant backing off to give Rafe time to claim his new mate.
Because in all the time Dreyk and Rafe had worked together, Dreyk had never seen the Mardu look at another woman the way he stared at Erin. He had a special look in his eye and an aura pulsating around his body that directly aligned with Erin’s energy—a tell-tale sign the two would soon bond. Dreyk had seen it before, a fascinating ritual, but never with a male of Rafe’s particular intensity.
Still, Dreyk didn’t want to intrude on what was probably Erin’s first measure of peace in her unfortunate life. Just seeing her in that Flor-forsaken bar had told him who and what she was. And though he’d sensed what she meant to do to him in Cheltam’s office, he couldn’t blithely hand her over to Gar to use as bait, no matter how much she might have helped them take down Blue Rim.
Dreyk had been waiting for years to destroy that particular laboratory on Eyra. And with Erin’s help, he planned to do just that. But not for the peacemakers, or because it was the law. He’d take Blue Rim apart for all the ones that had come before, and would no doubt come again if someone didn’t put an end to the evil Creators and Handlers tinkering with god-skills.
Erin moaned, distracting him, and Dreyk watching with interest as Rafe moved her off his torso and propped her up on her hands and knees in front of him. The Mardu spanked her hard, several times, and Erin bowed her head and groaned with pleasure, her pheromones reaching Dreyk even up in the tree. No, now was definitely not the time to be worrying about Blue Rim, not with two beautiful forms engaging in the carnality of pain and pleasure.
Dreyk rubbed his rock-hard cock, amused and aroused at Rafe’s prowess with the female sex. Though the decent thing would have been to give the couple their privacy, Dreyk had never claimed to be anything approaching respectable. He wanted to watch, to see if the Mardu lived up to his reputation, and to see if Erin would live up to the promise of her incredible beauty. By the way Erin continued to shiver under her lover’s touch, Dreyk figured he was in for quite a show.
Chapter Nine
ERIN KEPT HER head down as she knelt, undone by Rafe’s selfless promise. He couldn’t really want to help her, could he? Because hope was all that had carried her this far in life, a desire for freedom and justice, and the ability to find her own happiness. Though she hadn’t had much in the way of relationships with others, she knew she’d found something special with Rafe. Her energy pulsed in time with his, and if what he said were true, then the wainu they both experienced had as muc
h to do with one another as it did with the sexual act itself.
“You ready to finish your punishment, baby?”
She shivered, thrilled when he called her those pet names in a husky voice. And the slaps he’d given to her ass did crazy things to her insides. She’d never imagined that a rough hand could arouse her so much, as if he strummed her clit instead of smacking her flesh.
“Yes, Sir.” He palmed her butt and stroked her, sliding his thumb into the crease between her cheeks, stretching the opening of her anus. The feel of him there stirred a dark hunger, a thrilling, forbidden pleasure she’d wondered about, especially after seeing the act in one of the many bars she’d visited since her escape. “Rafe—Sir—can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
She turned her head to see him kneeling to the side of her, his shaft ruddy with desire. “How are you ready again so soon? Your recovery seems incredibly quick, and not typical with what I’ve read about Mardu males.”
“Studious, aren’t you?” Rafe grinned. “But you’re right. Most men wouldn’t equal your stamina.” He sounded pleased with that announcement, and Erin liked the possessiveness in his tone when he spoke to her. “With you the rules don’t seem to apply. And speaking of rules...” He smacked her hard, three times successively, the strikes overly loud in the quiet around them. “It’s high time you answered for hitting me, baby. That’s twice now that you’ve knocked me out cold. There won’t be a third time,” he reinforced in a deep, gravelly voice. Rafe smoothed his hand over the fiery burn of her skin, the contrasting softness of his touch with the hardness of his slaps arousing in the extreme.
She gasped at the surprisingly erotic sensation, her mind pulling her back into a quagmire of submission as he exerted his dominance. “Wh-what are you doing to me, Sir?”
His fingers trailed over her ass and between her thighs, delving into the moisture dripping down her legs, and she stared at the ground, focused on the feelings he stoked within her. Before she could answer him, he pinched her clit, and she swore she saw stars from the extreme bliss. “You like that, hmm? The pain and the pleasure.”
