by Loki Renard
Three more explosions hit us, though with our shielding at maximum power, we barely feel a wobble on the bridge, and then… silence. They’re all out of energy. Perfect. We sit becalmed, together. I expect the other ship to make a run for it now, but they don’t. They stay stationary. Maybe they’ve drained everything they’ve got.
“Identify aggressor,” I snap at the scanner tech.
“Unknown, sir. Closest classification is rebel, potential pirate. Scanning indicates goods from multiple territories aboard. Smuggler is also an option.”
Except smugglers don’t pick fights with Rathkari war ships. Pirate or rebel is more likely. Maybe both at the same time. One doesn’t preclude the other, in fact rebels are more likely to be dealing in pirated goods than anyone. What I do know is that it’s someone who wants my attention. And they’ve got it. It’s time to find out who managed to piss me off.
“Open a voice channel.”
“Channel open.”
I clear my throat before I speak. “Unidentified vessel, you are in Rathkari space. Identify yourselves.”
There’s a pause and then a click and a hiss. Static between us.
“Get the fuck out of here.”
There’s interference over the connection, probably as they put their shielding up to full charge, but that fuzzy voice signal makes my heart stop in my chest.
“Get that captain on screen now.”
“Sir, we can’t force a…”
“Now!”
“Requesting video feed,” he says, lowering his head.
There’s another pause while the underlings negotiate. We can broadcast voice across space to our heart’s content, but we can’t demand video. That has to be given. It feels like forever as I wait impatiently, fingers tapping at the panel. I’ve long left my chair, rising to my feet the moment I heard those words. I stride across the bridge, my body filled with an uncomfortable energy. Hope. Is that what I’m feeling?
“Video, sir.”
The screen before our eyes flashes with the colors of the other ship. I see the captain’s face. She is wearing tight black battle armor open nearly to her navel. The rounds of her breasts are visible, held in place by two dark black straps running beneath. Her hair is the color of a woodland, and blue eyes blaze defiantly into my soul.
It is her. Her.
“Hello, Karlo.” Her eyes are ringed with dark cosmetics, making the bright blue of her eyes stand out even more. I have dreamed of the day I would see her again, but I never imagined it would be like this. I thought I would find in her in a prison somewhere. She is too disagreeable to peacefully exist most places where women are expected to obey. But she has carved out something more for herself. She has grown stronger. Her figure is fuller. Her skin is clearer. She is healthy. She is all she was and more.
I have so many words, but they are all stuck in my throat.
“I’ll repeat,” she says with an arrogant little flick of her head. “Get the fuck out of here. This is my territory.”
“This is Rathkari territory.”
“Not anymore.” Her smirk is beautiful, the challenge in her voice makes my cock hard. “Fifteen colonies swear loyalty to independence.” She leans closer to the screen. “I am routing you out, Karlo. Every one of you. In every corner of the universe.”
Her beauty is matched by her fire. It is almost a pity to have to capture her, but these are the last hours of her freedom. Soon she will be mine again. I can almost smell her. Every now and then throughout the years, I feel I have caught her scent, as if she has been in a room before me, or as if her ghost has brushed past me. She has been ever present in my mind and my senses and I am impatient to claim her again.
“We have them in sight, General. Shall we fire?”
“No,” I say. “We will capture the vessel. Tie them.”
My order is followed and seconds later, tendrils extend from our ship, long powerful metallic tentacles that float through space propelled by small charges. They wrap around the smaller craft, catching it by a hundred different points so that when it inevitably begins to fire its engines, nothing will happen.
The best part of the capture is being able to watch it on the live feed, to see her reaction as her ship shakes in our grasp.
“Karlo! Don’t you… asshole!”
She is perfectly furious the moment before she cuts the internal feed. A moment later, their ship begins to buck and squirm, using what is no doubt the last of their thrusters to attempt escape. It is too late. The irony is, if she had simply stayed quiet, we would have floated past, never seeing them at all. It was her impatience, her desire to fire that bought her vessel to my attention. As much as she may now try to fight it, she sealed her own fate.
I watch the drama unfold as their ship is drawn toward ours slowly, close enough to allow boarding. A thicker cable, the main tendril has been deployed. It will dock with her craft, bore through the exterior, and create a passage through which we will board.
Though I have searched for years, and had given up all hope of her, I am not in a hurry now. Impatience is the enemy, as she has demonstrated amply.
“They’re attempting to remove our probes, sir.”
The surveillance hand taps at his screen and the image of her ship expands to show that someone in an exo-suit is out trying to hack at the connectors. It’s a futile effort. They penetrate through the skin of the ship and weld themselves to it with a thermo-kinetic burst. That ship is ours unless and until I sever the connections from our end—and even then, their once-quick vessel will be a wild and flailing thing dangling tentacles from every part of its fuselage, of no use to anyone.
There is just one problem. If that person is her—and I know in my gut that it is—and she severs that connector partially, more voltage than she can stand is going to run through her rebellious little body. That I will not stand idly by and wait for.
“Go get her,” I order. “Now. Bring her back alive or you won’t be for much longer.”
Chapter Thirteen
It’s over. All over. I have been taken from my ship and forced into a dark Rathkari cell. Fierce soldiers took me kicking and screaming, stripped me of the exo-suit and left me here in my thin rubber undersuit. I can smell their species here, something in the blend of alloys they use is tangy against the back of my throat. I was free of him for so long, and now I am back in his custody and I can’t stand it.
This was a mistake. I should never have given the order to fire. We were hidden. Safe. And I threw us from the shadows and I blazed hell at this vessel. I had to do it, but I wish I hadn’t. I should have let them float by. I should have left things as they were. Now we are all in danger. I don’t know what’s happened to my crew, but the Rathkari are not known for their mercy. I may have sentenced them all to death with my attack.
Guilt. Fear. Rage, they all battle within me as I struggle to hold back tears. I know he will come for me soon, and the last thing I want is for him to find me sniveling on the floor. I have to be strong, for myself and for my crew. Taking a deep breath, I force the tears back—and just in time. I hear footsteps. Heavy. Solid. Measured. Fuck. I still know him by his step.
The cell door opens and he steps inside. He is wearing Rathkari war garb, black-plated metallic pieces of armor that conform perfectly to the lines of his body. A tremor runs through me. He is darkly handsome and the role of war general suits him. He always was a merciless bastard.
My knees go out from under me. I am too tired, too scared, too awed. I thought I could stand up to him, but I can’t… I can’t…
He crouches down in front of me and looks me over, his gaze sweeping up and down my body. “Era.” That deep voice rolls through me, finds my soft spots and makes them squirm.
Karlo is as I remembered him, but his eyes burn brighter in the dim light of the cell, and it seems to me that they hold more cruelty than they did before.
“I searched for you,” he says, running his fingers over my temple, brushing hair away from my eye
s.
“I know. I hid.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
My temper flares. How dare he lecture me for running after he was the one to give me the chance to leave?
“You were done with me. You sent me away.”
“I gave you freedom,” he growls. “And look what you did with it. I’ve looked at your ship’s logs. I know what you’ve been up to. I gave you freedom, and you threw a tantrum across seven solar systems. I won’t make that mistake again.” He takes the front of my suit in his fist and pulls me close, his golden eyes searing into my soul. “You’re mine now, Era. Forever.”
“No, Karlo, you’re wrong,” I hiss as every nerve in my body comes alive. My heart is beating faster, my senses are heightened. My gaze locks on him with desperate intensity. There’s nothing but him.
“Do you ever get tired of lying to yourself?” He quirks his brow and the question seems almost genuine. “You spend so much time in denial of your own feelings, your own desires. It must be exhausting.”
“You don’t know me, or what I think,” I hiss back. “Let me go or kill me.”
He smirks and snorts at the same time. “Spoiled,” he says. “You are so fortunate, Era. Fortunate that I found you. If it had been one of the other war ships, you would have been spread across the stars in a fine vapor by now.”
“I’d prefer that.”
“Stop lying.”
What’s the point of talking to a man who doesn’t believe a word I say? I fall silent as he holds me, his eyes scanning my face intently.
“I missed you, Era.”
Those are words I did not expect to hear. Almost immediately, tears spring to my eyes, because in spite of everything I’ve told myself for the past three years, I’ve missed him too. Terribly. We did not spend long together, but he left a mark on my soul and no man has matched him. Fucking has been pointless. I haven’t managed to muster attraction for anyone or anything. Until now. Now it’s back, a torrent of desire running through me.
He pulls me forward, his mouth finds mine, his lips crushing mine as he kisses me deeply and thoroughly, his tongue claiming me, his other hand wrapping around my shoulders, pulling me against him as we curl on the floor there, and my tears make everything salty.
“I looked for you,” he repeats when he breaks the kiss. “I looked for you for months and months. You hid well, Era.”
“You rejected me because I can’t give you the only thing that matters to a Rathkari male.”
His lips tighten. “I…”
“I wasn’t good enough for you, Karlo. Not then. And I’m not good enough now. So let me go. Please. For both our sakes. I won’t make this easy for you if you keep me.”
“You’re mine,” he repeats.
We stare at one another, my stony gaze marred by tears, his hard glower showing no such internal conflict. He wants me, whether I want him or not. The fact that I do is irrelevant. And that is the problem with Karlo. He is not a man. I can mistake him for being human at times, but he is fundamentally something else, and we do not belong together.
“What have you done with my crew?”
“They are criminals, and will be dealt with according to Rathkari criminal code.”
“You mean you’re going to kill them.”
“The penalty for rebellion and piracy is death.”
“So kill me.”
“No.”
I draw in a deep, shuddering breath, hatred and anger flowing through me as I realize there is only one bargaining chip Karlo is interested in.
“If you spare them, I will be yours.”
“You’re already mine,” he says. “I have no need to negotiate with you.”
“Karlo,” I snarl his name as my voice shakes with anger. “If they are hurt, in any way, I will never be yours. I promise you that. You will be able to take my body, but I will hate you every second, of every minute, of every day.”
He looks at me with those eyes like twin suns and I know he is thinking. He seems to have finally understood something about me.
“Yes,” he says after the longest pause. “You will, won’t you.”
* * *
I have no intention of killing her crew. However, she needs to understand who and what I am. This is an opportunity to demonstrate mercy, to show her that even though I need not spare anyone, I will do so to make her happy. Era has never understood my care for her. She sees me through a veil of prejudice and fear. Even when she feels desire, it is twisted through hate to become some perversion, something I do to her rather than something she admits to herself. She has lain in wait in this far flung corner of the galaxy like a black widow awaiting her prey—and she struck out at me the moment I came by. I have been hunting her all these years, but in the end, she was the one to lure me in.
“So you will spare them?”
“I will spare them death. They will serve a year’s sentence in the nearest prison colony.”
“No, Karlo. You have to let them go free.”
“Two years.”
Her eyes widen as she realizes that every time she argues with me, the sentence for her crew increases.
“Karlo…”
“I have no intention of letting any one of you get away with your rebellion,” I say, my tone significant. She will pay for this too. Her crimes are extensive, each and every one committed with the intention of some kind of revenge on me, I am sure.
“A year… please…” She lowers her head, feigning some kind of submission. The pretense is good enough for now.
I already have the colony picked out. Antera 9. It is in the process of being built. Her crew will help settle a new world, learn some skills aside from piracy, and perhaps even find a home for themselves on the purple starlit shores.
“A year,” I agree. “If you take your punishment gracefully.”
“That’s not fair, Karlo. You know… you know what I’m like.”
“I do,” I agree, holding back a smile.
She lets out a small whine of complaint, and in an instant she is no rebel captain. She is the little human I rescued all those years ago, curled in my arms.
“I’m not graceful.”
“You can be,” I say, running my fingers through her hair. It is soft like silk. I have missed its touch. I have missed her. Having her in my arms again fills me with a sense of completion and contentment. I doubt she will be graceful, or even remotely well behaved. I am sure she will fight it tooth and nail, but I want to give her a good reason to at least try to access that little sliver of submission that flares when I touch her.
* * *
He’s going to punish me. He has come prepared, a thick cord is coiled at his waist and even as he embraces me, he begins to strip me. My suit is one piece, close-fitting rubber. He peels it from me, baring my skin, which is marked with little droplets of stress sweat. There is no point resisting. My body is softer than it was when he last saw me. I keep myself shaven now, to make it easier to slip into the suit. The feminine tang of desire is evident to both of us, my shame and his need are equal as he thrusts his hand between my legs and his fingers find my pussy.
“You’re wet,” he says, triumphant.
“The suit is hot,” I say, lying even though it will not help me save face at all.
His fingers slip inside me, twist and pull out again. He lifts them to his nose and then pushes them toward my mouth.
“Open,” he commands as he pushes them past my lips. He makes me taste myself, my desire undeniable. “Does that taste like sweat to you?”
I can’t speak with his fingers in my mouth, but it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t need to hear my answer. He just wants to make me admit I want him as much as he wants me. As he pulls my clothing the rest of the way off, he brings his binding rope into play.
I am nothing but a doll in his hands as he wraps it around me, creating a sling that spreads my legs wide and lets me lie back just a little, semi-reclined as he holds me in place and tosses it around a bar in the roof
and ties it again. He stands back to look at his handiwork. I am trussed up so effectively, no part of me can move besides my fingers and my toes. My breasts are presented in a rope brassiere, my arms crossed behind my back. He has used my hair against me, tied the end of it to a piece of rope that pulls it high so I am limited in how much I can move my head without tugging on my hair.
He slides his hand up the ropes, between my breasts and his large, strong fingers close lightly around my throat. He holds me there, his eyes boring into mine and for long moments all we do is look at one another. He has me. I am his captive. He owns me again. It has been so long and yet the years melt now that I am back in his grasp.
Have I missed this? I told myself I didn’t. I told myself that he was sick and I hated him and I never wanted anything he did to me. But now, lashed in his ropes and held in his hands, I know I did. I wanted all of it and more. Yearning makes my heart ache for everything we’ve lost. Everything we’ll never have.
“I’ve missed you,” he says, a rough quality to his voice. He sounds… broken. How is that possible? Karlo is the strongest creature I know. Even in his absence these long years, I have felt him. He is bigger than the sun. And yet now, he is vulnerable in his dark longing. “I will never let you go again, Era. Not ever.”
“I won’t have a baby, Karlo.” I remind him why he sent me away, why any chance of togetherness was lost.
“There are more important things.”
“You said there’s nothing more important.”
His eyes flash at me. “I was wrong. You are more important to me than any person yet to be. You are the one I love here and now. You are all that matters.” His tone is fierce, but his voice nearly breaks and I see for the first time that he loves me. He loves me for all I am, and all I am not. But it is late in our story, maybe too late.
“I don’t understand… you were so… that’s all you wanted…”
“Of course you don’t understand me. You don’t understand yourself,” he says in pitying tones. “I take you and your body sighs for me. I slap you and you grow wet. And yet you declare you hate it, and hate me. You live in a constant contradiction. I made my biggest mistake when I listened to you, when I did what you told me you wanted me to do. I let you go and it was wrong, Era. I won’t make that mistake again.”
