by Kate Rudolph
At least, she hadn’t thought they’d make her feel like this: a panting mess, writhing against him and ready to lay back and take him inside her, ready to ride him and fuck until they both came in a sticky mess of desire.
She wanted it, she wanted it more than she wanted breath, and when Dru tugged her shirt up she almost let out a hallelujah in thanks. Distantly she heard seams ripping and strangely that was enough to jar her out of the sensual fog for a moment.
“Careful,” she muttered against his lips, “that’s the only shirt I have.”
Dru took her warning to heart, moving with care to get her shirt over her head. He laid it down on the table beside them and for half a moment she was worried that he was about to break away from her to fold the damn thing. Laurel didn’t want to deal with rips, she didn’t give a damn about wrinkles.
Somehow in their maneuvering his towel had fallen to the floor and Laurel could feel the naked heat of Dru’s arousal pressed against her, the leaking tip enough to leave a wet spot on her pants. That wasn’t the only reason her pants were getting damp. She wanted to be as naked as him, to spread her legs and take him inside her.
If this was some delayed reaction to surviving the horrors of the Oscavian ship, Laurel welcomed it. If it was something more, some genuine, though unlikely, attraction that had bloomed between the two of them in their brief acquaintance, they could deal with that later. Now Laurel needed. She needed Dru’s hot body against her, beside her, in her. She needed him. Now.
“I want...” She tried to pull him backwards towards the bunks but was too distracted in running her lips along the sharp edge of his jaw and down, tracing over the dark markings on his neck.
“Anything,” Dru promised, “say it and it’s yours.”
“I bet you say that to all the girls.” Something about the moment felt heavy, filled with a promise that Laurel wasn’t sure she wanted made.
But Dru deflected her attempt to lighten the mood and somehow his eyes seemed even more red. “You’re the only one I care about.” One hand landed on her shoulder while he used the fingers of the other to tip her chin up to meet his gaze. It was strong enough to burn a hole through her, to imprint something on her that she didn’t know she’d ever be able to get away from. She didn’t know if she’d want to.
“Really?” She meant to laugh while she said it, meant to try for the joke, but somehow she matched his tone, made it more real than she’d intended.
“You asked me what denya meant last night.” The response didn’t make sense to Laurel’s lust addled brain, but the intensity of Dru’s stare told her how important it was that she pay attention.
“Is now really the time for a language lesson?” She didn’t want this to turn serious, not when they’d been on the edge of scorching hot pleasure. Laurel’s heart rate kicked up, going from lust to leery between one beat and the next.
Dru kissed her again, but this wasn’t the possessive ardor of before, it was almost sweet, and that scared Laurel. She didn’t want sweet right now, she needed hot and fast and simple.
His eyes hadn’t faded from red when he pulled back, a sure sign that he was still feeling the heat of the moment just as much as she was. Maybe more. Maybe this had never been simple kissing to him. Suddenly Laurel wanted to cover her ears, wanted to keep herself from hearing whatever it was that Dru was about to say. If she couldn’t hear it, it couldn’t change anything.
But Dru pushed ahead, heedless of whatever worry must have been showing on her face. “It means mate,” he said, the last word coming out in a tone of reverential awe. “It means that you’re mine.” He leaned in for another kiss, but Laurel pulled back.
“What!” Mate? Mine? She might have liked the claiming kisses, but that didn’t mean she was ready to shack up with the guy based solely on his word. She’d spent the last months as the property of slavers who wanted to sell her to the highest bidder, then as the test subject/guest/prisoner of an Oscavian mad scientist. She wasn’t ready to hop into Dru’s bed and stay there just because she was hot for him.
“I recognized you when I saw you,” Dru said, holding onto her like she was precious. A precious possession. “You’re my denya. My destined mate.”
Laurel jerked out of his grasp. She wished she could say his words had been a bucket of ice on her lust, but that still raged just beneath the surface of her fear. If she let him keep touching her, she was going to give in, going to surrender to the heat between them no matter the consequences. Her headache flared up again and her eyes went fuzzy around the edges as want warred with wisdom. She stumbled back, keeping a hand up to ward him off. She didn’t want him touching her right now, she couldn’t deal with that.
“Um, nope.” Shaking her head hurt, but it was necessary. He needed to see just how much she was against this denya crap. “That must be the trauma talking. You’re out of your mind. I’m not anyone’s mate. No, uh-uh. I thought we were—” It was hard to get a full thought out, her mind too caught on what he’d confessed. Destined mate. Yeah, right. Things like that didn’t exist, not in Laurel’s world. Not in the human world. Which reminded her, “We’re not even the same species! How can I be your mate? Which I’m not! Why did you have to—uh!” She clutched her head as the pain spiked suddenly, but before Dru could try to help her she took two big steps back and turned around. “Don’t come after me!” she warned. “I can’t deal with this right now. I just can’t.”
She didn’t look back to see his response, didn’t want to see the anger she was sure had clouded his features. And she didn’t want to imagine something worse—what if he was heartsick from the rejection? Stricken.
No, she wasn’t going to think of him now, he was the one who’d sprung that mate nonsense on her. He could deal with the consequences.
Laurel crawled into her bunk and curled up into a ball, squeezing her eyes shut against her wobbling vision. It did nothing to make the headache go away, but at least the pain let her pretend that it was the reason she was crying.
She hoped they got to Dru’s people soon so she could negotiate a flight home. She didn’t know how she’d manage to stay around Dru for much longer, and she didn’t know how to deal with what he’d said. She just wanted this nightmare to be over. And she promised herself that as soon as she was safe, she was going to sleep for a month.
She’d earned it.
DRU KNEW THAT HE’D screwed up, and he had no idea how to fix it. Among his people the denya bond was a thing to be celebrated, not feared. And if he’d found a mate among his own people she would have recognized him just as he recognized her. There would be no need to explain it or think of rejecting it. Almost as soon as he had those thoughts, shame coursed through him. Laurel was his mate, his denya, his salvation, and he could not betray her like this, wishing for someone else just because the path would be easier. A mate was a gift, one he could not throw away simply because she did not yet understand what she meant to him.
He sat in the cockpit as his thoughts swirled. He wanted to rush back and find Laurel. There wasn’t really any place to hide on the ship so the separation right now only existed so long as they both agreed to maintain it. It would be so easy to get up and find her. But doing that would betray what little trust remained between them. She needed this time to think, to cope with all of the changes that were assaulting her.
It was late now by the ship’s clock. Laurel had to be exhausted from everything they’d gone through, and from the information he had just assaulted her with. So Dru would give her this time to sleep, to think, to recover. They still had a little time before they would reach Detyen HQ, and even then he’d be able to find her and keep track of her. But he wanted them together by the time they landed, wanted his place in her soul and her heart to already be staked out. They didn’t need to seal the bond; he understood that would take time before she could trust him with that final step. But if she could just accept that the denya bond was a thing that existed between them they would be well on the road to what he
needed.
Rather than retreat to his bunk, Dru fell into a light slumber in the pilot’s seat. He woke several hours later with a crick in his neck and stiff muscles, and if not for the years of training he would have groaned as he stood up. He meant to hunt Laurel down and have another talk with her, to try and explain the denya bond better. To find a way to make it sound like something she could understand. But despite the tiny size of the shuttle they were using, she had managed to make herself scarce. At first she hid away in the bathroom and Dru was not about to wait outside the door like an impatient stalker. But the next time he looked for her she was no longer in the bathroom, but she had curled herself into a ball on her bunk and seemed to be sleeping. She needed her rest after the last months of captivity and all the tortures that she’d endured before then. So Dru left her to sleep and a whole day went by without them speaking.
The next day they flew closer and closer to Detyen HQ. All of Dru’s hopes of mending the rift between them before they landed had gone up in smoke, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to warn Laurel about what could happen when they landed. After all, they were flying to a secure location in an enemy ship. If the distress calls he was trying to send didn’t go through, there was a good chance that they would be blown out of the sky before they could break atmo.
If his distress calls did go through, that didn’t mean they were safe. Varrow and whatever army he could muster couldn’t be far behind. War was coming to Detyen headquarters and Dru had two missions. Protect his denya and warn his people.
He found Laurel laying on her bunk, her blanket wrapped tightly around her as if to give her comfort. Her back faced the hallway and Dru hated to wake her, but this was too important to ignore. He folded down the bunk on the opposite wall and took a seat, watching Laurel for several moments before speaking. At first he thought she was asleep, as her chest rose and fell with even breaths, but she held herself otherwise completely still, as if she knew she was being watched and pretending to be asleep was her only option to avoid conversation.
“We’re getting close to headquarters,” Dru told her, his voice disturbingly loud in the hush that had fallen over the shuttle since they’d stopped talking.
Laurel remained still for almost an entire minute, but she must have realized that Dru wasn’t about to get up before they had this conversation. She rolled over to face him before leveraging herself up into a sitting position, her elbows resting on her knees, her face cradled in her hands. “Thank God it’s almost over,” she muttered, like the words weren’t meant for him.
And Dru wished that her words were true. “I wouldn’t say that,” he warned.
Laurel’s head snapped up and their eyes met, recognition blasting through him strong enough that Dru had to clench his fist to keep from reaching out and touching his denya. She had made her thoughts on that subject clear. “The Oscavians are sure to follow us. We might be on the eve of battle. I wish I could guarantee your safety. It is my duty as your—”
“If you’re going to sprout that crazy talk go do it somewhere else,” she interrupted, cutting him off before he could remind her of who she was to him.
He wanted to clutch her shoulders and explain until she finally understood. And if that didn’t do it, he wanted to kiss her until she forgot to care, until she was pliable in his arms and ready to listen to the miracle that they’d been handed. But Dru did neither of those things. He clenched his jaw and stood. “Be prepared for our landing.”
Laurel crossed her arms and spoke to his feet. “Got it,” she bit out. There was an edge in her voice that had nothing to do with the uncertainty between them.
Dru studied his denya, noting the tightness around her eyes and the way she was sitting, hunched over and hugging herself. He wanted to ask her if she was all right, if there was anything he could do to help. His heart and soul ached to know that his mate was in pain, but he knew that if he asked, she would lie to him. So though everything in him rebelled, he turned around and headed back to the cockpit.
It took a few hours, but when two Detyen speeders flanked his ship and signaled for him to land, he knew that this portion of their escape was almost over. There was some sort of lock on the communications, something preventing the Detyen signal from getting through, but his own signal must have made it out, or the fact that he wasn’t shooting was enough to pique the curiosity of his people.
Detyen HQ was an icy planet, a land trapped in perpetual winter that had been considered uninhabitable by everyone who tried to tame the place. Until the Detyens moved in. There were no comforts, nothing in the landscape to remind them of the home they had lost a century before. But the planet was isolated and defensible, and it gave them a base to grow from.
His shuttle touched down and Dru took a deep breath. He didn’t know what was about to happen, but something inside him was sure that everything was about to change. He turned off the engines and went back to find Laurel standing beside the shuttle door wearing a thick Oscavian coat that she must have found hidden somewhere. She handed him a larger jacket and he slipped it on. As soon as the coat left her fingers, she cradled her head in her hands, spiking Dru’s worry.
“Are you unwell?” The clinic deep inside of HQ would be able to confirm whether or not Varrow had been telling the truth when he claimed he was healing Laurel. But Dru didn’t want his mate to experience one more second of pain than was necessary.
Laurel dropped her hands to her sides. “I’ll live.”
“I will keep you safe, denya, I promise.” Dru hit the button to open the shuttle door and watched as it rose slowly and the ramp descended.
Laurel flinched at the word denya and stumbled down the ramp as soon as she had room to duck through the opening. “I am not your mate,” she declared before gasping and clutching the sides of her head. Her eyes rolled back and she crumpled into a heap there on the ramp.
“Laurel!” Dru’s heart stopped and he paid no attention to the warriors watching them, blasters raised and ready for a fight. He scooped her up off the ramp and hurried towards his fellow warriors. They were all masked, wearing thick gear to obscure their identities and protect them from the cold weather. Dru found the closest soldier, knowing all of them could hear him as he spoke. “She needs medical attention. And we don’t have a lot of time. They’re coming.”
Chapter Eight
LAUREL FELT LIKE SHE was floating, and for the first time in longer than she could remember her head didn’t hurt. She wanted to revel in this sensation forever. Was this how people normally felt? It had been so long since she had any semblance of normalcy that Laurel wasn’t sure. This was too good to be normal. There was no way.
Her eyes fluttered open and she immediately recognized the walls around her as belonging to another spaceship, one different and much bigger than the shuttle she and Dru had escaped on. It also wasn’t difficult to tell that this was some kind of medical clinic. It looked disturbingly similar to the room she’d been placed in on Brakley Varrow’s ship, but the human woman sitting beside her told Laurel that wherever she was, she might have made it to safety. Finally.
Where was Dru? She wanted to reject the thought as soon as it popped in her head. It didn’t matter where he was. He was her companion in escape, nothing more. If he wasn’t around, if he was in some other part of the ship doing his own thing, that was good. Their lives were separate, and now that they were safe they never needed to see each other again.
But Laurel still wanted to know that he was safe. They’d gone to so much trouble to get each other out, he had sacrificed so much to make sure that she got the medical care they thought she needed, that she didn’t know what she would do if she found out that they had made it so far and something had happened to him.
And that was something that she would think about anyone that she escaped with. It had nothing to do with his claims that they were mates. That was just basic human decency. Or whatever the Detyen equivalent of that was. Even in her mind, that explanation rang
hollow and Laurel was frustrated that one of the first thoughts to go through her head after waking up in a strange place, not in pain for the first time in so long, was about Dru and how he was doing. She had to worry about herself first; if she had learned nothing else in her time in captivity, she had learned that.
“You gave us quite a scare there,” the woman sitting beside her said. She had brown skin, big brown eyes, and curly brown hair. Laurel stared at her for several moments until recognition clicked. She knew this woman, they had met before.
“Quinn? Where am I? What’s going on?” Quinn was one of her fellow survivors, one of the women who’d been held with her on Fenryr 1, one of the women that Brakley Varrow had said was dead. But here she was now, very much alive and looking healthier than Laurel could remember her ever looking. She was even smiling, something none of the girls on Fenryr 1 had been able to do very often. What was the use of smiling when you lived in hell? But Laurel couldn’t stop her own smile from taking over her face. Quinn was alive. That had to mean something. Maybe others were alive too. Maybe they were on this ship, or otherwise nearby.
“Your mat—your man caused quite an uproar after you collapsed. We evacuated Detyen HQ just before the Oscavians showed up. You’ve been in a coma for three days. Dru has practically paced a hole in the floor waiting for you to wake up.” She delivered the news as if none of it was strong enough to rock Laurel’s world. A coma? Three days? Evacuation? Dru pacing? Was he worried? Of course he was worried, she’d been in a coma for three freaking days.
“He is not my mate, or my man.” Why that was the first thing that came out of her mouth, Laurel didn’t know. But she wanted that to be clear. She wasn’t about to be owned by anyone.
Quinn studied her for several long moments and pursed her lips. Finally she leaned back in her chair and offered something that might have been a commiserating expression. “Take it from someone who knows? These guys are super intense.”
