by Kate Rudolph
The almost scorchingly hot hand on her arm made her jump, but she calmed down a little when she realized it was just Dru. “Is something wrong?” he asked, glancing back at the window.
Laurel shook her head. “No, of course not.” She was just a little crazy, they didn’t need to deal with that now. “Sorry.”
Jules didn’t seem impressed with Laurel’s lack of attention. “I was just telling Dru about the new house Mom and Dad built on the old back lot. Peter and his husband are planning to move there when the adoption papers go through.”
That grabbed Laurel’s attention. “Peter and Gabe are adopting?” It seemed like they’d only just gotten married, and it was another harsh reminder of how long Laurel had been gone, and how life had moved on without her.
Jules pursed her lips. “Maybe you would have known that if you’d met with me for longer than ten minutes.” Her expression cleared into a smile. “You’re going to be an aunt!”
A year hadn’t seemed like such a long time before. When she’d been at school, Laurel had easily gone that long between visits, one Christmas holiday blurring into the next. But she’d kept in contact in other ways. Now after being away from the planet for so long, she felt out of place, like a puzzle piece that had been warped by water and could no longer be forced into its old spot.
Her eyes drifted away from the table and this time when she spotted the man in the window, she jolted where she sat. That was Brakley Varrow. She was sure of it.
She was out of her seat before she thought better of it, and once she was on her feet, she froze, unsure of what to do next. Her captor, Dru’s torturer, was just staring at her, his eyes raking across her skin in a hot look that burned her to the core. She wanted to turn away, to hide, to keep him from violating her with his gaze, but she couldn’t force herself to move. It was like he had a freeze ray, or something.
Laurel managed to close her eyes and she blinked hard enough for her eyelids to hurt. When she opened them again, the window was empty.
Dru rose beside her and placed a hand on her back. “What is it?”
Laurel turned towards him, listing a little. She didn’t want to talk about this, wanted to pretend that everything was alright. She must have been imagining things, right? Brakley Varrow was somewhere in the vast vacuum of space, not standing outside of a cafe in Washington DC. There was no way. But that didn’t mean she should keep the hallucination to herself. “I thought I saw Varrow.” She shook her head, embarrassed. “I was just imagining things, I’m sure.”
But the look Dru gave her was dead serious. He glanced over at the window, but Laurel knew it would still be empty. Dru’s lips thinned into a harsh line before his expression softened when he looked back at her. “No, we should report this. If there’s the slightest possibility he’s here, the Legion needs to know. And let’s get out of here. I don’t like to think of what could happen.”
First her sister, now Varrow. How many ways could this date get ruined? “No,” Laurel tried to insist, tried to save the night. “It’s okay.”
“Laurel.” Dru’s tone told her just how seriously he was taking this.
She sighed. “Okay.” Laurel turned back to her sister, who she’d almost forgotten in the last few moments. Jules was watching both of them with open fascination. “Sorry for cutting this short. Some stuff is going on. But once it wraps up, I promise that we’ll come visit. I should see everyone.”
Jules’ eyebrows shot up. “We?”
Had Laurel really included Dru that naturally in her future plans? She hadn’t really been thinking about it, but she didn’t feel the need to retract—or explain—her statement. “Let’s plan on meeting up next week, okay?”
Jules looked at them for another long moment before nodding and standing up. “Okay. And pick up your comm when I call.”
Laurel gave her sister a hug. She smelled like memories, home, and a hint of lemon. “I will, I promise.”
They wasted no more time on goodbyes, and before long Laurel was shunted into a taxi beside Dru, who leaned forward to enter the address for the Detyen suite. Laurel placed her hand on his arm to stop him. “I don’t want to be around people right now,” she said. Given that she and Dru had left barely an hour ago, she knew she’d get questions from her new roommates. And she really didn’t want to talk about what she might or might not have seen on the streets.
“You can hide out in your room if you want to be alone,” Dru offered, not understanding the unspoken part of her request.
Laurel bit her lip and slid her fingers down to lace them with her mate’s. “I don’t want to be alone with other people. I want to be alone with you.”
Dru’s eyes flashed red for a moment and he sucked in a deep breath. “We could...”
“There’s a hotel not far from here. Could we go there?” She wanted to escape from it all for a few hours, for the night, and there was no one better in the universe to escape with, Laurel knew that for a fact.
“Are you sure?” Dru asked, his voice ragged.
“I can’t face anyone else right now,” Laurel confessed. “I just... I just need you.”
“Let’s go.”
LAUREL’S HANDS WERE practically shaking as she stood in the hotel room she and Dru had rented for themselves. The walls were a neutral light gray but she couldn’t have recalled what anything else looked like. The rest of the room was taken up by Dru. Had he always been so big? He seemed to dwarf the space, make it a hundred times smaller and fifty times hotter.
He closed the distance between them until he loomed over her, his eyes red with the heat of his desire. She’d told him that she wanted this. She did want this. So why did she feel so nervous right now? Why did she want to run for the bathroom and lock the door behind her? It wasn’t like this was Laurel’s first time with a man. Sure, before she’d been nabbed from Earth there hadn’t been a lot of relationships, but she knew what she was doing.
And Dru was by far the hottest guy who’d ever wanted her. He looked at her like he saw the universe in her eyes. So what exactly was the problem?
Cold feet, that had to be it. The cab ride had been just a bit too long and had given Laurel’s anxieties time to crawl up and try and mess with her. Well, she knew how to get around that.
Dru opened his mouth as if he were about to say something, maybe even give her a chance to back out of this, but Laurel didn’t want that chance, not now that they were here. She latched onto his arms with her hands and launched herself at him, capturing his mouth in a feral kiss. It almost hurt and their teeth clashed for a moment before they both pulled back enough to gentle it. Heat swept over Laurel, enough to wash away her doubts.
This was Dru, the man who said she was his mate, the man who wanted her despite everything she’d done, despite the betrayals she’d made. Why was she hesitating?
Just like that her anxieties began to spike, somehow spurred on by her growing desire. Laurel reached down for the hem of Dru’s shirt, but she couldn’t get a good grip. She tore at it, but the fabric wouldn’t rip. Something mixed between a moan and a cry of frustration ripped from her throat and Laurel tried to hold tight to Dru, to ride out the feeling until she could be swamped by lust and make all the negativity go away.
But her man was too perceptive for that. He placed his hands on her wrists to stop her fight with his clothing and pulled back just a little, a smile lilting at the corner of his mouth. “We’re in no rush.”
“I said that I wanted to do this,” Laurel insisted, trying to go for his shirt once more. She knew what would happen if she backed off now, and she didn’t want to see that disappointment in Dru’s eyes.
Dru took an even bigger step back, his expression growing clouded. “Just because we’re here doesn’t mean you owe me anything.”
Laurel could remember their first kiss and his declaration that she was his mate. If he’d said something like that then, maybe she wouldn’t be feeling so weird about this now. Maybe they’d already know one another’s bodie
s in all the ways two people could. Maybe she wouldn’t be trembling, with tears threatening the prick the corners of her eyes. She squeezed them shut. She wasn’t going to cry, she wouldn’t ruin tonight with tears, not when she’d already ruined their date with her hallucination of Brakley Varrow.
Dru cradled her face, his thumb brushing against her cheek. “If all you want to do is lay down and let yourself feel safe, I’ll be right here, guarding you.”
“Really?” Her heart stuttered and the threat of tears got even worse, but Laurel managed to smile. Without her saying anything, Dru had figured out the real reason she’d wanted to be here with him, the reason she herself hadn’t realized. He was her constant, the only person who’d managed to make her feel safe, no matter what was going on around her. She knew she could count on him, that he’d lay his body down to protect hers. He already had.
“Is that what you want?” Dru asked.
Laurel glanced at the bed behind them. She’d been almost scared to look before, knowing the unspoken promise that its presence made. God, she was such a mess. She didn’t know why Dru wanted to be here with her when there were millions of other women out there who didn’t have nearly as many issues as she did. But she wasn’t about to say that to him right now. Not when he was going to let her be selfish. “Will you lay with me?” she asked. “Hold me?” She crawled under the covers and flipped one side back, giving him room to get in beside her.
Even with the prospect of sex on hold, Dru smiled and joined her. He put his arms around her so that she was held tight, secure in a way she hadn’t been since... well she wasn’t sure when she’d ever felt this secure. It must have been sometime before she was taken from Earth, but she couldn’t remember. Dru’s arms were strong and warm and solid, his presence like a thick wall between her and the rest of the world. Brakley Varrow had no chance of getting to her when Dru was right there.
And Laurel hadn’t even been able to kiss him for five minutes without freaking out.
“I’m sorry,” she said, unsure if he’d know why. She didn’t want to talk about it, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
“You don’t need to apologize,” Dru assured her. Their hands twined together in front of her and she nestled back against him, trying to press her body as close as possible. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
Given how close they were laying and what she’d planned to do with him tonight, it seemed fair. “Sure.”
“Before you were taken, did you have many lovers?” He asked it casually, but there was no way that a man could hold her as close as he was and not be concerned by her answer.
Laurel didn’t think Dru would have held it against her if she’d said yes, but she knew men could get weird about those things. “Are you getting jealous?” she asked with a smile.
Dru kissed her cheek, the move sending a shiver down her spine. “You’re here with me now, are you not?
She swallowed hard. His tone was teasing, but she could hear the edge of possession in his words, and though it had bothered her before, now she was beginning to feel protected by him, shielded from the terrors of the world. And though her intention had been to tease him, she found herself answering honestly. “Not really, no.” She thought back, past the blurred time of her captivity to when she’d been so concerned with being paired off that she’d stuck around with guys who didn’t make her happy. “Just two, actually. It’s hard to remember why I was even with either of them, except it seemed like everyone thought we seemed good together and I thought it was the thing I should do. They were both... I mean, with either of them, if I started anything, they got upset if we didn’t finish. You know what I mean?”
“Upset?” Dru’s tone held a threat and she was a little glad she hadn’t given him the names of either of her exes.
“Neither of them did anything about it,” Laurel insisted. “They just... pouted. Made me feel obligated, I guess. And then, of course, there’s what happened after.”
A sound rumbled deep in Dru’s chest and Laurel realized he was growling. After a moment the sound subsided and when he spoke his tone was caring, full of concern, instead of the urge for violence that had to be riding him hard as the reminder of what had been done to her. “Do you want to talk about that?”
Laurel buried half of her head in the pillow, as if she could hide from the past that easily. “I can’t remember most of it, and I’ll be happy if I never do.” She hadn’t told that to anyone else. Quinn had spoken to her of some of the things she’d endured at the hands of the slavers and Laurel hadn’t known how to admit that most of her time with them was a total blur, a blank space where a whole heap of horribleness was hiding. “I’m disgusted by the things that the control chip made me do, but if it means that I don’t have to remember the worst of it... does that make me weak?”
Dru pulled her close, turning her so that they faced one another and his expression was serious. “You’ve survived so much. I would never think you weak.”
It was her secret fear, the one hiding under all of the shame from the chip and all of the rest of the trauma she’d endured at the hands of the slavers and Brakley Varrow. She’d wrestled with whether or not she should be trying to recover all the terrible memories of what had been done to her, but Laurel couldn’t make herself want to do it. Wasn’t knowing that she’d been used and abused enough, without having it all replaying in her head all the time? Having Dru’s validation was freeing in a way she hadn’t expected. Every time she felt too low, felt like she wasn’t worth anything, he was there to pull her back up and assure her that she was.
And that assurance settled her nerves. The heat of his body and the masculine scent of him surrounded her, heating her to her core and relaxing her at the same time. “And what about... expectations?” She licked her lips as she imagined just what he might be expecting.
“We’re both here in this bed, and we both get to decide what we do with one another. I want you here because you want me, not because you think I will... pout... if you don’t surrender.” His eyes blazed red as he spoke, showing her just how much he meant what he said.
Laurel smiled and leaned in, her lips brushing feather light kisses against his. “I like hearing that.”
This time, they came together in a press of mouths that held no edge of anxiety, no pressure to go further than they wanted. Laurel let her hands explore Dru’s body, loving the hard press of his muscles under her fingers. He crowded close towards her until she rolled under him and wrapped her legs around his waist, feeling the hot press of him even through all of their clothes. It was almost too much, but she wanted more, and if the heat of the desire rising between them were any hotter their clothes would have burned up, leaving them naked and panting together.
But there was no spontaneous immolation and Laurel was both frustrated and a little pleased by that. It gave her more time to enjoy the press of Dru’s lips, of his tongue. The man plundered her, claimed her with his kiss and at the same time worshiped her. She could lay here all night and simply hold on while he worked his magic, but her own body was already crying out for more. She arched into him, wanting the pressure, the heat, and still it wasn’t enough, no matter what she did.
Dru groaned against her as she rubbed and met her arching body with his own. The sheets tangled around them, but neither of them seemed to care, too caught up in each other to even notice. When Dru’s fingers found their way under Laurel’s shirt she hummed in encouragement and she couldn’t have stopped the moan that escaped when he splayed his hand against her naked stomach if she’d tried.
He kissed his way down her body and when his lips caressed her abdomen she gasped and arched up against him. When had her pants come undone? She couldn’t remember, she didn’t care. Somehow they got off of her, leaving her exposed to Dru’s tongue as he feasted on her, wringing out every ounce of pleasure from her until she was a shivering mass of sensation, unable to think about anything beyond what the two of them were doing in this bed.
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nbsp; Her fingers dug into the sheets beside her, holding tight enough to make a permanent crease. The soft fabric under her was almost too much, rubbing against her skin where Dru wasn’t touching her. All of her body was sensitized and the cool air from the air conditioning unit only made her skin pebble. The contrast in sensations played in her mind and made her babble incoherently as Dru found exactly the right spot and tortured her with ecstasy. She might have called out his name, or it could have been a garbled collection of syllables that meant nothing at all. She was beyond knowing, beyond caring.
The pleasure exploded behind her eyes, leaving her gasping and crying out his name. Her chest heaved as she tried to pull in a deep enough breath to steady herself, but her heart beat so fast that she couldn’t control anything. Laurel’s head lolled on the pillow and when Dru slowly climbed back up her body, kisses trailing slowly from her waist and then up her chest and neck, her mouth broke out in a drunken grin.
She reached out and ran her fingers through his hair, reveling in the sensation. I could fall in love with this man. The thought hit her at the speed of light, tilting her even further off balance until her mind was left spinning. There was nothing about him that she didn’t want, that she wouldn’t take.
“Come here,” she urged, grabbing onto him and pulling him down on top of her. His cock was a steel rod against her stomach and she reached between the two of them, grasping on and running her hand up and down his stiff length. It was more textured than she’d expected, different from something human and wickedly intriguing.
