That wasn’t Remus. Again, she glanced down. Another warrior had joined the first, standing a bit off to the side. Like the other guard, he quickly averted his gaze, but in that brief moment, she recognized Tarus.
“What is wrong now?” Trask demanded to know.
“I’d have to look up.
“Yes, this is what I said a moment ago. How else would you expect to actually catch her?”
“Well. It’s just...” Remus coughed, clearly ill at ease. “I can see up her gown, General.”
Lana groaned. The women on this behind the times, patriarchal planet didn’t wear underwear. She hadn’t forgotten, having lived with it every day since being with Trask, but lord knows she hadn’t expected to be in such an embarrassing predicament. She quickly crossed her legs at the ankles, but the slight movement caused another loud rip.
“These linens aren’t going to hold much longer,” Trask stated with more urgency. “I’ll be right down. Warriors, please, even if I don’t like it, catch my misbehaving mate if she should fall before I get there. At least then I’ll still have something to spank when this is over.”
“Trask!”
“Hang on another minute, paulova. I’m coming to get you.”
It seemed like an eternity before he grumbled to his men from below. “I’m displeased you’ve seen as much as you have. Go. I’ll handle it from here.
“Yes, General,” they both replied before rushing away. Lana only knew this from hearing the rapid, and she suspected relieved, retreat of their footsteps.
“Drop down, Lana.”
“Trask...”
“Now.”
“But you’re going to spank me.”
“Damn straight I am. But hanging from a sheet that can shred at any moment is not only foolish, it’s delaying the inevitable.”
She closed her eyes and whispered, “You promise you won’t drop me?”
“She did not just ask that,” was his muttered response under his breath. “Mate,” he growled, “I carry weapons twice your weight during daylight-to-dark training drills once a week. What’s more, I spar warriors three times your weight and take them to the mat repeatedly. Catching you from this distance will be nothing. Now, my patience has worn well past thin, so I suggest you let go and get down here—at once.”
Another ominous rip came at the same time she peeled her fingers off the sheets. In a swirl of filmy skirts and a rush of cool air on her exposed skin, she dropped only to be caught in a blink by strong, capable arms and curled into a broad chest. She breathed out a protracted sigh, but it trapped in her throat when he roared next to her ear. “I cannot believe you risked breaking your neck by climbing out a window and while doing so, flashed my men something that is mine alone to see.”
“It’s not my fault you barbarians don’t allow your women to wear panties.”
“You’re actually deflecting blame for what happened just now?”
She said nothing, merely pressed her lips together before she made her situation worse.
“Smart girl,” he muttered as he strode to and through the rear door which stood open. “Let me explain why Primarian males don’t allow their mates to wear such garments. They slow things down when they want to breach their woman—”
She gasped and cut in, “You have got to be kidding!”
Without responding to her outraged remark, he went on. “The other reason is perhaps the most important one of all.” He hooked a kitchen stool with his foot, propped his boot on the wrung, and flipped her over his upraised thigh in one motion. Her skirt was over her head in a blink. “Being bare eliminates barriers when punishing his mate’s naughty backside is urgently required.”
A crack rent the air and fire seared across her bottom.
“Ow, Trask!”
Another crisp spank landed on the other cheek.
“Don’t you dare complain. You’ll lay there and take every well-deserved swat.”
“But I couldn’t just sit here and do nothing!”
“The hell you couldn’t. Fifteen months, Lana. That’s how long I waited to get you back. I leave you for one night to do my job, only to return and find you hanging out a window.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t expect you back until tomorrow.” She knew it was the wrong thing to say as soon as she said it, but she was upset.
“Which tells me you’re not sorry at all for risking your life, or for scaring me to death, only for being caught.”
“No, that isn’t what I meant.”
Her protest made no difference. A flurry of brisk, smarting smacks followed as he paddled her butt unreservedly. Firm and efficient, it was like his hand was made of stout oak rather than flesh and bone.
He settled into a rapid rhythm of side-to-side swats and showed no sign of stopping. Her bottom was prickly and blistering hot when he moved to her thighs and started in on them. And he had no problem carrying on a conversation while he did all this, and evidently expected her to do the same because another question was forthcoming.
“How about telling me what you meant, and, more importantly, what in all creation you were thinking with this stunt?”
All the frustration, anger, and misery she held inside, not just the false accusations, but what she’d done those fifteen long months ago, which had all been for naught because she was right back where she started, came out in a plaintive wail.
“I’m a pariah. I can’t walk down the street without getting scowled at, even if I’m with you. And I’ve been here three days and my friends haven’t visited me. No males are going to want their mates associating with an accused saboteur. Adria hates me and so do you.”
She found herself flipped upright with her burning bottom perched on his thigh. His hand was much gentler as he cupped her tear-streaked cheek.
“I don’t hate you, Lana.”
“Well, you should,” she wept. “Even...if...I was only trying...to do what I thought best. I...hurt...you.” She was blubbering and barely coherent between shuddering sobs.
His other hand came to rest on her opposite cheek, and with her face braced between them, he angled her face up. “What was it you thought was best? You never have said.”
Nothing had changed. He was stuck with a worthless, barren, troublesome, despised mate. Okay, the last one was different—but the highest ranking military officer on the planet with an accused terrorist as a mate made things worse. Hot tears rolled down her cheeks as she whispered wretchedly, “You should have let them exile me to Earth.”
He growled, set her on her feet, and rose to tower above her. “Since you are mine, under my authority, the decision how to punish is for me to say, not you.” His hand curled around the back of her neck, and he bent near, nose to nose with her, his eyes dark with anger. “I’m going to find out what you’re hiding, Lana. If not from you, then some other way. No woman comes apart in a man’s arms like you do for me then says it’s all a mistake, that it isn’t meant to be. And I’m going to find out who is behind this conspiracy. Then maybe, when both puzzles are solved, we can go back to what we had before. But even if I don’t, and the mystery is never solved, you are stuck with me. Forever.” He tossed her over his shoulder and started upstairs while he continued his lecture. “And so help me, if I ever find you hanging out a window again or doing anything so reckless and dangerous, you can forget about a spanking. I’ll bind you to the mate’s helper in position number nine and keep you there until you are so weak from coming you can’t be anything other than obedient. It’s either that or board up the damn windows.”
She hung listlessly over his shoulder quietly sobbing as she heard him conclude, “Maybe I’ll do both.”
In their room, he laid her on the bed but left her to go to the window and haul in the sheets, muttering angrily the whole time. He closed the window with a series of beeps, then went to the bathing room. When he returned, he climbed in bed and, with his back propped against the wall, picked her up and shifted her onto his lap. He caught her chin in one hand and used the small t
owel he had in the other to wipe her face. Despite his annoyance, his touch was gentle and the coolness of the wet cloth felt good against her hot skin.
“Stop crying; you’ll make yourself sick.”
“Okay,” she said obediently, but a hitching tearful breath followed.
Trask bent his head and kissed her lips. “What am I going to do with such a defiant female on my hands?”
She opened her mouth to make a suggestion, but he covered it with his fingers.
“If you say exile you to Earth, you’ll be facedown over my lap for round two.”
She snapped her mouth shut; her bottom was tender enough already.
“Hmm...” he hummed with disapproval. “I meant, what am I going to do with you now? I leave in an hour. I’ll be gone a week, at least. Probably more.
“A week, but where...?”
“There is a problem on Terra Nova.”
Her back stiffened and she sat up straight. “But we just left there. Has there been another explosion? Or an eruption?”
“This is a different issue, but I don’t have time to explain. I’m due at the shuttle port in a few minutes. I came home to kiss my mate goodbye before I left.”
“And I ruined that, too.”
“What I found was certainly a surprise. You’ll have guards posted, as always, and I want your promise to be good.”
“Take me with you. Don’t leave me by myself.”
“Lana.”
“I’ll go stir-crazy, please, Trask.”
“It’s impossible. You know as well as I, you cannot return to the colony.”
How could she have forgotten she was an accused criminal, and once again his captive? More tears pricked her eyes.
“We’ll figure this out, mate. Try to be patient.”
Not a trait she had buckets of, but she nodded. “At least this new trouble, whatever it is, can’t possibly be blamed on me.”
“I’ll explain when I get back, but before I go, I’ll have your promise.”
What choice did she have except to agree? “I can’t say I’ll be sane by the time you return, but I’ll be good. I promise.”
“I know this is hard for you, but it’s how it has to be for now.”
“I understand, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“Kiss me, Lana, then I must go.”
He didn’t have to ask twice. She sat up, twisting to face him and slid her hands over his shoulders and around to his back. As she was wont to do, she pulled the tie from his bound hair.
“Did I mention I had to go?”
“I don’t care. If this is my kiss to give, I get to do it my way.”
His full lips tipped up in a hint of a smile. Even though she was difficult, and he was domineering, and she was troublesome, and she sassed, and he yelled and spanked—most often deserved she had to admit—when they were in bed, alone, and she was in his arms, nothing else mattered. It all faded away. Like now, when she slid her fingers into his hair, angled her head, and touched her parted lips to his.
He opened in response but let her have her way. Teasing with little daring licks of her tongue. His patience lasted about a minute then his tongue was plundering her mouth and his hands were buried in her hair, setting her body on fire with only his kiss.
“You are incredibly tempting,” he said gruffly against her mouth. “And though I don’t have time,”—he flipped her onto her back—“I’m taking it anyway because I want you badly.”
“I want you, too,” she whispered against his lips.
“Hands up,” he ordered. “Let’s get rid of this gown.”
She sat up, as he did, and as soon as her arms rose above her head, the dress was off. His hands on her hips pulled her down the bed as he knelt over her.
“Spread your legs, baby.”
She obeyed—in bed was pretty much the only place she did everything he asked without question.
“Now, pull your knees to your chest.”
Lana did that, too, even though her face flooded with heat at the lewd picture she made. But he didn’t find it lewd, from the look in his eyes, he loved it. And he didn’t wait to dive in for a taste.
With his hands on the back of her thighs, pushing her wider, lifting her hips from the bed to point toward the ceiling, his tongue stoked the heat of her desire. He licked and swirled and stroked until she was so wet with arousal, she felt it trickling down her bottom. Right when she thought she couldn’t take another nibble from his lips, he rose above her. His hair swept around his shoulders in a dark glassy fan—so beautiful—and his eyes, burning with the intensity of his desire, did a slow perusal of her body spread open and ready before him. She imagined the lustful picture she made, as his gaze traced from wet and quivering sex, lewdly displayed between her sprawled thighs, to her heaving hard-tipped breasts, to her face flushed hot with passion.
She didn’t think she could want him more, but when his deep, velvet-edged whisper washed over her, she almost came apart. “I’m going to miss you, Lana, do not doubt that.”
Then he freed his cock from his pants, and with it heavy and hard in his hand, he guided it to her wet center and plunged deep. He did it without looking away, his eyes locked on hers, dark green with his need this time, never the same it seemed, but always so damn beautiful.
After a few strokes, he bent to her, his mouth covering hers hungrily. She tasted herself on his lips, but it only increased her need and she opened for his insistent tongue. After a few heady, demanding moments, he left her gasping as he nibbled down her cheek, along her jaw to her neck, and that’s where he stayed, his face buried in her hair as he drove into her relentlessly.
The intensity of his passion took hold and sent her hurtling to a breathtaking peak. Gasping, her fingers dug into his shoulders, clinging to him, her neck arched, and her head flew back as she came.
“Trask,” she breathed as her climax rocked through her. And, in an intended, uninhibited admission, she moaned, “I love you.”
He stilled above her, his head coming up, his cock on the downstroke hovering at the mouth of her channel, almost losing her.
“Don’t stop,” she cried out.
Stroking into her once more, as the intense waves made her shudder, her tense muscles slowly relaxed and her eyes open enough to gaze up at him sated.
“What did you say?”
“Huh?” she asked vaguely, but she knew. He realized she did too.
“Don’t be evasive, Lana. Not about something this important. At the height of your release, you said something. Tell me again what it was.”
“I love you, Trask. And this time, I’m never taking those words back.”
Silence rained for a moment then came the wet sound of him sliding out and plunging deep into her pussy once more.
“As I do you, Lana,” he declared with a raw, rasp in his voice. “I knew when I saw you in the forest you were mine, and I haven’t ever wavered.” He stroked into her faster, his eyes never wavering, either, while he did so.
One hand released his hair to slide to the side of his neck, from there it moved to his bearded jaw, and her thumb glided over his lip.
“Say it again,” he demanded.
“I love you.”
He pumped in hard. “And again,” he ordered.
“I love you, Trask.”
Soon, he didn’t need to order it because she was whispering it with every thrust, her eyes not looking away, as she watched the man she loved, her mate, find pleasure in her body and her arms.
Drowsy from the emotional and physical events of the day, she barely moved when he kissed her once more and rolled out of bed. He dressed quickly, bent over her for on last lingering brush of mouths, lips, and tongue, then he was striding from for the door. Over his shoulder, he said, “I’ll contact Kerr and Ram and Krager and have them bring their mates round for a visit.”
“You’d do that?”
His eyes met hers. “I’d do anything for you, paulova. And not only because I’d ha
te to have a stir-crazy mate in my bed when I get back.” Then he winked and was gone.
She rolled onto her side and pulled his pillow against her chest. She buried her face in it and inhaled. There were definite benefits to her decision to come back as his mate. Seeing her friends was one of them because she missed them terribly, and she hoped he followed through and got word to their mates. But the best one was Trask, who loved her, and had told her, and thank God and his Maker, she hadn’t destroyed it with what she’d done.
DOZING IN AND OUT, mostly in, thankfully, where her dreams starred a fierce yet loving giant warrior with gorgeous hair and eyes and a sensuous mouth that could do the most incredible things, something kept trying to pull her from sleep. But she didn’t want to wake up, too enchanted by her dream man and his phenomenal body with its washboard abs and tight ass and the most stunning marking covering half of one cheek and wrapping around his thigh and hip. Lana breathed in deep, trying to catch his scent on his pillow once more. Except it was different, not clean and fresh like she recalled but woodsy.
No, she thought vaguely, trying to place the familiar smell, rather smoky, like a campfire than anything else.
The strangeness of it dragged her up from sleep and to awakening.
She sat up, breathed deeper thinking she was mistaken, then coughed. And she blinked, her eyes burning because her room was filled with smoke—for real.
“Dear God,” she cried as she rushed for the door. It was closed, which was odd, and when she laid her hands on the panel, it was hot to the touch. She whirled, frantically searching for an alternate escape. She flew to the window, opened it and, after drawing in a deep gulp of fresh air, called for her guards.
There was no response, and as she stared at the fifty-foot drop—without her handmade rope, a sure trip to Jarlan’s med-bay with a broken leg or neck or both—she saw no escape out of this way, either. Turning back, she rushed to the bathroom, grabbed a towel, and soaked it in the sink. Planning to use it over her nose and mouth, she returned to the door, and, with no other option, waived her hand over the sensor. Nothing happened. Not even a flash of green or red.
“The power is out,” she said needlessly to no one, coughing each breath. Pressing both hands flat on the panel, she tried to slide the door open but had no luck. She was trapped.
Defying the General Page 34
