by Cathryn Cade
He groaned, a deep rumble in his chest. “Fuck me, that’s the sweetest thing I’ve seen in a long time,” he muttered.
Zaë’s tension released, she fell back on the pillows. Amazing. She shivered as he moved his finger inside her, and little aftershocks rippled through her.
“Open your eyes, baby,” Stark said. His voice was soft with amusement. “Look at me.”
Slowly she lifted her gaze to meet his, and blushed even more hotly as the knowledge of what had just happened, what was still happening seared between them.
“That was sweet,” he murmured. “Want more of that. Take off your dress.”
“But you said you wouldn’t...”
“I’m not going to. But that doesn’t mean we can’t play. Now take off your dress.”
She didn’t know where to look, not when he was touching her like that, and awakening those feelings all over again. The intimacy of the moment was too much, and yet not enough.
“Well, you—you must let go of me first.”
He grinned at her. “No I mustn’t. Got my fingers in the sweetest place known to man, not lettin’ go.”
And he didn’t. Not while she stared at him, dumb-founded. Not while she fumbled for the hem of her gown, then realized it was trapped underneath her. Not while she lifted her hips and worked the silk up to the small of her back, and not while she sat up enough to pull the dress up, and lift her arms to pull it over her head.
These movements around his hand caused so many nuances of sensation that Zaë had the mad urge to continue to move, to use his hand to pleasure herself all over again.
She leaned back on her elbow, the dress discarded like a husk on the bed beside her.
His gaze was riveted on the thin, stretchy lace of her bra. “I like that,” he said, although it was more of a growl, his voice thick and raspy. “You have perfect breasts. Fill a man’s hands or his mouth.”
He looked down over her, and Zaë couldn’t help but do so as well, torn between fascination and utter embarrassment. Her body was small and feminine next to his, curves and indentations next to the brawny muscle and tanned flesh of his male form. And the sight of his thick, corded forearm, his hand cupping her mons while she felt his finger deep inside her, made her tremble with pleasure even as she wanted to melt from sheer embarrassment.
“Now, take off your panties,” he ordered.
She gaped at him. He expected her to work her panties off while he continued to hold her like this? Then she gulped at the adamant gleam in his eyes. It seemed he did.
“What do you say, my Zaë?” He stroked her, in and out, watching her as he did so.
Zaë’s heart thudded in a slow, hard rhythm as she pushed her thumbs under the lace straps of her panties.
“Yes,” she whispered. After all, she wanted it too.
He gave her a little squeeze. “Good girl. Hurry now, cause the next time you come is gonna be on my tongue.”
She froze, half sitting, and her thighs locked on his arm as her gaze locked on his mouth. His beautiful masculine mouth, with those firm lips that worked such magic on hers. She stared, spellbound, as he slicked the tip of his tongue along his lower lip.
He leaned to kiss her. “Fuck, baby, your pussy is havin’ a whole conversation with my hand. You like that idea—felt you squeeze me tight. C’mon, now. Get the panties the rest of the way off.”
The tenderness of his kiss combined with the steel in his gaze undid her. She pushed the panties down over her lower legs, and then let them go, unable to focus on anything but the way this new position pressed her against the hard intrusion of his finger.
“Fuck, you’re gonna come again,” he muttered. He circled his thumb on her clitoris again. “Go ahead, baby. Let go. Give it to me.”
She gave it to him, convulsing in his hand.
Joran watched her blue eyes slip shut, lashes fluttering on her cheeks, her mouth open, and felt her tight little pussy grab his finger again, milking it with a fierce grip as she orgasmed.
His little Zaë liked it when he gave her orders, liked his dominance. Fuck, she was opening up to him like a flower in the hot sun, blooming for him when he’d bet she’d never done it for any other man. His fingers were drenched with her.
This made him want more, made him want it all. Which he couldn’t have—not yet. But he could have some of it. And the moment he was out of this bed, he was linking LodeStar security, and putting Logan’s best techs on finding her identity. He wanted her, he wanted her badly, but it had to be when she was her own woman.
“Take your bra off now,” he instructed, leaning to press a soft kiss to her shoulder. Her skin was like hot damp silk, and her heady scent rose around him, clean woman mixed with perspiration and arousal, nice and musky the way he liked it. Hells, with her he wanted to wallow in it like a male skrog in the spring mud.
The bra was a pretty tease, with her nipples and pale skin peeping through the lace, but he wanted her breasts out where he could fondle them, taste them, maybe leave a mark or two on them.
Still shivering with the remnants of her pleasure, her blue eyes dazed, she fumbled with her bra.
He smacked her bare bottom with his palm, just a little reminder that he was in charge.
“Hurry up, baby.”
She gave him a wide-eyed look, her mouth prissing with indignation. He narrowed his eyes at her, and smacked her again, just hard enough to sting. “Hurry.”
The bra came off, leaving her bare breasts swinging like the sweetest fruit, just at his eye level.
“Good,” he approved. “Now offer one to me. On your hand, baby. That’s right, lift it and put the nipple in my mouth.”
She gasped, and her hands fluttered like birds trying to take off from a lake, but she did as she was told, and by the way her pussy contracted again, he could tell she liked this a lot too.
He flicked her nipple with his tongue, and circled her aereola and then drew it into his mouth, gently at first and then harder, until she whimpered, a sweet soft sound in her throat of shock and pleasure.
Her hands rose to clasp his head, her fingers in his hair. Before long she was holding on for dear life, pressing him to her as if afraid he’d escape. He smiled to himself. Another time he’d make her keep her hands behind her back and tease the hells out of her by barely touching her with his tongue, see how long she could take that before she broke.
But now he was on a mission. He wanted his mouth all over her before he came, he’d decide how in a little while. He enjoyed her other breast, and if possible she liked that even more, arching into his touch and writhing on his hand.
“Now lie back, baby,” he said, leaning back to enjoy the sight of her breasts wet from his mouth, her nipples reddened from his mouth. “I’m gonna lick your pussy.”
He held her gaze as she lay back, totally into him and what he wanted, her blue eyes locked on his face. He’d left his other hand under her, so he had a palm full of her round, firm, soft ass. He squeezed.
“You want me to lick you here where my hand is?” he asked gently.
She looked at his mouth, and he nearly laughed at the look in her eyes—perplexed and excited at the same time.
“Um...lovers really do that?” she asked. “It’s very unhygienic.”
He burst out laughing again. “Yeah,” he agreed, his voice still quivering. “It is that. But baby, I do what I want.” And he wanted to be the one to see the look in her eyes when she learned all the other things lovers did for each other.
“Oh,” she breathed.
“Now spread your legs. Wider. Wider, baby.”
She clenched her hands on the covers, but did as he said until she was open to him like a naughty, sweet offering. She was trimmed up, just a narrow triangle of dark blonde curls pointing the way to her swollen clitoris, but the rest of her was bare, so her swollen lips flushed deep pink around his fingers.
“Pretty little virgin pussy,” he approved. “You haven’t had a cock in you. Have you had a man’s
mouth on you, I wonder?”
Her cheeks were as pink as her pussy. She shook her head. “I—I... No, I’m sure I haven’t.”
Joran shook his head, admiring her. “I’d wager you haven’t, baby. You wouldn’t be so shy, if you had.”
“That’s you,” she answered. “You—you do these things. Say these things.”
He sobered, and let her feel the weight of his intention as she lay there, displayed for him. “Dirty things? Yes, I do. And I’ll keep pushing you, too. ‘Cause that’s who I am, how I like it. If you think I’m pushing you now, little virgin...you just wait.”
A deeper spark of excitement glowed in her blue eyes, and he smiled to himself. Then he leaned down and inhaled her scent, and teased her and himself by pressing little kisses to the silky skin all around her triangle of curls, until he finally came back to her wetness. There he put out his tongue, and tasted her.
“Mm-mm,” he approved. “Sweet.”
She spasmed around his finger again and he licked her from where his finger disappeared in her pink depths up to the swollen little knot of her clit. She arched off the bed, whimpering in her throat. He pulled his hand out from under her and laid it on her flat little belly, soothing her, holding her down.
“Tell me,” he urged. “Tell me what it feels like.”
Then he got back to business.
She made that little sound again. “Oh. It feels...it feels so soft, like—like silk, and wet!”
“You like it, baby?” he took his mouth away just long enough to ask.
“Yes. I do, I do. Oh, Joran. Please, please don’t stop.”
He didn’t, and feeling her clench and flutter around him again while he had his mouth on her was one of the sweetest things he’d experienced for a long time. Hearing her gasp his name so pleadingly was the other.
And if he didn’t get off in the next two minutes, he was going to explode in his pants like a raw youth.
Kneeling up between her thighs, he yanked his underpants down and pulled her gently toward him so her sweet ass was in his lap, snug against his groin, with her legs up over his shoulders. Holding her there, he drove his cock between her thighs.
She blinked up at him, her face soft and dazed.
“What are you doing?”
He flexed his ass, pulling his cock along the warm, wet furrow of her sex, and then thrusting it back. “Getting off, my Zaë. And wishing like fuck I was all the way inside you.”
Holding on to her hips, he worked his cock against her, progressively wetter and hotter. Her breasts bounced with every thrust, and she watched him, her rapt blue gaze flying from his face to his cock moving between her thighs.
“Oh, yeah,” he groaned. “Now, sweetheart. Gonna give it to you, and I want you to take it—all over you.”
Pulling her legs down to his ribs, he took his cock in hand and jerked once, twice and a third time. He came hard, watching through pleasure-glazed eyes as his cum spurted, thick creamy pulses landing on her skin. Branding her flat little belly, her torso and the slope of her pretty breasts.
Breathing hard, satiation still rippling through him, he surveyed her with satisfaction. “Like the way you look with me on you, my Zaë.” And this time he wasn’t too drunk to enjoy and remember.
Then he leaned down far enough to kiss her, and fell onto the bed beside her with a groan.
She was silent for a long moment. Floating in relaxation, Joran could still feel the quiet rustle as she lifted her head. He dragged his eyes open just far enough to watch as she touched her fingertips to her belly.
At the look on her face, not disgusted but intrigued, his cock twitched. “You like me on you?”
Her gaze shot to meet his, and she blushed.
He lifted his hand to sniff, then brought it to her face. “Here, this is you on me. Scent of your pussy is better than any perfume.”
“Oh. I need to wash,” she murmured, her face flaming.
Joran sat up reluctantly. He’d hoped for more of a chance to just lie with her, thinking of nothing but what he might try next time. “Wait.”
She was sitting up, looking back at him over her shoulder. Her hair was a tousled mess, and he liked it that way. She had a very pretty back, a slender vee that segued into the flare of her slanting hips just right. And he was not ready to let her go.
“When I put my cum on you, I wash it off,” he told her.
She frowned. “I can wash myself.”
He sat up and slid off the bed, beckoning to her. “Not when I mark you.”
Shaking her hair forward over her breasts, her hand over her mons, she eyed him from across the bed. “Is this, um, sexual etiquette?”
He chuckled. ‘Sexual etiquette’? Who the hells said shit like that?
“It’s my etiquette, bunny. Now come and let me wash you. Unless you want to leave me on you, that’s all right too.”
“No, I don’t want to ‘leave you on me’. I’m all sticky and slippery.” And if looks could laser, his cock would be falling off.
He held out one arm toward the lav. “Then you’d better get your sweet ass in the showerdry, my Zaë.”
He set the water jets to the lower half of the unit. “Hold your hair up, baby.”
She gathered it up in a messy bundle with one hand. Tipping his head to the other side of hers, he held her back to his front, and leaned his chin on her shoulder as he lathered up his hands and soaped her down, taking his time and lavishing care on every tender crevice and curve. Putting off his return to reality as long as possible.
Then he turned her as the water jets rinsed her off, and the air puffed.
“Your hair looked pretty last night,” he told her. “One of the women do that for you?”
“Dano.”
He grinned. Dano was a male, but he was one of the ‘girls’.
Then he tipped her face up to his, and pulled her against him, his cock nestling happily against her belly. “Things are going to be ugly the next few days. You stick close to camp, close to Ringi and Dano, you hear me? If I’m not here, you’re with one of them.”
She nodded.
“You’ve already made some friends here,” he noted. “That’s good. Which reminds me, somethin’ weird happened. Slidi’s slave asked me about you—are you all right, are you safe. You made a friend there, too.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Pretty man, dark hair, dark eyes?”
“Oh,” she said wonderingly. “He was kind to me.”
He smiled at her. “Course he was. You bring that out in folks.”
“Do you think,” she asked cautiously, “you could help him get away from her?”
Her question sliced through his sense of well-being like a laser. The last time he’d tried a rescue, they’d all died—all but her. But damned if she didn’t make him want to try to be a hero all over again, even though he knew it was a terrible idea.
“I can try. Unless it’s because you want him in your bed instead of me?”
She looked at him as if he’d spoken to her in Gorglon without a translator. He managed a grin. “Guess that’s a no.”
His stomach growled, loudly enough to be heard over the dryer. “Now, I’m hungry enough to eat a skrog,” he realized. “Let’s see what Nera left us.”
Then, unfortunately, he had a world of trouble waiting to crash back onto his shoulders. He hoped they were broad enough to bear the load..
Chapter 22
Joran stood before the roaring fire, an old utility vest in his hands, size huge. Var had worn it on patrol, laden with tech and weapons.
“Var was a good man,” he said. “The best, the bravest and the truest.”
He clenched his jaw, ready to step back, ready to be done with this whole thing. But his crew, their partners, everyone was locked on him like homing devices, waiting for him to lead them to some resolution of their grief.
His gaze landed on Zaë, standing to one side of the group, watching him. Her soft blue gaze
arrowed deep inside him, a stealthy charge a man had no way to protect against. All he could do was accept it, use the trueness of it steady him, help him stand straight and tall while he gave his people what they really needed, which was his sorrow, real and raw. To show them their suffering was okay, because he suffered with them.
She’d given him the solace of her body, honest and sweet. Now she gave him her silent support, her sorrow at his loss. How was it that this girl who was adrift in a vast galaxy, with no idea where her own home lay or even who she really was, kept handing him little pieces of himself that he hadn’t even known were lost?
He looked around at all the faces turned his way, somber, full of grief, some wet with tears. A big part of him wanted to turn away from that, to walk away. But he couldn’t. He’d fucked up, badly, and a good man was dead. The least he could do was show them he felt it.
“Var was my friend. Maybe one of the best I’ve ever had,” he went on, marveling at how the steadiness of his voice gave no clue to the raw fear clawing at him from inside, warning him to turn away before he revealed too much, let these people in further.
But they were already in, he realized. Somehow, though he’d told himself he was protected behind the cerametal armor of his indifference, they’d seeped in to tiny cracks he hadn’t even noticed, until he carried them all in the hollow of his chest. The way he did Creed and Logan. Rough, rowdy, mauled by life and circumstance, some wounded so deeply they could only exist in a pack like this, these people were his, and they were in.
“We’ve been called a motley crew. Reckon that’s true,” he mused, half to himself. “But if any one of us dies, we all suffer. Some more than others, depending on our ties, but we’re all connected by the adventures we’ve had, the risks we’ve taken together. The times we’ve picked up and moved on, together. Always together.”
“Var was your friend, all of you. He was a warrior, a man who looked out for everyone, fought to keep us all safe.” He blinked as hot moisture blurred his eyes, filled his throat.
