by Pearl Foxx
“Ha!” Gerrit laughed, followed by an instant grimace. “That would be a sight. Can you imagine? Savas with a steel dick?”
His words droned in Jude’s ears. She was too busy watching Niva. It wasn’t that Gerrit was callous; he was just oblivious to a young woman’s infatuation. Frankly, Jude was surprised he’d missed it. Niva was stunning. Her dark skin set off her light eyes, and her short dark hair swung just beneath her chin in soft waves. Her form was slender but curvy in all the places Jude wasn’t.
She was perfect.
“Help me to my room,” Gerrit commanded, snagging Jude’s attention once again. He slipped his arm around Jude’s shoulders and held out his hand for Rayner.
Rayner scowled, but he helped the young Alpha to his feet. Jude took as much of Gerrit’s weight as he would allow. With Vera opening the bedroom’s door, they made their way to Gerrit’s bed.
The Vilkas certainly believed in comfort.
Gerrit’s bed was massive, nearly the width of the room, and suspended between four towering columns of thick wood with carved swirls and symbols. On the bed, piles of blankets—silk and fur—were draped over pillows as long as Jude’s body.
They helped settle Gerrit against the headboard, which was still knotted with bark. When Jude went to straighten away from him, he grabbed her hand and tugged her down beside him with more strength than she’d expected. She landed with a huff and grumbled, “I need to take a shower. I stink of blood and guts and ship exhaust.”
“Sounds delicious.” To Rayner and Vera, Gerrit added, “Leave us. My side hurts like a bitch, and I need my mate to kiss it better.”
Niva made a whimpering sound like the words were a lash that had struck her across the cheek. Neither Gerrit nor Rayner seemed to notice, but Vera’s eyes flashed to Jude’s before the redhead turned to the young girl and guided her from the room. Vera whispered into Niva’s ear as Rayner said his goodbyes and closed the door on Jude and Gerrit.
The young girl would be heartbroken, but what could Jude do? Gerrit was hers.
Gerrit’s hand slid around Jude’s waist. She caught it before he could squeeze her ass. “You really should rest. You’ve lost a lot of blood.”
“And you fought beside me. Hell, you saved my ass with those maneuvers in the ship.”
He gripped her hips and pulled her across him. She braced herself to keep from settling her weight on him and pulling at his bandaged side. Cuts and bruises still marred his skin, along with dried blood and dirt. They were a disgusting mess, but Gerrit’s eyes gleamed with mischief and Jude felt a familiar wet warmth in her core.
She wanted him. Even now. She would always want him.
Vera’s words about a connection, a binding between true mates wiggled back through her mind.
“Have you heard of true mates before?” she asked Gerrit.
His hand paused against her ass. “Yes,” he said, his gaze turning carefully neutral. “Rayner and Vera are true mates.”
“True mates die if they’re separated?”
He shook his head. “Only the shifter. A human wouldn’t die from it.”
She sat back, her legs straddling his hips. “That’s us, isn’t it? We’re true mates.”
Gerrit’s jaw flexed. She felt his hard length pressing against her. “Yes.”
“Were you going to let me leave without telling me?”
“Your sister needs you—”
“So, you were just going to die? That was your great plan?” Jude’s heart was beating out of her chest. A cold sweat spread across her brow, and she had the very serious feeling she might be sick at any moment. The thought of him dying … Even the idea of leaving and never seeing him again threatened to break her.
She understood then how true mates could die without each other.
She felt the truth of it deep in her heart.
Gerrit was her true mate. And her true life was here with him on Kladuu.
“I love you, Jude,” Gerrit whispered. “I just want you to be happy.”
Her throat tightened, and her eyes burned. “Fucking shit.” Jude swiped at her cheeks. “You’re making me cry. I hate crying.”
A smile tugged at Gerrit’s lips. “I’m sorry.”
Jude took a deep breath and stared down at the man—the alien, the Vilka—she loved. “I’ll have to call her. I need to let her know what happened. Where I am. That I’m okay—”
Gerrit jerked upright, grunting in pain, and nearly knocked Jude off his lap. He caught her, and she held on to his shoulders, a yelp of complaint on her lips. “What are you saying?”
The tears were dripping off her chin, and she shook her head, biting her lip. She smiled at him. “My sister. I’ll have to explain, but she’ll understand when I tell her how much I love you—”
“You love me?”
“Stop interrupting me, and I’ll tell you!”
“Sorry. Go on.” He grinned up at her like a fool, a lock of blond hair falling across his forehead.
He’s beautiful. And he’s all mine.
Laughing, she threaded her arms around his neck. “I love you, Gerrit. I’m not leaving. Just let me get a message to my sister. Let me talk to her. And let me send something back to the station,” she added, thinking of Warren’s patch. “And I’m yours forever. And you’re mine.”
“I’m yours,” he said. “Forever. I vow it.”
“You and your vows.” Jude chuckled under her breath, leaning her head against her mate’s.
“I’m a very serious man. I take things like this very seriously.”
“Yes.” Jude’s laughter increased as she took in Gerrit’s very serious face. “I know.”
Jude slipped her hand between them and began rubbing his cock. It came quickly to attention, delighted with her ministrations, but when Gerrit leaned forward to take his wife in his arms, he fell back on the pillows with a grunt.
“I don’t know if I can make love to you. I want to. Avilku knows I want to every minute of every day, but …”
“Shut up,” Jude said, moving off the bed and removing her bloody and disgusting dress. “Maybe this time you’ll let me take care of you.”
She climbed up next to him and removed first his shirt, despite some small groans of pain, and then his pants. His rock-hard erection apparently hadn’t been injured as it stood at attention, leaking with its need for her.
She straddled his lap, careful to use the headboard for leverage and lowered herself down, filling herself with his beautiful hardness. When she had him fully seated deep inside her, she rocked slowly, barely pulling off him, keeping her movements soft and gentle.
“Dammit, Jude,” Gerrit growled, his teeth bared and his head thrown back against the pillows. He clutched her thighs, urging her to move faster, but every time he tried to take control he winced in pain. “This is torture.”
“Actually, it’s kind of fun to watch you struggle.” She leaned down to kiss him and then whispered, “Maybe some time I should tie you up and have my way with you.”
Gerrit’s entire body shook, and he hissed with pleasure at the idea.
Jude sat up, enjoying the view of her exquisite husband lying beneath her, unable to move. Yes, next time, she’d restrain him with ropes instead of an injury.
She clenched around him and picked up her pace, lifting herself up off his lap before lowering herself back down, pulling his cock deep into her, taking every inch of him. She sped up, watching his face for pain, but all she found was love and wonder in the eyes staring back at her.
“I love you,” he said with a simple smile that spoke of a life spent together, full of love and friendship.
“I love you too,” Jude replied before kissing him again and moving against him with the speed and friction they both longed for. “I’m never leaving you. I vow it.”
Soon they were panting against each other’s mouths, and Jude sat up, leaning her head back and placing her hands on Gerrit’s legs behind her so she could feel his cock rubbing against her deep
est walls and most secret spot. Places within her she had never known could feel so amazing sparked to life as she moved and groaned and reached for more.
Together, they rode the wave of mounting pleasure until Gerrit’s moans didn’t come from his injury but from his uncontainable passion.
Together, they came.
Together, they fell over into that unknown place where shifters and aliens existed.
Where the impossible existed.
Where Kladuu existed.
Epilogue
Linnea
“Well done, Jude!”
“Thanks, sir—”
The communication recording crackled with a sharp pop.
Linnea Quincy leaned closer to the vidscreen and pressed the headphones she wore tighter to her ears. As she listened for the hundredth time to the audio track of her sister’s Falconer Elite flight test, Linnea heard Jude’s breathing turn fast with fear.
This was it. This was where it all went wrong for Jude.
The recording hissed with static, obscuring Jude’s next words, but to Linnea, who knew every inflection of her sister’s voice, it sounded like Jude was asking a question, her words ringing with shock and a bit of awe.
Then, her instructor shouted, “Eyes forward! Don’t let the—”
Alarms rang on the recording. Linnea frowned. What alarms would be going off during a test? The oxygen sensors, perhaps? Or had the ship failed?
She yanked the headphones off her ears and spun around in her chair to face her dark bedroom. A lumpy form lay sprawled across her bed. She kicked the end of the mattress, causing the form to stir and grumble.
“Hey,” Linnea said. “Listen to this.”
She unplugged her headphones from the vidscreen and replayed the alarm sounds out loud. Ryann, the command tower tech who’d snuck Linnea a copy of the audio recording in exchange for a date, sat up in bed. Her bed sheet covered his naked lap, and he raked a hand through his dark hair and blinked blearily at her.
“What?”
“Listen! What alarms are these?” She replayed the audio again.
Ryann sighed. “It sounds like her gravity sensors.”
“Gravity sensors? Why would those be going off? Is the alarm for her ship’s interior?”
“There aren’t interior gravity alarms. Just external. Come on, baby. Why don’t you come back to bed? You’ve been listening to that for hours.” His voice softened. “I know you miss her, but everyone has listened to that audio over and over. You’re not going to find something that Commander Gideon missed. She’s gone, Linnea.”
Ryann wasn’t a bad guy, and he’d risked a lot to get her the recording. Even if he’d asked for a date and sex in exchange. It was a price Linnea had been willing to pay. And it wasn’t like she was one to turn down a hot guy who wanted to mess around. Linnea loved sex.
But she loved her sister more. And no matter what, Linnea couldn’t believe Jude was gone. She was the best pilot in the Falconer program. She wouldn’t have crashed without good reason.
She wasn’t dead.
Linnea plugged her headphones in and turned back to her vidscreen. She adjusted the feedback and background noise on Jude’s question.
What are you asking? What caught your attention?
Something had set off the external gravity alarms. Something big enough to panic Jude. To make her seasoned instructor start shouting.
Linnea replayed the audio well into the early morning hours, adjusting feedback levels in micro increments. When her eyes were stinging and her back ached from sitting too still for so long, she hit play again.
“Well done, Jude!”
“Thanks, sir—”
The popping sound was muted. An empty hum came over the recording.
Then Jude’s question. It started as a garbled mess, but Linnea slowed down the audio. “—at a—” The audio fizzled, the static repressed. “—erhmhoh?”
Linnea jerked forward and hit replay. Her eyes stretched wide as she watched the track’s display spike on the screen with each inflection of Jude’s voice.
“Erhmhoh?”
Linnea replayed the audio again.
“Erhmhoh?”
She adjusted a few other settings and sped Jude’s voice back to normal.
“—armhole.”
“Wormhole,” Linnea whispered. “She said wormhole.”
She sat back in her chair, stunned. Jude had run into a wormhole? Linnea wasn’t much for science; as one of the chefs on board the Zynthar International Space Station, she preferred cooking. But even she knew a little something about wormholes.
Mainly that they technically didn’t exist.
She kicked the bed again until Ryann woke. “You’re still up?” he mumbled, rubbing sleep from his eyes. His tanned face looked blue in the light of her vidscreen.
“She said wormhole! I think she saw a wormhole out there!”
Linnea replayed the audio for Ryann. She slowed it down and sped it back up, again and again, walking him through the strangled vowels and slurred consonants of Jude’s harried, panicked question.
“I don’t hear her saying anything about a wormhole. Maybe you’ve been listening to that too long.”
“She’s saying it! Listen!” Linnea’s voice rose to a shout and rang through her tiny quarters.
“Babe—”
“I’m not your babe,” Linnea growled. She threw her headphones across the room. Ryann jerked further awake, his eyes stretching wide at her outburst. “She said it. I heard her.”
Keeping a wary eye on her, Ryann swung his legs over the edge of the bed and started jerking on his pants. He liked to work out, and Linnea guessed he bought steroids to bulk out his frame. She’d never liked the hulking, meathead type of guys, and watching him now, Linnea felt a surge of disgust that she’d been touching him and putting on a great show of moaning and writhing beneath him only the previous evening.
It was only ever a show with Linnea. No guy could ever really make her feel as good as she acted, and she’d put on a damn good performance for Ryann. The asshole didn’t deserve it.
“You shouldn’t be listening to that. For fuck’s sake, Linnea, her funeral is today!” He yanked on his shirt and glared at her.
“She said it,” Linnea whispered. “She said wormhole.”
Ryann threw up his hands. “Now you’re starting to sound like that crazy bitch from the astrophysics department.”
“Who?”
“Maeve Delgado. The psycho nerd who stole a Falconer last month and flew into space to prove her wormhole theory.”
Linnea remembered Jude telling her that story now. Jude had been impressed. She’d laughed about it. But Linnea hadn’t remembered anything about wormholes. “She was trying to prove her wormhole theory?”
“She thinks one exists out there near Saturn. Christ Almighty, Linnea. Don’t look at me like that. She’s crazy! She stole a ship! She nearly got fired! You need to get some sleep. You can’t show up to your sister’s funeral looking like shit.”
He snarled the last few words at her and stomped out of her quarters, slamming the door behind him. But Linnea had already turned around to face her computer. She stared at the paused audio recording.
Maeve Delgado.
Someone else believed there was a wormhole out there, near Jude’s last known coordinates. And Linnea knew what she heard. She knew her sister’s voice.
Jude had said wormhole. If she’d gotten close to one and if it was big enough to have its own gravity pull, it could have pulled her in.
Linnea replayed the audio. Each time she heard the word, she grew more convinced.
Jude hadn’t crashed. She wasn’t dead.
She’d gone through a wormhole.
For all Linnea knew, Jude could be alive right now, stranded on another planet.
She needed help, and Linnea would stop at nothing to find her sister.
It was time to talk to this Maeve Delgado.
THE END
I hope you
enjoyed Jude and Gerrit’s story!
Don’t miss THE VILKA’S CAPTIVE, starring Nestan and unlikely heroine who has risked everything to save her sister. If they can survive Savas, the man-eating Katu, and a fire-breathing, acid-spitting Draqon baby, they may just return to the ones they love… and find each other.
Coming September 2017!
Don’t miss out on a free download! Join my VIP club now and get THE VILKA’S SECRET, a short story about a lonely Vilkan patrol officer and the geeky, adorable astrophysicist he can’t resist.
http://www.subscribepage.com/FoxxVIPclub
About the Author
Pearl Foxx is the author of epic space adventures with steamy romance you will never want to stop reading. Join in the fun at www.PearlFoxx.com.
