by Kate Rudolph
“One hundred percent.”
He tore through the thin material of her tank top and the built in bra underneath it, exposing her bare skin to his hands and claws. The claws disappeared between one heartbeat and the next, disappearing into his hands like they’d never been there in the first place. He flattened his hands on her sides and explored her by touch, his calloused palms tough against her sensitive skin. She writhed underneath him and spread her legs, trying to urge him closer.
Raze’s head bent down and he trailed his lips up from her belly button to the valley between her breasts, teasing her with gentle nips and playful swipes of his tongue, driving her crazy inch by tortuous inch. She wanted to return the favor, but every time she made a move to touch him, Raze made a sound in the back of his throat that pinned her in place, commanding her to stay still without any words necessary. It was his turn to bring her pleasure, he said with that one syllable, a gift that she had to lay back and take.
But she cataloged every kiss and caress, ever swipe of his tongue and pinch of his fingers, just waiting to drive him to crazed insanity in the same way he was driving her.
When he made his way back down to her waist, she gasped as he undid the clasp of her pants and eased them down over her hips, taking her underwear with. When her boots got in the way, he let out an inarticulate growl and this time Sierra did have to speak out.
“Seriously,” she warned, “I need those boots. Don’t tear them.” He glanced back up at her face with those red eyes and any other teasing words died in her throat at the intensity writ large in his expression. With almost reverent care, he undid the straps and slid first one boot from her foot and then the other, placing them under her bed so they wouldn’t get lost or get in his way. Then, he was yanking her pants off again until she was completely naked and laying on the bed, a feast for his eyes.
He ran a hand over his cock, still trapped by layers of fabric that Sierra wished would just spontaneously combust so she could see the goods. She started to lean forward to undress him, but he darted forward and plastered her hands to the bed, covering her with his hot, heavy body, the length of his cock pressing hard against her stomach, the length impressive even through his pants.
“Mine,” he growled against her ear, possessive and a bit feral.
A thrill shot through her, even though she’d never gotten off on that shit before. But now the need to claim ran just as hot in her blood. She captured his lips, tugging at his bottom lip with her teeth until he hissed against her and released her hands to cup her head. She held herself in place; no matter how much she wanted to touch him, she wanted his control in a way she’d never known to want before. He conquered her mouth until there was nothing left but the heat and the connection burning like a conflagration between them.
It was too much. It wasn’t enough.
She needed more.
***
Any more pleasure and his heart might give out. Any less and he would die. There was no part of Sierra that he didn’t need to touch and taste, no ounce of pleasure he couldn’t wring out of her. She was bared before him, all her strange, human beauty his for the taking, and the only thing he could do was devour her lips, taking her taste into him with one swipe of his tongue against hers at a time.
She moaned under him and his eyes flicked up to watch her hands reach out until she gripped the edge of the bed to keep them in place, to keep herself from reaching out. If she touched him, he’d come undone, and they’d barely even started. He would let her touch him later, for now this was all about giving her exactly what she needed and taking everything that he wanted.
He slid down her body with a trail of kisses and licks, the salt of her skin sweet against his tongue. He could explore every hidden secret she had, but for now, he had only one goal in mind, the wet heat radiating out of the crux of her thighs. She opened under him, her hips arching up in a silent plea as he kissed over her abdomen and down one thigh. A wordless sound came out strangled as he licked over the soft skin of her thighs and back up over her mound, teasing her without any relief. She arched up again, her hips coming fully off the bed as she searched for his tongue with her body.
“Please!” she finally gasped, the sound echoing in her tiny room.
Raze showed mercy, using his tongue and his fingers to bring her pleasure until she was gasping against him, one leg kicked over his shoulder to give him more access to her core. She let out a string of curses when he hit a particularly sensitive spot, and when he circled his lips around the seat of her pleasure, she cried out and writhed against him, begging him for more.
With a shout, she let go, shuddering around him and breathing hard as he took her over the edge for the first time. Her hands tugged him up and he came willingly, kissing her again as she tried to regain her breath, sweat coating her and the heat between them still as strong as it had ever been, stronger.
“I need inside you,” he murmured against her lips, the sound a muffled exchange.
“Now, yes,” she panted, reaching down for the clasp of his pants and struggling in her haze of pleasure to get them undone.
Raze’s own hands were shaking and he was so hard he knew he wouldn’t last long. But he needed her now, today, forever. He pushed his pants down, freeing his erection, and settled himself back between Sierra’s thighs. With care, he guided himself to her entrance and met her eyes, knowing his own must be glowing red with how much emotion overpowered him, urged him on.
“Do it,” she said, placing her hand over the one he had braced on her hip. “Make me yours.” She might not have known all the technicalities of the denya bond, but he could see in her gaze that Sierra understood just how important this was, how much it meant.
She was slick with pleasure and open for him. He forced himself to go slow, easing in to the tortuously pleasurable heat until he was seated all the way in, joined as completely as two souls could ever hope to be. And then he began to move, driving into her, finding his pace and touching her reverently until her own eyes clouded over with pleasure and she let out contented little moans and gasps, begging him for more.
Sensation washed over him, almost painful, and something cracked inside of him, whipping out and reforming him, reaching out for his mate from the depths of the soul he thought he’d lost and tying them together in the most visceral connection of his people. Sierra shuddered again, her walls rippling around his length and with a roar, Raze came, emptying himself inside of her and sealing the bond between them.
His vision went white and on the heels of the greatest pleasure he’d ever known, pain stabbed through his chest. He gasped, reaching out and trying to stabilize himself as a hurricane of emotion roared into him, tearing him apart from the inside.
As he slumped to his side, everything went black.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
For three seconds, Sierra didn’t realize that anything was wrong. But when Raze slumped over with a groan and rolled to his side, completely unconscious, she went from delightfully sated to the edge of panic, the blissful haze of sex wiped away in an agonizing moment. She checked for his pulse, belatedly realizing that a Detyen might not have a heartbeat in exactly the same place. But the steady, if a bit fast, rhythm under her fingers was enough to get the panic to abate for a second.
Next question. Was this a Detyen sex thing? A mating thing? Or something weird and wrong and dangerous? There were only two other people on the ship who might be able to answer that. It hadn’t been Sierra’s intention to go around announcing what just happened between them, but fear for Raze’s life got her ass into gear. It wasn’t that she wanted to hide what they had together, but there was a lot of talking they needed to do before they started announcing that they were dating… mated… whatever.
Talking could come later. After medical attention.
Though Raze tearing her clothes off had been just about the hottest thing she’d ever lived through while it was happening, now she cursed as she had to dig through her pack to find an intact
shirt. She pulled it over her head and grabbed for her pants. Before she could take her first step towards the door, Raze groaned and rolled to his side. She was torn, but couldn’t just leave him there in pain. She sat on the bed beside him and placed her hand on his chest, rubbing it up and down gently, trying to soothe any pain he might be feeling at the moment.
Raze’s eyelid cracked open and the sense of relief that pounded through her would have taken her legs out from under her if she’d still been standing. He groaned again and blinked both eyes hard. “What happened?” he asked.
He was asking her that? Sierra tried to get her roiling emotions to calm down, but she kept picturing Raze collapsing in pain. “I could ask you the same thing.”
He rolled onto his back and tugged her down beside him, but when she lay down, he picked at her shirt, trying to tear it off with unsteady hands.
“Maybe I should go get one of your guys,” she said. He still looked pale and she had no idea if he was okay now or if he was about to collapse again. She definitely didn’t want to take her clothes off again until she was sure he wasn’t about to keel over. “Or at least a med kit.”
“No.” He tugged harder at her shirt and Sierra relented, pulling it off before shimmying out of her pants and laying down beside him. “I don’t need medical attention.”
She cuddled into him and his arm came around her. “Was that supposed to happen?”
He pressed a kiss against her forehead. “I can feel it. Can’t you?”
Okay, maybe undressing had been a bit premature. But he was a warm, solid presence and the safety of his arms was a soft blanket of strength around her. “Feel what?”
“Everything.” His eyes shone, shifting to that demonic red for a second before fading back to black. “I didn’t realize how muted it all was until just now. It was like everything that’s been suppressed for two years exploded in my chest in a single second. My soul…” he paused for a moment and squeezed her tighter, “I think it’s there. And our bond…”
She felt something, like a weight anchored just under her heart, and if she concentrated on it, she could sense Raze right there. It was unlike anything she’d ever felt before, less than a physical connection, but more substantial than emotion; she knew it was something that could never be severed. They’d be connected, heart to heart, soul to soul, to the end of their days.
“It’s beautiful,” she admitted. “And kind of terrifying.”
Raze tilted her chin up until they were looking eye to eye. “Why are you scared?” He seemed to savor the word, as if talking about any emotion were a forbidden treat.
“Why aren’t you? We live on different planets, this is supposed to be impossible, we’re different fucking species!” All of the ways things wouldn’t work between them cascaded until Sierra’s head was aching and her heart threatened to break. “I have no idea how to make this work,” she admitted, “and I think letting you go would kill me.” It was heady to feel this way, to know she belonged completely to the hulking warrior lying beside her, and that he was hers. But she was so terrified that she was practically shaking with it. She’d never felt even a tenth of this much for someone, and it had all happened so quickly that she was afraid she’d wake up one morning and find that it had all been a dream made from too many media shows and sleep deprivation. Raze was so solid, so real next to her that she couldn’t doubt him in this moment, but soon they’d have to part again, and there was only so much time they could steal until the real world came calling.
He wiped the pad of his thumb across her cheek and it was only then that she realized a tear had escaped. “We will figure this out,” he promised. “I won’t give you up, no matter what we have to do to make it work.”
Her mind reeled, trying to come up with a solution, something that would make them both happy. She couldn’t ask Raze to leave his people, not when they were so desperate, but she was loyal to Earth and didn’t know what leaving would mean.
Raze kissed her and pulled her close until she was half-draped over him, their legs tangled together. “Leave it for tonight. We will deal with our problems tomorrow.”
She checked the clock on the bedside and saw how late it was. It occurred to her that she should check in on the women to make sure they were sleeping okay, but with Raze next to her, she knew that could wait. They couldn’t get into that much trouble on a ship this size. He’d have to leave at some point, but she wasn’t about to push him away a moment sooner. Not when any moment could be their last.
***
Raze woke to a tidal wave of sensation and the colors of the room assaulted him as his eyes opened. He teetered on the edge of a dozen emotions, his body caught between laughter and tears and lust. The scent of Sierra enveloped him, grounded him, and as he sank into her presence, the overload faded slightly until he could begin to process everything that was happening.
His soul was back. His emotions, all of his emotions, were back. He had a mate. And she was looking up at him with wide eyes, full of the same wonder and fear that rattled around his chest.
“You looked a little freaked out there for a second,” she said, concern written across her features. Her red hair was a halo around her and her skin gleamed in the dim light of her room.
For the lighting to be this low, it still had to be late, but he wasn’t sure what woke him. He didn’t want to make his mate worry, but he would not lie to her. “My emotions, my senses, they will take some time to adjust. I lost so much along with my soul and regaining it is… overwhelming.”
“Will Toran and Kayde be okay with it? With us?” She cut to the heart of the issue, laying out his biggest concerns with her simple question.
And he didn’t want to give her that answer. Change did not come easy to the soulless, nor to anyone in the legion. His relationship with Sierra, his bond, represented the biggest change they’d encountered since the destruction of Detya. “There are strict protocols for soldiers like me and Kayde,” he admitted. “Any change in our mindset must be cataloged and reported. If we’re deemed to be unstable, the decision is made to put us down so that we do not become a danger to anyone else.”
She jolted up, her hair flipping back and eyes wide. “Put down? As in executed? What the fuck?” Her voice got so high that she practically squeaked out the last word.
Raze didn’t want to die. The fatalistic acceptance he’d had of that conclusion had blown away the second he claimed Sierra, and he would fight the sentence with everything in him. But he also understood his people’s logic. “It’s necessary,” he explained. “The soulless, soldiers with no emotion, they can easily become violent. In the early days of the legion, rates of murder and suicide among us—them—were astronomically high. Detyens aren’t meant to live without their souls. We cheat death to grab a few more years, but the average life expectancy for one of the soulless is thirty-five. The oldest now is forty-two, and the oldest ever was forty-seven. My own brother will need to make his decision soon, and even before today I didn’t want him to walk the same path as I did.”
“You have a brother?” Sierra asked, then she shook her head. “Not the important part right now, but we should probably circle back to the details of our lives before long. I know you, but there’s so much about you that I still need to learn.”
He leaned in and stole a kiss, unable to resist the siren song of her lips. “We’ll make time,” he promised, though his mind still hadn’t come to a solution there. “But do you understand what I’m saying? Kayde can no longer tell between right and wrong. He can only rely on a strict set of rules and procedures to keep himself from being a threat to others. We should have taken the origin of the soulless as a warning. Even in our desperation, we should not have created monsters.”
She reached down to cradle his cheek, her hair falling around her like a veil. “You wouldn’t be here with me if your people didn’t do that. I don’t think I like the alternate universe where you died two years ago and I’d never have any idea who you were.”
“The origin is not a pretty story,” he insisted, even as he agreed with everything she’d just said. He’d sacrificed everything in becoming soulless, but meeting Sierra made it all worth it.
“Tell me anyway?”
He hesitated for a moment. Everything he’d said since he woke up was forbidden knowledge. Those who weren’t members of the legion weren’t ever to know. He could be imprisoned or executed for spilling their secrets. But Sierra was his mate, and his duty to her came before all others. And because she was his, that made her a part of the legion so long as he was a member.
“At first, the survivors of the destruction of Detya thought it was a legend,” he began. “It happened hundreds, maybe thousands, of years ago. When the planet was still healthy and when we lived in peace, finding a mate was common. There was an entire system in place to pair potential matches and ensure survival. But still, some people were not lucky. Perhaps, like me, their mates weren’t Detyen.” It hadn’t occurred to him before, but it made sense. Even if Detya were still around, he would not have met Sierra there. “So there was a scientist who had several children. One by one, they reached thirty without finding their mates, and they died. The scientist became obsessed with finding a way to save them. His final child, a daughter, was about to turn thirty, and he thought he’d found success. He performed a procedure on her, and she survived her birthday. But then, she killed him, destroyed his laboratory, and killed herself because what had been done to her wasn’t worth it. She knew she was a monster and that she shouldn’t exist.”
Sierra’s eyes were wide. “How terrible. Is it true?”
Raze shrugged. “Parts of it must be. Whoever the scientist was, he had sent a copy of his findings to a colleague. Those papers were uploaded to a server somewhere and had been buried deep in a military archive. Someone in the legion discovered them and a vote was taken among the survivors when it was clear that mates were scarce. They decided to experiment and see if they could prolong Detyen lives through the removal of the soul. They succeeded. And here we are today.”
