The Bonding

by Imogen Keeper

  He nodded. He understood. He would too. But a part of him liked it in her. Hell, a huge part of him wanted her to need him like this forever. It would be a hell of way to spend their lives.

  “Not because I need you.” She shook her head, soft hair tickling the skin of his chest. “It’s just that I wish I wasn’t so weak. Those men were going to... I should have helped her. Instead I had to be carted off, vomiting.” She was silent for a moment. Then a torrent of words gushed out. “I wish I knew that it wasn’t just the bond. We abandoned these people, to be slaves. Tam, that’s what they are. They are slaves and we can free them. I wish I knew what was going to happen, if my feelings were real. I wish I knew the way you felt was real.”

  He palmed her skull, forced her to meet his gaze. “Do you think I don’t need you?”

  She inhaled sharply. “It’s not the same.” Her hands closed over his cock and guided him inside. Slippery. Wet. Hot. Heaven. She was wrong. He’d die without her.

  “How is it not?” he asked, thrusting against her. He caught a nipple between his teeth. She gasped.

  He pulled at her hair, baring her throat, as he sat up to graze it with his teeth.

  “I get sick and throw up. Or faint. You don’t.”

  He rolled them so he was on top, thrusting hard. “We don’t really know what would happen if we really went too long. Ajax said I’d get sick too. I feel it too, Nissa. I need you too.” He shoved his thumb down on her clit. “But I like wanting you. I want to need you. I need to fuck you.”

  She pushed and he let her momentum roll them again. No more rolling or they’d be too close to the edge of the cliff. She circled her hips over him.

  “I want you to want to want me like this. Always.”

  She moaned, “It would be better if we knew I did. Not because of the chemicals.”

  He couldn’t really argue with that, though the statement irked him. He’d feel the same way, chemicals or no. So he lay back down to enjoy the view and just let her ride.

  The sun bathed her skin and the bed of moss was soft beneath him. She’d never looked more beautiful. There wouldn’t be enough moments like this in a thousand forevers. He’d never tire of the feeling of her slick pussy pulsing around him.

  “It’s just—” She broke off when he pulled her down and lifted his hips higher to shove his cock deeper inside, clamping his teeth down on a red-pink nipple.

  He swirled his tongue along the turgid peak and shoved his longest finger deep into her ass. She gasped, body shaking, hips bucking in an orgasm that made him feel like a god.

  He released his hold on her nipple and it popped from his mouth, shining under the sun. Her head reared back, hair spilling over her shoulders. Bouncing breasts and shining skin.

  This woman.

  Maybe they should break the bond, just so he could prove to her he’d want her no matter what. He laughed, high on the moment. High on her.

  A grinning Trianni male stepped into his view and pressed a knife against Nissa’s throat.

  Tam saw the exact instant she realized they weren’t alone, that the new feeling on her neck wasn’t from him. Her eyes widened, gaze locked on his.

  Apprehension, fear, doubt flowered in her eyes. And trust. The knife pressed deeper, her skin blooming around the tip of the blade, and a small river of red ran down the end of the knife to drip over her breasts. Three other men stepped into view, small and pale and red. Tam pulled his finger out of Nissa’s ass. She shuddered.

  Fury surged in his chest. At them. At himself. He’d set the weapons down within arm’s reach. Until they’d rolled. Not once. But twice. The weapons sat a full six-and-a- half feet away. He’d trusted Sero and the others to protect them against any threats from the land above them. He’d never imagined any threat coming from the cliffs below.

  Fuck this planet. At that precise moment in time, with Nissa straddling his hips and fear blooming in her eyes, Tam would have happily shot a nuclear blast at the planet of Triannon and destroyed the whole thing.

  He’d have sat exultant on the ship and watched it burn in a cataclysmic vortex of a fireball that would eradicate every last Vestige or Trianni who inhabited it, releasing Nissa from her ridiculous, misplaced sense of responsibility to a people she’d never known. He’d have toasted the inferno like a guest at a Bonding ceremony. He didn’t dance but he’d make an exception, just this once, and dance a merry jig in the ashes of the miserable shithole of a planet. He’d have fucking laughed.

  There were a few problems with this solution, however. A few thousand and two, to be precise. There were a few thousand females on the planet that the many lone Tribe warriors would joyously take for mates, if given half a chance. He didn’t really want to deny them the pleasure.

  The few-thousand-and-first was that he currently existed on the planet with a group of people who mattered to him, none of whom he wanted to see go out in nuclear blast.

  The last problem, the few-thousand-and-second, currently sat astride his hips in all her silken glory. She’d hate him forever. Tam could endure many things. But hatred from his tiny mate wasn’t one of them.

  The knife pressed deeper, cutting into her perfect, white skin. A single drop slid down her breast to hang on the end of her nipple like a shining, red berry. It sparkled under the light of Triannon’s ruddy sun.

  His darkened.

  17

  You make no sense.

  NISSA had felt this before. This unique sensation. Terror. She recognized it from the darkness that had settled over her when the first of the Trianni had been shot by the ones who stole her planet.

  It was the same way she’d felt when she’d seen their bellies sliced open and watched organs, a rainbow of viscera, bright and slick, slide from bodies. She’d felt it when they had made their exodus into the forests, carrying what clothes, food and supplies they could on their backs. She’d felt its cold flames in her bloodstream as she’d climbed into the cryo-pod.

  Terror. It made time sluggish and tiny, infinitesimal details take on grave importance. The tickling drip of blood slipping down her breast. The sharp point of a blade pressing against her neck, a minor tinge from the nerves there. Tam’s anger pouring through their bond, steady and thumping.

  Tiny bumps raised all the hairs along the skin of her body. Colors burned brighter, the sky violet, the sun a great orange fireball above. Sounds hit her ears, clearer, the screaming birds swooping through the air, the deep chuffing hoots of the regnamissi in the crashing sea below them.

  Her eyes froze dumbly on Tam’s, almost purple in the sunlight, with moss the color of blood behind him. His hair was messy from her fingers, the breeze tearing at it. His big body shifted beneath her. They both froze, her legs still straddling his hips, bodies still joined, waiting.

  Her hair caught in the breeze and tickled her back and shoulders. All their weapons lay stupidly in a pile a few strides to their right. Out of reach. The cliff broke off sharply maybe two or three body lengths behind her. Tam’s eyes were wide and furious, his eyelashes thick and curling black. Green feathers slashed against the sky. The birds called out angrily.

  She closed her eyes against the sight. It was her fault the men were here. She’d angered the birds by stealing their eggs. They must have seen the circling birds and come to investigate. So simple, really. Such a small thing. She’d just wanted to make the soup. Have a taste of Triannon. A taste of home. She’d wanted to give Tam something, even something as small as a stupid bowl of soup, to go some measure toward repaying him for all he’d given her, all he’d done for her.

  Her heart hammered in her ears so loud she could barely hear the crashing surf or the strange sounds the men made when they spoke.

  She lifted her lids and found Tam’s eyes on hers. With the knife pressed to her neck she couldn’t shake her head to search for a telltale tug at the roots of hair. She saw a question in Tam’s eyes, his thoughts a parallel to her own. If the Goddess were good, there was a tiny blade in her hair. If she could
get to it and stab one of them she might cause enough chaos for Tam to get to the weapons.

  “Use—” Tam only managed a syllable before one of the men kicked him, a swift hard boot that connected with his cheek and snapped his neck to the left.

  His body bucked beneath her and she heard a woman’s voice, low and keening. Seconds passed before she realized the voice was her own.

  Blood sprayed from his nose and disappeared into the scarlet moss. He lunged, moving faster than Nissa could believe to grab the foot of one of the smaller men. The corded muscles of his forearms flexed as he twisted the man’s foot with a loud popping crack. The man cried out sharply and fell to the ground.

  Tam tensed under her, muscles coiling to spring. A sharp command from the man holding a knife at her throat stalled him. The knife tightened. The hot blood tickling down her breasts grew thicker, splashing off the tip to pool on Tam’s smooth, hard belly.

  After so much time with the Tribe, the Trianni seemed small and scrawny in comparison. These men looked malnourished and weak, dirty and mean.

  One of the men moved over to their pile of weapons, slowly, coolly, as if he had all the time in the world. How long before one of Tam’s men came to check on them? A long time. No one had made enough noise to attract their attention. They’d assume any moans or groans were lovers’ sounds.

  The man who must be their leader picked up the rezal and studied it warily, weighing it experimentally. His moved his filthy fingers along the barrel, unlocked the safety mechanism.

  Tam’s chest heaved. One of the men spoke again and pulled her off him by the hair. Her scalp burned. Tam slid thickly from her body. She prayed the little blade hadn’t been dislodged.

  She scrambled backward on awkward legs and felt a brief, worthless stab of embarrassment at her exposure to all these strange men.

  The man with the gun pointed it out at sea and Nissa prayed for a moment that he would fire it. The noise would undoubtedly draw the other warriors. But he didn’t. He merely turned the weapon so its barrel pointed directly at Tam. He spoke again, in that strange guttural language full of harsh consonants and slanting vowels. These men may have looked like Trianni, but they did not speak like Trianni.

  One of them approached Tam warily to pull the man lying beside him a few feet away against the back of the cliff face. He clutched his leg, sweating and red, and Nissa felt a moment’s pride in her fearsome mate.

  The man with the rezal spoke to him quietly. The one behind Nissa stroked a rough, seeking palm down her back, pressing his face against her neck. He inhaled sharply and whispered in her ear, stale breath hot on her cheek. She didn’t want to imagine the meaning behind his words. The tone said enough.

  He ran the flat of his tongue along her throat. A second set of hands reached out with dirty fingers and stroked a hand over her bottom and around her hip. She pressed her thighs together to block his entrance. Sharp words were uttered. She barely saw his hand move before it connected against her cheekbone. The pain blinded her temporarily, made her ears ring. He slapped her a second time, this time in the mouth. Her lip burned.

  The cord of their bond drew tight, shaking with live fury. Tam. The man behind her grabbed her by the neck, pulling her head back tight.

  The knife bit deep.

  Tam growled from the ground, body tensed, ready for an attack, face wild. Nissa shut her eyes.

  She heard a grunt, barely discernable over the squawking of the birds. She opened her eyes in time to see another kick land on Tam’s face. His nose was surely broken. A sickening fountain of blood poured from his nostrils to cover his mouth and chin. Bestial rage glittered in dark, hooded eyes. For a moment Nissa pitied these men. Tam’s eyes promised that he would rip them limb from limb. The man with the gun pressed it against Tam’s forehead and Nissa whimpered.

  She shut her eyes again and willed it all to go away. She willed the knife to have stayed in her hairband. She willed a hundred thousand things in that fraction of a second.

  A second hand came to stroke her breasts, fingernails black and caked in dirt pinching hard at her nipples. Someone sucked at her neck, pulled her head back and shoved a thick, rubbery tongue into her mouth. He tasted sour.

  She arched her back and leaned her head back to expose her neck to her captors. His lips left her mouth to slobber at her shoulder. Her cheekbone throbbed. She reached an arm, sinuous, and lithe to her mouth to suck at her fingers as she had so many times with Tam.

  Tam’s fury bubbled and seethed through their bond.

  The men chattered to one another, laughing, taunting her. They used the same word the old woman had used the night before. Fligrra. It had to mean whore. Look at her. The whore wants it. She likes it. The fingers inside her pumped hard and the man ground his small erection against her ass, humping her. Good. Let them be distracted. She could pretend to be a whore for as long as it took to find the knife.

  She raised her hand to run it through her hair, wanton, writhing. Her fingers closed around the tiny blade in her hair.

  She opened her eyes wide and met Tam’s gaze. Ferocious rage had swallowed all the goodness from him, leaving a hardened, demonic Tam, capable of destruction on a massive scale. Within him burned a ruthless, calculating violence that followed no rules. Knew no boundaries. He didn’t nod but she read the agreement in his eyes.

  Turning it in her palm, she got the angle right and stabbed the blade backward and hopefully straight into the eye of the man whose fingers were inside her.

  He screamed and threw her forward and she stumbled into the other man, knocking him to the floor. Tam had sprung into action before she’d even landed on her hands and knees.

  18

  Nothing but a pot to break.

  TAM’S VISION HAZED, his mind sifting out all but the essential information he could use. It reduced him to only the vital components of his being. Muscles, limbs and teeth. It established a grid that organized the distance between him and each of the Trianni. The weapons were beyond his reach at the moment, but fuck them. He was born with all the weapons he needed. He stood head and shoulders above these little shits.

  He could kill them in his sleep. The man with the gun against his temple would go first. All he needed was Nissa’s neck away from the blade and the bastard who held it.

  Tribe warriors started training as soon as they could walk. They played with practice weapons, learned to fight barehanded even as they learned to speak. It was second nature to them. Hours of practice, constant training drilled into his mind, turning battle into instinct. Taking down these bastards would be child’s play, once his mate’s neck was safe.

  He galvanized the second Nissa’s stab made contact. He moved his body with each breath. He guessed it would take fewer than fifteen or twenty breaths before the last threat to Nissa died. He inhaled on a swift motion that slapped the gun pressed against his forehead out of the way. The man probably tried to pull the trigger but he was too late. By then Tam was on his feet and moving.

  The leader widened his eyes in momentary shock at Tam’s speed. The Trianni couldn’t move like the Tribe or the Vestige. They were slower. The man didn’t even have time to change the direction of the rezal’s aim before Tam threw out his hand. Fingers clenched, he ripped the man’s throat out with his bare hands. Tam breathed deeply through his mouth, because his broken nose was useless.

  He dropped the slippery pink mess. It landed with a wet squelch. Tam exhaled.

  He’d moved on before the man even fell to his knees, blood bubbling from his open neck. He kicked the rezal out of the way and grabbed the man with the broken leg, who’d clambered to one foot. The man tried to run, or rather hop, away.

  Tam was faster. Quartz stones stained with blood. Tam stood and looked over his shoulder. There were two men left. One crouched on his knees close to the edge of the cliff, holding his face in his hands, preoccupied with the blade in his eyeball. That was the one Nissa had stabbed. The one who had tried to touch his mate between her thighs. T
he one who had struck her. New fury bubbled through Tam’s veins. That one would die last. He would know fear first. He would know pain.

  The other, the one who had kissed and groped her, grabbed Nissa by her hair, pulled her back against him, using her for a shield. He was unarmed. He wanted to live. That made him weak. In a breath Tam stood over his knives.

  He cocked his head to the side and smiled at him. “You should never have touched her,” he said to the man in Vestige he hadn’t used since school. His grammar might be crap, his accent might be shit, but fuck it. He smiled.

  The man blabbered something about killing Nissa but Tam didn’t bother trying to understand the full effect of his words.

  There was a commander that he’d lived with briefly after his father had died. The commander used to say, To be credible, a threat needs two things, capacity and intent.

  The man had neither the capacity nor the intent. He was no threat. Over the edge of the promontory above them, Tam saw Sero and the other warriors. They stood ready, legs spread, knives in hand, but they made no move to join him. Tam nodded. Each of them nodded back. This was Tam’s shame. His failure. His fight.

  He breathed deeply and selected a knife from its holster, slim and shining and perfectly balanced. Nissa gasped as the man pulled hard on her hair, yanking her neck back. Tam shook his head and in a move he’d practiced so often it came as naturally as breathing, he threw the knife, on a steady exhalation.

  It buried itself in the softest part of the Trianni’s scrawny neck. He picked up his nustal and strode across the clifftop. The threat of the sword was enough. These men weren’t soldiers. They were nothing more than fishermen. Rapists. With his free hand, he grabbed Nissa’s arm, pulling her away from the cliff’s edge. He pushed her toward the rocks to stand below Sero, just in case.

  His feet were bare, so his kick lacked some force, but it gave the Trianni nothing to grab hold of. Tam kicked him in the gut and he tumbled off the edge of the cliff and Tam allowed himself a moment of regret for the knife he took with him.