by Elise Jae
When I move—just a little—his grip eases, and I wriggle around so I’m facing him, wrapping my legs around his waist.
“The fact that I’ll be able to continue my research… that I’ll be able to meet Laurel’s baby and see my sister whenever I want…. Like that crazy laundry machine, those are just added benefits.” And I use the words that are easier to say. “I want you, and I’m not willing to give you up.”
He kisses me so sweetly, I think I might die from the tenderness.
This could have been the first of the last nights we had together.
“I can’t leave you.” Swallowing back the tears that are teetering inside me. “Unless you tell me to go, I’m not getting on that ship.”
He traces my jaw with his thumb. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“Then keep me.”
He pulls me against him, kissing me as though he wants to consume me whole.
“I want you to stay.”
We’re fully clothed, but the hunger in his eyes has stripped me bare.
“I’m in love with you, Jess. And I don’t think putting a galaxy between us is ever going to change that.”
The bell peals before I can finish processing that. And we both look at the screen that shows Laurel and Richter waiting to be let in.
I wish I could tell them to go away.
Jaw clenched, Trench lets out a long breath and presses a finger to my lips. “Hang on, and don’t say a word.”
He punches in a series of commands, and the bell stops, but the thing I’ve taken to calling his phone buzzes.
Trench picks it up. “What do you want?”
In the camera, I see Richter’s face crumple to a scowl. Laurel rolls her eyes.
“To come in.”
Trench motions for me to be quiet again, and I watch, wondering. “We’re in town. I don’t know when we’ll be back, but I’ll let you know.”
“Oh… kay.” Richter looks at the camera over the door suspiciously, but he doesn’t look like he’s going to argue.
“Call ahead next time.”
Richter pauses, “Are you okay? You sound funny?”
“Just busy.” He hangs up, and we both watch as Richter and Laurel share a confused look before heading back to their car.
Trench doesn’t move until they’ve started down the drive.
Then, I’m back in his arms. He’s scooped me off the ground and holds me close, searching my face.
“Do you really want me, sweetheart?”
“More than anything in this world or any other.” Being his. Giving myself to him wholly…. “Make me yours, Trench.”
His face lights, then his brows twitch and he swings me up into that ‘over the threshold’ carry and we’re halfway up the stairs before I know it.
“Where are we going?”
“I have no intention of making you mine in our living room.”
“What if I want to make you mine in our living room?”
He pauses at the top of the stairs, searching my eyes. “You’re teasing me.”
I kiss him instead of answering, and smile against his lips when he keeps walking.
I mentally track our progress, so I’m not surprised when he tosses me onto the bed. I am surprised when he doesn’t follow me onto the mattress.
He watches me with dangerously dark eyes as he pulls at his clothes. I don’t break away from his stare. There’s something primal in the way he watches me. And I need to get out of my clothes.
His gaze has stripped me naked anyway. There’s no point in wearing clothes when he looks at me like that.
“This is going to be quick, Jess.” His words are ragged. “Just the thought of—”
I press a finger to his lips. “This is about bonding. And I don’t want to wait any longer.”
Cupping me, he strokes a finger against me.
His brows rise, but I’m not surprised by how wet I am. “You’re not the only one who’s been dying for it.”
He presses two fingers into me and spreads me. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
I drag his face down to mine. “If that monster can fit in my ass… my pussy can take it too.”
He picks me up, tossing me further back onto the bed like I’m a rag doll, completely at his mercy. And when he follows me down, spreading my legs so he can slip a shoulder beneath each and those strong hands take hold of my hips….
He licks my pussy in one long, slow stroke, and I think I might have died. This is the closest I’ve ever come to feeling like I know what heaven might be like.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was nervous. But that might just be carnal hunger.
“Are you sure you want this?” I ask before he’s entered me. Before we’ve gone too far.
He shakes his head, never blinking. “I’ve known you were my mate for a long time now.”
He presses into me, eyes locked with mine watching… worrying.
“Are you—”
His eyes fly wide, and mine do too.
The bond slams into me, and I’m breathing so heavily… trying to process, trying to sort through the wash of feelings. He moves away, and every ounce of pleasure I feel is amplified.
Mine. His.
Ours.
It takes a minute for me to figure out which way is up again.
And then everything settles.
That was it.
Laughing, I drag my fingers down his back. “If I didn’t know there was going to be more, I’d have said that was terribly anticlimactic.”
He’s laughing too, but he props himself up onto his elbow. “I did warn you.”
Something fizzy bubbles through my veins and I shiver.
He shivers too.
“This is weird.”
Nodding, he brushes his nose against mine. “But it’s a good weird.”
I clench around him, testing his sensitivity, and a rush of pure lust shoots through me.
He hums, kissing me. “Are you experimenting on me?”
“No… but I should probably take a sample.”
He laughs and it feels like there's bubble wrap popping inside of me.
“Leave the science for another day.”
I don’t point out that this come is potentially special. Because he’s right.
This isn’t for science.
This is for us.
My head is clearer, and I know his is too.
He moves within me, each stroke keeping me buoyed on the pleasure filled sea we could so easily get lost in.
But he pulls out of me, pulling me upright, and dragging the sheets back. Pulling me down with him, shoving pillows aside.
He sits, just far enough away from the headboard that I can wrap my legs around his waist. Fully impaled on him, he’s wrapped the sheets around and between us to keep the lower half of my body warm, but he’s leaned back, heavy lidded eyes following his hands as they trace over my shoulders, my breasts, down to my stomach.
Rocking on him, I close my eyes, just.... feeling.
EIGHTEEN
TRENCH
Jessica is mine now.
I didn’t realize I could feel even more possessive of her than I already was.
But now, feeling her inside me as I’m inside her….
I fully understand those vague comments Kimba has made about losing her first bondmate. Losing her would kill me. Even more so than I’d already suspected.
“I don’t like whatever it is you’re thinking about.”
“You can feel that?”
She nods, slowly rocking her hips. “And that low-grade frustration is really harshing the vibe.”
“I don’t know what that means… but I’ll stop thinking about how I can’t lose you.”
“You won’t.”
JESSICA
The sun is bright but not painful, bouncing off the fresh layer of snow.
Stretching, I want to snuggle into the warm body behind me. But I have to do something first.
I’ve never been one t
o put off the inevitable.
Rolling over with a sleepy sigh, Trench reaches for me. “Where are you going?”
I pull my sweater on and sit on his side of the bed, kissing him lightly before I pile my hair up in a bun that I hope looks respectable.
“I’ve got to go break the bad news to my university chair.”
“I think he’ll get the point when you don’t get off the ship.”
“The last thing I want to do is have him blow the house down because he doesn’t understand what’s going on.” Smiling, I kiss him one more time, and stand, hunting for a pair of pants. “I am however going to avoid telling my mother for as long as possible. She’s going to have a meltdown.”
He chuckles, and that tingle of amusement flutters across my skin.
It’s going to take some getting used to, but I love it.
The house is utterly silent, and I glance toward the front door. Still in lockdown mode.
That’s fine by me.
I sit down for the call, not sure how long it’s going to be, and punch in the codes to send myself across the galaxies in real time. Another sian miracle they were kind enough to share with us.
When Dr. Dale answers, he’s got a cup of coffee to his lips, and I can see from the window behind him, it’s late enough out that he was probably pulling another all-nighter.
And I couldn’t find it in me to feel bad for ruining his evening—as I’m sure I’m about to do.
“If you’re calling with some break-through you think is going to get me to grant you an extension, you can save it. You’re coming home, and that’s the end of it.”
“I’m not calling to ask for permission to stay. I’m calling to tell you I am. Pursuant to Article forty-seven of the Sian-Earth treaty, no person who is sian or is bonded to a member of the sian race can be forcibly removed from the planet.” And I now understood why their language never said anything about someone electing to return on their own after bonding.
I see the realization of what I’ve just said hit him. Watch him work through the implications.
Dr. Dale looks… stunned. And then he just looks mad.
Bluster makes him stutter, and then, “That’s unacceptable.”
“It’s a fact and one that can’t be changed.”
“You will be on the next ship back here.”
“No. I won’t. Even if I wanted to—which I don’t—they won’t let me. You know the rules as well as I do.”
“And you knew the rules when you left. They signed a contract. They have to give you back.”
Realization dawns and I can’t stop myself from physically recoiling from the screen. “This is what you wanted. You made your bargain and hoped I’d sleep with one of them… so you could force me back and study me.”
He rolls his eyes and gives me a look generally reserved for small children. But he doesn’t deny it. “You signed a contract too.”
Blinking, I try to remember. Try to parse through everything that happened.
Trench comes out from the back. He can feel the panic that just hit me.
“No. I didn’t.” There had been vague mention of it, but…. “You gave me no time to get to the spaceport and in the rush, no one gave me the paperwork. Someone was going to send it on after me, but… it never arrived.”
He’s gone silent, glaring at the screen and then he turns sharply, tapping through commands on a terminal out of sight.
I see, more than hear him swear. And the relief that hits me is heady.
“You and your sister are two of a kind, aren’t you? Breaking promises and betraying your planet for what? So, you can be some alien’s whore?”
Trench is beside me in an instant, and Dr. Dales words die on a staccato squeak.
“We both know I’m not worth starting a war over. And I have a feeling once I suggest this was your plan all along, you’re not going to get a chance to try something so disgusting again.”
His jaw set.
“We’ll be sending someone to collect you.”
“Good luck with that.” I stab the button to end the call and let myself collapse back against Trench’s chest, closing my eyes as his arms wrap around me and I’m surrounded, as well as filled with his warmth.
“Should we start fortifying the perimeter?”
Twisting, I turn to him as I shake my head. “They won’t send anyone.”
“What if they do?”
“If they do, they do, and we’ll deal with it.” I hook my fingers in his waistband and pull him forward. “In the meantime….”
NINETEEN
TRENCH
Jessica is tracing circles on my skin, following patterns I don’t recognize that occasionally trace my scars.
“I’ve been doing some thinking,” she says. “About your Maker.”
I know she can feel the ill ease that comment creates. “What do you want to know?”
“There are just a bunch of random things that have me thinking…. Can I scan you? That would be easier than trying to talk though it and sort out the nonsense that’s in my head.”
Rolling out of bed, I drag her with me, and pick her up. But before I can get out the door, she stops me. Almost screaming at me to wait, but the shriek is accompanied by laughter, and my body tingles with something I’d classify as joy.
“Put some damn clothes on.”
With a sigh, I put her down, but I don’t let her go away. Framing her face, I look at her.
I memorized her when I thought I’d lose her. I’ll memorize her again now that I know she’s mine forever.
“If I thought I could get your brain to stop flying at a million miles a minute, I’d tell you to leave it for tomorrow.”
“If you could manage it, I’d be grateful, but I think we both know it’s not going to happen.”
I kiss her, wanting to distract her again, knowing it wouldn’t work for long. And I love the way her mind works.
It takes an extra several minutes to get downstairs, because there was a brief distraction when she bent down to fish her pants out from under the bed.
But as the machine whirrs to life, I can’t stop watching her. Can’t stop thinking about how lucky I am… how it would have killed me to let her go.
She looks up at me occasionally, and I know she can feel it. Whether or not she knows what it is… is a different story.
“Okay,” she says, cracking her knuckles. “That has to run for a little bit. Want to come outside and see what I made while you were gone the last time?”
I don't have to say “sure.” She knows.
Hand in mine, she leads the way upstairs and we slip on our shoes.
I have to unlock the house, and it feels a little like I’m bursting a bubble.
“We can put it back on when we get back in.” She smiles at me, and practically skips across the garage, hauling open the door to the lab.
She’s rearranged some things, but I don’t mind. I was never able to do any truly productive work in here. Now that she can, I’m happy to let her.
She crosses to the counter, and I pause, looking at the brains Arc was so quick to assume we’d committed murder for.
“Hey,” She’s looking back at me with a scowl. “Don’t.”
“I’ll try.”
She has a flask in her hand, swirling a clear liquid.
“You invented water.”
She rolls her eyes at my joke. “It’s a serum I made based on the acid that eats away at their tissues. I found the chemical composition in the tissues around the part of their skull that implodes.”
“So, it burns away the evidence.”
She nods, looking at the flask. “Fast acting, and fatal if it eats through enough of them. But you do have to have enough to get the job done. I was thinking about replacing your guns with super soakers filled with a serum.”
I don’t know what that is, but I can guess.
“This is going to be immensely helpful. You’re amazing.”
“I’m glad you think so.” S
etting down the flask, she slides her hands up my chest, wrapping her arms around my neck. “Would you like to demonstrate how much you appreciate how amazing I am?”
I kiss her to wipe away that wicked smile.
JESSICA
God, I could melt into Trench and never come back.
He moves me, one step at a time until I’m up against the counter, and I can’t go any further.
Part of me wants to pull away, to ask him to set me on the counter and…
Another part of me remembers the other occupants of the room, and that it’d be kind of gross.
Pulling back from him, I bite his lip.
“Let me put this back, and we can lock ourselves in again…. I’m always happy to study my favorite specimen.”
I turn, reaching for the flask….
And knock it over. “Damnit.”
I grab the towels, moving to sop it up without thinking. As soon as I do, I drop the rags, but the liquid doesn’t sting or burn.
“Be careful. It doesn’t seem to affect human skin—not something I meant to test—but who knows what it would do to you.”
I grab the box of bicarbonate soda and sprinkle it over, watching it fizz.
One bubble gets too big. Pops…
“Shit.” Trench goes to cover his arm, but I grab his hand just in time. Burning his palm would only make things worse.
The burn is dark red slash on his arm and he curses, slapping the sink on and shoving it under the water.
“I guess that answers that question.” Wincing, I feel the burn almost as if it’s on my own skin, but I also feel it start to dissipate.
I take a quick picture of what it’s done to him, and file that away for later.
“Can that fancy machine downstairs help with this?”
“Yes,” he grimaces, moving with me toward the door. “But it’s not going to feel good.”
“I think I can deal with it. If that's what it takes.”
And it doesn’t feel good.
I can’t feel the burn on my arm, but I feel the pain as his muscles tense and his hand trembles under what looks like a laser that’s regenerating skin.
It’s a painful fifteen minutes, but it’s only fifteen minutes. I can easily bear that.
