by Robin Lovett
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
If you love erotica, one-click these hot Scorched releases… Men in Uniform Anthology
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Robin Lovett. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Entangled Publishing, LLC
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Scorched is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.
Edited by Tracy Montoya
Cover design by Cover Couture
Cover photography by
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rangizzz, Andrey_Kuzmin, and Dotted Yeti/Shutterstock
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ISBN 978-1-64063-757-3
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition July 2019
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Chapter One
Jenie
I know he’s there, though I can’t see him.
I can’t hear him knock; the door is too thick. It’s made of an impenetrable marble, a gray slab that blends seamlessly with the wall.
If I open it, he will be standing there—waiting for me.
My heart pounds against my ribs, and I step forward, closer, drawn to the door like a puppet on a string. I shouldn’t. There are so many reasons why I should leave the door closed, why I should move away from it and forget it’s there. Why I should forget him.
But I ache, from the core of my body, like a craving from my soul, and I’m tired of resisting it. So exhausted by forcing myself to ignore the needs of my own body.
The dirty things I want from him, raw primal things that are so wanton I don’t dare dream about them, let alone act on them. Let alone ask him if he would do them to me.
I pause, breathing, feeling the war between longing and fear raging through my blood.
I can’t open the door. I shouldn’t. But I do.
The handle turns, silently. Light streams through and blinds me. I squint, thinking it’s the sun, until my eyes adjust, and I see it’s him. He is the light; his body glows with ethereal iridescence. He is not human. And I don’t want him to be.
“Will you let me in, lulipah?” His voice drips with sensual concern. I didn’t know those things could be a combo. “I can help you.”
My pulse slows and grows heavy—heavy with a need for everything I hear in his voice. His tone drips with promises, the kind my body is throbbing for.
He reaches for me, but his hand doesn’t come through the door. He doesn’t touch me. “I want to know you. I can feel the want radiating from your body like a curse torturing you.”
I swoon on my feet and grab the doorframe for support. I can’t help staring at him.
His body is visible through the sheer covering he wears. His alien form is foreign in its perfection. Like nothing I’ve ever seen before. He’s a work of art, every muscle flowing and yet carved into the next—the hardness of his chest, the mold of his shoulders, and the bulge of his biceps combined with the taper of his waist. I don’t dare glance below his hips. What’s there is no doubt visible and as gloriously flawless as the rest of him.
What’s most entrancing about him, though, is his skin swirls with a rainbow of colors, blending and flowing in wide swaths of brilliant sapphire, vibrant crimson, and deepest midnight. I watch a wave of azure brush across his firm chest and downward. Seeing it fills me with a feeling that the color waves are undulations of desire weaving within him. As though he visibly echoes and reflects the same desires aching within me.
His fingers and palm strain toward me. All it would take is a step for me to walk into his caress over my cheek. The temptation seethes within my center, and resisting it twists my stomach.
But I’m afraid that the slightest stroke of his skin against mine would merge my desire with his, and it would storm through my veins like a reckless hurricane, ravaging my self-control.
I cut my head to the side in rejection, the tiniest negative, the only one I’m capable of.
He lowers his hand. “Why do you resist? I don’t understand.” Confusion pinches his lips. Oh gods, his lips…thick and delectable. The perfect shape to…
He bites his lower one as though he knows I’m staring at it, as though he intuits what I’m dying to do to him myself. “I would satisfy you.”
A needy moan sounds from my chest, and my mouth is open, the acquiescence on my tongue. I could let him through the doorway. I could let him fulfill his promises. I could submit to every drive to let him pleasure me.
“Tell me what you need,” he croons, almost begging. “I’ll give it all to you.”
I could tell him—tell him that my body betrays me, that giving into what he’s offering and I’m needing would wreck me. I could confess the truth, how I want him to ravage me so fiercely that I don’t care if it’s what I should or shouldn’t have.
But the hard truth I’ve told no one is that I have no control over what happens to me if I take another lover. My body rules me now. My hormones have changed and will latch onto the next person I let into my body. I will be attached to that person for life and will have no say in who or why, craving that person like I need air in my lungs.
It is nature. I am not fully human but half Ulreya. I prayed I would escape this curse, the one that ravaged my mother’s heart. But there is no denying it. The Ulreya urge to mate awakened in me three days after we landed on this planet. My body is in heat, and it won’t rest until it can form a permanent mating bond. I no longer have any control over what it needs. Even if what it needs from this alien would likely overwhelm me with pleasure beyond my wildest dreams.
I step back from the threshold, grabbing the door.
Shock and disappointment rages over his expression. “Jenie, please. Don’t do this.”
I close the door in his face and seal it.
I jerk myself awake.
I open my eyes, my lungs gasping, my skin coated in sweat.
“Jenie, Jenie!” A face appears in front of me, a female voice calling me back to consciousness.
I look at her and am relieved to see Leinita, my second-in-command while
our general is away. I am leader of our crew. Our small metal shelter is illuminated by track lighting along the ceiling, and Ilena, our chief medical officer, stands there, too, her face etched with the same anxiety that mars Leinita’s features.
I groan in frustration and stare at the wall. This is the third night in a row I’ve woken them with my dreams.
“Another nightmare?” Leinita asks gently, her hand resting on my shoulder for comfort.
I nod, not wanting to correct her. They’re not nightmares, exactly, these recurring dreams of needing him, though this is the first one he’s actually appeared in. Perhaps it was a nightmare. Giving in to what he offers me is my worst fear.
Ilena hands me a vial full of a creamy liquid. “Here, take some of the antidote.”
I swallow it without question. Its effect is immediate; a coolness washes through me, eases the demanding ache between my legs and soothes the fire of desire raging through my veins. But it doesn’t stop the desire pounding through my body, the one the antidote won’t touch, the one my hormones and my Ulreya heritage pour into me. It’s an emptiness in my heart, an incompletion in my soul. My very being demands a partner, a lifelong mate.
Which would be contrary to every goal I’ve ever had in my life. I am a military woman, a leader in the rebellion against the Ten Systems Empire. I have too many people depending on me, too many people whose lives are at stake. Taking time to indulge my alien sex fantasies isn’t on my to-do list. If I fall for someone who isn’t of my mother’s species, I risk emotionally and biologically tying myself to a person who can’t possibly return the lifelong Ulreya bond. If I bond to someone who rejects me or leaves me, I risk losing my will to live. It happened to my mother. She was never the same after my human father left her.
“Better?” Ilena asks.
I take a deep breath. “Yes.” They don’t know about my other problem. I haven’t told them. My need for a mate is contrary to our mission. It would be a waste of my time and theirs to dwell on it.
Leinita squeezes my shoulder. “You need to feed the desidre. Remember, Koviye said just the antidote isn’t enough.”
I flinch at his name. Koviye. I haven’t told them he’s the one in my nightmares either. “I know. I will.” I lie. I will not be feeding the desidre like Koviye said. It’s not my real problem, though I’ve let them think it is.
Ilena crouches beside my bed. “We can help you, if you want.”
Leinita nods agreement. “Whatever you need.”
They’re so generous. They’re offering to help me with this desidre, this sex fever caused by a toxin in the air on this gods-forsaken planet. We crash landed here a week ago after our ship, the Origin, was attacked by the Ssedez people, who we’ve since realized are our allies against the oppressive regime we escaped from, the Ten Systems.
I landed here in an escape pod with Ilena and Leinita, and the three of us had…well, a very pleasurable experience between us when first confronted with the planet’s desidre. My mating bond hadn’t awakened yet. My first three days on this planet were lovely. We discovered a chemical antidote to keep the fever away, though the toxin cannot fully be released from the body without sex. Alone helps, but with a partner, it’s better.
The desidre was dangerous before we developed the antidote. It’s not life threatening anymore, but we still needed regular, daily orgasms. It could’ve been an inconvenience, but now that the crew has fallen into a pattern, it’s turned out to be bonding. The relationships between them are solidifying. They’re growing and learning to care for one another beyond mere comrades in duty. It’s good for them. For everyone except me, all because my drive to form a mating bond awoke five days ago.
I have to decline their offer of sex. “I’m okay. Thank you, though.”
“Do you want us to give you some privacy?” Leinita asks gently.
I can’t help heat flushing my face. She’s giving me the opportunity to masturbate by myself, to feed the desidre alone. “I’m fine, really.”
Ilena frowns. “You must feed it every day. You skipped yesterday, didn’t you?”
I’ve skipped every day for the last five, since my urge to mate started. I’m afraid of how it will be different, or if it might actually be painful now without a partner.
But I do have another excuse besides my bond. “Yesterday was a big day.” The Ten Systems, the evil empire we’ve rebelled against, the one whose goal is to conquer or destroy every alien in the galaxy, showed up three days ago on a space warship, the Hades. We attacked and sent them into retreat. They took off from the planet, but they took Assura with them.
Assura…a captive of her worst enemy, Dargule, captain of the Hades and a foul, evil monster. There is no word to describe the depraved, psychopathic general who was one of the many reasons we rebelled and escaped the Ten Systems military.
Leinita lets go of my shoulder, and her voice comes stern and certain. “Jenie, you know she’ll escape. Assura can take care of herself and is probably glad to have the opportunity to kill that sick motherfucker, finally. She deserves that. It’s a good thing.”
“She’ll come back, victorious,” Ilena agrees, no less confident. “We all know it.”
They’re right. Assura will take care of herself. She’s tougher than even me—and that’s saying something. But she’s so vital to our rebellion, and to me. It was due to her tactics we escaped the Ten Systems a month ago. She’s my former lover and dear friend—I miss her and our times, before my Ulreya need to mate started, when sex was free of complications.
I need Assura now. I cannot manage this rebellion without her, and my heart feels like it will break into pieces if something happens to her. Though I hide this extreme reaction from my crew. We’re soldiers. We’re not supposed to grow attached to each other on this level, or we weren’t as part of the Ten Systems military. Now that we’ve rebelled, we’re rewriting all the rules, and I’m not sure what they are anymore.
“She’s likely to communicate sometime within the next ten hours,” Leinita says analytically.
Ilena stands and moves back toward her bed. “It’s three hours to sunrise. Time for more sleep.”
But at the thought of closing my eyes again, I bolt upright in bed. “I need a walk.” If I go back to sleep, I’ll fall back into my dreams of Koviye, and I’m not sure I’ll have the will to resist him again. It’s too dangerous to allow even my imagination to indulge in the fantasy. The consequences of it happening in real life, of me forming a mating bond for a Fellamana, one of the free-loving species who inhabit this sex planet, would be too severe. Even thinking of sex with Koviye, of the exquisite act of creating the bond, has me aroused again.
Oh gods, his hands…
The first time I met him, he touched me. It was merely a grasping of hands, but something happened, something extraterrestrial, outside the realm of my human or Ulreya experience. When his skin met mine, an energy came from where our skin met, and I nearly melted with what felt like a scorching orgasm, which should’ve been impossible from just the touch of his hand. Ridiculous. I told him to stop, and he let go of me.
The next morning, I woke to the burn of my mating bond urge raging through my body. I refuse to believe it was because of him. It’s because my body reached its saturation with the desidre. It took three days, but it’s this planet that awakened the bond—not him.
But every time I’ve seen him since, in his visits to our camp, as he’s helped us adjust to life on his planet and introduced us to his Fellamana people, I’ve had to fight overheating from this terrible need to fuck him…like tear-my-clothes-off, get-on-my-knees-in-the-dirt terrible. Which, if it weren’t for my fear of forming a mating bond with him, might actually be fun.
He is the last person I should ever want to bond with. It’s only the curse of this desidre that has my attentions so obsessed with him.
His culture knows nothing of monogamy. His very DNA lacks the ability to commit and attach to a lover for life. I’d lose my soul to him, because h
e could never return my bond.
My lifelong, lose-my-heart-to-you-forever bond.
I ignore Leinita and Ilena’s protests that I need sleep and go toward the shelter exit. “Don’t worry about me. I’m sorry I woke you.”
I open the door, escaping into the humid jungle air—escaping from thoughts of him.
Chapter Two
Koviye
My eyes flash open, and the desire ramming through my body is throbbing through my veins. I can’t help smiling.
I sit on the ground with my back propped against a tree and stare at Jenie’s shelter. I was able to dream-walk into her sleep. That only happens when there is an intense connection on both sides. I didn’t know I could do it with someone not of my Fellamana species, let alone a human.
Hope swells in my chest.
She wants me. Even more than I thought. She must have been full of an intense desire for me and me alone. It’s the only way our dreams could unite as one like that.
But she resisted. Still. Even in her dreams. I don’t understand why. It makes no sense.
This human I’ve become obsessed with is confounding every instinct I have about desire. But it doesn’t bother me. It’s the opposite.
Her persistent ability to reject me is as beautiful and stunning as a pink tulina flower at sunrise. I’ve never experienced rejection before when there was a mutual desire between someone else and me. I can see her need for me radiating in her aura, an ability all the Fellamana have. We see people’s emotions around them like colors in the air. Her want for me is visible to me in swirls of crimson that appear around her whenever she’s near me, yet she closes the door on me. She tells me no. Which is her right, and though I respect her choice and keep my distance, her resistance of her own desire confounds and fascinates me.
The Fellamana do not resist. Or our culture has no precedent or reason to not engage in sex if there is mutual desire. Polyamorous and free-loving, we have no shame when it comes to the passions of the flesh. We are blatant voyeurists. Jenie would be shocked to speechlessness if she visited our civilization. Which I won’t subject her to. She’s under too much stress. She needs to focus on getting past whatever is blocking her from feeding the desidre.
