Stolen Desire

by Robin Lovett

  He taps a few buttons that on the glass panel are barely visible to me. “By the calculations, we should arrive before sunrise tomorrow, Fellamana time.”

  I do the conversion into Ten Systems’ time. “Eighteen hours,” I whisper to myself. Anxiety vibrates in my chest, and my heart beats too quickly.

  What are we going to do for eighteen hours?

  I glance at him from the corner of my eye, and he’s watching me, examining me with that penetrating gaze. “Don’t look at me like that,” I snap.

  His brows go up. “Like what?”

  “Like…like…” I don’t know, but when he stares at me—it’s not like he’s trying to seduce me. It’s not like there’s sex in his eyes or anything—it’s more like he’s trying to see through me, to understand me. And I don’t like it. “Like you’re trying to know me.”

  “But I do want to know you.”

  “Why? We’re on a mission. You don’t need—”

  “I’m concerned about your health. That’s all. I’m just wondering how you’re feeling.”

  “I’m fine.” I stare out the window, wishing all I could see were the stars, wishing I could forget he’s there.

  He unhooks his seat harness. “I’m going in the back to give us some space. Feel free to get familiar with the ship’s controls. There are procedures here, if you need them.” He taps a button, and a list of command directions comes up on the panel screen next to the radar.

  I look more closely and squint in surprise. The directions aren’t in Fellamana. It’s in the Ten Systems’ official language. My language now. “You translated it?” I can’t imagine how many hours that must have taken, or where he learned to write it.

  He pushes himself out of the seat and floats in the zero-gravity space. “Leinita showed me some of your research files. I read enough of them then programmed your language into a Fellamana computer specialized for translating and…” He looks down at me and, observing my shocked expression, he adds, “It took nowhere near as long as you think. The Fellamana across our planet have many various and complicated languages. Translation is a skill of mine.”

  Not wanting to expose anything vulnerable to him, how sort of…moved, touched, surprised I am that he thought of me enough to do this, I stare back at the screen. Out of the corner of my eye, he pushes off the handholds and drifts toward the back of the ship.

  I read some of the instructions and, baffled, find the grammar is more than understandable. He doesn’t have a grasp for punctuation, but everything is in clear bullet-point lists, so it’s easy to read.

  I hear a door close and look around. I can see his shadow behind a near-opaque wall in the rear of the ship, but I hear nothing and can’t see him precisely.

  I strap into my chair and relax, close my eyes. Intending to center myself, calm my anxiety, and focus on the tasks ahead rather than on the male in the back.

  But I notice it—the burn.

  I groan and cover my face in my hands. The arousal isn’t gone. It’s still here, breathing flames inside me like a dragon of ancient myth.

  “Damn it.” I slap my hand on the panel, needing some outlet for my frustration.

  It was supposed to stop. Leaving the Fellamana planet’s atmosphere was supposed to make this incessant desire go away—even stop the mating bond urge.

  If I were someone who cries, I would.

  It didn’t work. The sinking feeling in my gut is like a ten-ton weight. My stomach drops, and I have to close my eyes and remind myself to breathe. I don’t want to lose myself to this thing I can’t control. But my choices, my options, they’re dwindling. Soon I’ll have only one option left—my worst fear.

  I hear the door open behind me and stiffen. I don’t want to see him right now. I can’t.

  He drifts into the seat beside me. “The toxin is still in your blood.”

  I groan and don’t look at him. “It can’t be. I satisfied it.” That’s why I asked him for the orgasm in camp before we left, knowing he could do it without touching me intimately. Ilena convinced me that I’d still need a real orgasm not in my dreams to clear out the toxin. I asked him since his energy thing seems to work better than if I did it myself. And it worked. But obviously not permanently.

  It’s my mating bond. There’s nothing I can do about this. I’m doomed to sit here trapped with him for eighteen hours and with visions of him naked and fucking me endlessly—unable to enact the fantasies.

  He lowers his voice. “The desidre toxin won’t clear from your system until you satisfy it with someone else.”

  “How the fuck do you know?!” I shout at him. Fear is screaming inside me—that he’s wrong, that this is all the mating bond, and it will never leave me until I complete it, and all I want is him—

  Him, who will never want a mating bond with me or anyone.

  I have to get away from him.

  “I see it still lingering in your blood,” he presses. “There isn’t anything wrong with you, and there are many options to satisfy it. It does not have to be penetrative sex.”

  I stare daggers at him, disbelieving but desperately hoping he’s right. If it’s from the leftover desidre, not my mating bond, maybe it can still go away. “What are the options?”

  “I suspect from the way you have rubbed against me before, it could be done that way, with our clothes on.”

  I can’t help my mouth quirking at the image. “A bump and grind?”

  His mouth stretches in a smile. “That is an accurate description, yes.”

  I can’t help a small chuckle. “But how could it satisfy the desidre without you…” I can’t say “sexual intercourse.” It feels so intimate, too close to what I’m craving, my every cell screaming for his cock moving in me.

  He understands without me saying it. “I’ll climax, too. It’ll work. It’s more about the energy exchange than about intercourse, when it comes to the desidre.”

  I tilt my head, trying to figure him out. If he was just trying to get in my pants, literally, he wouldn’t be admitting that. He’d be telling me the opposite. It makes me want to believe him.

  It’s such a simple solution.

  Yesterday, I never would’ve agreed to it. I didn’t trust him or myself to not tear our clothes off instead. But I trust him now. More than myself, oddly. With my body, that is. Never with my heart. He wouldn’t know what to do with someone’s heart.

  I turn toward him in my seat, but it’s difficult. I keep floating upward. “How do we do this?” Now he’s suggested it, I don’t want to wait. My lust is too demanding to put it off and for me to be able to think with any clarity.

  A mischief lights his eyes. “Have you never had sex in zero-gravity?”

  “All the Ten Systems ships have gravity regulators.”

  “There is one in the back cabin, to help with sleeping.” He rises from his chair and floats toward me. “But there are a lot of pleasures gravity inhibits. A lot of things that are more enjoyable without it. If you’ll let me show you.”

  I let go of my chair and float toward him. “Yes.”

  He traces the titanium armor covering my chest. “May I take this off?”

  I glance down at myself, armed, ready for battle. “I suppose weightless sex doesn’t work with blasters on my hips.”

  He reaches for the buckle of my weapons. “No. But it’s fucking sexy.” He disarms me—literally, figuratively—and detaches my breast plate from my shoulder coverings.

  “How did you find the release clasps?” I ask with a smile. Getting this armor on and off takes as much skill as moving in it.

  “I watched you put it on.” He unhooks the plates from my forearms and the gauntlets. He stows each piece carefully in a hidden compartment behind the captain’s chair, along with my weapons.

  By the time he removes my ass plates and shin guards, I’m seething with arousal. Who knew wearing armor could be foreplay? When I’m only in my uniform, I feel exposed, vulnerable. I wish I had some sort of internal armor to wear against h
im. His small attentions are starting to get to me.

  But he wraps his arms around me, and I cling to his shoulders, pressing against him from chest to thigh. And I have no desire to let go.

  The warmth of him against me sends a rage of need through my core. I take his mouth with mine, and the desire flares between us like a blazing fire. I never knew it was possible to want a person this much, with every fiber of myself, and to feel like he feels the same.

  His hands grasp my back with digging, desperate fingers, and his tongue probes into my mouth. He thrusts it between my lips in an erotic mimic of how I wish he could move his cock in me—between my legs, or in my mouth, anywhere.

  He murmurs against my lips. “If I can feel you chest to chest, touch you with more of my skin against yours, I can make it better.”

  I’m not sure what he’s saying. I suck at his neck, rub my hips against his cock through his clothes. Gods, he’s hard again like metal, like rock. I don’t know how he can be real flesh.

  “Jenie.” He cups my face, urging me to look in his eyes. “Can I undress us both to the waist? It will hopefully feed the desidre more.”

  I’m dying to feel him. “Yes, yes.” I fumble with the zipper at his throat.

  While I lower his uniform’s zipper, he hangs onto me to keep us from drifting apart. We’re floating in the cabin’s empty space, weighted by nothing. And it makes me feel nothing else, only him, since I’m touching nothing but him. As though floating freely frees my sensation from being weighted and makes me more aware of myself and all of my feelings for him.

  I separate myself enough to unzip his uniform to his chest. I should stop, I shouldn’t go lower, but I can’t help it. His body, his chest, as I expose it, is a tantalizing temptation. I pull the zipper past his waist, to his hips. My wrist brushes his cock through the fabric, and I pause, breathing heavy. He’s so long, pressed upward between his skin and the fabric, my fingers are inches from the tip.

  “Jenie…” he warns but doesn’t stop me.

  I dip my fingers inside and wrap my hand around his cock. We both suck air in hard on contact. Fuck. He’s so thick in my palm, my thumb and fingers don’t meet around him. I squeeze, and there is no give to his flesh. He is rigid as stone but hot, smooth.

  I’m overtaken with a desire to see him, and I force the zipper lower.

  And gasp.

  He glows. His cock actually glows as though it’s lit from the inside, and my curiosity is raging. I want to know what he tastes like and what his come will look like. I push off the ceiling with my free hand to move lower, to put him in my mouth.

  “Whoa.” He grasps my shoulders and floats me back up to his face level. “Not right now.”

  I squint at him, unfamiliar with a male who would stop me from giving head. “Koviye…”

  “After we satisfy you, and your mind’s not clouded with the desidre, then we can talk about whether you want to go there or not. I’m staying covered below the waist, like you said before.” I let go of him begrudgingly, and he pulls his zipper back up some, then takes his arms out of the uniform sleeves.

  He’s not just glowing in his cock, he’s glowing everywhere, his whole torso and arms giving off a vibrant pale blue light. The rigid lines of muscle angle across his chest, to his shoulders and arms. He is powerfully built, and I glance at his eyes—now a rich emerald green filled with intensity. An intensity that doesn’t match what he’s showing me, or saying to me.

  I’d never thought about it—how much he holds back for me, how much he must be restraining himself whenever he’s with me, sexually, physically, dominantly. He never pushes me. He asks but doesn’t demand. He expresses concern but reserves judgment. He accepts my boundaries without complaint or frustration and upholds them like a promise. Far more than a male who is interested in me for merely sex.

  As I stare at him, our eyes lock. We’re floating away from each other in the open space. He reaches for me, and I grab his hand with mine. Our fingers entwine, and we’re palm to palm. It’s somehow strangely intimate—more intimate than the kiss—or even my hand on his cock.

  I glance at his face, and he’s staring at our hands with a matched surprise. It’s like we’re joined, not just in physical need, but in a desire for each other’s company.

  We let go, a little too overwhelmed by the intimacy of the hand-to-hand contact. This is about orgasms—nothing more. No matter what his attention may seem like, he’s getting one out of this, too. He’s as much here for it as I am.

  I refocus on his sex-on-a-stick body and push off a wall with my feet to get closer. I grasp his shoulders and revel in the feel of his skin: the hot smoothness of him, the give to his outer flesh, and the alien rigidity of his muscle beneath. He’s so much harder than human men—everywhere.

  He finds my uniform’s zipper and gently pulls it down to my navel, then eases my arms out of the sleeves. He runs his hands over my skin and wraps his arms around me.

  I slide my hands to his back and pull our chests together—and I feel what he means.

  It’s like the glow of him envelopes me the way his arms do, like I’m pulled inside him, his energy wrapping around me. I feel his desire for me, like in the dream. How he wants me, how my need matches his as though crafted by nature to fit.

  I don’t give a thought to what that means, only losing myself to how good it feels. It seeps a pleasure beneath my skin, deep into my veins, and permeates every crevice within me.

  His arm bumps against the ship’s glass ceiling, and not wanting him to let go of me, I reach out and find handholds behind his back to anchor us in place. He runs his hands around my ass, my thighs, over my uniform, and lifts my legs around his hips. There, he pumps his hips against the apex of my thighs, and the pleasure of his hard cock touching me so intimately, even through clothes, takes down my inhibitions.

  I thrust into him, and he slides against me, hard and thick, probing between our clothes. It is a poor imitation of what sex with him would be like, of what it would be like to have that cock inside me, to clench around him instead of on emptiness.

  But this is what we have. This is what I’m capable of, so I rock against him, forcefully. He grips my ass and matches my pressure. I find the wall with my feet and take out the desire pounding through my system on his hips.

  He meets me, encourages me, whispers in my ear, “Fuck me hard, dominaq. Give me everything.”

  I cry out in his ear, my body quaking with the desire to explode around him. My core aches with the need to be gripping his cock. The need revs me faster. I wish that the more brutally I thrust against him, the fiercer the stroke of his cock over my clit, the closer it would bring him to being inside me. I go at him, as though it were possible.

  His hands dig into my back, his body tightening, his hips ramming harder. He’s close to coming. Thank gods, because so am I.

  “I will—come—with you,” he breathes in my ear. “Let go.”

  It’s like a cutting of my last restraint. My body unfolds around him, and I climax, the ecstasy of him, his energy, his pressure, flooding me.

  I jerk against him, my mind overtaken and lost to all but the bliss, the cleansing of the toxin from my blood. I feel it unclogging my veins. Its release is as pleasurable as the orgasm itself.

  But it’s not enough. I’m moaning in his ear, my hips quaking, needing to stop, but not able to stop. “I can’t—I need—gods, Koviye!” I want to sob for the emptiness inside me. The need to have him coming in me, to feed on his orgasm filling me, it’s agony pouring through my blood.

  It’s as though the release of the desidre toxin exposes my worst fear: the biological imperative of my body to mate with him, totally.

  This deep, almost uncontrollable craving is why I didn’t want to do this before. This is why I resisted him for so long. It’s exactly what I didn’t want to happen.

  He kisses my cheeks, my mouth. “Let me help. How can I help?”

  I try to let go of him, to get away, but I can’t. I do
n’t know how. “I have to—come—again.” It’s the only thing I can think of that might make it better. It has to. I can’t go on like this.

  “Could I try my tongue? Would my mouth ease you?”

  “Please. Yes.” He can’t penetrate me with his tongue. It’s safe. I can’t imagine it satisfying this agony, but it’s worth a try.

  Anything to make this stop.

  Anything to find out what he can do with his tongue.

  Chapter Twelve

  Koviye

  She quakes in my arms and not as though from satiation, like she did on the planet after I gave her an orgasm. This time it’s…like she’s in pain. Something’s wrong. Very wrong.

  I don’t understand it.

  I pull back to look at her—her energy flows clean, free of the toxin for the first time since I’ve met her. She should be feeling better. She should be relieved and floating with the strength that comes from satisfying the desidre. But her emotional aura is a riot of flashing red, not swirling with desire, but blurring with agony.

  I’m relieved from the desidre that had built up in my blood. But it hardly feels good—not when she’s moaning in pain and breathing so shallowly, I worry she might choke herself.

  “Jenie, is there something you can take?” I glance at Ilena’s medical bag I shoved in a compartment by the cockpit. Maybe she put something in there to help if Jenie had this sort of reaction.

  “Nooo,” she cries and digs her nails into my shoulders. “I just need more.” She pushes my head down, and I go where she directs me, drifting down her body.

  Her skin is a waiting feast for my hands, but taking the time I want to touch her, to arouse her further, is not what she needs.

  I graze her belly and hips, then stop at her waist. I tuck my hands inside her uniform, and glance up. This was one of her boundaries earlier. I’m crossing it.

  She meets my eyes. “No fingers. Okay?”

  “Just my tongue.” I nod.

  Her gaze is warring with anxiety and desperation. “Just…please…don’t…” She grips my head with quaking hands and tries to communicate what she can’t say.