by Kate Rudolph
“Brax—” she cut herself off when he kissed her abdomen and pushed her back against the small bench that ran along the wall, watching as she sank down against it, legs falling open to expose herself completely.
It was vulnerable, and she seemed to realize it, tensing for a second before taking a deep breath and letting go. This was a gift she was giving him, the right to bring her pleasure, the right to watch as she fell apart. She lived a hard life and had to keep her guard up, but with him she was allowing this to be something real, something for the both of them.
And Brax wouldn’t disappoint.
He kissed his way over every bit of her he could reach and used his fingers to tease. When a moan escaped her throat he knew he was on the right track, and when his tongue lapped at the heat of her she dug her fingers into his hair and held him there.
Yes, definitely doing this right.
She tasted like heaven and his cock throbbed, already at the edge of pleasure just from giving her this. He had to reach down and adjust himself just to keep from coming too soon. This was about her and he wouldn’t let his own pleasure interrupt them, not when he could drive his denya crazy. It was his right as her mate, and his privilege.
“Fuck, your tongue,” she managed around a moan, and Brax remembered one of the differences between himself and a human. Ridges on the tongue... and other places, but she wouldn’t find out about those until later. “Fuck!” she said again.
She liked that word, and he liked to hear her use it.
But he used his tongue, delving into her and lapping at her, letting her guide him with her hands and her words and the way her lips bucked against him, and when she let out a high pitched cry and rippled around him, Brax smiled against her. Oh yes, he liked this a lot.
He pulled back, kissing the insides of her thighs, and watched as she slumped against the wall, her eyes lidded with sated pleasure.
“Let me watch you,” she said.
He groaned and almost came right then. She might have looked sated, but her eyes brightened as he wrapped a fist around his cock and stroked. Standing in front of her, he didn’t need to imagine what it would be like inside of her; this was as good in a different way. Her taste was still on his tongue and he knew he’d remember it for days to come, or until he could claim another taste of her.
And he would. There was no stopping them now.
His denya’s eyes followed his every twitch and jerk, and it didn’t take long for Brax to spurt out his release, the evidence of his pleasure quickly washed away in the shower. They’d been in there for long enough that the water should have run cold, but one of the perks of being planet bound meant no worries about the water heater.
He doubted he’d even feel the cold if it was there to feel.
“Denya,” he said as he sat next to Vita and pulled her close, capturing her lips in a tender kiss. Give him a few minutes and he’d be ready to go again, but right now he wanted to feel her pressed up close against him. There was no rush for more. Not yet. They had plenty of time.
There was a strange look in her eyes when she pulled away. “What does that mean?” she asked. “You keep saying it.”
His pleasure-addled brain didn’t see the danger, and he couldn’t have lied if he wanted to. “My mate,” he said, kissing along her jaw. “My destiny.”
And it all came crashing down when Vita stiffened in his arms and said, “No.”
Chapter Nine
RUNNING AWAY FROM THE hottest experience of her life was not one of Vita’s finer moves. But if she stayed with Brax for one minute more there was no telling what she’d do. Mate? Her? No. She didn’t belong to anyone. No one had a claim on her. She did jobs for Roski, sure, and worked for him exclusively, but that was business. And she could have walked away at any time. Outside of that, the people she slept with knew not to make a claim. Addex and Kya were the closest she’d ever come to considering something more, and even then, their offer had made her pull away, made her keep her distance from Cayster Market until she had little choice but to ask them for help.
And now Brax was trying to say that destiny had pulled them together? Had marked her as his possession long before they ever met?
No, she wasn’t happy with that and she refused to accept it.
She belonged to no one but herself and she was happy that way. No one would own her ever again. She’d already worn the heavy weight of a slave collar for nearly a third of her life and she wouldn’t let it happen again.
Brax would never hurt you.
And now her mind was rebelling? Vita huddled in her quarters behind the locked door and tried to tell her stupid brain to shut up. That was how all relationships started: with lust and the idiotic conviction that a lover wouldn’t cause harm. But the only way to be sure of that was to walk away before they got the chance. Lovers got ideas when you let them stick around too long. Ideas about telling you what to do, who to associate with, what to wear, what jobs to take, all of it. And she wasn’t looking to be weighed down by any sort of gravity.
If she could have kicked Brax off the ship and taken off she might have done it, but they had hours yet until takeoff and she’d need his help to retrieve Coyl Ygreen. Not to mention the fact that she’d promised to take him back to Earth. And she’d keep her word.
Just as she’d keep away from him.
Of course, that was easier said than done.
She managed to hide away for the rest of the night and Brax, showing the smallest modicum of smarts, didn’t come looking for her. A traitorous part wondered what he’d done after she ran away, but she refused to check the ship’s logs to see if he’d stayed aboard all night or had gone out. If he was her mate, it wasn’t like he’d leave a pleasurable encounter with her and run into the arms of anyone willing in the market.
Right?
It didn’t matter. She renounced any claim and he could see whoever he wished.
No. Fuck that.
Her sleep was fitful, but she managed a few hours, well trained at stealing rest wherever she could take it, no matter how much turmoil she felt. And when she checked on Brax in the morning it was only to make sure he was ready for takeoff. Really. That was all.
He mentioned nothing about their time in the shower or what he’d told her she was to him, and she said nothing about running away. But instead of joining her in the cockpit, he secured himself in his room and assured her he had plenty to do to keep himself entertained.
That was what she wanted. Right?
Curse the gods, why did these things happen to her?
With a final confirmation that all the goods they’d purchased were in place and that they had clearance from the Cayster Flight Commission to take off, she fired the engines and had them blasting through space in minutes. Morning turned to dark between one blink and the next as time lost meaning, no longer tethered to any planet. It was the ultimate kind of freedom, one Vita normally took a moment or two to revel in, but not today, not when her mind was still stuck on Brax.
Denya.
Why did it have to sound so nice?
She shivered whenever he said it, already sure that it had been some sort of term of endearment. It would have been alright if he called her darling or sweetheart, and maybe even love. But mate? No, she couldn’t take that. She was the only one who decided who she was with, not the hands of the fates who were known to be fickle. She wouldn’t allow it.
Then again, she remembered the stories from her childhood, of how the three fates meddled and punished those who dared to defy them. What would they do to her?
It didn’t matter. She’d already survived the worst that the worlds had to offer. What more could they do to her? Take Brax away?
The thought made her ill. She didn’t want to belong to him, but she didn’t think she wanted him gone either.
Normally taking off would focus her, let her relax into the freedom of all of space laid out in front of her. Today she just wanted to get the takeoff over with so she could let the auto
nav do its thing and she could find Brax. Not even for sex. She could understand if it was for sex.
No, she just wanted to be near him. Like fate was telling her to do it.
Stupid!
She couldn’t fall for that, couldn’t let herself get all tied up and bound to him to have him leave her or betray her or worse.
As they pulled away from Cayster, she pulled up a file on Coyl Ygreen, what she’d been able to pull from public sources and the less than legal avenues she had to find out about people. Her tablet screen went fuzzy for a moment, but at least it didn’t cut out. Brax still hadn’t managed to fix the view screen in the cockpit and she didn’t need to add even more to his troubles.
And, as if he could sense her thoughts, the man who called himself her mate clambered up into the cockpit and took a seat at the navigator’s station. Vita had to keep her cool. She schooled her expression, unwilling to give anything away.
“I thought I’d work on the view screen in here, if that doesn’t bother you?” he said after a few minutes of tense silence.
Was it tense? Or was that just Vita?
“Of course,” she replied, trying not to sound stilted. The mate thing had to be bullshit. If it really existed, there was no way it would be so off between them. Unless it was her rejection of the entire thing that made it that way.
Damn it.
She opened her mouth to ask, but then shut it again. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to let herself be owned.
She turned back to the tablet and studied what she could about Ygreen. He was an Oscavian from the center of their empire, though he’d spent the last several years bouncing around border planets and flirting with the more dangerous life outside of imperial safety. He liked to gamble but he wasn’t any good at it. What he was good at, however, was evading payment. He’d borrowed enough credits to make Roski angry, but he’d only borrowed those to pay off another creditor. He’d tried the same trick on Roski, but no one was willing to offer the cash.
“Oscavians don’t have mates.” Vita startled herself by speaking aloud. She hadn’t wanted to talk about it, but now that she heard herself, she swung around to face Brax and glared. “What were you trying to pull? You’re Oscavian. And that word, it’s nonsense, isn’t it? My translator can handle Oscavian and all its subdialects. You just made that up.”
The strange blue Oscavian studied her for a moment before he calmly put his tools down. “My mother is Oscavian,” said Brax. “My father was Detyen. Detyens need—” he cleared his throat, “have mates.”
Need? No, she wasn’t going to ask.
“I’ve never heard of Detyens before.” And she’d traveled most of the galaxy. If an alien species existed, she’d at least heard a whisper.
“Our planet was destroyed more than a hundred years ago. There aren’t that many of us left, barely enough to fill a city, let alone a planet. Those that survived the attack were near enough to space ships to escape or they were already off planet. And then given our quirks, we’ve been slowly marching our way to extinction ever since.” He didn’t meet her eyes as he spoke, as if he was afraid of what he’d see.
“What quirks?” Despite herself, she was interested. She tried to tell herself it was only because she needed to know anything she could about any aliens she might encounter. But really she just wanted to know more about Brax.
“I think if I told you, you’d run away again.”
So they weren’t just going to ignore that. Rude. “How bad could it be?”
She didn’t think he’d say. His jaw firmed up and his eyes flashed blue for the briefest second. “It’s called the Denya Price. Or the Detyen Curse. If we don’t claim our mates by the time we’re thirty, we die.” And then, before she could react, he picked up his tool kit and nodded towards the screen. “That should be fixed now.” And then he walked out, leaving Vita alone.
Bile rose in her throat and her stomach dropped. Dead? And what did claiming entail? How old was he? She refused to be owned, but she didn’t want to live in a galaxy without her handy blue alien.
No, not hers.
Vita needed to get over this fixation. Or to accept it. Maybe there was a way to have Brax without surrendering herself to him. Maybe there was some sort of compromise. She couldn’t let him die if there was some way she could stop it, but she couldn’t bow to the yoke of ownership either.
She reached over and flipped the switch to test the view screen. It flicked to life as if it had never been broken.
It seemed that Brax could fix everything on her ship. What about her?
VITA HID FROM HIM, but Brax couldn’t blame her. Telling her about the Denya Price had been a risk and he wasn’t sure if it had been the right move. But he couldn’t lie, even as she ran from him. Surely fate wouldn’t have put her in his path just to deny them. But the denya bond was no guarantee. He’d heard stories of tragic couples lost to each other before the bond could take root. And of those on opposite sides of wars. Every kind of mishap that could befall a fated pair had. And perhaps he was the same.
He needed someone to talk to.
And it couldn’t be his denya.
There was something he was missing when it came to her feelings about this, of that he was sure. And he wondered if that dream had anything to do with it. Had it truly been shared? Had he glimpsed her memories or her fears? Or had it simply been a manifestation of his own mind?
Had Vita once been a slave?
It was a despicable practice, one he’d rarely encountered. Honora Station outlawed it, as did Earth, and though the commune he’d grown up in had been strict, it had been firmly within the Oscavian Empire, where slavery was also banned. But though the Empire had a long reach, they didn’t have their tendrils everywhere, and he’d heard rumors that not even every part of the empire was free from the rot. It was more luck than anything else that had kept Brax from witnessing the atrocity.
But maybe Vita hadn’t been as lucky. And perhaps that would explain some of her loyalty to Roski. If he’d given her an opportunity when she was newly freed, of course she’d think well of him. And it would explain why she’d reacted so violently to the thought of enslaving him.
He hoped that one day she would share some of her history with him, would let him know what had happened to her, what had made her who she was. But it wasn’t going to be today.
When Vita left the cockpit to get herself a meal, Brax let himself in. That was where the viewscreen was, and he needed to talk to his family. He’d thought of just sending a message, but now he had questions he wanted answered, and maybe Shayn or Deke or Naomi could help.
They were far out from any signal relay, so it took several minutes for the call to connect. And Brax had no way to know what time it was on Earth. Things got wonky between different systems, and he didn’t want to wait to calculate when it would be best to call.
Brax called up the contact information and waited as the signal bounced its way to Earth. And when the screen came to life, he smiled. Naomi must have had a vision, or her instincts had told her to expect him. He could see darkness through the window behind her, so it must have been night, but she was wide awake. Next to her, Shayn was scowling, whether at him, the hour, or the situation, Brax wasn’t sure. And a moment later the door beside them burst open and Deke rushed into the room wearing only a hastily pulled on pair of pajama bottoms, his hair a mess from sleep.
Middle of the night, then.
“You look to be in good health,” Shayn said, still scowling. “Where the fuck have you been?”
Naomi placed her hand on Shayn’s thigh, as if to calm him down, but Brax couldn’t help but grin. It was good to see his family again, even from so far away. “It’s a bit of a story,” he said, but he settled into the captain’s seat and told them.
It took less time than he expected. Especially since he didn’t want to cast Vita in a negative light. He hoped that one day she’d go back to Earth with him and meet his family, and he didn’t want them prepared to
hate his mate.
“She’s my denya,” he ended with. “And I need help.”
“What? She got one look at your ugly face and rejected you?” Deke shot from behind Shayn’s shoulder.
Brax rolled his eyes. “My ugly face is your ugly face.” But his twin scoffed that off.
“What’s the matter?” Shayn shoved at Deke to keep him quiet, ever the older brother.
“She doesn’t want a mate. I’ve agreed to help her on this mission to get her back in her boss’s good graces, but I’m pretty sure she’s going to dump me off somewhere with enough credits to get home as soon as she has the chance. And I don’t know how to make her see what we could be together.” For some people it might have been sudden, but Brax was a Detyen and Vita was his mate. He didn’t need any more than that. “Is there anything I could do?” He looked right at Naomi as he asked that last question.
“We agreed—” Shayn began.
But his denya cut him off. “It’s okay, love.” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, but after several seconds nothing had happened. “I’m not seeing anything, I’m sorry. I’m still having trouble calling things up on demand. But I know you, Brax. Help her, be yourself, and accept that it may take time. She’s human, yes?”
He nodded.
“From what Shayn tells me, it feels differently for us, but she is feeling the pull, that I can guarantee you. It may just take her more time to adjust. You can’t force her to want you.”
“I would never!” The very thought of it made him sick. He’d rather die, and that was the choice he was making.
“We all know that,” Naomi assured him.
“If all goes well, are you coming home?” Shayn asked. The three brothers had never been parted for long. The only time before was Shayn’s sojourn to the Oscavian Empire to get answers about their ancestry. He’d found a mate instead.
“Sometime, I hope. But if all goes well...”
