Samantha moved deeper into the room and brushed her fingers over a control panel on the wall. Several wide drawers pushed out of the wall, and a door-sized section slid aside to reveal a closet. “I got you some clothes. I really hope they fit okay. I wasn’t sure with…” Her gaze dipped to Shay’s rounded stomach, visible between the parted sides of her jacket. “You can put your stuff wherever you’d like.”
Shay smiled. “Thanks.”
Sam returned the smile and pointed at the other end of the room. “The bathroom is through there. Oh, and we ordered some things for the baby. They should come soon.”
Shay moved her hands to her stomach, cradling it, as her heart clenched.
There’s that damned stinging in my eyes again.
Seeming to understand Shay’s silence, Sam went on, her smile unwavering. “If you need anything, just let me know. And, uh…just so you know, since he basically demanded it, your room is next to Drakkal’s.”
Shay huffed a laugh. “Of course it is.”
The other woman chuckled. “Anyway, it’s late, and I’m sure you’re exhausted. I’ll have some food brought here so you can eat and get some rest.” She moved to the door and opened it. Before she stepped through, she looked back and said, “And honestly Shay…I’m glad you’re here.”
Once Samantha was gone, Shay eased herself onto the bed. Floored—that was the word. She was absolutely floored. These people didn’t know her, Samantha didn’t know her, and yet they’d opened their arms to Shay and welcomed her into their home.
Part of her wanted so badly to distrust them, to see them as the criminals they’d admitted to being and treat them with the appropriate caution and skepticism, but she couldn’t. And that left her utterly off balance. The world—the universe—wasn’t a nice place full of nice people. It was cold, and hard, and lonely, and people were mean and selfish.
Mom and Dad weren’t. I wasn’t.
I’m not anymore.
Shay shrugged off her jacket and settled her hands on her belly, smiling as she rubbed it lovingly. “This could work, Baby.”
Even if it didn’t…she’d earn some credits and get out. She’d left bad situations before, and she could leave this one if necessary. It wasn’t like she’d put permanent roots down here; this was just another stop along the way, hopefully better than the others she’d made.
But she found that she didn’t want to leave. She wanted to make this work. A safe place, food, good people—it was perfect for her and her baby. This could be home.
Shay breathed in deeply and lifted her gaze toward the door.
There was just the matter of her mate to sort out.
Thirteen
Four days passed with impossible speed, hastened by a flurry of potential clients that required thorough background checks and careful planning. Drakkal had been afforded almost no time to spend with Shay—a frustrating issue he couldn’t solve even though he ran this whole operation alongside Arcanthus—and each day his hunger for her deepened and grew more insistent.
Every moment he spent separated from her had been its own unique bit of agony, all of them coming together to create a mosaic of suffering that shouldn’t have been possible considering the female he so desired was in the same damned building as him the entire time. The days had passed quickly, but the seconds had dragged on forever.
He’d long known that the passage of time was relative, but he’d never experienced it as so terribly fast and brutally slow simultaneously.
Kraasz ka’val, I’m losing my mind.
By all accounts, Shay was settling in well. The crew’s initial assessment of her hadn’t changed; they all liked her, and that admiration had only grown. She fit in perfectly, and part of Drakkal hated that—because everyone else had spent hours and hours of time with her.
Drakkal had known his share of hardships, had faced injustices and been wronged more times than he cared to count, but this was the first time in all those years that he ever felt the universe was unfair. Why the hell had business suddenly picked up the morning after he brought his mate home? Why was he being kept apart from his female when he’d only just brought her close?
Maybe I shouldn’t have been so hard on Arcanthus when he was trying to win over Samantha…
Now Drakkal stalked along the corridors, breathing deeply through his nose to pick up every scent on the air and filtering them all out of his awareness until only that sundrinker perfume with its exotic flair remained.
This was it—he was making time with her, taking it if necessary, and he wouldn’t let anything stop him. He’d waged a ceaseless, internal war against his instincts over the last four days. Having his mate so close and knowing he’d yet to claim her was a torture unlike any he could’ve imagined. He’d resisted his urges to focus on work, telling himself repeatedly that said work was necessary to maintain everyone’s safety.
But right now, his only concern was Shay. The others were adults; they could take care of themselves for a few hours. Mama Drakkal needed some personal time.
His search was complicated by the fact that her scent was everywhere in this building by now. After he’d checked her room—she wasn’t there—he should’ve just pulled up the surveillance feeds on his holocom to find her, but something inside him had railed against the idea. He couldn’t tell if it was a deep opposition to violating her privacy, which was an almost comical thought after he’d spent a day stalking her through the Undercity, or a more primal, instinctual need to track her. There was a drive in him to learn her scent so intimately that he could find her even were he stricken deaf and blind.
His skin prickled, his fur bristled, and his tail lashed as he searched the likeliest places. He opened the break room door, pressed his hands against the door frame, and leaned through the doorway, sniffing the air and scanning the room. Like everywhere else, her scent was there—but she wasn’t. Only Razi, watching two teary-eyed volturians profess their love for one another on the entertainment screen.
Snarling, Drakkal shoved away from the doorway and continued the hunt. He needed to claim her, yes, but she wasn’t likely ready for that yet. Just being near her would be enough for now. It had to be enough.
Vrek’osh, I hope it’s enough.
He stopped at the gym next. The air smelled like sweat and greased tristeel, but it was the scent of Shay’s sweat that stood out the strongest to him—not just because he was actively seeking it, but because it was the freshest. She’d been here recently.
Ears flattening, Drakkal clenched his fists and continued to the only other place she might’ve gone while off duty. Her scent strengthened as he descended into the lower level and approached the building’s training facilities, one of the only areas that had required little remodeling when the forgery operation had been relocated here. The stairs let him out in a short corridor with the door to the shooting range directly ahead and the control room for the simulation chambers to his right.
He entered the shooting range first.
The range ran almost the full length of the building—nearly one hundred and fifty meters from one end to the other—though it was only fifteen meters wide. Its dark gray walls were constructed of a material similar to that found in most combat armor, meaning they would absorb and disperse energy from plasma bolts and physical projectiles rather than deflect them.
The stalls lined up on this end of the range were empty, their control panels switched off, and the chamber was so quiet that Drakkal could hear the faint rustling of his fur against his clothing. For some reason, this room had always seemed lonely to him. Perhaps it was its size—it suggested wide open space without truly providing any, and that tease was enough to rouse Drakkal’s old desires for fields and forests, for fresh, warm breezes and endless skies.
But none of that mattered now; Shay wasn’t here, which only left one other likely place. If she wasn’t there, he’d have to tear through the entire building one room at a time, disregarding the quiet, rational part of his mind that insis
ted such a search was impractical and inefficient.
He exited the range and turned left, settling his gaze on the entrance to the simulation control room. There was a sign near the entrance that indicated the individual simulation chambers with a square and a number in Universal Speech for each one. All twelve of the squares were red except for chamber one, which glowed green, meaning it was in use.
Drakkal walked forward and turned into the long corridor than ran along the shooting range’s outside wall. The doors and view windows to the simulation chambers were lined up along the right side. He stopped at the first chamber and turned to look through the wide, one-way viewing window.
Shay was at the center of the chamber, standing on an omnidirectional moving floor that was currently hidden by the holographic simulation she was running—a simulation which, for her, was fully immersive and surrounded her completely on all sides. The window allowed Drakkal a clear view, cutting out the hologram that would’ve run along that wall from her perspective.
It was almost like watching a movie, though no movie had ever drawn Drakkal in as quickly and thoroughly as this.
His attention, not surprisingly, was consumed by her. Her blond hair was pulled up in a messy bun that barely kept the numerous dangling, rogue strands out of her face. Her skin glistened with perspiration, and her tank top—which revealed her graceful, faintly toned arms and shoulders—was damp with sweat. Its fabric hugged her body, molding to her breasts and her rounded belly. Her pants were just as form fitting.
Drakkal couldn’t help but notice there were no lines denoting the presence of undergarments beneath those leggings—the generous, natural curve of her ass was his to devour with his eyes. He groaned low, and his cock throbbed, suddenly straining against his pants.
How many times had he imagined taking Shay by her hips as he pushed inside her hot, welcoming body? How many times had he imagined her skin sweat-slickened like this as their bodies joined and their breaths mingled?
Fuck, how have I focused on anything else since I brought her here?
The answer to that was in his heart, nestled deep but not hidden—he hadn’t focused on anything apart from her for a month now. Since the moment he’d first locked eyes with her, Shay had been his only concern, his only goal, his only drive, and everything else he’d done since that night at Foltham’s manor was lost in a fuzzy haze of memory. He knew he’d worked, knew he’d handled business, but he’d retained none of the details.
Oh, but I can recall every detail of her body beneath those clothes, right down to the tiniest blemish.
He’d seen Shay fight during her brief scuffle with the sedhi on the street corner days ago, but that had offered only a hint of her training and discipline. She’d said her father had taught her, that he’d been a military man. Drakkal believed it as he finally forced himself to watch not just her body but the way she moved.
She held a training auto-blaster at the ready, its stock tucked against her shoulder. The weapon couldn’t fire live plasma bolts, but it operated like the real thing within the simulation—and it could be modified both physically and functionally to mimic the feel and characteristics of real weapons. The auto-blaster looked natural in her hands, especially paired with her confident stride.
Though she remained in place at the room’s center as she walked, the holographic corridor moved around her—and now that he was paying attention, he realized that corridor bore a striking resemblance to the halls of this building.
A deep, pulsating ache ran down his arm from elbow to fingertips—down his left arm, which he’d lost a year ago in defense of his then-home. That place had been like this one in many ways, and Drakkal had been mistaken to think it secure. He didn’t want to consider the possibility of an attack on this building, especially not while Shay was here, but he had to. That was his job. If he ignored the worst-case scenarios, he couldn’t keep his people safe. He couldn’t keep Shay and her cub safe.
He absently flexed the fingers of his prosthesis and returned his attention to his mate. Though her movements were occasionally awkward—undoubtedly because of her rounded belly—he could see the muscle memory behind each one, the skill that could only have come from extensive practice. She moved through the holographic hallway methodically, checking her corners and keeping alert, eliminating threats with speed and precision, often before her simulated foes could react.
And as minutes passed, her shoulders and chest began to heave, her reaction speed gradually slowed, and frustration hardened her expression.
She came to an intersection in the corridor, always a dangerous spot in combat situations, and paused for a second to catch her breath. The delay was a second too long.
Two of the doors directly ahead of her opened, and two featureless enemies stepped into the hallway. Shay raised her gun and fired. The simulated plasma bolts struck the enemy on the left side of the corridor, but the gunman on the right fired before she could take him down.
The gunman’s plasma bolts—a bright green produced by no real blasters—struck Shay in the chest. She flinched, face paling, and staggered back a step.
Drakkal’s heart leapt, and his body reflexively jerked toward the window, claws splayed. He stopped himself before he struck the glass. Tension had that quickly claimed his every muscle, and his thundering heart refused to immediately slow.
Just a simulation. She’s fine. Wasn’t real.
But it had looked real—real enough to push him to action based on instinct alone, real enough to heat his skin and twist his insides.
The holographic corridor flashed red a few times, and an alarm wailed briefly before everything faded away, leaving Shay in the center of a square, ten-by-ten-meter room with black walls and dull white overhead lights.
She shouted something Drakkal couldn’t make out—though the movements of her mouth indicated it had been the terran word for fuck—and bent forward as far as her belly allowed, bracing her auto-blaster across her thighs as she panted. Droplets of sweat trickled off her nose and chin and fell to the floor.
Though his heart hadn’t slowed, and his chest was still tight, Drakkal’s dipped his gaze to appreciate the way her position pulled the fabric of her pants taut around her thighs and ass. He didn’t have adequate words to describe her beauty. And even if it had been a simulation, even if she’d technically lost, seeing her move like that—seeing her fight like that—was fucking hot.
He couldn’t hold himself back for another moment; he stepped to the door and entered the simulation chamber.
Her scent permeated the air within, washing over him in a cloud of sundrinker perfume and sweet, tantalizing sweat, undoubtedly fraught with her irresistible pheromones. His cock, already erect and confined, swelled impossibly—and painfully—further.
Shay jerked her head up at the noise. As soon as her eyes fell upon him, her startled expression gave way to a grin. She straightened, letting the blaster fall to hang by its shoulder strap at her side, and raised a hand to wipe sweat from her face. “Look what the cat dragged in.”
Drakkal lifted a brow. “Arc already used that one. Doesn’t affect me anymore.”
“Fur real? I thought it was clawver.”
He jabbed a finger at her. “You’re not allowed to talk to Arcanthus from this point forward. Clearly he’s distracting you from your duties.”
Shay laughed. “Man, he wasn’t kitten when he said cat puns make you fur-ious.” When Drakkal just glared at her, she waved her hand, laughing harder. “Okay, okay! I’ll stop.”
Drakkal tilted his head back, drew in a deep breath, and released it in a sigh. “If the Consortium knew about such puns, they wouldn’t have invited terrans to Arthos. Maybe they would’ve gone so far as to quarantine your species on Earth.”
She snickered. “You like it. Admit it.”
He smirked. “All right, I can admit it. I’m feline a little better about it now that you’re involved.”
Shay burst into another round of laughter. “Good one.”<
br />
Drakkal’s amusement faded slowly, leaving only… What was it he felt for her? Attraction, lust, and desire—all slightly different nuances of the same thing—but there was much more to it. Admiration and respect, certainly. For the rest, it seemed too early to tell; the feelings were too new to identify.
He swept his eyes over her body again, drinking in her curves and her petite but enticing form. Even her stomach, swollen by her growing cub, somehow made her body lusher, adding an undefinable yet undeniable appeal. But it was the perspiration on her skin and soaking her clothing that stood out the most in that moment. It was the result of Shay pushing herself hard despite her situation, had been the result of her seeking out her limit and defiantly shoving against it.
Pride flooded his heart, and he accepted it even if it wasn’t technically his to claim—because she’d not yet chosen him.
“You did well,” he said.
She crinkled her nose, and her lip drew back in distaste as she approached him; the omnidirectional floor was locked in place now, having been deactivated along with the simulation. “I’m rusty as fuck and out of shape.”
Drakkal took that as an opportunity to study her body again—any excuse was good enough. “I enjoy your shape.”
Her cheeks, already pink, darkened further. She glanced at him briefly. There was appreciation and shyness in her gaze—and a glimmer of interest.
“That sim you were running is designed for a squad,” he said. “Not many people could’ve made it that far alone.”
When she reached Drakkal, Shay stepped around him and squatted down to retrieve a bottle of water and a towel from the floor beside the door. “Why do you have training programs for squads in here?”
As she stood up, she opened the bottle and took a long, deep drink.
Drakkal turned toward her and leaned a shoulder against the doorframe. “This place used to be the headquarters of a security company. Up until a few decades ago, the Eternal Guard used to contract out security in sectors like this, basically making private companies the peacekeepers. People liked that even less than they liked the real peacekeepers. They decommissioned all these stations and left behind anything that would’ve been too much trouble to haul out—like these simulation chambers.”
Untamed Hunger Page 19
