“But your freedom? What about your family on Everis? Your job?” He was an Elite Hunter, even I knew they were in high demand, and not just for use by military commanders. Private rulers on many worlds hired them for various jobs. They were rare. Valuable. Their services cost a fortune and they chose whom to serve, and whom not to.
By accepting a commission as an officer in the Coalition Fleet, he was now under Prime Nial’s command. The Prime could send him on missions, order him to obey, and if Quinn refused? He’d be sent to the brig. Imprisoned.
He slowly shook his head. “I spoke to Prime Nial. His mate is human, like you. He understands what I am dealing with.”
I gasped, ready to defend all women of Earth, but he nuzzled my neck and pulled out, thrust forward. My protest turned into a shudder of pleasure as ripples moved through my pussy. He was huge. Stretching me. Filling me up until I couldn’t breathe, let alone think. “Can we finish this conversation later?”
“No. Listen to me, Niobe, and understand. From now on, my job is protecting you. Caring for you. Being with you. I don’t give a shit about rank. Prime Nial and I came to an understanding. I answer to you, mate. I take orders from you when we are in public. You and no one else.”
“Me?”
“You.” He nibbled his way to my lips, each kiss melting my heart a little more. “Prime Nial has given me top level clearance, including within the I.C. I go where you go. No questions, no arguments.”
I lowered my hands and buried my fingers in his long, golden hair. Silk. So soft on something so hard. And strong. And mine. “Okay.”
That made him chuckle. “Okay? No arguments?”
“Nope. I am naked, after all. I don’t argue with my mate when I’m naked.”
“You’re right.” He lifted my ass, opening me to him. Thrust deep. Deeper. “When you’re naked, you’re mine.”
I smiled, stroked my hand over his hair, cupped his jaw. Felt the rasp of his whiskers. And that is when I confessed the truth of my heart. “I’m always yours, Quinn. Always.”
He froze for a heartbeat, as if I’d startled him with my confession, but his body went rigid. Hard. My dominant lover was coming out to play, and I needed him to make me stop thinking and just feel. I simply… needed.
“Put your hands over your head and keep them there, mate.” The sharp bite of his command only made me more eager to comply. Like a first day cadet, I didn’t have to do anything but follow orders.
I moved into place and he remained still, like a commander of his fighters, watching. Waiting for any breach of orders. I squirmed, knowing if I didn’t follow his orders, he’d spank me. And that wasn’t punishment at all.
As I placed my hands above my head on the ground, I couldn’t miss the outline of his expression in the shadows of the forest. His face was lined with strain, the veins in his neck and temples bulging. He wasn’t immune. In fact, he was probably as desperate as me. I moved instinctively, opening my legs, trying to pull him deeper.
“Wider.”
I swallowed, moved my knees outwards. More, then more still. Thank god I was in good physical shape. I’d never been more thankful for flexible hips.
His touch heated my skin. The humidity made perspiration dot my skin. But it was his gaze that burned me up. He could see me, all of me in the darkness.
“Mate, you are so beautiful.”
I felt beautiful.
His hands hooked my ankles and he pulled his cock free, kissed his way down my body, lowered his head to my aching core. He raised my legs, pushed my knees up toward my chest.
“Oh!” I cried as he licked up my slit, found my clit and put his mouth over it. Kissed it. Ruled it. My hips came up, rolled into the delicious contact.
“Quinn,” I breathed.
He didn’t allow me to come, but stopped well before, teasing me, prolonging my pleasure. Ruling my body like a master. Lifting his head, he looked up my body. God, seeing my arousal coat his lips, his chin… wicked.
“Please,” I begged. I ached for him, wanted to be filled with him, to feel the hard press of his body above mine. I wanted to shatter with his cock inside me. To know I was protected by him. Possessed.
Perhaps he liked me to beg, for he acquiesced by releasing my ankles and settling himself at my entrance. The blunt crown pressed in and I looked up at him where he braced above me on his forearm. He held my gaze as he moved. Entered an inch. Held.
“Mate. Mine.”
He thrust into me then. Hard. Fast. Claiming me. Making me his all over again.
My head arched back, the feel of him surrounding me, filling me… it was too much.
His groan vibrated from his chest and into mine.
“Yes!” I cried. I wasn’t a vice admiral. I wasn’t in charge of the Academy. I wasn’t on an I.C. mission. But I was where I needed to be. In this moment, I was important. I surrendered to my mate. I gave my mate what he needed, and in return, he made me whole.
A hand on my hip had us rolling, Quinn now on his back and I hovered over him. Straddling his narrow hips and his cock embedded deep, I pushed up on his chest, loomed over him.
“Quinn?” I breathed.
His hands settled on my hips, lifted me a little, then let me drop back down. I gasped. He groaned.
“Ride me, mate. Fuck the cum from my balls.”
I was on top, could move as I wished. His cock was mine to use as I wished. But what I did pleased him. I clenched down and he groaned again, his hands tightening on my hips.
I shifted, circled, lifted up, then dropped. Fucked him. Used him for my pleasure. And the more I got out of it, the more he did, for I lost myself in the feel of him, giving over to the pleasure, racing for it. I came on a scream that echoed through the forest and as I milked his cock, I felt it swell within me just before he came.
In this moment, both of us lost to the pleasure we could only find in each other, I knew; Quinn and I belonged to each other.
We were one.
Epilogue
Quinn, One Month Later, Location Unknown
“Where are we?” I asked, looking around. The transport platform looked as generic and familiar as every other one in the universe.
Five minutes ago, I’d walked into Niobe’s office to escort her back to our house. I didn’t have to do it; she could make it across the Academy grounds without my escort. I just wanted to be close to her. Being with her made me happy, content in a way I’d never felt before. The restlessness I’d been plagued with my entire life had settled as soon as I’d made her my focus. My purpose.
And as soon as I’d insisted Prime Nial get his Coalition protocols and rules out of my fucking way so I could protect my mate.
Instead of gathering her things, as she normally did, she came around the desk, placed a transport beacon on my chest, took my hand and we were gone.
Transported. Sent… here.
The transport tech behind the panel straightened, saluted. “Vice Admiral,” he said. He stared wide-eyed at her as if our arrival was a surprise but said nothing more.
Niobe dropped my hand and went down the steps from the platform. She expected me to follow. Damned straight, I would. Anywhere.
She didn’t say a word to the tech, just exited the room and turned right down a long hallway. Everything was nondescript, not giving me any idea where we were. And she’d never answered my question.
Her pace was brisk and efficient and she seemed to know exactly where she was going. Several fighters passed us, saluting as they went.
After a few lefts and rights down corridors, she put her hand up to a panel beside a door. The light turned green and the door slid silently open. Passing through, we were in another hallway, but the temperature was several degrees cooler. Doors lined both sides and she stopped at the third one down on the right.
She faced me for the first time since our arrival and removed the transport beacon from my chest. “You have five minutes, Elite Hunter Quinn.”
I frowned, looked at the doo
r. I was no longer referred to by my former title. I was Lieutenant Quinn of the Coalition Fleet now. What game was she playing?
“Five minutes? For what?”
She tipped her chin up, her dark gaze lifting to mine. “Justice.”
Her hand slapped against the entry pad beside the door. It beeped, turned green and slid open.
I looked inside and I froze.
The Nexus unit.
I looked at her, making sure I understood.
“They’ve been at him for over a month. That’s long enough. He’s yours now.”
Holy. Fucking. Shit. This was an I.C. base. Somewhere. And this was a prison area deep within it where the Nexus was housed. I had no doubt there was some kind of lab nearby. I hated the feel of the space, the confinement, knowing there was no escape except through the one door. I’d been within a cell not that different from this one recently, the guest of this blue fucker, and was shocked to realize I was not happy to be here, despite what my mate was offering. I’d tried to find a way to escape my cell, and I’d failed. There was no way out. Not back on Latiri 4 for me, and not here, now, for the blue asshole.
Turning my head, I took him in. He was cut, everywhere, but a thousand tiny slices appeared on his head as if the I.C. scientist had taken a special interest in that region, no doubt trying to figure out how they controlled the minds of the fighters and civilians they integrated. He was thinner, if that was possible. I had assumed he was all machine, but perhaps the biological part of his body had gone hungry. He was naked and I couldn’t help but stare at his patchwork of blue and silver pieces. He had ribs, as I did. Arms. Legs. But his dark blue torso was covered in twisting silver, his cock a strange, writhing thing that seemed to have a life of its own. And his dark, black eyes focused on me clearly, despite his weakened state.
“Here to finish me, Hunter?” The Nexus did not smile, nor did he appear to fear my response. And what was my response?
I looked him over and felt… nothing. I had no interest in lingering. I thought of the forest on Zioria, of chasing my mate through the open spaces, the humid air, the rugged terrain. The freedom.
I whipped my gaze to Niobe but she had on her vice admiral’s expression. Devoid of any emotion. In complete control. This was her doing, her choice. With her rank, access was easy. Even high-level access to personal transport beacons was within her reach.
Fuck.
She’d brought me to the Nexus unit for me to kill it. To finish it, like I’d wanted to when we’d captured it on Latiri 4. She’d refused to give in then, had stood her ground when not one, but several fighters had wanted to kill the Nexus, in direct opposition of her orders. She hadn’t given in then. Why was she giving in now?
Because I had. Because I had surrendered to her just as completely as she’d surrendered to me. Not during sex, but in life. In choosing her and the Coalition over my freedom as an Elite Hunter.
I felt cut open. Flayed wide. My heart beating outside of my chest. For this female. How had I been so lucky to be matched to her? She didn’t need me. Gods, she was smart, skilled, ruthless, cunning, in control of herself and everything around her. She was brave and had balls bigger than most males.
And she was mine.
I wanted to grab my mate, pull her into my arms and hug her. Kiss the hell out of her. Push her against the wall and fuck her long and hard. She was giving me what I’d wanted. What I thought I’d needed all along. Vengeance for my dead friends. Closure.
“Five minutes,” she repeated, glancing at the comm on her wrist.
Time I wouldn’t waste. I turned, stepped into the room. The door slid closed behind me. Without looking, I knew Niobe was not within. She waited in the corridor for me to have my time alone with the Nexus unit. To kill him, if that’s what I wished.
The Nexus unit was chained as I had been. He could not reach me if he tried.
We stared at one another and I felt the buzzing in my mind, the effect of his nearness on the microscopic integrations that remained in my body. I would never be completely free of him. Not even if I killed him. But he no longer had any influence over me. None.
Our gazes met, and although I felt a strange pull, one thought of Niobe and I had no trouble resisting his psychic influence.
“Nothing to say, Hunter?”
“I’m sorry.”
I’d never seen a Nexus unit before this one, and had never seen any emotion on his face during my captivity. But now, I saw surprise. “You apologize? Why?”
Taking a quick inventory of his shackles, his bruises and his lost weight, I knew he’d been through hell, just as I had been. “Because I’m not like you. I am not evil. I do not enjoy watching others suffer, even when they are an enemy.”
He blinked, the slow movement of his eyelids over the large, opaque disks strange to witness. “I am not evil. Evil does not exist. Good does not exist. Good. Evil. They are both nothing more than concepts for small minds.”
What the fuck was this thing talking about? And why was I talking to him at all?
No. I knew the answer to that question. Curiosity. A need to understand the enemy. “Then why fight this war? Why kill so many of our people?”
The Nexus tilted his head, as if confused. “War? We are not at war. We wish to learn and you resist.”
Learn? Was that what he called it? Taking good fighters and turning them into robots? Controlling their minds? Forcing them to kill their friends? Their families? Sometimes their own children?
“Why do you resist?”
“Because we choose to be individuals. We choose freedom.”
“Freedom is an illusion. Individuality is an illusion. This body, your body, both an illusion. You are already part of us.”
“No. We’re not. And we never will be.” He would never understand. My head understood that, even though my heart did not. How many buzzing minds did he share? How many integrated fighters’ thoughts did he hear? Was he ever alone in his own head? Had he ever been alone?
“The future is inevitable, Hunter. You will see. In the end, we are all one.”
Fuck that nonsense. As I waited to feel the urge to rip the head from his body, to set my ion pistol to the highest setting and finish him, I realized I didn’t want to. Not anymore.
My need to kill it had been so great I’d been blinded, even when Niobe had explained, spoken the truth. The Nexus unit was needed alive. My moment of justice for what he’d done to me was not important enough to supersede the victory that would be achieved by learning from the study of our enemy. Many lives could be saved if the Coalition could gain an understanding of how the Nexus unit worked. How it functioned. How it thought. By killing it, that data, that insight, would be lost.
And for what? My personal, petty need to destroy the one small piece of the Hive that had harmed me.
This was war, a war that had been going on for hundreds of years. I’d survived. Others had not. Even more wouldn’t if we didn’t make deliberate choices and study that which we hated.
If I hadn’t been captured, then Niobe wouldn’t have transported to me on Latiri 4. She wouldn’t have saved me or locked down the underground base. We would not have been able to save all the others or deliver a fucking Nexus unit to the I.C. Alive.
Because I’d been a prisoner, my integrations, my sacrifice, had allowed everything else to fall into place. Had my ultimate purpose as an Elite Hunter been to be captured? To be tortured and matched and saved and brought to this moment so that many millions more could be kept from a similar fate?
If I killed the fucker, my imprisonment would have been for nothing. The imprisonment of the others, their deaths, would have been—would be—for nothing.
No, it needed to remain alive, just as Niobe had said. The capture and study of the Nexus unit needed to be a victory for the Coalition, a reason for hope in this war.
It wasn’t about me. It wasn’t about her.
It was about good versus evil. Saving others.
I stepped back, sl
apped my hand on the wall and took one last look at the blue Nexus unit who now meant nothing to me.
He taunted me with words. “You will learn, Hunter. In the end, you will learn.”
His stoic finality was like an ion blast but the shot reflected off my mental armor.
It did not hit. Did not wound. Niobe had healed me, made me stronger. Stronger than the Nexus in this cell. Stronger than my past mistakes. Stronger than I had any right to be, but I would never stop fighting. Never give in. Never stop protecting what was mine. My life. My world. My mate. She was the universe now. My universe. And if Doctor Helion needed to torture and dissect the Nexus unit to help me protect her, so be it.
I turned on my heel and exited the cell. Niobe frowned the moment she saw me leave and spotted the still breathing enemy behind me chained to the wall.
The door slid closed and she stood close, looked into my eyes. “Why?”
I knew the depth of her question.
I stepped closer still, so our bodies brushed. The cell door sealed, the lock making a very distinct sound as my past echoed behind me and enclosed the Nexus unit within, where he would remain to be tested, analyzed. Used.
“Because he is the past. You, mate, are my future.”
I leaned forward, brushed my lips over hers.
She didn’t kiss me back, remained still. Perhaps I’d stunned her. Confused her with my reversal on the blue fucker.
“You’re sure?”
I nodded once, took her hand in mine.
“Positive. I am content to be yours. Your security. Your protection. Your mate. Just yours, Niobe.”
Her brow arched, studied me, perhaps to see if I spoke the truth, if I meant the words. She nodded, seemingly appeased.
She led me back toward the transport room, but glanced over at me.
“I love you, you know that?”
I smiled and tugged on her arm, kissed her again, because I could, because she was mine. “I know. I love you more.”
She raised a brow, the vice admiral’s cold, calculating assessment of my words apparent on her face… until she grinned up at me like a goddess who’d just been given a gift—and I realized that gift was me. I would care for her, protect her, love her, dedicate the rest of my life to making her happy and I couldn’t wait to get started.
Hunted: Interstellar Brides® Program- Book 17 Page 15
