Who was I kidding? I hadn’t had a single worthy thought in this skull since the moment I’d heard him roar and my body had taken over.
“I’m going to touch your face. Okay?”
When he remained silent I lifted my hands to his cheeks and held his face between them. His jaw was big. His lips…big. Everything was big. I wanted all of it.
“I know this is crazy, okay? I know. But you’re mine. My mate. I can’t explain it, I just know.”
“That is impossible.”
“All I know, Kovo, can I call you that?”
He gave me a barely perceptible dip of his chin in assent.
“All I know, Kovo, is that you’re mine. I can’t walk away. I can’t leave you. I want you.”
“I am to be executed in a matter of hours, my lady.”
“I don’t care.”
“I have been judged guilty of treason and murder. You should not debase yourself by touching me.”
“Did you do it?”
“To what do you refer?”
“Commit treason? Murder someone who didn’t deserve it?” I was no saint. The neighborhood we grew up in back on Earth didn’t allow for that kind of naïveté. There were people who needed to die. Evil people. I doubted it mattered much what planet one was from. Evil was evil. It was universal. Someone had to kill those creeps. I was okay with that.
I expected him to answer me with either a yes or a no. Instead, he turned his head slightly to the side and refused to meet my gaze.
My gut instinct told me he had done no such thing. “Why are you taking the fall for something you didn’t do?”
“Silence.” His head snapped back up and he glowered at me. “You will not say such things. I was judged. My sentence is death.” He lifted one hand and pointed to a countdown timer up in the corner of his cell, near the ceiling. “That is how much time I have left, my lady. You need to leave.”
“No.” I already knew about those stupid timers. I was going to fight to get him out of here. Find out what happened. Get him a better lawyer, or whatever they had on Atlan. Didn’t they have appeals? Mistrials? Did their law work that way? I had no idea.
Max would help me; I knew he would. He was rich. Mansions and servants and people nodding to him on the street, rich. My mom would help, as would Stephanie, and all of Max’s guards and friends and Atlans he knew. But to convince anyone to help me, I had to have some right to fight on Kovo’s behalf, to speak for him. I had to be his mate. He had to be mine. Mine, mine. Mating cuffs on my wrists, mine.
Thick cock buried deep inside me, mine.
Yes, please.
“I command you to leave, female. You must obey.”
“Only if I’m your mate. And, to be perfectly honest, probably not even then.” I placed my hands on his shoulders. “Do you have mating fever?”
“Of course.”
“How long?”
“To what do you refer?”
“How long have you suffered from mating fever?”
He shuddered. “Years.”
Years?No wonder he was so ready to die. Everything our stepfather told us about mating fever was terrible. Burning in the muscles. Fogged thinking. Irritability. Headaches. Cock aches—although Max had said something less crude, likeswollen, angry body parts.Yep. I knew exactly what he was talking about, especially after his face turned red.
Mom had kissed him then and shoed us out of the room. My sister and I hadn’t just left, we’dbolted.Still wasn’t sure we made it out of there before they were—umm. Not going to think about that.
