“It’s nothing.” She panted the words as she reached one of her delicate hands back over her shoulder and buried her fingers in my hair. She tilted her head as far as my hand around her neck would allow and pulled my head down, pricked her own flesh with my fangs. “Bite me. Do it. Fuck me. Your cock gets bigger, doesn’t it? You can make it huge and lock it inside me? Do it. And bite me. Just do it.Please.” She used her inner muscles to squeeze my cock as she made her plea and I nearly lost control, images of rutting into her like an animal, locking her to me with my mating fist as I sank my fangs deep, filled her with my essence, forced a groan from my lips.
She tempted a demon, the most primitive part of me wanted to do exactly as she asked, make her mine, claim her, own her body and soul. For if she were mine in truth, I would never let her go, even if she wanted me to. She could never leave me,never go back to her people, never return to Battleship Karter, to her place in the Coalition Fleet, her home world.
Obsession. Possession. If I survived, she would be mine.
“Mikos?” Her pussy tightened around my cock once more and I realized she knew exactly what she was doing. My hand contracted around her neck, just hard enough to get her to stop talking. Tempting. Teasing.
Fuck. “I am not an honorable male. I am a killer, an Enforcer, a thief and smuggler.”
“I don’t care what you are.”
“You do not want to be mated to someone like me.” I pulled my cock nearly free, then pushed deep, satisfied with the soft cry I forced from her lips. “I would control you, female. What you eat. What you wear. Where you go. Who you speak to. I would own you.” I did not speak the full extent of that truth. She would own me. If she were my mate, I could deny her nothing. Would always put her life before mine, her pleasure before mine. One touch, one smile, one whispered request, and I would destroy planets for her.
“No. It’s just fucking.” She gasped as I circled her clit with my finger. “Just for a few days.”
Fuck. She should not tempt me so when she offered exactly what I wanted, what my instincts demanded.
I could claim her. Were I to die at the hands of Drakdak and the Silver Scions, she would never know what she was to me, what claiming a mate meant to a male like me. All she would remember was pleasure.
The thought gave me pause and I stopped moving, frozen with indecision.
Her hips froze, no longer pushing against me. She stilled in my arms as if she sensed the war that raged within me. “Mikos, I know I’m not your mate. It’s okay. I don’t want a mate. But if we are only going to be together for a few days, I want everything Ican get. All of you. And I want you to enjoy yourself, too. I want you to fuck me and bite me and I don’t want you holding back. I need this. I need you right now. All of you.”
She was winning. Who the fuck was I kidding? I wanted to claim her more than her human mind could comprehend. “Tell me the truth. Tell me what upset you earlier, and I will do as you ask, female.” I shifted my hips and pressed deeper, pushed my mating fist inside her hot, wet heat. As if my body had been waiting for this, for her, my entire life, the mating fist began to swell. Soon, there would be no turning back. No change of plans. No chance for her to escape.
“It’s nothing. It’s stupid.”
“Tell me.” I rubbed the sensitive tips of my fangs over the soft skin of her shoulder. Back and forth.
“You can’t tell anyone.”
I snorted. I would kill any male who knew my mate’s secrets, her weaknesses, her fears.
“Okay.” She rested the back of her head against my shoulder and turned slightly to look up into my eyes. I held her gaze with a seriousness I’d never felt before as my mate whispered her secrets to me. “I’m afraid of dirt. Rocks. Being underground. I got buried in a Hive facility with my ReCon team for a few days, and now I’m terrified of dirt. I can be on a ship, in a tiny space, and be fine. But if there’s dirt or rocks, I panic. It’s stupid.”
“Fear is irrational and unforgiving. It has nothing to do with intelligence.” I tilted my head and placed a trail of kisses along her cheek to her ear. “What else?” I saw her tears. “Your tears were not about rocks.”
She sighed and tried to turn her face away.
I used the hand around her neck to block the movement and gently turn head. The sadness in her eyes caught me off guard and I should have issued an order. It felt like a plea. “Do not hide from me.”
She closed her eyes, but gave me what I wanted. “My father died when I was young. I was missing him.”
“There is more. Tell me.” She would not work so diligently to hide her love for her father.
“I had… I was in love once. His name was Robert. Robbie. We were engaged to be married. Mated, I guess you would call it, on Earth.” She spoke of another even as my mating fist invaded her wet pussy, swelled in preparation for claiming her. I didn’t fucking care who she loved in the past. She was mine now. I only cared about her pain.
“What happened to this male you loved?” I knew. The sadness in her gaze told me the answer, but I needed to hear the truth from her. Needed her to trust me with this piece of heart.
“He was captured by some drug dealers. They tortured him for information and then dumped him at my feet. They killed him because of me. Because I made a mistake. I trusted the wrong person. The traitor was an FBI agent, a supposed ally. I told him too much, didn’t realize he was on the cartel’s payroll until it was way too fucking late.”
“You were betrayed. His death was not your fault.”
“Yeah, right.” Her self-hatred angered me. “I know that, in my head. My heart isn’t quite there yet.” She sighed, the sound so utterly and completely defeated, I almost regretted asking.
“Every man I’ve ever loved has died and left me alone.” Using her inner muscles, she squeezed my cock once more, forced a moan from my suddenly raw throat. “That’s why I don’t want a mate. I can’t go through that again. I can’t fall in love with you, Mikos. This can only be sex.”
The gods themselves would damn me for eternity if I tormented my beautiful mate with yet another loss. I could not tell her the truth until after the Silver Scions were defeated. If I were to die, she would not grieve my loss. I vowed it.
