She waseverything. Theonlything. Perfect. Beautiful. Fierce. Fearless.
Mine.
16
Breanna
When I could breathe again,Mikos’s swollen cock finally settled down enough to slip out of me and I reached for my pants—still around my knees because he’d been in such a hurry to get inside me—and pulled them back into place.
Being with Mikos was literally going to kill me. My heart threatened to pound out of my chest. I should be angry about the things he said. Threatening to kill Commander Karter? He was insane.
Worse, I believed him.
Worse than worse, his bossy, possessive, violent nature turned me on.
I’d never had anyone choose me over everything else. Everyone else. Not my mother when she went into her depression, then started cheating on my daddy because she was lonely, not when her new husband took her on fancy vacations and left me home.
Not my real father. That was for damn sure. He chose his military service. The men in his unit were closer than brothers.I understood now that I’d served. I understood him in a way I hadn’t when I was a child. Didn’t make being left behind easier to feel.
This thing between me and Mikos? It was dangerous. Obsessive. Probably not healthy in a thousand mental health-ish ways, and I didn’t care. I wanted him like this, growly, possessive, bossy, brutal, protective, obsessed. Especially obsessed. The thought of him wanting another woman, looking at another woman, touching another woman, was enough to make me ready to claw the imaginary woman’s eyes from her skull, throw her eyeballs on the floor, and stomp them under my boot heels.
Maybe Mikos was making me crazy, too. Or maybe I’d always been like this and I never let it out, hid who I really was from myself and the rest of the world. Robbie always told me he wanted a feminine wife. So when we dated, then became engaged, I’d played that part, too. Gun and badge all day, lipstick and high heels if we went out at night. He’d spent a small fortune on lingerie and, even when I wore it for him, hestillmade comments about how muscular my back was, how big my hands. He loved me enough to propose, but I always knew he wished I was different. More petite. Feminine.
There was nothing I could do to satisfy him in that way. I was almost six feet tall and I worked out almost every day of my life. Being delicate and fragile didn’t make sense when I went from the military to law enforcement. I didn’t like feeling weak.
Having a taste for fine wine and a master’s degree hadn’t saved him from being tortured and killed by the cartel. Robbie had been intelligent, educated, and cultured. He knew what fork to use at the fancy restaurants, and what wine tasted best with an entrée. He was also physically fit, a great shot, and had good instincts. None of it had saved him. In the end, he’d been broken.
Losing him had nearly broken me. I’d vowed never to fall in love again, never care that much. It was too big of a risk.
So why was I so content in Mikos’s arms? So unafraid?
Because Mikos was unbreakable.
I’d seen him in chains, bloody and cut to pieces, tortured by the Hive. Even after everything they’d done to him, he’dstillbeen strong enough to save my life. No one was going to take him by surprise. He wasn’t going to follow any stupid rules, laws, or protocols that gave the bad guys the advantage and would just get him killed.
Mikos didn’t follow the rules. He didn’t care about laws. He would do what needed to be done to survive, to protect me. Keep me. Love me.
Did he love me? Did it matter? He wasn’t human, he was an alien, and he chose me.
Fuck the Coalition. I was choosing him back. If he could be an outlaw, I could, too. Sure, I would try to figure out a legal way to get out of the rest of my time with the Coalition Fleet. But if Karter said no? Well, tough shit. I was out. Mikos was mine.
“The guard will be back soon.” I straightened my clothes and forced myself to do the one thing in the world I hated to do, give up. Let him take control. Trust. Trust that he would take care of whoever this child-torturing alien asshole’s brother was without being executed tomorrow. Trust that he’d figure out a way to get me out of the rest of my Coalition Fleet contract. Trust him to kill whoever needed killing and come home to me.
I knew he didn’t believe he was a good man. He told me so himself.
He was wrong. He protected the people he cared about. Everyone I met in Astra Legion worshiped the ground he walked on. Even Barek and Astra, who seemed like the two leaders of the whole group, talked about him like he was family.
I wanted to be his family. I wanted to be someone’s—his—everything.
When we were both dressed, I crawled onto his lap and let him hold me. “What now?”
“You will go back to Astra territory with Barek, and I will take care of things tomorrow.” His matter-of-fact tone, his confidence, earned him a kiss, and acceptance. This was his world, not mine. Either I trusted him, or I lost my mind.
“Promise me you won’t let them kill you.”
His chuckle made me smile, despite the fact that there was probably two hundred billion tons of moon rock over our heads. I’d been so distracted and worried about Mikos, I hadn’t noticed I was underground until now. With his arms around me, the fear faded to background noise. Unimportant.
“I will not die tomorrow, mate.”
