“Yeah. I can get the rest.” When Mikos grunted at me to hurry, I pulled off my helmet and shoved both gloves inside. I set it down on the floor. Much better. All the sensor scans and comms scrolling on the inside of the visor cluttered my vision. Total distraction.
Or maybe I just wanted to look at this guy with my own eyes. Becausewow.
“I’m Breanna, but everyone calls me Bree.” The thick band of metal around his waist fell away and I crouched down to inspect the backs of his boots—and those electrical wires that could unleash unexpected hell on both of us. I had zero desire to turn either of us into smoke and ash. His firm ass and legs were literally right in front of me. Right. There. I wanted to touch. Nuzzle. Comfort him, not that he’d accept that kind of overture from me. He had to be in so much pain. I couldn’t stop every feminine part of me from admiring his strength. So. Much. Power.
Down girl. Jeez. Havesomeclass. Drooling over a bloody, beaten prisoner was not cool. Not okay.
I couldn’t stop. Seemed my conscience and my libido were at odds. I never had this problem back on the battleship. No Atlan had ever made me lose my damn mind in a hormone rush. What was it about this guy that made me want to strip naked and beg him to fuck me until I passed out?
Stay on task. That’s all I could do. I got down on my knees to take a closer look at the boots. There were three pin shaped objects sticking out of the back of each boot. Each pin was attached to three wires, and those wires ran to some kind of control unit embedded in the wall.
“Am I going to electrocute us if I touch the wires?” I asked him. Why not? He might know.
“Do not bother with the wires. The release is on the front, just below the knee.”
See? Very helpful. Stoic. So unlike the twenty-something Warlords on the battleship who strutted around on testosterone overload trying to prove how tough they were. This one had some age on his face, a darkness in his gaze that the younger fighters didn’t carry. This wasn’t a good guy. Mikos was a survivor, and what he’d survived had made him a monster.
I could relate. Sometimes, breaking the rules was the only way to survive. Sometimes I had to be the monster. God bless my dark side. That mean bitch had saved my life more than once.
I crawled around to the front of the boots and locked my gaze below his knees. I’d seen the bulge of his cock. Last thing I needed was to kneel in front of him and have his manly partsright in front of my face.
The locking mechanism looked like a metallic version of buckles on a ski boot. I wedged my fingers under the buckle’s edge and pulled. Hard.
They didn’t budge. “Shit. Henry?” I glanced at my partner over my shoulder. “I can’t get these buckles. I could use my rifle as leverage, but?—”
“No thanks. I’ve been shot enough today.”
I grinned and moved out of the way so Henry could tackle the buckles. I was strong, but he was stronger. Just a biological fact I didn’t bother to analyze or question. Knowing my limitations helped me survive out here.
Didn’t stop me from smiling when Henry cursed. “Fuck. These things are impossible.”
Mikos,Astra Legion
The human malewas too weak to remove the boots. Fuck. Humans. So small. So fucking weak.
So why did my cock harden at the scent of the female’s, of Breanna’s, skin? Why did the riot of short, dark brown curls on her head make my fingertips burn to touch? Her light brown skin shimmered in the light, covered with a light coating of moisture I longed to see covering her from head to toe as I fucked her until she begged for mercy. For release. Formore.
My fangs elongated, dripped with the need to claim her, inject her with my essence. Heal her. Make her strong. Infuse every cell in her body with my scent, my protection. Most of all, drive her mad with desire, flood her body with euphoric pleasure. My essence would arouse her and ready her for a proper claiming, make sure she could take the mating fist at the base of my cock.
I was no Atlan. I did not suffer the mind-eroding terror of mating fever. My ancestors were cousins of the Atlans. My species evolved on a sister planet in the Atlan’s home star system. Forsia. Even if we did not lose control of our minds like the Atlans did, our males suffered the same physical agony, an identical need to find and claim a mate. The familiar pain settled into my bones as my essence dripped onto my tongue. The taste threatened to drive me mad.
The Hive could not break me. For more than six days they tortured me, forced mind altering drugs into my system. Still, I resisted.
In a matter of minutes this small, human female threatened to unravel what remained of my sanity. Since birth I’d been told claiming a mate was impossible, that my bite was poison. That to claim any female would guarantee her death. Thanks to an unlucky reaction between Forsian and Hyperion DNA, injecting any female with our essence was fatal. Every Forsian hybrid on Rogue 5, my brethren in Astra Legion, had been taught this fact.
We fucked for pleasure, for a distraction. The few, like me, born on Rogue 5, were the product of casual fucking. Unplanned pregnancies. We served Astra, kept one another in line, andneverfucked the same female more than once. I didn’t bother to search for a mate of my own or lie to myself about what would happen if I found a suitable female. I made peace with what I was many years ago.
Yet here she was, looking at me with dark brown eyes. Unafraid. I could smell the wet heat of her pussy, her arousal. She would not resist.
Fuck!
I breathed her in and cursed my cock for growing hard, my heart for pounding.
Thisis what I feared would happen if I found my mate.This madness. Instincts as old as time rose from the depths of my soul, whispered savage, wicked, impossible things inside my head.
I could take her here, now. Make her mine. Kill her human companion, shove her against the wall and fuck her. Bite her. Mark her. Give her the gift of my essence.
No.She was Coalition. A fighter. Strictly off limits. Our leader, Astra, would flay me alive if I violated our tenuous peace with the Interstellar Coalition. That would be if I wasn’t executed the moment I set foot on Rogue 5. Which was a very real possibility and the reason I had not been home in more than eight years.
