There was nowhere for him to retreat inside this tiny escape pod, and I was certain he regretted that very much now. His teeth snapped together in my face, like he wanted to bite my nose off, but he wouldn’t. His arms were still around me, holding me tohis chest, pinning me in his lap: a chaotic contradiction, push and pull.
“Mate?” he growled from between clenched teeth, a vein pulsing at his temple and fury radiating from his eyes. “You think you want to be my mate? Just when I was starting to think you were no idiot.” Oh, the self-loathing in those words was so intense, it practically crawled down my spine, leaving me feeling dirtied myself. Well, he could be messed up, I was too, after what I’d been through.
“We won’t know until we give it a try, will we?” I asked. I didn’t think that would get me what I wanted. There was no way this Talacan was even remotely capable of saying soft, sweet things. That should make me run, but I’d had relationships with all the right words and gestures, and they hadn’t worked out. Maybe it was time to see what was on the other side. His genetics were telling us we’d be perfect together, but a mating drive that was all about procreation didn’t mean we were right for one another. Just that we’d make strong kids. Romantic, I was not.
I didn’t expect Sin to take my words at face value, but I should have. “Try? You want to try me out before you decide?” It was utter fury—rage—and I wasn’t prepared for what he’d do. His kiss was no longer about shutting me up. No, it was all seduction this time. I felt a niggle of worry, because part of me knew this was wrong, the wrong kind of motivation for him to kiss me. But the kiss? It was so good, it didn’t matter anyway.
Under his onslaught, my thoughts fled, and my body became all instinct and sensation. My hands were on his neck, stroking the sleek skin down to the collar of his armor. He was all hard edges and metal, but that only inflamed me as he began pulling thetabs on my uniform jacket. In seconds, he had me draped over his arm, his mouth on my nipple, sucking on it through the thin fabric of my camisole. The pleasure was so sharp and bright that my thighs wanted to squeeze tightly together. Sin’s slender waist pinned between them.
He could do anything he wanted to me then. The desire to fall apart, to fly while he touched me, was all-consuming. I made no protests as he shed more of my clothes with competent hands. Camisole vanishing over my head, my pants freed at the waist so his clever fingers could slide in. The brush of his thumb over my clit made me see stars, and the curl of a finger into my weeping passage made me combust. I flew apart, moaning his name—or perhaps just naming what it was we were doing: sinning.
His fingers were rough on my skin, sliding along my spine and into my pants from behind to cup my ass and lift me. He had to be short on hands, but the fabric slipped from my thighs and tangled around one ankle. My panties tore when he pulled the hand cupped around my pussy away with a rough curse. I felt a breath of cool air against my folds, my body weightless, tangled in his grip, in his symbiont.
“Is this what you meant, Frederique?” he demanded, the space between us barely enough for me to glance down at his lap. My breathing stalled, my body suspended over his thighs in silver, my legs spread wide so my most private parts were exposed. The symbiont had slid away from his body to hold me, and he’d split his black armor open across his chest, displaying a ridge of defined abs, his heavy pecs, and gleaming gray skin marked with glowing lines that, if you squinted, just might be text in letters that couldn’t be deciphered.
What drew my eyes most was the thick cock rising from his groin—silver gray, the head sharp and a lurid shade of purple. It was mostly human in shape, but dauntingly big, as was everything about him—thick as my wrist, long as my forearm. Here, his symbiont clung in writhing, silver tendrils and ridges.
It was a good thing he did not seem to expect an answer from me; his hands curled around my hips, touching bare skin with cool fingers. It was domineering, possessive, the way he yanked me forward into his lap, raising me over his jutting cock. There was no dawdling, no foreplay, just a rough thrust into my core. I knew I shouted, pain and pleasure blending as he stretched me wide. My body was unprepared for his size but inflamed enough to part for him anyway. The shock of that shove was fire to my nerves, and I shuddered around him, clasping, spasming, tightening until it became a squeeze.
“This is on you. You started this; you finish it,” Sin snarled, but his hands were moving me with a gentle tug, followed by a firmer push that made him sink in another inch. I groaned when his thick length touched my G-spot, my thighs trembling against his legs. If he wanted me to ride him, to take control, he had a funny way of showing it. His hands got more forceful with each thrust, his hips moving up in time with his hands pushing my body down. He filled me, and then he filled me some more, until there was no me and no him—there was just us.
I opened my mouth, maybe to tell him to let me take charge, maybe to tell him to keep doing exactly what he was doing. All of it felt good, even if he was too big, even if he was too rough, maybe because of it. He didn’t give me a chance to speak, his eyes sharp and taunting, then shuttering as he closed them. Hismouth was on mine, our tongues tangling the way lower, our bodies colliding in a dance as old as time.
I had not even managed to take all of him yet when I came, shattering around his thick length. Then each drop of pleasure seemed pulled from me, prolonged, drawn out. His cock, ribbed and moving, sought out the most sensitive spots inside me. That was all him—his symbiont—not his Talacan physical features. It was unexpected, a scintillating shock to be touched that way; at its crescendo, I might have blacked out.
Sin held me, and so did Val, curled around my shoulders and along my spine, shackling my throat and my wrists, pinning my legs apart across his lap so he had full access. Then it even dripped down, liquid swirling over my bare belly, coiling between my folds where they were luridly parted by Sin’s thick cock. The touch to my clit was too much. I crashed again, thrashing, shouting in pleasure, shamelessly moaning.
He swore as if that were a bad thing, and the glow of his silver eyes went dark, like a thundercloud, again. “Did I give you what you asked for?” he asked, his tone mocking, but his cock thrust back in roughly, feeling even thicker to my inflamed body. “Or do you want my seed too?” Still, he gave me no chance to answer, his hands pressing me so hard down into his lap that, finally, the last of him filled me. He had stuffed me so fully that it felt like he could touch my soul, or maybe the fucking back of my throat. He pulsed then, in rapid convulsions, one after the other, trembling against my G-spot while his symbiont pinched around my clit.
He came; I came. It was messy, and it felt good, even if Sin bit down hard on his lower lip with razor-sharp fangs and never so much as made a sound. I felt deprived, my eyes stinging wetlyas I met his gaze. He still seemed angry, and the pleasure ebbed abruptly, icy water splashing down my spine. Oh no, what had I done? What had just happened?
This time, I was the one who wanted to retreat, but he wouldn’t let me. No, he kept me pinned in his lap, naked, while he was still mostly dressed. He pinned me so I could feel each inch of his long cock, still hard as steel, deep inside me. “How did I do? Hmm? Good enough for a mate, or just good enough to fuck?” Like this was an audition and not the most important discovery in both our lives. He sought to cheapen it, to make this transactional rather than meaningful. He didn’t want a partner, he’d just done this to put me in my place.
My dignity in tatters, my heart shredded—even though I felt like I had no right to feel that way, all I could do was lift my chin and mask my pain. “You’ll do,” I said, never clarifying which of the two.You’ll do.It tasted like ashes in my mouth.
Chapter 9
The Sineater
I was very good at making myself feel like shit, but what I’d done this time was probably my worst move ever. Frederique—small, brave little human that she was—had more guts than I had in my pinky finger. She’d known, and what had I done? I’d slapped her in the face, made her feel cheap and dirty. Made myself feel that way too.
The tiny escape pod was so small that there was no escaping one another, but all my anger—all my rage—had withered until I felt like I was about to fade into the walls. She could not retreat from me, though she clearly wanted to, and I could not leave her and her feelings in peace. No, what she felt now was so richly fulfilling to Val that it was a veritable banquet: pain, shame, despair, and yes, all the grief from before over discovering the loss of her crew, piling on top of it.
I’d played my crewmates, incited their feelings, sometimes to feed, sometimes because I knew, in the end, it would help them see the light. It had never made me feel like shit, but this did. If I could take it back, I would, the words, not the sex. This was probably when I owed her an apology, but those words never managed to pass across my lips.
Val was feeding, soaking it up, and still, it was not enough to lessen the intense things Frederique was feeling. Never did any of it show on her face—not when I finally released her so she could slip off my cock, not when she cleaned up with the scraps of her torn panties, and not when she dressed in her uniform.In the limited space, all of it meant touching me, bumping into me when she stuck her legs in her pants, a brush as she sat back down against my knees. It all felt cold, impersonal, distant. She had retreated in her mind, even if she could not create physical distance.
I told myself it was better this way. She couldn’t be my mate, given the wreck my life was. My bond with Val was messed up; I’d mess up the one with Frederique even worse. I already had. I slanted a look her way through my lashes and ached when I realized her lower lip was trembling.
Val hadn’t cradled my body in armor since I’d started the sensual dance with my mate. Now I realized that she had not returned at all; she was on the other side of the tiny pod, wrapped around Frederique’s shoulders like a cloak. It might simply be to give her easier access to all the things my mate was feeling—to feed—but I had a sinking feeling that it was not. I’d managed to piss off both my ladies in one fell swoop.
I didn’t know how to fix any of it, and I was actually relieved when an alarm started blaring. A distraction, we could all use that, even if it came in the form of a dangerous alien life form attacking a tiny, fragile little escape pod.
Val responded to the emergency by circling my mate and creating protective armor that covered her entire body. She made a surprised sound but quickly muffled it. Hunching over the control panel forced my shoulder into her face, but I could not feel the warmth of her breathing through the armor, only the ghost of it against the edge of my neck. I forced myself to focus on the emergency, quickly appraising the risk and our options.There was no way I’d let Frederique into the water, where they could grab hold of her.
“Hold on tight,” I warned, though it was mostly for Val, so she could secure my mate against the coming acceleration. I forced the pod to divert power from life support to the engines, and it leaped toward the surface. Though capable of flight, the pod was never meant to go far and was better suited for space than atmosphere. We were lucky to have gotten this close to the ocean’s surface already. There wasn’t enough power to get us out of range of the shadowy threat and to the strip of rock in the distance.
Lifting my hand, I thumped it against the tightly sealed hatch. “It’s going to be rough,” I warned. She resisted when I grabbed her around the waist, but Val slid over her head, covering her face with a helmet. I never heard her words as I gave the hatch another strike. It spun away, and the pod lost all pressure. We didn’t need it—Ysa’s armor also came with a helmet and oxygen. It slid over my face, and then I was throwing both of us out of the narrow opening. The boosters in my suit did the rest. Val kept Frederique’s body safely encased and protected, but I still cradled her carefully against my chest as we flew.
