He hauled me over his shoulder like I was a sack of potatoes, my stomach colliding roughly with his silver shoulder. With an “oomph,” all the air left my lungs, and briefly, I struggled to breathe. My head spun when he turned and charged back the way he’d come. I could hear Mandy calling someone on her comm, the other ladies talking loudly together, and one baby crying. Like earlier, when we’d left the crowd at the med bay in the dust, Sin turned a corner, and the sound cut off.
Then I was alone with him again.
Chapter 16
The Sineater
I was so angry that it was beyond me to say anything. Running through theVarakartoomwith Frederique over my shoulder, I moved too fast for Mitnick to anticipate my path this time. At the very least, he didn’t have time to warn people to get out of the way. We caught Raukesh by surprise as he was leaving the gym, bowling over the Tarkan male so that his leathery wings slapped against the wall. He boldly called me names in my wake, but I barely heard them over the sound of blood rushing in my ears.
Frederique was quiet, hanging calmly in my grip with not an ounce of fear in her scent. That crazy female was getting too used to me, she didn’t know what was good for her. She should have stayed put in my chambers, where I knew she was safe. When I bowled Flack out of the way, I nearly ran headfirst into Jaxin, who was right behind the Quartermaster. “Watch it, Sineater!” the Rummicaron Weaponmaster snarled, and his laser cannon went up as if he felt like shooting me with it. Val covered my face and slid further over Frederique, concentrating on protecting her. The shark snarled, knowing firing a shot was pointless—then I left the pair of them in the dust, too.
The door to my quarters was wide open, the way I’d left it when I’d charged out to search for my missing mate. Nobody would have dared to even glance inside, so I was not surprised that the place was undisturbed. The open door meant my mate’s scent had drifted away, though, and that was not right. She had to be in there, clinging to every surface.
I tossed her on the bed, where I’d left her, where I’d pictured her sleeping while I was away. She bounced and yelped, Val sliding away to reveal she wore nothing except one of my Aderian silk robes. She looked ridiculous, ridiculously sexy, especially with her military-issue boots sticking out from underneath and the front falling open to expose her naked legs.
I let Val melt away from the rest of my body as well. From the corner of my eye, I could see her pool together and reshape into her favorite Gracka hound form. She slipped away to give us some privacy, or maybe to hide from the fallout of my fury. I glared at the subject of my anger, and she glared right back at me. Crawling to her knees, she planted her fists on her hips and faced off against me as if she were a warrior, a tiny, frizzy-haired little warrior.
Something cracked inside my chest, and the anger shifted, exposing the raw fear underneath. Damn it. This was irrational, it made no sense. This wasn’t like back on that dangerous water planet, where I’d left her unguarded and she’d nearly paid the price. She was perfectly safe on theVarakartoom, wherever she went, but something inside me was dead certain that if she left my protection, she’d pay the price. Or perhaps I was the one who would pay…she’d find another male to add to her harem. She’d discover she wanted more than just this broken Son of Ragnar and failure of a Talacan.
“You cannot do that,” she said, speaking before I could. Her green eyes flashed like wildfire, her fury as raw and powerful as my own. “I am not some prize you can haul off like a fucking caveman, Sin. You cannot lock me up. Do you hear me?” She pointed her finger at me, waving it through the air as she spoke,and I tracked it as it came perilously close to jabbing me in the chest.
“No,” I snapped, and I caught that impertinent finger in my fist. Her skin was cool, or maybe my flesh was just hot. “You need to hear me,” I said, pulling on her hand and hauling her across the bed until she was right on the edge, right up against my chest. I trapped her there so she could not squirm away. “I do not share, and you cannot leave. You wanted this, you dared me, and this is what you get.” I dipped my head to kiss her, but her enraged howl halted me in my tracks.
“I don’t think so, mister. You can be bossy when there’s danger, but in your own freaking bedroom? You only get to be bossy if I say so!” she raged right back. We both stared, chests heaving in time with our ragged breathing. Then the absurdity of her statement sank in. I could be bossy when she said I could be? What the blazing stars was that supposed to mean? My mouth twitched, the corner shifting. Then, before I knew it, a laugh—rough and husky—escaped.
“Do you hear yourself, mate?” I huffed. Her hands were curled against my shoulders as fists, but they softened, smoothed out to lie on my armor more like a caress. Her mutinous expression shifted, turned lighter, until she smiled back at me. It did something funny to my chest, and that crack I’d felt earlier grew a bit larger. I wasn’t sure if it felt good or ached, I just knew I didn’t want it to stop.
“I would have told you where I was if I had a comm to call you with, you know…” she said, as if that made all of it right. I stared at her, the strained laugh petering out as I thought about that. Call me? She would do that? Her brow furrowed a little. “ButI was told theVarakartoomis perfectly safe, so why are you acting like it isn’t, caveman?” She jabbed a finger at me again, then smoothed it over the spot as if she felt bad for doing it. This woman… she made no sense at all.
“It is dangerous,” I began to say, but then I shook my head, because, intellectually, I knew it wasn’t true. “No,” I said, trying to figure this out as I went. I’d never had to explain my thoughts to anyone, and it was hard. “It feels dangerous to me…”
“Oh, Sin,” Frederique sighed, all soft and understanding. Something in her eyes told me she knew something I had yet to figure out, and I didn’t like it one bit. She was softening even further in my arms, though, and I definitely liked that part.
“I’m really not going anywhere, you know? Where would I go? My world is dead, my friends are gone, and my mission pointless. You’re not the only one adrift.” That settled a heavy weight of guilt onto my shoulders, and I was once again reminded of how much she’d gone through in so short a time. For her, it must have seemed like her friends had been alive just yesterday, instead of seven hundred years ago. I was the bastard complicating it all with my selfish instincts and irrational fears. Rather than embrace her—offer to be the mate she deserved—I tossed her around like a plaything.
She was the one who kissed me, lifting herself against me to brush her mouth to my lips. Her warm breath mingled with mine, and her taste consumed my mind. Yeah, all right. I could kiss her, I could pleasure her, show her how good things could be between us. Maybe I wanted to prove to myself, this time, that I could be the right male for her, the only male.
***
Frederique
The shift in him was sudden and abrupt; I could feel it against my mouth. He went from that confused anger to something heated and sensual. The man they called Sineater, although I had a feeling they’d never meant to describe this kind of ‘sin’ with the moniker. “Kiss me, Sin,” I whispered against his mouth, and he did, his tongue dipping deep, stroking along my own.
My mind wanted to shout at me in warning. This was a mistake, just like last time had been a mistake. Then, he’d used sex like a weapon, and I had not seen it until after it was over. This was different, though, then, everything had been rough, furious, fast. I’d felt pleasure then beyond my wildest dreams, but what he started this time was more. Somehow, it was more. Like he’d set his mind to tempting me until I surrendered. Maybe he was using his body as a tool once again, but this time not to drive me away, but to tie me to him—to get me to obey, to get me to agree to stay locked in his room and wait for him like an obedient little wife. The scary part was, itwastempting to let him do that to me, to be cared for, never to worry about anything big and crazy, like the fate of an entire planet.
“Let me,” he drawled, his voice turning sinfully husky. He was on the path of seduction now, and I was too weak to resist. I let him sweep me off my feet, I couldn’t help it. He smelled too good, and the marks hinting at our mate bond glimmered like foreign script and elegant lines beneath his purplish-gray skin. As he laid me back down on the bed, it felt like he was on the prowl, a predator zeroing in on his prey. His hands went for the sash around my waist, undoing it with quick fingers. He partedthe silky fabric slowly, like he was savoring every moment, every inch of skin revealed.
My breath hitched with anticipation, my thighs clenched tightly together. His shoulders were so wide, clad in the black armor customary for all crew on this ship. I curled my fingers into the bedspread, tensing. Could I touch him, or would he push me away? His hand was so gentle when he ran the calloused tips of his fingers along my calf. Everything tingled, and I forced myself to breathe, to keep breathing, and to watch.
Every shift in his expression, the play of the marks that lined his skin, each minute tilt of his lips—he brushed a kiss to the side of my knee and, with gentle pressure, spread my thighs. “Nothing at all under that robe, do you?” he drawled. His silver eyes shimmered, hinting at the fire banked within, the fire waiting to be unleashed. I shook my head, and the flames danced behind those mysterious orbs. “Good,” he said. “Very good.”
His mouth returned to my skin, and I lost all sense of time as he spent long, sensual moments laving my body and stroking his hands along every sensitive place I possessed—and more—discovering a few new ones in the process. The curve of my elbow, the edge of my shoulder, the line of my hipbone; he explored them all until he finally settled between my thighs and lapped at my folds. Every sense of urgency that had riddled our last encounter was absent this time. He took his time, and when I tried to urge him on, he pinned me in place, first with his hands, and then with sleek shackles of silver.
“No, this time I’ll show you what you’re really getting into. This is not a game,” he warned me. I wriggled against him anyway, desperate to feel his touch again and to fall over the edge he hadme hanging on. Not a game? He certainly knew how to play my body, press every button, ignite each point of pressure. He gave in just enough to drive me utterly crazy: a stroke of his finger through my folds, a brush against my clit that made stars march across my vision.
“Sin… please,” I begged. So what if he was a caveman, so what if he liked getting his way far too much? As long as he let me come right now, all was fine. I must have bitten my lip hard enough to make it bleed, because he tsssked with displeasure and leaned in to lick the small wound. Then cool silver slid from his wrist, down one long finger, and sleeked across my skin, healing me.
“Behave, Frederique. I need you to…” he trailed off, because I’d discovered that he had released one ankle when he reached for my mouth. I curled my leg up and threw it around his hip, arching against him. He growled when my wet folds slid against him.
