My eyes flicked to the big beast, black and hulking. Val had reached him, and they were nosing at one another. Big and shimmering black, the bear—with shark-like fins on his shoulders—seemed inordinately gentle, far kinder in the way he responded to the slinky, small, silver-and-black-streaked Val than the Talacan was acting toward my mate.
“And you’ve got a cure now? Do you?” Sin responded, his voice so cold it could give frostbite. He didn’t believe it for a minute, didn’t want to hope. I didn’t blame him. Seven hundred years believing this couldn’t change… this had to be hard. It was so hard he couldn’t even talk to me about it. It brought a sting of pain, followed by a whole lot of empathy. That wasn’t a rejection of me; those were patterns he had to unlearn, and he was. And that was good enough. I might not have been a believer once, but I knew now that the mate bond was far more than biological. I had faith in him, in us.
Devan did not answer immediately but cocked his head to study Val and her strangely streaked appearance. “It appears I’ve come at exactly the right time. I’ll need a lab to work from, but yes, I do believe I can… reinitialize the establishment of the bond the right way.” He swept his hand between Val and Sin to indicate which bond he was referring to. “Data indicated that during your bonding there was a power surge, an uncorroborated fluke. When it happened again, I could be more certain.”
“It happened again?” Sin asked faintly. The idea was clearly so abysmal to him that his shock could not be hidden. “Some other poor guy got dealt the same hand I did?” he asked. He appeared to struggle to comprehend that, and relating the situation to something as random as a power surge meant it wasn’t anything he’d failed to do, just something he’d had the bad luck to be a victim of. If there was one thing I knew, it was that Sin could not handle that kind of thinking easily. He might have had rotten luck in life, but he was not a victim—he could not think of himself that way.
“Not he,” Devan said, either choosing not to respond or truly oblivious to Sin’s surprise. “She. I have not yet been able to fixher bond with her symbiont.” The words trailed off when Sin abruptly launched to his feet and snarled.
“Her? Are you saying there are female pairings now? And you’re just here to see me so you can help her, that’s it? I’m a stepping stone? How did you even find me? I made damn sure to vanish, to never leave a trace, to never…” He trailed off, because he did not need to finish that. It was sad, lonely—the life he’d led—all so that he could keep himself separate from the world he’d once belonged to.
At least now, Devan seemed to know that he was touching some very raw nerves. Perhaps he was not as cold and calculating as I’d first given him credit for. He slowly rose from his seat as well, and the two faced off, equally tall, equally imposing. Devan spoke very gently, though, the way you might to a spooked animal. “No, her situation just reminded me of my failure to you, Damor. It was sheer luck that an article by one Harper O’Neill drifted into the Alpha Quadrant and talked of the great crew of theVarakartoom. I would never have found you otherwise.”
An article by Harper… Sin’s eyes went from the Son of Ragnar to me, huge, silver, and so incredulous that it was almost comical. I reached for his hand and gently curled my fingers around it, squeezing when I realized just how cold and clammy those strong digits were. “I guess you got lucky this once, Sin,” I said to him. Then I realized what I’d said and backtracked, “I mean, Damor…” I hadn’t meant for that to sound like I was upset with him for not sharing his real name, but that was clearly how he took it.
He twisted, turning his back on his guest, wanted, unwanted; on that, the jury was still out. Pulling his hand free, he reachedfor me, cupping my face with both palms. “I’ve not been that male in so long… I would have told you if I thought it mattered. But you’re wrong. I’ve been lucky before.” He leaned closer and pressed his forehead to mine, shutting out the world around us. “I was extremely lucky when I found your stasis pod, for instance.”
The room felt warmer after those words, which I knew were as good as a declaration of love coming from him. He wasn’t done yet, though, and heedless of the stranger as our audience, he soldiered on. “I was extremely lucky when you decided not to let me run and hide. Lucky when you tempted me with a future so bright I couldn’t look away. So lucky, Frederique, when you showed me what was right here, in my heart.” He tapped his chest with a fist. “I love you, my mate.”
I was not the type to cry easily, but tears were definitely spilling down my cheeks then. The words stuck inmythroat for once. He kissed me, his expression softer than I’d ever seen it. Then he had the gall to push me over the edge by turning to Val and saying, his voice hoarse, “And I was lucky bonding with you, Val. No matter what it put us through. You know that, right?”
I was pretty sure that even the gruff Devan was not unaffected by the scene we’d just made. He had stepped back, giving us space, and curled a fist deep into the scruffy fur on the back of his hulking symbiont. Val had returned to us, curling her slinky, oversized Riho body against us and purring loudly.
“Yes,” Devan’Car said when the silence stretched. Sin held me tight against his chest, his body relaxing in a way I could not ever recall him doing before. “I believe I came at just the right time.Your mating bond might be the very key we were missing. Now, a lab?”
It was several hours later—and after a lot of prodding and testing—before Sin and I could finally withdraw to our home on the ship. His rooms had been a safe haven while I grieved and adjusted to life in a future seven hundred years beyond the Earth I’d known. After the Davidsonthinghad invaded, that peace had been shattered, and I needed my mate and his symbiont at my side to reassure me that home was still real.
Sin was quiet as we stepped through the door into the living area, which resembled a museum more than anything. Nobody had been in to clean up after my fight with Davidson. Shards lay on the floor from some of the broken things that had been pushed off the shelves, and a dark smear of something coated the wall in one spot. Sin took a long look at it all, but just as I began to open my mouth to apologize for destroying some of his mementos, he shushed me. “No, all that matters is that you’re safe, mate. These were just things, they’re not important anymore.” He swept me up in his arms bridal style, and with the crunch of shards beneath his boots, he strode across the room into the bedroom.
Here, nothing had left a mark. There was no sign Davidson had ever been here, as if he’d never breached this sanctuary. I drew in a relieved breath when Sin put me down with a slow, sensual slide, his eyes heating as he glanced at the rumpled blankets on the bed, then back at me. I saw the gears spinning in his head, and I knew I was in for a treat. We hadn’t seen each other for several days; the heat was bound to be combustive now that we were alone.
“Shower first,” I warned him, because I could still smell the damp jungle in my frizzy hair. Not to mention that the socks I’d borrowed from Ysa—fluffy, with alien skulls—were a little worn at this point. Of course, mentioning a shower was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. His mouth twisted into a smirk that promised all kinds of things, sinful things. My stomach flip-flopped in my belly in answer.
Sin’s rooms had to be far more luxurious than most aboard the ship; I doubted the common grunts had glass-walled showers with running water, marble floors, or gold fixtures. Sin definitely enjoyed the finer things in life, the sensual things that enticed all his senses. As he stripped me out of my clothes, he spent every moment reminding me that I was now part of that. He stroked, licked, enticed, and tempted me until I was out of my mind. Only then did he carry me into the shower, and the hot spray of water clashed with the fire in my veins. “Sin,” I demanded—begged—but he was not ready to let me tumble. The man was maddening, but I knew it was all going to be worth the wait.
He had not stripped the way he’d stripped me, his body still covered in sleek black armor and streaks of silver that writhed wildly over his arms. His face was stern, eyes glowing, skin gleaming, and the marks that covered him were illuminated with something from deep within. I raised my hands to touch the tab at his throat, to undo the armor, and he stopped me.
“No, not yet. I want you on your knees. I want you begging for it.” He lowered his hand along his front and lewdly cupped himself, making sure there was no doubt what ‘it’ he wanted me to beg for. It made my spine tingle, my belly clench with a sharp lance of pleasure, and rebellion surged through my veins. Beg? Kneel?I didn’t think so. And then he kissed me, his hand cupping me between my legs, and rebellion was the last thing on my mind.
Sin’s armor was a hard, sharp contrast of coolness against my heated flesh—a reminder that he was stronger than me, bigger, and very much in control. That was exactly how he liked it, and although the modern woman in me wanted to believe otherwise, it was how I liked it, too. He used all that power and control to his advantage, but perhaps it was mine when the result was his mouth on my core, his hands lifting me until my legs dangled over his shoulders and my body rested against the cool metal of the wall.
Tongue sinking deep, lapping through my folds, until I saw stars. He did not hold back this time, but let me fall over the precipice, there to catch me when I fell, with his steady hands and grounding presence. Heat clashing with cold walls and steaming water, his eyes like pools of molten liquid, silver mercury. I was a wrung-out mess by the time he finally lifted his head and let me slide down his body to my unsteady feet.
When Sin set out to seduce, there was no other option but to surrender. When he told me in that dark voice again to kneel and to beg for his cock, how could I possibly say no? Turnabout was fair play, after all. The water turned off as I went to my knees on the tile, and I would have gotten cold, but he’d activated the drying sequence. Warm air gently blew from vents all over me, whisking away the water from my damp skin.
He freed his cock, thick, gray, and the head a deep, dark purple. Silver beaded at the tip, and when I reached out and swirled my fingertip through it, he hissed. “I didn’t say you could do that yet,” he warned, and I didn’t listen. Instead, I brought his seed tomy mouth to taste it. Seeing Sin lose his cool was about the most rewarding thing there was—and that certainly did it.
He swept me into his arms with a growl, and I found myself sprawled on the bed on my back the next moment. He was still in his black armor, all dark and threatening as he loomed over me, cock in hand. I knew he’d never harm me, and when he lifted my chin and pressed the slick head of his cock to my lips, I opened greedily. He did not last long, and that thought pleased me more than anything. A few deep sucks, a long, slow lick, and he came my name like a vow on his lips.
Afterward, he couldn’t let go of me, holding me tightly to his chest, breath rapid and wild. “You’re never going to obey, are you?” he drawled darkly, but it was a pleased kind of sound, as if he very much looked forward to that. I could only smile up at him, feeling lighter, happier than I had in a long time. I might have lost so much when theLancing Lightwas sabotaged and I’d slumbered in stasis for more than seven hundred years. Traveling through time that way—to this future—was worthwhile in many ways.
Sin seemed to know exactly where my thoughts had turned. He pulled the blankets over us, not just holding me but protectively sheltering me in soft, decadent warmth. “We can travel with Devan’Car back to the Alpha Quadrant—restart your mission to oppose the UAR. Traveling with a Son of Ragnar capable of flight…it’s the fastest way there is. It wouldn’t take us two years to get there, just a few months.”
The offer, so casually spoken, was probably hard for him to make. He had no good memories in the quadrant, just loss. So did I, really. But still, he said it because he knew it had been mylife’s goal—my mission—to try to fix things before they broke. I was pretty sure it was too late now, and a two-man mission, as powerful as Sin was, against a three-species-encompassing dictatorship… impossible odds. Perhaps it was time to leave that mission to someone else. Perhaps it was time to admit that even seven hundred years ago, it would have been impossible to stop the UAR’s advance.
I shook my head, chest tight with love and revelations. “No, this is your home, Sin. I mean… Damor. My mission is over—at least, that one is. Let’s rebuild our lives here.” He didn’t reply, just leaned in and kissed me, and that was answer enough.
“Sin is fine. I have not been Damor to anyone but bad memories. I rather like the way you moan Sin when you come on my tongue.” Sin it was, then, and that made sense. It was the person he’d remade himself into when the entire Alpha Quadrant had seemed to reject him. As the Sineater, here aboard theVarakartoom, he’d found his home, at least for a while. And now, with Devan’Car and Dravion bending their clever heads together, it might be forever.
