“It’s really sweet.” Grace sighs, and when her hand lands on my chest, the mating sound swells louder.
“It’s really fucking dirty, is what it is. What it sounds like, anyway, from the other side of the hatch.” Because they slept in the cargo hold, until Sotelo gave that space to us.
“Dirty?” To my surprise, Grace sounds intrigued. “What do they do that’s dirty?”
“Well, I can only guess, since I’m not a voyeur,” I tell her. “But I’d be happy to demonstrate my theories, if you’re interested.”
“Does it even matter what I say?” she groans, as I kneel in front of her and take her nipple into my mouth.
“What you want matters, always. What you need matters, always. And what you say matters, as long as it’s true.”
“That isn’t fair. Sometimes people have really good reasons for lying.”
“Yes, but those people aren’t my mate. You and I owe each other honesty, Grace. And that’s all you’ll get from me. I need to know that’s what I’ll get from you.”
She sighs as she stares down at me, where I’m still kneeling before her. “Yes. You’re right. No more lies. No more secrets. Just keep in mind, when the time comes, that you asked for that.”
Her eyes fall shut as I close my mouth over her nipple again and begin to stroke my fingers into her. “Tell me what you want,” I murmur against her breast. “What you really want.”
“You,” she breathes. “I want you.”
“How do you want me? Shall I first lick you until you come on my tongue, or do you need my cock immediately?”
“Immediately,” she moans, her eyes still closed, and the desire swimming in her voice, now that she’s given up her pointless protests, makes my length swell even longer. Harder.
I growl as I lift her, pressing her against the wall of the cargo hold, and she hisses, her eyes flying open to glare at me. “That’s cold!”
“It’ll warm up.” I tuck her legs around my hips one at a time, sliding her gray slippers off so that her bare heels clutch at my back, and by the time I have one hand free to unfasten my pants, my cock is swollen and throbbing with need for her.
“Will it hurt this time?” she whispers as I shove my pants halfway down my hips.
“Not if I can help it.”
“Shirt,” she says, as I lift her higher, one hand beneath her backside, to support her weight.
“What?”
“Take your shirt off. I want to touch you.”
I moan while the beast preens in my head, pleased by her demand. And when I don’t move fast enough to indulge her, she slips her hands beneath the hem of my shirt and slides them over my chest, dragging the material with them, just slow enough to torture me with anticipation. “Arm,” she says, when she’s taken my shirt as far as it will go. So I slide my left arm through the sleeve. “Other arm.” I repeat the process on the right side, and she tugs my shirt over my head, then drops it on the floor. “That’s better,” she sighs, as her hands roam my chest. “Now I need the rest of you.
Balancing her weight on one hand, I slide the other between us and I groan when I feel how wet she’s become. Her folds are swollen with need. She’s slick, and hot, and welcoming as I stroke her clit and venture lower.
“Vaughn…” she moans. And that’s all I can take.
I position myself at her entrance, rubbing my engorged head over her a couple of times, to lubricate it, hoping there won’t be pain for her this time. Then I carefully lower her onto my cock, as slowly as I can.
“Oh my god,” she breathes as her hot sheath gradually slides over me, already squeezing before I’m even all the way inside.
“Pain?” I grunt, trying to control the urge to thrust into her. To bury myself as deeply as I can. There’s no distress in her sweat anymore. No anxiety. Her scent is all desire now, and it smells amazing.
“No,” she confirms, squirming against me in search of more friction. “Just feels really full.”
“Good.” Slowly, I push forward again, pressing her between the wall and my chest until I’m fully enclosed by her tight, wet heat, despite the exaggerated size the beast insists is for her pleasure. She’s taken all of me. And I never want to let her go.
But I do want to fuck her.
Grace groans as I begin to move, pumping up into her with my hips, careful to rub my pubic bone against her clit with every stroke. She clutches at my shoulders, her nails digging into me, and I hope that if I thrust a little harder, she’ll break the surface. That she’ll draw blood and leave marks for the rest of the crew to see.
If she does, I’ll damn well find an excuse to keep my shirt off until they heal.
“More,” Grace begs, and I thrust faster as my balls begin to tighten. As I feel my release hurtling toward me. But I can’t climax before she does. I won’t dishonor her like that.
“Come for me, Grace,” I groan against her ear, trying to hold back my own orgasm as I draw hers out. “Please, baby, I need to feel you come on my cock.” She’s close. I can feel that. I can taste it in the sweat I bend to lick from her neck.
“No.” She clutches me tighter, rocking her hip against mine. “I don’t want this to end.”
“Fuck,” I grunt, both impressed and frustrated by her determination. Her willpower. “You don’t need to make it last, because we’re going to do it again in an hour,” I promise her. “Just let it go. Come for me.”
“No…” She throws her head back against the wall, eyes squeezed shut, and the look of pleasure on her features almost pushes me over the edge. But she has to come first. So I grab her ass with both hands and grind her against me, applying extra pressure to her clit, which is still slick with her own arousal.
“Oh…” she breathes as her body clenches tighter around me. “No fair…”
I squeeze her ass and pump into her as hard as I can, desperate to feel her passage clamp down around me so I can let go. “Grace,” I beg. “Come for me, now!” I demand with another hard thrust, and her mouth falls open on a soft cry. She spasms around my cock as I release into her, shooting as deep as I can, over and over, indulging in the feel of her tight heat.
Afterward, she collapses against me, her head on my shoulder, and I think, based on the soft stinging on my back, that she’s actually broken my skin. It is a wound I will wear with pride—evidence of my mate’s pleasure. Of her satisfaction with my skill.
“Oh my god,” she says into my neck. “That was amazing. “You said we can do it again in an hour?”
I chuckle into her hair. “Maybe sooner. The beast has a lot of stamina, and you seem to bring out the best in him.” And in me.
“Can we rest until then? On the blankets? I’m really tired.”
“Of course.” I carry her across the cargo hold and set her down on our makeshift pallet, and her unfinished meal catches my eye. “You should eat this. Your body will need the energy.”
“Tell me about the book,” she says as she picks up the open packet and scoops out a bite of pasta. “What’s so special about a hardbound copy, when you can have thousands on your com device, whenever you want?”
I take the book of poetry from the leather tote and open it, then I raise it near her face as I flip through the pages. “Do you smell that?”
She nods. “It smells old. And…real.”
“Exactly. Books on a com device are great. That’s all I could carry into battle, and when we weren’t worried about the glow giving away our position. I spent many long nights reading on my wrist com. And, of course, there were no books in the lab, while we were locked up. But when I was a kid, my mother had a small collection of old books like this. I wasn’t allowed to touch them, because they were so old and expensive. But sometimes she would take one down and read to me from it, and I would bury my nose in the center. Right at the binding. And I would breath in that scent. There’s something special about words written on paper. Something real and tangible. Something historic. Hundreds of years ago, someone wrote these word
s, and they’re still here, long after the author died. Her thoughts are ageless. Immortal. It’s like a part of her will live forever, now. And not just in an electronic signal that disappears as soon as you turn the device off. These words will outlive us all.”
“That’s beautiful.” Grace smiles at me as she sets her food down. She looks like she might ask me for another look at the book, but her eyes are already closing, so I make a pillow for her by folding up the extra blanket, then I insist that she lie down.
This is not good enough, the beast growls, when I step back to take a good look at my sleeping mate. And he’s right. She deserves a better home. Or a real bed, at least.
We have to get that damn ship.
14
GRACE
IT’S SO dark when I wake up that I’m not sure, at first, that I’ve actually opened my eyes. I blink, and nothing changes. But then my vision begins to adjust to the dim glow from around the floor of the cargo hold.
Someone moves behind me, and I roll over on the blankets, expecting to find Vaughn curled up beside me. Yet the silhouette of the form next to me is much too small to be Vaughn.
“Lilli?” I whisper.
She rolls over and smiles at me in the dark. “Yeah. Hi.”
I push myself upright and sit cross legged. “Where’s Vaughn?”
“Upstairs.” She sits up to mirror my pose. “He asked me to stay with you, so you wouldn’t wake up alone.”
Vaughn’s book lies open beside her, on the floor. “Were you reading that?”
She nods. “Using the light from my com device. It’s weird to read words that aren’t backlit. But kind of cool. Do you like to read?”
I frown while I consider the question. “I don’t know. I mean, I know how to read. And I have vague memories of being educated in the convent. But I’ve never seen a hardbound book before this one, and electronics tend to give me a migraine. My eyes refused to focus after about a minute of staring at a screen.” But that book of poetry has no screen.
“How long was I out?”
She glances at the slim com device strapped to her wrist. “About twelve hours. Vaughn was here with you for the first half of that, but then Dreyer called him upstairs to help with their mission.”
“Was I…in a coma?” Yesterday I was terrified by that thought. Or was that last night? In space, there seem to be on-shifts and off-shifts, rather than day and night. But now that my initial shock has worn off, the thought of a coma has left me with a numb sort of fear.
“No, I don’t think so. Vaughn seemed worried about that at first, but you turned over in your sleep several times, and you kind of nuzzled into him when he brushed hair back from your face. I think you were just really tired.”
“He said you fell into a coma after you and the captain were first together?”
“Yeah. I fell asleep, and the next thing I remember is waking up on a cold metal table, in the lab on Rhodon.”
“How long were you out?”
“Three days.”
All the blood drains from my face. “You couldn’t eat or drink for three days? Isn’t that dangerous?”
“The doctor didn’t seem worried. They had me on an IV, and—” Lilli’s mouth snaps shut when she realizes her mistake.
“We don’t have a doctor, out here. Or medical equipment.” If I become comatose, I could die without ever waking up. Or Meshach could find me and take me, and I’d have no idea until I woke up on Gebose.
Assuming I ever woke up.
“But I’m sure you won’t fall into a coma.” She takes my hand and I let her squeeze it, despite my urge to pull away. To tuck my knees up to my chest and back up until I hit the wall.
I’ve never been touched casually. I’ve never really been touched at all, except by Vaughn, and what he does to me is far from casual.
“I was sterilized before they sent me to the prison planet,” Lilli continues, and her grip on me slowly starts to feel like more of a comfort and less of an invasion. “Surgically. As are all female prisoners. So my body had a lot to ‘repair,’ before I could get pregnant. Not that I wanted any of this, at first.”
“But you do now?”
She squeezes my hand again and smiles. “Very much. Carson is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and the rest of the crew is like family.”
Family. Lilli’s family—the crew of the Dinghy—is so different from Silas’s family that I’m not sure I even truly grasp the concept. What I am sure of is that staying on Gebose and becoming Silas’s concubine would not have made me a part of his family. Concubines are often outright hated by wives and children. But Lilli, Dreyer, and the others have truly taken me in, which only makes me feel more guilty for the threat I’ve become to them.
“Do you know what the issue is?” Lilli lets go of my hand to pick up an open bag of crackers. “Sorry. I’m a little nauseated.” She crunches into one of the crackers with her eyes closed.
“The issue?”
“I mean, do you know why you can’t have kids? There are about a million possible reasons for that, of course. But if you know the why, we might be able to guess at how complicated the repair will be. Not that any of this is really…quantifiable.”
Her question leads to a thousand more questions I don’t have answers to, and I close my eyes as the scale of my ignorance truly comes into focus. “No,” I tell her, when I can finally meet her gaze again. “I have no idea why I can’t have children. I don’t know much of anything, in fact, because it turns out that my childhood on Theron might be nothing but fiction fed straight into my brain. I feel like I’m just floating out here in space. Untethered. Like I could drift out here for millennia without ever bumping into an actual fucking fact about my life. About myself.”
Lilli gives me a small smile. “I’ve never heard you curse before.”
“I don’t think I ever have.”
“How did it feel?”
“Fucking amazing.”
She laughs. “You’re getting good at that.”
“I’m starting to truly understand the appeal of engaging in the forbidden. I’m also starting to question the arbitrary nature of so many of the things Damaris told me were sins. Like profanity. They’re just words, right? What’s wrong with words?”
Lilli shrugs. “My mother told me that words themselves are never the problem. It’s how we use them. So she was fine with us cursing when we stubbed a toe, but not with us calling each other names.”
“That seems reasonable,” I admit. “Why isn’t that the policy everywhere? What do the people on Gebose have against ‘reasonable?’”
“No idea.” Lilli crunches into another cracker, then she speaks around it. “So, if you don’t know why you’re sterile, how do you know that you are?”
“Because Damaris told me. That’s why I wasn’t considered suitable for marriage. Because Silas would need to marry someone who could give him heirs. Concubines are just for pleasure.”
“His pleasure, I assume?”
I nod slowly. “To the exclusion of mine. There’s a lot they didn’t tell me. And a lot they lied about.” Like the fact that sex should bring pleasure to all involved parties.
“So, is there any chance that they lied about your fertility?”
“I don’t think so. Men on Gebose aren’t allowed to have children out of wedlock, so I can’t imagine them giving Silas a concubine who might accidentally get pregnant. Which makes me wonder…”
“About what?” Lilli buries her arm in the bag to dig out one of the last crackers.
“I don’t know how I got to Gebose, and I don’t know whether anything I remember about my childhood is real. But I do know that Damaris lied to me over and over, to ‘prepare’ me for my role in Silas’s life. Which means it’s entirely possible that she lied—even if only by omission—about how I became infertile.”
“You think they sterilized you?”
“I have no idea what went on before I woke up in that cryopod, but I think that’s possi
ble.”
“Oh my god.”
“What?” I study her face, then drop my gaze to her flat stomach. “Are you in pain?”
“Not physically.” Lilli rolls down the open end of the cracker bag, to close it. “Do you think there’s any chance that you were a prisoner? That Meshach bought you from someplace like the red rock, and that’s how they know you can’t have children?”
Chills travel up my arms, leaving goosebumps all over my skin. “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t remember being in prison, obviously. But everyone seems convinced that my memories aren’t real anyway. And if they were implanted, I guess that could be because they didn’t want me to remember being a prisoner?”
Lilli nods. “It sounds like they might have imprinted you with memories of growing up in a religious environment specifically so their way of life wouldn’t be quiet such a shock. Or so that you wouldn’t question it?”
I have to think about that for a minute. “I’m not sure why they’d choose a convent, for my background, when I would have ‘assimilated’ better if I’d believed I was from Gebose.”
“Price,” Lilli says.
“What?”
“My guess is that it has to do with money. Cost. Everything does.”
“Well, Meshach has plenty of money, from what I understand. But I also have no idea what it costs to buy a prisoner and have her imprinted with false memories. So, I guess cost could be the issue.”
“Do you want to go up and run this theory by everyone else? See if they have some thoughts?”
“Sure.” Also, I have to pee. And I need to see Vaughn. My fingers itch to touch him, even if just to reassure myself that he’s still there.
Lilli gives me a knowing smile. “I miss Carson too. Let’s go.”
Vaughn spins in the chair at his console the minute I step onto the main deck, as if he can feel my presence. He stands and crosses the space between us faster than I can follow his movement. The next thing I know, I’m in his arms, and his embraces feels so good—so inevitably right—that for the moment, at least, that feeling that I’m drifting alone in space just…fades.
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