“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Could you please quit being mysterious and tell me what’s going on? Who are the Bastards?” She was getting thoroughly fed up. “And how did I get here?”
He lifted his head suddenly and turned to stare off into the trees, his expression alert. “Same way I did, I’d imagine,” he said absently. “You were abducted by aliens. And I think you’re about to find out why I call them the Bastards.”
Aliens? Good God, she was stranded with a lunatic. “Is this some kind of joke? Because it’s really not funny.”
“Shut up.”
Anger zapped her appreciation of his amazing butt as he turned his back on her. Nobody talked to a Kenyon that way. “Who do you think you are?”
He closed a hand around the hilt of his sword and levered the big blade out of its scabbard. “I said shut up. Something’s coming.”
Before she could tell him off, the bushes rattled. A roar split the air, loud enough to make her jump.
Something burst from the trees in an explosion of scales and teeth. Alex screamed like a fire siren as it lunged right at Hawke, snapping massive jaws.
“Get back!” he bellowed, running to meet the monster. Even as it tensed to spring, he swung his sword. Blade bit into scaly hide. The monster howled and reared, slashing at him with knifelike front claws. Hawke leaped back and circled. It turned with him, snapping.
Good God, it had six legs!
It scuttled on four of them while it tried to rake him with long, thin forearms, snapping and roaring like a nightmare cross between a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a scorpion. It was easily the size of a horse.
Alex wanted to run. She wanted to help him. But she couldn’t do either, because she couldn’t move. Her body was completely frozen with terror as he hacked at the monstrosity slashing and snapping at him like something out of Alien.
I’ve got to do something! It’s going to kill him!
Chapter Two
Hawke grunted in pain as the thing raked claws across his thigh.
Jolted out of her shock, Alex looked desperately around for a stick, a rock. Anything. She had to get her hands on a weapon.
At her feet lay what looked like a misshapen conch shell. She snatched it up in a sweaty hand and started toward them even as her every instinct howled at her to run away. She couldn’t just stand around while a monster chowed down on the man who’d saved her life.
But before she could take another step, the thing screeched, took a step, and toppled into the sand. Alex had no idea what Hawke had done, and he didn’t give her time to figure it out. The minute the monster was down, he pounced and started chopping. Purple blood flew. The thing roared and flailed, but he ignored its claws and kept hacking with grim intensity.
“Jesus,” Alex whispered as the shell dropped from her lax fingers. Note to self. Never piss off Hawke.
Finally the thing’s struggles subsided. Hawke’s Ginsu imitation slowed. Finally, with one last chop for good measure, he rose from the twitching corpse. The only sounds were his harsh breathing and the lazy buzz of bumblebees.
Edging closer, Alex looked down at the thing. He’d cut off its head and one foreleg. The rest of it looked like it had been put through a Cuisinart.
It had six eyes.
This thing couldn’t be real. Yet indisputably, it was. Just as indisputably, it hadn’t evolved on Earth. Everything from the color of its blood to the weird structure of its muscles told her that. “Is this the alien that abducted us?” Alex whispered. She was shaking.
“This?” He wiped purple blood from his forehead and snorted. “Not likely. This thing is dumb as a post.”
“It tried to eat us.” She felt numb.
“We’d have given it a belly ache.” Hawke turned to look down at her with a euphoric grin, visibly high on his dangerous victory. “I tried meat from one once. Gave me the runs like you would not believe.”
Alex stared at him. “You ate one of these things?”
“A piece of it. Seemed only fair.” He pulled a piece of leather from a belt pouch and started cleaning the blood off his sword. “It would have eaten me.”
Suddenly she realized some of the blood running down his thigh was red. “You’re hurt!”
He looked down at the gash cutting across one thigh and shrugged. “It’s already healing.”
“But it…” Alex broke off. As she watched, the wound narrowed, sealing over like a special effect in a werewolf movie. But that was impossible.
She stepped back, keenly aware of what he’d done to the alien lizard. No ordinary man could have done that much damage with nothing more than a glorified machete. “You’re not human.”
Hawke rolled his eyes. “Oh, give me a break.”
“Your strength--the way you heal. You’re not from Earth any more than that…thing is!”
“I was born in Virginia.” Glaring at her, he sheathed his sword with a slither of steel on leather. “It’s just that ever since the Bastards took me, I’ve gotten stronger and harder to kill. Which is a damn good thing, or we’d both be monster chow by now.”
She winced, suddenly feeling like a paranoid bitch. “You’ve got a point. Sorry. I guess this whole situation is just making me a little nuts.”
“Tell me about it.” Hawke slumped, suddenly looking weary as all the anger ran out of him. “Look, I’m going to wash this shit off. It stings. Wait here.” Turning, he strode toward the ocean, stripping off his gear as he went.
“Wait!” Alex called, shooting a hunted look at the trees. “What if another one of these things come along?”
Hawke glanced back at her. “It won’t. The Bastards never send more than one WTF at a time.”
With one last uneasy glance at the cooling corpse, she hurried after him. “WTF? What does that stand for?”
“‘What The Fuck.’ It seems to fit.”
“Guess it does, at that.” As Alex watched, he crouched and began to splash the blood off. Seawater turned pink as it ran in glistening trails down the ridges of his body. “Doesn’t the salt sting?”
“There is no salt. This is more big-ass lake than anything else.”
He was right, she realized, looking out to sea. There was almost no wave action at all, unlike every ocean she’d ever seen back home. “It’s almost as though it’s man-made.”
“More like alien-made.”
Alex wrapped both arms around her body. A cool breeze blew into her face, smelling of flowers and monster blood. She shivered, though her body had almost dried from its dunking. “I don’t understand any of this.”
“Join the club.” He rose from the water, slicking his wet hair back from his head. “You know, I haven’t had to shave once the entire time I’ve been here. My hair grows, but not my beard. I’m not sure why, but that bothers me almost more than anything else. Why do aliens care if I get stubble? Doesn’t make sense.”
“Why should it? Apparently nothing else does.”
“Good point.” Hawke waded back toward her. Cool gray eyes studied her with approval. “So, Alexandria Kenyon. What do you do back home?”
She forced herself to straighten up and stop huddling as he stepped out of the water. “I’m an attorney.”
For a moment something flickered in his eyes. Then it was gone. “Yeah? I was a Marine. The aliens abducted me from the middle of a battle in Afghanistan. Must have been a year ago now. What day was it when they took you?”
Alex blinked, watching the water sluice down his magnificent body. It suddenly hit that she was completely alone with him on this planet, or space ship, or whatever the hell it was. God knew how far away Earth was. “July 7, 2004.”
That stopped him in his tracks. “2004?” He frowned. “I’ve been here more than two years? That can’t be right. It was March 2, 2002 when they took me, and only three hundred and sixty-seven days have passed since then. I’ve kept track.”
So he was snatched during the war in Afghanistan, just a few months after September 11. “Could the
days be longer here?”
“Not according to my watch.” Hawke picked up his belt and buckled it around his lean waist, then collected the rest of his weapons. “It’s broken now, but the first couple of weeks, it worked fine. The Goldfish Bowl is on a twenty-four hour cycle.” Fastening the sword belt across his torso, he shook his head and dismissed the question. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter. I’m not a Marine any more.”
Gray eyes lifted to meet hers. She felt her mouth go dry at the heat that flared in them. He started toward her in a long, sensuous pace, like a tiger stalking something slow and delicious. “And you’re not a lawyer,” he continued in a deep, velvet voice. “There is no law here.”
That did not sound good, especially given what he was capable of. She looked him right in the eye anyway. “Wherever there are people, there are laws.”
He lifted a blond brow as he stepped up to her, muscle sliding under tanned skin. A lot of tanned skin. “Sure of that, are you?”
“Absolutely.”
“In that case, I guess that makes me the law.” Hawke’s gray eyes searched her face with predatory intensity. “At least as far as you’re concerned.”
Her mouth went dry, but Alex knew she didn’t dare back down. She couldn’t let him think he could bully her. “Just exactly what do you mean?”
“At least once every couple of days, sometimes more often, something’s going to attack us. It may another WTF, like our scaly friend over there, or it may be a lot of small, ravenous things, or it may be something even I have never seen before. But whatever it is, I’m going to have to defend us both.” His gray gaze intensified. “I’m going to bleed for you, Alex. I already have.”
He had a damn good point, but she had no intention of admitting it. “I’m not helpless.”
“Aren’t you?”
She tilted her chin at him. “Maybe I’ll get superpowers too.”
“Maybe. But maybe you won’t.” He straightened his brawny shoulders, silently drawing attention to his size. He was a good eight inches taller than she was. “And even if you do, somehow I get the feeling I’ll still be stronger.”
“So, what? That gives you the right to order me around?” She attempted a scornful laugh. A husky note spoiled the effect.
“Yes, actually. It does.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’d better. Our toothy friend is just a sample of what I’ve faced on this rock every single day for the past year. I’ve had to work my ass off to stay alive. Now I’m going to have to work twice as hard keeping you breathing too.”
“I’ll do my part.”
“Yes. You will.”
Damn, why did she have the feeling she’d just fallen into a trap?
And why, she wondered, staring up into his brutal face, were her nipples getting hard?
“Sometimes the Bastards send a deer, and I have to hunt it.” He took a step forward. Alex took another step back. “I kill it, skin it and butcher it. I tan its hide to make leather for what clothes I have. I carve its hooves and horns into tools. When there’s no meat, I harvest the local plants and berries.”
“I can do that. I’m not afraid of work.”
“I’m relieved to hear it.” His gaze bored into hers. “And you’ll do everything else I tell you to do, too.”
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll…” His sensuous mouth curled into a smile “…Persuade you.”
“I’ll bet.” Alex gave him her best regal glare. She’d learned the fine art of putting a man in his place from Virginia Kenyon, and she was willing to bet her mother’s techniques would work just as well on Conan the Sex God. “What’s your first order--Master?”
The cold mockery in her voice would have made most men back off in a hurry, but Hawke didn’t even blink. “Suck my cock.”
She didn’t even wonder what her mother would have done. She just bared her teeth. “Go to hell, Conan.”
His gray eyes crinkled at the corners, amused rather than threatening. Was this was some kind of test? “That’s no way to talk to your lord and master.”
“I won’t be bullied into sex.” But despite her anger, despite her offended dignity, something in her responded to his outrageous demand. Her nipples ached as they contracted even further into tight, ready peaks.
He glanced down, as if his attention had been drawn by the subtle movement of those hardening tips. “When I give you an order, I expect you to obey it,” he said, still watching her breasts. “If you make me stand around arguing, we’re both going to end up dead.”
She fought the impulse to cover herself and silently cursed her randy libido. “Not when the argument involves sex.”
“I just saved your ass. Twice, come to think of it.”
“Thank you.” Her heart was pounding. This shouldn’t be turning her on, no matter how big, bad and gorgeous he was. “I’m willing to concede all that might deserve a gratitude hummer, but I won’t be forced.”
“So why am I getting the distinct impression you’d like to be?”
Heat poured into her cheeks. On top of everything else, she was blushing. Fantastic. “Now you’re just being insulting.”
“Am I?” Hawke broke into a feral grin. In one smooth motion, he reached back and drew his sword. It hissed as it emerged from its scabbard in an endless length of gleaming steel. Biceps rippled as he placed the sharp edge just under her chin. “Get on your knees.”
She swallowed, looking from the glittering blade to his hot, aroused gaze. “You do know the definition of rape, right?”
“Yeah. This isn’t it. On your knees.”
Had she misjudged him? Was she stuck on this island with an abusive superhuman creep?
Testing, Alex stared hard into Hawke’s eyes. There was heat there, true, a hint of dark pleasure in what he was doing. But there was humor too. Like a kid playing a game.
A really big kid playing a really kinky game.
She relaxed slightly. Sword or not, she could sense he wouldn’t hurt her. Dominate the hell out of her, yes. But he wouldn’t hurt her.
Besides, wouldn’t it feel good to just play for once? There was nobody here to judge her, nobody to find her a disappointment. Nobody to remind her of her responsibilities as a Kenyon. For once, she could be herself. She could act out her kinky dreams without fear. Hawke would be delighted to help.
“Alex.” He said her name gently, with just a hint of artistic male menace. “I gave you an order.”
Looking into his hard, deeply masculine face, she felt fine inner muscles clench and heat. Slowly, she dropped to her knees in the sand at his big feet.
Chapter Three
“That’s better,” Hawke purred, lowering the sword to reach for his loin cloth with one hand. He tugged the flap of leather out of his waistband and dropped it with a wet plop.
Alex sucked in a breath as his cock spilled out at her. It was beautiful--a long, smooth column of hard flesh, flushed with lust, invitingly thick. Imagining how it would feel pushing its way into her aching core, she had to fight back a moan.
“Put it in your mouth.”
She shot a look up at him. He was watching her, gray eyes narrow, sensual lips parted. She knew she should make some kind of effort to let him know he hadn’t intimidated her. That she wasn’t falling for the act.
Instead she caught his cock in one hand, leaned forward and gave it one teasing lick of her tongue.
Hawke stiffened, sucking in a hard breath. Despite all his rough orders, she suspected she’d surprised him.
“How long has it been, Hawke?” Alex asked, caressing his thick length. She wanted to suck him, yes, but first she’d damn well let him know she wasn’t a doormat. “At least a year, right? Probably longer, if you were at war before that.”
“About…eighteen months.” He stood rigid, as if he didn’t trust himself to move. She wondered what he was afraid he’d do to her.
Cupping his heavy balls with her free hand, she gave him a gentle squeeze. “A long ti
me without a woman.”
“Yeah. I want your mouth, Alex. Now.”
Smiling at the rough hunger in his voice, she leaned forward until her mouth was a bare half-inch from the flushed head of his cock. But instead of engulfing him, she blew gently.
“You’d be wise not to tease me.” There it was again--that hot male rumble that never failed to send cream trickling into her core.
Gently, she closed her teeth over his cockhead and raked them across the flushed knob, drawing back until they clicked closed. “Or what?”
“Or I’ll take you over my knee and beat that pretty ass until you squeal.” His hand threaded through her drying hair to curve around the base of her skull. Not quite dragging her onto his cock, but close.
A glistening bead of pre-cum emerged from the flushed head. Alex licked the drop away with a flick of her tongue. The hard muscles of his belly laced. “Do I look like your slave?”
He laughed, the sound rough with need. “Half naked, on your knees in front of my cock? Yeah, as a matter of fact, you do.”
She gave him another teasing nibble. God, she loved this. Loved the idea of taunting this powerful man until he was helpless with need. “Well, I’m not.”
“Baby, I could change that by nightfall.”
“I doubt that.” The wildfire racing through her veins made her want to stroke herself.
Why not?
She released her hold on his cock and balls and caught her breasts in both hands. Cupping the full globes through the lace of her camisole, she squeezed her nipples and tilted her head up to meet his gaze. “But I’ll bet I could enslave you.”
Long fingers tightened around the base of her skull, reminding her he still held her. “Honey, you don’t have the slightest interest in enslaving me.” The corner of his mouth curled up. “Your eyes light up too much whenever I order you around.”
She stiffened. That hit a little too close to home. “Bull.”
He grinned darkly. “I’d bet a month’s pay you’re slick as melted butter between those pretty thighs.”
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