by Roxie Ray
I knew I should have been scared. He was approaching me the way a predator stalks its prey. But even though my heart was beating hard and fast, it wasn’t in fear. Coplan may have been angry, but he wasn’t going to hurt me. I knew him better than that.
And he was right. He deserved to know why I’d done what I did.
I just hoped when I told him, he’d be able to understand.
“I didn’t do it to hurt you, Coplan.” That was important. He was obviously hurt. I got that. I was hurting too. But that hadn’t been my reasoning, and above anything, he needed to know that. “I don’t want you to think that.”
“You did not want to hurt me? As if it has not been painful enough to bed you, to let you into my heart, only to lose you to your home planet while you forgot me entirely—” Coplan scoffed, pulling his lips back in a sneer. “Now, when I go to court, I will have to see you on his arm, Savii. When you become pregnant, I will be forced to see the swell in your belly, forced to live with the knowledge that it is his cub you are carrying. Not mine. Never mine. How can you say that you did not mean to hurt me, knowing that?”
“Because—”
Coplan drew so near to me, I had to take a step back to keep space between his body and mine. He had my back against the wall as he loomed over me, his chest heaving in rage.
“When I take my place at the High Council, I will have to sit across from the man who has stolen the only mate I have ever wanted from me. But this time, you have not been stolen, have you?” He shook his head. In his eyes, I only saw hate. “This time, you have given yourself over willingly. Why?”
“For Atlanta,” I choked out. It was so hard to say. It hurt to admit it. But my voice wasn’t small and meek anymore. It rang out clear, even as the tears poured down my cheeks. “They weren’t going to rescue her if I told them no, and they were going to make sure the High Council stopped you from doing it, too. You have to understand, Coplan. She’s my twin—she’s the other half of me—”
“I am the other half of you! Did you not feel that when we mated? Did you not know?” Coplan spat the words at me. He didn’t back away. “Your entire life for one female. Would she have done the same for you, I wonder? You put her before yourself, before me, before everyone on this ship who has worked so hard to keep you out of Idria’s clutches and safe from harm—”
“She would have,” I spat back at him. If he wanted to be nasty, two could play that game. “Without even thinking about it. But it’s not just one woman, Coplan. My entire planet has been threatened by Rutharians. You’ve said before that I’m not the first woman who’s been kidnapped by them. Atlanta and I won’t be the last, either—unless I do something to stop it. To keep all the women on Earth safe. For good.”
Finally, the red sank back from Coplan’s eyes. It left a dull, gray color in its wake.
“She offered Earth protection,” he said, like it was just dawning on him. Whatever conversation he’d just had with Idria, she must have only told him half the story. “An alliance with Lunaria in exchange for your hand.”
“Yes, and I had to take it, Coplan. You saw the cell the Rutharians were keeping me in. You’ve seen what they did to me too.” Coplan may not have been furious anymore, but my blood was still rushing and the rage inside me—the rage that he’d awakened—was still running its course. “They beat me, they raped me, and they left me for dead until they remembered that they might want to hurt me all over again. And Idria, unlike anyone else, has given me a way to stop all of that, so that no other woman ever has to go through what I went through.” I pointed him to the door. “If you can’t understand why I made the choice that I’ve made, then you should leave now.”
“I—” he stammered.
“Now!” I put my hands on his chest and shoved him, though it didn’t do any good. Even when he was caught off guard, he was still sturdy as a rock. He didn’t even move.
“Savii…” Instead of leaving, he curled his hands around mine until I didn’t have any more strength to keep pushing on him. A sob left my throat as he drew me to his chest. He held me just like he had that first time. Touch is good for healing, he’d told me. Or something like that, at least.
But I didn’t feel healed. I didn’t feel happy.
I felt like I’d just destroyed my entire life. Just liked he’d said I had.
And this time, unlike all the others, there was no way out. No dashing blue-haired warriors to come bursting into my personal hell to save me. Nothing left to do but accept my fate.
This time, my life was ruined for good.
I cried against him until there weren’t any more tears left to fall. I hadn’t lied to him. I hadn’t had a choice. Not in any of this. It was only when I’d finally sobbed myself to the brink of exhaustion that I looked up at Coplan’s face and saw a tear on each of his cheeks, too.
“I’m sorry, Coplan.” I meant it, too. He’d been right—it was one thing for me to leave his world completely, but this was something else. Something worse. Something especially horrible and cruel. “If there was any other way…”
A pained hiss of something like a laugh left his lips. “I suppose running away together is no longer something you wish to consider.”
“I wish I could. I wish we could.” But this wasn’t a time for wishes. We both knew they could never come true. “I…I’m going to miss you. More than you can imagine.”
“I do not have to imagine, Savii. I know.” He took my hands in his and brought them up to his lips, kissed every knuckle, then both my palms, then the undersides of both my wrists. “I feel it too. But if this is how it must be…if this is the life you have no choice but to accept…”
“You know it is, Coplan.” I moved his hands to my lips, kissing them in just the same way he’d kissed mine. “There are too many lives at stake here. There’s nothing more that either of us can do. We just have to accept our fate.”
“No.”
“I’m glad you agree.” I bowed my head and bit my lip. “I know it will be hard for both of us, but maybe if Idria’s brother dies someday, or—” I looked up at him suddenly, brows lowered in confusion. “Wait. What do you mean, no?”
Coplan’s eyes were still sad, but despite their gray hue, his lips curled into a defiant smile. “I mean I will not accept fate. Not yet.”
“But if I don’t go through with this—”
“I know. Lives will be ruined. Atlanta will be abandoned. I am aware. But it is a long way back to Lunaria, Savii.” This time, when his mouth moved to kiss me, it wasn’t on my hands—it was on my own lips. The kiss was slow and mournful, but no less passionate than any other I’d ever had from Coplan. I didn’t think dispassionate was something he was capable of. “We have time together still. We should make the most of it, as you have said before.”
“You don’t think that Idria’s brother will be angry with you for, ah…fooling around with his future wife?”
“Oh, I am sure he will be. In fact, I am counting on it.” Coplan’s smile widened. “And I will accept that fate when I am forced to reckon with it. But for tonight…”
He kissed me again, longer this time. His hands wrapped around my waist, then my ribs, then raked through the waves of my hair and smoothed against my neck.
“I am not yet willing to accept fate tonight.”
18
Coplan
I took her to the viewing deck, and I did not care who saw. With her back against the glass and the stars splayed out behind her, she looked like a goddess, a vision from a dream—
And moons, how I wished that she could truly be mine.
As I peeled her clothes away from her skin, kissing every inch of her that I uncovered, I could not help but imagine what it would have been like to claim her for my own. Not like this, this sinful way we were taking from each other, against tradition, against the will of fate.
I wished I could claim her the proper way—as my mate. My partner. My bride.
I stole kiss after kiss from her lips and ima
gined kissing her in the sacred caves on Lunaria, after we had mated, and I had placed the wedding bracelet around her slender wrists. Our tongues tangled, and I imagined bringing her back to my family’s castle with me to tangle my legs with hers in our marriage bed instead.
I cupped her bare breasts in my palms, moving my thumbs over her nipples, and imagined the way they would harden and darken, the way they would ache as her breasts grew heavy and large with milk. Were it not for the birth control implant in her arm, I would have fantasized, perhaps cruelly, about impregnating her myself. If she could only bear my cub, Lord Brixta would no longer want her for his wife. I pressed my hands to her stomach, willing it anyway.
Take my seed, I prayed, feeling safe in doing so only because it was entirely impossible. Create my cub inside this precious womb. Be mine, be mine, be mine.
“I need you,” she whimpered as my hands moved lower to cup her sex. “Coplan…I’ve never been wet like this before. Not for anyone. It’s like…it’s like just being close to you sets me on fire.”
“Burn for me then, precious one.” I took her hair into my fist and claimed another kiss. I could feel it, the fire inside her. Her lips were searingly hot. So were my own. “Burn for me, and I will give you all you need.”
“I’m scared, Coplan.” She glanced toward the elevator and bit her lip as she drew away from me. “What if…what if someone sees us? What would they think of me?”
“They would think that you were a beautiful woman claiming something for her own,” I said with a smile. “You have been denied too often in your life, my sweetest joy. You should not have to be denied tonight.”
“I don’t want to deny myself.” She purred in delight as her hands moved down to the laces of my pants. She struggled with them, but when the laces were finally freed, she loosened them enough to pull my cock out and take it in her fists. “I’ll spend the rest of my life denying myself…You’re right. If someone comes in…let them watch.”
“You are an exhibitionist, Savii.” I chuckled as I reached beneath her. My hands cupped her thighs and I lifted her effortlessly. Though her curves had begun to fill out a little, she was still so light, it was no trouble at all. “I am surprised.”
“I just want you, idiot.” She laughed against my lips as we found each other in another kiss. “I only want you.”
My cock throbbed with need of her. With her legs spread for me like this, every breath I took was full of her scent. Earthy and sweet, like a forest freshly watered with rain. It was intoxicating. Addictive. Once again, I imagined making her my bride, and my cock leapt up toward her entrance at the mere thought.
“You will make a beautiful wife, Savii. Perfect in every way.” I did not mention that it was my wife I felt she should be becoming. It didn’t need to be said. I knew—I hoped—she could feel that as well. “But tonight…tonight, I will make you my whore as well.”
With a thrust of my hips, my cock entered her. Her honey, sticky and hot, slipped down my shaft and coated my balls with every motion. I churned into her, seeking to hilt myself. She hissed and clung to me as my cock sank deeper inside her channel. With her teeth, she bit down on my shoulder, so hard that I wondered if she might draw blood.
It only made me want more of her. Made me want to use her harder. I would gladly bleed for Savii if only it meant the chance to spill my seed in her womb. I would bleed a thousand times, and a thousand times over again, for only a few more moments with her. Our time was so precious.
I would spend it well, and release myself inside her as many times as I could before that time ran out.
“Coplan…” she breathed into my shoulder. “Coplan…you’re going to make me…”
“Hush, darling one. Not yet.” I tugged her head back by her hair again, fucking her firmly up against the viewing deck’s glass wall. “You may not come until I am ready. Do you understand? Come with me—and not a second before.”
“I’ll try,” she panted. Her eyes closed as if she was in prayer. “But you aren’t exactly…m-making it easy on me.”
I grinned, thrusting up into her even more quickly, even harder. I reveled in her pleasure, her every whimper and moan and coo. With the way her cunt throbbed around my thickness, I could have brought myself to orgasm in an instant had I wanted—but no. I needed more of her. Always more.
Just as easily, I could have fucked her like this all night.
But as Savii’s body trembled beneath mine and her moans grew louder, I knew that she would not last for much longer—orders or no. My balls were tense against the firm curves of her ass already. My cum boiled inside them, desperate to be unleashed.
And then, I heard it. A whimper—then a plea.
“Fill me,” she whispered against my ear. “Come inside me, Coplan. Flood me with…with your cum.”
“Is that what you truly want, Savii?” My own voice was a feral growl. “You wish to be used by me? Worshiped and adored and pumped full of my seed?”
“I want you to get me pregnant, you baz-terd.” Her fist thumped against my chest as her head tilted back against the glass, dark hair tumbling over her shoulders until it blended in with the waves of the night behind her. “I want you to breed me. I want—I want—”
Her voice cut off with a desperate cry. She did not need to finish the sentence anyhow. She had already told me all I needed to know.
Our fantasies were the same tonight. Our desires were one.
Her cunt spasmed around me, milking my cum up from out of my balls. I felt myself unload inside her, hot ropes of seed gushing up into her core as deep as my cock would allow. But even as I felt my balls grow empty, my cock was still rock hard within her.
I did not stop until she let out a final, exhausted moan. I did not withdraw from her until our breaths both stilled, moving from heavy panting to slow, measured sighs.
We took turns with them. As she breathed out, I let myself become drunk on her scent. And as I exhaled, she breathed me in as well.
“Were it only possible, Savii,” I found myself saying between passionate kisses against her perfect lips. “If only I could find some way to make you mine, to breed you as you wish and claim you for my own…”
“I know, Coplan.” Her smile was a sad one, but the flush on her cheeks and the brightness in her eyes told me I had pleased her as well as any warrior could ever hope to please a woman. Her sadness was not because of me. If I could do anything for her now, I would only bring her joy. “But still…it’s nice to dream, isn’t it?”
“It is, my—” I stopped myself. My love, I had nearly called her. But that, in this moment, seemed impossibly cruel. “My darling,” I purred down at her instead. “And if a dream is all we have…”
“We should enjoy it,” Savii finished for me. She gave me a peck on my lips, then on each cheek, then on the tip of my nose before she claimed my lips again. “For as long as we can.”
19
Savannah
The next few days were some of the best days of my life. Coplan must have gotten leave from his shifts in the medical bay—or maybe he just didn’t care. Without any recent battles since we’d last left Lunaria, it wasn’t like there were many wounded for him to care for, and Head Healer Adskow was more than capable of handling any medical emergencies that might have popped up. If Coplan’s generals had any problems with the way he was spending his time, certainly no one came along and mentioned it.
In a way, it was a blessing that Idria already knew that Coplan and I had slept together. An even bigger blessing that she didn’t care.
It meant we got to do it again—and again—and again—and there was nothing she could do to stop us.
“You are too ravenous, my love.” Coplan groaned as I laid my head on his bare thigh, tracing the shaft of his cock with the tip of my nose. “Three times already this morning…I cannot possibly go again so soon.”
“Mm. Maybe not.” I licked along the sensitive ridge that marked the tip of his cock, tasting a mixture of my honey and his
cum. It was still wet, just like the cum that dripped from my thighs every time I moved. I was full of Coplan’s seed, covered in his scent, while he lay on his back and ate pieces of gilly-fruit in my bed. “If you won’t fuck me again, will you at least share? I’m hungry.”
“You are filling out so gorgeously, how could I deny you?” Coplan smirked down at me and plucked one of the strange little fruits between his fingers—but hesitated before he could press it to my lips. “On second thought, perhaps I should summon something different from the articulator for you. These…you will not like.”
“Right. They’re sour and gross for humans unless we’re pregnant, aren’t they?” I sighed sadly and rubbed the spot on my arm where my implant was. “Sometimes I wish I’d never been forced to get this stupid thing. If you got me pregnant, I doubt Idria’s terrible brother would want me then.”
“Do not tease me with such things, Savii,” Coplan warned. He popped the gilly-fruit in his mouth instead, then smiled down at me as he chewed. “It takes everything that I have already to stop myself from removing it from your arm and placing a pillow beneath you each time I fill you with my seed, so that none will spill out.”
“Don’t threaten me with a good time.”
“It is not a threat.” Gently, Coplan moved my head off of his thigh and rose from the bed. “If you continue to tease me so, I might make it a promise, though.”
I rolled back onto the pillows as Coplan went out into the suite’s kitchen to find me something nicer to eat. We’d had this same conversation, or at least a similar one, a dozen times or more over the last few days. Sometimes, like now, it was fun. Other times, though, if we weren’t careful, it was easy to get sad about it.
These last few days were our last few days together, period. When we reached Lunaria, we both knew what I had to do. It was a terrible twist of fate that as soon as I finally found someone that I could be with—a man that, whether I wanted to admit it, I was quickly falling in love with—I was being torn away from him and forced to marry someone else. I’d spent my whole life expecting to give all of myself to someone I didn’t love. I’d always known that this was how things would end up for me.