His Human Rebel (Zandian Masters Book 4)

by Renee Rose

  ~.~

  Lundric turned back to his aroused female, the need to satisfy her making his blood hum. He relished the way she’d softened to him over the past week. His little rebel was beginning to trust him, beginning to receive everything he wanted to give her. Pleasure. Satisfaction. Protection. He wanted to provide for her, to make her life easier, even though she was the toughest, most capable female on the pod.

  Even though he still scented her arousal, he saw he’d half lost her in the moment he left. Her face clouded with some inner conflict. What was she thinking? It had something to do with him, he’d bet his last crystal. He didn’t believe she feared him, despite her play at resistance.

  He stalked back to her, taking his time, predator approaching his beautiful prey. When he reached her, he picked her up by her narrow waist and plopped her on top of the long, industrial-sized washing machine.

  “There’s no getting away from me now, little female.”

  She kicked up her chin. “Is that a challenge?”

  A surprised burst of laughter erupted from him, echoing off the walls of the small room. He touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “It was not so long ago you refused to be closed in a room with me,” he said softly. He brushed her lower lip with his thumb. “The old Venusian said I need to know the secrets of your heart.”

  Her smile fell away, wariness returning.

  A chill washed over him from his neck down to his boots. What was his little female hiding? What didn’t she want to show him? He vecking hated uncertainty. He needed to know Cambry belonged to him. Forever. He couldn’t stand a repetition of his mother’s fickle love. He’d recovered from maternal abandonment, but he wouldn’t recover from losing Cambry. He refused to ever accept her leaving.

  His fear had already morphed to aggression, his masculine pride demanding he claim her here, now, but he drew a deep breath and willed himself to calm down. The prince said he had to win her. Force was not an option, not that he’d ever allow Cambry to be hurt or unhappy on his watch.

  He pushed her knees open and curled his hands under her thighs, yanking her hips forward on the machine.

  She gasped and fell back on her hands behind her.

  Without waiting a moment, he thrust his head between her legs, biting at her pussy through her leggings. Her wanton moan made his cock turn harder than stone. “Do you want me to lick your pussy, beautiful female?”

  “Y-yes,” she breathed, her inner thighs trembling against his ears.

  He rubbed his knuckle over the seam of her pants, stimulating her clitoris. “Tell me three secrets.”

  She stilled. “What?”

  He continued the slow knuckle treatment. Her pussy dampened her panties and pants, and the scent made it hard for him to maintain control. “You heard me. Three secrets.”

  She rocked her hips to meet his knuckle, and he smirked. “You want my mouth there, don’t you, pretty girl?”

  “What kind of secret?”

  Again, foreboding twisted in his gut. He cocked his head to the side and locked gazes with her. “I don’t know. What are you hiding from me, Cambry?”

  Her face went pale, confirming his worst fears. Now she played at sounding casual. She tossed her long ponytail back over her shoulder. “I’m not hiding anything. I’ll answer three questions. You ask them.”

  He reached for the thread holding her hair back and broke it with his fingers. The thick mane fell down in riotous waves. Gorgeous locks of brown, red, and copper wove in and out in soft curls. He wanted to see it all the way down—the little braids around her face unwound, as well. He wanted to make rules for her about her hair—that she must always take it down for him, or that he’d be the only male to see it unbound. But he wasn’t in a position to make demands like that. Yet. Stars, he needed to be.

  He pushed the fingers of one hand into the braids, bunching them up to gently tug her head back. With the other hand, he continued to massage her pussy. He struggled to think what her secrets could be. What were his worst fears? “Have you already been mated, Cambry?”

  Her lips fell open with pleasure, lids drooped. He couldn’t wait to bring her to orgasm, to watch that beautiful face contort as she toppled over the peak. But not until he had answers.

  “Mated? I wasn’t a virgin, is that what you mean?”

  He removed his touch from her pussy as punishment for not answering his question. “No, that’s not what I meant. Bound to another male. Do humans not mate?”

  Her cheeks turned pink. He always found it enchanting when she blushed, because she was normally so composed, so fierce. “We once called it marriage, yes.”

  A dark shadow loomed over him.

  “I mean, no. I’ve never married or mated. No.”

  He let out a rough breath and returned the pad of his thumb to her pussy, stroking lightly up and down the seam of her outer lips.

  “Do you love another male?”

  She hesitated for a beat before she shook her head. “No.” The answer sounded definitive, yet the pause had ice prickling through his veins. Veck. Who was this other male? Was he dead? Or alive? Did she pine for him? Was she waiting for him? He wanted to slam a fist through the wall and demand to know everything.

  But scaring his female would be disastrous.

  What else could he ask? What other secret might she carry in her heart? Or was there nothing? The old Venusian was probably just speaking in riddles. But no, Cambry had appeared to be hiding something. He had to ask the hardest question of all, even though it was too soon. He had to know what was in her heart.

  “Do you wish...would you like...tobematedtome?” He said the last words in a rush, forcing them from his mouth. Breath held, he forced himself to watch her face.

  Her eyes flew open, but not with pleasure. She, too, stopped breathing. Her throat worked. “Lundric, I—”

  He covered her mouth with his hand, too much of a coward to hear what she would say. “Don’t answer. It was too soon, I know. I haven’t won you yet. I’ll keep working.”

  For some reason he couldn’t fathom, her eyes filled with tears.

  Not wanting to slog through the awkward moment and determined to vecking prove he could offer her something she couldn’t live without, he yanked her pants and panties down and tossed them to the side. “Give me this pussy,” he growled as he palmed her ass and lifted it to meet his mouth.

  She’d done her part and answered his questions. She deserved her reward. He couldn’t vecking wait to show her pleasure. His tongue parted her lips, tracing the swelling inner petals of her sex. He circled her clit then suctioned his lips over it and sucked hard on the tiny bud.

  Cambry cried out. Her torso fell back, and she wrapped her fists around his horns, bringing him painfully close to the brink of orgasm, without a single touch of his cock. His horns stiffened and pulsed in time with his cock as he vecked her with his tongue, making it into a hard point. He replaced it with two fingers, which he curled inside her to stroke her inner wall as he sucked and nipped at her labia then reattached his mouth to her clit. With his free hand, he thumbed her asshole. The moment he pressed there, she came, closing her mouth on her scream so it reverberated in her throat, still echoing off the walls.

  Her hips bucked up and down, but he kept his fingers and mouth working her through the spasms of her climax, following her frantic movements with a satisfaction so much deeper than achieving his own pleasure would have brought.

  She finally went limp, a soft moan sighing from her lips. “Lundric.”

  He wished to always hear his name on her lips with that hoarse, wrung-out sound of contentment. “That’s right, little female. Lundric makes you scream.” He eased his fingers from her and planted one last kiss on the apex of her pussy, which sent it into another paroxysm of quakes.

  She sat up and slid her butt off the washer, turning to present it to him. “Do you want to spank me?” Her voice was little more than a ragged whisper. Despite the way his cock surged with excitement,
the question also caused his heart to compress.

  His little female felt guilty. She wanted his punishment to atone for not accepting him as her mate. Well, he’d vecking give it to her, then. He loved spanking that pretty little ass, leaving his marks for her to remember where he’d been. He gripped her hair and tugged her head all the way back. “You like feeling my hand on your ass.”

  “Yes,” she admitted.

  “Because you know I’m safe? Or because you like the danger?” He wasn’t going to ask why she needed this punishment. Wasn’t going to mention mating again. Not until things were clearer between them.

  “Both.” Her husky voice made him squeeze his cock through his pants.

  He let his hand fall, hard.

  She choked on a breath and rose to her tiptoes.

  He slapped again, abusing the under part of her buttocks, the enchanting place where ass met thigh. As he continued, her breath grew ragged and she jerked with each smack but always returned to position, offering her sweet little ass for his chastisement.

  “I like punishing you, sweet female.”

  “Why?” she croaked, gasping as he struck her again.

  “I vecking love everything about it. The sounds you make. The way your ass looks when it’s painted red by my hand. The way it feels under my palm.” He shoved her tunic up her back and licked a long line from the base of her spine to her shoulder blades. “The trust you show me when you submit.” He took his cock out and dragged the head through her moistened lips. “Vecking you afterward.”

  She arched back, pushing her hips against the head of his cock to encourage his entry.

  He rocked slowly into her, shaking with the effort of holding back. “Showing you my strength even though we both know ultimately—when it comes down to it—you’re in charge.”

  “Lundric...please,” she whined.

  “That’s right, little rebel. You’re already begging—just the way I want you.” He braced one hand on the washer beside hers and gripped the side of her hip with the other. “You give it to Lundric, now. Tell me who owns you.” He beat into her with his cock, pumping hard, slapping his loins against her ass, shoving deep and nearly lifting her from her toes with each instroke.

  “Yes,” she gasped. “You own me.”

  He knew she meant in this moment. In this moment, he owned her, not forever. But he would take what he could get while he figured out how to wrest the promise of forever from her.

  Control slipped, and his vision tunneled. All he knew was the sweetest pleasure of Cambry’s pussy squeezing his cock. All he saw was her thick mane of hair sprawling down her back. All he heard were her panting breaths, the little grunts and cries she made as he pummeled her pussy with his cock, imagining he was marking it like his hand marked her ass, giving her something to remember him by, to keep the sensation of him with her when he went to sleep and she stayed up.

  “Cambry.” He didn’t recognize the guttural sound from his own mouth.

  “Take me. Take me, Lundric.”

  Zandian star, he needed her with such desperation. He wanted to consume her, to rid the separation of their bodies until they became one. Inseparable. Being. He roared and heard Cambry echo with a scream.

  His orgasm shook his entire body, limbs quaking as his ass squeezed and he shot his pleasure into the deepest reaches of her tight channel. Her muscles squeezed his cock, milking it for his seed, making his eyes roll back in his head.

  He dropped his forearms to the washing machine, caging her against him as he caught his breath. “I should have asked before—” he started gruffly, then cleared his throat. “You didn’t say anything, so I’m assuming—”

  “They gave all female slaves at the factory a shot to prevent pregnancy. It lasts at least another two years.” He didn’t miss the bitterness in her tone. Did she want a baby? Veck, he wanted to give her one with a desperation that stunned him.

  “Yes, all right.” He kissed the back of her neck. “I’m clean of any disease.”

  “So am I.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t ask the first time.”

  She turned in his arms, peering up at him quizzically. Her eyes turned liquid again, and she reached for his face. “I keep thinking there must be a trick, here,” she croaked.

  He covered her hand with his own, pressing it against his cheek. “What trick?”

  Her throat moved. “No one’s ever been good to me without demanding something in return. Except for—”

  “Who?” he demanded, unable to keep the sharpness from his tone. Was this the other male she’d loved?

  “Family,” she mumbled, dropping her gaze.

  Later, he would wish he’d pressed for more information about her family. But the moment was so raw, so perfect; he didn’t want to mar it with something that seemed to make her sad.

  He kept his tone light. “Oh, I’m demanding, little female. I demand everything in return.” I want your vecking soul.

  She smiled and lifted her face for a kiss, which he delivered with as much gusto as he knew how.

  Chapter Six

  Cambry landed the battleship on the rocky terrain, only skidding a few yards this time. A surge of satisfaction ran through her. She was ready. Maybe not to fly defensively, but to fly. To fly away.

  “Nice work, Cambry,” her Zandian trainer, Vokart, said. He’d taken her and three others out for practice that planet rotation, much to Lundric’s fury. Lundric’s superior, an older Zandian named Master Seke, had arrived and had demanded Lundric’s attention in the sparring room. “Charl, your turn.”

  Cambry climbed out of the pilot’s seat and swapped places with Charl, a young, dark-skinned human who said little but handled the ship like he’d been flying all his life. She missed flying with Lily, who had left with Rok to visit her mother and sister on the pod the Zandians considered home. Lily had confessed to being nervous before she left. Like Cambry, she’d been taken from her parents as a toddler, and so she had no memory of her mother and had never known of the existence of her sister, Lamira, until Lamira arrived with Rok to rescue her from the Ocretion Death Pod.

  Lily said their reunion had been awkward, since they were strangers, and unlike Lamira, she hadn’t spent a lifetime looking for a sister. She’d chosen to remain on the training pod with Rok, rather than accept the invitation from Prince Zander, her sister’s mate, to stay at his pod. As the planet rotations passed, though, she’d felt guilty over shunning a relationship with her newly discovered sister and the mother she barely remembered, so Rok had arranged a visit.

  It had been on the tip of Cambry’s tongue to confess her own family situation to Lily. Their stories weren’t the same, but she might understand the pain Cambry experienced at being separated from her own sibling, the need to find him, as Lamira had needed to find Lily.

  But then she remembered Lundric. Would you like to be mated to me?

  He’d been jealous of her love for another. She’d seen the spark of possessiveness when she hesitated answering his question about whether she loved another. If she told him about her brother, would he suspect her plans to find him? He read her so well.

  Precious Mother Earth, she felt like her insides had been torn apart. Nothing made sense to her anymore. She didn’t know if her judgment could be trusted when it came to Lundric. This mission of fighting for Zandia was still a death mission. Just because she’d found solace in a wonderfully attentive Zandian warrior didn’t mean she should give her life for his cause.

  Or did it?

  No, it couldn’t. Because she had to find Tal. He needed her. She was his older sister. She’d held him in her arms as a child and promised they’d always have each other, no matter what the factory foremen did to them. And if she gave her life for this hopeless Zandian cause, Tal would be alone. And she would’ve broken her promise to find him.

  She needed to get away at the first possible chance. She was becoming too attached to the Zandians and her pod mates. Far too attached to Lundric, her incredible
warrior. The longer she allowed him to believe she would mate him, the more he would hate her when she left. She needed to go before both their hearts broke at what she had to do.

  Unfortunately, her heartbreak was already a foregone conclusion.

  She finished flight training, and they exited the battleship and went back to the training pod. Lundric was waiting for her at the entrance, his face tense. The tension drained away when he saw her, and his fists unclenched.

  For fun, and to challenge him, she ran and launched herself at him, full speed.

  He grunted as he caught her, his forearm hooking under her ass to hold her straddled around his waist. “I should get you into the sparring room,” he growled against her neck. “You could use a sound thrashing, couldn’t you, pet? Instead, I’ve spent all afternoon helping my master exorcise his demons.”

  “What demons?”

  “A female, I believe. Lily’s mother. I’ve never seen him like this.”

  She nibbled on her lip. She’d had very few examples of loving relationships in her life. People in the factory used one another for sex, or clung together out of necessity—shoring up against weakness, the way she and her brother had. But after exploring amorous relations with Lundric, watching Rok and Lily, and now hearing of another Zandian who cared deeply about a human female, she wondered what she really knew about relationships. Nothing, it seemed.

  “How did your training go, little female?”

  “Wonderfully.” She was surprised to hear how cheerful she sounded. And the truth that anything had been great in her life surprised her. But she felt exhilarated by what she’d learned and accomplished in a short time. She ran a fingertip over one of Lundric’s horns.

  He groaned. “Be careful, little rebel. You’re about to get yourself vecked in short order, and I was going to see if you wanted to fly some more.”

  “You were?”

  He lowered her to the ground and adjusted his swollen cock. “I wanted to murder Vokart for taking you out when it should have been me. Do you want more practice?” He smiled at what must be the goofiest grin on her face. “Yes?”