“Mine,” Jarred snarled. “You’re mine, and you’ll always be mine no matter how many times De’Lar fucks you. Say it!”
Bracing herself against his next powerful thrust, she opened her mouth only to discover herself unable to form words.
“Say it!” He slammed deep.
“Yours!” she cried, the word popping free as her orgasm went off like a bomb in a wave of heat and mindless pleasure. “I’m yours!”
“Yes!” He arched his back, lodging his cock halfway to her throat, roaring as he came.
The world ripped apart with the force of his climax in an explosion of light.
The next thing Celeste knew, she was staring at the head-board of Garr’s bed with Jarred’s body draped heavily over hers. Disoriented, she stared at the powerful hand gripping her wrists. It was covered in smooth tanned skin instead of silken black fur.
She realized she and Jarred occupied the exact same position as they had in the VR illusion. Had she really run from him, or had that been an illusion, too?
One thing was certain: the cock deep inside her was definitely real. So was the powerful body covering hers like a hard, sweaty blanket, and the ache deep inside her where he’d fucked her without mercy.
Suddenly she remembered the way he’d demanded she acknowledge his possession. That had been real, too.
The implication was stunning. Jarred was jealous of De’Lar.
Which was nuts. He was the one who’d decided to give her to the Kyristari king. But what did it mean? Despite everything, was he beginning to care for her?
And why did that idea send such joy surging through her?
Jarred lay draped over Celeste, his softened cock still buried in her tight little sex. He felt completely wrung out—and oddly euphoric.
Damn, that had been the best sex he’d ever had in his life. He didn’t think he’d ever been hotter. Chasing Celeste, capturing her, dominating and taking her . . . God, he’d never experienced anything more erotic.
And he wasn’t quite sure why.
As he lay still, listening to her thudding heartbeat settle as his own decreased its frantic pounding, Jarred frowned. He’d dommed other women in scenes even more kinky—punishing Ayla with De’Lar’s help came to mind—but none of them had ever had quite this much raw sexual intensity.
But then, none of the women had been Celeste.
Before Jarred could consider the implications of that idea in any detail, she stirred and murmured sleepily under him. He realized he must be getting heavy. With a regretful sigh, he rolled off her and onto his back.
Automatically, he reached out and drew her against him to nestle her head in the curve between his shoulder and chest. She fit perfectly, her blond curls tickling his cheek. Sighing, she relaxed into him.
He felt as if all his muscles had turned to softened butter—a sure mark of good sex if ever there was one. Suddenly a thought penetrated his haze of postcoital bliss: Why is it so much better with her?
And why does it feel so damn good to hold her now?
Now that was an unnerving thought. He could accept being hot and horny after wanting her for ten years—naturally it would be good after all that. But damn it, what was he doing cuddling her?
Galvanized, Jarred caught Celeste by one shoulder and gently pushed, intent on disentangling himself from her warm, fragrant weight. She jerked her head up off his chest, jolted from her doze. “Wha . . . ?”
“Go back to sleep,” he said gruffly, sliding out of the bed.
Jarred looked down at her. For just an instant, her pretty green eyes blinked at him, wounded. Then her lashes lowered. Without another word, she rolled over and gave him her back. He hesitated, staring at the slim, lovely line of her naked spine as she curled around herself. He’d hurt her.
It shouldn’t matter. Not after everything she’d done to him. Not after Garr. He turned on a bare heel and walked out, knowing it did matter. Entirely too damn much.
SIX
Two weeks later
Celeste floated cross-legged six inches above Garr’s bed, her hands resting on her knees, her ears straining to detect any hint of movement from Jarred. She couldn’t afford to let him catch her.
A blizzard of small objects orbited her like electrons around an atomic nucleus—the sexsub statue, a couple of styluses, five or six book chips, several kitschy knickknacks from Garr’s collection. Levitating all that plus her own body wasn’t easy; her gritty eyes burned from lack of sleep and she had her habitual telekinetic migraine. But that was better than feeling hurt over Jarred’s equally habitual postsex desertion—he always left after he finished with her—and it was certainly better than sleeping.
She didn’t like sleeping anymore. Or at least, not until she’d exhausted herself too much to dream.
Celeste could never quite remember the nightmares she’d begun having two weeks ago, soon after Jarred dommed her in the werewolf fantasy. No matter how she strained, she could never recall more of those dreams than an impression of blood and fear and horrible grief.
Just enough, in other words, to scare the hell out of her.
With a grim frown, Celeste flicked a finger and sent the sexsub statue flying at top speed toward the bulkhead. It slammed into the cushioning force field she’d erected and stuck like a dart in peanut butter.
As her entourage of knickknacks continued to orbit, she floated in the air and contemplated the trapped figure with weary satisfaction. Not bad. She was getting pretty damn powerful.
Maybe too powerful. Frown deepening, she massaged her aching temples. Garr had once had nightmares like hers. That wasn’t a comforting comparison, because he’d been precognitive as well as telepathic. He’d had some particularly chilling dreams the week before he died.
What if, besides being telekinetic, she was a precog, too? What if those dreams she couldn’t quite remember foretold a nightmarish future?
Boy, that sucked. What was the point of having precognitive dreams if you couldn’t remember them well enough to do something about the future they foretold? Celeste shuddered and pulled the sexsub statue from the force field with a telekinetic jerk. Sighing, she sent it back into orbit.
Her migraine was taking on a particularly demanding thump. Taking a silent poll of her aching thighs and gritty eyes, she tried to determine whether it was safe to put everything down and go to sleep.
Not yet.
At least Jarred was doing his bit to tire her out, whether he knew it or not. Over the past two weeks, he’d conducted a determined assault on her senses, evidently designed to drive home his dominance in the most elemental way possible.
Damn, the man was creative. He could have made a fortune writing erotica, judging from the kinky scenarios he plunged her into every night. Sometimes he used the control band to create VR illusions, sometimes he put her in the rack—she’d named it Brutus—and sometimes he mixed and matched the two.
He was a wicked pirate captain having his way with a pretty captive, or a lusty knight interrogating the lady of a captured castle. He was a slaveholder or a spymaster or a thief who slid through her bedroom window with more than the silver on his mind. Sometimes he was fiercely dominant, others as silkily seductive as any of Corinne’s romance heroes.
And sometimes he got a sudden hot gleam in his eye, and the next thing she knew his massive cock was buried deep inside her as he rode her like a stallion mounting a mare. Though Celeste would never admit it, those were the times she liked best, because it seemed he had no other motive than simple need.
She liked being needed by him.
It was at those times that the aftermath was the sweetest. She would lie in his powerful arms, listening to his heartbeat slow, savoring the feeling of his body against hers, sweat-damp and strong. Sometimes she thought she felt his lips move against her forehead in a kiss that was far more tender than those he gave her when he was intent on dominance and seduction. It almost felt as if he cared for her.
At least until he got up and w
alked out.
Idiot, Celeste thought, and sent the sexsub statue zooming toward her reflection in the mirror screen over the bureau. She stopped it just before it hit and stared glumly at her reflection. She looked distinctly haggard these days.
Why the hell would he feel anything for you? Look at everything he is, and look at what you are.
Despite his streak of darkness, Jarred was essentially a hero—brilliant, handsome, and brave. Not to mention driven by a powerful sense of justice. She, on the other hand, was nobody’s idea of a romantic heroine. True, she was reasonably smart, but she was certainly nowhere in Jarred’s league. Neither was she particularly courageous; at times she was downright lazy, and she was, at best, only passably pretty.
No, if there seemed to be something more than lust between them, it was only because Jarred was lonely. Garr had been his only real friend, his sounding board and his balance, providing perspective and humor when he’d become consumed by his various obsessions.
At least until Celeste had killed Garr off.
Given the powers she was developing, she was beginning to suspect more and more that she really was responsible for the death of Jarred’s best friend. Maybe she deserved to spend a year or two as a sex slave.
Glumly, Celeste sent her collection of toys spinning in the opposite direction. One way or another this interlude was about to end. They would arrive at Kyristari in two days.
And she’d never see him again.
She felt her eyes fill. Her butt hit the mattress as her powerfield collapsed, and she bounced once. A series of soft thumps announced the impact of her toys as they rained down on the bed around her, released from her telekinetic grip.
She was in love with him, of course.
She supposed it had been inevitable. After all, she’d been in love with him even before she knew he existed. With a sob, Celeste lay back on the bed, then jerked up, wincing, when she felt something hard under her spine.
Craning her neck to look down at it, she saw it was the sexsub statue. Naturally. Celeste sent it back to its niche, almost dropping it before it got there.
Damn. She knew that little bobble meant she’d about exhausted her powers. Resigned, she got out of bed, gathered the rest of her odds and ends, and wearily began putting them away.
As for the tears rolling down her cheeks, she ignored those.
Jarred looked down at Celeste as she lay curled up in Garr’s old bed. She slept, but not peacefully. But then, she never seemed to sleep peacefully anymore. Her eyes flicked back and forth behind her closed lids, and that pretty face was pulled into a mask of fear. She whimpered again with that heartbreaking note that had drawn him from his own bed. “No!” she muttered. “No, don’t . . . Jarred!”
He wondered what she dreamed he was doing to her. Did she honestly believe she was in danger from him? All he’d ever done was make love to her. Ruthlessly, true, but she’d also found pleasure in everything they’d done. He’d made sure of that.
So why had she begun looking so strained lately, so haunted? His sensors told him she was exhausted—though he could have gathered that from the shadows darkening the skin beneath her eyes.
And why did he care? He was doing all this for revenge, after all. Evidence that she was suffering should be welcome. Yet it wasn’t.
Brooding, he watched as she made another soft, distressed sound and twisted uneasily on the mattress. Her pretty breasts bounced, pale and bare. He’d expected to relish every moment of his conquest of her, but he hadn’t. Oh, the sex was incredible—he’d never had better. Yet a kind of discontent nagged at him, and he didn’t know why.
To make matters worse, they were only two days out from Kyristari, and he wasn’t tired of her yet. He’d expected to have had his fill by now. Expected to have reduced her to a state of helpless sexual submission. Yet even when Celeste yielded to him, she never quite surrendered. There remained some part of her that eluded him, no matter how thoroughly he pleasured her, no matter how many times he made her scream out her climax.
That wasn’t good enough. He wanted all of her. And he had the ugly suspicion that even after he gave her to De’Lar, that need would still haunt him—and so would she.
Dammit, he’d been haunted by Celeste Carson long enough. The point of this entire revenge plot was to get her out of his system, but it seemed he’d only succeeded in embedding her more deeply.
Frowning, Jarred rolled his head on his shoulders, trying to work out the knots he could feel gathering in his spine. God, he was tired. He really should go back to bed. And yet, there was something profoundly unsatisfying about lying there alone. He wanted her next to him. And he didn’t like that at all. You’d think he was one of Corinne’s ridiculous romance heroes, mooning after his true love.
What pakshit.
A gasp of terror jolted Jarred out of his preoccupation. He looked down at Celeste just as her eyes flew wide. She screamed in absolute terror and catapulted from the bed like a woman who’d found a devil in it.
“Celeste!” Jarred caught her slim shoulders, stopping her in mid lunge. Green eyes enormous, she battered his chest with small fists, wailing hopelessly. Her face was twisted in an expression of such black horror, pity stabbed his heart. “It’s all right!” he called over her screams, trying to keep his voice even and calm. “Celeste, you’re fine! You’re just having a nightmare.”
“She killed Jarred!” she cried, swatting his imprisoning forearms with her small fists. “He’s dead!”
She’s still asleep, he realized. “Darlin’, I’m fine. Nobody killed me. It was just a bad dream.”
At the sound of his voice, she stopped struggling and stared up at him with a heartrending expression of hope. “Jarred?”
“Right here, sweetheart.” But even as he spoke to her, he could tell from her vague, vulnerable expression that she was still asleep.
She collapsed into his arms with a muffled sob. “I thought you were dead.”
“Not me.” He cradled her, touched by her very real distress. “You know it would take a direct hit from a star cruiser to take me out.”
Celeste burrowed her head into his chest with a whimper of relief. For a moment he let himself stand there enjoying her warm femininity. It felt oddly satisfying to hold her like that without the need to prove a point or take revenge or dominate her.
When she began to lean more heavily against him, he realized reluctantly that she was sliding deeper into sleep. He bent to sweep her up into his arms, then put her down on the bed again. She immediately curled into a small, silken ball, all blond curls and soft skin. He turned to leave the room.
“Glad you’re not dead,” she said in a slurred voice that spoke of a mind deeply asleep. “Love you.”
Jarred’s eyes widened as he stopped in mid step. He turned to look down at her. “What did you say?”
But her only reply was a soft, breathy snore.
He stood looking down at her for a long moment. Then he bent, eased her over on the mattress, and slipped under the covers next to her. Wrapping his arms around her, he drew her close and let his own eyes slip closed.
If I left her alone, she’d only have another nightmare, he told himself. This way we’ll both get some sleep. It had nothing to do with her semiconscious admission. Which he didn’t believe anyway.
He drifted to sleep listening to her deep, slow breathing. Neither of them woke again for the rest of the night.
When Jarred did finally wake again, she was draped over his chest, boneless as a scarf. He lifted his head and twisted his neck so he could look down into her face.
Still sleeping.
Frowning, he studied her porcelain-delicate features framed by that mass of tangled blond curls. She looked pale, and the shadows under her eyes seemed to have deepened. Even in sleep, a line of worry creased her brows. He remembered all the ways he’d taken her and felt a twinge of guilt. He evidently hadn’t allowed her enough rest.
Love you.
Had she meant it?
Some small, unworthy part of his mind thought that would be a fine revenge—to make the woman who had tormented him fall helplessly in love, then walk off and leave her. But the rest of him . . .
The rest felt a bloom of something soft and warm whenever he remembered those drowsy words.
She was asleep, Jarred told himself. She didn’t mean it. How could she? If anyone knew him, Celeste Carson did. She knew what he was capable of, had recorded every dark thought he’d had for a decade. Hell, he’d kidnapped and sexually tormented her for the past two weeks. Why in the name of the Galactic Gods would she fall in love with him? She’d been ready to kill him off fourteen days ago.
And yet . . .
And yet sometimes there was something in her eyes when she looked at him. A tenderness. A poignant need tinged with hopelessness, as though she knew she’d never have whatever it was she wanted from him.
Freedom, Jarred told himself firmly. She wants her freedom. She just wants to go home, and she thinks I can take her there.
She shifted and murmured something he couldn’t make out. He felt one of her lush breasts move against his chest as she sighed.
Jarred lifted one hand and put it in the delicate valley between her shoulders. Under his palm, he could feel each bump in her vulnerable spine. She felt so fragile, so delicate. He drew in a deep breath, inhaling the scent of her hair. She’d put something on it that smelled of starlillies. A faint smile curved his lips as he wondered if she even knew what a starlilly was.
The smile faded as he remembered they would arrive at Kyristari tomorrow. There’d be no more time with her—no more listening to her cry out in passion, no more watching her face when she came. Those pleasures would belong to De’Lar.
God, he hated that thought.
Maybe she’d fail the sexsub test. No, no such luck. After the sensor readings he’d recorded, Jarred knew she’d score well into the submissive range. And then he’d have no choice except to return to his empty ship and try to ignore the lingering scent of starlillies . . .
Captive Dreams Page 25