Celeste gave him her best steady stare. “So do I.”
Jarred shrugged his broad shoulders and looked away. “Throttle down, goddess. People try to murder me a couple of times a month. If I were that easy, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
She stretched her legs out in front of her and crossed them deliberately at the ankles. “You know, if I really was responsible for all the nasty stuff that’s happened to you, has it ever occurred to you I might also have stacked the deck to keep you alive?”
He shifted his gaze to the toes of his armored boots. “All the time.”
Anger stirred beneath her despair. “So maybe you should keep me and my telekinetic powers around, instead of handing me over to the first pervert that comes along.”
“De’Lar is a dominant, not a pervert. In any case, I was an agent for the Stellar Compact for five years before you ever wrote a word.” He smiled dismissively. “I imagine I can struggle along without you.”
“Not if you get killed in the next ten minutes. Dammit, Jarred . . .”
“Drop it.” His expression was so menacing, she badly wanted to obey.
Then she remembered the lightning-bolt-tossing assassin. “Why are you being so stupidly stubborn? Look, I swear to you, I will present myself to De’Lar and start sucking his dick the minute we land . . .”
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a control band. “If you won’t shut your mouth, I can do it for you.”
Celeste snapped her teeth shut. She knew she couldn’t risk him paralyzing her again. She had to be ready when the assassin struck; she was damned if she’d stand by and watch some bitch murder the man she loved without doing something about it.
Assuming I don’t kill him myself . . .
If looks were ion blasts, he’d be a smoking crater in the seat.
But then, Jarred wasn’t particularly thrilled with the situation, either. The thought of surrendering Celeste to De’Lar made him burn with a sullen fury almost as intense as his dread of returning to that empty ship.
She’d sunk her claws in deep, all right.
Which was why he didn’t dare keep her, though he could think of a dozen very good excuses to do so. She was right about those powers of hers making her invaluable; the Stellar Compact would probably be more than happy to hire her on as his partner.
But she still couldn’t be trusted. She had too much power over him, in every sense. It wouldn’t take her long to take advantage of his weakness.
Just like Ayla—and his mother.
All right, dammit, that’s just absurd, he told himself firmly. Celeste wasn’t Ayla, and she certainly wasn’t Jamme Varrain. He had no idea why his mind kept digging at those old scars.
For God’s sake, he’d been twelve when Jamme had enrolled him in the Stellar Compact’s Enforcement Academy and left him without another word. Twenty years should have been more than enough time for that wound to heal.
Hell, it had been fifteen years since he’d graduated and gone looking for her, only to discover she’d been killed fighting the Rekan the year before. Truthfully, he’d expected to hear Jamme had died much earlier, since she’d never replied to even one of his com messages.
Which wasn’t surprising. Jarred had known from the time he was very young that his mother hated him because he reminded her of his rapist father. He hadn’t been surprised when Jamme had abandoned him the minute her sense of honor allowed it. He was lucky she hadn’t aborted her pregnancy in the first place. She probably would have, if she hadn’t enjoyed playing martyr so much.
None of which had a damn thing to do with Celeste. The point was, he needed to get her settled with De’Lar and get the hell away before she dug any deeper into his soul than she already had.
The skycab jolted as it landed, snapping him out of his reverie. He shot a quick look at Celeste. She was too pale, her eyes darting as she scanned the palace grounds for his would-be assassin.
“Calm down,” Jarred told her gruffly, trying not to be touched by her visible concern. “My sensors aren’t picking up anybody who reads as though they’d like to kill me.”
“Then your sensors are on the blink,” Celeste muttered, as the cab’s door popped open. “Because I’d like to kill you.”
Actually, according to his sensors she was on the verge of crying, but he knew better than to make that observation aloud. He swung from the cab and turned to give her a hand, but she’d already scrambled out, flashing a mouth-watering length of tanned thigh. She turned to watch as the cab lumbered skyward with a whoosh of heated air, banked, and accelerated away like a big blue egg with jets.
“Jarred Varrain?”
He turned as Celeste jumped and spun around. Nervous as a minxlin surrounded by a pack of bloodwolves, Jarred thought, slanting a glance at her. She barely relaxed when she saw it was only De’Lar’s assistant who walked toward them across the landing pad. Skinny and pompous though he was, she still looked him over as if he might be hiding an ion pistol in those iridescent court robes.
“Greetings, Gel’ka’far.” Jarred gave him a civil nod.
The bureaucrat sketched a curt bow in return. “His majesty is expecting you. If you’ll follow me . . .” Pivoting on a peacock-blue high-heeled boot, he hurried away, glancing impatiently over his shoulder to make sure they were following.
Jarred strode after Gel’ka’far, his own boots scraping on the landing pad’s rough surface. Celeste crowded his heels. He noticed her hands were knotted into fists of anxiety. “You could have at least worn your helmet,” she hissed.
“I am not wearing battle gear to visit an old friend. My usual armor is enough.”
“But . . .”
He sighed. “Look, I’m scanning. If anybody shows up with any kind of energy weapon, I’ll know it.”
She growled something that sounded like, “Pigheaded ’borg,” then subsided to eye everything and everyone they passed with such paranoia he started feeling jumpy himself.
Jarred frowned suddenly, eyes focusing on the whisper of silk that barely veiled her pretty pink nipples and the gleaming thatch between her thighs. It was a sexsub’s standard costume, but if somebody started shooting at him, it would provide her with no protection at all. Dammit, I should have thought of that earlier. I could have issued her some body armor of her own . . . Too late now. He’d just have to make sure he got the killer before the killer got them.
Jarred widened the perimeter of his scan, but his computer still could detect no sign of any energy weapons beyond those De’Lar’s guards carried. Could the Kyristari king have a traitor in his service?
The hair rose on the back of his neck as an even more chilling thought occurred to him: could De’Lar himself have sold out?
Celeste padded along the palace corridor at Jarred’s heels, her nerves strung so tight she was surprised she wasn’t humming like a tuning fork. She had to be ready to generate a protective field around him when the assassin started throwing lightning bolts, but she wasn’t sure she was strong enough to block that much power.
Distraction from that sickening worry came in the form of a man walking down the corridor. He wore the blue and green of the palace guard—and a particularly nasty, speculative smirk as he stared at her. She gave him a what’s-your-problem glare before she tracked his gaze back to her own gown. Pink nipples thrust against its sheer bodice.
She winced. Oh, right, Jarred dressed me like a sexsub. Not only did the silk shift put every detail of her anatomy on display, it was like wearing a sign around her neck that said, “Tie me up and do me.”
The guard’s taunting grin widened until his eyes flicked to Jarred. Whatever he saw on the big ’borg’s face wiped the smile right off his own.
As he started to hurry past, Celeste positioned an invisible force field right in front of his shins. With a yelp, he tripped and went sprawling.
While the guard scrambled, cursing, to his feet, Jarred turned to lift a dark brow at her. She widened her eyes in mock innocence. For
a moment she thought he was going to laugh, but instead he focused his gaze on their guide’s narrow back and kept going.
The humor of the moment faded all too soon, leaving Celeste to spiral back into worry. She tried to focus on the elegant sweep of the palace’s architecture, on the soaring niches with their animated statues of De’Lar’s ancestors, on the glowing marble tiles beneath her sandaled feet.
Her obsessed mind foiled her efforts with a low background chant, He’s going to leave me—if they don’t kill him first. He’s going to leave me . . .
Dammit, stop that, she told herself, clenching her fists. Watch for the assassin. All that matters is making sure Jarred survives this.
Just ahead, two men armed with ion pistols snapped to attention at their approach. Between them, the massive double doors they guarded swung slowly, majestically open. Her stomach clenched as De’Lar’s obnoxious little assistant led them inside.
Oh, hell. Celeste looked warily around at the chamber with its high, soaring walls. Stepping close to her lover, she dropped her voice to a murmur. “Heads up, Jarred—I saw this in my vision. This is where the assassin’s going to attack.”
And there was Ayla, spy turned sexsub, curled in sensuous femininity on a bed big enough to sleep the entire New York Jets football team. Her dark eyes focused with hungry interest on Jarred.
Celeste considered slamming her into the nearest wall just on general principle.
Before she could yield to temptation, De’Lar stepped through another door. “Ah, there you are. I see you made it after all. Burned out your obsession yet, Jarred?” Fluid as a cat, he padded toward them, his attention focused with predatory intensity on Celeste’s face.
She shifted uneasily, acutely aware of her all-too-visible nipples as he moved to stand in front of her. Damn, he was big. He wore another one of those flowing robes, this one in peacock blue embroidered in gold. It hung open over a very nice chest, plated in thick, lean muscle and swirled with golden hair. Skin-tight black trousers hugged his long, long legs before they tucked into shiny knee-high black boots.
He was, if anything, even better looking than Jarred, with the kind of perfectly sculpted male beauty of a GQ model—broad cheekbones sharp enough to grate cheese, a square chin set with a deep cleft, a thin nose, and the kind of full mouth that seemed designed for oral sex. Add to that a fall of golden hair that lay across his broad shoulders like a mantle, and you had any girl’s sex fantasy come to life.
Yet staring up into those golden eyes, Celeste felt only a kind of profound despair. Handsome as he was, she didn’t want him. She wanted dark, tormented, arrogant Jarred, sadistic streak and all. Well, you’re not going to get him, she told herself grimly. The most you can hope for is to get him out of here alive.
She shifted her attention to Ayla, who was wearing a sexsub shift that revealed pouting brown nipples and long legs, but no weapon of mass destruction. Where the hell was she hiding it?
“I must admit, Jarred, you were right,” De’Lar said. Celeste jumped as a big hand suddenly closed over her breast, thumb casually flicking her nipple. Fighting panic, she stared up into the Kyristari king’s face as he slid his other arm around her waist and drew her close. “Judging from the sensor readings you sent me, she is deliciously responsive.”
She shot a look at Jarred just in time to see fury blaze in his eyes before his expression smoothed into an icy mask.
If he hated so much seeing another man fondle her, why the hell was he giving her away? She glared at him and mouthed silently, “Pigheaded ’borg jerk.”
“So you’ll accept her as a sexsub?” Jarred sounded as indifferent as a teenager asking, “Do you want fries with that?” Celeste considered slugging him.
“Not quite—yet.” De’Lar looked down at her breast, where her nipple remained stubbornly soft despite his skillful ministrations. “I would like to try her myself first. It’s been my experience that some women only respond to one man.”
The muscles in Jarred’s powerful shoulders bunched under his jacket. “As you wish.” Despite the tension in his big body, he sounded bored. “I’ll leave you alone, then. You can call me aboard the Vengeance once you’ve made your decision.”
No. Celeste bit her lip. Don’t leave me here with him! Then her gaze fell on Ayla, still curled like a sullen snake on De’Lar’s bed. “Sounds like a good plan to me,” she managed, her mouth dry as dust.
What would the king do to her? He’d had some pretty kinky tastes in that story she’d written . . .
Jarred turned, but before he could start toward the door De’Lar said, “Wouldn’t you rather share her with me?”
He stopped dead, but he didn’t look around. “I thought the point was to see how she’ll respond to you.”
“True, but she doesn’t know me.” The Kyristari king smiled at him slowly and teased her captive nipple again. “You could help . . . ease the transition.”
Celeste frowned. What the hell was he up to? She couldn’t think of anything more miserable than screwing a stranger with the man she loved in the same bed . . .
She straightened convulsively. De’Lar’s testing Jarred to see if he can really stand to give me up.
And she’d be more than willing to go along with it—if it wasn’t for Ayla and her lightning bolts. “I really don’t think that’s a good idea . . .”
“And I really don’t care,” De’Lar told her coolly. “I’m not interested in you for your opinions. Jarred?”
He shrugged. “Certainly.”
“Can we at least send Ayla out?” Glancing at her sullen enemy, Celeste improvised a quick excuse. “She’s killing the mood.”
De’Lar considered the request, then waved a regal hand. “You’re excused, Ayla.”
The former spy shot Celeste a glare seething with raw, jealous fury, then rolled from the bed and flounced out. Watching her stalk through double doors that thankfully sealed behind her, Celeste relaxed fractionally. If anybody was the assassin from her vision, it was Ayla.
She just had to make sure the little bitch didn’t slip back in while they were . . . occupied.
But when Celeste pulled her attention from those closed doors, she found she faced a more immediate challenge: two very big men eyeing her with intensely predatory sexual interest. She swallowed, meeting Jarred’s burning black stare. Where the hell had all that ravenous need been when they’d been alone on the Vengeance the last couple of days?
“Just like a man,” she muttered under her breath. “Only wants me when somebody else is interested.”
Jarred knew he should turn around and walk out the door right now. Hell, if Celeste was right, an assassin would soon take a shot at him. If that wasn’t a reason to ignore his insistent dick, he didn’t know what was.
And yet, he also knew when he left this room, he would never see her again. Never touch her satin skin, never taste that maddening mouth. Never drive to the balls into her wet, snug heat. Never hear her laugh or swear or purr at him in that velvet voice of hers.
Staring into Celeste’s anxious green eyes, he realized he wouldn’t be able to leave if an entire battalion of Rekan berserkers was about to break down the door. He had to have her again, even if it meant sharing her with De’Lar.
Then why are you giving her up, you idiot? a voice whispered in the back of his mind.
Because she’s too dangerous to keep.
He was the first to reach for her.
One of Jarred’s hands caught her wrist in a grip like tender iron. He spun her around and hustled her toward the bed as he unsealed his jacket with his free hand. De’Lar moved after them, letting his robe slither off massive shoulders. When Jarred released her to finish stripping, the king picked Celeste up and tossed her onto the bed.
She sprawled where she’d landed, half-afraid to move as the two men undressed with impatient jerks that shouted of lust spinning out of control. Dazed, she looked from one powerful male body to the other. De’Lar was the taller of the two, his lean bod
y dusted with golden hair that thickened around his long, elegant cock. Jarred, by contrast, was broader, more powerfully built, his shoulders a bit wider, his chest roped with heavy muscle and pelted in dark hair.
And his cock was so erect it tilted upward, flushed dark with arousal, its thickness sending a hot quiver through her body as she remembered what it felt like digging so hard and deep into her.
Seeing the direction of her widened gaze, he wrapped a big hand around the base of his shaft and cupped his balls tauntingly. When she licked her lips, the grin faded from his lips. He released himself and reached out to wrap a big fist into the fabric of her shift. One tug ripped it from cleavage to hem. “I want her bound,” he growled, his eyes flicking from her nipples to the thatch between her thighs.
De’Lar smiled slowly. “I think we can manage that.”
So they tied her up. And not in the quick, offhand way Jarred had secured her wrists before. No, they took their time as they wrapped her in the thin silk cords, touching and stroking and tasting as they worked until she felt like a fly at the mercy of two amorous spiders. They bound her arms to her side and her ankles to her thighs, circled her breasts in loops of silk, even tied both her hard nipples, stringing a single thread between the two. Periodically, one man or the other would pluck the string, sending vibrations of heat radiating from the hard peaks.
Then, once she felt even more utterly immobilized than she’d been by Jarred’s control band, they lay down on either side of her to play.
Hot mouths sucked and big hands stroked as she lay on the bed, sandwiched helplessly between two powerful males apparently intent on driving her out of her mind.
Both men were intensely skilled lovers, but their styles were sharply different. De’Lar was a calculating seducer who watched her every reaction, gauging her responses and adjusting his actions accordingly, his hands floating across her bare skin with wicked skill.
Jarred simply devoured her.
He buried his face between her thighs and plunged his tongue deep into her wet core in ruthless licks. Even as he drove her to madness with his mouth, he watched her face hungrily—not like a man trying to seduce a woman, but as though he desperately wanted to memorize her expression.
Captive Dreams Page 27