Book 3
Volume 1 (Books 1-3)
FAITH
Book 4
Book 5
Book 6
Volume 2 (Books 4-6)
DESTINY
Book 7
Book 8
Book 9
Volume 3 (Books 7-9)
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Start off the Interstellar Brides®: The Virgins series with The Alien’s Mate. Read the first chapter now!
Cassie, 1885, Selby, Montana Territory
I was at a complete disadvantage. I’d never been kissed like this before. I didn’t know if I was doing it the least bit correctly. He did. Oh, he knew exactly how to kiss. I never imagined it would be like this, so… so hot. Wet. Decadent. The skill and eagerness of his attentions was a complete shock.
He tasted like cinnamon and whiskey and… man. There was no other word to describe that dark essence that was purely male. I had missed this, missed the intimacy, the… need. I craved more: his mouth, his hands, his breath on my skin. Everything.
His hand coasted down my side over my plain cotton nightgown until it reached the hem, which he caught up above my knee. Fingers, rough with calluses, slid the material up my thigh ever so slowly, searing a path as they went. Higher and higher his hand moved until my nightgown was bunched about my waist and I was bared to him, naked and exposed and so very empty. His palm circled to my inner thigh, nudging it wider. Wider still. His pant-clad knee moved between mine and I was trapped, open to him. To whatever he wanted.
His heavy weight pressed me deliciously into the bed. I liked it, liked the feel of him, the solidness. I felt small and feminine. The world—everything—was blocked by his body, separated from me and from what he was doing to my flesh. I was shielded, guarded and safe. Protected. My breasts rubbed against his chest, my nipples pebbling. Heat seeped through both his clothes and my nightgown, warming my flesh and making me shiver. The kiss, oh lord, the kiss! Firm, but insistent, he worked his way from one side of my mouth to the other before his tongue flicked over the corner. I gasped and he took advantage of that, plundering inside my mouth. His left hand tangled in my hair, tilting and turning my head as he wanted.
At the first brush of his fingertips against my core, I whimpered and tugged at the restraints that held my arms locked above my head. I couldn’t move, couldn’t touch him or escape his caress.
The thought made me whimper, my core pulsing with need. He silenced the sound with deeper kisses. Heat bloomed on my skin at the caress. My nipples ached, my pussy softened as if readying for him, for the hard drive of his cock filling me. A brilliant burst of pleasure flared when he circled my clit with his fingers and I bent my knee, arched my back and clawed at the wrought iron headboard.
One of his hands lifted to wrap around my wrist, sliding upward so our fingers entwined. Locked together. I felt my palm pulse and flare, as if he were marking me, branding me with just his touch. The pleasure engulfed me. I was lost, overcome with it.
Lower, I felt his cock nudge first my inner thigh, then my swollen folds. It slipped through my wet welcome, became coated in my essence. Shifting my hips, the head tipped inside me, stretching me open. Wide. So very wide that I felt the slight burn of discomfort, the edge of pleasure-pain spinning me higher, making me desperate to have all of him.
I gripped his hand and arched my hips, taking what I wanted, forcing him to slide in all the way. His groan mixed with my gasp at the feel of him deep inside. Like a hand and glove. So perfect. He began to move then, in and out, his own hips pinning mine into the bed. I could not move, could only revel in the way he angled his cock to stroke over delicious places deep inside that made my skin flush, my thighs clench on his sides. All the while, he kissed me, his tongue mimicking the motions of his cock, thrusting deeply before withdrawing. Aggressive. Hard. So overwhelming I couldn’t think or want, I could only feel. And need.
His need was as great as mine, for his pace changed from an even cadence to wild and desperate.
I came then, brilliant white light flaring behind my closed eyelids. He swallowed my cries of exquisite pleasure even as he continued to plunder, to push deep inside me, touching my womb. We weren’t just making love; this felt more primitive than that. Like a marking, as if he were a primal beast staking his claim on my body, and my soul. Dark, frantic and irreversible.
I felt claimed. As if I would never be the same.
“I will find you,” his harsh voice whispered in my ear as he kissed his way along my jaw, his thrusts shifting my entire body up on the bed with each wild drive of his hips to mine.
I will find you.
I jerked awake.
Sitting up, I looked about, confused. The room was dark, and, much to my disappointment, I was alone. No man touched my body or caressed my skin. My breath came quickly. My skin was damp as if I’d run home from town. My nightgown was up about my waist. I could still feel the man’s hands on me, his cock deep inside me. Clenching down, remnants of my orgasm lingered. My nipples were hard, my womanhood was swollen and achy. Shifting my hips, I rearranged my nightgown and fell back onto the soft mattress, but I left my feet flat on the bed, drawn up, my knees bent. Parting my knees, I spread them wide to dip my fingers between my legs. I was wet. So wet that it coated my thighs.
I whimpered as the need to come raged through my veins yet again. As my fingers took up the familiar circular motion over my clit, I thought of the dream.
It was the same dream as the previous night, but he’d gone farther this time. He’d only kissed and touched me before, but now… he’d fucked me. Dear God, he’d fucked me.
I’d been married to my late husband for nearly two years before he died, and was quite familiar with the activity, but what I’d done with Charles was nothing like this dream, nothing like the man who continued to haunt—and taunt—me. I had no idea the marriage bed could be anything but slightly pleasant. I had been young when we wed, just eighteen, and neither of us were skilled in the arts of the bedroom. Charles, while kind, was not overly attentive, especially when it came to marital relations. It had been quick fumblings in the dark, more thrusting and grunting with a sticky finish than lingering pleasure and desire. This man of my dreams was definitely not Charles. The feel of him was different. The scent. Even his cock. This was a man, not a boy as Charles had been.
Letting my legs fall open, I continued to touch myself, to push myself to feel the same thing again, but I sighed, resigned to suffering the ache. I rested my palm over the heated flesh, but found the touch of my own hand was not the same. My fingers could not offer the fulfillment that the man of my dreams could achieve. I was… unsatisfied somehow. Desperate and needy. I needed that man to touch me, kiss me, love me.
“Wake up, Cassie. It was just a dream,” I muttered to myself.
Shaking my head, I tried in vain to eliminate the sensual visions from my thoughts but found I could not. I wanted that man, needed him. No, I needed his cock. It was no more than a ridiculous fantasy, for he only ever existed in my dreams and my subconscious mind had not bothered to give him a name. Worse, I did not know his face, only his touch. His taste. His scent.
Taking a deep breath, I tried to pick up the smell of him on the cool air. I would recognize his scent, knew the woodsy smell of him, but it was gone. Fading along with the dream and the aftereffects of the orgasm.
It was insane. No, perhaps I was insane. To dream, not once or twice, but four times of the same thing. The same man. The first time, it was just the feel of him, heavy and comforting on top of me. The next, he’d kissed me. The next, he’d touched me. And this time, he fucked me. The dream was becoming longer, more detailed, more… carnal. Yet each time before I woke, I heard his voice. Dark and rumbling, like two stones being rubbed together. I would never forget that voice or the promise it made.
“I will find you,” he’d said as I ca
me, my release so much better in a dream than the real thing ever had been.
I lay there, staring out the window as the sky slowly turned to gray in the east, thinking of what that promise meant. Dawn was approaching and the answer would not come. Nor would sleep, no matter how badly I longed to return to my dreams and his arms.
With a sigh, I climbed from the comforts of my bed and dressed quickly and pinned my hair into a simple bun. There was much to do before dawn, when Mr. Anderson awakened. I would have a little extra time this morning to complete my chores, time to myself as I considered the dream, wondered about how my desires for an unseen stranger had invaded my mind and body more than once.
Tiptoeing down from the attic on the back stairs, I lit the lantern in the kitchen and relit the stove. I filled the coffeepot with grounds and water, set it to heat. At the pump sink, I cupped the cool water in my palms and splashed it on my face, hoping to cool my heated cheeks. I washed my hands and dried myself with a towel. In the dawn light I looked at my palm, swiped it with the cloth.
The birthmark there, the darker shape, tingled. Rubbing it did not soothe the sensation. I remembered the dream and how the man held my hand. Palm to palm, the birthmark had flared to life and I’d almost come from that alone. I felt none of that now, but I was truly aware of it for the first time. I’d ignored it all my life. But now, I felt it, was aware of it, warm and insistent. It was becoming a distraction I did not need, as the dreams were.
There was no man in my life any longer. No suitor or beau. I was just the young widow who lived and worked at the boarding house. The Andersons had been kind to take me in when I was four, when I’d been placed on a train and sent west for adoption. I’d grown up with their son, Charles, who had been a few years older. It had been only natural to marry him when I turned eighteen. Looking back, I had to think that Mrs. Anderson had been motivated to keep me on as free labor rather than see me marry some other man in town. The alternatives had been slim and so I’d readily agreed to the match. Perhaps I was young; perhaps I’d been worried about what would become of me if Charles had married someone else. Surely I’d have been turned out with nowhere to go. Selby was on the train line and growing, but there were not many options for work for unmarried women.
When Charles and his mother both died, I had chosen to remain with Mr. Anderson, who had been—and still was—completely lost. We were two wayward souls. For me, I’d still had no options and so I’d stayed. I wasn’t content, but I was safe. The dreams though, had me wonder if being safe didn’t feel as good as being free.
The familiar sound of footfalls overhead indicated that Mr. Anderson was stirring. He was a man of routine and would be down in five minutes to wash his hands and drink some coffee. I broke from my silly thoughts and let the dream slip away as I began yet another long workday. Grabbing the basket by the back door, I went outside to collect the eggs for breakfast.
* * *
Maddox, Somewhere in the Montana Territory, Earth
I awoke with a start. My heart pounded and my cock throbbed in the tight confines of the rough, uncomfortable pants. Rubbing my hand over the hard length, I hissed at the ache. The dream. Gods. The dream had made me this way.
No, she had done this to me. My mate. She was here, on this ass-backward planet.
“How is this possible?” I whispered my question to the stars still visible in the predawn light. Chest heaving, heart racing, I lay on my back on the hard ground and stared into the night sky, trying to recall an image of her face, found that I could not.
Unbuttoning my pants, I reached in and pulled out my cock, grasped the base in a tight grip, slid my palm up. Awakening with a hard cock was not uncommon, a daily occurrence really, but this was different. I ached for her. I needed to fuck, to sink into a woman… into her.
I didn’t need this desire, the distraction. I’d been tracking Neron since his escape from Incar, the prison colony on our nearest moon. Neron escaped with two other criminals, but the others did not concern me. I had not traveled across the fucking galaxy to hunt them. I wanted Neron’s head on a spike. I’d stolen a horse and been tracking him since we’d landed, nearly caught him, too. But I had begun to suspect that Neron knew I was here, knew I had come to claim the vengeance my family demanded.
Why he’d chosen Earth, a world so primitive it wasn’t yet eligible to join the Interstellar Coalition, I could not understand. Was this planet a secret haven for criminal activity in this region of the galaxy? Had he made contact with other known or hunted criminals hiding among the people of Earth? Or did this planet offer him something else? A free reign of terror and power with his enhanced strength, speed and superior technology?
For the first time in my life I did not know what my old childhood friend wanted. And that made him even more dangerous.
Neron’s life sentence on the prison moon had been enough, at the time, to ease my need for retribution. Now, he’d escaped and fled to this simple planet, so my family had sent me after him. I was to hunt him down and bring him to justice.
My dead sister would be avenged.
But now a simple dream changed everything. My vengeance forced to wait. Finding my mate here was not part of the plan, but she was now my priority.
I fisted my cock, pumped once, twice, and groaned as lust spread like a fire through my blood. “Fuck. This can’t be happening.”
I was here to hunt a killer, not chase a woman, but the dream would not be denied. Nor would the mating mark that flared and burned on my palm. She was here. And the dream. Fuck, the dream had come again and again. This occurrence, I remembered it, remembered her. The feel of her—silky soft and warm. The taste of her skin—like flowers and sunshine. The sound of her—sweet surprise and newfound desire.
The mating mark on my palm throbbed and burned where it slid up and down my cock, where it absorbed the pre-cum that streamed from my slit. My entire life, that damn mark had lain dormant, completely dead, as had my hope of ever finding my marked mate.
And now that we had landed on this primitive planet? The mark blazed with life, making my cock heavy and my skin ultra-sensitive to touch. I dreamed of her. Kissing her. Touching her. I wanted to claim her, fill her with my cock and mark her as mine. I’d ached to come deep inside her, to fill her womb with my seed, but her mind rebelled and she tore from the dream, waking before I could find release.
I thought of her taste, of her hips rising to meet mine and I pumped my cock hard, eager to come.
“You’re mine.”
The thought that I had found her, that I would be the only man to touch her, to own and possess her, made my cock jump in my hand even as my mind rebelled at the idea of delaying my hunt for Neron.
Only the Divine would be so daring as to tempt me with a mate here, so far from my home world that I never would have found her. The dreams were more than a sign; they were a calling, an instinct I had no hope or desire to ignore. A marked mate! It was an honor to find the other half of your soul.
The dreams were a gift, and I welcomed them each night, welcomed the glimpses of her skin, the feel of her creamy thighs, the heat of her pussy, the sticky essence of her arousal. The hard feel of her nipples against my chest. Her taste. Everything.
I pumped my cock harder, remembering the kiss. The memory of her soft lips caused me to arch off the ground, lifting my hips as my balls drew up to my body. The sounds she made, innocent surprise and newfound pleasure, had my orgasm flare at the base of my spine, had my cum all but boiling. It shot forth, pulse after pulse of it as I relived the feel of her body finding release from the barest of touches to her clit.
“Mate,” I growled into the night as my seed coated my hand, slipping over my mark that had finally come to life. I did not know her name, but I would find her and claim her.
“Mine,” I vowed, my breath soughing from my lungs.
I stared up at the stars as I recovered, my body sated for now, knowing that Everis was up there somewhere, the twin stars my home world orb
ited two insignificant sparks among billions in the night sky.
In the early years of my education, I’d listened about as well as the rest of my class as we were told the history of the Coalition planets, and about our home world, Everis. But now those lessons comforted me, for I knew that eons ago, people from Everis had scattered across the galaxies, colonizing new worlds. Some must have found their way here, to Earth. My mate’s presence here was indisputable proof of that.
But something must have happened to my ancestors, for there was no technology here, no knowledge of any life forms beyond their small, blue world. The people of Earth had no space travel. Hell, there was no air travel within the planet’s atmosphere. They still used simple beasts of burden for their transportation. Life was simple, primitive and yet the marked were here. Descendants.
Mates.
The Sevens would have to be notified immediately. Earth would need to be included in our next Reaping ceremony. For now, I would hunt the woman who haunted my dreams. Hunt her. Find her. Claim her.
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Ascension Saga, Book 9: Interstellar Brides®: Ascension Saga Page 9