by Cara Bristol
“I did not hear the knock.” How could she have heard it if she wasn’t in her quarters?
“I entered your room.”
Anika gulped. Show your mettle. Be bold. She planted her hands on her hips and gambled. “You did not check the bathing facility.”
Anger and suspicion melted into ruefulness. “No. I did not think of that.” He sighed.
“That is where I was,” she lied. She’d given Perce and Urazi a head start before exiting the Chamber of Familiars. Hanging back, she’d tagged along while Perce pointed out the various and numerous rooms and even buildings. Out of earshot, she’d had to guess at the purposes of each.
Then Perce had led Urazi down a corridor and, in the distance, she’d spotted Zala. Fearing the female would notice her and call attention to her presence, she’d beaten a hasty retreat. She had explored on her own, attempted to locate the females’ quarters. If Omra and Miri had been captured, that was likely where they would be held. But she’d gotten lost, and by the time she’d caught her bearings, much time had passed. She’d run to her chamber to remove her breast bindings in anticipation of her discussion with Urazi’s manhood. After checking that the corridor was vacant, she’d sprinted to Urazi’s room, hoping he hadn’t returned yet.
But he had.
“I apologize for doubting you,” Urazi said. “You gave your word you would remain here, and I should not have questioned you.” He raked a hand through his hair, demonstrating how its tousled state had come to be. “I was worried about you. When I did not find you here—or in your chambers—I feared someone had discovered your identity.”
A wad of shame lodged in her throat. “I am sorry.”
“You do not need to be sorry about anything. The fault was mine.”
Now she felt worse. Guilty tears moistened her eyes.
Instantly, Urazi approached her. “Foolish female,” he chided, but the gentle affection in his voice further weakened her self-control, causing her lower lip to quiver and tears to spout faster than she could blink.
He drew her into his strong arms, and the dam broke under the strain of his comfort. She sobbed. Urazi rested his cheek on her head and rocked her. “It is all right. I should not have yelled at you.”
He was making it worse! Anika wept and burrowed against his chest.
“Did I frighten you?” he asked, his voice tentative.
She rolled her head from side to side.
“I mean…before. When I punished you.”
Qalin. Veronians. The future of Parseon. Being found out. Dying a slow horrible painful death. Those things frightened her. But Urazi? Not even at his worst. She shook her head again and wrapped her arms around his waist, pressing her unencumbered breasts against his muscled chest.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” She nodded. Urazi might inflict less-than-pleasant discipline, but he would never use his superior strength to hurt her. He was steadfast, loyal, and true. He would never sneak or lie. Unlike her. Her shoulders shook.
“What has upset you so?” He kissed her hair. Then her temple. The corner of her eye.
She lifted a shoulder. “N-nothing.” Except disappointing him. Seeing his reproach if he discovered the truth. She wanted to be the person he assumed she was—steadfast, loyal, and true. Like he was. Not a sneaky liar. When she’d fled Marlix’s abode, she had abandoned her honor, she realized. Had given no thought to duty—only to fulfilling her selfish wishes. “Everything,” she amended.
His chuckle rumbled under her ear. “From nothing to everything. I get it now.”
“You are laughing at me.”
“Never.” This time he fibbed, but she could hear the self-deprecating humor and smiled through her tears. Perhaps males and females would never understand each other. Maybe Nature did not intend them to. She could not confess her actions and falsehoods now, but she vowed to improve in the future. A cleansing breath shuddered through her on the taper of tears. She hugged his waist.
Urazi rubbed his chin against her head, the bristles of hair that darkened his jaw tingling pleasantly. His chest rose with a deep inhalation. “You smell good.”
“I bathed earlier.”
“No, you. Your own scent.”
“Oh.” She didn’t know what to say to such an odd comment—was it praise?—except, “you smell good, too.” He did. Like something woodsy, but clean. She pressed her nose against his chest and sniffed. Male.
“I bathed.” Against her head, his lips twitched.
“No, you,” she parroted and giggled.
He swatted her buttock. “Feleen.”
Breath caught in her throat. Female parts clenched. Do it again. She pressed her pelvis against his lower body. Male parts had started to harden. Female genitalia let down dewy moisture. Call and response.
The hand that had swatted, now caressed. “How are your buttocks?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Since I disciplined you. Are you very sore?” He sounded remorseful.
A new rush of guilt undermined the pleasurable ache between her legs.
“I treated you too harshly—” he said, and she mashed her lips against his to stop him from exacerbating her guilt.
Urazi groaned and swept his tongue inside her mouth. All that was tentative vanished under his plundering kiss. The gentle way he cradled her head in the crook of his arm and stroked her throat contrasted to the heated way he vanquished her mouth.
This kind of surrender came easy. Anika melted, her bones turning to mush.
He kissed her once more, and then scooped her into an embrace. She squealed as her feet left the ground. “What are doing?”
“Carrying you. Put your arms around me,” he ordered. Rather imperiously, she thought, but found she liked it.
Still, she had to lay a token protest. “I can walk,” she said, clinging to his neck.
“Good to know.” He strode to the sleeping platform. Halted.
“Now what?” She wiggled her feet.
“Release me.”
She did, and Urazi let go too and, with nothing but open air beneath her, she flailed until she hit the sleeping platform with a bounce. Urazi grinned, rough maleness transforming into something boyish making it difficult to maintain her glare, but she gave it her best shot. His uniform and footwear hit the floor, and then, with a leap, he landed next to her.
He tugged at her shirt. “Take this off. I wish to see the breasts you have been flaunting unbound beneath your shirt.”
“I have not been flaunting,” she said testily, but pulled the garment over her head.
Urazi cupped both breasts in his large hands, catching the tautened nipples between thumb and forefinger. His eyes glinted before he swooped and sucked a nipple into his mouth.
Maybe she had been flaunting a little. Anika arched, and he growled his approval, the rumble causing her sex to contract and moisten. She would leave a wet stain on her uniform. She tugged at the waistband.
“Good idea.” Urazi lifted his head. “Remove those also.” He yanked her boots off and tossed them over his shoulder. She watched them sail, fearing the knitting needle would fly out. She had not told Urazi about her secret weapon. He probably would not mind, but she’d never mentioned what she carried. He might wonder how much more she hadn’t told him.
Fortunately, the boots landed safely, their hidden items secure.
“While I appreciate the easy access of breeder shifts,” he said, pulling her pants off, “I also like how the alpha uniform molds your buttocks. It is a pleasure to watch you walk, observe your moons as they shift.” He paused and nudged her hip. “Let me examine them.”
She rolled onto her stomach.
“Pink,” he pronounced, with a shade of satisfaction. “But I must check closer.”
How much closer could he get?
And then she found herself stretched face down across his knees, his hardened manhood prodding her side. Excitement and trepidation curled. He massaged and kneaded her but
tocks, and Anika smothered a groan of pleasure, stifled the urge to writhe against his erection.
“Pink,” he repeated, as if memorizing the color. “But not pink enough.”
Her breath caught in her throat. What was he implying?
“Do you consider it wise to creep about the halls with your unbound breasts swaying beneath your shirt?”
There was no mistaking his intention this time. Anika sprang off his lap, but he caught her. She kicked and thrashed, but he held her tight and landed the first strike harmlessly in the center of one clenched buttock. Then tapped the other.
He was teasing! Resistance collapsed. Urazi continued to slap her posterior with whisperfly kisses. Desire pulsed in her core, and her body wanted to move. She lifted her hips.
His broad palm connected with a loud, but only slightly stinging, crack. “Do you tease other males with your charms I wonder?”
Only you. A sly smile slid across her face as she lowered her buttocks so her abdomen brushed against his manhood.
Anika felt the movement of his rising hand. Crack! And…swivel…and grind. She rubbed his erection.
They developed a rhythm, and their teasing game continued for several more strokes until Urazi abruptly hauled her off his lap, and flipped her onto her back. He planted a forearm on each side of her head, his torso crushing her into the sleeping platform. The playful gleam she expected was replaced by an intensity she’d only seen on Marlix’s face when he looked at Tara, and Dak at Omra. Never had she been on the receiving end.
Her lungs failed her. They seized up in her chest.
Urazi cleared his throat. “I regard you in a way I have no other.”
At once, she felt replete, yet oddly light, but her stupid eyes watered again. She’d become incapable of controlling her emotions. “I regard you like no other, too.” Her voice wobbled.
“Good.” He smiled.
Her lips curved in response.
They did nothing but grin and gaze for a long moment until Urazi’s expression turned serious. “We may not get out of Qalin’s abode alive.”
May not? Probably not. “I know.”
“Let us make the most of our time.” Urazi lowered his head.
She expected him to plunder her mouth with a hungry desperation, but he surprised her with a slow exploration that savored and coaxed. He nibbled on her lip, played teasing games, rubbing and lifting, rubbing and lifting. Surprise yielded to understanding that he intended to treat the night as if it was all they had, for maybe it was.
From her mouth, he trailed his lips to her ear, his warm breath and light nibbles wreaking havoc. He planted wet kisses in a meandering path down her neck, moving lower to draw a nipple into his mouth.
Anika curled her fingers into his springy hair and arched. Too far away to reach, his manhood bumped her leg, hot and hard and oozing the fluid of his essence. Needing to touch him, she brushed her shin against his length. Urazi growled and increased suction, and she moaned at the tug between her thighs.
The ache worsened when he slid his fingers between her slick, swollen folds and homed in on the nub at the anterior of her sex. The tense craving that hinted of greater pleasures had returned. Urazi nudged her inner thigh, but she needed little encouragement for her legs to splay open.
She gasped, her hips moving with the dance of his hand. He kissed her, lips earnest, tongue insistent, and then he broke away to smile slyly before scooting down her body.
Anika squealed when he licked her sex, flicked his tongue over her folds, and wiggled it into her channel. Pushing with her heels, she lifted her hips and clamped her thighs around his head as if his skull were a giant acca nut she could crack, but he took that as encouragement to cup her buttocks in his large hands—and to continue to torment the nub with his maddening tongue.
Anika scraped at his scalp with her fingernails, holding him closer, lest he stop. He was killing her with pleasure. She shrieked, her hips bucking on the platform when he applied gentle suction to the nub. She was burning up. Everywhere, but especially down there. Burning. Burning. Burn—
Urazi sprang to his knees, and she wanted to beat at him for stopping, but then he guided his tumescence to her entrance, and filled her in two thrusts. Anika wrapped her legs around his buttocks in satisfaction and clasped her arms around his sturdy neck.
Braced on his elbows, he rode her hard, and she was carried on a wave of pleasure toward ecstasy. When it crashed over her, they both cried out, she with a scream, Urazi with a deep bellow that echoed her rapture.
When her climax waned, Anika clung to him, panting against his neck, as he rained light kisses on her hair.
“Monto,” he rumbled as if awed.
Exactly.
He kissed her, and she tasted herself, smelled her scent, but instead of finding it unpleasant, she pressed her mouth firmer against his. This moment, this pleasure belonged to them, and nobody could rob them of it. She clung to his kiss when he would have pulled away, tried to hold onto his member, too, but it softened and slipped out.
Urazi lifted off her. “I am too heavy.” He rolled onto his back, and she felt bereft until he extended his arm and tucked her into the crook of his elbow. Her head found a perfect resting spot on his chest, and her leg nestled between his. She sighed in peaceful contentment.
Words did not seem necessary, and Anika drifted toward slumber. She struggled to remain alert, to savor this wonderful moment, but her eyelids grew heavy.
“I wish I could have seen Qalin when Perce and I appeared before him, to count how many guards he had with him.” Urazi’s voice seemed to come from a long way off. “It would be helpful to know how well defended he is.”
“Four bodyguards,” Anika answered sleepily.
Beneath her cheek, Urazi went rigid. “How would you know that?”
Her eyes popped open. Drowsiness vanished.
“Anika?” He jerked them both to a sitting position. “How do you know how many guards Qalin had?”
She studied his hair-roughened chest, focused on the single-starred insignia threaded through his right nipple. Urazi lifted her chin. “Answer me.”
Anika bit her lip. She could lie and say she’d been half-asleep and had misheard the question, but she had vowed to end the subterfuge and become the person Urazi assumed she was. She’d not expected to be confronted with a dilemma so soon. “I followed you to the Chamber of Familiars,” she admitted in a small voice. “Hid behind a pillar while you and Perce knelt. I watched everything.”
Urazi clenched his jaw. “Is your word, your honor worth nothing? I should have been able to trust you, of all people.” He flung himself off the bed, and stalked away, his posture stiff.
“I am sorry. I wanted to help.” Misery tightened her chest. She’d give anything to recall her accidental words, her actions.
“How is getting caught going to help?” Urazi whipped around.
“But I didn’t get caught!”
“But you could have. We are in Qalin’s abode! He even has a personal chamber not very far from ours. He or his guards could pass by at any time.”
Anika hadn’t known that. She’d slipped away before that part of the tour. But she’d had enough confinement to last a lifetime. “So I’m to be a prisoner in my chamber?”
“If Qalin gets you, I will not be able to save you. At least one of us should get out of this alive, and I know it is not going to be me.”
“Do not talk like that!” She scrambled off the bed.
His eyes blazed. “If you care if I die, should you not care enough to obey and to keep your word?”
She reached out to him. “I do care.” A lump formed in her throat that he would question her feelings. She had been at fault, but that didn’t mean she didn’t hold him in the utmost regard.
He regarded her extended hand and shook his head in disgust. “You weren’t in the bath when I checked your room, were you?”
Anika dropped her arm and hung her head. “No.”
Urazi m
arched to the other side of the room. Away from her. The distance between them widened like the ravine that had swallowed the conveyance. She had to get him to understand. Repair the rift. She followed. “Urazi, listen. Please.” She wrapped her fingers about his forearm, the muscle as unforgiving as his stony glare.
“I-I was wrong. I wish I could undo it, but I cannot. B-but I observed his defenses. Qalin had four guards—two alphas and two Veronians. Plus three betas, two chair attendants, and a clarionist.” If he realized how useful her information could be, maybe he would forgive her.
“Save it. I do not wish to listen right now. Go back to your chamber.”
His rejection stung like a barb, but she rushed on. “The guards carried daggers and LPDs—”
Urazi wrenched his arm out of her grasp.
“Qalin had a dagger strapped to each thigh. They looked ceremonial—”
Urazi’s eyes glinted colder than a Parseon winter. “And to think I regretted punishing you. Felt I’d been too harsh. And you danced in here—telling more lies.”
“Please,” Anika pleaded. “Punish me now.” She deserved it. Anything to erase the cold fury consuming him, erase the hurt she’d caused. He wasn’t just angry; he felt betrayed, she realized.
He strode toward his bathing chamber, but Anika ran after him. “Urazi, please.”
He didn’t even look at her. “Leave, Anika! Go back to your chamber.” He entered the room and slammed the door.
She could not wallow in a fit of weeping here. She would disgust Urazi further with such a shameful spectacle. Anika dragged on her uniform, shoved her feet into her boots, and ran to the door. The first sob bubbled up in her throat as she burst into the hallway.
A veiled figure and two alpha guards jerked their heads in her direction. With horror, Anika recognized familiar eyes peering through a gap in the veil, eyes that raked her from head to toe, before widening as they riveted on her chest.
“I knew there was something strange about you,” Zala hissed. She turned to the guards. “This is no alpha. She is female!”
Chapter Nineteen
A lounging Qalin shifted to an upright position when the two guards dragged her into the chamber. “What is the meaning of this?” The Alpha flicked his gaze to a heavy wooden apparatus standing on four legs in the center of the room, and then he scowled at the guards. “Who is this alpha? Where is the breeder I have summoned?”