by Marie Harte
“Are you ready to begin?” He removed his shirt, showcasing that powerful body that never failed to arouse her.
“What do you want from me?”
His eyes gleamed, and he removed his boots and trousers, leaving him clad in a thin pair of shorts, which did nothing to hide his fierce erection. “We’ll get to that soon enough.” He joined her on the bed. He straddled her waist and rested on his knees so as not to overwhelm her with his weight.
She swallowed loudly, unable to look away from the shorts clinging to his massive cock. He seemed to swell under her regard.
She blinked up into his gaze and saw him staring at her mouth. She flushed, unable to help herself, and he chuckled.
“Let’s begin the game. First, I’ll ask you a question, and I expect you to answer honestly. Even if it’s what you think I don’t want to hear.”
“Okay,” she said slowly.
“Then you ask me a question in return.”
“I can ask anything?”
He nodded, and she thought this might work out to her advantage after all. In addition to the obvious arousal he stoked in her, he might also assuage her curiosity.
“Does my heritage bother you?” he asked.
Surprised, she shook her head before she even thought about it. “No, why would you ask that?” He seemed to relax, and she couldn’t help laughing. “Of all the questions to ask, that seems a little obvious now, doesn’t it?”
“Lust can be aroused in anyone, Seriana. Like has little to do with it.” He sounded different, and she realised he truly had feared she disliked the Ragga in him.
“Okay, I answered your question. Now answer mine. What exactly are you? You’re Ragga, but you’re something else as well. You’re not a Creation, are you?” she joked. Creations had been manmade by Eyran scientists and were killed on sight. The poor creatures had the combined genetics of many species in the System, but those combinations sparked insanity and violence.
Raggas were a rare breed that only ever displayed one gender, that of huge, massively strong males. No females, and Ragga children always bore the male characteristics of their race—square jaws, broad foreheads, high cheekbones and arrogant noses. But Abjon looked different to her.
He blinked in surprise. “You’re very observant.” He didn’t sound happy at the admission. “My father was Ragga, my mother Nebite.”
She’d only guessed before that he might have Nebite blood in his background. But hearing him say it, she could only stare in admiration. The Nebites possessed a sexuality and beauty envied by those in the System. She could see the sensuality in his face, in the pleasure-slanted eyes that burned with gold as they watched her.
“Does it bother you to admit it?”
“It’s my turn to ask a question. Do you hate your father?”
The abrupt change in subject startled her. “Hate my father? Of course not.”
“Yet you ran not only from me, but from him as well.”
She blushed. Hearing him say it made her feel all of two years old. She should never have run. She should have stayed and fought for her independence. “I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“I agree.” He overlooked her glare. “You don’t trust him, though, do you?”
She squirmed, not wanting to answer. “Hey, it’s my turn to ask a question.”
He ran a hand over her breast, squeezing and petting. “If you don’t answer, sweet,” he threatened in a soft voice, “I will bring you near to climax but not over. Again and again, you’ll teeter on the brink, begging me for release.”
The word ‘begging’ made her reconsider. To her consternation, she’d done enough begging already. “Okay, okay.” She gasped when he toyed with her nipple. “I trust my father in that I know he loves me. But he’s too unprincipled to trust with other things. Currency? No. The lives of himself and my friends? No, I’m sorry to say.” She was ashamed to admit what she’d felt all her life.
“Don’t worry, love, I know how you feel.”
She blinked. “You do?”
“Much as I love and respect your father, I understand him. He hasn’t gotten where he is today by being compassionate and, dare I say, nice.”
He shifted over her body, sliding his heavy erection over her belly.
“Do you like how I make you feel?” he asked.
“Hey, it’s my turn for a question.”
“You asked it already.”
“I did not.”
“When I said I knew how you felt, you asked, ‘You do?’”
“That’s cheap.” She wanted to scowl, but his hands crept over her breasts again, and she sighed instead.
“Yes, love, tell me how you feel. Your body knows, but I want you to admit it to me.”
She arched under his touch, frustrated at how much he made her want him. “Yes,” she hissed. “I like the way you make me feel. I want you. I always want you,” she confessed when he leaned down to suck one taut nipple into his mouth.
“Tell me.” He moved back so that he sat between her legs, his hands placed precariously near the juncture of her thighs.
“Since I was, I don’t know, sixteen or so, I’ve felt out of sorts around you.”
He began stroking her thighs, his gaze fixed to hers, and she continued, breathless.
“You made me feel hot and cold. You bothered me when you stared at me with those blazing eyes, when they turn from gold to red, like they are now.” She moaned as he slid a finger between her folds and shoved it deep inside her. “You always promised with your eyes, but you never made good on that promise.”
He stilled his hands, and she could tell she’d surprised him. “You wanted me then?”
“I don’t know. I wanted something from you, but I didn’t know what. I was young. By the time I realised what I felt, I knew too much about you,” she added resentfully.
“Ah.” He slid back and leaned down to lick the dew from her clit. She groaned and tried to tighten her thighs around him, but bound, she could do nothing. “So my ‘illegal pursuits’, as you think of them, put you off?”
“Yes,” she groaned as he sucked hard on her clit.
He licked her again before kneeling once more between her legs. Staring down at his tented shorts, he muttered under his breath and tore them from his body. “Do you like what you see?” he asked on a ragged breath.
She nodded.
“What do you want me to do to you?”
Seriana bit her lip, wanting him more now that she saw his cock glistening with need. Yet to give voice to her inner desires…
“Seriana,” he threatened in a growl and ground his palm over her moist clit.
She closed her eyes and sucked in a breath. It was easier if she didn’t have to look at him. For some reason he made her feel shy while overly sensual. It made no sense.
Hoping she didn’t sound as foolish as she felt, she confessed, “I want you to touch me like you did last night, to feel your cock in my mouth again. But I want you to come inside my sex. I want to feel you thrusting in and out of me, your body rubbing against mine.”
His breathing increased as she spoke, and she knew she’d aroused both of them with her desire. She opened her eyes and saw him staring at her, his mouth flat and his cock even larger.
“I wanted to draw this out,” he admitted on a rasp. “But I can’t.”
He crawled up her body and turned around, putting his face in her lap, his cock level with her mouth. Then he began licking and tasting her, and she was lost. Feeling for his shaft with her lips, she eagerly opened her mouth and accepted his gentle thrust.
Like a lover’s perfume, his sultry scent called to her, demanding she give him as much pleasure as he’d given her. She took him in, pushing and pulling at his cock with her lips and tongue while he nipped at her clit.
The added sensation of being unable to move, completely under his control, increased her stimulation until she was a short breath from orgasm.
His thrusts increased as well, telling her
in no uncertain terms how much he wanted her. She managed to break from his shaft. “Please, Abjon, inside me.”
With a muffled curse, he quickly turned around and positioned himself so the head of his cock met the wet heat of her pussy. “Look at me, love,” he said in a guttural voice. Waiting until their gazes met, he slowly slid inside her, stretching her to the limit and further.
He was large, massive, yet he fit with a perfection she knew was right.
With a deep groan, he started thrusting. Slowly, carefully, as if to determine her acceptance. But it wasn’t enough.
“Dammit, I need more,” she moaned, wishing she could touch him, taste him.
His answer was a violent thrust, making her cry out with approval. He stroked and pummelled with a strength that should have hurt but only heightened the erotic sensation. Another graze of his pelvis against her clit and she was coming, hard and deep, her contractions gripping his cock with a violent pull that triggered his climax.
“Seriana,” he shouted as he came, spending inside her with a desperate cry that filled a part of her heart long empty. He shuddered as he poured into her, caging her within his arms while his body loved hers.
After a while they both recovered enough to gaze sleepily at one another.
The discomfort of her bonds seeped in, and she read the understanding in his golden eyes. The sign of a replete male. “You promise you won’t run?”
“Not until you answer the rest of my questions,” she managed once she’d caught her breath.
He grinned, a bright shine of affection that made her smile. “I think I can handle that.” After a quick kiss on the mouth, he undid her restraints.
Feeling the blood rush back into her hands and feet, she shivered as he rubbed her to relieve the tingling.
Once the blood rushed back into her limbs, she thanked him and watched as he climbed back into bed. “You really are a handsome man.”
“I know.”
Laughing at his arrogance, she accepted the warm embrace he enfolded her in and thought hard about how to say what she desperately wanted to know.
“Seriana?”
“What do you really want from me, Abjon?”
He stiffened beneath her, and she wondered if she should have eased into the heavy questions after they’d both fully recovered from their lovemaking. Now the passion and excitement she’d felt faded under the sudden flatness in his expressionless gaze.
Chapter Six
What did he want with her? Was the woman dense? How could she not sense his feelings behind every touch, every teasing caress? But then, perhaps she didn’t sense it because she didn’t feel it herself.
A foreign sense of self-doubt filled him, one Abjon hadn’t felt in a very long time. Even when Seriana had vanished a year ago, he’d known he would find her and bring her back to him. She’d run, afraid of her feelings. Hell, Rover had insisted Seriana never had eyes for anyone other than Abjon. Abjon had felt their connection for years.
He’d never once considered the possibility she wouldn’t return his affection.
“Abjon?” she asked hesitantly.
He rolled away, his back to her, and sat at the side of the bed. Frustration and rage built inside him, that once again he might fall prey to a woman’s manipulations.
Dammit, he hadn’t imagined the way she’d looked at him for the last few years, or had he? Yes, there had always been a tinge of wariness in her gaze, but mixed with that was a wealth of admiration, of attraction. He’d been equally taken by her beauty, her intelligence, and more, her integrity. Ironically, her basic purity had drawn him like no other thing could.
Surrounded by a world of corruption, Seriana glowed with an innocence all too rare in this life. The daughter of Rover Blue, a cutthroat that made Abjon pale by comparison, she possessed a keen intelligence that should have enabled her to see beyond the superficial layers of his craftily built reputation. He’d stolen, yes, and he’d killed to defend himself, but he’d never murdered, and he’d only stolen from those as or more corrupt than himself.
That she still didn’t see the real him, after all their years together and, hell, after this morning, made him want to pound something. He didn’t dare examine the emptiness in the vicinity of his heart.
“What is it you think I want?” he asked coolly.
“I, well…” she paused, and he glanced back at her.
Unlike him, Seriana was small, feminine, and beauty personified. Her long black hair fell in waves around her face, framing the deep lavender pools of uncertainty swimming in her gaze.
“Tell, me, Seriana. We are, after all, still playing the game.”
“The game?” Confusion lined her brow before her eyes darkened to a deep indigo. “Is that all this is to you? A game?”
“I might ask you the same.”
She rose to her knees, gloriously naked but so enraged she missed the answering flame of his passion. “You’ve stalked me. You’ve haunted me for as long as I can remember. The first time in my life I tried to be free of my father’s life, you hunted me, and not just for a few days or weeks, but for an entire year. I was almost sold as a slave to filthy Melan degenerates because of you.
“And now, after a year of running, of never-ending pursuit, I turned around and made love to you. I, Seriana Blue, made love to Abjon Afier, the biggest, baddest pirate in the entire Vrail System, in the face of my self-imposed rule to avoid my father’s way of life. What the hell does that tell you?”
He could only stare at her, so enraptured by her passionate rage he wanted to lay her down and join their bodies for eternity. It was with some effort he answered. “That you were needing it, bad?”
He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but her eyes deepened to black, and then she flew at him. Startled, he caught her and tumbled to the floor, conscious to keep his weight underneath her.
Stars, but the woman had spirit in droves. She slapped, clawed, and even managed to bite him before he flipped her onto her back and straddled her, staring in puzzlement.
In all the time he’d known her, he’d seen Seriana do many things, including lose her temper. But he’d never, ever, seen her explode into violence about anything. Dare he hope this was a good sign?
“Get off me, you oaf!” She struck at his chest, and he easily caught her hands and pinned them to either side of her head. “Shit. You’re not even breathing hard.”
He wanted to smile at her pique. “Are you finished?”
“Are you?” she growled.
“Sweet, I’ve barely begun.”
Seriana couldn’t put her finger on it, but the odd flatness that had moments ago filled Abjon had vanished. Now, as she lay on her back under a mountain of Ragga, she wondered whether to view that as a good thing.
He stared down at her with a face that captivated her, as it had from the first moment she’d seen him. For years she’d regarded him from afar, afraid to get too close lest she succumb to his temptation. The last thing she’d wanted was to get involved with one of her father’s men.
Yet for all her distance, she’d noticed things. She’d never seen him act disrespectfully to a woman or to a person of advanced years. She knew Raggas had a hearty respect for traditions and the elderly, but Abjon had been raised apart from his people.
Though he’d supposedly stolen millions, he lived comfortably but not to excess in the house next to her family’s home. She’d never seen him with a woman, but his popularity with the ladies was a thing of legend among her father’s crew. Abjon, however, remained circumspect about his love life, almost like…a gentleman.
A gentleman, she thought wryly as her temper faded, didn’t sit on top of a woman. Though he kept his weight off her by resting on his knees, she didn’t like her submissive position.
Almost as if he’d read her thoughts, he cautiously rose and lifted her to her feet as if she weighed no more than a feather. “Back on the bed, Seriana,” he said in a thick voice, making her instantly aware of his large, thick cock.
She felt stupid to feel such shyness after he’d kept her naked for days and loved her so intimately, but she couldn’t help herself. She blushed under his hungry stare and reached for a sheet to wrap around herself.
Seriana cleared her throat. “I don’t think so. I want you to answer my question, Abjon.”
“Question?” he asked negligently as he leaned against a bedpost. “Which question would that be?”
She opened her mouth to blast his insolence when she realised he was enjoying their banter. He looked relaxed, almost boyish in his amusement, and he lacked the battle tension that always seemed to fill his frame.
Much as she wanted to take him to task for making light of what she’d been through, she didn’t want this new, light-hearted Abjon to disappear.
The fact that he’d pursued her since the day she’d left, that even when he’d captured her he hadn’t hurt her, but instead had gifted her with pleasure beyond imagining, had to mean something. He’d made no reference to returning her to her father, and he touched her like a man who cared. At turns possessive yet tender, he stared at her with a strange look in his eyes, one that, in her heart of hearts, she hoped to credit as love.
Narrowing her gaze, she stepped forward and poked him. “Don’t get smart with me,” she growled. Her finger made no headway against the muscled wall of his chest, so she sought an alternate means to subdue him. She dropped her sheet and saw an answering need in the tension that bracketed his hard body.
With stroking hands, she petted him, trailing over muscle and sinew, stealing around the rock-hard bulge of his biceps. His breathing quickened, and she grinned, a purely feminine power stealing through her.
“You aren’t sending me back to my father anytime soon, are you?” Her hands reached down to encircle his impressive length.
He groaned and closed his eyes, yielding to her control. She thrilled when he shook his head and brought his hands over hers.
“More, sweet.” He encouraged her to increase the friction on his cock, and when she followed his instruction she was richly rewarded with a soul-stealing kiss. Thought soon faded as feeling and sensation overtook them both.