Warlord

by Angela Knight

  Then he stopped.

  “Baird!” I cried, desperate. “Don’t stop!”

  “Am I your master, Kyna?”

  The question made me gape. I lifted my head and looked at him, looming over my sex, his muscled biceps bunching as he watched my face with a predator’s hunger. “What?” I couldn’t believe he’d asked the question.

  He lowered his head and flicked my clit, punctuating each word with a skillful stroke of his tongue. “Am…” Lick. “…I…” Lick. “…your…” Lick. “…Master?”

  My climax was so close I could only twist mindlessly. “Yes! Oh, yes, whatever you want!”

  “Good.” He sat back on his heels, leaving my stiff, desperate clit to cool without his mouth. “Then your master wants the satisfaction you have denied him.”

  He reached down and caught me by the shoulders, pulling me onto my knees facing him. Dazed, I could only watch as he rose easily to his feet and opened the fly of his huggers. His cock thrust out, so broad and thick I was momentarily startled. I had never seen an organ of such menacing size. “Take it down your throat,” he ordered.

  Wide-eyed, I lifted my gaze to his. Those gold-shot eyes were narrowed, fierce. Demanding.

  “You’ve been torturing me for weeks, Kyna,” he growled. “Now you’re going to use that sweet mouth for something besides telling me no.”

  He reached out a big hand and wrapped it in my hair. Helplessly, I leaned forward, opened my mouth, and took that big, threatening cock inside.

  “Yeesssssssss,” he hissed. “That’s it. Like that. Deeper.” He rocked his hips, forcing the massive shaft more fully into my mouth. He tasted hot and salty, and the texture of his skin was slick as his cock slid past my lips. I felt hot cream flooding my cunt, shockingly aroused by his dominant pose. It should have offended and outraged me, but it didn’t. Instead I saw it as a mark of his extreme arousal. And his lust sent mine spiraling even higher.

  He wrapped both hands in my hair, holding me still as he rolled his hips, forcing more and more of his cock down my throat. I choked, and he backed off, but only slightly. I could sense his ruthless intent to come in my mouth. With my hands bound behind me and his hands controlling my head, he could use me as he pleased. And he did, fucking my mouth as I sucked him, rumbling blunt orders about how to use my tongue and lips. Orders I, helplessly aroused, could only obey.

  Until he drove in a thrust that made me gasp around his shaft. The big, plum head jerked, and something hot and salty flooded my mouth as he groaned out a low, animal sound of pleasure.

  “Very nice, my captive,” he rumbled at last, releasing me. I collapsed gasping, my cunt burning in helpless lust. “Now I can tend to you properly.”

  He stepped around behind me. In an instant, my every erotic instinct went on alert. With a helpless moan, I drew my legs up under my body and lifted my hips to him, offering him my desperately needy cunt. He tapped my thighs with one foot. “Wider, captive.”

  Licking my lips, I obeyed. My face pressed to the cool mat, my ass in the air, I waited. It was a gallingly subservient pose, but I didn’t care. Suddenly I understood why my sister had been so willing to play this game with her Warlord husband.

  He stepped away from me for a moment, and I shut my eyes, fighting the need to beg.

  Something cold touched my hot cunt, and my back arched in shock. “Baird!” I gasped.

  I heard him laugh. “I thought you liked the touch of my blade?” A long, cool object sought the opening of my cunt and pressed inside. I yelped and jerked my head around.

  Baird was fucking me with the hilt of his rapier. He grinned at me wickedly as he pushed the thick, leather wrapped grip deeper into my creamy cunt. Until finally the long quillions of the guard pressed my sex and ass, cool steel grinding against my clit.

  Helplessly I moaned. The lust I felt scalded me.

  Eyes dark gold with raw lechery, Baird slowly began to fuck me with the hilt. Each time he drove it in up to the guard, he twisted it so the cold metal raked my clit. The sensation made me writhe.

  But despite the wicked pleasure, what I really wanted was the feeling of that hot satin shaft of his, driven all the way to my core. “Baird, please,” I whimpered. “Take me!”

  “Baird?” He withdrew the hilt and drove it in hard. I yelped at the brutal pleasure.

  “Master! I meant, Master! Please, give me your cock!”

  “Do you really think you deserve it, after the way you’ve tormented and denied me?”

  “Aaah!” I sucked in a breath as he twisted the hilt skillfully. “No, but…but you do. Oh, please, Baird. I’m so wet….”

  “Yes,” he growled. “You are. I can scent you, hot and slick and wanting. But is your cunt all you want filled?”

  “No,” I groaned, knowing it was true. “I want you to fill the circle. Give me your mark, Baird. Please.”

  “Finally!” He jerked the hilt from my body and threw the sword across the room. No sooner did it bounce clattering off the bulkhead than he flipped me onto my back and covered my body with his. In an instant he was in me, driving to my heart with one hard thrust of his cock.

  I screamed at the sensation of that broad shaft filling my cunt. But he gave me no quarter, no time to catch my breath. He simply started ramming me in long strokes that hit me deep and hard, just where I needed it.

  I keened at his rough possession, staring up into those narrow, gold-shot eyes. His lips were pulled back from his teeth as he fucked me. Every stroke sent pleasure spiraling tighter, deeper. Until I could not take any more. I felt it rise in me like a molten wave, searing every last thought, every last feeling, out of me. Leaving only the mind-detonating sensation of his cock, shuttling inside my spread and helpless body.

  I threw back my head and screamed. He roared in pleasure and drove to the hilt, freezing there, pumping out his come.

  Finally the storm was over. He rolled off me to lay beside my sore, well-used body. I groaned softly as my strained muscles protested deliciously.

  Suddenly one of Baird’s long fingers slid into my cunt, making my back arch in shock. Before I could yelp a protest, he withdrew his hand. Something wet and white covered his fingertip—his come.

  With a wicked grin, he pressed the finger against my cheekbone, filling the circle just as he had two months before with his blood. “Now,” he said, grinning with smug male possessiveness, “you are mine.”

  I eyed him, then reached between my thighs and slipped my own finger deep. Then I pressed our mingled juices against his arrogant cheekbone, covering the half circle tattooed there. “As you’re mine.”

  He smiled, the dark light lifting from his eyes. “I love you, Kyna.”

  I grinned back. “And I love you, too, Baird.” Lifting my head, I kissed him, sliding my tongue deep in his mouth. I heard a startled growl of lust….

  And then it began all over again.

  Baby, You’ve Changed

  I’m told everybody squirms a little on seeing somebody they made love to years ago as a teenager. Maybe you gained weight. Maybe he picked up a few scars. Maybe, like me, you said something stupidly thoughtless when you broke it off that makes you wince as an adult.

  But I suspect my reunion with Captain Gage Deauxville hit new depths of God-awful unplumbed in the history of romance.

  To begin with, our little meeting didn’t exactly take place at a Star Academy reunion. No, I and the rest of the crew of the Xe’vit had just been captured by Deauxville’s Intrepid after running a four-hour space battle during the conquest of Arcana.

  Not that we made it easy. After the Xe’vit was disabled by several well-placed Intrepid antimatter volleys, we fought like hell to repel the enemy’s boarding parties, with me and my Arcanan Marines in the lead.

  Didn’t do much good. Deauxville’s mercs were just too damned battle-hardened for a shipload of human draftees, no matter how desperate. Most of my mates were grass-green fresh recruits, no match for Deauxville’s troops, fully half of whom were eith
er vamp or genetically engineered anyway. I knew when the boarding started we were fucked, and I was right.

  After the obligatory ass-kicking—and the post ass-kicking trip to the ship’s medtechs for treatment of some ugly beamer burns—all us Marines were ordered to report to the Xe’vit’s quarterdeck. My boys and girls didn’t like the sound of that much, and to tell the truth, neither did I. My old lover had built himself a very dark reputation, so dark I was still wondering whether it really was him.

  Until they lined us up on the quarterdeck, us unarmed in our shipsuits, them in boarding armor. Deauxville came out to review us all, and my heart sank. It was him, all right.

  Of course, he was a hell of a lot bigger than the half-grown seventeen-year-old I’d seduced as a bitchy little teenage Fem. Hard to tell how much of it was him and how much was that matte-black boarding armor, but he towered over every Marine in the line. Except maybe Tiny, who wasn’t really human to begin with.

  But that face—that face I knew. He’d been such a pretty kid all those years ago, with that beautifully sculptured bone structure that looked like something Michelangelo had chiseled, with big blue eyes and a sweet, kissable mouth. A young archangel I had thoroughly enjoyed corrupting with all the wicked experience that comes from being a whole year older.

  The beauty was still there, but it was darker now, harder. A scar slashed from his forehead, across one eye, and down an elegant cheek, but it somehow set his looks off instead of ruining them. I imagined what the original wound must have been like and winced. It was a miracle he hadn’t lost that eye.

  I also wondered why he hadn’t had the scar surgically removed. What kind of statement was he trying to make with that?

  As he walked down the line of my Marines, I saw him study each of them in turn, meeting their eyes with an icy crystalline stare. If any of them had any thoughts of giving the Intrepid’s crew a hard time, they didn’t by the time he went past.

  Watching him terrorize my unit, I remembered the time I used my Fem strength to hold him down and suck his beautiful young cock into a gushing orgasm. I remembered the adoration in those blue eyes when he told me he loved me.

  And I remembered telling him I could never fall for a mere human like him.

  With the sort of thoughtless cruelty only a teenage girl can manage, I’d told him I was a Fem, genetically engineered for battle. I wanted a man of my own kind who could match me strength for strength, and more. Dominate me, even. Not a guy I could hold down and suck off without working up a sweat. I wanted a Warlord.

  God, what a fucking idiot I’d been.

  I don’t know whether Deauxville read the wince of apology in my eyes when he reached me in that line. I do know he stared down into my face for a long, long time while I tried to decide what, if anything, I should say. Then, slowly, chillingly, he smiled, revealing half-inch fangs.

  My beautiful Gage Deauxville wasn’t a “mere” human anymore. He was a vampire. And one of the nastiest military commanders in this part of the galaxy.

  Without saying a word, he pivoted on his heel and aimed an offhand command at the Intrepid trooper behind him. “That one.”

  “Aye, sir.” The trooper lifted his stun rifle and pointed into my face.

  Shit.

  Before I could react, the lights went out.

  I came to lying in a puddle of drool on cold deck plate. Eeeeww. I lifted my head—which promptly began to pound so hard I dropped it again. Making a supreme effort, I managed to roll over and blink at the ceiling a long way over my head. It wasn’t a familiar ceiling. I wasn’t on board the Xe’vit anymore.

  No sooner had the thought registered that I must be on the Intrepid than I realized something else. My back, pressed against that cold deck, was completely bare. Lifting my head, I discovered that so was the rest of me.

  I was naked.

  To make matters worse, Gage Deauxville towered over me, his blue eyes locked on my face with a distinctly hostile gleam. And he was just as naked as I was, every last centimeter of tanned, gleaming muscle on breath-stealing display. Including his huge, rock-hard erection. As I watched, completely frozen with astonishment, he deliberately squirted a tube of something into one hand and slicked it over his shaft. He’d always been hung, but…

  “Damn, you’ve grown.” I wished I could recall the words the instant they were out of my mouth.

  He gave me a slow, nasty smile, still slowly stroking that massive dick. “A lot of it in the last few minutes.”

  Lying on the deck was beginning to seem like an invitation. I scrambled to my feet, though my head throbbed in protest. Licking dry lips, I eyed the hand stroking that long, thick organ. “Is there a reason you’re greasing your cock, Gage?”

  “I’m planning to celebrate my conquest.” The smile widened, making it uncomfortably obvious just where he intended to do his celebrating.

  I swallowed and met his hot, threatening gaze. Even without the armor, he was a full head taller than I. As a merc, I was no stranger to beautifully sculpted male bodies, but Gage was as powerfully built as a Viking Class Warlord, from corded throat and massive chest all the way down to his big feet. He dwarfed me in every dimension. If he’d still been human, I could have kicked his ass anyway; my Fem strength would have been at least three times greater. But he was a vampire now, and that meant he was significantly stronger than even a Warlord. Which meant I didn’t have a prayer.

  I lifted my chin anyway. “The Gage I knew wasn’t a rapist.”

  “You dumped the Gage you knew.” He stepped closer to loom, a wall of male muscle and hostile sensuality. “At the time, you said you wanted someone who could…take you. Hand to hand.”

  “I said a lot of shit I didn’t mean.” Including the part about not loving you. “I was too young and dumb to know better.”

  “Don’t try to play me, Tamir.” There was genuine anger flaring in his eyes now. “You meant exactly what you said. I’ve researched Warlord culture—all those elaborate courtship and dominance games. You would never have treated a Warlord the way you treated me.”

  Because a Warlord would have seen my actions as the sexual challenge they’d been—an invitation to a dominance duel. And if I’d lost that fight, he’d have seen it as his right to indulge in what my people view as the ultimate act of conquest: a hard, deep assfucking. The kind Gage evidently had in mind now.

  Something I’d still never experienced—though I wasn’t about to admit that to my vampire captor.

  My mouth was completely dry. Involuntarily, my eyes drifted down to his long, thick cock, imagining the way that broad shaft would feel forcing its way into my anus. Deep down, as humiliating as it was, some part of me was getting turned on. God help me, my sweet young lover had turned into the kind of hard, dominant male my darker fantasies had always revolved around.

  So why did I feel…regret?

  “I never meant to hurt you.” The minute I said the words, I mentally cringed. Not a smart thing to say to a guy you’ve humiliated.

  Sure enough, the nasty glint in his eyes brightened. “Don’t worry, darling—I plan to get my revenge.” His gaze flicked downward. I followed them automatically. And saw what I should have noticed immediately, had I not been so hypnotized by Gage’s gorgeous cock.

  On the deck at his feet lay a broadsword, with a lethal point and a visibly sharp edge. It definitely wasn’t a practice weapon. I felt something cold coil in my belly.

  When I looked up again, I found him watching me, cool and calculating. “Pick it up, Tamir.”

  I took a step back. “What?”

  “We’re going to fight my own variation of a dominance duel.” He crouched and picked up the blade himself, giving it a few effortless practice swings. “If I win, you become my bloodslave, and I do my…celebrating in your tight little ass while I feed.” His smile revealed fangs so long, sharp, and white, I instantly imagined how they’d feel sinking into my throat. With an offhand gesture, he tossed me the sword. I caught it automatically. “I
f you win, you avoid a permanent spot on my personal menu. Know how to kill a vampire?”

  Of course I knew—I was a Space Marine. I’d even done it, when I’d had to. But the idea of beheading Gage Deauxville made my gut twist in such horror I almost dropped the sword. “Gage, I am not going to fight you.”

  “Good.” He bared his fangs. “Bend over wide, Tamir.”

  I stared at him as he began to stalk me. He was fucking huge, in every sense of the word. It hit me again that this wasn’t the Gage I’d known—this was a vampire. I didn’t know what he was capable of, what had happened to him over the past fifteen years, what—or whom—he’d done. Though part of me found him deliciously arousing and part remembered the Gage of my girlhood, I was too much a hardened mercenary to turn myself over to a vampire without a fight.

  I lifted the sword. “Kiss my ass.”

  “Actually, I’d rather fuck it.” And he came for me.

  I jumped back barely ahead of his lunge, my heart bounding in my chest. Automatically, I swung my sword at him, pulling it at the last minute. Not that the strike would have landed anyway, judging from the cat-quick way he twisted aside. Damn, the man was fast.

  His chilly blue gaze flicked from my blade to my eyes. Slowly, he smiled in dark satisfaction. I knew he’d realized I had tried to avoid hitting him at the last second. And I knew he interpreted that to mean I wasn’t nearly as opposed to being fang banged as I should have been. I snarled at him, my pride stung. Dammit, I would not be easy prey for him.

  When he came at me again, I put my back into my swing—but I aimed at his leg. I still didn’t want him dead, just stopped.

  Not that it did me any good. He leaped over my swing and lunged for me. I barely eluded those big hands. I’d fought vampires before, but he was even faster and more powerful than my previous opponents.