"Nobody's watching. It's just you and me."
"And the whole lodge just outside that door." She gestured behind her.
"So lock it."
"Maybe I'm a little dangerous, too. Ever think of that one, Tierny?" She lowered her lashes coquettishly, parting her thighs a little wider. "If Commander Bennett walks in on us …" Her words trailed off, and she planted both hands on his shoulders, leaning into him. "Well, I guess he could kick me off base or could demote you. Wait! You're not a ranking officer. Forgot. So what's to worry about?"
Jake muttered a curse, then hiked her skirt up to her waist. "All right, sweet thing, if you want danger, you've got it." He bent his head low and forward, planting fiery kisses along her inner thighs, dragging his lips upward until he buried himself in those sweet folds of flesh. Oh gods, she tasted like nectar, and she was already so wet for him. Just gleaming and damp and perfect.
She dug one hand into his hair, scraping her fingers back and forth across his scalp. Her other hand tore into his shoulder, and he could feel her arch. She made soft moaning cries—quiet, but certainly intense—and he plunged his tongue within her, spreading her wider with his hand.
"Deeper," she murmured. "Please, Jake … deeper." She began to rock her hips, thrusting them, teasing him harder.
A desperate moan escaped his lips, and a dim part of him hoped they wouldn't get barged in on; still, he couldn't keep quiet. His erection lengthened a little more, tightening to the point of painfullness. Almost as if she knew it, Shelby worked her little ass closer to the edge of the table, until she was as close to his own body as she could get. Then, with another delicate cry of pleasure, she slowly leaned back onto the table, opening herself wider to him that way.
He buried his face deeper, thrust his tongue faster and swirled it all about her mound, licking at every drop that she released for him. Just for him.
She began trembling, her thighs tightened about his head, and then quake after quake shot through her core. Arching on the table, she moaned—loudly—and Jake had to have more.
Fumbling with his fly, he rose to his feet, shoved his pants down about his legs, and mounted her right there on the table.
Shelby knew she was in seriously deep trouble. She'd known it from the moment Jake had begun eyeing her legs; now, well, she was just too far gone to care. Any moment and one of the officers was going to discover them having rock-hard, blazing sex on the meeting room table. Jake's heavy weight settled atop her, the wooden table groaning in complaint.
"Better not break this thing," she said, wrapping her legs about his waist.
"I'm not going to break you, baby." He pushed his tip against her opening, sliding in easily.
"The table." It gave another creaking groan. "You're a big, big boy." She settled him inside of her deeper. "A really big boy. God, Jake, you're huge."
He pulled back, giving her a lopsided grin. "Couldn't get this deep on the hood of that truck last night."
Adjusting his hips, he worked his way in farther, and it was all she could do not to melt beneath him. He was beautiful, from his haunted green eyes to his dusky olive skin; his body was exquisite, with its roping muscle and surging power. And he made her feel things that she hadn't in such a long time. Oh, for such a very long time.
Sliding both her hands along his lower back, she outlined that big, gorgeous body atop hers. "You're … stunning," she murmured in his ear.
He dipped his head low, nibbling at her collarbone. "Even if I am a vlksai," he teased, and she stilled beneath him. "What?" He stared down into her eyes. "I was just joking, sweetheart."
She gave her head a little shake, staring up at him in shock.
"Shelby." He brushed her hair out of her eyes. "It doesn't matter what we are.… This is beautiful. Trust me."
That was the terrifying part—she did trust him. And she had no doubt she'd let this man do anything with her that he ever wanted. He leaned up on his forearms, watching her, his intense eyes growing brighter. She turned her head to the side. "Don't go gazing me, now. That's not fair."
He bent down, kissing her chastely on the forehead. "I didn't even know I was doing it. I can't always control my gift. Just call me on it if I do that again."
She nodded, keeping her face turned away from him. Finally, he released a quiet sigh. "We better try this again later." He moved off of her and into a push-up, bending to kiss her softly on the lips one more time.
She slid her hand behind his head, stroking his nape. "I—I don't want this to be over."
Jake opened his mouth to speak just as the meeting room door opened. He bolted backward, practically falling off the table. "Meshdki fliishki!"
Chris Harper appeared in the doorway, eyes bugging out of his head. "Holy shit, Tierny."
"You ever hear of knocking?" Jake shouted, grabbing at his clothes.
Shelby yanked her skirt down as low as it would go. How was it that she and Jake always seemed hell-bent on landing in compromising positions?
"You ever hear of the bedroom?" Harper fired back at Jake, shaking his head. "Fuck, Tierny, let me know when you're done so we can get back to work."
The door slammed shut, rattling in its frame. Shelby slid off the table, her face burning red-hot, and adjusted her skirt. Jake stared after Harper, a dazed, stricken expression in his eyes. She had a pretty good idea that it was far more than being busted by Hope's brother. For it to have been Chris of all people had to have triggered an avalanche of guilt within Jake's heart.
He stared at the closed door, his chest heaving. Shelby's throat tightened; some part of Jake would always be in love with Hope, she realized, and that meant some part of him would always be elusive, unattainable. Remote.
"I better get down to the medical complex," she said smoothly. "I have some patients to check in on after being away for the past ten days."
Jake caught her by the arm, spinning her up against his chest. "We're not done, Shelby. Not even close to done." His light green eyes blazed against his swarthy skin, electrified with unspent need and emotion.
"You've got a meeting, and I've got patients." She kept her tone flat and fixed her gaze just past his shoulder.
"What is it about me that you're so afraid of? Is it really because I'm a hybrid? Does the Antousian blood pumping through my veins turn you off that much?"
"I know how you must have hated that. Chris seeing you with me. How disloyal it must have made you feel." She pressed her eyes shut, tears appearing from nowhere. Jake must have seen, because his entire demeanor changed, and he cradled her head against his chest.
"Shh, sweetheart. I don't care what Chris Harper thinks." He stroked her hair.
"I'm not afraid of your hybrid nature, either," she told him in a thick voice. "I—I just feel so overwhelmed by you. Everything about you."
"I'm not trying to push you," he told her, running one hand down her back.
She tried to speak, but no words would come, and at last she sighed against him, feeling his fingers stroke her hair. Her tears wouldn't stop, and all the while just one thought echoed in her mind: Gentle. Jake Tierny, Antousian hybrid, deadly soldier, giant of a man, was so unbelievably … gentle with her.
Surely she would be safe with someone capable of this kind of tenderness—even if he was a vlksai.
Maybe that was true, but everything—all of what was happening between them—was just too much, too fast. She pushed apart from him, wiping at her eyes. "I really do have to go," she said in a numb voice, staggering slightly as she made for the door.
"I'll see you later, though?"
"I have patients to visit."
"You already said that."
"Because it's true." She hesitated, her hand flat against the heavy wooden door. "But … I want to see you, too."
"Yeah?" Jake asked softly, stepping close behind her. His large hand settled on her shoulder, a heavy and comforting weight.
"Sure." She steadied her hand, trying to stop it from trembling against the door. "S
o I'll just, uh, see you around." She slid out of his grasp and was gone before he could catch her.
"Just tell me that Erica doesn't somehow know I'm ravishing her mother," Jared laughed, rolling onto his back and collapsing against the pillows. His body was covered in perspiration, his naturally dark face ruddy from their exertions.
"It puts her to sleep," Kelsey panted.
Jared's eyebrows lifted to his hairline. "You must be joking, love. How could anyone sleep through"—he slid an open palm over her breast, then down along her hip—"that. Sweet gods above, we'll be lucky if a battalion doesn't storm down our door after the noise we just made. They're probably afraid the compound is under attack."
Kelsey laughed, burrowing closer to Jared. "It's the rhythm of it. The back and forth is like we're rocking her."
Jared's eyes drifted halfway shut, and he flipped over onto his belly. "I know what she means.… I'm ready for a nap myself. You wore me out, sweet Kelse."
Kelsey began stroking her fingertips across his shoulders; he practically purred in response. He loved a good postcoital back scratching and always lapped it up, growling happily in reaction. So long as she avoided his scars; from the beginning, he'd always flinched or pulled away whenever she touched the rough striations on his back.
She wasn't sure why—maybe because of the growing closeness she felt with him now that Erica was almost here or maybe from some need to help him—but she took her fingers and deliberately touched the harshest scar that ran from his left shoulder all the way down to his hip. He flinched in reaction to her touch, but she didn't remove her hand.
"You never talk about how you got these." She skimmed her hand lower, moving across the firm musculature of his buttocks, stroking until she reached the banded scars on his upper thighs. "Or these."
If he hadn't been lying facedown on the pillow, she would have undoubtedly touched the faint scoring on his jaw and face as well.
He shifted his hips, propping his chin on both arms. "Love, it's an ugly story. Not something you should have to hear."
Her voice was gentle. "But I want to know everything about you. I don't want there to be secrets. There's still so much you've never told me about your life here on Earth, about the war, your family. I love you, Jareshk. I want to know all the things you've experienced." She pressed her lips to the longest scar on his back, then pulled away and stared down into his eyes. "Please tell me how you got them."
He rotated onto his side so she wouldn't be able to see the ridged flesh on his back. Just the thought of her gazing on such ugliness shamed him, made him feel dirty inside, dark. He clenched and unclenched his fists around the covers, remembering his captivity at Veckus's hands. Only when she pressed her hand over his own did he realize that he'd begun to rip the sheet in half.
"I know it's hard to talk about," she prompted softly, reaching to stroke his temple. "Maybe I'm selfish because I want to know."
"No. No, you're not wrong … I—I have never spoken of what was done to me. Only Scott knows … well, a bit of it, and it probably is time that I …" His mind flooded with twisted images, of his arms strung out overhead, the feel of the flaying whip against his back. If only the physical torture had been the worst of it.
"Time that you opened up about it?" she encouraged.
He swallowed, nodding as his head dropped heavily against the pillow. "When I was twenty-six, I was shot down over Idaho, the middle of nowhere. I had no choice but to eject from the craft …" His voice trailed off. Gods, he hated the thought of Kelsey learning what they'd done to him. To his body … and his soul.
Of course she didn't relent. "And you were captured?"
He nodded. "Veckus didn't care about intel or what he could learn. He only had a taste for vengeance. He wanted me to suffer … and I did."
Kelsey nodded, calmly stroking his hair, but he could sense how her heartbeat quickened. "How long did they have you?"
"Three days." He gulped at the air between them, his throat tightening spasmodically.
"They beat you?"
Again he nodded. "But that's not what caused the scarring. Those wounds healed up … eventually."
Kelsey stroked her hand across her pregnant belly, studying him intently. Not pushing too hard, not forcing him to continue. The safety of her love and goodness nearly overwhelmed him. "At the end, they trapped me in my D'Aravnian form," he admitted thickly. "And beat me with pulsar whips … over and over. My energized body doesn't scar, but the torture left marks on my physical one." He lifted a hand to his cheek, outlining the long mark along his jaw.
He didn't dare look at her, his pain and shame at what had been done to him was that intense. Besides, it would be impossible for her—a human—to comprehend the thin line between his dual selves. Nor could she fully grasp the ambivalent feelings he had about his twin halves—and how Veckus had played those insecurities to the hilt. No, nothing had ever made him feel more perverse for simply being what he was—an entity of pure energy—than the feel of those spiny, cracking whips burning across his surging power.
And Veckus had laughed. Over and over the perverted bastard had mocked him, holding him in his natural form until he began to lose touch with his physical body. Putting that whip to his glowing D'Aravnian self until Jared thought he'd lose his mind from the shocking, torturous agony. Until the smell had sickened him to the core of his undulating, swirling being. During those three days, his primal golden body had been like a dying sun, flayed raw beneath the hands of its captors.
"I—I almost couldn't change back. They kept me in my D'Aravnian form for so long that the connection between my two forms was almost destroyed." He cracked his eyes open, daring to see if she was frightened of him, disgusted by how "other" he truly was to her human self. After all these months together, he still wrestled to grasp her pure acceptance of what he was.
"Oh, Jareshk." She bent toward him, struggling a little awkwardly to reach him because of her large belly. She pressed gentle kisses against his brow, over and over, just murmuring his name. "I'm so sorry you had to live through that."
"You've no idea how badly it hurts, the way my energy reacts to those Antousian whips. It's worse than anything I've ever experienced in this body." He thumped at his chest. "I wanted to die. I prayed the gods would take my life."
"But you didn't die," she whispered, stroking his hair.
He cringed. "What sort of king wishes to leave his people because he's not strong enough to endure torture? What sort of leader? I am still ashamed at the memory of it."
Kelsey had known the scars were linked to some deep pain, but nothing could have prepared her for the hidden suffering Jared still carried with him. And that he blamed himself for having wanted to die? That was probably what tore her up the most. "Jared, you were in pain. You didn't know if your people would find you.… You can't feel bad that you prayed for an escape."
She watched as Jared's whole body jerked and flinched, almost as if it were remembering the physical punishments it had endured. "That weakness is still inside of me. …" he finally whispered, thrusting an arm across his face like he was hiding from her. She fought the urge to peel away that freaking arm so she could just stare into his beautiful black eyes and make him understand that he was blameless.
But healing took time, and she knew that. This was just a first step, a beginning of his opening up to her about the full nature of what he was.
And that was when it hit her, a total insight into something they'd been wrestling with throughout their relationship. "Is that why you're so uncomfortable with your D'Aravnian form?" she asked. "Why you're always so afraid of being near me in your natural state?"
A fervent growl came from his chest, but he kept his eyes hidden behind his forearm.
"Is that a yes?"
Another growl. "Stop … pressing …"
That was her answer. He worried that he'd hurt her, could destroy her—that much she understood. But there had always been a more complicated layer of discomfort that
she'd never been able to find her way past. And here it was, at last brought out of darkness and into the pure light of their love for each other.
"Thank you, Jareshk," she whispered softly, bending low to kiss the top of his head. "I love you so much. Thank you for trusting me, for knowing I won't hurt you."
His arm dropped away, and he turned his black gaze on her. The fury and revulsion in his eyes shocked her. "I hate them for what they took from me, Kelse. I despise them for it. Don't you see? That's the ugliest part of it all. A part of my soul was stolen during that captivity.… They made me hate, made me less than what I was. They made me," he whispered meaningfully, "at least a little bit, like them."
"You're nothing like they are!" she cried, struggling to sit up in bed, but Jared had already launched himself onto the floor. He paced back and forth like he'd been caged; maybe because he was remembering his captivity. His naked body gleamed with sweat, and he rolled his shoulders, the muscles bunching tensely.
And then he stopped. Right in front of her, he pulled to a halt, his midnight eyes blazing ferociously. "I cannot forgive them for what they did to me during those three days."
"Nobody expects you to."
"I expect it!" he roared, the words bouncing off the overhead beams like a pinball. "I expect myself to be better than they are, to not become less than … what I'm called to be, Kelse." Jared thrust a hand through his hair, trembling slightly. "I am a leader, and as much as it makes me uncomfortable, I am also a king. A king does not let bitterness take root in his soul. He has greater character and strength than that."
Kelsey wobbled up onto her feet, wrapping her arms about Jared from behind. She pressed her lips against his longest and most brutal scar, trailing her mouth down it in a healing gesture, lapping at it with the tip of her tongue. "They tortured you, sweetheart," she whispered at last. "You had a normal human … well, normal Refarian reaction. You're a good, kind man."
"I prayed to All every day after that, prayed that Veckus would be killed." The words were dark, threatening. "And he did die. But perhaps there's a cost; perhaps I'm going to be punished for those prayers."
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