by Isabel Wroth
Ilaria seemed to have decided her reticence at ‘deep reading’ was absent in Setar’s case. Whatever else Ilaria had seen in the young Sarazen’s thoughts had deeply disturbed her. Though Cassie could imagine that reading someone’s most private thoughts, their true thoughts, and thoughts that revolved around killing someone had to be intensely disturbing.
Cassie warred with waking up Brennaugh or asking to speak to Tarek. She assumed that she was being watched now, as she had predicted, and if she went running to Brennaugh or the Asho, whoever else might be watching would know she wasn’t a viable asset to be acquired. They would know she had no intention of spying for them or being a tool for this so-called ‘Original Council’ to use in an effort to further their plans.
What an unoriginal name.
However, the information Cassie now had was important. It needed to be shared and soon. But it had to be an organic meeting, something that looked natural as to not tip off the traitors.
Cassie was jolted out of her thoughts by sounds no throat should ever have been able to make. Inhuman screaming the likes of which she had never heard and hoped to God she never heard again. Knowing something horrific had happened, that so many different horrific things could have happened, the babies in the forefront of Cassie’s mind, she ran from her holo-room and threw the doors open.
Racing down the corridor, she followed the sounds of screaming, slipping and sliding as she found herself in the central chamber of the fortress. The chamber everyone passed through every day on their way to one floor or the next, carved from the glorious veins of stone that ran the spectrum of the rainbow.
The scent of blood and bowels was so thick in the air that even breathing through her mouth, Cassie could taste it. At first, her mind couldn’t process what her eyes were seeing. There was just so much red. Slick pink chunks of something hanging from the wall to her left. Blood was splashed all over the hall to her right in dark, shimmering streaks, pooling beneath what she finally realized was a body.
Ne’tare knelt in the center of the vast hall, cradling the gruesome remains. Oh…gods. Setar. It was Setar.
The unbelievably kind steward rocked back and forth with his son clutched in his arms, the sounds of Ne’tare’s grief and disbelief so loud Cassie was certain he could be heard even beyond the fortress. Moments must have passed since she had arrived, but it seemed like an eternity before the central chamber was invaded by warriors.
“Surround the female!” one of the armored males ordered. Cassie fumbled to speak, to defend herself and say she hadn’t been involved, but her thought that the warriors were considering her as a suspect was completely ridiculous. “Until the murderer is found, this female goes nowhere unprotected. Return her to her quarters and ensure her safety.”
She was immediately surrounded by six of the fully armored males and forced into movement back the way she had come. Cassie heard the boom of Ga’rae’s voice commanding the warriors out of his way, but it was the continued keening Ne’tare gave as he cradled his son that continued to send chills through her.
When Cassie stumbled in the hall, the horror and disbelief beginning to process through her mind, one of the warriors bent and simply scooped her up into his arms. He took her place in the center of the circle and his fellow warriors shifted to close around them in a constantly moving circle, their laser weapons carried at the ready.
The warrior carrying her had to ask her twice to put her hand on the bio-lock to open the doors to her quarters. Three of the six remained out in the hall with her, the others went in to thoroughly do a sweep of the suite.
“Clear. Bring her inside.”
Cassie didn’t remember much of what happened around her after that. Which in retrospection could have been extremely stupid if one of the warriors guarding her had been corrupted. She wasn’t sure how long she sat there staring at her lap, wondering how in the world she was going to be able to face Ne’tare knowing what she now knew.
The information she had could not be withheld, but how? How could she bring what she knew, with a witness that no one but Cassie could see, and accuse Ne’tare’s now dead son of conspiring with the enemy? Conspiring to commit murder. Conspiring to spy and carry secrets back to this Original Council. Ne’tare had been so good to them all.
Cassie didn’t know if she could bring herself to speak the words she knew she must and hurt someone who had been so kind to her and all the other humans as they had made their transition into their new lives.
She hadn’t ever felt so completely alone in her entire life, which was saying something. It occurred to her that if Falken was here, he would help her. He would have been with her. She wouldn’t be alone.
Her certainty made her question herself. Question all those things she had blamed Falken for, foremost in her mind, her feelings of betrayal at his actions on S7. How could he have possibly known her mental state when it came to being drugged? She hadn’t ever told him, so how could he have known about it?
Or the host of other things she’d never told him. It made the breath stutter in her lungs to realize she had been comparing him to the human men she had known and been mistreated by. Expecting Falken to act just like them and vilified his every action to fit those expectations. Except he wasn’t human. Not even close.
“I am an idiot.” She hadn’t noticed she had spoken aloud until Gwen touched her cheek.
“Cassie?”
She blinked, having sightlessly been staring at her hands where they lay open in her lap. It seemed like a monumental task to lift her head and look up into Gwen’s concerned face.
“Hon, you’re in shock. I can give you something if you’d like.”
Gwen was sweet, thinking it was the shock of seeing Setar’s body ripped to shreds that had Cassie so wrecked.
“No, thanks. Where is Ne’tare?”
Gwen’s lips trembled a little but she forced a smile. “Tarek and T’mai are with him while they wait for his mate to arrive.”
Cassie nodded and went back to looking at her hands, rubbing her fingertips together to feel how cold they were.
“That’s good. He shouldn’t be alone right now.”
A tear slipped down her cheek. First one, then the other.
Ne’tare had never spoken of his mate, but Cassie couldn’t imagine the grief and the pain Ne’tare would face when he told his mate their son had been killed. Without a reason why, the pain would eat at them, at their family. Cassie didn’t have a choice.
Gwen reached out to take her hands, squeezing them gently. Earnestly. “Cassie, you don’t look good. Please, what can I get for you? Is there anything?”
The words came to her immediately. Cassie didn’t even have to think hard about them, and every last one was the absolute truth.
“Falken. I need my mate.”
*****
Falken entered his suite of rooms in time to hear Cassie tell Gwen, she needed him.
Falken’s arrival at the citadel had been blocked and entrance delayed because a murder had been committed within the central chamber of the Asho’s fortress. By the time he learned who had been killed, all he could think of was getting to Cassie.
Despite the terrible circumstances, to cross the threshold of their quarters and hear her speak her need for him, was the greatest homecoming he could imagine. Falken said her name and he watched the way her head snapped up. Saw the immediate relief that crossed Cassie’s beautiful face and how she didn’t even hesitate as she pushed to her feet and raced to him.
Falken opened his arms to her just before she hit his chest and burrowed against his shirt, shivering when he breathed out a heavy sigh and palmed the softness of her hair. Cassie grabbed fistfuls of his tunic and made a hiccupping little sound. One that made him clench his jaw against the need to hunt down the creature responsible for her distress. He hugged her as hard as he dared, bending to touch a kiss to the raised scar of his mating bite on her throat.
“I’m here. I have you.” he murmured, noticing Gwen
slipping quietly from the room to give them privacy. It seemed as though the moment the door closed behind Gwen, Cassie erupted with fury.
“Where the hell have you been?” She shoved out of his arms and slapped at his chest with an angry little growl. “You didn’t make contact except once, once, Falken. I was freaking out that something had happened to you and everyone knew it but me!”
She ranted at him for his complete lack of courtesy or protocol, not allowing him the opportunity to explain how his ship had been tampered with to prevent all outgoing transmissions.
The scent of her fear and her worry grew heavier, her anger clearly fueled by her concern for him. Falken had worried in his absence Cassie would find reason to continue to push him away or find more reasons not to trust in him. Yet here she was raging at him for not making contact and making her worry.
He hadn’t thought his love for her could burn any hotter, but now his chest felt too tight to contain his feelings. Neither could he help the smile, or the surge of arousal. The leap of his pulse or the hungry growl his beast made.
“You have zero reason to be smiling right now, asshole!” Cassie yelled, slicing her hand through the air as though to cut him off.
Falken snatched her hand and jerked her back to him, ignoring how she snarled as he fisted his hand in her hair and pulled her inexorably into his kiss. The taste of her was intoxicating, more so when the fight drained from her and she swayed closer. Surrendered with a soft little purr and wrapped her arms around his neck.
She opened her lips to him, shivering in the wake of the nip he gave, causing him to do a little shivering of his own when her tongue teasingly stroked along the points of his fangs. As hungry for his mate as he was, Falken hadn’t even felt them descend.
Cassie made another little sound, rising up on her toes to press herself closer to him, her arms tightening in a clear desire for more. He reached down to her thighs and hoisted her up, growling at how desperately she wrapped her legs around his waist.
Their kisses deepened, the scent of her in his nose, the taste of her in his mouth, any thought Falken might have had about carefully seducing her into accepting more from him, faded from thought.
His claws shredded the soft sleeping gown she wore, his palms ravenous to feel the softness of her skin. The perfection of her lithe muscles flexing under the beautiful curves and hollows of her body. The power of the sexual heat that built between them was beyond anything he had ever known. He thought each time that perhaps he would have become used to the burn, the need, but each time he was amazed.
The head-spinning feelings his mate evoked in him were soul deep. Delirium followed close behind when Cassie undulated and rubbed every inch of herself against him in a sensuous, seductive little roll. It started in the tightening of her thighs around his waist, then a coil of her hips to rub the slick heat of her sex against his abdomen, chaffing her most sensitive spot against the material of his tunic.
It pulled a small growl from her, a quiver of her belly he felt as her undulation brought her stomach against him, then her breasts. The hard points of her nipples scraped against his chest, her arms helping her to complete her movements, her tongue coiling around his to feed him the hungry sounds of her need.
It set a blaze to light inside him as it always did, the knowledge that his mate had had no other but him, and never would. She had come to him untouched and inexperienced, and while her mating heat had caused her to rage and fight with him until he proved his dominance, she had been shy.
Now…she made him feel like a cub experiencing his first exciting brush with pleasure.
He tore his mouth from hers to look at the beauty of her face, the hot flush of her cheeks and the lust-filled dilation of her pupils. The excitement he saw when he turned and walked the few steps to press her back against the wall of their suite, only added more fuel to the fire pushing him closer to his edge of control.
Cassie hissed and dug her blunt nails into his shoulders at the sweep of his hands up her sides. The careful pinch and tug he gave her nipples caused her to purr before he filled his palms with the lush weight of her breasts.
He could and had spent hours learning the shape and feel of the soft, malleable skin. He loved to lift and shape them to his hands, to press the soft globes together and worship the tender flesh with licks and suckling kisses. Falken was obsessed with his mate’s breasts. Obsessed with the way the soft skin felt against his cheek. How the tight little points of her nipples would flush and pucker the more he licked and sucked at them. Obsessed with the breathy gasps, hisses and little moans Cassie made as he delighted himself with her body.
“Falken…please…”
He grinned as he bent and worried at one nipple with the point of his fang. Licking at the quivering tip teasingly.
“Please what, my one?”
Cassie didn’t seem to be in a mood for teasing. Evident by the way she growled and ripped at his tunic, struggling now to get him free of his flight leathers.
“Play with those later, I need you. Now.”
Falken could indeed smell the power of her need, sweet and thick on the air heating up between them. His mouth watered, greedy to make up for so many days of lost time. His mate demanded more from him and Falken was delighted to oblige her.
He shifted his grip to her thighs and dropped to his knees, throwing her legs over his shoulder to bury his face in the deliciously wet, soft sex. He could not help but grin in reaction to her wail of shock. He remembered with pride the very first time he had feasted on her sweet pink flesh, how embarrassed and surprised she had been. How shy his normally brazen and bold mate had been.
The difference now in the way she arched into his mouth and rubbed herself against his tongue with eagerness was no less glorious. He looked up the long, luscious stretch of her body to find she had curled her arm above her head, digging her crystalline claws into the rock face. Giving herself the leverage she needed to twist and arch the way she wanted.
Her other hand she fisted in his hair, tugging him forward as though he needed urging to devour her. Her thighs quivered against his cheeks when he split her delicate folds with his tongue, opening her up to lick her from core to cleft, drunk on the taste of the slick arousal she spilled for him.
He watched her with a mischievous delight as he wrapped his lips around the little nub she called her clit, waiting patiently, licking at the delicate flesh when Cassie tensed and sucked in a huge breath in anticipation of what he would do next. The moment she let out her air and relaxed, Falken sucked hard and roared, focusing the power of that vibration right into the unbelievably sensitive treasure he held in his mouth.
*****
Falken’s roar vibrated through Cassie’s entire body. Her eyes rolled back in her head as the pleasure arced through her, like a bolt of lightning had been shot directly at her clit and then fractured into a thousand more bolts to electrify every last nerve ending she possessed. She heard herself screaming, knew she was writhing in ecstasy, but she was so overwhelmed by the orgasm she couldn’t think.
Couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t do anything but feel.
Feel herself floating, falling into something warm and soft.
Falken’s roar turned into soft, wicked little rumbles as he eased her back from such an intense fall.
It took her a minute to realize she was lying on their bed while he tenderly licked every drop of her orgasm from between her thighs. The rougher texture of his tongue continued to make her twitch and shiver, but her entire body was mush. She had not a single muscle left to support her. Falken rose slowly from between her legs, as though he was reluctant to give up the meal he had made of her.
The smug pleasure that made his eyes glow would have made her smile if her facial muscles would have cooperated. To her delight, she got to watch him strip out of the tunic she had shredded already, feeling every pump of blood through her body, every surge of arousal as Falken revealed the ungodly sexiness of his body to her. Hi
s muscles flexed and bunched, his biceps and the strong muscles in his forearms tightening as his fingers moved over the laces on his flight trousers.
Cassie wanted to be up on her knees to reach for him. Wanted her hands on all that glorious flesh, but she realized as she lay there, in the months they had been together, it had always been a rush.
A rush to get naked.
A rush to completion.
A rush to the next flat surface.
She hadn’t ever gotten this opportunity to lie back, relax, and let her eyes wander at her leisure. Falken was not stingy with his compliments and had told her often how beautiful he found her to be. To her shame, Cassie realized she hadn’t ever returned his compliments. She was momentarily distracted by the sight of him toeing off his boots to push the leather from his thighs and to the ground.
His cock was glorious.
Not that Cassie had any experience to say otherwise, but it was a thing of intimidating beauty. It was monstrous, flushed with blood and visibly pulsating, stretching up to touch his navel. Her fingers curled weakly where her hands lay splayed out at her sides, slightly jealous by the casual way he palmed his shaft and stroked while he swept his heavy lidded gaze over her prone body. His eyes shone like firelight cast through honey, a deep, burnished gold.
How could she have never told him how alarmingly gorgeous he was?
“You frown, my one. Do you wish for me to stop?” He would. Cassie had no doubt that if she said ‘no more’, Falken would lie down beside her and ask no more of her.
Falken was leaner than most of his fellow warriors, something she had heard him teased about, but she’d seen the way Falken moved through the forest that night of the breeding festival. He was fast and agile, able to flip and twist in the air like an Old Earth arrow shot from a bow. His shoulders were wide and strapped with muscle, steel ropes wrapped in surprisingly soft skin. Tough, but soft.