Royal Defender: Her Space Guardian (Celestial Mates Book 9)

by Therron, Marla

  “I didn't touch you because I didn't want to disturb your sleep,” Tavaayn said, sounding pained. “And I've been working late because...” He turned to look at the queen, and suddenly a strange look came over his face. He turned back to Rachael. “Rachael, darling, who told you that I slept around?” he asked.

  Rachael glanced at the queen, who had hot fury in her eyes. She felt as though she was balanced at the edge of a knife. If only she knew more about Saveithyan politics… If she didn't say anything about the queen, she wasn't sure anyone would buy her story. But if she betrayed the queen and the queen remained in power, she would be dead as well.

  She took a deep breath. “Aistrana hinted at it,” she said, moving her eyes back to meet Tavaayn's. “And she was also the one who suggested that she and I meet in the banqueting hall. She was going to show me a back route to get to my spaceship so that I could attempt to leave here.” She bit her lower lip. “I couldn't stay here on Saveithya when I thought that you were sleeping with someone else.”

  There was a long silence in the room, until suddenly the queen began to laugh. “Well, I suppose you've gotten to the bottom of it all,” she said, as everyone turned to look at her. “But it doesn't really matter, does it? I'm the queen. There's nothing that you can do to punish me.” She sneered at the Lord Commander.

  “Why did you want me dead, Aistra?” Tavaayn asked, looking wrecked. “We've been best friends since–“

  “I wanted more than that,” Aistrana interrupted. She gestured sharply at Rachael. “Then that little bitch came along and took everything that was rightfully mine. You were supposed to be mine.”

  Tavaayn shook his head. “I was never yours,” he said quietly. “Rachael and I were destined to be together from the start.” He looked out towards his wife. “And I think we'll have a very happy life together—wherever we end up.”

  “Not if I had anything to say about it,” the queen said darkly, rising to her feet.

  “You're forgetting something,” Tavaayn said, looking sadly at the woman. “I control the guards.”

  He made a sharp gesture with his hand. The queen's death was ruthlessly efficient.

  Chapter Eleven

  Rachael walked out of her final meeting for the day—and what was hopefully her final formal meeting for a while—and breathed a sigh of relief. She could only imagine how good it would feel to finally take off these pointy heels and her button-down shirt and change into some of the clothes that she had brought with her from Saveithya.

  And if she was really lucky, her husband would be there in the room waiting for her and they would have enough time before dinner to…

  Her train of thought was interrupted when she went around a corner and ran into one of her former students. “Rachael!” Nicole exclaimed. “I had heard you were around this week, but I haven't seen you at all—I'm sure they kept you busy in meetings and seminars?”

  “Very,” Rachael said, smiling at the woman. She shook her head. “You know how it is, every discipline thinks there's some way that my work with the plants of the Avanaarr galaxy ties in with their lectures, whether it's herbology or scientific research or IDC work or...”

  “You're a popular lady,” Nicole said. “I still remember all those amazing lectures that you gave to us—and half the time, you were just talking about soil make-up!”

  “Well, it's a very important thing!” Rachael said. But she laughed a little as well.

  “You also don't look like you've aged a day,” Nicole said. On Nicole, Rachael could see a fine tracery of wrinkles forming, hinting that the girl wasn't twenty-three anymore.

  But she smiled and made a joke out of it. “Well, if you wold just come join me in my lab on Saveithya, you could look the same in ten years too!” she said. “Time passes so different there; you'd be amazed.”

  “I'm sure I would be,” Nicole said. “And maybe I'll take you up on that offer once my youngest is old enough to withstand hyperspeed, but I don't think any of us wants to take a one-year trip on a cramped spaceship to get to Saveithya!”

  “Probably not,” Rachael agreed. She glanced past the woman, impatient to get back to her room.

  “All right, all right, I can take a hint,” Nicole said, shaking her head with a grin on her face. “Listen, keep in touch, okay? Maybe we can open a new branch of your labs somewhere in this galaxy. There has to be plenty of other plant life to explore around here.”

  “We'll see,” Rachael agreed. “It was good seeing you as well, and remember that the offer to join me stands for whenever you're ready.”

  There had been plenty of those offers that had gone out over the six years that she'd taught on Earth, but very few people had taken her up on them—despite the fact that the supposed curse that had prevented foreigners from leaving Saveithya had turned out to be a myth created to keep fighters there in the banqueting hall cages.

  There had been a lot of changes on the planet since Rachael had become queen there, and she was excited to be returning home again the following afternoon.

  And it really felt like home now, that was the thing. Sometimes she only wished she were more lonely there.

  When she got to her room, Tavaayn was lounging on their bed reading some engineering book or another. He glanced up at her as she came in and turned his eyes back towards his book. “I got naked waiting for you,” he said, “but then I started this very exciting chapter on-”

  “Don't you dare finish that sentence,” Rachael warned. “And put that book away now.”

  Tavaayn laughed and set the book aside, watching as Rachael shed her formal attire. “I'm never doing another of these symposium things,” she complained.

  “You said that last time,” her husband pointed out.

  “And yet I keep coming back,” Rachael sighed. “Remind me why?”

  “Hmm,” Tavaayn said, pretending to think about it. “Maybe because it gives us an excuse to shut ourselves away in our suite for a week after we return so that we can do nothing but have copious amounts of sex?” he suggested.

  “You know, because we need to reacclimatize to Saveithya and get over that travel sickness.”

  Rachael laughed and, divested of her clothing, crawled across the bed until she could straddle her husband's hips. She leaned in to kiss him, starting gentle despite her impatience to get to the grand finale as well. But she pulled away for a moment to just nuzzle in beneath the alien's chin. “I've kind of missed you this week,” she said quietly.

  Tavaayn kissed the top of her head. “I've missed you too,” he said. “But it's been nearly twenty-five years now—it's not like I'm going anywhere.”

  Rachael smiled against his skin and moved back to kiss him again, upping the intensity a little until they were both gasping against each others' lips. “Is there anywhere in this room that we haven't already done this?” she asked. “The bed just seems like such a boring way to start the night...”

  Tavaayn laughed. “You're so much picker than you were twenty-five years ago,” he complained, mirth in his eyes. “We haven't done this in the shower yet, though...”

  Rachael grinned and bounced away from him, turning on the water in the bathroom and setting it to the perfect temperature.

  Tavaayn followed her and lifted her up onto the counter so that he could kiss her while the water heated up. He stepped in between her legs, pulling her forwards so that their chests were flush against one another's.

  With Rachael up there on the counter, they were nearly the same height, which lent a different dynamic to their kissing—one that Rachael really appreciated since it normally made her feel more in control of the kiss. But today, Tavaayn was clearly dominating the kiss. When he finally let her go, Rachael's lips were red and swollen from the pressure and from the way that he had sucked at them, and she couldn't help but bring a hand up to them, grinning a little to herself.

  “You like that?” her husband asked, dragging her into the shower with him. “We can do more of that.” He pressed her back
against the wall, his hands sliding across her slick curves, aided by the water cascading around them. They kissed wet and sloppy, in a battle to rediscover all the spots that would make the other gasp.

  Rachael broke away with a moan, dropping her head back as Tavaayn's hands expertly found her scorching need. “Twenty-five years later and you're still just as needy as you were when I met you,” Tavaayn laughed against her skin.

  Rachael grinned crookedly. “Time passes differently on Saveithya,” she said unapologetically.

  Tavaayn's laugh was cut off when Rachael suddenly jumped her legs up to straddle his hips, managing to land perfectly against him so that his hard length was pressed up against the folds between her legs.

  The alien shifted to get a better grip on her bum and rocked back slightly and then slid forwards. Even though he wasn't inside of her yet, the feeling was incredible, and their heady arousal was practically palpable in the way it danced in the air between them.

  “Open yourself up to me,” Tavaayn whispered against her skin. “Open the bond and let me really feel what you're feeling.”

  When it was the two of them together and they were able to manipulate their soul-bond so that they could each feel what the other person was thinking, their love-making moved to a whole other level.

  It wasn't something that they did every time, especially because it could leave them both feeling a little fuzzy around the edges and unsure where they ended and the other person began—but when all they had on their schedule at the moment was their trip back to Saveithya, those after-effects hardly mattered. And Tavaayn was desperate to feel everything that his wife was feeling, to feel the stress of the week melting away from her.

  He leaned down to kiss the woman's breasts, sucking a nipple into his mouth and lightly raking his teeth over the pert nub, causing Rachael to gasp. But it was when he finally slipped inside of her, in an almost accidental movement that was eased by the gushing water around them and the slickness forming between her legs, that she finally moaned out his name and a litany of needy pleas.

  He smirked and set a deliberately slow rhythm that would keep her right on the edge but not climaxing for a little while longer. “Oh fuck, Tavaayn,” she whispered reverently. “Oh, that feels so good. Just like that, that feels so good.”

  “I take it you wouldn't want anything more than this?” the alien asked innocently, grinning cheekily at her as she cracked open her eyes to glare playfully at him.

  “I could always take more,” Rachael said.

  “Be careful what you wish for...” Tavaayn changed up the rhythm quickly, and before she'd even had a chance to adjust to it, she was sobbing out his name, her orgasm ripping through her and leaving her on the very edge of consciousness.

  Of course, with their bond open as it was, Tavaayn could feel everything that she was feeling, and so her climax wrung his own out of him as well. He very nearly lost his footing as his hips stuttered up into hers, desperately pushing himself as far inside her warmth as he could.

  For a long moment, they simply stood there beneath the spray, eyes closed and breathing heavy. Slowly, Tavaayn began to peel himself away from her, but he left the bond open for now, reveling in the closeness that they shared in this post-orgasmic bliss.

  “I feel really good right now,” Rachael said sleepily, mussing up her hair a little. She leaned up on her toes to kiss her husband lightly on the lips.

  “Good,” Tavaayn said quietly and sincerely. He smiled at the human woman, still amazed that they had come this far in their relationship—in a relationship that might never have happened if she hadn't been sent to Saveithya for a mission that she wasn't qualified for.

  “Sometimes I can't get over how lucky we are,” he mused.

  Rachael shook her head, her face falling into the serious look that Tavaayn called her Teacher Face. “Now, now,” she chided, “I'm a scientist. We don't believe in luck.”

  They stared at one another for a long moment before they both burst out laughing. “Yeah,” Rachael said finally as they straightened, her voice fond. “Yeah, we're pretty lucky.”

  ***

  PREVIEW OF ‘THE BARBARIAN’S OWNED’ BY MARLA THERRON

  Chapter One

  It was a normal Saturday for the rest of the world, but it was supposed to be the most important day in Rae’s life. Not her final most-important day, of course, but one in a series of most-important days, each bigger than the one before.

  The last was six months ago when she’d graduated with Ph.D.s in genetics and astrophysics; before that, it was the day she left for university, and before that, the day she dosed Cory Wilson’s Gatorade and turned his urine green, thus establishing her reputation in junior high as “that girl.” The girl who took no B.S. from Cory Wilson, yes, but also who knew the kinds of science her teachers worried about.

  To Rae, if science couldn’t be used to turn an obnoxious junior’s urine an alarming shade of neon, it wasn’t worth doing.

  She mentally walked through her day in the shower, dressed, ordered a cab to the Chicago conference center, and checked her word of the day.

  Conjuncture.

  No matter how many peer-reviewed journals she published in, Rae could never shake the last remnant of her Midwestern faith in a universe without coincidences. That word of the day seemed inauspicious. Recalling her earliest research lectures, a favorite professor taught her that the foundation of science was in understanding the word “conjuncture.”

  There were only two types of thing in all existence. The first was the domain of science. These were the built-in things, the normal patterns in the universe. The software and GPS churning out her location to a cab driver, the locomotion of his engine, even the day’s typical weather: Chicago wind rippled her open jacket as she exited her hotel.

  The jacket’s closely patterned white-and-black colors would smudge and appear gray from a distance, offsetting the dark of her slacks and blouse. From engineering to optics, all those variables could be understood. They were… reliable.

  Rae was good at these variables. She had them figured; she always had. But conjunctures were the second type of thing in the universe. The one-offs. The strange combination of circumstances that couldn’t be anticipated, accounted for in a model, that by their very definition existed outside the normal order—and therefore, outside the reach of her discipline. They could be described, but never predicted.

  Rae did not want any conjunctures today.

  Her presentation was at 2 p.m., which was primetime. Even astrophysicists liked a drink on Friday night, but 2 p.m. on Saturday was late enough that the last straggler had kicked their hangover. It was far enough from lunch that no one was in a food coma, and not yet so late that it bled over into the cocktail hour.

  If anything had surprised Dr. Rae Ashburn about her discipline, it was how much alcohol fueled the whole social end of the enterprise. Put a thousand egotistical nerds into a room and more than a glass or two of wine was needed to lubricate those rusted social gears.

  By a quarter till, she’d set up her PowerPoint and was patiently waiting as the room filled. They’d headlined the day with her paper, whose subject had made a splash. It made the newspapers, and science and tech journalists were jockeying for a position at front.

  She did a summary check of her discussant panel, whose job it was to say useful things about the working paper. There were three. She guessed, based on age and tenure, that maybe one of them had read it ahead of time.

  The normal thing was to shred through it fifteen minutes before; she could guess what each would say based on their research areas. There was no sign of her dreaded conjuncture, and Rae breathed easier.

  “What are you thinking?” asked her former advisor, Dr. Ravi, seated to her left.

  “That Midwestern superstition loses again,” Rae said with a grin.

  “Pardon?”

  But it was too late to explain. The moderator introduced her paper topic to the audience: “Defending the Earth from E
xtra-Solar Threats: Lessons from the K-T Extinction Event.” It was an awful title, but Dr. Ravi had insisted and Rae had finally acquiesced.

  She’d wanted to title it, “Were the Dinosaurs Killed? Or Murdered?” She’d discovered, after all, that materials she’d collected near the Chicxulub crater—the impact site of the asteroid that zapped the dinosaurs—had residue from ancient, foreign materials that didn’t exist in nature.

  Talking about aliens in astrophysics was dicey. It brought press attention, but not much professional esteem. A lot of Rae’s graduate colleagues snickered behind her back—including Reese, who she noticed in the audience, a possible conjuncture that knotted her stomach.

  He was picking at lint on his tweed jacket, a young man with a boyish face who liked to dress up like the real professor he planned to become one day. The disdain in the gesture was obvious. He picked at it the same way he’d picked at Rae every time they’d talked since their break-up.

  The competition for tenure-track slots was fierce, and Reese too professionally jealous for their relationship to work. Since then, he’d mocked Rae’s research as either “methodologically flawed” or “kooky.”