His Untamed Mate (Swarii Mates Book 1)

by Korey Mae Johnson

  She was beginning to think Thorton’s offhanded mention that it was fine as long as it held together was actually a concern.

  “Why are we using one this old?” she asked, turning to Graham.

  “Because ships this old don’t have a remote pilot function,” Graham replied, dragging her through the ship toward the command room. The other three Swarii were there, strapped into their seats and waiting for them. “Buckle in,” Graham ordered her, pushing her toward an empty seat.

  She sat down, mostly because his push had landed her on the seat whether she wanted to sit down or not. Mary sat down next to her and immediately began to figure out how to strap herself in; after ten seconds, Peyton came by and helped her.

  Mary looked over at Ellie and raised an eyebrow. “What?” she asked, concerned.

  “What do you mean, what? I’m nervous,” Ellie replied frankly, and then stood up from her seat and walked over to Graham, who was standing over the console between the two men who had never spoken to her. Graham looked like he was busy using the navigational system. After running two kilometers so quickly he should have been breathing hard, but he wasn’t. As it was, she was beginning to feel worthless. She still couldn’t believe that he had carried her that whole way. “Hey,” she said, poking him sharply with her finger. “What can I do to help?”

  “Sit down and be quiet,” he directed, not turning away from the navigational system.

  That was a little easier said than done; she didn’t like sitting down for ten seconds. Her bottom was still killing her. “Believe it or not, I can help,” she told him.

  “You’re distracting,” he informed, leaning over the control panel and then sitting in the chair in front of it. He turned and gave her bottom a hard smack, which, just like the last time he swatted her, she didn’t see coming.

  She grabbed her bottom and glared indignantly at him, but all he said was, “Do as I ask.”

  She didn’t, she just stood there, glaring harder. He was typing something into the keyboard in front of him. He didn’t look up as he asked, “Are you still there?”

  She flipped him off. Not that he was even looking at her with anything more than a peripheral glance, and he probably wouldn’t have understood the gesture even if he was giving her his full attention. But it still made her feel slightly better for a split second before the ship began to hover from the ground and all the lights on the panel started flashing red.

  “I didn’t do it!” she said, holding up her hands to show she wasn’t touching anything. Something was broken; she had long ago discovered that red was a universal color of malfunctions.

  Graham muttered something under his breath in his own language, looking intensely at the screen in front of him.

  A panel next to her lit up with a bunch of text scrolling across. She couldn’t read much Frian, even after having lived on the planet for a full year, but she did recognize one bit of text. “Wire 119 dead.” She had helped fix enough electrical problems in the last year to understand what that meant, and she knew exactly where that wire would be located.

  The ship wasn’t stopped; in fact, it was picking up speed. In the large windows in front of them, the horizon began to darken as the ship sailed up through the atmosphere.

  She tripped over her feet for a moment, feeling the ship tilt wildly, but then fell right next to the panel she meant to get to anyway. She flipped her body around so she was underneath the control panel and facing up, and then opened the panel to get to the wires underneath.

  “One nineteen… One nineteen…” she said, staring up at wires that were marked with runes, which she had learned were numbers. She closed her thumb and forefinger over the wire and inspected it. It had a slice going through it.

  She had just frowned at it when Thorton suddenly crawled next to her. “I found wire 119,” she told him. “Got some spare line?”

  “Yeah,” he replied, then rolled over to access a small roll of wire in his hands. He twisted off a piece efficiently using his bare hands, something she’d never seen done before. “Cool,” she said, taking it from him. “What’s this do?” she said, beginning to replace it from its start point.

  “We need it to launch into hyperspace,” he replied, his tone sounding nearly out of breath.

  “Eleanor!” Graham said from somewhere above them. “You have done more than try my patience, mate. Go sit down and buckle up before I take off my belt!”

  The threat had her seeing red with anger. “Just drive the ship, asshole,” she seethed in reply. She handed the dead wire to Thorton and began to twist the new one into place. “That man’s pushy,” she explained to Thorton, who looked at her anxiously.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” he muttered secretively, then watched her work. He might have been stronger than her, but she fancied herself faster. She hadn’t met anyone else who could wire something together faster than she could. Rewiring had always been her specialty at her family’s garage.

  Thorton disappeared for a moment, and then came back another second later. “You got it working,” Thorton told her, patting her thigh. “Good job, kitten,” he added with a wink.

  A voice above them clucked something in Swarii. She didn’t understand it, but she could assume it was that they needed to enter hyperspace, because Thorton immediately pulled himself out from under the console, saying, “Get seated!”

  She blinked at him, not understand his rush, and then suddenly her ankle was grabbed and she was dragged out from under the control dock. Graham hauled her to her feet in his next movement and sat down in his chair with her so quickly that her head swam.

  As soon as she realized that Graham was holding her down in his lap, his arms around her like straps, the ship lurched into hyper-drive.

  Since she had been drugged on her journey between Earth and Jazeel’s planet, she hadn’t remembered what hyper-drive was like. Or maybe this hyper-drive was different, since they were on an older ship. Regardless, the sensation was similar to what she imagined a strawberry’s was when it was being sucked through a straw after sitting at the bottom of a glass of lemonade, but in this case the strawberry got spat back out at hyper-speed.

  It seemed like even gravity itself was trying to figure out what had happened. Whether it lasted for a minute or an hour, she didn’t know. She might have passed out, but either way, her brain felt like it was turning into mush.

  And then everything returned to normal, and she was able to look around to find herself clinging to Graham like a wild yet frightened animal. He was looking at her, looking less than amused, and so she slowly and awkwardly plucked her fingers away from where they were curled into his shirt and jacket. She would have slowly climbed off of his lap, as well, if he hadn’t put his hand under her chin to keep her head up so that her eyes were focused on his own. “Are you well?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she wheezed.

  “Good,” he acknowledged brusquely and stood up. She slid off of his lap and he helped her settle her bare feet on the floor as he looked around the room. She looked too—everyone was looking alert and staring at him, and so he said something in Swarii. He stopped in front of Peyton, who was looking a little dazed, but snapped his head up to give Graham his attention. “If you or your mate have needs, ask Thorton,” he pointed to the shortest one, “or Fie,” he said, pointing to the tallest, blond Swarii, who spun around in his seat and gave a friendly wave. “I am not to be disturbed for the next hour except for life-or-death circumstances.”

  He turned and pulled her by the hand with him toward the back of the ship.

  Peyton asked, “Where are you going?”

  “To mate,” Graham replied tersely. Ellie had stopped walking at the pronouncement, and he pulled her along with him.

  “Wait,” she said, pulling back on her arm. “No, wait—Graham. No, we’re not going to do that!” she protested, her heart racing. Her bare feet dragged across the floor, even though she dug in her heels. Obviously, he was stronger than her, and at least tw
ice her weight, maybe three times. “Graham!” she screamed, afraid at his unwillingness to stop and at least talk with her before pulling her into a back room intent on fucking her.

  “Where are you going with her?” Peyton said, standing just behind her now. She took a breath of relief that he would finally stand up for her for once. “She doesn’t want to go with you.”

  Graham stopped pulling and took a step toward Peyton, never letting go of Ellie. “And that’s none of your business. She is none of your business,” Graham told him pointedly. He jerked his chin at something behind Peyton. “You have your own woman. This one is mine.”

  “She’s not yours,” Peyton growled at him, taking Ellie’s other hand and jerking her back. “She doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to.”

  Graham tugged her one way, and Peyton tugged her back. She squeaked, hoping that the two men wouldn’t accidentally tear her apart like she was a Christmas toy that they were fighting over. But Graham didn’t let it last for long. He locked his jaw, and then pulled the blaster out of his utility belt.

  The blaster warmed up with a whirr as he pointed it at Peyton’s head. “Step away, Muscles,” Graham ordered. “I’m not in the mood to dance with you.”

  Peyton didn’t move.

  “Graham, stop it!” she cried, still trying to break free of his grasp. Knowing that wasn’t going to work, and that Peyton was too hard-headed to back down, she said, “Peyton, it’s okay!” The last thing she wanted him to do was blow his escape when he and Mary was so close to freedom.

  “Peyton,” she said more softly, panting, “it’s okay.”

  Peyton looked down at her, and she shot him her most sincere look. His eyes shifted toward Mary, and then back at her. Hesitantly, he let go of her wrist.

  Graham continued walking her down the hall, opened the nearest door hatch, looked inside, and then closed it again. He went to the next room as she snapped at him, “That was stupid!”

  “Is there ever a time when you are silent?” he gritted, opening the door. He looked in, then pushed her in front of him before closing the door behind him. He let her go to turn on the lights.

  She looked around, finding that they were in a sort of bedroom. She suddenly felt a stinging paralysis within her legs. Heat rose to her cheeks, and it was suddenly very hard to breathe. It was also very hard to look anywhere that wasn’t at Graham’s boots.

  “I have a right mind to take you across my knee, little mate,” he snapped at her when he turned back in her direction. He put his hand under her chin and lifted her face toward him. “The only reason I’m not is because I know the human chastised you unjustly yesterday, but I will not be spoken to like that in front of my men, or even in private. I will have your respect. And you don’t have to like my orders, but you do have to follow them.”

  Her cheeks flushed at his threat. Would he really spank her? Was she just going to go from one person who spanked her to the next? “I’ll respect you when you deserve it,” she hissed. “And I was helping. I fixed your wiring problem.”

  “That’s what Thorton’s for. He’s our engineer,” he responded without anything that sounded like gratitude.

  “And I’m not your mate,” she continued, undaunted. “I didn’t even choose to go on a date with you. Nor would I!”

  He looked offended at his, his face pinching with anger. “You’re not exactly my dream mate, either,” he finally told her. “But that choice is behind us now. Things are what they are. Now we’re both angry, sick, and tired, and there’s only one thing we can do to fix it.” He turned around and pulled off his shirt as he walked toward a sink and turned it on.

  She stifled a gasp. His entire back and chest was black and blue, and where it wasn’t, he was scraped and scratched. Dried blood lined down from just under his arm until it disappeared at his waistline. He was covered with dirt and grime everywhere. He splashed some water across his face and the back of his neck, and then rinsed himself off with a towel. “Get undressed,” he told her, catching her eye in the reflection of the mirror in front of him.

  She dug her feet against the cold floor underneath her. Panic was gone now, and she knew she couldn’t plot her way out of this one. There was only one thing that was going to happen: after everything she’d been through so far, she was going to lose her virginity to an alien. Not just any alien, but a strange, pushy one that she’d known for less than a day.

  She hadn’t thought much about what her ‘first time’ would be like, but this wasn’t it. Disappointment felt like it was burning a hole in her stomach. She looked down at her hands, not that they looked at all extraordinary, but because they were shaking, and she couldn’t do anything about it. Just like she couldn’t do anything about… anything.

  “Hey…” Graham said, walking quickly over to her. This time, his tone wasn’t frank, or coarse, or firm. He had made his tone soothing, and he took her hands in his own when he stepped up to her. His hands felt very warm around hers. “Hey, come here.” He gently guided her to the bed and sat down on the edge of it. She was still looking at her hands, and at the difference in the size between his and hers. Hers were like a child’s hands in comparison to his.

  “I am sorry for my gruffness with you,” he finally said gently. He gave a sigh and added, “My mother would have tried to skin me alive if she knew I’d ever treat my mate like that. I’m just not in my right mind, Eleanor. Believe it or not, but I’m going to be a good mate to you.”

  “You’re not my mate,” she argued, shaking her head, her throat feeling choked.

  He let go of her hands and reached back to pet his fingers through her hair. “Well, you’re mine,” he told her. “I’m not saying that to trap you. You just are. I can feel it. It’s like… being able to touch for the first time. Whenever I touch you. It’s like… smelling for the first time, whenever I catch your scent. I’m feel overwhelmed, because it feels like I’ve been asleep all my life, and I’m just waking up now, and everything around me feels like more than I can take.” He took a deep breath in through his nose.

  “See, I’m used to that feeling,” she told him. “On Earth, we don’t know about people living on other planets.” He grunted with amusement at that. She couldn’t keep from a smile, either. It seemed pretty ridiculous now. “But then I was captured… I hadn’t even left my state before then. I barely’d left town. And then… Well, a lot has happened in fifteen months. It feels like my whole life’s been bashed in.”

  “Eleven years ago, the Frians attacked us with biological weapons. It took more than half of our female population on Swaraan… including my mother and four sisters,” he told her, his eyes slightly distant when she looked over at him. “So my world’s been turned upside down too.”

  She didn’t know what to say to this; she felt like something was stuck in her throat and was expanding to the rest of her body. She had felt sick before, but now she felt awkward and uncomfortable.

  At least her family wasn’t dead. They were just far away. By now, they probably had gotten used to her absence and were doing fine without her. Her brother had probably come back home from college by now, and was probably even working her share in the garage. They probably went days without thinking of her at all, maybe even weeks.

  This didn’t mean that Graham was a nice guy, however, and it certainly didn’t make her want to submit to him. Yet her resolve was beginning to soften. She felt tired and overwhelmed, and she found it very hard to concentrate on anything.

  “You look so weary of fighting this,” he finally said, filling the silence. He brought his hand up from her back and scooped the back of her neck, effectively tilting back her head as she looked at him. “Let me take care of you. You don’t have to fear me. I promise you that you’ll feel better afterward.” He stroked her earlobe with his thumb.

  She didn’t answer, since her mind was still in turmoil. She couldn’t pretend that she wasn’t aroused. In fact, she had been aroused for so long that she could feel her clit throb
with an uncomfortable ache. “No,” she said anyway, as weak as she was. For some reason, she really didn’t want to let him have his way. She didn’t want to be that easy.

  He groaned and pulled his arms clear of her, apparently so he could massage his own temples. “You are easily the most stubborn woman in the universe,” he said, his tone getting more snappish as he spoke. He stood up from the bed. “You can’t act like you’re the only one who’s uncomfortable, and that I don’t mean anything at all!”

  “Hey—I’m having a really rough day because of you!” she snapped in the same surly tone. “I’m sore, I’m tired, and I have no idea where we are. I’m not going to drop my panties just because you think I owe you something.”

  “I do things for you, and you do things for me. That’s how relationships work,” he told her tensely.

  “Yeah, between pimps and hookers!” she retorted incredulously. “And I told you—I don’t want a relationship.”

  “Too bad!” She thought he sounded particularly pouty, but he was obviously close to tugging out his own hair. “You’ll let Jazeel touch you, but not me?” he then asked, which she felt was a slap in the face. It made her feel cheap; it wasn’t as if she’d ever enjoyed Jazeel touching her. She did it to survive.

  She stood up and put her hands on her hips. “Jazeel never fucked me. You want to go from the introduction straight to act three! Why would I let you? What makes you so different than Jazeel, anyway?”

  Now he was the one who was shaking. Apparently, she had struck a chord, but she couldn’t care less. She stood, even straightened, and awaited a response with eyebrows drawn.

  “I am your mate!” he finally spat at her, pointing at the center of his own chest. “You are indispensable to me! I’ll only have one mate my whole life! How dare you compare me to him? He would kill you without a second thought as soon as he tired of you. He would never think of you again. To him, you’re just an animal.”