by Mary Auclair
“Celaith needs to rest now,” Zaxis told him as he stared at the Arvak female.
Khal looked at her and saw his friend was right. The deathly pallor was back in her face and her eyes were underscored with deep, purple circles. Whatever hell Gerkin had put her through, it had taken a toll.
“I will bring Hazel back to my quarters. Take care of this one.” Khal lifted a hand to his bloodmate, and after a long second, she accepted it. As his fingers closed around her flesh, a current of possessiveness overwhelmed him.
She was his to protect, his to care for.
And he was leading her right into the heart of danger.
* * *
Hazel
The door closed and Hazel was alone with Khal again. The sound of the lock clicking reverberated inside her skull as she swam in the thick ooze of her fear.
I will never get to Earth. I will never see Sally again. I will never get to make things right.
The thoughts circled inside her skull like caged animals, and Hazel was trapped in the middle. Emotions coiled somewhere deep in her chest, boiling to the surface in acid and ashes, flowing out of her pores in tides of molten pain.
All this suffering had been for nothing. Knut had won in the end.
She was vaguely aware of Khal moving toward her, his handsome, well-carved face twisted with worry. She tried to smile, tried to appease him, but her lips refused to move. Something hard met her knees as pain shot—real and physical this time—through her hands and legs. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she realized she had fallen.
“I’ll never see Sally again,” Hazel said in a daze. Warm hands closed around her shoulders and a sob traveled up her throat. The sound broke out despite her best attempt to keep it in, pathetic and female. Weak. “I’ll never get to tell her how sorry I am. She will never know that I tried. I tried to make things right. I tried so hard…”
She was swallowed in her grief, unable to continue. It was like losing Sally all over again, having that hope ripped from her hands.
“What are you talking about?” Khal spoke in low, reassuring tones, but Hazel knew better. Sally would rather spit in her face than hug her. “Your sister awaits you on Earth.”
Hazel shook her head, tears streaming freely down her face.
“I will die with her hating me.”
Khal stayed silent, his hands still on her shoulders. She could feel his confusion, his lack of understanding. She had to tell him, tell him why her twin sister hated her so much. And when he understood what a terrible person she was, she would lose him, too.
“You will not die. You will never be in danger, ever again.” Khal kept going, his large palms now rubbing her back. He was trying to reassure her, he probably thought she was simply scared of dying. “I will send you and Celaith back aboard the Myrador. The automatic pilot will bring you both straight to my brothers on Eokim. You will be able to send a communication to your sister on Earth. She will be ecstatic to see you.”
Hazel chuckled, but the sound was more like the breaking of a dry stick. Hollow and sterile. Devoid of life. Khal thought she was distraught because she was scared for her own life. Because she was scared she would never get to stride into the sunset with her sister, happy as only twins could be. How wrong he was. Hazel would never be striding into the sunset arm in arm with her sister, she was never going to be embraced. Her only hope had been that, after all these years, Sally would tolerate seeing her close by, would let her watch from a distance.
And that maybe, just maybe, after years and years had passed, she would forgive Hazel for ruining her life.
“Sally is not waiting for me.” Hazel shook her head, tears burning her eyelids, then tracing long trails of salty guilt down her cheeks. “She hates me. She would rather curse my name than hand me some bread if I were starving.”
Pain shot through her as Hazel spoke the words that Sally had shouted at her the last time they’d been together.
I hate you. I will hate you till the day I die.
That was what Sally had said. What Sally had meant as Knut had had his Ilarian guard drag her away to sell her in Hazel’s place. And she had been right—Hazel had been the cause of it all, and all because she couldn’t keep her damned mouth shut.
“I assure you, she doesn’t.” Khal spoke with the confidence only an Eok warrior could have. Only one who had never betrayed could feel. “She will welcome you with open arms.”
“No, she won’t.” His large hand closed around her chin and Khal forced her to lift her head. His deep, Prussian blue eyes stared at her, full of a gut-wrenching concern. All her life, ever since Sally had been ripped from her, Hazel had longed for love. Longed for someone to care for her. To have someone like Khal, so perfect, so strong, express a devotion so total. It seemed wrong. It felt like a fraud.
Hazel was the fraud. She didn’t deserve Khal’s care, Khal’s attention.
“I’m the reason Sally was sold in the first place.” The words left her lips and Hazel watched Khal as his expression turned to one of shock. Afraid of losing her courage, Hazel continued her confession. “When we were little, maybe four or five years old, Knut sold off our mother. I barely remember her. We never saw her again. So, when we grew up, it was only Sally and me. We knew we would be okay as long as we had each other.”
The weight of the past came crashing down, and Hazel was swallowed by it.
“Then, when I turned eighteen, Knut came for me. He took me away from Sally and brought me to his mansion.” Hazel shivered at the memory of that day. “That’s when I met the Duke. He was an Avonie, tall and prissy, the same as Knut. He told me I belonged to him now, that he was my new owner. When he tried to touch me, I fought back. I kicked and bit, I threw all the insults I knew at him. He was shocked, repulsed by my lack of manners. He said he wasn’t paying a fortune for a savage animal. He asked Knut for a reimbursement, telling him I was a disgraceful female.”
Hazel fell silent. She still remembered what she had felt that day. How good it had felt to kick, scratch and shout at the Avonie Duke. What a triumph she’d thought she had accomplished when the Duke had refused to pay for her. She had been such a fool.
“He rejected you.” Khal finished her thought. “But Knut is not one to take defeat so easily.”
“No, he’s not.” Hazel shook her head. “He had me thrown in a dark, cold room. I stayed there for days, with no food, little water. He tried to break me, but he couldn’t. I still have no idea how long he kept me there. When he finally let me out, he told me that the Duke wasn’t interested in buying me anymore.”
She swallowed the hard lump that had formed in her throat.
“He brought me back to Sally. We hugged each other and cried, then we laughed. We were so sure we had won. But there is no winning with Knut.”
Hazel paused, gathering her courage to admit her fault to Khal. To tell him the one thing that would make him reject her.
“He took Sally away that day. He told us the Duke didn’t want a little savage, that Sally was a much better subject than I was.” She shut her eyes, not wanting to see the loathing in Khal’s eyes as he understood what had happened. “He sold Sally to him instead of me. When the Ilarian guards took her, Sally lost it. She held on to me, pleaded with me to help her. I tried. I begged Knut to give me a second chance, told him that I would be a good girl, that I would behave from now on, but he just laughed. He laughed and took Sally away. It’s because of my selfishness, my stupidity, that my sister was sold. It’s my fault.”
Silence descended over the room and Khal’s hands left her back. Cold seeped into her skin at the loss of contact, and despair filled Hazel with the hollow pain of the past.
This was it. Khal knew what kind of person she was now. What a selfish, stupid girl she was.
He would never have her now.
“Hazel, look at me.”
The command came from just above her head, harsh and cutting. Hazel recoiled, but she knew the inevitable was coming. She looked up to
see Khal staring down at her, his face full of anger, his hard, full lips pressed together in a thin line. His deep blue eyes gleamed with emotion as his chest heaved up and down.
“I need you to hear me, so pay attention. I don’t ever want to have to repeat this to you.”
As he kept talking, his tone became harsher and harsher. Full of anger. Hazel braced herself for the rejection, for the judgment she knew she deserved.
“You are not responsible for what happened to your sister.” Khal glared at her as he spoke. “Knut is the one who’s responsible for all this. Knut is the one who sold her, who made you feel guilty for this. This is on him, not you. You were only trying to survive. You had no idea what he would do in reprisal.”
“But I should have,” Hazel protested, all the guilt and pain coming back like a fresh wound being reopened. “I should have known he would get his revenge.”
“You are not to blame for any of it.”
Khal knelt in front of Hazel, his large hands flattening against her thighs. The warm contact traveled straight up to her heart and some of her oozing pain lessened. She blinked, looking up at him. He wasn’t looking at her with revulsion or with judgment. He was looking at her with sadness and with anger, but the anger wasn’t directed at her. It was directed at Knut.
“I will kill him.” Khal spoke with death in his tone. “I will not capture Knut and bring him back to Prime Councilor Aav. I will rid the universe of that monster, once and for all.”
Hazel held Khal’s gaze for a long time as her heart stopped bleeding and her strength came back to her, little by little. “And I will be there with you.”
Khal stared at her, the shock almost comical on his sharp features. He blinked, and this time, it was his turn to open his mouth without speaking.
“Absolutely not. I won’t permit it.” He shook his head, finally shaking off the shock. “You are going with Celaith to Eokim, where you will be safe.”
Hazel leaned forward, her face coming close to his. She could feel his breath on her lips, the heat from his body, just there, within reach. Her fingers itched with the desire to make contact. She knew it was the Mating Venom acting in her bloodstream, pushing her toward Khal, but she didn’t care.
What she felt for him went beyond the Mating Venom, beyond that venomous lust that consumed her mind whenever he was too close. What she felt for him had transformed, melted into something deeper. Something she feared naming, but couldn’t live without anymore.
“I won’t leave your side.” She reached out, cupping Khal’s cheeks. Touching him released a torrent of desire, of savage lust within her bloodstream, but that only made her stronger. More resolute. “You took me as bloodmate. Now, you have to accept that that means we’re together, for better or for worse. No going back.”
Khal’s Prussian blue eyes shone with emotion and he swallowed hard. “I can’t let you come to harm.” There was no more anger in his voice. Only a deep, piercing concern that went straight to her heart.
“Neither can I.”
Then she kissed him. When her lips landed on his, she knew she had finally found her home. And she was never letting it go.
Chapter 16
Khal
Hazel’s mouth was on him, brazen and feminine. Her sweet scent filled his nostrils, her pheromones of pain and lust, of fear and joy, melting into a potent mixture that filled his senses and loosened his already tenuous hold on his control.
The salty taste of her tears entered his mouth, mingling with her taste. He wanted to lick those tears from her cheeks until nothing remained of the ravaging pain she had been through.
She should never be sad, never be afraid. Her happiness had become his mission in life, his very reason to exist.
“I should return to the control room.” Khal placed his hands firmly on her waist, peeling his lips from hers with a supernatural effort. “Make sure the Myrador remains safe.”
He pushed her away, but her little hands closed around his neck and held on firmly. She was surprisingly strong when she needed to be.
“I don’t care about the safety of the Ring just now.” Her musical, fluting voice was deeper, hoarser. She moved, pressing her chest against his, her legs raising on either side of his hips until she was straddling him. Her brazenness pleased him, made him even crazier for her. “I just want you, all of you.”
Her words ignited something inside him, and in a heartbeat, he was kissing her again. His tongue slid out between his lips and she parted her own, allowing him in eagerly, answering with her own tongue.
Already, Mating Venom was flowing in his mouth, pulsing all the way down to his painfully hard seed stem.
He wanted Hazel, and he wanted her now.
His hands closed around the firmness of her full, round breasts, his thumb brushing over her nipples. The tiny buds immediately hardened at his touch and she moaned into his mouth, the sound fully and utterly female.
Delectable. Responsive. His.
Still, he resisted the brutal instincts that pushed him to take her, rough and long—a total possession of the senses and mind. To make her scream with mind-numbing ecstasy. He refrained.
He wanted to take Hazel slow and deep, to feel every inch of her as she came around his seed stem, around his fingers, inside his mouth. To enjoy every last inch of her wonderful, lush body. To imprint it in his mind so he could see it, all the way to the Midnight Lands.
Her blunt teeth closed around the flesh of his neck, biting lightly.
Khal lost it.
He grabbed Hazel’s hips, then got to his feet, still holding her. Her legs were wrapped around his waist, her sex pushing against his seed stem, the scent of her arousal coming to him in waves. She was ravenous in his arms, kissing and licking him, pressing her chest to him. Pushing the faint hold of civilization he had wrapped himself around further and further away.
In two long strides, Khal was leaning over the bed. He bent with her still in his arms, then placed her down on the mattress, kneeling between her parted knees.
“All that black leather. I want it off you.” He growled, low in his throat, then reached out quickly. His talons sliced her clothing, from her neck to her navel, easily parting the heavy fabric in two. Hazel cried out in surprise as he parted the ruins of her coat, revealing her round, large, milky breasts. “So much perfection.”
Khal bent, his mouth closing greedily around one nipple. He sucked hard, not bothering with softness and play. Hazel arched her chest toward him, moaning as her fingers interlaced behind his skull. The touch of her fingertips on his sensitive skin made him even wilder.
He wanted more. He wanted to taste her.
Khal traced his way down Hazel’s stomach, trailing his tongue along her skin, reveling in the salty taste of her sweat. Soon, his mouth found her navel and then traveled further down, where her musky female perfume invaded his mind.
He didn’t wait. He reached up and sliced through the pants, discarding them to the floor. As he hovered between her knees, he stared at her sex, covered in soft curls a shade darker than her pale blonde hair. This was the source of that maddening scent.
Khal dove in with no warning, no hesitation. This was his female, by all the laws of the Midnight God. She was his to pleasure, his to enjoy, his to fill with his seed.
He lapped at her, his tongue splitting the lips of her sex, flicking her tiny bundle of nerves, then sliding down. Entering that channel that belonged only to him.
Already, Hazel was writhing on the bed, her hips arching, tortured, almost painful noises coming from her lips. But he didn’t want her to move. Something dark and feral inside him wanted absolute control. Wanted her defenseless and ravaged by pleasure.
Pleasure he would give her.
He growled against her sex, the warning a slice in the air. He lifted his gaze, his mouth still against her sensitive flesh, to see her watching him with wariness, with awe.
With excitement and fear.
His seed stem answered, pre-cum dripping o
nto his thighs. But he wasn’t ready to fuck her. Not before she had screamed his name in surrender.
“Don’t move,” Khal growled, then rested his fangs just around her sex in a definitive warning. More wetness slipped from her channel, and he lapped at it in delight. She was perfect. So responsive, so female.
He couldn’t wait anymore. He wanted to feel her come in his mouth. He wanted more of her screams.
Khal inserted a finger into her silky, wet depths. At the same time, he sucked and flicked at her tiny bud, pushing with his fingers from the other side. Hazel’s moans turned tortured, unhinged. She moved despite his orders, pushing her hips forward, unable to resist the call of her body.
Then he pushed a second finger inside her channel, sucking with a great force on her tiny bud at the same time.
Hazel unraveled. A feral satisfaction welled inside him as Khal lapped at her cream as she came in his mouth. For a long time, she screamed mindlessly, pleasure rolling over her body like a crashing wave, enhanced by the Mating Venom’s effect.
As she calmed down, his own lust raged on, imperious. Undeniable.
Finally, Khal knelt, looking down over Hazel’s satisfied, exhausted body. She stared blankly at the ceiling, her eyes glassy and dazed, her expression one of shock. She was breathless, her full chest heaving fast, her nipples still hard, rocking softly back and forth.
She was perfection made female.
“This is how I will always take you,” Khal told her, getting rid of his own pants as she stared, her eyes still unfocused. “Fully, without mercy.”
Before she had a chance to say anything, he threw his pants away, but held on to his belt. An idea had come to him, one that made his seed sack tight with anticipation and his seed stem ready to pierce her soft body.
“Turn around,” he ordered, and satisfaction welled inside him, pulsed in his seed stem as she stared at the leather belt in his hands, her eyes suddenly sober. She swallowed hard, but nodded. She turned her back to him, and he stared at the beauty of her elegantly arched back, her fine waist and her full, round ass.