I dropped to my knees and sucked her clit into my mouth once again, drawing out her pleasure as she came, her soft screams fading to whimpers as we acted like the greedy Prillon mates I knew us to be and used our hands and our mouths to push her over the edge again and again. We took and took until she had nothing left to give, until she lay limp with complete exhaustion. Only then did Nial wrap the blanket about her and stand. I wiped her salty, tangy essence from my lips and chin as I, too, rose to follow Nial as he carried our mate to the transport chamber.
There, Warden Egara waited for us. She blushed slightly at our entry, but busied herself with the instrumentation before her.
“Send us back to Commander Deston’s battleship,” Nial commanded.
“I’m sorry. I can’t,” she replied. “The Prime has shut down all transport beyond the second zone.”
I shook my head and looked at Nial, who carried our naked, sleepy mate. Jessica’s head was tucked securely beneath his chin and she was completely relaxed in his arms, trusting us to take care of her. My heart swelled with pride knowing I’d helped put that contented, submissive languor in her bones. She was no longer pale, a flush of arousal lingered on her cheeks and her gaze drifted about without care or concern, safe as she was with her mates surrounding her.
“That means the only planet my father left within transport range of Earth is the Colony.”
I recognized the rage in Nial’s voice. I felt it myself. The Prime had made it impossible for us to take our mate home. Taking her to the Colony would be dangerous. The entire planet was populated with contaminated warriors, those who had been taken by the Hive and altered, as Nial had been. The men there were all outcasts, captured, tortured, and then rejected by their own people, abandoned to live out their days alone and without mates on another world.
I looked at our mate, at her beautiful face and soft curves and knew she would most likely be the only female on the entire planet. I knew, even before Nial spoke, what he would choose. As Jessica’s primary mate, he carried full authority in this situation.
“We have no choice, Ander. The Hive hunt for her. We cannot remain on Earth. It’s not safe for our mate.” Nial looked at me and I nodded, rolling my shoulders in preparation for battle. Just in case.
“The colony may be no better than this place.” We were taking our mate into unfamiliar territory with no weapons but our own fists. If the warriors who had been banished to the colony were angry or vengeful, or unfriendly to outsiders, we could regret the decision to take our mate amongst them.
“If we must, we can steal a transport ship and travel to the battleship Deston from there.” He looked down at Jessica, who appeared to be asleep in his arms. “If we stay here, the danger to our mate is tenfold. The Hive will send additional scouts to hunt for her once they lose the tracking signal on the ship you destroyed. They will send more than three scouts next time.”
“Agreed.” I would trust my mate’s safety to Prillon warriors who had been named outcast over an endless stream of mindless Hive slaves. There was no question.
Nial nodded to Warden Egara. “Send us to the Colony.”
We stepped onto the transport platform and I looked at the darkly beautiful woman who had helped us save our mate, concerned that we left her behind unprotected. “Be careful once we are gone. The Hive might track our mate to you.”
“I’m not afraid of those bastards.” She looked fierce, filled with a rage I’d not seen in her before. I studied her with new eyes as she entered our destination in the control panel in front of her.
“You are brave and honorable. You would make an excellent bride.” I knew several warriors who would be pleased with her darkly exotic hair and warm eyes.
“I already tried that. I’ll pass.” Her sad smile was the last thing I saw before the transport energy came for us.
Chapter Nine
Jessica
I was having the most amazing dream. Warm and comfortable, my bed was a mix of soft and firm. I rubbed my face against my pillow and the scent that rose, a dark, woodsy smell, made me smile. A hand stroked over my bare belly in slow and easy circles. It felt so good that I felt like I was melting and a contented sigh whispered past my lips.
“I will not begin her examination until she awakens.”
I stiffened. I knew that voice. Nial’s. But a stranger answered.
“I understand, prince, but a delay is dangerous. The others can scent her.”
“She smells like Ander and me. Our seed is upon her.”
“Regardless, it is not enough. She smells like an unmated female, and she does not wear a collar.”
The conversation was alarming, but I didn’t want to awaken. I didn’t want to open my eyes or climb from my contented spot. And I did not want to deal with an examination or challenges. I did not want to wake up and face a room full of males trying to sniff me. Who cared what I smelled like? As far as I knew, I smelled like green tea shampoo and lavender-scented antiperspirant, as per the usual.
The strange voice continued, “On the Colony, an unmated female is unheard of and the warriors are demanding a chance to challenge for her.”
“She is ours.” Nial’s voice boomed and startled me. My eyes flew open and I wasn’t in a bed at all, but in his lap. I was staring at his massive chest, a gray shirt stretched taut over broad muscles. How I thought this pillow was soft was definitely part of a dream, for Nial—I knew it was Nial’s lap without looking up at his face for I would recognize his scent anywhere—was all hard male. Everywhere, including the cock that nudged my hip.
“She is awake. As soon as she is examined and cleared for the claiming ceremony, we will remove her from the Colony. I assure you, doctor, we will not linger. She is hunted by the Hive.”
Ander. I knew his voice now as readily as Nial’s. He was loud and brash and direct, and very, very good with his tongue. I wondered if he did everything with the same intensity he used when he went down on me.
Nial’s hand stilled on my belly. My bare belly. I glanced down and realized I was wrapped in another blanket, this one a dark red, not the bride processing center’s dull gray. His hand had slipped between the folds to touch me directly. Warden Egara was nowhere to be seen, but a man wearing a gray uniform stood nearby, staring at me as if I were an alien. I did not recognize the room we were in. Blinking, I looked around Ander’s large form, similarly clad in dark gray, and realized we weren’t in the processing center at all.
“Where are we?” I asked. My voice was scratchy and I cleared my throat.
Nial gave me a gentle squeeze. “We are on the Colony, fourteen lightyears from Earth.”
“The Colony?” I asked.
“It’s a planet, near Earth. Coalition forces send all the contaminated and non-functional warriors here to live out the remainder of their lives.”
“What do you mean, contaminated?”
His body had tensed beneath me when he used that word, and I knew it pained him for some reason. I trusted my instincts, and they were screaming at me that his answer was important.
“The warriors who have been contaminated. Like me.”
Confused, I stared at him. “You seem fine to me. Do you have a disease or something? What were you contaminated with? Radiation?”
“Hive technology.” He lifted his hand and pointed to the left side of his face, the silver of his eye. “I have more, covering my back and leg.”
Ander tensed as Nial spoke, watching me intently, as if my reaction mattered a great deal. I glanced to him for a brief moment. I hadn’t seen Ander like this before without his face buried in my pussy. That was the only other time I’d seen him so serious, so intent. For a woman, that kind of focus, there, was a good thing. My pussy clenched at the thought of his skills.
I noticed the scar on the right side of his face. It was thick, running from the top of his forehead, down the outside of his eye socket, and farther down his cheek to his neck. I traced the path with my gaze, imagining a blade of some kind sl
icing through his flesh and decided I would have to kiss the entire length later, trace the scar with my tongue.
Nial’s voice drew my attention from Ander and I turned to face him as he explained. “The Hive is our enemy, as it is Earth’s. If a warrior, from any planet, is captured, they are modified into a Hive fighter. I was partially modified before being rescued. Nonetheless, to the Prillon Prime, my father, I am enough Hive to be contaminated.”
His fingers squeezed my flesh, then relaxed.
“I am considered ruined on my world, an outcast, not worthy of a bride.” He looked away from me, staring past me, and I frowned at his shame as he continued, “This is the reason my father refused your transport, Jessica. I carry Hive technology that can never be removed.”
“So?” I lifted my hand to his cheek, to touch the silvery hued skin with my fingers. The softness of the oddly colored flesh was a shock, as was its warmth. But it was part of him, simple as that. “What does that have to do with anything?”
His stillness was unnatural and his gaze returned to my face. Beside us, the stranger I did not know had stopped moving as well, as if I’d shocked them all into silence. Confused, I turned to Ander and found his gaze smoldering, raw lust burning through his eyes to devour me. I shivered, unable to stop the flood of heat that made my core ache with emptiness as I met his gaze. I vividly remembered that same look as he’d sucked on my clit and made me scream. I shook my head, trying to clear the mixture of need and confusion I was feeling.
“You’re all crazy. I don’t think I want to go to Prillon, not if this is how you treat your vets.” I thought of all my friends in the service who’d lost limbs, been burned by explosives, shot, hurt. They were good men and women, soldiers who had served with honor and deserved to be treated with care and respect when they returned home. I couldn’t imagine sending a wounded veteran to what amounted to a prison colony, an outcast denied a mate and a family simply because a wound had altered their appearance. “What is wrong with you people? You should be ashamed if that’s the way you treat your vets.”
“What is a vet?” The strange man asked the question and I tore my gaze from Ander’s to answer him.
“Who are you?” I wanted to know, since I was sitting half naked in the same room with him, and he seemed to think he had a right to be here.
“I am Doctor Halsen.”
I inspected him then, noticed the same golden coloring and sharp angles of his face as Nial and Ander. His eyes were the color of bourbon on ice and his uniform was a strange green armor that looked more like forest camouflage than medical scrubs. He was also huge, close to seven feet tall. But whatever. As Dorothy would say, I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
“Vets is short for veterans. Soldiers who served and were then discharged.”
He shook his head, confusion evident on his face. I sighed. I’d try again, in alien speak.
“Warriors who fought on the front lines. Some of them are wounded and sent home with honor. We call them veterans, and I’m one of them.” I tugged on the blanket covering me as the doctor looked at me with confusion in his eyes.
“How is this possible? Females do not fight in war,” he replied.
“Where I’m from, women fight. They work. They serve in the military and law enforcement. They don’t sit on the sidelines and wait for a man to save them.” I stared him down, pissed off by the way they treated their soldiers in general, and their misogynistic attitude in particular. All the macho testosterone in the room was making me see red. None of these aliens had earned my loyalty or my trust… well, none but Nial when he’d saved me from that Hive scout. Okay, perhaps Ander, too, when he got rid of the same scout.
The doctor took a step closer and I leaned back into Nial’s arms, exceedingly aware of the fact that I was naked beneath the blanket.
“Fascinating. And you, you fought in a battle?” the doctor asked, but it was Ander who stepped forward, eager to hear my answer.
I nodded once. “Yes. Many times.”
Nial’s arms tightened around me, but I ignored him as I held the doctor’s gaze, his disbelief evident in his raised brows and thin lips, even before he spoke. “I don’t believe you.”
I shoved at Nial and slid from his lap. If this alien jerk really was a doctor, nothing I was about to show him should shock.
I stood proudly, the red blanket around my shoulders like a royal robe. I reached up and pulled my long hair forward over my shoulder so it wouldn’t get in the way of what I was about to do. “I didn’t get these scars baking cookies.”
Without breaking eye contact, I dropped the blanket to the floor at my feet and spun around so he would see the ugly, ragged edged shrapnel scars that ran from my shoulder to my waist, across my buttock and onto my thigh. Ander stepped closer, his shoulders tense, but Nial held up his hand to prevent Ander’s interference. Nial’s gaze locked with mine as I glared at him with open defiance, daring him to stop me taking the pompous doctor down a notch.
I knew Nial could see the front of me, my breasts and pussy, but I didn’t care. I should have questioned why I transported and arrived naked while Ander and Nial were clothed in identical shirts and pants. I’d ask later, but for now, I had something to prove.
Exposing my body was not to tease and lure the doctor. I heard him move and I spoke to the man without breaking eye contact with Nial. “Do not touch me.”
Silence, then his voice, which held a previously absent note of awe and respect. “And so, it is true. You were wounded and sent home? You are one of the outcasts? The ones you call vet?”
I was going to strangle him. I spun around and lifted the blanket to cover myself. “Our vets are not outcasts. They are cared for and treated with respect. They resume their lives. We try to fully integrate them back into society. Many of them have families to go home to.” At his confused look, I changed to alien speak again. “Mates and children waiting for their return.”
“Your outcasts are allowed to claim mates?” Ander crouched beside me, staring up into my face with awe on his features. I leaned forward and placed my hand atop his scar on his cheek, traced the line with my fingertips as I’d imagined doing, letting him know his scar didn’t make him less attractive to me.
“Some resent all soldiers, but mostly those people are angry about the wars on Earth, not at the soldier who fought. Most of our people treat all soldiers with great respect.” I smiled as he shivered beneath my gentle exploration, and I recognized my actions as what they were, a claiming of my own. “Whether they were wounded or not.”
The silence of the men around me was stifling and I pulled my hand back and cleared my throat. I looked around the oddly shaped room. It was circular, with dark glass of some sort from waist to ceiling. The floor was solid gray and smooth, like marble. I saw no door or exterior views. We could have been on a spaceship or hundreds of feet below ground. I had no way of knowing. “So, why are we here? Why did you bring me to this horrible place?”
The room wasn’t horrible, but from what they said of the Colony, it wasn’t Disneyland. I could only imagine what it was like outside the room’s door.
“Do not worry, mate. We will only remain here long enough to ensure you are well,” Ander promised. He rose to stand next to me, but he was so tall and bent at the waist so he could meet my eyes. “A ship is waiting to transport us to the battleship Deston. But before we leave you must be examined by the doctor to ensure you are well enough for the claiming ceremony.”
I took stock of my body. The buckshot wounds no longer hurt. In fact, I felt as if it had never happened. I had no other complaints, although I did feel a little tender between my thighs. I flushed, thinking about how Ander’s fingers had filled me. Fucked me. Brought me to orgasm again and again. No, that wasn’t all. He’d also put his mouth on my pussy and licked my clit, sucked on it, flicked it, even nibbled on it until I came. The last memory I would have of Earth was being draped across Nial’s lap in the processing center with both of my mates’ mouths on me,
making me come.
Oh, God, Earth. I was no longer on Earth. The thought was quick and fleeting because Ander stood over me and Nial moved to press his heat to my back. I was surrounded and I could no longer see the other man in the room. I didn’t miss him. He had irritated me with his attitude, his questions about my abilities solely because I was a woman.
“I am well. I do not need to be checked by a doctor.”
“You do,” Ander countered. He straightened and moved to a table several steps behind Nial where I had not noticed it before. Ander placed his hands upon the hard surface. The doctor, still present, began to retrieve strange objects from shelves that lined one wall. As I looked around for the first time, I realized we were in an exam room and they had every intention of looking me over. All three of them.
This wasn’t a take a look at the scars on my back kind of thing. This was a doctor’s exam.
From the way Ander was staring at me, he wasn’t going to change his mind. I tilted my chin to look up at Nial instead, hoping he’d see reason. “I’m fine. Really.”
His lifted his hands to cup my face, tilting my head up to face him. “You were shot, Jessica, and healed by a decades-old ReGen wand. We should have waited to begin the bonding process, but we could not anticipate how strong your reaction would be. We gave you no chance to recover from our seed and transported you across the galaxy. We do not know if you were harmed in transport. I do not trust the ReGen wand that was used to mend your flesh or any internal damage that isn’t visible. Also, we need to know the extent of your other injuries.”
“What other injuries? I’m fine.” I narrowed my eyes. What the hell was he talking about? I didn’t have any other injuries.
“You carry many scars, my warrior bride. I do not know if you were completely healed from your war wounds. We need to know if you can safely carry a child. If we can fuck you the way we would like. You have accepted the seed placed upon you. The bonding has begun, but your reaction was very…” his eyes darkened with a look of desire I already recognized in my mate, “…extreme.”
Taken by Her Mates Page 9