“You’re not going anywhere so you might as well just lie back down.”
Ignoring her, he straightened slowly, focusing on the pain and using it as an impetus to move. Peserin, he’d aged a hundred years since the day before—his back creaked, the tendons in his thighs and calves felt as though they’d snap at any moment, and his arms were too stiff to straighten at all.
“Okay, have it your way, but I promise you, you’re not getting out that door.”
He grimaced. “Don’t keep me alive just to assuage your conscience, Shelley.”
“Don’t be a chickenshit, Cecine.”
“Chickenshit!” He whirled to face her and lost his balance. Stumbling back against the wall, he was momentarily blinded by agony and the matted curtain of his hair.
“Yes, chickenshit. With a capital chicken.”
Taking a deep breath, Cecine straightened again, forcing his aching arm up to shove his hair back from his face, and glared at her. “Do you forget whom you’re addressing?”
Slouched in the corner of the wide easy chair by his bed, she had one long, pale leg draped over the arm, her bare toes making lazy circles in the air. In that position, the bright floral sheath she wore didn’t completely cover the pink panties underneath.
“Hmm, let’s see,” she said with an unnerving grin. “You’re naked, weak as a kitten and in a lot of pain, and I’m a nurse. I think that makes you my patient.”
When he opened his mouth, she held up an infuser. “Meanwhile, I’ve got this nifty little shot of stuff that will make you feel a hundred percent better, and I’ll use it…if you’re a very good boy and get back in that bed.”
Cecine’s perception of his present reality groaned as it rolled over onto its side, sending everything he thought he knew tumbling around his ears—and giving him a confounding feeling of hope in the face of all reason.
He licked his dry lips. “Shelley, why are you so cheerful? Your children are dead.”
“I don’t believe that.”
Pain and guilt scored him again. “Not believing it doesn’t make it any less true.”
Swinging her leg to the floor, she rose slowly, sinuously. When she was standing, she crossed her arms under her full breasts, still holding the infuser, and cocked a brow at him. “I’m waiting.”
Her challenge stole the breath from his chest and sent a spurt of hot blood into his mindless cock.
Shelley’s eyes widened flirtatiously. “Oh my. Looks like a decent night’s sleep did somebody a world of good.”
“Decent night’s sleep?” He looked out at the sea. “The sun set an hour ago or less.”
“Cecine, you slept around the clock. Twice.”
“I can’t have!” He seldom slept more than three or four hours at the best of times, and the last two weeks had hardly been that.
“It’s true. Hastion left yesterday. You must have needed sleep desperately.”
He frowned. “Where is Hastion?”
“Running an errand for me. Now, are you going to be a good boy and get back in bed for me?”
Good boy. The words sucked all the air out of him again, and unable to reply, he took a step toward the end of the bed, and then another and another, never taking his eyes off her.
She danced away from him, her long blonde braid swinging behind her and a devilish twinkle in her eye. “Ah-ah-ah,” she taunted. “Stalking your nurse is a no-no, Cecine. Don’t make me use the neural restraints on you.”
Though she was almost certainly bluffing, he halted, feeling an uncustomary vulnerability…and the perverse hope that she wasn’t bluffing. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Oh really?” She smiled widely. “Armitran, rigid neural restraints for the minister, please.”
Before he could move, he found himself frozen in place. His pulse grew erratic. “Shelley…”
“Yes, Cecine?” She sauntered forward until the tips of her toes touched his and looked up at him from under her lashes. “Something you’d like to say?”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because you’re in time-out at the moment and Tiber gave me control over your restraints. Right now, you have no command, no council and no official responsibilities to distract you from me. Why shouldn’t I take advantage of it?”
She pressed the infuser against his left pectoral muscle and then immediately pressed her plump pink lips to the same spot. It was hard to say which affected him more profoundly. As his physical discomfort dissipated, heat bloomed under his skin and his cock climbed higher between them, brushing against her silken shift. “You’d have me against my will?”
In reply, she dropped the infuser on the bed and reached up with both hands to pull his head down until their foreheads touched. Staring into his eyes, she asked, “If I turned off the restraints right now, would you run away from me?”
“No, I’d deliver a much-needed spanking followed by a much-needed fucking. I have no idea what you’ll do to me.” When she gave a silent huff of laughter, he said, “You think I’m joking, but I’ve been under the absolute control of females before. I have ample reason to be wary.”
She let go of him and traced his scar with a fingertip. “It left you scarred, didn’t it?”
“In more ways than you can imagine.”
“I want to mark you,” she whispered. “The way you did Hastion. I want to leave my love bites all over your beautiful body and make you mine.”
He trembled at the thought. He deserved no such pleasure. No such honor.
“Why? I failed you, Shelley. I failed my—” a fist-sized ball of pain lodged in his throat and he swallowed hard as tears spilled down his cheeks, “—my children. My babes. Powers, I loved them all so much.”
“Oh, my love, you’ll have them back. I promise.” Shelley wrapped her arms around his waist. “Armitran, neural restraints—”
“Don’t.” Cecine took a shuddering breath. He had to trust her. He needed her touch and her forgiveness and her unshakable faith too much not to trust her. “I wish to be at your mercy.”
“Okay. We can do that.”
Shelley hugged him for a long time, pressing kisses to his chest and rubbing his back until his eyes had gone dry and gritty, and the evening light had faded to a deep royal purple. While her faith that the twins still lived shook him to his foundation, he’d never felt such peace as he did in her arms. Such hope. Peserin, could she be right? Was there any chance at all?
Without warning, the pressure of her mouth changed. Cecine held his breath as she sucked on the skin over his pectoral muscle, drawing blood to the surface and stroking it with her tongue. Then she opened her mouth wider, digging her teeth into him as she sucked harder, milking his flesh, and a long, shaky groan of ecstasy escaped him.
“You like that?” she asked, licking the throbbing mark.
Cecine couldn’t even reply properly. “Hmmmm…”
She chuckled against his skin. “I’ll take that as a yes. Now, I’m going to release your restraints just long enough for you to lie facedown on the bed, all right? Then I’ll put you in the loosey-goosey restraints so I can dig in a little better.”
“Facedown?” he murmured.
“Definitely facedown. To start, anyway,” she added with a grin. “Armitran, neural restraints off, please.”
“It would be my pleasure.”
When the restraints released him, Cecine frowned down at her. “Shelley, you really shouldn’t treat the computer like a person. You have no idea the sort of danger it might lead to.”
He frowned harder when she just smiled and said, “Facedown, Cecine. Now.”
Kneeling naked between his widespread legs, Shelley used her sensitive palms to catalogue the bruises and tooth imprints she’d left all over his back, buttocks, thighs and calves, soaking up his purrs of enjoyment and experiencing the kind of bone-deep satisfaction that made her want to curl up and purr herself. At the same time, she felt totally energized—she could do this all night. Or she could if her jaw wer
en’t about to give out, but there were plenty of other things she could do to his lovely body.
Cecine hadn’t stopped vocalizing his pleasure in one way or another since she started touching him almost an hour earlier, and the realization brought tears to her eyes. Good God, how had he stood all those years of deprivation and come out relatively sane? How had any of the Garathani stood it? Touch was essential to human life, and the Garathani were obviously every bit as human as Terrans in their need for it, but Cecine was a sensual, tactile man who seemed to crave it more than most.
When she held him earlier, she’d been disturbed to realize his back was rough in places, and when she got him down on the bed, she’d seen the full extent of the damage. At some point, someone had torn him up with a single-tail or cat-o’-nine or some other equally vicious whip, from his shoulders all the way down to his knees.
The thought of it made her furious. She wanted to ask who’d done it but she didn’t want to spoil his mood, and she had a feeling a woman was probably responsible, presumably his dead mate. Shelley wanted to dig her up and make her die all over again.
She leaned over and planted a kiss right in the top of his lovely crack. “Ready to turn over for me?”
“I can’t move,” he mumbled.
“I turned off the restraints half an hour ago. Didn’t you hear me?”
“Heard. Didn’t care.”
Grinning, she stretched over his back and whispered in his ear, “But I can’t reach your penis until you turn over.”
He took a deep breath before asking, “What do you plan to do to it?”
“Whatever I want.”
After a moment’s thought, he exhaled. “Fair enough.”
He turned over slowly, being careful to avoid knocking her with his legs, and then sighed when his back settled against the mattress. His eyes were as dark as she’d ever seen them, his cock already fully hard and dripping pre-ejaculate on his abdomen.
“Beautiful,” Shelley murmured, sliding her hands up his thighs until they framed his sac.
“I don’t deserve you,” he said, “but you should know I refuse to live without you, Shelley Nicole Emray. It simply isn’t in me.”
Painful happiness expanded inside her until it felt like her chest would burst. “Well that’s convenient,” she said, blinking away tears, “because I refuse to let you, Cecine whatever-the-rest-of-your-name-is. You’re mine now. I marked you, remember?”
“Kiss me, please, szisdagya.”
“I’ll do better than that.” Shelley climbed up to straddle his waist and reached down to position him at her opening.
“Lubricant?” he inquired, stroking her hips with his fingertips.
“You’re kidding, right? I’m so freaking turned on I may have to issue a flash flood warning for this mattress.”
His breathy chuckle squeezed her chest again, and she smiled back as she laid her hands on his ribs and sank slowly onto his hot hardness. “Oh my God, that feels soooo good.”
Once she’d sunk as far as she could, she kissed her way up his ginger-furred chest and smooth jaw to his lips. He slid his hands up her back and held her closer, tucking his chin down to plumb her mouth. When his purr of enjoyment started up again, she smiled, sliding her own hands up into his hair to scratch behind his ears, making him chuckle again.
“Shelley…”
Shelley sat up with a gasp, suddenly trembling all over. “Empran?”
“Are you well, Shelley?” Cecine asked with a concerned look.
“Hastion did it, Shelley. We have them. The babies are safe, and so is Monica.”
She covered her mouth with her hands and tears welled in her eyes. “Oh my God!”
Grabbing her wrists, Cecine pulled them down. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
Unable to speak for the joy clogging her throat, she shook her head and smiled as the tears streamed down her face. “Thank you, Empran! Oh my God, I love you so much! Thank you!”
“You’re more than welcome, Shelley. Thank you for your help. We’ll arrive at Garathan early tomorrow morning. Communications have been restored, and I’m opening your cerecom to the twins. Just think of one of them and I’ll assist the link.”
“Shelley, who are you communicating with?” Cecine demanded. “What’s happening?”
Trying to pull herself together, Shelley took a deep breath, and then another, and then looked into his eyes. “I was talking to Empran. They’re alive, Cecine. All of them. Monica, the twins… They’re coming home.”
His mouth opened and he blinked at her. “How?”
“Hastion and Empran took the Heptoral and went after them. Can you hear them?”
He lost focus, then inhaled sharply. Closing his eyes, he began to tremble just as hard as she was. “I hear them.”
“Empran, can I hear Wyatt and Kallie at the same time?”
“Yes, you can.”
Immediately she heard the twins’ quiet babbling. It was hard to tell them apart at first—one of them was interested in “Hashun’s” zipper tab and the other was trying to figure out where Zannen’s hair had gone.
A tear slipped down her cheek as she giggled and Cecine crushed her against his chest, kissing her temple as he lay back. At some point, his erection had slipped away, and she was kind of glad about it now. It didn’t seem right communicating with the twins while they were actually having sex.
“You knew,” he whispered against her hair. “You knew they were alive.”
“I knew.”
“I’ll never doubt your mother’s intuition again, szisdagya.”
Cheating and not feeling the least bit bad about it, she asked Empran what szisdagya meant.
“The closest translation would be little dragon.”
Shelley smiled. She’d take that. It beat the hell out of little animal.
Pushing up, she braced her elbows on his chest. “You know, you owe Empran a lot, Cecine. Everything, in fact. She caught you yesterday, and she saved your children today…because she cares.”
His expression immediately grew apprehensive. “Oh Peserin, Shelley…”
“Don’t worry, she knows she’ll be deactivated. She saved them knowing there was no other possible outcome. If there’s anything you can do for her, I hope you’ll do it.”
Sighing, he pulled her back against him and rubbed her arms without answering.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Cecine had lain awake all night holding Shelley, and he suspected she hadn’t slept much more than he had. They rose with the sun and showered together, soaping each other intimately and sharing frequent kisses, but they were both too edgy, too filled with conflicting emotions, to concentrate on an activity as intense as intercourse.
He was just rinsing the soap out of his hair when Shelley said, “You love Hastion, don’t you?”
Suddenly apprehensive, he turned and let the water stream over his face for a moment before saying with forced lightness, “If I didn’t before, I certainly do now.”
She pinned him with a stern gaze. “You loved him before, Cecine. Admit it. And while you’re at it, admit you love me too.”
“That, I can do.” He leaned forward to kiss the tip of her nose. “I love you, Shelley Nicole Emray, and you are mine until the day I die.”
She pressed her lips to his smartly. “I love you too, and actually, you’re mine. Those marks all over your backside say so.”
Peserin, how could he have forgotten? “Armitran, display my full-length dorsal image.”
Instantly a flare image of his back appeared in the shower and he grinned as he examined each ragged purplish mark on his skin.
Shelley gasped and then trailed her fingertip over the image. “Wow, now that’s pretty cool.”
“I do believe you’re right,” he drawled. “Those marks declare me yours. I hope you’ll allow me to declare you mine in the same fashion.”
“Um, no,” she said in a decisive tone. “You’re the sadomasochist here, not me, and you’ve got a gorgeo
us little masochist in Hastion to express that side of yourself with.” When he scowled, she added, “Besides, you already declared me yours by turning me into one of you, right?”
“You’re not one of us,” he said dryly. “You’re just taller.”
“And I’ve got a nook.”
And how in Peserin’s name had he forgotten that? He immediately slipped his first finger into her wet pubic curls and she spread her legs helpfully.
“It’s a little bigger than I thought it would be,” she told him.
“Hastion’s spur is shaped differently from mine so it needed to be large enough to accommodate either of us.”
She gasped when he rubbed her clitoris, which now hovered on the inside edge of her nook, and her delightful pink nipples hardened before his eyes.
“It’s ideally located,” he commented with a grin, leaning down to lick one of them. “Easily accessible to both my tongue and my spur.”
“Hmm, I never thought of that.”
He insinuated his finger deeper into her nook. “Hadn’t you noticed when you were with Hastion?”
Shaking her head, she kissed his chin. “We haven’t had sex since that first time with you. It just didn’t feel right without you.”
Emotion grabbed him by the throat, but before he could speak, she said against his lips, “Speaking of which, I actually remembered that sometime last week. It was pretty freaking hot.”
“I rather enjoyed it myself,” he murmured before claiming her in a long, sinuous mating of mouths. Peserin, he’d only half lived before discovering this component of intimacy. He now understood Portia’s ban on kissing—it was transcendent. Transforming. With every stroke of Shelley’s sweet tongue over his, he felt more captured, and yet at the same time, more free. More hers, and more himself.
“The Heptoral is now entering geosynchronous orbit, Minister,” Armitran reported.
He and Shelley broke apart and stared at each other for a breathless instant.
“The ship has arrived,” he repeated inanely.
Shelley squealed, “Oh my God, they’re here! My babies are here!”
After skidding out of the shower and making a cursory pass over her body with a towel, Shelley pulled on jeans and a sleeveless white top over her undergarments while he managed to jam his damp body into a plain gray civilian wrapsuit and boots.
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