In response he flicked his tongue faster, shooting her right over the edge. She shuddered into his mouth, spasming so hard she would have jerked away if not for his insistent hands holding her in place.
To her shock and delight, he didn’t stop sucking or licking or nuzzling. He continued as though no orgasm had just ripped through her, as though he was unaware that he had pleasured her so completely that her mind had gone numb and her limbs had lost all strength. If not for her suit holding her up, she might have collapsed in a heap.
As the aftershocks seeped away and awareness returned, she realized that he was priming her all over again. He was using his psi on her breasts and every inch of her skin felt as though he was brushing her with silky feathers, the touch light and almost as provocative as his tongue.
She hadn’t known it was possible to feel so satiated, yet at the same time so ravenous for more. It was as if Kirek was determined to feed her a fantasy feast, and so far she’d only dined on the tantalizing appetizer.
She’d never met a man who was so comfortable with himself. Kirek seemed to equally enjoy bossing her around or acceding to her wishes. And oh my … stars. What the man could do with his tongue ought to be classified a Federation secret … or illegal. Because after experiencing his skill, she would be forever spoiled.
Muscles clenching, fingers gripping his shoulders, she flung back her head and welcomed the spiking tension. So soon, he had her right back at a pivotal moment, and like a tide rising with a full moon, she crested, broke, and surged. If her orgasm had been fireworks, it would have been the grand finale. If her pleasure had been an exploding star, she’d have erupted in a supernova. If she’d been capable of screaming, she would have shouted herself hoarse.
But the intensity caused her throat to close and her heart to race and her center to weep with bliss. She would have gyrated her hips, but his hands on her butt kept her firmly pressed against his sweet mouth.
His lips gentled, but he kept stroking, caressing, lapping her moisture. As the last spasms splashed through her, he ratcheted up his tempo.
Again?
God. Did the man have no limits? Surely she couldn’t … not this soon … but she could.
If a girl could die of pleasure, she would surely be dead within the hour because Kirek wasn’t stopping. Her every nerve ending was already so sensitive that in only moments, he was driving her into another wild frenzy.
Her flesh raw with desire, she moaned as he whipped her to new sensations. She wanted to jump out of her skin. Each breath, each touch, each tiny caress inflamed, excited, and encouraged her to take more than she’d ever believed possible. And then more again.
He kept upping her sensitivity level. She climbed ever higher, poised on the ultimate leap.
All her thoughts focused on what Kirek was doing with his sensual mouth and his psi. Not for one second did he stop caressing her breasts. But there was no pattern. At times he delicately stroked. Sometimes he pinched or rolled the tips of her nipples, and sometimes, he rained icy droplets over her. All the while he kept her bottom hot.
At the multitude of cascading sensations, she exploded once more and felt as though every brain cell was blowing out. Incredible heat and tension burst from her in wave after wave.
For certain, she couldn’t take more. “Enough.”
With a surge of desperate strength, she staggered, her knees weak, her psi weaker. She would have fallen, but he stood and scooped her into his arms.
As he gathered her into his chest, she glanced in the mirror. Purple clouds mocked her. She looked at Kirek and found him watching her with wary enjoyment—as if she’d given him exactly what he’d wanted.
“You did that on purpose. Made me forget about the mirror.” She spoke softly, so relaxed she couldn’t find any anger to put in her words.
“I did what you asked.”
“You did more than I asked.” She gazed at him, wondering what he really wanted. “I didn’t know my body could explode so many times.”
“For a twice-married woman who has taken many lovers, it seems there’s a lot you don’t know.”
Confident she was a good lover, she frowned at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re a very sensual woman.”
Kirek was good at pricking her into thinking one thing, then soothing her. She ran a lazy finger over his lip. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“I take great pleasure in pleasing you.” His eyes sparkled with intimacy, as if sharing a secret.
She suspected whatever Kirek did, he would do well and to the utmost of his ability. She’d never doubted his ability to please her sexually.
But she hadn’t expected that after so many orgasms she would still want to make love to him again.
Chapter Twelve
THE NEWS WAS bad. Horrible. After making love, eating, and sleeping in the mansion, Kirek let the real world back in by flicking on the vidscreen. Gripping pictures of devastation coming from the planet Zenon had both Angel and Kirek putting their own difficulties aside.
Zenon, the pride of the Federation, was a smoking hulk of a planet. The famous architectural cities that resembled masterful works of art had toppled. The giant spaceport that had been capable of landing thousands of ships simultaneously had melted into a lava sea. One moment billions of beings had been going about their lives, working, loving, and learning—and the next, every facet of civilization had ceased to exist.
Federation scientists speculated that someone had activated a geothermal explosion that had tapped the planet’s core heat and melted the crust. Nothing could survive the tremendous heat. Billions had lost their lives, and almost every Federation world had lost diplomats, visitors, families. The devastation of the Federation’s capital planet threatened the stability of the galactic organization.
“The Zin are behind the massacre.” Sickened by the devastation, Kirek had no doubt who was responsible.
“How do you know? Couldn’t this have been a natural disaster?” Angel asked, her face ashen.
Kirek’s tone was grim, his emotions bleak as he checked the computer system and collated data. “Just before that geothermal weapon ignited the core, a wormhole opened up, the same kind of wormhole the Zin used to send a virus to Earth less than a decade ago. Besides, who else would want to take out Zenon?”
“Are you certain about the wormhole?” Angel asked.
“Several starships in the area took readings during the attack. Since the first wormhole attack, many planets installed warning buoys to set off alarms to detect wormhole activity. Those alarms went off, but they didn’t give enough warning to evacuate an entire planet.”
Angel’s face paled even further. “Even ships in orbit melted.”
“Who else but the Zin would give no warnings?” Kirek checked his data. “The disaster wasn’t natural, and no other race in the Federation possesses the kind of technology necessary to open a wormhole and heat up a planetary core until the crust melts.”
A drone flew over Zenon and sent back images. The great cities were no more than smoking slag heaps. Gigantic parks, precious art, a proud people, and their history had been wiped out as if they’d never been.
Angel stared at the vidscreen, her eyes full of shock and anger. “There’s nothing left. Why would even the Zin do such a thing? The crust won’t cool for thousands of years. The planet is now just as useless to them as it is to us.”
“To the Zin, a thousand years is the blink of an eye. The virus they tried to spread through the galaxy would have killed every living plant and animal. They are relentless, ruthless. If not for the Sentinels—the giant machines the Perceptive Ones built and left behind long ago to keep the Zin from invading—we would not have lasted this long.”
Angel’s voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s hard to comprehend so much destruction. So much evil.”
“Zenon may have been a test, and now that the Zin have succeeded in taking out the Federation’s capital, they will stri
ke again.” Kirek rubbed his jaw. Although his home world was nowhere near Zenon, he ached to contact his parents. He wanted to see his father’s face, look into his mother’s eyes, and make sure they were safe. He wanted to go over plans with Tessa and Kahn, but now more than ever, he needed to maintain a low profile.
The Kraj were still on Dakmar, and after he and Angel left the safety of the mansion, they would once again become targets. In the two days they’d hidden here, they’d slept, made love, and rested. Only the utmost self-restraint had kept him from showing Angel his true feelings. Although she readily came into his arms, she remained touchy about her emotions, and he had to face the fact that she might never admit she wanted him for more than just a fling. Clearly she didn’t feel the same connection to him that he did with her.
Angel needed space, and he would give her as much as possible. So he forced himself to curb his natural tendency to pursue, to insist, and to demand that she recognize she had feelings for him.
With the Federation capital a slag heap, Kirek might have to rush his plans. He had most of the pieces in play, but he was still waiting for one item of essential equipment to reach Dakmar.
Kirek had also pulled every string he could to expedite the Raven’s repairs. Without Angel’s knowledge, crews had worked day and night, with specialized teams on each section, and thanks to skilled workers and the greasing of many palms, the Raven was almost ready to go.
Kirek wished that Angel would never find out what he’d done to her ship. So far her crew had assumed the repairs were what she’d ordered and hadn’t contacted her. But when she returned to the ship and learned what he’d done, she would see his act as a betrayal. Yet he’d had no choice. He could not go up against the Zin without every advantage he could muster—even if that meant testing his relationship with Angel to the limit.
That he knew she considered the Raven her sole responsibility couldn’t alter his decision. However, after she learned that he’d gone behind her back and altered her precious ship, he’d be lucky if she didn’t shove him out the nearest airlock and leave him in deep space.
He should have found a way to tell her. But the mission was too critical to take a chance that he’d be able to change her mind. Besides, he hadn’t wanted anything to intrude upon their rest until necessary. Their lovemaking meant too much for him to detract from it, and although she might see his choice as dishonesty, he’d seen too much hardship during his life not to want to steal moments of pleasure and happiness when he could. He’d hoped their lovemaking and time together would bridge the emotional chasm between them.
But his plan hadn’t worked. He supposed once she’d learned what he’d done, she’d hold that against him, too.
He would cope by keeping his love for her to himself. Telling her would likely send her running away.
And while this time they’d spent together hadn’t turned out as he’d planned, it might have still forged a bond between them that she couldn’t so easily break. Although he hadn’t again used his psi to show her the emotions she usually repressed, he could see by the gleam in her eyes and the curve of her lips that she was softening toward him.
Angel stared at the news coming out of Zenon, her blond locks messy and adorable in contrast to the tense lines in her shoulders, her eyes narrowed in fierce resolve. Kirek would enjoy nothing better than to place his hands on her shoulders, to rub out the knots of tension, and kiss her until they both lost themselves in pleasures of the flesh. Too bad he didn’t have a month, or a week, or even a few more days to spend alone with her without other obligations.
Within the hour his contact would land on the darkest quarter of the moon. As distracted as Kirek had been by Angel’s lovemaking, and now by the catastrophic news about Zenon, he made himself focus on his mission and called up three-dimensional holomaps of Dakmar’s nightclub region. Residents called the nasty quarter of the moon “The Peel” after one notorious knife fight where the victor had skinned his opponent in the street in front of a mob. No one was safe in The Peel—not without bodyguards, heavy armor, and lots of credit to pay one’s way out of trouble.
Angel glanced at his vidscreen. “Why didn’t you pick a more reputable place for the meet?”
“It wasn’t my decision.” Kirek’s psi itched at his nape, a sure sign of trouble, but his contact had been reliable until now, and his information credible … if expensive. Kirek didn’t mind paying for accurate intel, but in this quarter of the moon, a man had to go in with the expectation of encountering attempted murder, robbery, or at the very least, a brawl.
“I’ll watch your back.” Angel picked up a stunner from a cache left by the mansion’s owner and strapped it to her gorgeous thigh, handling the weapon as casually as some women donned jewels.
The leather holster against her shapely legs made his mouth water. He recalled those long legs wrapped around his waist, her nails digging into his back as she urged his hips to move faster. The idea of a beautiful woman like Angel going into that den of misfits caused every protective instinct to flare into the hot zone.
He folded his arms across his chest. “You aren’t going anywhere near The Peel.”
“Of course I am.” Her tone remained matter-of-fact as she shoved a knife into her boot and altered her suit to hide her tan legs with a skintight black that outlined every curve. “You’ll need my connections to get past the outer sector.”
“You’ve been in The Peel before?” Kirek frowned at her. The combination of a thigh holster strapped over the too-revealing black pantsuit was an image of feminine curves and lethal weapon that repeatedly drew his gaze. Kirek would have objected to any woman who looked as sexy as hell walking into the grittiest, nastiest section of Dakmar, but Angel had just made love to him, and by all Rystani moral codes that made her his responsibility.
Too bad she wouldn’t see it that way. Although he knew she could handle herself, he wouldn’t let her go into danger to watch his back.
She strapped a second stunner on her other thigh. “The Peel is not my favorite place for a date. The food bites, the men are slime-sucking slugs, and the women are body-sculpted predators, mercs at their worst.”
“Mercs?”
“Mercenaries.”
Angel would be tempting every bad element. “You’re staying. I’ll get there on my own.”
She lowered her neckline with a psi thought, revealing enough cleavage to make his mouth go dry. “And here I thought you had more intelligence than a sand flea. Didn’t you hear the part about the female predators?”
“Excuse me?”
“You need me.”
“I don’t.”
“Fine. Go get yourself killed and let the Zin take over the galaxy because you don’t know the secret handshake.”
“Secret handshake?”
“You don’t know the culture here. You don’t know who to pay off and who to slug and who means business. You won’t take five steps into The Peel before you’re marked for scraping.”
“Scraping?”
“A local custom where two gorgeous women pin the mark so a third can take him down. After the scavengers finish with you, there won’t be much left for the botcops to scrape off the street.”
“I think I can defend myself against a few determined females.”
“Oh, really?” She advanced, her hips swaying. “You can’t even defend yourself against me.”
“I can’t?” He raised an intrigued eyebrow.
But Angel wasn’t coming on to him—she was challenging him, and he didn’t understand why. She might be in shape, but her muscles were no match for his. Neither was her psi. But unless she was bluffing, she believed every word she’d spoken. Kirek had known women warriors with extraordinary powers. Skilled in ancient Terran martial arts, Tessa could take on most men with her bare hands and her psi. There wasn’t a man alive who could match Dora when she linked to a computer.
Angel stepped closer, and he breathed in her citrus scent. Her chest rose and fell enticingly with
every breath, drawing his gaze to her breasts. “I suppose you think these babies are lethal weapons?”
When Angel’s hands dropped to caress her gun grips, he realized his mistake. He refocused on her guns and noted they shot projectiles and weren’t stunners as he’d first assumed. “What are they?”
“HGLs. Hypnotic Grenade Launchers. All I need to do is pop one off anywhere in your vicinity and you go to la-la land.”
“My suit’s filters—”
“They don’t require air and they only take out men. We could both take a hit, and you would go down, and I wouldn’t notice a thing.”
“Really?” He’d never heard of such a weapon.
“The techno-geeks have created an electromagnetic wave that fries male neural networks. I don’t know exactly how it works, but the major principle has something to do with a male chromosome that makes you vulnerable.”
Kirek had faced death many times, but the idea of the grenade damaging his mind made him uneasy. If the women on Dakmar could so easily render him unconscious, he would require Angel’s help, although he wasn’t quite ready to admit it.
“What exactly would happen to me if a grenade goes off?” he asked with a frown, wishing she’d move her hands away from the weapons.
“Some men dream sweet dreams or wake up with a raging headache and there’s no damage. Others don’t remember so much as their name or their past, including families and friends. Some don’t wake up at all. Apparently, the geeks have yet to fine-tune the grenades. Either that or they react differently on different species.”
“What’s the detonation radius?”
Rystani Warrior 04 - The Quest Page 15