His Virgin Bride (Interstellar Brides: The Virgins) (Volume 2)

by Grace Goodwin

  He had three fingers in me now. I couldn’t see them, but could feel them scissoring and sliding deep. It didn’t hurt, but felt odd. The vibrator helped, my body relaxed, his passage eased. I was so slick with lube now that I could feel his knuckles as they moved inside me.

  His hand disappeared but I heard the rustle of his clothes before I heard the wet sound of more lube.

  “You’re ready, mate.”

  “Yes.” I turned my head to look back at him with lust-filled eyes. He’d ripped off his shirt, opened his pants so they fell down to his hips, exposing his cock. It was thick and swollen, a dark plum color. The broad head flared and I had to wonder how it would fit. But it was glistening with lube and I knew he’d prepared me. I wanted it. Wanted him.

  Yes, he was dominating me. There was no question I was going to be submitting in the most elemental of ways. This was more intimate than a simple fuck. No, this was the second claiming because it was to ensure the deep connection, the trust that was shared with this action. The officiate had mentioned it at the orientation, but I hadn’t understood it. Not until now. Not until I watched as Bryn leaned forward, put one hand on the bed beside me and pressed his cock against me. He’d been saying he was mine all along and I kept telling him otherwise, but now, now I knew.

  He began to open me, the slick lube easing his way.

  I wiggled my hips, not sure if I was trying to get away or give him better access. Bryn’s hand came down on my ass, the heat of it searing and making me cry out.

  “Be still,” he murmured. “Let me take care of you. Let me give you pleasure you never imagined.”

  I gripped my hands together even tighter and breathed. He pressed and pushed and with a silent pop, his cock head slipped into me. He pressed forward at the same time he reached around and adjusted the vibrations on the clit attachment. He stung, the size and heat and width of him stretching me open as the vibrations rocked through my body. As I surrendered.

  I clenched my back inner muscles, squeezing him just to hear him moan, hear him lose a little sense of himself, before I pushed back out, opening to him like a flower so he slid deep, deeper, filling me up until I couldn’t take anymore. Until I saw stars.

  Bryn groaned, I cried out, my orgasm swift and fierce. The bright, searing heat of my ass being stretched for my mate’s cock combined with the vibrator on my clit was too much. I screamed as my body clenched and squeezed the tip of his cock, wanting it deeper within. I was lost, completely overcome with the feel of what Bryn was doing to me. He knew what I’d needed to be able to take his cock. The vibrator had distracted me, emptied my mind from thoughts of discomfort or pre-conceived ideas of pain for an ass claiming. Instead, Bryn had given me nothing but mindless pleasure so intense I couldn’t catch my breath.

  He hadn’t moved as I came clenching hard around his cock. But now that I’d recovered, he started to move. Carefully, he slid out and back in, his way slicked from his preparation. He’d allowed me to come, to have no fear of the second claiming, but now we were in this together. I arched my hips and no spank came. I pressed back, shifting on the bed to take him deeper and he said, “Yes,” on a hiss.

  I was now an active participant. He wanted me to move, to seek the pleasure his cock going deeper and deeper into my ass would bring. The stimulator on my clit seemed to be freakishly in tune with my body. It had stopped after my orgasm, but it began again. Peaking. Cresting. Stopping. Teasing me as my mate fucked my ass slow and deep.

  I felt the press of his hips against mine, knew he was all the way in. But somehow, it wasn’t enough. My pussy felt empty. I needed more.

  “More,” I told him.

  “Yes. We’ll come together, mate.”

  He began to fuck me then. His strokes were sure. Deliberate, yet gentle. I sensed his restraint, even though this position, with him mounting me from behind and his cock deep in my ass, was pure dominance on his part, I felt loved. Wanted. Cherished.

  This wasn’t an act of just dominance. It was a claiming. Yes, he was taking me, but I was giving myself to him. I accepted him as mine, consented to being his, to being taken like this. I squeezed my inner walls and he groaned.

  He was in charge, but I was powerful, too.

  In this, we were equals. He released my cuffs and when my hands dropped to the bedding, his larger palms settled on top them, our fingers entwined.

  Pulling back, he lifted me until my back was pressed to his chest, his cock sliding deeper at the new angle, my ass resting on his thighs as I settled my weight over him, opened. Took him deeper. I groaned.

  His hand drifted to my neck and I leaned back, lifting my chin, giving him what he wanted. Submission. Control. Complete surrender to the powerful touch pressed to my throat.

  When he shuddered beneath me and stilled, I nearly shattered, but his hand was moving on my thigh. Higher. Higher.

  His hot palm covered the stimulator on my clit, dipped lower as he slipped a finger inside my wet pussy, filling me completely. Pussy and ass full. Stretching. Aching.

  “Squeeze me, mate. Over and over. Do it now as I fuck your tight pussy with my fingers. Squeeze my cock in that ass. Make me come.”

  There was no coherent thought. My mind was blank, filled with lust and trust and surrender. I did as he asked, as the vibrator shocked my clit and his fingers opened my wet pussy, fucked me as I clenched my muscles around the huge cock filling my ass, gave over to the jagged pleasure. I felt him swell inside me just before he came.

  His cock jumped and spurted hot seed inside me. The extra movement was all I needed, the slight squeeze of his hand at my throat, a reassurance and a reminder that he had me, held me safe. That I was his.

  He shouted my name as I felt the hot seed coat me. Mark me as his.

  My answering cries were nothing I’d ever heard before, more mindless animal than any sound that had ever left my body.

  I was his. Totally. Completely. His.

  For now.

  Chapter Six

  Bryn

  I crouched on a rooftop, watching the sidewalk outside one of the mid-sized gambling establishments controlled by Styx and his legion. A slow but steady stream of Styx’s people came and went, some drunk, some bloody, all armed to the teeth and mean as hell. The women were either wearing armor and weapons, like the woman, Silver. The ones below also wore silk and jewels, their shoulders bare to display the prominent bite mark of the brutes walking beside them.

  It was evening, if there was such a thing. Rogue 5 adapted their technology and environment to mimic the natural patterns of the planet below. The hybrid warriors living here might not be as untamed as their ancestors on Hyperion, but they were far from refined. Their wildness called to me, to the Hunter perched within like a living shadow. I understood them, and the uncivilized nature that crouched inside, ready to erupt to the surface at the slightest threat.

  Or when taking a mate. Fucking her. Claiming her. Filling her with seed.

  Mine. Mine. Mine. Katie was here on this wild moon. Alone. I’d left her under Styx’s protection, but that wasn’t enough. The pulsing of my mark told me so. She needed me. I had to find Garvos. Kill him. Get back to her. Bury my tongue in her wet pussy. Make her scream. Fill her with my seed. Pump into her. Explore every inch of her with tongue and hands and teeth.

  Mine.

  And she was with him, right now. Styx. A male in his prime who lusted after my mate. Who wanted to touch her. Seduce her. Steal her from me.

  I growled before I could stop myself and shook my head, clenching the brick wall with such force that it began to crumble in my palm. And yet I still felt the mark’s pulse.

  By the divine. I had to stop thinking about her. Garvos was not mated. He would not be thinking about a warm, wet pussy or his mate’s soft skin when I came for him. He would not be distracted.

  And I was sure word had reached him by now. An Everian Hunter arrived at the docks in plain sight of everyone. Personally escorted to speak with Styx.

  Unless
Garvos was an idiot, he Hunted me already, knew I’d come for him.

  My cock was hard as a rock and I shifted, uncomfortable on the roof. I crouched in the shadow of a large exhaust pipe painted with a reflective coating that mimicked whatever version of a sky appeared in the dome above.

  Blinking to clear my head, I looked up. At least a thousand feet above me, the dome ceiling over this section of Rogue 5 sparkled with countless artificial stars. Dark at night. The palest pink at dawn. Bright blue or cloud white during the day. The effect was stunning and unnerving, the illusion of a vast open sky at odds with what my Hunter’s senses insisted was truth. The swirling stars overhead were pinpoint lights strategically placed and put into motion to mimic the rise and fall of constellations I did not recognize. It wasn’t real. None of this was real. Only Katie.

  “Focus, Hunter,” I spoke to myself, the words barely more than a whisper. I trembled, edgy, the calm I normally felt on a hunt all but deserting me as my entire being ached to return to Katie. To the long, elegant line of her spine as I held her bent over my bed. The delicate curve of her face. The hoarse cries of her pleasure as I filled her with my cock and marked her with both my seed and scent.

  Raw, primal instinct demanded I return to her. Stay with her. Protect her. The compulsion stronger than I had anticipated. Was it made fiercer because I’d claimed two of her virginities? Was the mark eager for the third?

  Everians with Marked Mates did not hunt. They were still so rare among us that I hadn’t questioned the why of it. I’d always assumed their retirement was meant as a protection for their mate, that their service on council positions and as emissaries and ambassadors was because their mate made them stable, thoughtful, more careful in their choices. That they became safer.

  On the rooftop, I realized the opposite was true.

  I’d rip apart this entire moon if any one of these bastards touched her, and damn the consequences. I’d bite and tear and take great pleasure in tormenting anyone who hurt her. This hunger inside me, the craving to return to her, was not bound by honor or duty or anything remotely close to logical.

  It was hunger. Need. My body incomplete without hers. My very bones heavy and hurting. I should be tracking my prey, but instead I fought to resist the lure of her scent that lingered on my own skin where we’d touched. I inhaled deeply, ignoring the other smells around me, requiring more of it…of her.

  A dark void spread and filled me in her absence, like rotting tar in my veins. The air reeked of bodies and sex and blood, despite the filters used to keep the moon base habitable. Rotting vegetables and waste waited in bins to be disposed of. Rodents from the gods only knew how many worlds scuttled for superiority under the streets and sewers of Rogue 5, my sensitive ears picking up the faint scratch and scurry of their tiny claws inside metal and stone, pipes and underground passageways.

  Giant structures filled with moss and vines from the planet below lined the streets like sentinels. They had been used to mimic the size and shape of Hyperion’s native trees and landscapes, making Rogue 5 an unlikely blend of cold steel and living things existing side by side in a strange dance of twisted metal, of reality and illusion spun together to create a new world.

  Rogue 5 was foreign hunting ground. Dangerous. The warriors who lived and ran the city—and the never-ending power struggle between the 5 legions—both were legendary all over the Coalition Worlds.

  If Hunters from Everis were the whip and enforcers of these worlds’ law, the long arm of those leaders, then Rogue 5 was the dark underbelly of that just society. Their spies and assassins spread through the galaxy like thousands of tiny spiders on a giant web. They were everywhere, on every planet, every moon, every half-forgotten outpost crumbling to dust.

  The Coalition could have gotten rid of them years ago, centuries ago, but dared not touch them.

  Without men like Styx and his iron control of the criminals and thieves pledged to him, the Coalition Fleet would be fighting two wars instead of one. And it was generally agreed that trying to eliminate the legions of Rogue 5 and survive the Hive War at the same time would simply not be possible.

  Better the harsh rule and iron will of the leaders on Rogue 5 than complete lawlessness, piracy and chaos among the criminal elements within the Coalition itself. Without rulers like Styx, the criminal elements in the Coalition worlds would take many planets toward a truly savage existence. The Hive were far worse, bent on complete annihilation, assimilation of all living beings. At least the legions kept their people in line. And whole.

  The legion members were living, breathing. Not machines. Not contaminated with Hive technology and mind control. They could be reasoned with. They had families to threaten and clear motivations…greed, power, security. This wasn’t the Colony.

  The secret treaties between the leaders of the Coalition Intelligence Core, the Everian Hunters and Prime Nial of Prillon kept the peace—as it had for centuries. An uneasy alliance, perhaps an unholy one, but necessary for survival.

  None of which would matter to me if anything happened to my mate. I shifted behind the wall, resettled.

  I’d been a loyal servant of Everis and the Coalition since I’d been old enough to hunt. But now?

  Now I belonged to her.

  A tingle of danger, awareness, the unnamed thing that made the Hunters other slithered down my spine and my gaze snapped to the street below as the one I sought stepped into the light hanging from an old-fashioned lantern above the tavern’s door.

  Garvos was older than I anticipated, a male in his prime, the dark hair at his temples touched with a hint of silver and harsh lines permanently etched at the corners of his eyes and mouth. Not laugh lines, the grooves held the twist of cruelty, pure menace on display with no attempt to mask who or what he was—a killer. Dressed in black, he wore the silver arm band of a Styx legionnaire on his bicep, as did everyone in this area of the city, but his eyes darted to the shadows and scanned the rooftops as if he could sense my presence, knew he was hunted.

  Yes, his other was working just fine.

  A worthy adversary. Something deep and primeval unfurled at the challenge Garvos presented. So still I could have been made of stone, I watched my prey disappear inside the building as memory surfaced. When I’d been summoned to the Seven after Councilor Hervan’s murder, seen the blood and twisted bodies of Hervan’s mate and sons, I’d known there would be no retrieval, no trial or years of incarceration on the Everian prison moon of Incar for Garvos, not for this crime.

  The assassination of Hervan was a challenge, a test of the strength of the Hunters and their Elite. A challenge to the rule of the Coalition Fleet and the rule of law. It could not go unanswered.

  And I could not return home without answers.

  A man like Garvos did not kill for country or honor or to defend a crown. Filth like his did not care for politics or the power struggles among the planetary elite. He killed because someone offered to pay him, and because he was good at it.

  Who had wanted Councilor Hervan dead? Who was behind the assassination? Who had demanded such a bloody spectacle be made because the councilor’s death alone was not a strong enough sign, not enough of a threat? The blood and brutality was a message. One that I had been sent to unravel. That was the true hunt. Garvos was a deadly pawn. Nothing more.

  As was I. I was on Rogue 5 for a reason, a reason bigger than a Hunter finding his prey.

  Two killers on opposite sides of a war, not for survival against the Hive, but to protect everything my people and the Coalition fought for—order, peace, generations of unborn children and a future that—should men like Garvos win—would be violent and evil, ruled by cruel dictators too terrible to imagine.

  I Hunted and killed, I stained my soul black so that others could sit idly at their supper tables and laugh with their mates and children. So they could grow old in peace surrounded by loved ones and the comforts of a happy home. I’d come to terms with my existence a long time ago. I was the guardian of many worlds.
But now my existence, my world, had narrowed to one person, the only one who mattered.

  Katie.

  I wanted to sit idly at a supper table and laugh with her and our children. But to do that, I had to find Garvos and his co-conspirators and take care of it. Of them.

  The weight of hundreds of worlds on my shoulders, I shoved my personal needs down, buried Katie and her soft skin, her scent, so deep that I forced myself to forget she existed. Against a new set of innate instincts, I ignored the mark on my palm. It was the only thing I could do. Hunting here, focusing on the now, was the only way to keep her safe.

  The black uniform I wore was on loan from Styx, as was the silver band around my arm. I was one of them, free to walk the streets of his legion’s territory and Hunt as I saw fit. Styx wanted the bounty on Garvos’s head. Of that I had no doubt.

  But he wouldn’t mourn my death. I wasn’t a fool. I saw the way he looked at my beautiful mate and knew what would happen should I fail to return to her.

  I would not fail.

  More shadow than man, I climbed over the side of the building and leapt to the ground below, falling on silent feet. My boots were soft, making not a whisper of sound as I rounded the building. Once in the light, I straightened my spine, put several weapons on display and walked into the tavern after my prey.

  Smoke and the stench of burned meat greeted me as I ducked inside. The room was softly lit and scattered with tables full of laughing men and women drinking and eating, relaxed. This was their place and they were among their own. Safe.

  They did not know a monster walked among them, intent on killing someone in their midst.

  I found an empty chair at the end of a long bar top and sat, ordering a glass of their house ale as I scanned the room.

  “You’re new around here.” The woman behind the bar was tall, muscled and armed with both knives and ion blasters on each side of her hips. Her gaze was dark, direct, and flashed from me to the men in the corner so quickly I nearly missed the slight movement.