Conquered Mate: Stargazer Alien Space Cruise Brides #3

by Tasha Black

  Rose crawled on top of him, pinning his big body with her small one.

  She leaned down to kiss him and her hair tickled his chest, sending electric shivers of anticipation down his spine.

  Her kiss was soft, tentative.

  He kissed her back with all the restrained violence he dared to let her see.

  She whimpered into his mouth and he felt her hips press her hot sex against him through her clothing and his towel.

  He groaned, begging himself to hold back, to let her show him what she wanted.

  But when she slid her hand under the edge of his towel, he grabbed her wrist and flipped her on her back.

  “There’s only so much I can take, woman,” he growled.

  She wiggled under him for closer contact with his ravenous body.

  “Easy,” he murmured, leaning down to press a kiss between her breasts.

  12

  Rose

  Rose’s heart pounded as Rex pressed his lips to her chest.

  These feelings had been haunting her all day, a ghost of a feeling that he should be hers, though there was no reason to believe a Terran and a Cerulean should be friends, let alone lovers.

  But the heat of his lips against her skin was so right, and the labels faded away. They were only a man and a woman, his every touch burning like a brand on her trembling flesh.

  When he loosed the slides on her silken sleeping top, she only shifted slightly to make it easier.

  She could feel her nipples puckering in the cool air, exposed to him. Her whole body surged with the desire for him to touch her, taste her.

  He gasped and cupped one breast in a reverent hand, lowering his head to nuzzle and then flick the sensitive bud with his tongue.

  Rose let her head fall back on the bed as a wave of sensation swept through her.

  Too soon he was abandoning her breasts, kissing down her belly, sliding her underthings off, nuzzling her thighs.

  “Rex?” she murmured.

  No one had ever kissed her there before.

  “Please,” he groaned. “Please, I need to taste you.”

  Her legs fell apart for him, her body ready, even though her mind was spinning.

  The first touch of his tongue was a stroke of lighting, illuminating the landscape of her hunger, setting her ablaze with desire.

  Rose cried out as he fed on her, his tongue plunging into her as she felt herself turning inside out with need, every touch sending her further toward the stars until she didn’t know who or even what she was, only the thundering demand that he sate this towering need.

  He slid a finger against her opening, easing it in so slowly as he teased her with his tongue.

  Rose felt her whole body lock down on his thick digit, her thighs trembling.

  He groaned against her as if in response and then set a frenzied rhythm with his tongue, lifting her higher and higher until the pleasure exploded and she was shot through with it, shivering and crying his name.

  Rex coaxed wave after wave of pleasure out of her until there was nothing left.

  When he crawled up to her, she put her arms out to him, expecting him to claim her.

  Rose had never made love to anyone, but she understood how it worked. Privacy was at a premium on Terra-4, so most uncoupled people had little opportunity to mate. And here on the ship, she hadn’t met anyone who interested her, until now.

  She was eager to experience this new phase of adulthood with someone as skilled as Rex.

  But he merely lay beside her and pulled her into his arms.

  “Don’t you want to…?” she asked.

  “I just needed to taste you, that’s all,” he whispered.

  “It’s because I’m Terran, isn’t it?” she asked, hot tears of shame prickling her eyes. She should never have allowed him to make her vulnerable in this way.

  “No,” he said, sounding horrified. “Of course not. I want you so much, Rose.”

  She turned her head away, mortified that he had seen her desire.

  He took her hand and placed it against himself.

  She could feel the throb of his need through the towel. He was so hard he must be in pain.

  She opened her eyes and turned back to him.

  “Rose, I need you,” he said, his voice breaking. “But Ceruleans have true mates. And with this tracker in me, dulling my instincts, I have no way to be sure if that’s what you are to me.”

  “You only make love to your true mate?” she asked.

  “Until we find our true mates, we are free to do as we will,” he said gently. “But once we seal that bond we are mated for life.”

  “And you think I might be…?” she couldn’t quite say it.

  “Yes,” he said solemnly. “I think you are my true mate. And true mates shouldn’t choose to bond while in the throes of passion. Especially when one hates the other.”

  “I don’t hate you,” she murmured. “Do you hate me?”

  “I could never hate you, Rose,” he whispered. “But I’m afraid you will hate me if I claim you and tie you to me forever. Rest now, my angel. You can think about it in the morning.”

  She wondered how she was supposed to sleep when this blue giant had just obliterated her with pleasure and told her she might be his true mate.

  But he was stroking her hair so gently that she felt herself drifting before she had time to argue with him.

  13

  Rose

  Rose awoke with her stomach rumbling.

  She opened her eyes. It was still dark, but she felt rested and warm and…

  Oh.

  Rex’s big body was curved around hers, as if he were shielding her from the outside world.

  She rolled over as unobtrusively as she could.

  Had last night really happened?

  His face was peaceful in sleep, his beard somehow less intimidating, his eyelashes so long they kissed his azure cheeks. She hadn’t noticed that before.

  “Are you hungry?” he murmured sleepily.

  So she had woken him up after all.

  “How did you guess?” she asked, not wanting to get up.

  He opened his eyes. His slow smile awakened her desire again and she nearly flung herself at him.

  “Food first, woman,” he teased.

  She grinned and scampered up, grabbing the tray from the table and placing it in the middle of the bed. “Breakfast in bed,” she announced.

  “Is it?” he asked. “I think it’s probably just a middle of the night snack. You’ll have to feed me again in the morning.”

  She blinked at him in confusion and he laughed at her.

  “I’m kidding, Peach. Come sit and eat with me.”

  “Peach?” she asked. “Are you seriously giving me a racist nickname?”

  “Oh, it has nothing to do with your skin color,” he said, arching an eyebrow.

  She felt herself blush all the way to her toes.

  “Come on, have something to eat,” he told her.

  “Fine, but you can’t call me that in front of anyone,” she muttered.

  “We both know that you love your new endearment too much to share it with anyone else,” he teased. “Now eat, before I start to worry.”

  She climbed back in bed and they attacked the feast before them with gusto.

  When there was nothing left on the plates but garnishes and a large bowl of sticky Alder plums in honeyed cream, Rex leaned back on his elbows.

  “You don’t like sticky Alder plums?” Rose asked, amazed.

  “I’d rather watch you eat them,” he said.

  She smiled.

  “Don’t think I’m going to go all shy and girly about eating sweets,” she warned him. “When there’s a good meal in front of me, I’m not going to let it get away.”

  “Or four good meals,” he suggested.

  “Or ten good meals,” she told him. “Life is short. You only get so many good meals.”

  “On that thought, maybe I do want to eat sticky Alder plums,” he said.
<
br />   She plucked one out of the cream and held it to his mouth.

  He licked it off her fingers.

  “What’s happening to us?” she asked quietly, melting a little at the sight of his mouth on her hand.

  “You know my theory,” he said, his hand rubbing the back of his neck unconsciously.

  “I can’t take that tracker off you,” Rose said. “You know that, right?”

  “I know,” he said.

  She studied him.

  Was it possible that this whole you might be my mate thing was an elaborate ruse designed to get her to remove the tracker?

  She didn’t want to believe it.

  But she wouldn’t exactly put it past him either.

  A tiny alert brought Rose out of her thoughts, and she looked down at her wrist comm to see who it was.

  Anna Nilsson.

  She swiped to answer.

  “Rose,” Anna said, her voice an octave higher than usual. “I know it’s the middle of the night. Can we speak?”

  “Of course,” Rose replied.

  “I wouldn’t disturb you, but it’s urgent,” Anna said. “Please come to my office. And bring Rex, of course.”

  Rose swiped the comm and stared at Rex.

  “Are we in trouble for going into the forest?” she asked him at last.

  “I doubt it,” he said. “More likely she wants to know what we think.”

  “What do we think?” she asked.

  He shook his head sadly. “I don’t know what to think. But I’ll help Anna any way I can.”

  “Right,” Rose nodded. “I guess we’d better get dressed.

  They each hopped out of bed and scrambled to dress and freshen up. A few minutes later, they were being escorted into Anna Nilsson’s office.

  The room was oddly formal in contrast with their down-to-Earth captain. Walnut wainscoting stretched from the floor to the ceiling and there was a hologram fire in the marble lined fireplace.

  A dozen or so framed holo-pics of Anna and Leo’s son, Tolstoy, lined the entire mantel, breaking up the formality at least a little.

  Anna herself sat up stiffly in an office chair with a pained look on her face.

  Leo sat beside her, one hand on her knee.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said.

  “We serve at your pleasure,” Rex said quietly.

  “No need for that,” Anna said. “Let’s just talk as friends. What did you see in the forest?”

  Rex glanced over at Rose.

  She nodded. He should tell Anna, even if he thought he might be losing his mind.

  “It was late,” he said. “And I was talking with Rose. My eye is still swollen and I was under a great deal of… stress.”

  Rose bit her lip.

  He had been trying not to kiss her. That was hardly the kind of stress Anna would think of.

  “What did you see?” Anna asked again, her voice wavering slightly.

  “Something, big, huge really,” Rex admitted. “It was the shape of a giant, black wolf.”

  Anna nodded, looking far less disturbed than Rose would have expected in the face of this news. “And the doors were wrenched off their hinges?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Rex said. “Rose and I went down to check it out. When we saw the doors, we contacted Jensen.”

  “The thing you saw, did it appear to be made of shadows?” Leo asked. “Like the darkness itself had come to life?”

  Rose blinked at him.

  He hadn’t spoken until now. His voice was shaken, too.

  She hadn’t known Anna and Leo that long, but neither of them struck her as the type to be easily spooked.

  “No,” Rex said. “It looked like an animal. And the tracks it left were pretty deep.”

  “It left tracks?” Anna asked hopefully. “Are you sure?”

  “Well, yes,” Rex said, holding his hands apart at nearly shoulder width. “Big ones.”

  “Thank God,” Anna sighed, embracing her husband.

  Rose didn’t see how this could possibly have been good news.

  “Is- is it a lost pet or something?” Rex asked.

  “No,” Anna said. “We have no idea what it is. Our ship can’t accommodate passengers of that size, so whatever it is, didn’t book passage. This is a big problem.”

  “But you seem so… relieved,” Rex said.

  Anna and Leo exchanged a look and seemed to decide it was worth explaining to them.

  “When I first boarded this ship, it was abandoned,” Anna said. “Or at least that’s what I thought. But there was something dangerous onboard already. A shadow creature that was big and black that moved strangely throughout the ship. It was like something out of a primal nightmare. It took a lot, but we dealt with it. When you made your report, Leo and I were just a little worried that somehow we hadn’t gotten it entirely off the ship.”

  “But clearly what’s in the forest has a corporeal form,” Leo said. “So it’s still a massive security risk, but a different kind. A kind I can handle.”

  Leo’s hand balled into a tight fist, and Rose couldn’t help but get the impression that the big man was talking about a physical altercation with the giant beast.

  But that couldn’t be. No one would survive a one-on-one encounter like that.

  Would they?

  It occurred to her how little she really knew about the founders and captains of the Stargazer II.

  “We couldn’t have lived with ourselves if we had endangered everyone by somehow allowing that shadow creature to remain onboard without our knowledge,” Anna said. “At any rate, Jensen tells us that he needs some help. He asked us if you could consult on this, Rex. We know we can’t put you in charge of security, at least not until you’ve been formally acquitted. But we would be grateful for your help in this matter.”

  “It’s my pleasure,” Rex said solemnly.

  Rose had to appreciate the position he was in.

  She was very sure she could not have submitted to it with half as much grace.

  “Get your rest,” Anna said, rising. “But do help Jensen in the morning. And let us know if there’s anything you need.”

  “It’s almost time for our run anyway,” Rose told Anna, as she glanced at the time on her comm unit. “Rex and I will do anything we can to help.”

  Anna looked back and forth between them, a curious expression appearing on her face.

  Rose pleaded with her cheeks not to blush.

  “I know you will,” Anna said lightly. “I think you’re a very good team.”

  14

  Rex

  Rex followed Rose around the curve of the forest.

  It was a little trickier running this morning, since Rose had chosen an upper floor today. It was refuse day, and up on this residential floor, guests had pulled their garbage in front of their doors to be disposed of.

  Bins, large and small lined the corridor, as well as bags and cell-wraps of items.

  It had only been a day since their last jog, but he already felt stronger.

  She’s my mate…

  It was impossible to distract himself from the thought.

  But there was no way to know for sure until his tracker was removed.

  And that might be a long time…

  He tried not to think about whether he would get a fair shake at trial. If he did, the tracker would come off and his life would restart.

  If not, he could be in intergalactic prison for a very long time.

  He pushed the dark thoughts aside and concentrated on the swish of Rose’s ponytail swinging across her back, and the feel of the deck below his feet.

  Some things were in his control and some weren’t. It was better to focus on what he could do.

  And right now, the ship needed his help.

  He glanced up at the massive trees behind the windows on their right side. The forest was still mostly dark, and it was hard not to imagine that beast looming just beyond the glass.

  But there was nothing but the green of the wo
ods and the pale mist that floated among the leaves.

  Suddenly, Rose’s ponytail stopped swinging.

  She had stopped running and was staring at something in one of the garbage bins.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, stopping beside her.

  She gestured to a container at the top of the bin.

  A sticker on it read:

  Mega Plant Food *with Nitrate and a patented blend of plant vitamins

  “The nitrate,” Rex said.

  Rose nodded.

  They looked at the door behind the bin.

  “Is this an employee from Agro?” Rex asked, already knowing the answer.

  No one from Agro could afford quarters up here.

  Except for Rose, now that she was looking after him.

  She shook her head.

  “We should call Jensen,” he said.

  She nodded and typed into her wrist comm. “Let’s stay here though, so the evidence doesn’t disappear on us.”

  He nodded. She had the instincts of a damn good security officer.

  The corridor was quiet. It was still very early, and darkness ruled in the forest.

  Of course, on an intergalactic ship there was no single sun to cause light and darkness, but the solar lights in the forest were programmed to create a day-night cycle.

  Most of the passengers would be sleeping now.

  Without warning, the door behind them crashed open, releasing the harsh sounds of an old-school heavy metal band being played with computer inlay.

  A Terran staggered out and went for the bin.

  He was young, with a long, thick mop of golden hair. He smelled like alcohol and nagaaa smoke.

  Rose snatched the bin away before he could reach it. “Is this your room?” she asked.

  He looked up at her, opened his mouth, and spewed foul-smelling vomit all over the carpet of the corridor.

  “It’s my sister’s room,” he said, wiping his mouth.

  His voice was bathed in condescension, in spite of his disheveled condition.

  “Aaaanders,” another snooty voice, this one female, called out from inside the room. “What the hell? Who are you talking to?”