Rebel: Survivors Heart book 2: Planet Athion

by Cassidy, Debbie

  Lore exhaled through his nose and shook his head, but Xavier said a few words in the Athion language that sounded suspiciously like curses.

  “She saved your fucking life, Tide,” Xavier said. “She carried you up a rock face and then back down again and across the fucking dustlands. She almost died.”

  “And none of that would have happened if you hadn’t sabotaged our ship,” Tide snapped.

  Lore sucked in a breath. “What? No. We discussed this. Xavier wouldn’t, I mean, why would he?” Lore looked from Xavier to Tide. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Tide ignored Lore, instead fixing his weary gaze on me. “You saved my life, and I owe you the truth.”

  Foreboding gripped my insides. “The truth?”

  “You aren’t free, Rogue. Once we take you to Athion, you’ll be taken to a lab where they’ll experiment on you to find a way to make all human females infertile to Trads. You’re not the first one-percenter, and you won’t be the last, but it’s the only way to save a billion other human females and to stop the Trads for good.”

  “You bastard.” Vex made to stand, but I grabbed his arm.

  “Wait.” I swallowed the lump of fear in my throat, ignoring the ice flooding my veins. “You’re going to give me up to be experimented on?” I looked to Xavier. “That’s why you came to Vesper V. To find a one-percenter and take her back to be used?”

  Xavier’s jaw ticked. “Yes. That was our mission, but then I met you, and I … I fell for you, Rogue. I won’t do this to you. I won’t let them do this. Yes, I fucking sabotaged the ship, and I’d do it again.” His pale blue eyes blazed with defiance as he glared at Tide. “I wanted you to get to know her like I know her, and don’t stand there and tell me you feel nothing for her. I can tell you’re attracted to her, both of you.” He looked from Tide to Lore. “We agreed we’d find a human female we could all love, and she’s the one, dammit. You know it, so why are you fucking fighting it?”

  Vex made a sound of protest deep in his throat.

  “She can’t be the one,” Tide snapped. “She can’t give us children.”

  The room descended into pin-drop silence, and my insides twisted at the reminder of what had been taken from me.

  It was Lore who broke the tension with his calm, matter-of-fact tone. “Xavier said someone to love, not someone to produce babies.”

  Tide frowned. “Lore?” He looked bewildered. “You agree with him?”

  Lore’s throat bobbed. “I can’t do this, Tide. I know what happens in those labs, and I can’t subject her to that. I won’t. The others were faceless and nameless. Laird knows we never interacted with them because we knew what we were doing was wrong, and it was easier to turn a blind eye to it when the human was just a subject and not a person. I tried to do the same with Rogue. I tried to distance myself, but Rogue … Rogue is a person. She saved you. She saved us all. We owe her more than that.”

  Tide stumbled into the room and slumped into the nearest chair. “Then what do you suggest we do? This is our job. This is who we are. We can’t go back without her.”

  “Then maybe we don’t,” Lore said.

  Tide let out a bark of laughter and then massaged his temples as if the exertion of making the sound had been too much. “I need to think about this.”

  Xavier pushed his chair back. “And while you do, I’m going to shut off that fucking signal.”

  Tide didn’t protest as Xavier left the room.

  Vex squeezed my hand, and when he spoke his voice was a lethal rumble. “You think as much as you want, but if you believe you’re going to hand Rogue over to your Athion butchers, then you’ll have to go through me. All of me. And trust me, I know how to bring the pain.” He gently tugged me to my feet. “Come on, you need to rest.”

  Tide kept his gaze fixed on the table as I walked past, but the sudden tensing of his shoulders was acknowledgment enough.

  12

  XAVIER

  The fucker isn’t bluffing. He’s sent the bloody signal. Oh, Laird, the man is as stubborn as a watering hole oxen. Thirty minutes of broadcasts have spiraled off into space. Let’s hope no one’s picked it up. I shut it off and sit back in my seat to stare out of the tower window. The quad below is silent and empty, and the dustlands beyond barren and still. Someone needs to make a note of the predators out there. Time to access the logs to this place. The entry can be anonymous. I’m getting good at the subterfuge, but heck, that’s why Tide and Lore chose me to go down to Vesper and play the part of captive. They knew I could pull it off.

  Back in the academy, they’d called me the many-visage because of my ability to don many faces, and I’d been prepared to do that with Rogue, but then one look into her stormy eyes, and I was hooked.

  After that, sabotage was an easy decision, and it worked because they have no choice but to accept how amazing Rogue is, but it’s more than that. She’s more than an anomaly. Tide can see that now. He just needs time to accept it.

  I switch feeds on the monitors to bay four, to my secret, my ace in the hole—the shuttle buggy that comes with the station. Fully fueled and ready to hop. I’ve done my research, and there’s a trade port close by we could hop to. From there, we can pool our credits and buy a ship and be gone before the Athion government can trace us.

  That’s the plan, and if Tide isn’t in, then we’ll leave without him. The monitors beep, and then data scrolls up over it. I lean in and scan the information. Barometric readings, temperature logs for the past six months, and then at the bottom, an alert. Total star eclipse in minus twelve hours for twenty-four hours. Strange. A twenty-four-hour period of darkness? That isn’t on the Limira reports. I pull up old data and information on the planet. Shit. It seems like the blackout happens once every century. I guess we’re about to make history.

  I push back the seat and head out of the tower. Better check the generators and gather the lamps.

  13

  Marick

  The expanse of space is serene and desolate all at the same time as we drop out of hyperspace. She could already be on Athion by now, and that is where we are headed, but I order frequent stops to scan space for ships.

  An Athion took her. A spy, and they have something the head of the acquisitions department on Tradacyh wants. There is no doubt in my mind that if I return empty-handed, then it will be a prison sentence if I’m lucky, or death, if I’m not.

  Failure is not an option.

  The controls on the bridge are simple, the ship is small—enough to carry a troop of soldiers loaned by the inquisitor and a shuttle.

  The pilot scans for other ships. The net has been cast wide, but it’s unlikely we’ll find her now; they must know that, so why send me?

  “Sir, we just picked up a distress signal.”

  My pulse quickens. “Where from?”

  “A small planet called Limira.”

  “It’s inhabited?”

  “Sir, our covert records claim it to be an Athion satellite station.”

  My lips curl in a smile. “How quickly can you get us there?”

  He grins at me. “We can be in orbit in three hours.”

  “Do it.”

  Rogue, it has to be you. I feel it in my bones, and I’m coming for you.

  14

  Finding out that Tide had planned to serve me up to his government as a guinea pig should have kept me awake, but my body was still recovering from the venom and the exertion, and basically, this planet’s oxygen sucked, so sleep was a blessed diversion.

  But I’d barely slipped under when I woke in a sweat, the kind of sweat that had me aching all over. Aching down there.

  Oh, shit. Not now.

  Not here.

  The urge to touch myself was almost too much. In fact, my hand was already cupping my pubic bone. I pulled away as if burned because … bad idea. If experience had taught me anything, it was that touching myself wouldn’t be enough, it would only fuel the heat and make it worse. I needed release, but I couldn’t give it t
o myself without spiraling. It was the curse that fell on me every month and one I’d been battling ever since the Trad fertility drug had changed me.

  The heat was there, and it had a grip on my throat and cut a simmering passage through my bloodstream.

  I sobbed softly into my pillow, cursing everything.

  A cool hand skimmed up my back. “Rogue?”

  Xavier? When had he come in? Didn’t matter, he was there now, so he could help.

  I rolled onto my back. “I need you.”

  He pushed back the hair stuck to my clammy forehead, pale blue eyes darkening as he scanned my face.

  “Xavier.” His name was a husky prayer on my tongue.

  He peeled off the covers wrapped around my torso. The cool air was delicious and taunting as it played across my bare thighs. “Xavier, please.” I tugged at my sleep shirt, stuck to my skin here and there with perspiration.

  He knew about this. Had told me it was similar to what had happened to the women of his tribe. He’d make it stop. He’d soothe the ache.

  He climbed onto the bed and slipped his hand down my pants, his long slender fingers parting my folds to find the wetness. I bucked up to meet his fingers, opening for him, unashamed and wanton as I rubbed against him. His fingers played the tune, round and round, in and out, but the tightening was almost painful. The ledge just out of reach. I turned my head into his chest, mouth parted to taste his skin. My breath fanned across his pectoral as I pushed for more because it wasn’t enough.

  “Oh, God. Xav.” I raised my head to look at him. “I need more. I need you to fuck me.”

  His breath exploded hot across my forehead. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, yes, please.”

  My mind was a haze of desperate need and desire as he tugged off his shirt and shucked his pants. His body, velvet-smooth and hard, slipped over mine, hips slotting between my thighs, but my focus was on his cock. On the hard length of it as I grasped him and positioned him at my entrance before thrusting my hips up to claim him. Argh, yes. Oh, yes. I brought my legs up high, forcing him to thrust deeper, his gasps and his pants mingling with my cries as he slammed into me, and then the ledge was within reach, and I was tumbling off it, legs trembling as I came all over him. He kissed me, swallowing my moan and giving me his tongue to suck on. Sweet and mine. And then he collapsed on top of me, his face in the crook of my neck, cock still inside me.

  The heat was ebbing, but a warm glow was spreading through me now. A hyperawareness of every inch of contact between our bodies—the heaviness of his cock inside me, still hard and throbbing, and the rolling pulse of my body as it hugged him like a sheath.

  I wanted more.

  Me. Not the heat but me. I turned my head and kissed the spot just under his ear, then flicked out a tongue to taste him. He moaned softly, so I brushed back his hair to get better access and sucked softly, reveling in the sweet flavor of his skin. Did all Athions taste this fucking good?

  I brushed my mouth against the shell of his ear. “My turn to be on top.”

  I rolled with him so he was trapped beneath me and we were still joined at the groin. His pale blue eyes gleamed in the lamplight, watching hungrily as I tugged off my night shirt and bared myself to him.

  He’d seen me naked on Vesper V, but the hunger in his eyes was new, bright, and potent.

  “Fuck, Rogue, you’re beautiful.”

  I cupped my breasts and began to massage them, tugging on my nipples and reveling in the sweet ache that shot through me. My body tightened around him, and he sucked in a sharp breath and bucked beneath me.

  “Rogue.”

  I began to move, undulating my hips, taking him deep. He tugged me forward, adjusting the angle so he was hitting my G-spot, and then his mouth was around my nipple, his rough tongue kicking up all kinds of sensations as he sucked. His hand found my clit and began to play. The sensations were too much, too sharp, too sweet. I needed to take control. Bracing a hand on his chest, I pushed myself upright and adjusted the rhythm—harder, faster, taking him deep enough to have us both crying out with each thrust and groin-to-groin contact.

  “Fuck, Rogue. Oh, Laird.” Xavier growled the words, his hands on my hips, gripping tight, flexing while he thrust upward into me.

  “Yes, yes. Oh, God, yes.” We came together, rolling hips and low groans and sharp shocks of pleasure that turned my limbs to a trembling mass of jelly.

  I flopped forward onto his chest, blood rushing in my ears, and closed my eyes to his thundering heartbeat and the soothing sensation of his hand caressing my scalp.

  * * *

  Xavier pulled on his shirt.

  “You sure you don’t want to shower with me?” I wiggled my brows.

  He swept me off the floor and kissed me hard. “I need to prepare for the blackout. I only came here to check on you, and it’s been almost two hours. The star eclipse is in less than ten hours.”

  I pecked him on the nose. “Fine, go. I’ll be rubbing suds all over myself in the shower.”

  He frowned. “Suds?”

  “Bubbles from the soap?”

  He smirked. “Athion soap doesn’t foam up. It’s slippery and can be used as a lubricant.” He growled in frustration. “I can’t wait to show you.”

  His hand clutched my ass, and my cheeks heated.

  “Um, that’s exit only?”

  It was his turn to wiggle his eyebrows. “You have no idea what you’re missing. The orgasm you’ll get will be mind-blowing.”

  “Are you speaking from experience?”

  His eyes heated. “Of course.”

  Oh, God, no. That was … Hot. I licked my lips, and he tracked the movement, and then he was kissing me again, deep, tongue-stroking kisses where we came up for air in tiny gasps until I was pressed to the wall with a pulse pounding between my legs.

  He tore his mouth from mine and pressed his temple to the side of my head. “Oh, Laird. You, Rogue, are trouble.” He took my hand and pressed it to his groin. “Look what you do to me.”

  I took his hand and slipped it down my pants, raising my hips. “Look what you do to me.”

  He groaned in defeat then freed his cock, raised me up to wrap my legs around his waist, tugged my panties aside, and buried himself into my wetness.

  Looked like the shower would have to wait.

  15

  Xavier

  Rogue’s scent is all over me, and I take it around the station with me, along with the memory of her body wrapped around mine.

  Mine.

  I’d resigned myself to a human female, but love is an unexpected bonus. So, we won’t procreate, so what? We’ll have adventures instead. Travel and see the galaxy and find a corner of it to call our own.

  A laugh escapes my lips. To think I’ll be sharing my love with a Trad. Tide and Lore are one thing, but Vex … He is an unforeseen member of our family, but he is important to Rogue and, therefore, important to me.

  The storage units beneath the first floor contain several lamps that I pull out and test. Two don’t work, but the others have full battery.

  “What are you doing?”

  I spin to face Lore. “Laird, don’t sneak up on me like that.”

  “Sneak up on you?” He grins. “That’s a first. What had you so distracted?” He sniffs, and then his ember eyes flare. “Rogue …”

  “Has Tide made his decision?”

  “He retired to his cabin. He’ll be back to himself tomorrow.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  Lore’s throat bobs. “I want to be covered in her scent.”

  We stare at each other, bonded in our need for a woman who landed in our lives like an unexpected gift.

  “Vex loves her too, and she cares for him.”

  “I know. It hasn’t been easy playing the ice man all these weeks. Every time she came into my lab to talk, every time she sat beside me at dinner … I’ve not felt this kind of pull before. I met two human females before we left for this snitch mission.”
<
br />   This was news. “Without us?”

  He ducks his head. “Father was insistent I make a match. I had to meet them, but I felt nothing. They stirred nothing, not even curiosity, and I believed … I believed that when we finally chose our mate, I’d simply agree with what you and Tide decided upon. But then you teleported onto the ship with her, and everything changed.”

  “I know what you mean. When I first set eyes on her on Vesper, I thought my heart would beat out of my chest.”

  “Tide feels it too,” Lore says softly. “I know he does. He’s just stubborn. It’s always the job first with him.”

  “And you.”

  “Only because nothing else has ever mattered more to me.”

  “So, you’ll stand by me? You’ll help me protect her?”

  “I can do nothing less.”

  We share a smile, united against Tide for the first time in … well, forever. Tide and Lore, Lore and Tide. I have always been the extra, the third brother in our brotherhood, but Rogue will unite us and make us equal. I know it.

  “What are you doing with the lamps?” Lore picks one up.

  “There’s a star eclipse about to hit in a few hours. Help me out. Check the generator.”

  He snorts. “I’m a medic, Xavier, not a mechanic.”

  I roll my eyes. “Fine. Take the lamps up to the first floor, and tell Tide about the star eclipse.”

  “How long is it due to last?”

  “Twenty-four hours.”

  He nods. “We don’t want to burn out the generator by using the lights for the full twenty-four hours. We use the lamps for the night and tap the generator for the daytime.”

  “I thought you weren’t a mechanic.”

  “Common sense.” He frowns. “This place is secure?” His gaze goes to the walls.

  “Trust me, if those creatures couldn’t climb a rock face, they’re not getting over those walls.”