Braxtyn (Mated to the Alien, #8)

by Kate Rudolph

  Distantly she heard footsteps pounding outside their door, and she knew they didn’t have much time before someone came looking for them again. But it was her need for her mate and not any fear of discovery that made her rush. She guided him to her entrance and groaned as he pushed inside, loving the feel of him filling her up. She might have been intimidated by the size of his cock at first, though she would have never admitted it, but now it was a perfect fit, filling every part of her and claiming her as his.

  Her throat throbbed along with the rest of her, right where he’d buried his teeth into her that night on her ship. The bruise had faded, but she could still feel it when they were joined together. Vita arched her neck, inviting his lips, silently begging for another bite.

  The sound Brax let out was primal, animalistic, and it made her shudder with need. She felt the tips of his claws resting gently against her skin, as if he was no longer able to control the darker, more violent aspects of himself while they rutted.

  Except he remained in control. She didn’t fear his claws or his sharp teeth. She knew he’d only ever mark her, never hurt her. And she wanted all he had to give.

  She leaned into him and moaned as his teeth nipped against her, raising another bruise, another claiming mark. And then he was thrusting into her and she met his every move, rocking with him and urging him on, calling out his name, declaring her love, begging him to go harder, faster, more.

  Now.

  She shuddered against him and pressed her face against his neck to keep her cries of pleasure from waking the house. And this time it was her teeth that teased his skin, bruising and marking him and claiming him as hers.

  And as Brax unleashed himself inside of her he clamped his arm against her to keep her head in place, to keep her working his skin.

  And when they were done they collapsed back on the bed, sated. “We don’t have to get up, do we?” she asked.

  A minute later there was another loud knock at the door. “The only thing keeping me from busting in there is that I don’t want to see your ugly ass naked. Breakfast is ready. We want to meet your mate.”

  “Isn’t he your twin?” Vita asked.

  They heard Deke walk away again. “Yes, why?” Brax brushed his lips against her messy hair.

  “Wouldn’t his ugly ass look the same as your ugly ass? Not that it’s ugly. I quite like it.” To show her appreciation she reached down and ran her fingers over the tight curves of his ass and watched as he shivered.

  His eyes shifted to that electrifying blue, and Vita knew they were going to miss breakfast.

  KNOWING SMILES GREETED them as they made their way downstairs. Brax couldn’t be bothered. After round two, he and his denya had taken their time in the shower, and it appeared that everyone was done with their meals. He ignored his brothers and Naomi and led Vita to the kitchen, where they scrounged up leftovers and ate side by side. His mate didn’t seem bothered by the silent ribbing and it made him hopeful that she would fit in among his people.

  “Do they know how I found you?” she asked as she finished up her plate and put it aside.

  Brax glanced into the other room, but no one seemed to be straining to overhear their conversation. “Not all of the particulars.” He’d forgiven his mate. He couldn’t do anything but; besides, once the initial misunderstanding had cleared up, she’d done her best to fix the situation. “But there’s no need to hide it. They’ll love you because I love you.” He curled his hand over her cheek and kissed her.

  “Now I have to deal with both of you?” Deke burst into the room and leaned against the wall, arms crossed. His expression was torn between a scowl and a smile.

  Just for that, Brax kissed his denya again. She rolled her eyes at him when he pulled back, knowing exactly what he’d been doing. He was about to say that his brother would understand someday when the words died on his tongue. He’d shared most of his life with Deke, and he could tell when his twin was hiding his pain. And right now Deke was hiding it like never before.

  Of course it hurt to see him and Shayn with their mates. Deke still had years yet before he might have to pay the Denya Price, but there was no guarantee he’d find someone of his own. And Brax didn’t know how to help.

  It dawned on him why Deke had been throwing himself into every social gathering the planet had to offer, meeting with Detyens every time the opportunity arose and getting settled on the planet as best he could. He wanted to find his mate, and the chances of her snatching him from the streets and absconding with him were slim to none.

  “Don’t think so hard, brother,” Deke said, and that hint of sadness was gone. “I’m hardly dead yet.”

  Brax had no way to respond to that.

  Vita saved him. She nodded at Deke. “He’s had a rough few weeks. Give him time to adjust back to your teasing.”

  “Rough?” Deke laughed. “Brax made it sound like he was on vacation. And from the sounds of it, you two have barely managed to crawl out of bed to socialize for the last week.”

  So they’d talked to Doryan and Manda. Brax wouldn’t say that they’d been that bad, but it was true that they’d taken advantage of the fact that their lives were no longer in danger. Vita opened her mouth and Brax knew she was about to tell the whole story, so he put a hand on her arm to stop her. He didn’t want his family to worry. Bits and pieces might come out over the next days, but if he could protect them, he would. “She’s my mate,” Brax said. “Of course I need to claim her.”

  Deke made a sound of disgust, but it was all in good fun. “I guess Neera will be disappointed.”

  “Neera?” Vita turned to him, her eyebrows raised sky high. “Are you breaking hearts wherever you turn?”

  It took Brax a moment to place the name. And when he did it felt so long ago that he couldn’t believe it had been less than a month. “She offered me woodworking classes because I helped her fix her computer.” He shot a questioning look at his brother. “How do you know her?”

  “She saw me walking down the street and chased me down. When it became clear I wasn’t you, she asked me to remind you about her class.” Deke shrugged. “I assumed you’d made a friend. But that was before you’d contacted us and I almost forgot.”

  “When does the class start?” Vita asked.

  “She said there was a new one at the beginning of every month.” He’d let it all fall to the back of his mind given the excitement of the last weeks. Staying on Vita’s ship, helping his mate, had helped him rediscover his love of mechanical work, but there was still a yearning within him to create the art he’d been struggling to make with scavenged parts. “But we don’t know how long we’re staying on the planet, and if we need to leave again...”

  “Take the class,” Vita commanded. “We have our whole lives to figure out what comes next. And neither of us is going to hold the other back. Got it?”

  “I think I like your mate,” Deke said.

  Brax laughed. “Find your own.” He wrapped his arms around Vita and held her close. He had his mate in his arms and everything he’d ever wanted. “Being abducted was the best thing to ever happen to me,” he told his mate.

  “Wait? What?”

  But Brax ignored his brother and kissed Vita again. They’d tell the story later.

  Much later.

  And from the way Vita kissed him back, he knew she agreed.

  Thank you for reading Braxtyn!

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  What happens next?

  The Mated to the Alien series continues with Doryan’s story.

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omed race finds out that all hope might not be lost.

  Mated to the Alien

  Ruwen

  Tyral

  Stoan

  Cyborg

  Krayter

  Kayleb

  Shayn

  Braxtyn

  Doryan

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  Preview Soulless: Detyen Warriors Book One

  A SHOCK OF SOMETHING ripped through Raze in that moment when their eyes locked. He faltered and pain scored his chest as if claws raked him from shoulder to hip. In a blink it was gone as the pirate woman flung grit at him with astonishing accuracy and was off running like an Oscavian hound was on her heels. He stumbled for a moment, heart pounding so hard it threatened to beat out of his chest.

  He clenched his fists and for one crazy second his claws threatened to slide out of his hands as something they couldn’t define washed over him.

  Find her, that foreign urge demanded. Protect her. Claim her.

  He could almost feel it, could almost recognize what it was, but his mind rejected the impossibility even before his feet moved and the chase was on. He didn’t pull out his blaster. Though the pirate had quickly recovered from the stun, far more quickly than he’d thought possible, two shots in such a short amount of time might do permanent harm to her. Why he cared about that, he wasn’t sure, but his gun remained in its holster all the same.

  She glanced back and that was her undoing. He had height on her, and endurance. He could run for days and not give in to exhaustion or pain. No pirate training was a match for a Detyen warrior.

  Though he wondered why she hadn’t cried out, hadn’t tried to raise an alarm. Surely she must have some allies in the nearby settlement. They were probably too far away to be heard, but didn’t creatures such as she rely on hope like that for survival? Or were her enemies too numerous that she doubted help would come?

  He closed the distance between them in easy strides until he could almost reach her with a swipe of his arm. Just as he launched the final step, she dropped and rolled to the side, her hand coming up with a small knife he must have missed on her person.

  “Fucking pirate scum,” she spat as she rolled to her feet, knife held confidently in her hand and absolute disgust written across her features.

  Pirate scum? “You’re the pirate,” he replied without thought, keeping his distance. His claws should be out now, with her on her back at his mercy, her cheeks flushed and breath coming in hard as she panted under him. What that stirred froze him in place, his body rocking with sensation he hadn’t known in years, sensation he could barely remember.

  The distraction cost him and she took advantage, swiping in with the knife in a move that showed practice and training to rival his own. His instincts took over and he rolled with her, taking her arm and flipping her as she cut a ragged wound across his shoulder. The hot flash of pain brought his focus back and they rolled together, neither able to take a position of advantage on the ground.

  The woman—not a pirate?—sprang back up and jumped on the balls of her feet, those cheeks flushed like he’d imagined and her eyes glinting bright in the moonlight. “Of course a giant like you isn’t going to make it easy for me. What are you, anyway?” The run and the fight hadn’t winded her and as his subdermal translator worked, he realized she wasn’t speaking IC, interstellar common. His translator identified her language of origin as English, an Earth language. Strange.

  Remaining silent would frustrate her, but Raze couldn’t stop himself from answering. “Detyen.” He should have kept it hidden in case she escaped and reported back, but he found himself wanting to talk to her, and he hadn’t wanted anything in so long that he couldn’t deny this one simple thing.

  She blew at an errant strand of hair, ruby red in the moonlight, as her eyes narrowed. Her eyes flicked down to his hip, where his blaster remained holstered. The distance between them wasn’t long, both of them standing just out of reach of one another, but it might as well have been a deep chasm.

  “Why aren’t you shooting me?”

  “I don’t—” he couldn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t know how to finish the sentence. In the last ten minutes, he’d been more alive than he’d been in two years and his control was shot. If Toran or Kayde saw him, they’d order him put down in a second, and he’d deserve it. He wasn’t thinking clearly, wasn’t operating at acceptable capacity. He wanted to... he wanted and for a soulless Detyen, there could be nothing worse.

  That narrowed gaze of hers relaxed a fraction and she took a step back, her knife still out, but the hold not quite as threatening as it had been only a moment ago.

  They stared at one another, neither sure of what action to take. No, Raze knew what he should do, what he must do. Anything that would give him the information he needed about his men so that he could retrieve them and complete the mission, find the data they’d been assigned to retrieve and return home to his bleak existence, where nothing awaited him except years more of gray emptiness until he came to his natural end by his own hand or that of his fellow soldiers.

  And that should bring up no reaction in him except acceptance. He’d chosen the path when he let his soul be ripped apart in the name of the survival of his people.

  But in this endless moment between him and this strange woman, he wished that he’d taken another path, one he’d never realized was there in the first place.

  The woman broke him out of his daze. “You’re not a pirate, are you?”

  Before he could answer, he caught a hint of movement and light out of the corner of his eye. He moved without thought, launching himself at the woman and tackling her to the ground, his hand clasping her wrist and keeping the knife away from anything important. For a moment, their hands met, skin to skin, and agony ripped through his body and he held it close with a silent scream.

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  About Kate Rudolph

  KATE RUDOLPH IS A DERBY girl who lives in Indiana. She loves writing about kick butt heroines and the steamy heroes who love them. She's been devouring romance novels since she was too young to be reading them and had to hide her books so no one would take them away. She couldn't imagine a better job in this world than writing romances and sharing them with her fellow readers.

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  Find more by Kate Rudolph at www.katerudolph.net