Chapter 6
Lyra
Hot water poured over Ethan’s shoulders as he stood behind me, pressed against my back, arms wrapped around me, hands cupping my breasts. Kneading. Massaging. Touching.
His lips wandered over my shoulders and neck as I held my wrists—still handcuffed—over my head, palms pressed flat on the cold tile wall of the oversized shower.
He kissed the side of my neck. My shoulders.
My cheek. When I had enough energy, I turned my head to kiss him.
His cock was buried deep. I’d lost count of how many orgasms I’d had the last couple hours.
He’d finished inside me again moments ago, his hot seed satisfying the beast within me in a way I found impossible to rationalize or explain, even to myself.
She wanted all of him. Now that we’d had him, tasted bliss, I knew I was in serious trouble.
He was human. I was not. I wasn’t staying on Earth.
Couldn’t stay, even if I wanted to. I was breaking multiple Coalition and human laws by being here at all.
Settling down to pretend to be a human wife with a human husband? Impossible.
Right now, the beast inside me—the one that should not exist—was sated. Mostly.
She stirred whenever I thought about leaving him.
Leaving Earth. Finishing my mission and returning to Core Command.
So I didn’t dwell on those thoughts. I didn’t dare.
She’d chosen her mate, and as far as she was concerned, we would never leave his side.
Ever. A mate was until death, and she would kill to remain next to him. To protect him.
A soft growl of warning left my throat at the thought of the Silver Scions hunting my male. I fought down blinding, irrational fury. The need to hunt. To kill.
Mate! Mine!
She raged inside me, and I bit my lower lip to keep the scream of challenge from leaving my throat.
Holy fuck. What the hell was that? How was I supposed to calm her down now? I’d believed having sex with Ethan would have done the trick.
Now I was afraid I’d only made her obsession worse.
The handcuffs steadied me, but they weren’t enough.
I knew I could break them. So did she. She craved more, the heavy mating cuffs used by Atlan Warlords when they claimed their mates.
Unbreakable. Linked so that too much distance would cause pain, shock the beast’s system into remembering they had a mate who needed them to remain in control. Sane.
I never thought I’d need that kind of reminder, that jolt of pain to bring me to my senses.
Then again, I’d never had a beast alive and raging inside me before.
If I left Earth, left Ethan behind, would she fade away? Would I go back to normal?
No leave! Mine!
Gods, now she was really angry. I could hardly argue with her logic when his naked body pressed into us with a possessive strength we craved, and his hard cock was still deep inside us.
The scent of his seed made my beast ravenous for more.
The taste of his skin was addictive. I’d had his cock in my mouth, tasted his body, his kiss, his seed, thought I’d pass out when his essence hit my tongue.
The memory made me whimper, my pussy spasm around his cock.
“I love the sounds you make. So fucking sexy.” Ethan leaned his chest into my back, his hands wandering down from my breasts to the sensitive flesh between my legs.
I didn’t think I had anything left to give him, but one flick of his finger on my clit and my pussy ached, swelled around his still hard length. “Come for me. One more.”
“I can’t.” Lie. I knew it as soon as the words left my mouth.
With a grunt that made my nipples pebble into hard peaks, Ethan’s mouth settled over the curve where shoulder met neck. He bit down, not hard enough to hurt, just to dominate. One hand worked my clit, the other slipped up over my cuffed wrists and pinned me in place.
My beast practically purred, her anger with me melting into submission to our mate. I wasn’t fooled. I felt her when she was homicidal, ready to rend flesh, tear Ethan’s enemies into pieces. But right now, she was his, and I had no choice but to surrender right along with her.
Realizing I didn’t want to fight his claim on us made me nervous even as my body responded to his gentle but insistent stroking of my clit.
I didn’t last long, too stimulated and tender by everything that had come before.
The orgasm rolled through my entire body like an avalanche rumbling down the side of a mountain and he held me up when my knees collapsed. A soft protest left my lips when he slipped his cock out of my body.
I felt abandoned. Bereft.
He chuckled. “Greedy. I like it.” He turned me around and kissed me softly. Gently. “I need some time to recover.”
He’d placed the keys to the handcuffs on a shelf in the shower.
He grabbed them and set me free, rubbing the bright pink marks on my wrists with a frown on his face.
“You’re hurt. I’m sorry. They were too tight.
” After the wildness of our fucking, the tenderness made my eyes ache, tears gathering.
Tears I hoped the shower would hide from him.
“No. It’s fine. I…” How was I supposed to admit that I’d purposely put pressure on the metal, needed to feel the cold steel dig into my flesh? “It’s my fault.”
This emotional upheaval was not normal, not for me.
Not since I’d shed every tear in my body over my brothers.
I didn’t cry anymore. It was useless. I had to be exhausted.
I’d been tracking the Silver Scions for three years without a break.
Commander Helion had recruited me mere days after Kovo’s execution and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse—a chance at vengeance.
I’d joined the Intelligence Core and never looked back.
Fatigue had to be the reason I acted so out of character.
The reason I wanted to curl into a ball and cry.
The reason I could not bury the completely irrational fear that Ethan would stop touching me and never start again.
Utterly absurd. I barely knew the male. Had just met him. I just needed rest. Sleep.
Sure, Lyra. Keep telling yourself that.
I held myself perfectly still as he rinsed me off and washed every inch of my sensitive skin.
A more honest assessment was that I fought both to stay on my feet and to keep my hands off him.
When he was finished, he led me into the adjacent sleeping room, the largest room on the upper floor, and started going through the owners’ things.
Drawers. Closet. “Let’s see what we have to work with.
I doubt these people will miss a couple pieces of clothing.
” He glanced at me, the question in his eyes.
“So, where are we? A safe house?” He looked around.
“Awfully nice for a safe house, isn’t it? ”
I wasn’t sure what he was referring to, so I told him the truth.
“This home belongs to Clyde and Melissa Hanover. They are currently on an extended trip to Greece.” Accessing the humans’ primitive computation and data systems, what they called the internet, and finding this base of operations had taken a few minutes at most. I had three backup locations already selected as well. Just in case.
He pulled on a pair of soft gray pants that did nothing to hide his still swollen cock.
“Well, shit. Clyde’s not my size.” The pants ended halfway down his calves and the soft material was tight across his thighs, hips and ass.
I watched him reach for a dark blue, cotton T-shirt and bit back a protest as he covered his exceptional body with clothes.
When the shirt hugged every curve and muscle in his chest, shoulders and back, I grinned.
Clyde was the perfect size. My opinion, of course.
I sat, naked, on the edge of the very large bed and watched Ethan in silence. This was the part where we had to talk. I was not good at talking. Not anymore. I was severely out of practice.
“You gonna put something on?” he asked. “I’m not going to be able to think if you don’t.”
I almost laughed. Almost. I didn’t particularly want him thinking.
“All right.” I wanted him holding me. Touching me.
Kissing me. I wanted to crawl under the blankets on the large bed and sleep in his arms. I was exhausted.
I had hidden my supplies downstairs. I’d been taking short naps, too paranoid to sleep.
The Silver Scions had found me a few days ago.
Tried to kill me. Sent assassins while I slept.
That was four days ago. Since my escape, I’d been moving to a new house every day, dozing in full armor, my torso spread out on a plush sofa in the front room.
In fact, other than my initial reconnaissance, this was the first time I’d been on the upper level of the house.
There was a full bathing room and everything else I needed on the main floor.
With a deep reluctance I didn’t want to examine too closely, I walked into the large closet and selected a button-down white shirt that looked like it might fit, or at least cover most of my thighs.
I was tall, for a human female, much larger than the female who lived in this house.
Her clothing would never cover me, so I chose one of the male’s larger items. I very much enjoyed the way Ethan’s gaze narrowed as he watched me button the shirt and cover my breasts.
“On second thought, that’s not much better.”
I slipped the shirt’s collar down over my bare shoulders. Exposed one naked breast.
“Fuck. Okay. Put it on.”
I laughed. “I don’t have any other clothes here.
” That was a lie. My gear was stored in a cube in the main living room.
The cube was also large enough for me to crawl inside and hide, if needed.
The ruse would fool the humans. Scions with advanced scanners would find the cube eventually.
Locking myself inside and waiting to be found would be an act of last resort.
“You look like a goddess.” Ethan walked over and wrapped his arms around my waist. “I look like a gym bro in tight sweats.”
“You can always take them off.” My long hair had begun to dry, the tendrils curling around my face. Ethan reached up and wrapped one long strand around his index finger.
“No. I think we need to talk.”
I shrugged. I didn’t want to talk. Or work. Or hunt my enemies. The sooner I found the Silver Scions, the sooner I’d be forced to leave the planet, and Ethan, behind. “All right. I need to run the memory scan. Should have done it already.”
“What memory scan?”
“Come on. I’ll show you.” I led Ethan back into the kitchen and stepped over the white doctor’s coat soaked with blood. He followed behind and rubbed his shoulder, as if in pain, when he saw the evidence of his injury.
My she-beast immediately rose up in protest, furious that we hadn’t completely healed him. That he suffered.
Heal! Now!
“Shhh.” I picked up the white coat and placed it in the trash container hidden inside one of the kitchen drawers. Ethan was already rifling through the rest of the drawers and pulled out a medium sized towel I assumed humans used to clean.
“I got this. You do your scan.” Ethan grabbed cleaning supplies that smelled like lemons and bleach from underneath the sink and cleaned the floor until no trace of his blood remained.
I grabbed the ReGen wand out of my tool kit and moved to his side. “I’m sorry. I should have done that.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “Why would you say that? It’s my blood.”
“Because you’re m—.” The word mine died a reluctant death in the back of my throat. Part of me wanted to shout it at him. Scream my claim to the heavens and eliminate anyone who tried to stand in my way. The sane part of me bit my lip and shut the fuck up. “You’re injured.”
“As far as I can figure, when you used your transport beacon to get me out of there, you saved my life.” He took the ReGen wand from my hand and flipped it over in his palm, examining the foreign item. “How do I turn it on?”
I leaned in and indicated the controls, walked him through the adjustments and the healing levels available. “Just hold it over the injured area until the light flashes at you. If you ignore it, or fall asleep, it will turn itself off.”
He sighed with relief when the blue-green section of the wand hovered over his shoulder. “I was feeling pretty good, but we were—”
“I apologize if I hurt you.” I didn’t want him to finish that sentence. I needed to focus on the task at hand, not relive every orgasmic moment of the last couple hours. “I shouldn’t have—”
Instantly, he reached out and cupped my cheek with a gentleness that made me want to melt into a puddle on the floor. “Don’t. Don’t say it.”
Don’t say what? That I shouldn’t have jumped on him like an out-of-control maniac? I shouldn’t have begged him to restrain me and fuck my brains out? I shouldn’t have been so undisciplined? Such a… a beast?
“I need to run the scan.” I stepped away from him and stood before my toolbox once more, determined to focus on my mission.
Locking the extraction device into place in the larger DNA scanner, I entered my access code and watched as the device activated.
“What are you doing, exactly?” Ethan stood directly behind me, his chest heating my spine as he peered over my right shoulder. I jumped when his left arm wrapped around my back, and the hand that had been stroking my clit mere minutes ago settled on my hip like he owned me.
Problem was, he did own me. Body and soul. My beast had chosen.