Chapter 44
CORA
Yiri’s fingers worked at the fastenings of my dress and then peeled it away like the husk of my fear.
Bare beneath the satin, I wanted his clothes gone, too, nothing between us.
He let me draw his shirt frantically over his head, and then he lifted his hips with me still on his lap as he pushed off his sodden trousers as well.
“Better?” He asked, rough-voiced.
I nodded, but still needed more. Taking his hands, I placed them on my body, relishing the heat of his palms. Could I feel his love, strength, and possession radiating through them, or had I lost my mind?
It didn’t matter. His fingertips pressed into my hips, drawing my center over his length, hard and ready for me.
“What do you need, Cora?” He asked.
Closing my eyes, I lay my cheek on his shoulder, my mouth against his throat. “My husband.”
With a groan, he jerked my hips to his, wetness already slipping from me to him, preparing the way. I rocked over him a few times as our need smoldered between us. One hand still on my hip, his other rose to my shoulder and pushed me back a little.
“Put me inside you, Aneah,” he said. “Let me watch.”
Grasping him in my hand, I stroked his cock, rubbing the tip over my clit and spreading more of my wetness over him. My other hand rested over his lower abdomen, my thumb positioned perfectly to massage his ridge. The motion made his cock jump in my hand and his breath shorten to quick pants.
“Be good,” he rumbled. “I need to feel you before I come.”
Angling him to my entrance, I sank onto him slowly, watching with him as he filled me inch by inch.
My heart pounded in my chest as heat filled my limbs.
The whole world shrank down to us and this moment.
Nothing else mattered but the fullness of having him deep inside me.
For a moment, I didn’t move, too enraptured by the rightness of our joining.
I pressed a hand to my heart, meeting his eyes in astonishment.
“Is this what it feels like?”
“What what feels like?”
My other palm flattened over his heartbeat, too. “Knowing I’m your Aneah,” I said. “Does it feel like you’re too much too fit in your own body?”
I felt his heartbeat stutter and the breath whoosh out of him. “Fuck yes.” He sounded relieved, like I’d lifted some burden. “You feel it, Cora?”
I nodded. “I feel it.”
With a tortured sound, he grabbed me, his hands framing my face and dragging me close for a consuming kiss.
It was a melding of souls, a blending of our two hearts into one.
My hips rolled, my body needing more of him, more of us.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, holding on as we moved together, my blood humming with need.
“You’re mine,” he said with his mouth against my ear. “No one will ever take you from me again. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe.”
“I know.” I couldn’t take my lips off him either. I kissed his neck, his shoulder, the ceket tattoo on his pec and the pinup girl on his bicep, and all the silvered scars that broke up his gorgeous, taught, amethyst skin.
With one arm banded around my lower back, he kept me anchored as he drove up into me. My clit rubbed against his ridge with every movement, sending heat and pleasure through every part of me. My inner muscles gripping him and dragging a ragged moan from deep in his chest.
“That’s it, Aneah,” he said in a breathless voice. “Milk me with that perfect cunt.”
Prickling pleasure sparked and caught fire in me, the strength in my limbs waning. “Yiri.”
With a low hum, he flipped me to my back on the velvet cushions and drove deeper into me, hitting just the right spot.
His pierced ridge stimulated my clit with every thrust until I was nothing but a moaning mess beneath him.
Capturing one of my breasts in his big, calloused hand, he rolled his thumb over the nipple while he bent his head to nip and suck at the other.
“Oh. Don’t stop....” I panted as a tide of heat swept through me. His answering growl of approval was the thing that sent me deep into those waves of bliss.
“Mmm. My perfect little wife,” he said, lifting up to his elbows as he snapped his hips in powerful thrusts, chasing after me. “Look at me, Aneah. Wanna see those strong, beautiful eyes when I come inside you.”
Our eyes locked, his glowing with intensity.
Fate, Ibar, whatever it was, I felt it. He was a part of me, and I’d never felt safer or more cherished than I did in his arms. The heat seemed to spill over, leaking through my eyes.
I blinked and tears gathered. Some girls marry good men who might see those tears and show concern.
But I married a bad one. Yiri made a guttural sound and licked the salty drop off my cheek, lust clouding his eyes as he fucked me into the cushions of the couch he smuggled across countless galaxies, likely at great expense, just for me.
My husband was rough, tattooed, and scarred.
He smoked too much sellah, swore a lot, and didn’t play by the rules, but he’d fight, steal, and kill for me.
I’d take that over a nice guy every day of the week.
As the pleasure built in me again and I felt myself careening toward a thunderous orgasm, I took his face in my hands, making sure to look into his eyes like he asked. “Come with me, Daddy,” I begged him.
With a grunt, he thrust deeper, his soul pouring into mine while time stopped around us and we fell apart together.
“Yes, Aneah. Fuck.” His body trembled over mine with fraying restraint. “Ready to take my cum like a good little wife?”
I nodded my head, unable to do anything else but cry out his name as the heat of him filled me, and I unraveled too.
Limp and sated, I let him clean me up moments later.
We snuggled on the couch for a while, murmuring vicious little promises of revenge on anyone who ever crossed us again, exchanging lazy kisses and words of love, too.
But eventually, we had to go back to his estate since we agreed the bed in the cruiser was unfit for sleeping or anything else now.
We bathed, we slept, and the next morning I stirred in Yiri’s arms, my body floating as he carried me.
“Shh, Aneah,” he murmured. “Go back to sleep.”
Sleeping was easy to do. Whether it was the stress of being kidnapped and killing two men, or just an aftereffect of the drugs Xokat used, my body sagged with exhaustion. So I tucked my face into the crook of Yiri’s neck and let my mind drift back into dreamless sleep.
Hours later, I woke in a new bed in the cruiser, the gentle rocking of the vessel telling me we were sitting on water.
Following the delicious aroma of food cooking, I found Yiri in the kitchen, making breakfast. The hatch was open, the deck extended, and sunlight—daylight—pouring in.
Mr. Darcy bread-loafed in the middle of the floor, soaking it up.
“There’s my beautiful wife,” Yiri greeted me.
“And there’s my wicked husband,” I said, wrapping my arms around his waist from behind, pressing a kiss to his bare back.
Yiri chuckled. “Speaking of wicked things,” he chuckled.
“I looked over the cruiser’s recs. Caught every minute you were here with them.
” He turned, drawing me to his chest and kissing the top of my head.
“You told me what you had to do, but you left out the part where you stopped for a snack between killing one male and drugging another.”
“I thought it would settle my stomach,” I said indignantly.
“And the sellah break after you threw Masoh’s son to the cekets?”
“To settle my nerves.”
“You didn’t look nervous,” he grinned. “You looked pissed off. Dangerous. Wicked.”
“I was channeling my inner mob wife,” I grinned. “Can I go for a swim?”
“Of course,” he nodded, letting me slip from his arms. “I’ll bring the food out in a minute.”
The turquoise water showed no signs of the frenzy from the day before.
Possibly that should have been unnerving, but I was learning to appreciate the cekets’ efficiency rather than fear it.
Stripped down to my skin, I dove off the deck, and though I hadn’t seen any circling fins at first, a grandmother and a youngling swam slowly by as I resurfaced.
They skimmed close to me, but showed no aggression at all.
If I didn’t have a lifetime of preconceived notions about sharklike creatures, I might have said they looked happy to see me.
I was floating on my back when Yiri joined me.
The little hover boat followed him to my side, carrying a beautiful spread of fresh fruit and cooked veggies.
As my alien husband, who was not a good man, and definitely in the alien mafia, fed me cubes of zibe fruit between long, languid kisses in the warm salt water, I thought, A girl could get used to this.