Chapter 11 #2
He groaned and shifted, rolling them without breaking their connection until she was on top. She ended up straddling him, her palms braced on his chest. The new position made her sink even deeper onto his steely length, and she gasped.
“Like this.” His hands settled on her hips to guide her. “Take what you need.”
She braced her hands on his chest and started to move. His head fell back against the pillow, a low groan rumbling from his chest as he watched her riding him.
It was different like this. She controlled the angle, the depth, and the speed. She felt every ridge of him inside her, watching his face as she moved and rocked. His eyes were half-closed, his lips parted.
She moved faster, and his fingers dug into the flesh of her hips. Not hard enough to bruise, but enough to anchor her.
The view from up here blew her mind. Sweat gleamed on his chest. Muscles flexed and bunched with every movement she made. His abs contracted as she ground down on him. She traced the ridges of his muscles with her nails, and he bucked up into her with a curse.
“Draanth, Cait. Just like that.”
She rode him harder. The angle hit something new inside her, and pleasure coiled tight in her belly, tighter and tighter. Ready to snap. Then he slid a hand between them, his thumb finding her clit to circle it. Her rhythm faltered.
“Oh god, that’s—”
“I’ve got you,” he said, his voice rough. “Let go, kelarris.”
The second orgasm crashed over her, stronger than the first. A tightening in her core, a heat spreading through her limbs. She chased it, grinding down against him, and he kept moving beneath her. Drawing it out, prolonging every pulse until she thought she’d shake apart.
Before she could come down, he flipped them. Pinning her to the bunk with his larger body, he drove into her again and again. Not rough or uncontrolled. Just relentless.
Just perfect.
Wrapping her arms around his neck, she held on as he chased his own release.
His thrusts grew erratic, and his breathing ragged. His gaze locked on hers, fierce and possessive, with something softer underneath.
“Kelarris,” he growled as he buried himself deep one final time.
Heat flooded her as he came. His cock jerked and pulsed as he bathed her inner walls with his hot seed, filling her until it spilled out around where they joined.
The sensation pushed her over again, a smaller climax that milked him through his own release. She clung to him, nails digging into his shoulders, riding the waves until they both stilled.
Neither of them spoke, but they didn’t need to.
With a soft groan, he turned them again, slipping from her as she nestled against his broad chest. His hand stroked her back in slow circles, and lulled by his warmth and the ship’s gentle hum, she slipped into sleep.
Raaze lay in the narrow bunk, Cait’s soft weight draped across his chest like she belonged there, and stared at the ceiling.
Sleep was impossible, especially after last night. His body buzzed with leftover energy, muscles loose but mind spinning as if he’d just finished a championship match.
Three times. They’d gone three rounds, and each one had been better than the last. His little human was insatiable, and he’d been more than happy to oblige.
She shifted in her sleep, her breath warm against his chest, one small hand curled over his heart. The gesture was unconscious, trusting in a way that made something twist deep in his gut.
He wasn’t an innocent. Nowhere near. Fame had thrown plenty of females at him…
groupies from every species, some with skills that could make a male forget his own name.
Trained pleasure companions, curious civilians, even a few rivals’ exes looking for revenge between the sheets.
But none of them had ever affected him like this.
None of them made him want to stay.
He turned his head slightly, watching her sleep. This tiny human had wrecked him.
Her red hair spilled across the pillow in a tangled mess, and there was a small crease between her brows even as she slept. Like she was solving problems in her dreams. Probably was. His little human never stopped thinking.
His quarters on the warball circuit had been three times this size, with real sheets and climate control that didn’t rattle. But he’d never wanted to linger in any of them. Here, in this cramped bunk that smelled like recycled air and engine grease and her, he couldn’t make himself move.
Kelarris.
The word had slipped out more than once. She didn’t know what it meant. Just as well.
He was only here by invitation. These were her quarters, her territory, her ship. The bunk, the space, the tentative trust.. It could all disappear. One wrong move and she’d boot his ass back to the cargo bay with that sharp tongue of hers.
Don’t get comfortable, he told himself. Don’t get attached.
Too late for that.
The data chip changed everything, though. This wasn’t just about clearing his name now. No, this mess went deeper, far deeper.
Vikrav R’Tev.
His lip curled back from his teeth just thinking the name.
Everyone knew Vikrav. The spoilt little rich kid who’d exploded onto the warball scene four years ago, all flash and no substance.
His marketing team had been relentless, plastering his face across every holoscreen from the core worlds to the outer colonies.
They’d hailed him as ‘The Next Big Thing’, ‘The Future of Warball’, and ‘A Generational Talent.’
And it was all utter trall.
The R’Tev owned half the colonies… property magnates with fingers in every pie from luxury domes to mining ops. They had credits to burn and connections that reached into every level of Imperial society. So when Vikrav had announced his warball ambitions, they’d just bought him an ‘in’ with a team.
Raaze remembered watching Vikrav’s early matches.
The kid had potential, sure. Decent reflexes, reasonable court awareness.
But he wasn’t elite. He wasn’t even close to elite.
He made positioning errors that would have gotten him benched on any serious team.
His shot selection was predictable. His defensive footwork was sloppy.
And yet he kept winning and moving up the rankings.
Raaze had assumed the kid was finally living up to the hype. Late bloomer, maybe. Some players took longer to develop, took longer for things to ‘click’ for them on the pitch. Everyone was different, and he’d been too focused on his own career to pay much attention.
Draanthing fool.
The names Cait had found in the archive told a different story. Matches that should have gone to veterans suddenly flipped. Key players benched with sudden illnesses or “accidents”… career-ending injuries under suspicious circumstances. And players who’d simply disappeared.
And every one of them had been ranked above Vikrav R’Tev. Not just above, but if you looked at the pattern, they all had been obstacles in his path to the top.
Including him.
The R'Tev hadn’t just bought their son a career.
They’d cleared the field… had the opposition dealt with.
Systematically, they’d eliminated anyone who might stand between their precious heir and warball glory.
And when the healer who’d signed off on the fake diagnoses had become a liability, they’d eliminated him too.
V’Teth hadn’t died of natural causes. Raaze would bet his left bollock on it.
The thought should have excited him. It was proof that he was right, that his diagnosis was trall. Instead, ice settled in his gut.
If the R'Tev had monitoring on those records, then they knew someone had accessed them. They’d know the files had been copied. They might even know who’d done it.
He and Cait had just gone from running from a security flag to being targets of a powerful family with a body count.
Draanth.
His breath caught as his chest tightened. He couldn’t let anything happen to her. His arm tightened around her reflexively, and he pulled her closer. She made a soft sound in her sleep but didn’t wake up.
He’d dragged her into this. She’d been a mark, a means of escape, a pilot with a ship and a desperate need for parts that he’d used. He’d manipulated her from the moment he’d spotted her on that landing pad, and he’d put her in the crosshairs of people who killed witnesses.
Kelarris.
He’d thrown the word out there without thinking, but it was what she was.
His beloved. He traced idle patterns along her back with his fingertips, feeling the delicate knobs of her vertebrae under warm skin.
She was so fragile compared to a Lathar…
compared to him. So fierce anyway. Something twisted deep in his chest, a protective surge rolling through him that had nothing to do with his old warball instincts and everything to do with the female in his arms.
Her lashes fluttered against her cheeks as she stirred. Her eyes opened, and she looked at him. The smile that crossed her face was soft and unguarded. Sleepy and happy, like waking up in his arms was exactly where she wanted to be.
Draanthing hells. He didn’t deserve that look, not with this new threat looming like an incoming asteroid field.
He dipped his head and kissed her so he could stop thinking. It was slow at first, his lips brushing hers with a gentleness that surprised even him.
She made a small sound in the back of her throat, pressing closer, and the kiss deepened. Heat flickered low in his belly again, but he pulled back before either of them could get lost in it.
“Morning,” he murmured against her lips.
“Morning,” she murmured, her voice rough with sleep. “You’re still here.”
“Where else would I be?”
She stretched against him, all warm skin and lazy contentment like a deearin kit. “Thought maybe you’d sneak off to the cargo hold. Maintain your mysterious, brooding image.”
“I don’t brood.”
“You do brood.” She propped herself up on one elbow, her lips curved at the corners as she studied his face. “You’ve got that look right now. The one that says you’re thinking too hard about something.”
He should tell her. About Vikrav, about the pattern, about the target they’d just painted on their backs. She deserved to know what she was walking into.
But she was looking at him like he was something worth keeping, and he couldn’t make himself shatter that. Not yet. Not when he could give her a few more minutes of blissful ignorance before the universe came crashing back in.
He shifted carefully, easing her off his chest so he could sit up.
“Just thinking about how I’m going to explain to Fred that I defiled his captain,” he said instead as he pulled her back into his lap. He’d already reacted to her, his cock half hard and hardening more as she settled against him with a small rock. Gods, he’d never get enough of this female.
She laughed, bright and genuine, and the sound hit him somewhere behind his ribs. “Fred already knows. He monitors everything.”
“Everything?”
“Everything.” Her grin turned wicked. “I turned off my implant, but the ship’s sensors are always running. He’s probably already compiled a performance review.”
“A performance—” he just stared at her. “Your ship’s AI watched us have sex, and you’re joking about it?”
“Fred’s seen worse. Trust me.”
He didn’t want to know what that meant. He really, really didn’t.
She leaned down and kissed him, soft and sweet, and he let himself sink into it for one more moment. One more breath of peace before everything changed.
Then he pulled back.
“I should check our status,” he said. “See where we are on the route.”
Disappointment flickered across her face, but she nodded. “I’ll grab a shower. Meet you in the cockpit?”
“Yeah.”
He watched her slide out of the bunk, her pale skin marked with faint bruises from his grip. Evidence of what they’d shared. What he’d taken.
She disappeared into the tiny head, and he forced himself to move. Hauling himself out of the bunk, he found his pants on the floor, pulled them on, and headed for the cockpit.
Fred would have the answers he needed. And then he’d figure out how to keep Cait alive long enough to hate him for the truth.