Creations 1: The Perfect Creation (13 page)

She said nothing for a moment, then asked, “But you don’t think
I’m
a wrong you need to correct?”

“No, baby. You’re the one thing in my life that’s Flor-damned perfect, and I intend to keep it that way.” No matter how many peacemakers, scientists, or brothers he had to overrun to do it.

* * * *

Gar glared at the com unit he’d just disconnected. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have sworn Drekk was deliberately slowing his progress, which made no sense. Gar knew Drekk better than most. An inheritance that came with Cheltam’s cover, Drekk provided both muscle and invaluable contacts throughout the System. He couldn’t be bought, and he never stopped on a mission. In a way, he reminded Gar of the Xema, and were it not for his large frame and unsettling grey eyes, Drekk might have passed for one.

So why would Drekk intentionally sabotage Gar’s efforts to find Rafe and keep him safe?

“He wouldn’t.” Gar rubbed the back of his neck, tired from his worry and the successive nights of no sleep. The nightmares had returned. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Taika and his son crying out for help. Unfortunately, the dream ended just like his reality had, with his wife and son being blown to bits.

Closing his eyes tightly, Gar willed away the images that refused to fade completely and focused on the family he had that were still alive. He had to trust that Drekk would do his job. As Drekk had said, the man preferred Rafe to Gar anyway. Rafe, the brother who most looked like Gar, but possessed an arsenal of charm that stayed him well in life. Hell, were it not for Rafe, Gar doubted he’d be here today. Only his brother’s dogged persistence, that ever-annoying penchant he had to get his own way, had woken Gar from a grief filled daze long enough to return to the peacemakers.

Sernal’s attitude, on the other hand, Gar could do without. But not permanently, he hastened to add, should fickle Flor be listening close. That fucking Mardu god had an odd sense of humour on Gar’s best day. No sense to exacerbate Sernal’s problems by wishing for something he didn’t really feel. Truth be told, Gar counted on Sernal’s steadfastness. Sernal was like a rock. Good and bad had definite sides, and to his law-loving brother, a grey area between the two didn’t exist.

That attitude had propelled Sernal through the peacekeeper ranks to the head of the organisation. That and his propensity towards an honest living. Little by little, Sernal emptied his forces of the corrupt peacekeepers giving justice a bad name. But the process was slow-going, and Gar thought that maybe this time Sernal had stepped on the wrong toes.

From what Gar had thus far gathered, Sernal had simply disappeared from sight four nights ago. No one had seen or heard from him since, and ugly rumours began spreading that Sernal wasn’t as honest as everyone had thought. Typical peacemaker politics. Without Sernal there to stem the accusations, his career would surely come to a screeching halt. And Gar knew how much Sernal lived for the law. To Sernal, being a peacemaker held the same importance as being Xema.

“Dammit.” Gar shoved the communicator in his belt and grabbed a pistol from his weapons stash. In minutes he found his rover and plotted a course to his nearby landing pad.

As he travelled, he decided he’d put it off long enough. Taking a deep breath, he set the rover on autopilot and checked in with his youngest brother.

Mara’s Light
picked up after two short pings.

“What?” The growl belonged to one of the behemoth Raggas, Nu or Set, Catam’s crewmates. Commotion sounded in the background, and then the Ragga cleared his throat.

“
Mara’s Light
. What can I do for you?”

“Who’s this?” Gar asked, aware he came off as rude. But hell, who had the patience for social niceties?

“Nu Fas. Who the hell is this?”

Gar snorted. So much for Nu’s attempted diplomacy. “Gar. Put Catam on.” Nu cursed loudly enough to be heard three planets away, and then Catam joined the conversation. “Gar, any word on Sernal?”

“Not yet, but I’m working on it. What do you have on Blue Rim?” As Catam relayed his dealings with two of Blue Rim’s underlings, Canunn and Synster, Gar understood that his little brother had come a long way from the aggravating imp he’d once been. No longer was Catam the smaller boy trailing after his brothers. He had a successful career as a bounty hunter, a beautiful wife and two breathtakingly wonderful children. At short moments like these, when envy and pain cleared from his mind, Gar could appreciate his little brother and grasp how much he loved and was proud of him. But the memories always intruded, and eventual heartache wiped away any good feelings resurfacing. Before they could overwhelm him, Gar thanked Catam, promised to keep him up-to-date, and broke the connection.

Breathing hard, Gar wished he could overcome his need to distance himself from the happiness of others. Drekk, fortunately, proved easy enough to work with. The large man rarely spoke, and when he did, it was with rancour or dismissal. Though Drekk worked hard, he didn’t project that loving, familial tone Gar’s brothers did. That need to protect Gar simply didn’t exist for Drekk, and for that Gar was grateful. Oh, he knew he could count on Drekk to watch his back, but Drekk and he operated less on affection than on mission-oriented success. A mutual respect for an end state both men wanted. Nothing more.

Nothing like the seeming affection Drekk held for Rafe, which Gar definitely appreciated considering the circumstances.

Mulling the notion that he didn’t quite fill Rafe’s shoes in this job, Gar decided to make the change he’d been debating for several months. Playing Cheltam had helped free him from a course set on self-destruction, but this job didn’t fit. Rafe needed to come back, just as soon as Drekk pulled his ass from that troublesome Eyran refugee. Flor’s dagger, trust Rafe to land himself next to a fucking Creation.

Gar sighed. Just as soon as he cleared Sernal and settled Rafe once again behind Cheltam’s desk, he planned to pack up and head out, to where he didn’t yet know. But his instincts told him it was time to leave. Already he skirted the law more than Rafe, and definitely Sernal, would be comfortable with. The fact that his lawlessness didn’t bother Gar at all made his existence as a peacemaker a real problem in the organisation Sernal idealized.

No, Gar’s time as a lawman had ended.

Arriving at his landing strip, Gar left the rover and soon piloted his small craft into space, towards Sernal’s last known location—Mornio, a mining planet filled with more criminals than those populating Jintak’s jails. There Gar hoped to find a lead on Sernal, and maybe an idea about what to do with the rest of his pathetic life. But in the meantime, he planned to continue monitoring Drekk’s progress, or lack thereof, because if his shady assistant thought to screw with Gar’s orders, there’d be hell to pay. After all, Gar lived in the grey between right and wrong. And Flor help Drekk if he thought to sabotage any of the Mardu brothers.

* * * *

Teleporting into the forest had been easy. And from his vantage in the crook of the tree above, Drekk watched Rafe stroke Erin’s full breasts, his motions tender and not at all rough as the marks on Erin’s wrists might have indicated. Listening to their conversation illuminated much about Rafe that Drekk had suspected but never actually witnessed. Drekk respected the hell out of the peacemaker even more, and the fact that Rafe knew about Erin and still planned to help her cemented Drekk’s decision to give them more time alone together; screw Gar’s orders. With Rafe, Erin would be protected. The Mardu would help her and her siblings, no matter what. As would Drekk. And part of that help meant backing off to give Rafe time to claim his new mate.

Because in all the time Drekk and Rafe had worked together, Drekk had never seen the Mardu look at another woman the way he stared at Erin. He had a special look in his eye and an aura pulsating around his body that directly aligned with Erin’s energy—a tell-tale sign the two would soon bond. Drekk had seen it before, a fascinating ritual, but never with a male of Rafe’s particular intensity.

Still, Drekk didn’t want to intrude on what was probably Erin’s first measure of peace in her unfortunate life. Just seeing her in that Flor-forsaken bar had told him who and what she was. And though he’d sensed what she meant to do to him in Cheltam’s office, he couldn’t blithely hand her over to Gar to use as bait, no matter how much she might have helped them take down Blue Rim.

Drekk had been waiting for years to destroy that particular laboratory on Eyra. And with Erin’s help, he planned to do just that. But not for the peacemakers, or because it was the law. He’d take Blue Rim apart for all the ones that had come before, and would no doubt come again if someone didn’t put an end to the evil Creators and Handlers tinkering with god-skills.

Erin moaned, distracting him, and Drekk watching with interest as Rafe moved her off his torso and propped her up on her hands and knees in front of him. The Mardu spanked her hard, several times, and Erin bowed her head and groaned with pleasure, her pheromones reaching Drekk even up in the tree. No, now was definitely not the time to be worrying about Blue Rim, not with two beautiful forms engaging in the carnality of pain and pleasure.

Drekk rubbed his rock-hard cock, amused and aroused at Rafe’s prowess with the female sex. Though the decent thing would have been to give the couple their privacy, Drekk had never claimed to be anything approaching respectable. He wanted to watch, to see if the Mardu lived up to his reputation, and to see if Erin would live up to the promise of her incredible beauty. By the way Erin continued to shiver under her lover’s touch, Drekk figured he was in for quite a show.

Erin kept her head down as she knelt, undone by Rafe’s selfless promise. He couldn’t really want to help her, could he? Because hope was all that had carried her this far in life, a desire for freedom and justice, and the ability to find her own happiness. Though she hadn’t had much in the way of relationships with others, she knew she’d found something special with Rafe. Her energy pulsed in time with his, and if what he said were true, then the
wainu
they both experienced had as much to do with one another as it did with the sexual act itself.

“You ready to finish your punishment, baby?”

She shivered, thrilled when he called her those pet names in a husky voice. And the slaps he’d given to her ass did crazy things to her insides. She’d never imagined that a rough hand could arouse her so much, as if he strummed her clit instead of smacking her flesh.

“Yes, Sir.” He palmed her butt and stroked her, sliding his thumb into the crease between her cheeks, stretching the opening of her anus. The feel of him there stirred a dark hunger, a thrilling, forbidden pleasure she’d wondered about, especially after seeing the act in one of the many bars she’d visited since her escape. “Rafe—Sir—can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

She turned her head to see him kneeling to the side of her, his shaft ruddy with desire.

“How are you ready again so soon? Your recovery seems incredibly quick, and not typical with what I’ve read about Mardu males.”

“Studious, aren’t you?” Rafe grinned. “But you’re right.
Most
men wouldn’t equal your stamina.” He sounded pleased with that announcement, and Erin liked the possessiveness in his tone when he spoke to her. “With you the rules don’t seem to apply. And speaking of rules…” He smacked her hard, three times successively, the strikes overly loud in the quiet around them. “It’s high time you answered for hitting me, baby. That’s twice now that you’ve knocked me out cold. There won’t be a third time,” he reinforced in a deep, gravelly voice. Rafe smoothed his hand over the fiery burn of her skin, the contrasting softness of his touch with the hardness of his slaps arousing in the extreme.

She gasped at the surprisingly erotic sensation, her mind pulling her back into a quagmire of submission as he exerted his dominance. “Wh-what are you doing to me, Sir?” His fingers trailed over her ass and between her thighs, delving into the moisture dripping down her legs, and she stared at the ground, focused on the feelings he stoked within her. Before she could answer him, he pinched her clit, and she swore she saw stars from the extreme bliss. “You like that, hmm? The pain and the pleasure.” Erin blushed, unable to control her response as she flooded his fingers with cream. She waited for more—
wanting
more—her skin sensitised, anticipation making her lightheaded.

When Rafe did nothing for several moments, she glanced up only to see him staring into the treeline, a look of fierce concentration on his face. Awareness penetrated and Erin used her enhanced senses, seeing the outline of a man through the leaves, his heat signature obvious now that she knew to look.

“Rafe, there’s someone up there,” she whispered as she rose slowly to her knees off her hands.

“No, get back down. Hands and knees, Erin. Now.”

His authority put her at immediate ease, and she resumed her position, puzzled but not threatened. Embarrassment, however, covered her body in one large blush as she stared hard at the tree in front of her, all too conscious of their audience above.

“I know there’s someone up there,” Rafe admitted. “He’s been there for a while, but he’s no threat.” She swore she heard humour in his voice.

“Who is it?”

“Don’t you mean, ‘Who is it, Sir?’”

She groaned.

“What’s that?”

“Who is it,
Sir
?”

“Does it matter? Why? Do you want him to join us?” The menace in Rafe’s tone set her on fire, and when he shoved a sudden finger deep into her pussy she clenched him tight.

“Because that’s a problem for me, Erin.”

“I…don’t…want…that.”

“I don’t share what’s mine.” He removed his finger and inched it up, pushing into her anus. “No, don’t move a muscle.” The dark command in his voice forced her to remain still, the burn of his intrusive digit soon giving way to pleasure. “It hurts so good, doesn’t it, baby?”

“No, Sir.”

He chuckled. “Liar.” He pushed harder, and she groaned, wanting him out even as she wanted him deeper. “That’s it. Now take another.” Rafe did as before, using the juices from her arousal to grease his second finger. Then he added it, stretching her virgin passage. “Your body adapts so beautifully, baby. Flor, that’s sexy.”