Authors: Marcella Burnard
Enemy Games (28 page)
Damen wrapped his arms around her, and tucked her head beneath his chin. Warmth radiated from his body, urging her to relax.
“You aren’t as contact shy as Captain Idylle was after she’d been released by the Chekydran,” he noted, splaying his fingers over the skin bared at her waist by her dress. “But you mistrust what you feel as much as she ever did.”
Heat suffused Jay at the pressure of his nails drawn tauntingly over her flank. She gasped.
“We’ll work on that,” he promised. He hooked an arm under her knees and rose.
“No!” she rasped, stiffening.
He met her gaze with eyebrows raised as he carried her out of the cockpit and down the corridor to his cabin.
“No?” he challenged.
Jayleia thumped the heel of her hand to the center of his chest.
He grunted and chuckled.
“No! I don’t want to be a job, or a toy to be used and broken. Not again.”
She caught in a sharp breath, trying to call back the words she’d never meant to say.
“You are my heart,” he whispered at her ear, sending a shiver of longing through her, “my blood. I can’t break my own heart.”
“Damen, you had my blood forced on you!” she gasped, struggling to free herself from his grasp. “In the worst possible way. If I take advantage of that . . .”
The cabin door opened.
“Don’t trouble yourself on that point,” he said. “I intend to take every advantage you’ll afford me. And maybe a few you won’t.”
He tossed her on the bed.
She barely had time to register her backside contacting the mattress.
He pounced, pinning her with the weight of his hips against hers, his feet hooked over her shins. A self-satisfied smile on his face, desire smoldering in his eyes, he smoothed the hair from her face and caressed a line down the center of her chest.
“Why did you give me your blood?” he murmured.
He pressed a heated kiss against the pulse point in her neck. His lips twitched against her skin as her already too-fast pulse rate ramped.
“To seal our truce,” she gasped.
He lifted his head to look her in the eye.
“You’re holding out on me. Why did you give me your blood?” He traced the base of one breast through the silky fabric of her dress.
Her entire body tightened in response.
“Y-you kept on about first blood,” she stuttered, barely able to breathe. “It seemed important to you. I wanted you to have something I thought you’d value. I didn’t want you to forget me.”
“Ah,” he breathed, rewarding her by closing his hand on her breast and playing his thumb over the taut peak.
She bit back a moan.
“One more question,” he said, moving so that his mouth hovered above her breast. His warm breath seeped through the thin fabric.
Suddenly, she wanted—needed—nothing more than his mouth on her.
“With your skill, you could have taken me out any time and escaped. Why didn’t you?”
She stroked his cheekbone to draw his gaze to hers, fear colliding with desire in her bloodstream.
He looked at her, lines between his eyebrows. “Was I right? You enjoy being my prisoner?”
“Back to neural cuffs again?” she asked, tracing the arch of his brows with her fingertips. “I never wanted to hurt you.”
He trembled beneath her caress. “I’m tougher than I look.”
“That’s why I can’t hurt you,” she replied, threading her fingers through his hair. “Not like that.”
He smiled and lowered his head to her breast, teasing her through the silky dress.
She couldn’t suppress the moan the attention wrung from her throat.
“Let me show you what your first experience . . .” Damen began, running a hand along the line of her belt.
“And last,” she interjected, needing him to understand.
His idle exploration froze.
“You’ve had no one for seven years?”
Jay uttered the ghost of a laugh at the disbelief in his voice.
“Plague left me in the company of a man who is like a father to me, my cousin, and Pietre,” she said.
“And because Pietre prefers men, he’s celibate as well,” Damen surmised.
“He’d change that for you,” she said.
Damen raised his head and propped himself on one elbow, anticipation in the set of his smile. “What about you?”
His question startled her into meeting his gaze. “What?”
A wicked gleam in his eye, he bent to trail his lips along the scooped neck of her dress.
She clenched a fist in his hair, trying to dissuade him, but with her muscles weakened by delight, she failed.
“Will you change being celibate for me?” he murmured against her skin. He shifted his weight, until he rested between her legs, the evidence of his arousal scorching her.
“Gods!” she gasped, arching into his kisses. “You don’t play fair!”
His chuckle vibrated throughout her body and he returned to take her mouth in a ruthless assault on her senses.
Potent, primitive chemicals flooded her, shooting hot blood straight to every taut, greedy nerve in her body.
He pulled away, his breathing ragged, and murmured, “No. I don’t. I don’t fight fair, either. I’m desperate for you, but I won’t do this without your permission.”
Her heart fluttered. He had her backed into a corner. He could so easily make her beg him to take her. Instead, he offered her a choice when no one and nothing else in her life had.
Unfamiliar emotion swelled in her chest, twining through her skin and bone and blood. Damen had been used, and she gathered, abused. Still, he’d risen to her rescue, offering himself up for use yet again, rather than leaving her to the less than tender mercy of the Temple.
She owed him a modicum of courage. She longed to experience the kind of love his touch and his smile seemed to promise.
“You’re not accustomed to being protected,” she whispered against his lips. “I’m not used to . . .”
“Being cherished,” he finished, his hand at her breast again, tantalizing her with brushes of his fingers. “Loved. You can learn. Let me teach you.”
“Yes,” she gasped, tightening her arms around him. “Please. Now.”
“Begging so soon?” he teased, rocking his pelvis against hers. “I hadn’t planned for that until much later.”
Anticipation and pleasure zinged through her. Daring to turn Damen’s technique against him, she kissed the pulse point in his throat, savoring the life beating against the tip of her tongue.
The breath he drew sounded ragged.
Smiling, she kissed her way up his jaw to nuzzle his ear and whisper, “I won’t be the only one begging.”
Damen closed his teeth on her earlobe and half growled, half chuckled.
Her heart, and anatomy significantly lower, clenched tight in response. She tripped the release on his uniform shirt and slid her palms over the supple muscles of his chest, easing the fabric from his shoulders.
He unhooked her belt, rolled away from her, snaked an arm under the small of her back, and lifted her hips. He swept her skirt to the floor, planting a kiss in the center of her belly.
She moaned.
He released her, perching on the edge of the bed to rid himself of his shirt.
She sat up. Faint red lines marred the pale skin of his back. Scooting close, she laid an exploratory finger above one of the aged scars.
He flinched.
“Does it hurt?”
“Not physically.” A whisper of tension touched his voice.
Like the marks on his ankles, she gathered. Jayleia choked back the urge to ask how he’d come by them. But that part of his past seemed to trouble him and she could guess. She smoothed a palm over his back and instead pressed a kiss against the highest mark.
The rigid set of his shoulders eased and he sighed when she moved to the next line and then the next. He tipped his chin to his chest, his eyes closed.
Pleased by the uneven catch of his breath whenever her lips touched his skin, she kissed her way down each mark until the band of his trousers halted her.
Uttering a sound of disappointment, she splayed her hands wide against the small of his back and followed the line of his waistband until her arms circled him.
He shuddered.
“Don’t stop,” he pleaded in a whisper.
“Never,” she rasped, releasing him only long enough to sit up, shrug out of her top, and press her naked chest against his back. Wrapping her legs around him, she slid her hands over his skin.
Leaning his head back against her collarbone, he combed her hair over his shoulders, and then slid her shoes from her feet. His deft hands kneaded the muscles of her bare calves, then up to her thighs until she could barely draw breath.
Following the line of muscle down the center of his belly, she ran her fingertips over the release for his trousers. “Coded to me?” she breathed into his ear.
He shook with a silent laugh, unhooked her legs, and surged off the bed, kicking his boots across the tiny cabin and shedding his pants while his gaze touched every part of her.
Flushed, she subsided into the mattress when he prowled up her body, glorious, passionate, male. She reveled in discovering every inch of him. When her trembling fingers brushed the heated length of his arousal, he sucked in a shuddering breath before shifting out of her reach and dropping his mouth to lavish kisses on her breasts.
Sensation exploded through her, wringing a groan from her throat.
Damen kissed and teased, touched, licked, and nibbled until the pressure of need drove her to the edge of reason.
“Now!” she implored. “Damen, please.”
Resting his forehead against hers, he eased into her as if afraid she’d break.
She whimpered.
He stilled and gasped, “Hang on. You won’t hurt me, even if you draw blood.”
“No!” she choked, smoothing her hands over the hard muscles of his backside, deliberately relaxing her grip.
“Still protecting me?”
“Until the day I die,” she swore in a ragged whisper.
He drew a breath that sounded like a sob and surged the last distance into her.
She cried out at the intoxicating blend of need, pleasure, and exhilaration. Arching into him, her body silently begged for completion.
He responded with a possessive, rough growl and claimed her mind, body, and soul until the volatile compound of sensation and emotion they’d brewed exploded. She felt the cry wrung from her throat, then Damen groaned, convulsed, and collapsed against her.
Breathless, reeling, she collected the scattered pieces of herself only to find her heart no longer where she’d left it. She knew where to find it, though.
Damen rolled them to their sides.
Jayleia pressed her lips against his chest and brushed scar tissue. She leaned back to get a better look.
The faint tracing of veins showed through his pale skin. Curls of golden hair drew her fingers to explore the silky texture. She found the pink, shiny spot she’d felt. It sat directly over his heart.
“Where your blood was introduced to my system,” Damen rumbled, a look of deep contentment and peace in his eyes.
She traced the pattern and frowned. “Was it my blood that made you want me?”
He picked up one of the bells still tied in her hair. “Your blood came a year too late to make me want you. It sensitized me to you. You’re my mate. I am not whole unless I’m with you.”
She stared into his face, her heart trembling. “You’re saying I have an unfair advantage?”
He laughed. “I am indeed coded to you. Now. Let me teach you about the rapid recharge rate of my species base.”
She knew.
Academically.
When Damen’s people had turned their prey drive from hunting humanoids to hunting ore, the exposure to radioactive minerals and toxic chemicals had negatively impacted fertility rates. Adaptation had taken over.
The species reached sexual maturity much earlier than primate-based species.
And as Damen proved in the most engrossing way possible, the males of the species required very little recharge time.
CHAPTER 28
W
HEN Damen emerged from the shower, Jayleia had already dressed and left the cabin. He stood in the center of the room, closed his eyes, and drew in a slow breath, savoring the scent of her presence and of her pleasure, amazed by the sense of contentment wrapped around his heart.
HEN Damen emerged from the shower, Jayleia had already dressed and left the cabin. He stood in the center of the room, closed his eyes, and drew in a slow breath, savoring the scent of her presence and of her pleasure, amazed by the sense of contentment wrapped around his heart.
He’d kidnapped her with every intention of seducing her if he could. Never had he imagined that she’d turn the tables with her vow to protect him until the day she died.
It made him dizzy. He had to pause in pulling on his fatigues. After a lifetime of fending for himself and of protecting others, fierce, sweet Jayleia had waltzed right past his defenses, scooped his heart out of his chest, and cradled it.
Now, he need only hear her say that she loved him.
He grinned and tucked in his shirt. Given her numerous sensitive spots, he suspected they’d both enjoy having him coax the admission from her.
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