Marked 2: Marked for Desire (6 page)

She waved her hand to the chair in the corner. “That’s the observation chair. Usually my bodyguard sits there.” She flicked her gaze over Leo from head to toe. “I prefer nudity, but I’ll give you the choice.”

Had she kept the longing out of her voice? She hoped so. She wanted to see him naked more than anything else, but there was no way she’d say so.

His eyes narrowed. She loved the way his blue eyes glittered when he was pissed off. His muscles bunched as he stripped away his coveralls. She swallowed. The man was gorgeous. Broad shoulders, a tight ass, his cock at attention, and his face tightened in anger. The urge to stroke his skin was unbearable. For a moment, she wondered why he’d chosen to take his clothes off. Was he hoping she would include him in this session?

She wanted to. Her lips were dry, and she ran her tongue over them. No matter how much he might tempt her, she wasn’t going to touch him.

She was going to torment him.

The soft material of her dress slithered down her body when she released the top button. Her hands were barely steady, but she managed to remove her bra and panties without trembling.

Leo sat down in the observer’s chair and kept his gaze on her body. A flush swept along her skin, heat billowing to the surface. Just his stare made her nipples tighten and pucker.

She turned her back on him and knelt in the center of the carpet. That was the agreed position. Only minutes later, the door opened, and her requested Nyral dominant entered the suite.

“Very nice, Princess,” a deep voice told her. She wasn’t allowed to look at him until he gave her permission. In the privacy of these rooms, she followed the rules…mostly.

“On all fours,” the man demanded.

She dropped her hands down and stared at the carpet. Would he just fuck her? Some men were impatient like that.

Her mind spun, wondering. She was so distracted, she jumped when the man slid a glove with prickling needles over her ass.

“Hold still,” he snapped, and she froze. The needles scraped over her body. She shivered. It hurt so good. The man moved the glove over her tits, and her nipples hardened unbearably.

He stepped in front of her, and his cock bobbed in front of her face. “Suck my dick. And while you do, I want you to look at me.”

Her mouth closed over his cock. A musky scent filled her nostrils, and she met the man’s gaze. He had hazel eyes and a strong jaw. Young? Yes. Sexy? Absolutely. But it was the glitter in Leo’s blue eyes, a glitter she could only imagine, that spurred her on. She kept her gaze on Shaun, well aware that Leo stared at them.

“You have a wonderful mouth, Princess,” he murmured. His ungloved hand wrapped around the strands of her hair and made her scalp tingle. Her pussy ached. She loved the feel of a man’s cock in her mouth. Not any man’s. A dominant. A man who took control and kept it.

The man eased his hard length out of her mouth and used the gloved hand over her skin. She was so sensitive that she moaned when the scrape of the needles dug into her ass.

“Put your face in the carpet,” the man said in a low, compelling tone. “I want to see that beautiful ass in the air.”

She whimpered but obeyed. The carpet scratched her cheek, and she trembled when he stroked her back with the needles. Part of the thrill was wondering what he would do next. But nothing excited her more than knowing Leo watched them, watched her. She wanted him to see her submit, to see her the way this man saw her.

The strike of the cane made her yelp and lift her head. She growled at the man. Most dominants gave some kind of warning. But the sting rippled along her nerves, and her pussy throbbed for more.

“Bad little girl,” Shaun said and shook his head. “You’ll have to be punished.”

Her eyes narrowed while she observed him retrieve something from a drawer. A scarf. Was he going to blindfold her?

Before she knew what he was doing, he stuffed the thing in her mouth, and she choked a little. He tied the ends behind her head, catching strands of her hair and tightening the material on her lips. She glared at him. How the hell was she supposed to say her safe word if he gagged her? She bit and clawed, but the man captured her hands. “I’ll let you raise two fingers if you want to call it quits. But I don’t want to hear a sound from you.” His voice hardened. “Get your face back on the floor.”

She scrambled to comply. His voice, his roughness made her head spin and her nerves sizzle. Her cheeks burned, her ass throbbed, and her breath came in gasps. “Now I’m going to give you what you asked for.”

Her brain whirled. What had she asked for? Oh. Marks. Bruises. She needed to feel something, anything. When the cane whistled through the air, it stung her backside. The second strike hurt more. The third made her bite the scarf and tears leak from her eyes. Still she wouldn’t raise her hand. It hurt. God, it hurt.

“Princess,” Leo said in a warning tone.

She didn’t glance at him or lift her head. This was her punishment, her payment for failure. The pain was her pleasure. The sting of the cane dulled to a throb, and Shaun aimed lower, hitting the junction between her thighs. She jumped when it whacked her pussy. Then she moaned as desire, excitement, and need flooded her senses.

Shaun stopped and thrust three fingers inside her pussy. She pressed back, deepening the penetration, desperate for relief. His other hand connected with the sensitive skin of her ass. “Hold still.”

Tears dripped down her nose. He gave her no respite but speared her with his fingers and refused to send her over the edge. The urge to move, to take back control was so strong, Sera thought she might die from it. She remained still, her thoughts on Leo’s gaze. It intoxicated her, the thought that he stared at her while this other man aroused her.

When Shaun removed his fingers, she bit back a moan of protest. The scarf showed teeth marks when he untied it and took it from her mouth.

He tipped her chin to force her gaze to meet his, and she noticed his eyes glittered. “On the bed,” he ordered.

Her legs shook when she stumbled to her feet. She shot a glance at Leo. His cock was hard and made her mouth water. Why him? Why did he have to attract her even more than this handsome dominant who was going to fuck her?

She lay down on the bed, and Shaun gripped her hands to shackle them to the headboard. Her ass burned, bruised from the strikes with the cane. Tears clogged her throat. Helpless, she cast another glance at Leo. His heated gaze studied her from head to toe, missing nothing, clearly aroused by her position. She wanted
his
hands on her,
his
fingers inside her. Even when Shaun stripped her of all her resistance, she only thought of Leo and his hot gaze on her, not the hard hazel eyes of the man who’d caned her.

Shaun had crossed the room to a bag he must have brought with him. What would he use? A flogger? A dildo? Something else?

She froze when she watched him produce a disintegrator. Leo shot to his feet, but Shaun aimed the weapon at him. “Sit down,” Shaun ordered.

A muscle jumped in Leo’s cheek, but to Sera’s shock, he sat. Shaun’s lips curved. “So easy. She always thinks she has the upper hand.” The man crossed to the table and took the disintegrator Leo had set on the table, while keeping his weapon constantly aimed at her. He gestured to Leo’s hip. “You’re marked, so you know she’s a challenge. But she won’t live long enough to find out what she’s missing.”

“You’re wrong,” Leo answered.

“No, she’ll die,” Shaun said confidently. He gazed at her. She started to cross her legs, then stopped and glared at him. She refused to be ashamed. That she sought a little kinky sex was her business. It might get her killed, but it wasn’t wrong.

Shaun kept the disintegrator on Leo. Why didn’t he just kill her? Because he couldn’t kill them both. He was waiting for the rest of his team. “Princess, I wonder if you know who your bodyguard really is. That mark on his hip. You see how it’s a small knot?” His smile was razor thin. “On Nylar, a small mate mark means a lack of passion. You see it with arranged marriages and puppy love.” Shaun’s eyebrows rose. “Which was it, Leo Eyler? For such a small mark, she must have been less to you than a sister.”

Leo roared, then shot across the room. Sera thought he was dead. But the disintegrator blast missed him somehow, and Leo plowed into the man. A desperate struggle commenced. She yanked on the restraints. She called out to the watching eyes that were everywhere in this place. “Help!”

The door opened, and Barrett crashed into the room. She’d never been so relieved to see the big lug in her whole life. He had just released her restraints when Tony stumbled into the room, blood pouring from his eyes.

Sera screamed, her throat sore, her gaze riveted on the dying man.

Barrett cursed, and Leo, distracted by her scream, took a fist to the gut, doubled over, and released his hold on Shaun.

Shaun aimed the disintegrator at Leo, but Barrett launched in front of the blast.

When the dust from Barrett’s body fell to the floor, Sera’s vision turned black, blurry, and then, nothing.

* * *

When she came to, Leo was carrying her out of the suite hurriedly. Guilt, anguish, and frustration all ate at Sera. With Leo’s bloody lip, his white face, and pinched eyes, he looked like a man on the edge. She didn’t fight him.

Her fault. Those men had died because she hadn’t believed the Brotherhood really wanted her dead. Why should they? Whatever power she held was so dangerous and unpredictable, it wasn’t any use to anyone. But her reckless behavior may have cost two men their lives.

For the next few hours, she just existed. They had to give statements to the authorities. The man known as Shaun Reynald had escaped, though that hadn’t been his real name. It seemed like an eternity before they were able to leave.

Leo put his foot down and forbade the appearance at the Central Arena. Sera had been too heartsick to argue. Barrett and Tony had been with her only a few months, but she had liked them. They were nice men, dependable, sweet.

Dead.

Leo herded her through the process of getting her out of the Sethos Five police station and back to her shuttle. “Stop pushing me,” she snapped as he shoved her into the shuttle bay.

“Stop fighting me.”

“I’m not fighting you. Just don’t touch me.” She jerked away from him, and he gripped her arm.

“I’m not going to take my hands off you until I know you’re safe.” And he didn’t. Through the shuttle bay and onto the ship itself, he kept a hand around her arm. No matter how hard she tried to pull away, he kept her close.

On the ship, he made her wait while he checked every nook and cranny to make sure there was no danger. She didn’t care. Maybe she should have just let them kill her and be done with it. What difference did it make? The vision of Tony’s bloody corpse swam before her, haunting her.

In the whirl of the last few hours, she’d heard Leo tell the Sethos Five authorities that she’d fainted after Barrett died, that Tony had killed two assassins before his death, that Leo had dispatched two more.

“I’m safe,” she snapped when they stepped onto the shuttle. “Now get your fucking hands off me.”

“You won’t be safe until we’re far away from here.”

She hated him. He was so calm, so controlled in the face of all that blood and death. “You’re inhuman,” she shouted at him.

A muscle moved in his jaw. “Because I’m not hysterical?”

“You don’t feel
anything
.”

He said nothing to that but started to brush past her toward the cockpit. She grabbed his arm. “Is that why your mate mark is so small, Dom Boy? Because you can’t feel anything?” Taunting him, as the assassin had, wasn’t very smart or very kind. She was out of control, and she wanted to lash out at someone.

“I loved Shanie,” he said in a low, tight tone.

“Really? I think it’s hilarious that I’m depending on a man who let his mate be killed by a Brotherhood assassin. Kind of ironic, isn’t it?” The way he winced, the way the pain jerked across his face should have made her feel triumph. Instead she felt horrible. Rather than meet his gaze, she turned away and sat in the pilot’s chair. But he whipped the chair around to face him, his hands on the armrests.

“I’m not the man who was mated to Shanie Tao, Princess.” His face had a dark, hard expression. “I’ve had three years to become a lot more dangerous. That man is dead.”

Something in the way he’d said it, something in the way his mouth twisted told her she’d succeeded in wounding him. “Leo—”

Her stomach hurt. Hunted, there was no place safe for her. Her lower lips trembled. She wanted to cry, but she didn’t. A block of ice lay heavy in her chest, frozen, unmoving.

She wanted to touch him, reach out to him, but he flung away from her and flicked her chair forward. “Fly this bucket, Princess,” Leo ordered.

She glared at him as he flopped down beside her in the copilot’s chair. “I can’t. I can’t fly. I can’t feel. I can’t hide.” Her hands started to shake. Cold. She was so cold.

“You can, and you will,” Leo snapped. “Do it.”

Her hands flew to the controls, and she automatically did a systems check. Her subconscious went through all the motions and fired up the engines. Why she did it was a mystery to her. Perhaps it was the way the man ordered her to do it. Perhaps it was because he was completely unmoved.

It wasn’t until they careened out of Sethos Five’s orbit that she began to cry.

The cold that encased her heart melted, and a flood poured out.

Leo clicked on the autopilot and yanked her into his lap. He was warm where she was cold. He was hard where she’d given way. Her throat closed, but the tears wouldn’t stop. She sobbed for the two men who were dead. She cried for her mother, who’d died a horrific death before her eyes. She cried for her people, who were spread all over the galaxy. She cried for her freedom, which she’d never have again as long as the Brotherhood sought to kill her.

How long she buried her face in Leo’s chest, she didn’t know. Long enough for the knot in her belly to unravel and the block of ice in her chest to wash away. His hand stroked her hair, and he murmured, “Shh, Princess. It’s all right. You’re all right.”