Three Worlds 01 - Seduce Me In Dreams (30 page)

“That‟s not your business,” he said sharply, suddenly surging to his feet because he simply could not be sitting down while she sidled up to him. It made him feel completely off his mark. Almost subordinate. Like she was the one with all the power.

But she didn‟t have power and neither did he. Didn‟t she see that? Didn‟t she appreciate how much danger the worlds had to offer?

“Very well.” She paused for only a beat. “I spoke with the Chosen Ones. We have all agreed that, for now, we will offer our services to the Interplanetary Militia. This solves both the problem of what to do with us and how to explain our presence on this ship. You found an excellent resource for the IM to use and brought it to them.”

It sounded so perfunctory, so coldly matter of fact. So simple when it was anything but.

“It also allows you and me to remain close so you can satisfy your desire to protect me,”

she added.

That wasn‟t the only desire he wanted to satisfy, damn it, and he‟d bet big money that she knew it. Well, he had to shake that notion out of her head straight off.

“See, that just proves how naïve you really are,” he said in hard bursts. “I won‟t be around. I‟m never around. I‟m either on-mission or I‟m training my troops for being on-mission or I‟m being briefed on my next mission. I‟m never, ever around. If you think we‟re going to play house together and have romantic dinners every night, you‟re sorely mistaken.”

Bronse reached out to grab her by her shoulders and shake her when she gave him a serene smile. Wasn‟t she listening to him? Didn‟t she understand? He was an ETF First Active soldier. The best of the best when it came to soldiering and the worst of the worst when it came to relationships.

“I don‟t recall ever asking for romantic dinners,” she mused blithely.

Bronse snapped. Maybe it was anger, maybe it was frustration, but whatever it was it was powerful and unstoppable. He spun her around hard and shoved her across the room toward the door.

“Do yourself a favor and get out!” he barked at her.

“I‟m not leaving.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Well, you just said you‟re never around.”

Bronse tried not to growl out in frustration. “You‟re not making any sense!”

“No. I make perfect sense. If you are never around, that means I should take advantage of every moment that you
are
around. But I think my being here is making you very uncomfortable, and I am curious as to why that is.”

“Maybe it‟s because you‟re in my fucking bedroom when my crew is marching watch in the corridor only a few sheets of metal away! I‟ve compromised the integrity of this ship and this crew enough for one mission, Ravenna. I‟m not going to compound the issue!”

He grabbed hold of her arm and tried to march her toward the door, but she ducked and slipped right out of his hand, moving back toward his bed. Bronse had to stop her. He didn‟t think he could stand the sight of her in his bed again. It would play tawdry tricks with his imagination—more so than the scent of her perfume was already doing. That intoxicating Ayalya spice was just about killing him. Just breathing it in was making him hard. He had to get her out of his room. He refused to force his crew to “pretend” to not see or know any of this. He‟d disgraced them enough. He needed to take back control. He needed to prove to himself that he could.

“I want you to leave. Can I make it any clearer? Are you going to make me use force?”

“Hmm.” She hummed that as if contemplating the possibilities, and abruptly he was contemplating them too.

Then suddenly he wasn‟t just contemplating. He all but pounced on her, grabbing her by both arms and slamming her up hard against his chest and body. So hard that the air left her lungs in a sudden gust.

“You‟re doing this on purpose,” he gritted out between his teeth, trying not to notice how her body heat seemed to burn so much fiercer than his own. She was so hot in so many ways.

“I never made a secret of that,” she said. “Do you want to know what I see?”

As she asked the question, she reached to place one hand over his heart and the other around his neck. He squeezed her hard between his hands.

“Is it the same thing you saw when you read me before I went back to find out where the Nomaads were?” he asked. “Don‟t you see? You‟re afraid of me. Afraid of what I do. You can‟t read my fortune every time I go off on a mission just to see if it will turn out okay!”

“Why not?” she asked simply. “I have a power and I‟m going to use it. If it benefits you, I see no wrong in it.”

“It‟s the fear that I see is wrong,” he said with intensity. “You‟re afraid of what I do. By the Being, could you see yourself if this ever really went anywhere? You‟d be a basket case, afraid of what I might be doing or how I might be trying to get myself killed!”

“Think that if you must. If it gives you comfort. But you don‟t look comforted, Bronse,”

she said softly. “You look like you‟re the one who‟s scared.”

Bronse‟s brain hazed over with emotion, more than he could identify right then all at once.

“You have no idea what you‟re getting into,” he hissed softly. He lurched forward, just a single hard step, and she hit the side of his bed and fell down onto it.

No. He actually threw her onto it, he confessed to himself as he flipped her hard onto her belly and followed her down with a fierce caging of his body over hers. He pressed down over her, his whole body screaming with the relief of feeling her beneath him again. There was a way, he realized, of making his point to her
and
satisfying this unholy craving he had for her. As he yanked her onto her knees and against his chest, he groaned with uncontrolled pleasure when her bottom rose up against the fly of his uniform pants. He rubbed up hard against her, trying to relieve the pressure of his swiftly growing erection and serving only to make it worse. His hands were nothing less than harsh on her as they swept to embrace both her breasts through the fabric of the shirt she was wearing.

That was when he realized that it was his shirt. She wore only his shirt. Like some kind of brand he‟d stamped there himself, his mind swam with a possessive fury that rushed through him. She looked incredible like this. So curvaceous and feminine in an article of clothing meant for war in the desert. The blackness of it was stark against her soft skin, making it seem paler than it was. Making her seem somehow more vulnerable and more womanly all at once. No wonder the sight of her had been driving him crazy ever since he‟d walked in the door.

Normally he‟d have been more considerate, more patient. He‟d have preferred to shower to wash away the long hike they‟d taken to get to the ship. But he didn‟t care about niceties. In fact, lack of gentility was his very goal. She needed to learn more about him than just the gentleman she had seen last night. She needed to know just what she was getting herself into.

He shoved the hem of the shirt up over the round curve of her backside, baring her creamy smooth skin and that delightfully naughty curve of flesh that he was stroking in stronger and stronger passes of his hand. He wanted her to feel the rough calluses of a soldier‟s hands, to feel how uncivilized and coarse he could be even in the smallest details.

The problem was the way she pressed back against him, teasing his cock with the curve of her butt and taunting his sense of smell with the sudden wash of aroused female scent that drifted up between them. Unable to help himself against even the slightest impulse, he stroked her down between the split of her cheeks and straight into the hot and ready wetness waiting for him. His fingers were working inside of her an instant after that, testing her heat and tightness for what would come next.

Then he was ripping at the front of his trousers with growling impatience, freeing himself in just a few temperamental tugs until his swollen cock was lying hot against her. Without any preamble or anything even remotely resembling foreplay or gentlemanly behavior, he thrust himself into her, shoving into the dark liquid fist of her body and sinking deep and true to the hilt.

She gasped in a staggered breath, but at the same time she pushed back against him to make certain that she had him as deeply as she could. Bronse rose up to balance on his knees, digging them into the mattress even as he dug a bruising grip into her hips. With a surge of power he undulated into a deep, body-crashing thrust that sent an impact completely through her body. The next thrust was harder still, the sound he made raw and savage. But as rough as he was, as brutish as was his technique, she reached back to grab him by his shirt, fisting her fingers in deeply, holding him to her and telling him she wanted exactly what he was giving her.

But all he had for her was savagery, one blind and banging thrust after another until he finally heard her moan in an attractive breath of pleasure. He had meant to give her nothing, meant only to take, but that changed as he vented his frustration in passionate thrusts. Now he chased her. Chased her satisfaction down, fucked her to the very edge until she was forced to press her face down into the mattress and muffle the shouts ejecting from her body. He felt the very instant she broke into orgasm, felt it because he‟d never known anything so tight and wrenching to his soul. Then he was just blindly thrusting, taking her up off her knees with every impact until his chest was on fire for oxygen and his gut was clenched forever in anticipation. He finished with a ripping roar, the ejaculation streaking out of him in vicious pulses that were pain and pleasure combined. Only the clench of his teeth kept him from shouting down the ship, and only the sudden brace of his hand kept him from falling down over her and crushing her flat beneath him.

Bronse kneeled there, propped over her, for several long minutes as he sucked hard for breath and tried to focus. He‟d never felt anything so incredible in all his life, and had never done anything so damning. His behavior had been appalling, had gone against everything he‟d ever trained himself to be when it came to women. The worst part was that he couldn‟t see what she had done to deserve it. What had seemed to have logic in the heat of the moment was now lost on him. It was one of the most horrific moments of realization he‟d ever had.

Drawing himself from her, he fell back onto the bed, his hands scrubbing up to cover his face as waves of shameful guilt rode over him. Why had he done this? Why had he been such a bastard to her?

“Bronse.”

She said his name, still breathless with her exertions, and then slid herself over him. She straddled his body, her hot, wet core slipping over his relaxed penis and lower belly. He looked at her, the sight of her astride him so painfully wonderful that he could hardly stand it. She was driving him insane. He‟d utterly lost his mind. And yet she had the sweetest little smile playing at her lips as if he weren‟t the worst kind of jerk on the planet.

“Bronse, you don‟t have to be afraid of me,” she said softly to him, bending forward to give his lips a kiss too warm and affectionate for him to have deserved. “You don‟t have to be afraid I‟m going to ask for too much. Take too much. Be too much of a liability. That isn‟t what I want.”

“It‟s too late for that,” he said hoarsely. “You‟re already a liability. I haven‟t made a single right step since the moment I first laid eyes on you.”

“That‟s not true,” she soothed him softly, kissing him again until he was compelled to kiss her back. He started it off with confusion and compulsion, but by the time his tongue swept in to touch hers, he was starting to settle, starting to concede to the inevitability he saw before him. “You are doing much better than you think you are. But tell me,” she coaxed him, “why you are so afraid of me.”

Not of her, he realized, but of himself when he was with her. He was overwhelmed by how quickly she was getting under his skin. When he looked up into her beautiful face, he started to see cravings in himself that had no place in his life. He had already proved to himself that he wouldn‟t be able to have what his father and his uncles had had. His career choice had made it impossible. And he was afraid she would get too attached to him too quickly and would be hurt badly when he inevitably failed to satisfy her needs.

“Why,” she breathed softly against his mouth before kissing him, “are you assuming that what you feel for me is wrong?”

Put like that, Bronse felt his heart hiccup in his chest. What he felt for her? How could he feel anything for her? He hardly knew her! And she hardly knew him. Wasn‟t that what he was trying to prove just now as he had taken her so roughly and crudely?

And yet she had accepted it. Every minute of it. Hell, she‟d even taken her pleasure in it.

She‟d kept pace with him every single step of the way. How could someone so new to these sorts of things take to them so easily and with so little confusion? How was it that she always seemed to be thinking so clearly when he was a jumble of disorganized thoughts and feelings? He was supposed to have the coolest head in the business.

At least, that was true when it came to his work.

This was something else entirely.

But he kept confusing the issues because at the moment the issues were lying on top of one another just as surely as she was lying on top of him. Of course, they weren‟t reaching to strip off her shirt the way she was right then.

And just like that he was distracted from the turmoil of his thoughts by the creamy perfection of her skin and the startling dark points of her gorgeous nipples in full thrust and in full reach of his hands. Like metal to magnet, he stroked bold hands over her breasts, catching the nipples between his knuckles and tugging on them again and again as he kneaded her in leisurely pulls of his fingers and palms. She fit him so well like this, filling even his very big hands. As with everything else, it was as though she‟d been made to match him perfectly.

“I don‟t think it‟s wrong,” he said at last, speaking the words aloud and realizing that he believed them. She was anything but wrong for him. “It‟s just that I know how hard it is to be part of my life. I‟m not sure someone who is so strongly centered in home and family could ever find happiness waiting for me to show up.” Leaving her breasts, he stroked down over her ribs.