Chapter Five

 

The rich, earthy smell of fresh caff brewing brought Achelle awake to thin lines of sunlight piercing partially drawn blinds. The hard nude body at her naked back brought her out of bed and across the room. She stumbled backward. Her arms pinwheeled and she slammed against the far wall.

The male was out of bed and across the room before she could blink, gripping her forearms and pulling her up against him, which flattened her breasts against his chest and pressed his erection into her stomach.

Damn.

Flushing, she pulled away from him to thump against the wall again. This time when he reached out to steady her, he left space between them.

Fast learner.

She looked up into Samius Pherein’s possessive green-blue eyes…and screamed. Full-throated, hands fisted, screamed.

When she ran out of breath, she took another and raged at him.

“How dare you, you liar, you wretched piece of space trash! You made me trust you, like you, and for what? To turn me into your whore?”

She beat at him with her fists as well as her words. He flinched under her attack but didn’t retreat. And when at last her strength ran out and her words slid together, no longer making sense, she sank to the floor and wept.

She had become what she’d promised her mother she would never be. Faces of the men she’d fucked last night flashed in her mind, burning her eyes, breaking her heart. How could she? And like it—no, love it?

He’d drugged her. That had to be the reason for her voracious sexual appetite, for her lack of inhibition—

“No.” Samius kneeled down in front of her and took her face in his hands. “I know what you’re thinking and you’re wrong. I didn’t make you a whore, I made you my wife. I didn’t drug you, what you felt last night was your body’s natural reaction to finding me, your mate.”

“My mate?” She rubbed away her tears with the heel of her hands. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You are Rane, Achelle, or at least part Rane. Our race is biologically programmed to recognize our mortal mates, our spouses, like I recognized you at the station. And you recognized me too. Otherwise I doubt you would’ve trusted me enough to leave with me.”

She brought her knees up to her chest, covering herself and forcing Samius to give her more space. “I made a mistake in trusting you. Obviously you’re a liar. I was desperate and stupid, that’s why I left with you. I needed a job.”

He ran his hands over the stubble on his head. “You’re wrong. If you look inside yourself you’ll see—”

“See what?” She lifted her hands palms out and noticed that they were shaking. The tremor grew and moved up her arms to shudder through her body. “That you’re my mate? Yeah, you must really be devoted to me giving me to all those men.”

All long lines and smooth muscle, he stood and paced away. “Last night was the Rane coupling ritual.” He turned to her and let out a heavy sigh as his gaze dropped to her chest. “Those men are my brothers and your protectors. They coupled with you and marked you, which bonded you to our family and ensured your fertility.”

Achelle placed a hand over her heart and felt dozens of small scars that made a circular pattern. Even though she didn’t want it, a feeling of rightness, of belonging permeated her psyche as she traced the circular scars with her fingertips. Her racing heart slowed and a feeling of calm swept away her anger and fear, allowing her to consider last night clearly.

A million questions sounded in her mind, but when she looked up at Samius, she didn’t have to ask them. His answers were there to pluck from his mind. He told her with his thoughts that her ability to see into him was part of the benefit of bonding.

What’s more, he believed everything he’d told her.

She shied away from the love she felt from him, the compassion and understanding, the regret that he’d frightened her. And then there was his lust, or the “coupling drive” as he called it, which would level off in a few days, no longer demanding they spend days in bed, coming together, reinforcing their bond.

He thought her beautiful.

Her gaze jumped to meet his. He had never wanted a female the way he wanted her. And she could use that. His love and lust were just waiting for her to take advantage of.

Sliding up the wall to a standing position, Achelle kept her eyes on him.

“How will you take advantage of my feelings for you, Mate?”

Startled, she gasped. She should have realized that the mind link worked both ways.

Recovering from the shock quickly, she lowered her gaze to his semihard cock and licked her lips.

 

Sam didn’t question the sudden change in his mate’s mood. They were just beginning their three-day bonding. If she wanted to take advantage of his hard-on, he sure as hell wasn’t going to discourage her. He’d much rather couple than fight. It didn’t matter that they’d come together again and again last night after his brothers had left.

They belonged in the three-day bonding bed and then together forever. Ranes mated for life.

At that moment, Sam’s mate pushed off the wall and sauntered to him, her hips rolling so she moved in a seductive glide. His gaze lifted to her plush breasts, her nipples hard and begging for his hands and mouth.

When she reached him, standing a finger-width away, she shocked him by pressing her hands to his chest and sliding down his body to kneel on the floor, her head level to his cock.

She looked up, met his eyes and licked her lips. Then she ducked her head and licked him from the tip of his head down his shaft, flicked and sucked on his balls. He cupped her head in his hands as she kissed her way up his shaft. When she blew on his oversensitive skin, he buried his fingers in her hair and held her to him as he fucked her face.

“Open your mouth wider,” he prompted as he thrust.

She complied and allowed him to move at his own pace, change from deep to shallow, fast to slow. When he moved deep, she swallowed him to the back of her throat. When he moved shallow, she wrapped one hand around his shaft and used the other to massage his balls.

Because of the mind link, she knew what would please him most, just as he knew when she began to tire.

He withdrew to pull her up into his arms, where she rubbed against him from hips to breasts with a delicate purr that reverberated through his body like a siren’s song. The pout in her parted lips seduced him into a kiss that tasted of their future together. The grip of her hand as she stroked his cock brought him back to the present.

Holding her hips, he walked them back to the bed where she pushed him backward. He hit the mattress. She stood over him, feet planted wide, hands on hips, all seductress until one reached her magenta eyes, which were opened wide and framed by raised eyebrows.

“Achelle?”

She gave him a smile that didn’t reach her eyes and climbed up on the bed to straddle his hips. He reached for her through their mind link but her nervous need blocked out anything else she might be feeling or thinking. All he felt of her emotions was uneasy desire. All he heard of her thoughts was tense need. She took him in an inch at a time, enveloping him with her heat, allowing him access to her body when she refused him entrance to her mind.

Eyes closed, hair spilling all around her in a golden curtain, she gripped him tight and began to move, rolling her hips. Sam watched her graceful, sensual movements, mesmerized by her beauty and the amazing fact that she was his mate.

He drove up into her, gripping her hips then sliding his hands up to cup her small, high breasts. Her breathy moans and sighs filled the room, growing louder, more intense with each thrust.

He slid his hands back down to her hips to help her pick up the rhythm and ride him as fast and hard as she wanted. She came on a curse, gripping him tight. He rolled so she was under him and found his own release as he watched her shudder beneath him.

As soon as he came, he was hard again.

She looked up at him, her brows coming together, her lower lip caught between her teeth. He could feel her surprise through their mind link.

“You are my mortal mate. I will always want you—no matter how recent our last coupling.”

He leaned down and licked at her bottom lip until she released it from the bite of her teeth. The kiss he gave her started soft but she took over, turning it hard, aggressive. Damn if she didn’t taste like highest heaven. Damn if she didn’t suck his tongue into her mouth as if he tasted every bit as good.

Without a conscious decision, he began to move over her, inside her. She was so slick, so tight. She scratched her nails down his back to embed them in his butt, urging him to go deeper. He reared back, braced her legs against his body and drove into her.

She arched off the bed, coming immediately. He smiled at the sight of her enraptured face, her hair tangled around her making her look wild, exotic, feral. When she began to quiet, he reached between her legs and teased her clit. Light, soft caresses at first. He became more insistent with his strokes when he felt her reach her peak once more.

They came together, each shouting the other’s name, both riding their passion so high they fought to breathe. The afterglow dazzled like a supernova, outshining everything before fading over what might have been minutes or years.

When he finally grew cognizant of his surroundings, he found all six of his brothers crowding around the bed. With an angry growl, he pulled the covers over his mate.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” He glared at them as Achelle pulled the covers even higher to hide her head.

Cannan cleared his throat and said, “We’ve been trying to reach you over the intercom—”

“My mate and I are in our three-day bonding bed. Has it been three days?” He made sure his question was loaded with sarcasm but truth be told, he wouldn’t have been all that surprised if the answer was yes. He felt as though he might’ve been in Achelle’s arms for hours or days.

“There’s been another accident at the main mine,” Cannan said, his fingers sliding over the slick, rubbery scars on his face. With a full-body jolt, the male seemed to realize what he was doing and dropped his hand to his side. “Twelve mineworkers trapped.”

“We wouldn’t disturb you,” Shome said, “but as head of the company we need—”

“You don’t need to tell me my duties. I know what my job entails.” Sam tugged at the sheet covering Achelle’s face. After three hard pulls, the sheet ripped, revealing wary eyes. “Achelle, there are lives at stake. Otherwise I would not leave our bonding bed. I will return as soon as I can.”

“I understand,” she said quietly, “and I don’t blame you.”

He felt sincerity packed behind her words and an emotional undercurrent that he didn’t have time to examine. With another quick tug of the sheet, her mouth came into view. He leaned down and gave her a short, soft kiss before rolling from the bed.

Unable to suppress a sigh of regret, he looked over his shoulder as he followed his brothers from the room. The bonding to his mortal mate had gone wrong from the start.

First they’d coupled without witness. Now he was leaving their three-day bonding bed on the first day. Things were not going well.

Up the stairs on the right, he entered his rooms, going straight to the cleanser. Under the hot rays of the cleanser beam, Sam mentally reached for Achelle through their mind link but she still kept him at a distance so he could only sense and hear far-flung feelings and thoughts, nothing personal, nothing close to her heart.

The cleanser beam blinked high then off. Sam stepped out of the chamber and headed for his closet. Selecting sturdy but worn mining clothes, he withdrew from his mind link with Achelle. He dressed quickly and met his brothers in the garage.

Seeing him, they all climbed into their monster-sized moon transport and headed out toward the main mine. For Sam’s sake, Cannan flew the transport only a few yards above the desolate surface of Twellen Moon. The vehicle’s high beams flashed over the clusters of houses located in each living compound they’d built to house their workers.

A couple hundred in all, the compounds were enveloped by enviro-shields that allowed the inhabitants to live in a copy of their home planet’s natural environment.

Because of the diversity in the races of their mineworkers, the environments of the compounds were diverse as well. Sam wondered if his mate preferred the environment of her human half’s planet, Earth, or of her Rane half’s planet, Cohere. The environments were very similar but he would ask her preference when he returned home.

The see-all was on, the small screen mounted on the dashboard showing live footage of the mining accident, moving from clips of the mine itself to the families of the mineworkers who were trapped.

This is a disaster, he thought.

“Agreed,” Essar and Errol said together.

Sam shut down his mind link while giving his brothers a good glare. The last thing he needed was six other voices in his head as he tried to work the problem at the mine. Sometimes the familial bond was more of a pain than a pleasure.

“Do we have a new plan?” Faolan asked from the back of the transport. He’d been at school when the mining accident occurred two months ago and they’d revised their emergency plan.

“Each of you is assigned a section of the mine to gather information. You have one hour then report back to me at the control room with everything you’ve learned. We’ll decide on a course of action from there.”

“How do we know which section—ouch!”

Sam glanced into the panoramic rearview mirror just in time to see Dell punching Faolan on the arm.

“We sent the new emergency plan to you at school. You were supposed to read it,” Dell said.

“I was a little busy with finals and then rushing back home when you finally decided to tell me Cannan was hurt. Not a lot of time to review the new plan, okay.”

“You’re an idiot,” Dell groused.

“I second that,” Shome said.

“Everyone shut the fuck up,” Sam said as Cannan pulled the transport into the cavernous main garage, which was filled with mineworkers, family members and reporters. “We’re here.”

* * * * *

For the life of her, Achelle couldn’t figure out where she was in relation to where she wanted to be. The all-know panels flashed a map at her whenever she hit the auto-locate button on the high-tech screens that were staggered around the house every dozen yards or so, but she couldn’t read a map worth crap.

“Where is the garage?” she asked, tucking her hands into the pockets of the wide-belted blue-and-brown-colored dress Samius had purchased for her at the station.

“The main garage is located in subbasement two,” the all-know replied in an over-sexualized female voice. The panel lit with a map again.

“Can you direct me?”

“Yes, please follow the blue arrows.” A fat arrow lit on the recessed ceiling a few yards ahead of where she stood in the hall.

Achelle put one newly shod foot in front of the other, following the arrows and suppressing her guilt.

Damn. Had she really seduced Samius in order to prevent him from reading her thoughts about leaving him?

“No less than he deserved,” she mumbled, trying to reassure herself that she wanted to leave. Really she did.

With a hard sigh, she stepped into a chute that rushed her to subbasement two on a stream of compressed air. Her long wavy hair twisted around her body like gold snakes as the skirt of her dress ballooned up around her boyish hips, and then her shoes clicked onto the slick surface of the highly shined floor as she landed softly in the subbasement. The smell of engine oil and afterburn hit her nose, making it burn and run the moment she stepped out of the chute.

She sniffled, looking around the large garage crammed with surface, short- and long-distance ships. A group of maintenance bots congregated around one mid-sized ship, chirping and clicking at each other in their bot language. She gave them a wide berth. As long as she didn’t get in their way, they’d ignore her.

I’m doing what I have to, Achelle thought. She decided to take the same flip ship she arrived in because the autopilot obviously worked. The rear door opened with a sibilant hiss. She stepped inside and the bright interior lights came on, making her blink as her eyes adjusted.

If Samius had known she would try to leave, he would have locked her away or put a guard on her. All his talk about family bonding and mates was nothing more than manipulative lies meant to make her stay. And she’d made him think he’d succeeded.

She squirmed around in the high-backed pilot’s seat, remembering how good he’d tasted, how wonderful he’d smelled, how amazing he’d felt as he made love to her.

Starting up the twin engines, she let out a huff. No, not made love. Love had nothing to do with it…except her heart pounded as she thought of his mouth pressing against hers, soft and sweet and then hard and aggressive, his hard body moving over her, inside her. The heat in his eyes as he looked at her as if she were the only female in the universe, the tenor in his voice as he moaned her name, the taste of his tongue as it tangled with hers.

She closed her eyes and groaned. Damn, he’d gotten to her.

With a disgusted growl, she flew the ship up out of the garage only to be inundated with traffic.

“What the—?”

As dozens of sets of blinding headlights flashed around her, she hit inquiry on the flight-info box. A stilted computerized voice said, “Traffic heavy on Twellen due to incident at the moon’s main mine.”

Ah, of course.

Achelle entered the destination of Ploice Two and engaged the autopilot. As she left the bright and shining moon behind for the deep darkness of space, she rubbed her eyes. Her fingers came away wet and she cursed her stupidity.

“I’m doing the right thing,” she assured herself. “He’s just as bad as Captain Grab-Ass—worse! At least the captain didn’t pretend to care about me.”

Determined to act nonchalant, she slumped back into the hard chair, stretched her legs out to rest her feet on the dash, and stared out the view screen into fathomless darkness until the hum of the engines and the sameness of space lulled her to sleep.

She jerked awake hours later when the ship warned her with a piercing chirp that the autopilot was disengaging. Sitting up straight, she watched Ploice Two fill the view screen. Its glittering rings revolved around the docking axis. Her heart kicked in her chest with excitement. She’d only ever docked in simulations, never a flip ship.

She hailed the station and hit her mic. “Requesting permission to dock.”

“Permission granted. Proceed to space four-twenty.”

With shaking hands, she gripped the controls and cautiously guided the one-person ship to the narrow space that the station master had indicated. The margin for error was next to nothing. The docking clamp opened like a giant metal claw and locked the ship into place. The engines automatically shut down, the song they hummed slowly fading to silence.

She unfolded from the pilot seat with a prayer of thanks to Faran, the bright god of safe travel. The view screen darkened, becoming a mirror. She scowled at her disheveled reflection. But before she could smooth her hands over the dress, the smart material the outfit was made of released the wrinkles, making it appear crisp and clean, as if she’d just put it on instead of slept in it.

Too bad her hair couldn’t do the same thing.

After gathering up her bedraggled hair, she twisted it into a rope and knotted it at the base of her skull. The style may not have been in fashion but at least she looked tidy.

If only she could do something about the lost look in her eyes.

With a sigh, she hit the release and stepped out of the small ship onto the dock, a lone traveler in a sea of pinprick stars and predators. The feeling of déjà vu licked up her spine, making her shiver. Once more she ducked her head and tried to blend as she left the docks for the ring.

This time the revolution of the ring placed her in the five-hundred circle, just where she needed to be—her first bit of good luck in…she didn’t know how long. Sam’s green-blue eyes rose in her mind, reminding her what it had felt like to be looked upon with love—damn lucky, that’s how it’d felt.

With a frustrated growl, she headed straight for the ship repair shop…and tripped over the damn trash bot a second time once she neared it. This time, however, she was quick to jump out of the way when the bot sprayed acid at her.

The stream of yellow liquid missed her by inches. More luck. With a smug smile, she turned and slammed into a male who clamped his hands around her upper arms and held her against him. He ducked his head and whispered in her ear, “I knew you’d come back. Waited for you. Didn’t like the plans that pretty boy had for you, did you?”

Captain Grab-Ass.

She jerked back, trying to break free. His fingers dug in with bruising force as he lowered his mouth to the side of her neck and bit. Hard.

Achelle stomped on his foot and twisted, forcing him to loosen his grip. The bot wasn’t the only one who knew a little self-defense. She sucked in some air to scream for help. Captain Grab-Ass slapped one hand over her mouth as he locked his other arm around her waist, pinning her arms down to her sides. He pulled her into the ship repair shop.

“Hey! No!” the same man who had yelled at her before about tripping over the trash bot yelled at the captain. “You want to assault some woman, do it somewhere else. Not in my establishment. Last thing I need is station security finding an excuse to search my shop.”

Achelle bit the soft cushion of the captain’s palm. He jerked away from her mouth but before she could scream he wrapped his hand around her neck, cutting off her air supply. Tears sprang in her eyes as she struggled to take a breath. She thrashed in his arms, kicking his shins, stomping on his feet. His dual grips on her throat and waist tightened, squeezing the life out of her like a boidae snake kills its prey.

Her vision blurred and dimmed. Her muscles weakened and quieted. Her body slumped and collapsed.

Her last thought was not of herself or the captain but of a green-blue-eyed man who claimed her as his mortal mate.