Katarina knew all this clinically. She’d studied diagrams and read long treatises.
But charts and diagrams didn’t prepare her for the real thing, especially not one attached to a Shareem.
She leaned forward and nuzzled it through the leather.
A small noise escaped Calder’s throat. So he
could
feel. She nuzzled the tip again then the shaft beneath it.
Calder growled, and his bare hand snaked through her hair. His other hand, still gloved, balled into a fist.
Katarina nuzzled some more, enjoying the feel of the cool leather and the hard, hot flesh behind it. She acted at his command, but what she did disarmed him.
“I like it,” she murmured. “So big and thick.”
Her own words startled her. She’d never have dreamed of saying that out loud. But it seemed to be all right to say it to him, her faceless captor.
“Lie down on your back.”
Katarina looked up. “But I thought—”
He put his gloved hand over her face. “Lie down.”
Katarina’s entire body tingled and she let herself more or less fall to the floor. She shivered when his large, dark body covered hers, so warm. He was so wonderfully warm.
“I want to see you,” she said. “Why won’t you show me your face?”
Calder didn’t answer. He jerked her skirt upward, baring her groin, but he didn’t touch her. Instead, he pressed his leather-covered cock right against her clit.
“Gods,” she whispered.
The burning sensation as he rubbed his cock against her made her want to scream.
She reached up to touch his face but he turned his head, and her hand fell on a swath of velvet.
“Please,” she repeated. “I want to look at you.”
“No.”
“You know what
I
look like.” She stifled a groan as his cock rubbed her swollen clit.
“Highborn women don’t like to show their faces, but I showed you mine. And so much more. It’s not fair.”
“You did not come here for me to be fair. You came here to give yourself to me.”
Sensations clawed for attention, the burning in her clit, the hot tingling all over her body. “It’s only a little thing,” she whimpered.
He put his face close to hers, but she could only see velvet and the glitter of his eyes. “Come for me and I’ll show you.”
Come. Climax.
The woman’s vulva squeezes the man’s penis, helping to stroke the man
into releasing his seed…
Katarina’s medical manuals never mentioned the dark power of it, the screaming need. How beautiful it felt. How she’d never want to stop.
Without realizing she did it, Katarina snaked her legs around Calder’s thighs and lifted herself to him. She rocked her hips, wanting him inside her,
needing
him inside her.
She’d never be able to take him, and at the same time, she wanted it more than anything in the world.
“Show me,” she shouted. “Please. Now!”
“I don’t like to be commanded.”
“Please. Oh please,” she babbled, too happy to care what she said.
She came. Katarina gasped for breath as waves of mad pleasure poured over her.
This was a hundred times better than when she brought herself off with her own hand at night.
He had to stop—she didn’t want him to
ever
stop. It was too much. It was not enough.
Calder released her and she fell back against the floor, panting. Her clit tingled, still wanting his touch, and an ache started in her heart.
“Please, I know you were burned. I’m not afraid to look at you.”
His voice went raw with fury. “Get up on your knees or you will have to beg harder than that for mercy.”
“I just want to see your face. To touch it.”
Calder lifted himself away from her, his warmth disappearing. Katarina scrambled to her feet and reached for him, sighing in pleasure when her hands closed on his warm, tall body.
Calder turned abruptly away. At the last minute, Katarina managed to grab the mask and yank it off. Shadowy candlelight fell on his face—and she gasped.
The right side of Calder’s face was handsome as sin, sculpted perfection around deep blue eyes, a hard jaw, a firm mouth.
The left side was a complete ruin.
Scars overlapped scars that twisted over his cheekbone and down his neck. The left side of his mouth was pulled into a perpetual frown, the skin around it mottled and ugly. His left eye was untouched, but scars streaked the brow and eyelid.
Katarina bit her lip as she touched his cheek, fingertips finding the smooth seams of the scars.
The burning had happened a long time ago, she could tell, but the pain of it lingered in his very blue eyes.
“This must have hurt you so much,” she whispered.
Calder snarled and jerked away.
“Calder…”
“No,” he growled, his voice harsh like it had been in the clinic. “I don’t want this with you.”
He swung around, black clothes swirling, and disappeared into the darkness beyond the candles.
“Wait!” Katarina tried to run after him but the stupid high heels impeded her.
Silence. The feeling of his presence dissipated, the soothing calm, the excitement, the peace, all gone.
Tears stung Katarina’s eyes. “Please. Calder, don’t leave me.”
As if in answer, lights went on in the room and a sudden whoosh of air extinguished the candles. Katarina found herself standing in a square room with a platform bed, a wall fountain and smoking, guttering candles.
It looked so ordinary, the magic of the darkness and the flickering light gone. She saw the cameras now, dark, shining lenses all over the ceiling and walls, surveying the room at every angle. He must have watched her through these before he’d entered.
Katarina looked for a hidden door through which Calder must have exited but she found only seamless black walls. After a few circuits of the room, she gave up and plunked on the bed.
She tugged off the boots and threw off the leather dress, not caring that she was mother-naked in a bright room with cameras all over it. Let him watch.
Katarina put on her tunic and pants and grabbed her sun-blocking robes, veils and breath mask. “I’m going,” she said to the air.
The entrance to the greenery-lined walkway shot open. Katarina plunged into the garden she’d thought so beautiful, now finding it overly exotic, the scent of the flowers too strong.
Soon she was running through the door that led to the dingy hall. The outside door opened for her as she hurried toward it, heat blasting her before she even made it outside.
Katarina slithered into sun-blocking robes and veils, grateful for the ability to hide her face. Behind her the door slammed shut with finality, the rusting metal as unyielding as it had been when she’d arrived.
Blinking back tears, Katarina pulled her veils over her face then walked into the street in search of a hovercab.
Chapter Four
Fuck.
Calder, pent-up and furious, paced the small quarters of his apartment. He’d always liked the contrast of his functional, minimal living space with the exotic décor of his lair, but today he wished he had more room to pace.
Damn her.
The minute she’d walked in, his plan to show the nervous medic what a Shareem truly was evaporated. She and her condescending highborn attitude were supposed to crumble like dust—she was supposed to learn that Calder would have the upper hand the next time he had to visit her clinic.
His plan had gone all to hell. Hence his frenzied pacing, like an animal in a cage.
Shareem were made for sex; they needed sex. Any woman could get Calder hard, his body built to react instantly and strongly to a woman’s pheromones. If
she
wanted it, his body wanted it too.
But that was a simple chemical reaction. What rarely happened was Calder looking at a woman and wanting to fuck her because of
her
, for the pure joy of it. This woman…
Calder slammed his fists into the white wall. His Shareem chemicals had shot all kinds of joy through him, and he’d wanted to touch every inch of her.
If she hadn’t been so damn curious he could still be in there, maybe with her on the padded platform, her legs around his hips while he enjoyed a good fuck.
Why had she ripped the mask from his face and ruined everything?
Women had seen him before—sometimes he decided they needed to see what kind of being they craved to be with. They’d scream in horror, those highborn, face-sculpted women, for whom physical beauty was easily purchased, and run from him. He’d hunt
them down and take them, which was what they wanted. That was the fantasy, to be ravished by The Beast.
I don’t want this with you
, he’d said to Katarina.
He wanted to
be
with her, and not through the stupid game of predator and prey.
Well, all right, he wouldn’t mind a little predator and prey fantasy with her, but he wanted the playing to be mutual. He wanted to hunt her, and when he caught her, have her laugh and kiss him and be happy to be caught.
He wanted it to be real.
What the fuck is the matter with me?
Calder strode to his sparsely furnished bedroom and slid back a wall panel to reveal a full-length mirror. Barely glancing at it, he began to remove his clothes.
“She’s just a woman who wanted The Beast,” he said out loud as he shucked his gloves and skin-tight tunic. “That’s why she came. No other reason.”
There could have been no other reason. What Calder offered was unique and dangerous and spoke to needs women didn’t want to examine too closely.
Calder didn’t ask women to examine their needs. He simply offered a way to let them put aside taboos and give in. If they didn’t give in, he taught them to.
He touched primal fears and primal needs, and women flocked to him for it.
Some left terrified, others more sated then they’d ever been in their lives. But he’d never had one complaint, never a threat of arrest or termination. No one ever talked about what happened in the lair of The Beast.
He’d never, ever stopped the game and fled, leaving a woman bewildered and calling after him.
Stupid, cock-brained asshole.
Calder pulled off his linen under tunic, his eyes on the mirror. His flat abdomen was tight with muscle, his chest massive, widening to broad, strong shoulders. A body made for power and pleasure.
The left side of Calder’s torso was a maze of scars, with a concave indentation below his rib cage covered with unnaturally smooth skin. The rest of his body was mottled with puckers of scar tissue. Beneath that lay bones that had been crushed and rebuilt molecule by molecule.
The right side of his body was not as bad as the left, but rows of scars laced his skin from collarbone to ankle.
Some of the skin grafts had come from the right side of his body, Dr. Laas desperately harvesting every bit of healthy skin. Repairing him had been tricky business. The bones had been easiest, pinned together and left to Shareem metabolism to heal.
The organs had taken much more time and much more pain. Dr. Laas had rebuilt every single one, and now they functioned as they were suppose to. Calder had convalesced for a damn long time, during which he’d sometimes wished she would just let him die.
He had healed, but the scarring, despite Dr. Laas’ work, remained. He looked a damn sight better than when he’d first been rolled out of the plasma fire, and he’d always be grateful for that. But even techniques that had evolved in the twenty years since hadn’t helped. The damage was simply too extensive.
Dr. Laas had once suggested cyber replacements but Calder had snarled so viciously that she’d never brought up the subject again. He didn’t want to be a damn cyborg, half man, half machine. It was bad enough being Shareem.
Calder pulled open the fly of his leggings and kicked them off. His legs had taken the worst of the burning, both mangled and twisted until they’d almost disintegrated.
Dr. Laas had painstakingly pieced them back together, ignoring her fellow scientists who predicted he’d never walk again.
She’d fixed him so that not only could he walk, but his muscles healed and regained most of their strength. Now his legs were taut and strong, though the skin was ruined beyond repair.
A vain man would have gotten rid of the mirror. Calder kept it so he’d never take himself for granted.
What he could now offer a woman was not a body to gaze at, a handsome smile to make her wet in an instant. He offered a technique, an experience they would never forget.
Calder faced his naked body, remembering the heat of Katarina’s pussy through the leather.
His already-hard cock tightened. There were no scars on
it
, thank the gods, except a few at the very base. He’d moved his thigh over it in time when he’d fallen. The DNAmo scientists had joked that of course a Shareem would protect his greatest asset.
Now the cock rose to full erection, a standard foot long. His hand went to it as he remembered Katarina pressing her face against it. She’d kissed and explored it, begged to see it.
He imagined her beautiful lips closing over it and he stifled a groan. He grabbed a tube from his bedside table, opened it, dribbled lube onto his hand.
He smoothed in the gel, biting his lip to keep himself from growling. If it had been Katarina’s hand slathering lube all over him, her hand gripping him, he’d have come already.
He closed his hand tightly and drew his fist up the length, his palm making a snapping noise as it came together at the end. He slid his hand down for a second stroke, and a third, building up speed.
His Shareem irises widened until his eyes were nothing but blue. He felt the pulsing at the base of his balls very quickly—he’d wanted to come ever since Katarina d’Arnal had walked into his house of pleasure.
Faster and faster. The sound of his hand was loud in the silent room. His hips rocked with the rhythm, his legs moving. Calder studied his ugly body in the mirror as his hand gave as much pleasure as it could.
He thought about Katarina, how sexy she looked in that tight red dress and the high-heeled boots. How she’d put her hands on her hips and smiled at herself in the mirror. Everything about her was innocence and warmth.