Deep Penetration; Alien Breeders I (41 page)

Actually, it had
been
more
unsatisfactory, he thought abruptly, and not merely because
he’d felt compelled to ignore his own urges until he was nearly
mindless. He’d wanted to make love to her and he hadn’t dared allow
her to see just how deeply she affected him. He wasn’t sure he
dared now and yet he knew if he didn’t give her something the
chances were far greater, now, that he would lose her than they’d
been before when he’d been so worried about it.

She had to
want t
o be with him. He
didn’t think he’d fully assimilated that until that moment. He’d
trusted in the dependency that he’d woven into her mind when he’d
pleasured her until it was torture and then rewarded her, but he’d
known all along that that wasn’t true love.

What he felt was, though. He would’ve
realized it sooner if he hadn’t been working so hard to convince
himself it was pure lust and the drive to produce an
heir.

It was the scariest fucking thing he’d
ever encountered and his dick thought so, too. It deflated as
abruptly as if it had sprung an air leak.

Emerald lifted her head and stared at
him in dismay. He could see she was struggling with whether to
mention it or not, wondering if it was something she’d done, or not
done.

Rolling to his side, he dumped her
onto the bed. He needed distance to consider both his situation and
his feelings, but he realized immediately that he wasn’t going to
get it. If he left now, Em would be convinced he didn’t want her or
care about her and beyond that, it would leave the fucking door
wide open for Koryn to step in. He wasn’t about to let that happen,
regardless of his doubts.

“
You didn’t … like the way
I was doing it?” she asked after a moment.

Fuck! It wasn’t embarrassing enough
he’d lost his erection? She wanted true confessions? He cleared his
throat uncomfortably. “It wasn’t that. I just … thought about
something.”

She paled. She didn’t leave him in
doubt long, though, of what thoughts that comment prompted.
“Mylor?”

He clapped his hand over
her mouth before he even thought about it. Actually, that was what
he’d intended. It was a little disconcerting to discover his hand
covered most of her face and not only silenced her, it cut off her
air. He removed his hand. “Don’t say that or think it!” he growled.
“I tortured myself with that enough while I was in that stinking
prison.” He sucked in a calming breath at the look on her face. “I
want to forget it. We
both
need to put it behind us. Leave it in the past
where it belongs.”

She looked more distressed instead of
less. Her eyes teared up, chasing his anger at the reminder of
Mylor with a healthy dose of alarm. “Gods, baby! Don’t do that! You
know it tears me up when you cry!”

She swallowed convulsively, blinking
her eyes rapidly to dispel the tears but that only made them roll
down her cheeks. Uttering an irritated breath, he slipped the arm
he’d been propped on beneath her and drew her against his length,
rubbing his hand soothingly along her back. To his relief, it
calmed her.

“
What you said before …
about the baby … that was really why you wanted to wait?” she asked
tentatively after a few moments.

Tariq wrestled with himself. “That was
part of it,” he said finally. “It was one thing to breed you when I
thought ….” He broke off, realizing that by the time he had gotten
around to breeding her their situation was already looking
dangerous enough he should have refrained then. He could’ve spared
her the ordeal Mylor had put her through if he hadn’t been so gods
damned focused on claiming her—spared her that part, anyway. He
didn’t think he could’ve done anything to protect her except making
the decision to send her away sooner, and it had taken all he could
do to make himself let go of her then. He tightened his hold on her
reflexively at the memory.

“
What was the other
reason?”

“
What?” he asked
blankly.

“
You said that was part of
the reason.”

He mentally kicked himself. “Most of
it, really. It isn’t that I want to wait. I just think it could
make things more dangerous for you and it would be better to assess
our situation and find a place to settle before we breed
again.”

She wiggled against his hold until she
could look up at his face. He met her gaze, trying to think of
another argument to distract her, and finally released an irritated
huff. “Koryn will be all over you the very gods damned minute the
test turns up positive!” he growled.

Emerald bit her lip and ducked her
head again, brushing a kiss along his chest. “It could take days of
dedicated fucking before it takes, though.”

Tariq felt his pulse leap. His cock
wasn’t far behind. Not that it didn’t rankle just a tad that she’d
referred to it as fucking, but he didn’t see any way to argue about
her terminology without making a confession he wasn’t sure he was
ready to make. It was bad enough she had him twisted in knots
without giving her more ammunition until he felt a little more
confident she wouldn’t turn it against him.

Instead, he dragged her up for a kiss.
“There is that,” he murmured huskily when he broke from her lips a
few moments later to explore her throat. “Gods, Em! I’ve missed
this. I’d begun to think I wasn’t ever ….”

“
Don’t think about it,”
Emerald whispered when he broke off, seeking his lips
again.

* * * *

Surprise and then anger washed through
Koryn when he returned from checking the sick bay for birth control
and discovered both Emerald and Tariq had vanished. It didn’t take
more than a moment to figure out where they’d disappeared to. After
glaring at the closed door of the cabin for several moments, he
finally headed back to the sick bay to perform the inventory he’d
planned. He discovered it was far harder to focus on his work that
it generally was, mostly because of the images that kept forming in
his mind and the anger that arose each time it did.

It pissed him off to be sent off on a
fool’s errand when Tariq, clearly, hadn’t had any intention of
holding off on breeding Emerald again, regardless of what he’d
said.

He considered that for a while and
realized once he’d cooled off a little that he hadn’t actually been
manipulated as he’d first thought. Tariq had obviously been angling
to outmaneuver him and had only intended to stall for time until
he’d had time to consider a plan.

That pissed him off more when he
realized Tariq had thought to keep Emerald to himself by refusing
to breed her right off. Short of reneging on his word, however, he
was foresworn and Tariq was too much a man of honor to break his
word.

No doubt that was like a knife in his
gut now! Just as clearly, he was trying to decide whether his honor
required that he keep a promise made under completely different
circumstances.

Well, he was right in one respect!
Things had certainly changed a great deal! Class rank no longer
applied to any of them when they’d broken from the society it had
sprung from. He was Tariq’s equal, not his social
inferior.

He considered that angrily
for several moments and realized that, regardless of social
standing, he still didn’t
feel
like Tariq’s equal.

Because he wasn’t. Tariq could kill
him inside of five minutes if it came down to a deadly contest. He
would’ve liked to believe that wasn’t so, but he knew better. If
Tariq had let himself grow soft once he took his place on the lower
council—maybe—but he hadn’t and Koryn doubted it would’ve made a
hell of a lot of difference even if he had.

It wasn’t as if he
had
no
idea of
how to defend himself. A certain amount of fight training was
required of everyone—whatever their station or life goals. He
hadn’t particularly relished getting his face, or his ribs, kicked
in, however, and he spent most of his time in his lab. Barring the
occasional verbal battles, he hadn’t actually had a lot of
opportunities to use any of the training he’d had.

Tariq, on the other hand, had been in
training or in battle much of his life.

It occurred to him rather forcefully
that it might be time to brush up on his battle skills. He and
Tariq had already come to blows over Emerald twice and he had a bad
feeling that there might be more battles ahead.

Unless he bowed out.

It didn’t take more than a second to
realize he wasn’t going to. Reason might triumph over pretty much
any other obstacle, but he couldn’t give Emerald up without a
fight. He didn’t think he could’ve if she’d told him she didn’t
care about him. He sure as hell couldn’t when she’d made it clear
she did.

He might not have any other choice but
to continue to share her with Tariq as they’d begun, but he
couldn’t give her up completely.

By the time he’d finished
inventorying the contents of the sick bay, he’d decided that love
might just have tainted his reasoning abilities. He and Tariq had
been best friends for much of their lives. However possessive Tariq
was of Emerald or unpredictable his temper where she was concerned,
he didn’t think it was going to come down to a battle to the death
and since beating
him
to a pulp wasn’t going to change Emerald’s mind and Tariq had
to know that, there would be no point to it.

Except, possibly, satisfaction for
Tariq.

It couldn’t hurt to brush up on his
self-defense techniques, he decided, since defending himself was
all he had any likelihood of accomplishing. Tariq wasn’t just far
more skilled than he was. He outweighed him by a good fifty
pounds—of rock solid muscle.

Tariq convinced him that reasoning, at
least, was completely sound when he met up with him in the galley
in search of food. He hadn’t bothered to dress, proof, if he’d
needed it, that Tariq fully intended to head directly back to
Emerald as soon as he’d found food.

Tariq looked him over and scowled. “We
won’t be needing the birth control.”

Koryn’s lips tightened. “I’d deduced
that.”

Tariq narrowed his eyes. “And before
you trot down to sick bay to collect a scanner, I’ll tell you
straight out—if you come near her with a gods damned scanner I’ll
shove it so far up your ass you’ll play hell ever finding it
again.”

Anger flashed through Koryn, potent
enough that he had to wrestle with the urge to punch Tariq in the
face. “I guess that means you disposed of your word of honor along
with everything else you left behind on Niribu,” he
growled.

Tariq flushed, balling his hands into
fists. He looked so furious for several moments, Koryn tensed to
duck and mentally reviewed the ship behind him in case he needed to
find an escape route quickly. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear
that,” he said after a long moment. “If you were anybody else,
you’d be spitting out your teeth right now.”

Koryn fought another round with his
temper. “She’ll only be fertile three days.”

Tariq looked more murderous at the
reminder. “True,” he finally responded tightly. “She’ll probably
want to rest a while after that.”

The taunt almost provoked Koryn into
tossing aside all sense of self-preservation. He wasn’t certain it
wouldn’t have except that even as he tensed to spring, he saw that
Emerald had come to the door of the cabin and was watching the two
of them.

“
You said you understood,”
she said, drawing Tariq’s attention.

He didn’t recall saying anything of
the sort! In point of fact, he knew fucking well he hadn’t! Emerald
had distracted him by embracing him and telling him she loved him
and he’d kissed her and lost what little brain function he had
left.

“
Go back to bed, baby,”
Tariq growled.

She met his gaze for a
long moment and then flicked a look at Koryn before returning her
attention to Tariq. Folding her arms under her bare breasts, she
leaned against the door frame. “I didn’t like it when the two of
you decided to share me as if what I wanted didn’t matter—which it
didn’t—to either of you. I was nothing but a possession. I fell in
love with both of you because, despite your arrogance, despite the
things you did, despite your complete disregard for my rights as a
human being to make my own decisions, I realized that, in your own
way, you were trying to protect me … because, I thought, I actually
did matter to both of you. I’m not your possession. I’m not a
thing. I’m a person and I would love to be your woman—to both of
you. Because I love
both
of you. It worked before. It can still work, but
you’ll both have to get past the belief that your wants and needs
are more important than mine and that I only exist to be your
possession.

“
You can still hold me
against my will. I’m well aware of that, but you’re going have to
decide whether you want to own me and not have me, or have me and
not own me. I don’t know—maybe it would help to consider how you
would treat an Anunnaki woman?”

Tariq scowled at the empty doorway
when she turned away. When the door closed, he flicked a look at
Koryn to see what he thought about Emerald’s announcement. It made
him feel better to see that Koryn was as outraged as he
was.