Mercenaries (29 page)

Alrigo lowered her to the soft, short alien leaves and went to work in earnest with delicate nibbles and a slow, swirling tongue. As he settled between her thighs, she gave into impulse and stroked the bunching muscles of his shoulder, the skin like velvet over granite.

Watch it, Cassidy,
she told herself.
You're supposed to seduce him into dropping his guard, not let him seduce you into dropping yours.

But, God, his mouth felt good as he gently tugged and suckled. It felt even better when he reached between her thighs. Tender fingertips traced her vaginal lips, stroking the soft hair before slipping between.

She was so slickly wet, even she was surprised. Alrigo groaned in lust. “No,” he rasped, his gaze flashing up to meet hers with sudden fierceness, “you can't claim this is rape.”

Cassidy stiffened—trust a man to find a way to spoil the mood—but then he brushed a skillful thumb across her clit as he raked her nipple with his teeth, and her eyes rolled back in her head.

Damn, he was
way
too good at that.

By the time he abandoned her breasts to work his way down her abdomen with tiny nipping bites, she was all but writhing. Anticipation curled in shimmering waves of heat in her belly.

Then Alrigo stopped to explore her bellybutton, and she thought she was going to explode. Despite her best intentions, she found herself spreading her legs and rolling her hips.

His pale gaze met hers across her panting breasts. “Like that?”

“You're a teasing son of a bitch, you know that?” she gasped.

Rune smiled slowly. “Why, yes.” He gave her navel another taunting swirl of his tongue.

Slowly, deliberately, Cassidy drew one long leg up his side in a long caress. She hooked a foot against his ass and dug in as she rolled her hips up. To her satisfaction, his eyes widened and a flush of lust rolled up his cheekbones.

She gave him a mocking smile. “I can play too, stud.”

He grinned, humor lighting his face, making him look almost boyish. “So you can.”

Then he rose off her, slid down between her thighs, and caught her behind the knees. She sucked in a breath as he spread her wide and buried his face against her sex.

He licked her once, slow and deep, as if she were some exotic sweet he wanted to capture on his tongue. Cassidy gasped, arching her spine at the burning intensity of the pleasure. He growled something guttural and settled in, almost attacking her flesh with a flurry of tongue flicks and slow laps and small, careful bites centered over and around her clit.

The ruthless pleasure rose, spiraling in a molten corkscrew up her spine until the muscles in her thighs quivered and jumped with the ferocity of her building orgasm.

Close. So close. But not quite.

It was all she could do not to beg him. She had to clench her teeth against the need.

He lifted his dark head to study her face. His mouth was wet. “You see?” he purred. “This is what I can do to you. Anytime.”

It took effort, but she managed a sneer. “You talk big, but I still haven't come.”

His teeth flashed. “You will.”

He rose onto hands and knees and crawled up her body like a big predator. Despite herself, she caught her breath as she watched him take his cock in hand and aim it for her wet, aching sex.

Don't let me get pregnant, comp,
she managed, despite the hot arousal steaming through her.

Understood,
the comp replied. It would mobilize her body's defenses against his sperm just as it would against any microbial invaders he happened to be harboring.

Cassidy didn't want any souvenirs of this little encounter. She suspected she'd have enough trouble forgetting it as it was.

Alrigo entered her slowly, taking his time as he worked his thickness into her tight sex. It had been too long for her, and Cassidy hissed through her teeth at the raw, dark delight. He felt huge, overwhelming, though God knew she was no virgin.

His pale silver eyes locked on hers, fierce and triumphant as he slid deeper and deeper. “Nice,” he breathed. “Very nice.” In to the balls at last, he started pulling out. “And tight. And wet.”

Panting, she managed to bare her teeth at him. “Give it your best shot, stud.”

He bared his back. “Oh, I will. Let's go.”

And then he started to thrust.

A
hot flush rode Cassidy's high cheekbones, and her pupils were dilated so wide they almost swallowed the gem green of her eyes. She gripped Rune's cock like a slick, breathtaking fist, so tight that every stroke sent blazing ecstacy rolling up his spine. He could feel the tiny contractions of her sex milking him, demonstrating just how close she was to coming herself.

Yet so much defiance blazed in that emerald gaze, he knew that though he might have won over her body, the battle for her heart hadn't even been joined.

Luckily, he enjoyed a challenge.

Rune braced his palms beside her shoulders and rolled his hips, using every bit of skill he'd learned on the women's deck, keeping his thrusts slow and deep.

It wasn't easy. She felt so slick and delicious that all he wanted to do was ride her hard, grind deep and ruthlessly until he came. And judging from the challenge in her eyes, she expected him to do just that.

But Rune had learned discipline from harsh teachers, so he clamped down hard on his control. He'd damn well bring her before he went over.

As if reading his mind, Cassidy wrapped her endless legs around his waist and began to hunch her hips in short, teasing strokes that tested his control. “How long do you think you can hold it, stud?”

He gritted his teeth. “Longer than you.”

“I don't think so.” But to his satisfaction, she was panting.

Tits of the Goddess, he liked her. Liked her defiance, her determination to win, her intelligence.

And of course, he loved her lush little body, from those snapping green eyes to those full breasts to the tight, creamy cunt and long, long legs. She was everything he'd ever wanted. And he was damn well going to claim her.

So Rune reared off her, scooped her long legs up, draped her calves over his shoulders, and slid back into her again. Just to make sure she got the full effect, he thrummed his thumb over her hard little clit.

She might be stubborn, but so was he.

CASSIDY caught her breath as delight drove up her spine like a spike.

God, he was good.

She could see how close he was. She knew she could have forced him over, but in this position, Alrigo was firmly in control.

And he felt like a beamer cannon in her cunt—thick, hard, merciless. Every single stroke maddened her, an effect heightened by his thumb circling her clit. She fought to hold her climax off, determined not to give in until he came.

Then he rose up on his knees, leaned hard against her, and ground. “Come,” he rumbled, with a single devastating stroke across her tight pearl timed at just the right moment.

Her climax came boiling out of nowhere, savage and irresistible. With a cry of mingled ecstacy and frustration, she came, her back arching with the frenzy of her orgasm.

“Yes,” he growled. “Yes!”

Alrigo threw his head back and slammed his hips against hers, circling hard, pounding deep. Spurring her climax to jolting new heights as he roared and came, the tendons standing rigid on his throat, every muscle in stark relief.

The sweet, dark pleasure was merciless, a luscious firestorm. By the time it retreated, Cassidy felt drained and boneless, sprawled beneath his hot weight in the leaves.

With a groan he dropped her legs and collapsed over her, fists braced on the ground. Panting hard, he grinned into her eyes. “I'll have you yet.”

Cassidy snarled at him even with her nervous system still jolting from the ferocity of her climax. “Fuck off.”

He laughed, a long, rolling boom of delight and anticipation. “I didn't think it would be easy.”

DRESSED in his armor again, Rune sat in the cockpit of Cassidy's fighter and studied the equipment he'd jury-rigged. A dim red light gleamed on the otherwise dark console.

It meant he'd succeeded in deploying the solar collectors on the wings, despite the damage that had forced him to go out and pop them up by hand. Evidently something mechanical had broken somewhere, either during the fight or the landing. In any case, the collectors were recharging the fighter's battery array now. Barring too much cloud cover, systems should be up and running again in forty-eight hours. Then he'd be able to recharge his beamer pistol and use the fighter's com system to call the
Conquest
.

Assuming they hadn't sent someone to look for him by then. When Rune didn't report back, his Wing Brothers would start the search even if nobody else did.

Unless the
Starrunner
and her sister ships won. His stomach sank at the thought. There were more than ten thousand men, women, and children on the
Conquest,
including the Wing Brothers he'd known since his boyhood on the
Invader
. If his ship was destroyed, he might as well be dead.

There was, of course, another possibility—that the
Conquest
had survived, but a search party from Cassidy's ship would arrive first. If that happened, Rune was finished anyway. His people would expect him to kill as many of the enemy as possible—including Cassidy.

Grimacing, he dragged a hand through his short hair. The idea of hurting her wound a knot of pain in his chest. Despite the demands of duty, he simply didn't think he could look into those brilliant green eyes and end her.

Suicide would be much easier—and that was just what he'd do, rather than let himself be taken prisoner. A captured warrior was considered shamed beyond redemption.

Bowing his head, Rune sent a quick prayer to the Warrior Goddess. He only hoped she granted him the luck he asked for. He'd need it. There were far too many things that could go wrong.

Too many of them were already doing just that. His own fighter had been so badly damaged, he couldn't even deploy the solar collectors. He'd been lucky he could figure out how to get Cassidy's operational.

“Shitpissfuck!”

Despite the situation, Cassidy's muffled curse lightened his grim mood. Grinning, Rune called, “Are you all right out there, Cassidy?”

“Fuck off!”

He laughed, his spirits lifting. He'd used mag restraints to secure Cassidy's wrists to one of the fighter's wing nacelles. She'd been fighting to free herself since he'd climbed into her cockpit; he'd used his sensors to monitor her increasingly frustrated struggles. Strong as she was, she still couldn't break the cables.

“You know, I am really looking forward to kicking your ass!” she shouted.

“And I'm looking forward to fucking yours.”

Something thumped hard against the wing—likely her foot. Her string of inventive curses had his brows rising and his lips twitching. She really was everything he'd ever wanted.

He just hoped he wasn't forced to kill her.