TICEES (4 page)

Chelan looked down at the bronze arm that surrounded her protectively, the corded muscles locked about her with a grip that told her that despite his sleep, he was poised for battle, forever prepared to defend what was his no matter what his state. Though he rested, he was alert and primed, a powder keg ready to detonate at a moment’s notice, an explosive that had to be consciously defused for normal interactions to occur.

She smiled. She had been an insignificant Earthling not long ago, but now she was the solution that dissolved the hardened war machine next to her, if only for fleeting moments. He was her poison, and she was his antidote.

Chelan drew in a long, soft breath, afraid to disrupt her breathing too much lest she disturb her Warlord. Her life on board the battleship RIBUS 7 had thus far been a never-ending struggle from within and without. Chaos had ensued from the moment she had run into the alien landing party on Earth. Plucked from her world, she had lost all—her family, her friends, her home. All the foundation and structure of her life as she had known it had been splintered in a microsecond.

Chelan winced as her thoughts catapulted back through time to a point two Earth years ago. She had been so lost, floundering in an ocean of indecision, unhappy with everything and everyone, but no more disappointed in any one thing than she was in herself. In an effort to rescue herself from the quagmire of self-doubt that was suffocating her, she had gone on a vacation high in the Canadian Rockies to “find herself.” But who and what she had found were beyond the realm of belief.

Chelan felt a small residual tremor invade her as she relived the exact moment she had stumbled upon the Iceanean men shrouded in ominous black.
A cult
had been her first thought, but unbeknownst to her, the warriors who had claimed her were among the most powerful beings in the known galaxy. And though they took her aboard their ship with full intentions of nurturing and caring for her, her life with them had turned into one horrendous ordeal after another.

Her struggle to coexist with her captors had been complicated right from the beginning by unexpected perils that seemed to lurk around every corner. An insidious illness ravaged her on the heels of her abduction, and the brutality of the blade that these people lived by pursued her and terrorized her endlessly.

Chelan shuddered inwardly and then stilled herself, shelving the disturbing memories and forging on through her thoughts. She had weathered all manner of storms directed at her from her new reality, but what had taken the biggest toll on her were the struggles that arose from within herself. Shy, timid, and crippled by her own perceived inadequacies, here she was surrounded by the genetically elite. The men and women of RIBUS 7 were the crème de la crème of genetic engineering, the end result of millennia of selective breeding. They embodied perfection. She did not.

In the beginning, all those fundamental differences, physical and mental, were what had ensured her survival, drawing the Iceaneans to her like bees to honey. She was the antithesis of everything they stood for. She was peace, while they were war. She was an oasis of tranquility that soothed their strife. She was the tenderness that tempered their brutality, the softness that absorbed their steel. She was an enigma that shunted the savage beast out of conflict and into harmony, albeit at times only fleetingly.

In all aspects of their society, the Iceaneans were nothing like any race on Earth. They lived a life where a taste for vicious warfare was indulged and hungered for as voraciously as the carnal offerings of the flesh. Hands were tutored and tailored to caress just as effectively as to crush. In this world of free love, where bodies were shared as easily and as casually as their blades cleaved flesh, Chelan had truly floundered. She had never experienced anything like their world on Earth, nor had she ever encountered such harsh extremes. Her Earthborn boundaries of right and wrong were tested at every turn in a world where the concepts of compromise and clemency were as foreign as the notions of modesty and monogamy.

But what she had been forced to grapple with the most came from the Earthly values so cherished within her own heart. The Commander of RIBUS 7, Korba, had been the ultimate determinant to whether she lived or perished. It was by his final decree alone that she existed. He had personally overseen her recovery from her abduction and defied Iceanean law to keep her on board his vessel. And it was this man who now held her heart within his own.

But things had not been so simple in the beginning, and as fate would have it, Korba had been taken from her early by the call to war. When he had been presumed dead at one dark moment in time, Chelan was cast headlong into the Iceanean world of free love, easy sex, and brutality. The men who took over her care offered all, tempting her at every opportunity, challenging her Earth values, and breaking down her resistance. Dar, the Commander of RIBUS 8, and Fremma, the head of security for RIBUS 7, were her caregivers, her tutors, and her weakness.

To the Iceaneans, monogamy had no logical basis, and Chelan’s stubborn allegiance to Korba was considered absurd on every level. But with the perceived death of her Warlord, Chelan found herself drawn closer and closer to the other two men. With time, the love she harbored for them blossomed and became undeniable.

But she was torn asunder, her Earth values clawing at her relentlessly and clashing constantly with the Iceaneans’. Both Dar and Fremma desperately wanted to share their love for her equally, unselfishly, and completely. But she could not bring herself to fully accept their ways, and loving the two great men so deeply was almost more than she could bear.

But deeper still was her own personal demon, a man in her past who had robbed her of her childhood in the most heinous of ways. His violation had left her struggling her entire life, dealing ineffectually with the fallout on her own, her secret buried as far down in her soul as she could possibly manage. To give herself to these men would be opening herself up to her past, resurrecting the entity that had so long ago stolen her innocence. And she could not let that happen.

But Dar and Fremma had been patient. They understood her reticence, her struggles, and her fears. They nurtured her, guided her, and through their attentive love and commitment, she pounded back the dark specter that overshadowed her every thought, her every move. She began to awaken in their arms.

Just as she was about to give her all to these men, her lost love was returned from the depths of hell. Her passion for Korba was rekindled, and finally Chelan was able to give the man all that she could, all that she had guarded and saved for him alone. She had shared her mind and soul with him before his departure, but now she shared with him her last gift, that of her body.

With her world forever lost to her, she now lived with the Iceaneans, and though she stood beside and made love to one of the most powerful man the universe had ever seen, inevitably, she stood in solitude. What principles she still clung to for comfort were hers alone, for none of those values where shared by the people she now lived among. But despite these small islands of Earth-bound allegiances, Chelan had finally come into her own. Nurtured by all three men, she weathered the storm of rediscovery, rebuilding herself from the inside out and becoming the strong, resilient woman she had always been meant to be. And as part of that amazing metamorphosis, she had come to embrace the Iceanean standards that allowed her to love all three men so deeply and on every level. She smiled to herself. If Jim could only see her now.

Chelan exhaled slowly and closed her eyes. But what really mattered above all else was the man beside her, her mate. To the universe, he was a killing machine, but in her new world, he was pure love. If she could have only one wish it would be to spend the rest of her life by his side, his powerful body surging over her endlessly. He was pure, raw sex, and the sudden thought of him sheathed within her caused a rush of desire to pound through her so deep and hard that she froze, but her body had already betrayed her, waking the beast beside her.

Chelan felt Korba stir, and his powerful arm drew her closer into him. The palm of his large hand pressed firmly into her abdomen, and she felt a tide of warmth overtake her. She wondered if she could ever be in the company of the giant Warlord without waves of need washing through her body. The mere sight of him and his flawless masculinity, especially in his black military uniform, armed and ready for battle, always stirred her. The capability and strength his garb represented weakened her knees and caused her heart to falter. But regardless of dress, she found that his presence set her instantly on fire with an insatiable appetite for his touch and a desire to be taken immediately by him.

Chelan closed her eyes and set her jaw. It was happening again, and she knew that if they began, she would never leave the bed, not even for all the nefarious arrangements she had planned for the day. She felt his lips on her neck, setting off a tidal wave of sensation, and her defenses nearly crumbled. She remained still, trying to ignore his soft nips, but his hand moved to cup her breast, and she melted. She arched her neck back, looking up into his smiling face.

He kissed her lips briefly as he teased her nipple with his fingers. “You arouse too easily, my Lady,” he needled in a baritone rumble.

Chelan hesitated and then rolled toward him. “If you were me and had spent all your developing years in the hands of uncontrolled and inept Earth men, you would find yourself responding quickly to one so gentle, so caring, and so patient”—she paused, looking deep into his azure eyes—“and to one so experienced, so eager to please, and so perfect.” Her tongue traced his lips as she pressed her body seductively into his.

Korba smiled down at her. “I’m afraid I cannot condemn all men of Earth, Chelan. They may lack our prowess and control, but somewhere, somehow, generations of them helped to produce you, and for that I am forever grateful.”

Chelan glowed and then grinned as she felt him harden against her pelvis. She drew in a ragged breath. “And you do not arouse easily, my Lord?” she quipped.

Korba leaned in and began to savor her slender neck as he raised her leg over his waist. “If you had just spent the last thirteen Iceanean years abstaining from the pleasures of our women, their aggressive pursuits never-ending, and had spent all previous times in the arms of these women whose bodies have the hardness of our men’s, you would not ask such a question. Especially when you present me with the soft, full body of a goddess. Besides, my Lady, around you I am always aroused, no matter what my outward male state.”

Chelan grabbed his long, blue-black hair, pulling him into her, her tongue exploring his mouth. Then she yielded to his words of love and was rewarded with his commanding, controlled penetration. Korba withdrew, ever so slowly, and then entered her again, one long, deep push. Chelan clung to him, and he rolled her to her back, taking his weight on his arms. He stayed buried in her as his lips tasted her neck, her jaw, her mouth … her beauty.

Chelan felt like putty, his gentle passion filling her with love and ecstasy. Her fingers feathered along his broad chest, and she whispered in his ear. “Lie on me, please.”

Korba looked down into her chocolate-brown eyes as her long, slender legs wound around him like an exotic vine. He moved his pelvis slowly, torturously, withdrawing from her depths fully before resheathing himself deeper still. “I would crush you, my pretty woman,” he whispered.

Chelan shook her head. “I want to feel all of you over me, on me, in me. Please. I want your weight, your strength, your protection.” And she reached up and took his lower lip with her teeth, drawing him down to her. She heard a deep growl emanate from his chest as he submitted to her soft pleadings, and she smiled to herself.

Korba explored her honeyed mouth as he slid his thickness out of her again, this time lingering at her moist entry until she moaned to be filled. Releasing her lips, he entered into her again, watching her carefully. And when he was fully embedded within her hot, tight depths, he began letting his densely muscled body down onto her ever so slowly.

Chelan bit into his neck, his waist-length mane cascading over her, its tendrils mingling with her golden brown strands on the pillow in a dance of light and dark. Her hands reached around his sides, her long nails seeking purchase along his iron-hard torso. She felt him lower himself further, and only when his body ceased all motion did she dare to take a shallow breath. This is where she wanted to be, under him, safe from everything around her, smothered by him.

But Korba did not linger long. He took up just enough of his weight so that her lungs could expand, and he looked down at the porcelain beauty dwarfed by his powerful bronze frame. He drew her arms above her head and gazed at her full breasts kissing his chest, and an unexpected explosion rippled through his body. He rose up, watching his swollen shaft withdraw from her delicate folds, his skin glistening with her cream, and he groaned. Suddenly, all he wanted was to feel her, possess her, and to take her hard.

His azure eyes ignited, and he threw his head back, arching into her. Chelan gasped at his sudden change from delicate lover to feral predator. She felt him pulse inside her, his thickness stretching her further, filling her completely. Then he hunched over her, grasping her nipple with his teeth. One arm hooked under her knee, drawing her leg up farther and spreading her wide for his dominion. He plunged into her while sucking her hard, milking her breast with fervor. Chelan cried out in rapture, his powerful entries stroking her perfectly. Suddenly, she contacted around him, every muscle in her body clenching with release.

Korba freed her breast, driving deep one last time as he shuddered with his own powerful orgasm. “Oh, god, woman,” he rumbled deeply as he sagged lightly onto her. He continued to move within her as his tremors rolled over him, his pelvis smoothing over her slippery flesh as he descended from the heights of passion. He released her leg and held her face with both hands. His tongue coursed over her salty skin, tasting her, savoring her, claiming her as his. Then he rolled to his side, taking her with him, his fullness still deep within her. “Oh, pretty woman … you are mine.”