Page 15 of Betrothed to the Alien Mercenary
As the electric current that continuously tingled over my skin flicked off, my breathing faltered, and my heart started to pound furiously in my chest. I did not dare to look away from his gaze, certain that he was going to make the next move. I wanted him to do it, to touch me, to hold me. Anything to make me feel better after how much I’d messed up today. If Theronix knew, he’d be in here, jumping down my throat to remind me what was at stake. I wanted to forget about princesses and kingdoms, valuable Xyraxin and alliances. I definitely wanted to forget about assassins out for my life.
What I did want was obvious. I’d wanted it from the start, for reasons I hadn’t been able to vocalize—let alone admit to myself. I wanted to know where I stood. No more uncertainty, at least about this one thing. With his warm, calloused hand pressing against my belly through the thin fabric of the cool, formal summer dress, and his eyes boring holes into me, I spoke the question that had been plaguing me since last night: “What’s going on between us, Aramon? Tell me the truth, please.”
His eyes seemed to spark in the dark, gleaming from inside his eye sockets, his mouth forming into a ghoulish grin—a grin that made my toes curl in my sturdy boots, his gift from last night. It was impish, a little naughty, and pleased at the same time. I definitely should not have been able to read so much into that one grin, but I was certain I was right. Aramon was becoming easier and easier to decipher, but I still held my breath as I waited for his answer.
He raised his free hand and curled it around my throat, a gesture that was entirely possessive, a little threatening if it had been anyone but him. His fingers pressed tight against my skin, but not too tight, and they were a claim. That hand made me feel like he owned me, and it felt entirely wrong to respond to that with a rush of wetness and an ache low in my abdomen. His grin morphed into a very serious expression as he drawled, “Don’t you know?”
I helplessly raised a shoulder but did not move my head an inch. He held me trapped in more ways than one. With his heated gaze, the warm glow of his eyes, and that possessive hold around my neck. I knew I could break that grip and leave at any moment. There were at least a dozen moves I could use to escape, but I didn’t want to.
His eyes slipped from mine to linger on my mouth before they slid even lower. Shamelessly, he perused every inch of my body, and I felt that gaze like a physical caress as it glided over my breasts, along my waist, and over the curve of my hips. “You’re mine, my love,” he said, his voice lowering until it was a deep rumble that bordered on a growl. “You are my mate, my woman, my princess.”
With a snap, his gaze jumped back to my face—not audible, but it felt like a rubber band that had stretched to its limit and now settled back into shape. Aramon did not lie. I knew that with every fiber of my being; he hadn’t once lied in the meeting today, either. He hadn’t needed to say a thing to maintain his cover; everyone had simply assumed he was the real deal.
I felt that truth settle over me like a blanket, warming me against the cold of the desert night. It was what I needed to give in to the pull I felt for him. My eyes left the warm glow of his and took their own path along his body, admiring him—from his wide shoulders and the warm red tint of his skin to his heavy pectorals and the sculpted lines of his abs. There was a sharp V that delineated his hips and arrowed into the waistband of his pants. Thinking about where that V led made my breathing hitch and my pulse stutter in anticipation.
I wanted him. He wanted me. Right now, it didn’t need to be any more complicated than that. Reaching out, I placed my palms on his chest. “Want to not take your eyes off me in the shower?” It was a joke—but I was dead serious too, and not disappointed with his response. He threw back his head and laughed, his chest shaking beneath my fingers, his pulse pounding. Then his hand slid from my throat down between my breasts before joining the one still on my belly. The sensual caress made my legs tremble, but I didn’t need my legs anyway. Once he held my waist, he picked me up, and with a whoosh of rushing air, I was thrown over his shoulder.
His arm pinned my thighs to his chest, and the other slid over my thighs to stroke my now very prone butt. “You are not getting out of that one now that you said it, my love,” he growled. My body bounced and jiggled against him as he stalked from the sitting room, through the bedroom with its massive bed, and straight into the bathing chamber. “I am going to watch you so much you’re going to go crazy, and then I’m going to lick you, and fuck you, and lick you again. That’s a promise, got it?”
Chapter 13
Evie
If I thought I’d be able to maintain even a shred of control, I was a fool. Once I’d tantalized Aramon with that offer, all bets were off. He didn’t even give me a chance to undress but set me on my feet inside the shower and turned on the tap. I couldn’t even get the world to stop spinning from moving so fast when water splashed on my head—cool but rapidly warming. My dress got stuck to my skin and turned nearly transparent. Aramon was caught in that same spray, droplets rolling down his shoulders, along his throat, and lovingly finding the path of least resistance between his pecs and abs.
“Blazing suns, that’s so fucking pretty,” he said, his words roughly translated, his tone husky and low. “Look at your nipples, pretty woman. Look at that! That’s perfection.” His hands reached to cup them, and I sighed, leaning into that touch. My nipples were diamond hard, aching points. The fabric felt rough against my sensitive nerves, but that friction eased with the warmth of his palms. The way he was looking at me left no doubt that he found a wet, bedraggled Evie as sexy as a polished Evadne. Maybe he liked Evie even better, and that soothed an ache in my chest I hadn’t even realized was there most of the time.
“Oh, yeah?” I dared to tease him. “What about without the dress?” I should have known that taunting him was like waving a red flag in front of a bull, and the result was inevitable. I shrieked with shock when he reached up a hand, caught the neckline of the dress with his claws, and, with a ripping noise, shredded the front all the way to my hips.
"Yes, much better," he agreed in a tone that wasalmostpolite, as though we were talking about the weather. "Thank you for the suggestion, my love," he added with a grin. I opened my mouth to protest that this was a borrowed dress, that he had just destroyed the property of a Queen of Tarkan, but he didn't give me the chance. Dipping down, he pressed his mouth to mine. With pleasure dancing through my veins, I succumbed to the touch.
When our tongues touched and tangled, I was lost—caught in the maelstrom he created between us. My pulse did not pound in my throat; it pounded between my thighs with the building desire. It felt so good to cling to his shoulders and become a woman of passion and feelings only: a sensual creature of instinct. My back collided with the stone wall, and water sluiced hotly over every part of me. Aramon was a bulwark against the outside world, pinning me in the corner, where I was safe, where nothing could ever get to me but him.
His hands claimed me boldly, first my breasts, where he plucked at my sensitive peaks, then they freed me of more of the wet, clingy fabric. The dress fell in tatters at my feet, and I didn’t even care because he’d cupped my ass and picked me up, spreading my legs so he could press his still pants-covered cock against my folds. I moaned for him, the sounds I made desperate and lewd, which spurred him on. He muttered all kinds of dirty things to me, interspersed with a rainfall of compliments that fell on drought-stricken ears. He made me feel desired and beautiful, and he made me feel fully, undeniably me.
Then his hands slipped between us and found my wet folds and the sensitive bud of my clit. I came apart for him in seconds when he applied expert pressure with a pinch of his fingertips. “That’s it, beautiful. Come for me.” And I did. There was no other option but to shatter into a thousand pieces in his arms, to surrender to the tidal wave of pleasure that coursed through me. He growled when I shouted his name, and his face was a dangerous, macabre vision swimming in front of me—the red points of his eyes my center of gravity.
Aramon did not make anything easy, and this was no different. I was still panting through the last shudders of that fierce orgasm, but he was already back to stroking my clit, testing me this time and learning the shape of my most intimate parts. One thick finger speared into my passage, and I jerked in his grip, my heels digging into his ass and my nails into the skin over his shoulders. “Yes, that’s it,” he agreed. “You can come again; I know you can.”
He raised me in his arms as easily as if I were a dainty little flower. My legs went over his shoulders, my ass cradled in his large hands, and he replaced the finger in my core with his tongue. A growl rattled through my flesh, and then he sucked and licked, water dripping all over us from the array of showerheads, his skull gleaming in the bright overhead lights. “Aramon!” I shouted, head thrown back as that tongue slid up and started lapping at my turgid clit. I had nothing to hold onto now, could only balance in his grip and ride out the sensations. It was scary, and it was good, and I felt utterly spent and wrung out when my orgasm crested and crashed.
Limp and weak, my head reeling, he lowered me slowly into his arms, cradling me tenderly against his wide chest. I trembled, suddenly cold, though the water still ran hot over our flesh. Aramon’s leather pants had to be utterly wrecked, and they clung to my skin as we stood together beneath the spray. “How was that for watching?” he asked, startling a laugh out of me. The laugh caught me by surprise. Emotionally and physically, I felt wrung out, but that laugh was good—it made my chest feel light.
“Perfect,” I told him. I did not think I could handle the rest of the promises he’d made me, but I was very willing to try. Resting my head against his pecs, I breathed slow and deep; I’d try in a minute, when I felt a little stronger. The water turned off then, and cold air struck my skin, raising goosebumps all along my flesh. I started to shiver immediately and burrowed closer against Aramon’s warm chest.
“Come here, my love,” he rumbled against my wet hair. Then, he picked me up bridal style and tromped out of the shower stall with soggy noises, as water dripped from his soaked pants onto the marble floor. He was tender as he wrapped me up in thick, fluffy towels and started to rub me dry. Then, he carried me—with still soggy pants—into the bedroom and slid me beneath the many blankets into the bed. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”
I blinked after him, admiring his muscled back and narrow hips as he returned to the bathroom. The shower turned back on a moment later, and my ears perked up when I heard him growl, followed by a long, drawn-out moan that made my core tingle. Did he just go back into the bathroom to jerk off? Why?
My thoughts were confused and spinning by the time he returned, not even two minutes later. Dry this time and completely nude, his cock jutting proudly from his hips and still very much erect. “Still awake?” he asked, eyes twinkling as he turned to give me the best view of his cock, his hand lowering to stroke the rampant length. “Your turn to watch?”
I nodded immediately, now certain I had imagined the sound of that moan—or at least misunderstood what it meant. But Aramon’s brows lowered over his eyes, a frown marring his face, which was oddly handsome despite the ghoulish markings. “No, you are too tired. I need you rested for all the things I want to do to you.” He opened his mouth, the tip of his tongue licking along one of his sharper canine teeth. “And there’s so much I am going to do to your sexy body, mate.”
Mate. There, he said it again. My body tingled with happiness, veins singing with pleasure. He really was my mate. I hadn’t imagined any of that lust-at-first-sight stuff. Aramon meant home in a huge, terrifying galaxy—a galaxy that had been out to kill me for as long as I could remember. But not really me: Evadne. I had just been in the way. I dared to hope that, with Aramon in my corner, I might finally be safe. Truly safe. Forever. There could be no place safer than at the side of a notorious mercenary, could there?
I slipped my arms from beneath the blankets and stuck them out to him, and he came to me immediately, his mouth splitting into a wide, happy smile. “Oh, yeah?” I said, falling into a by-now-familiar pattern. It was too exciting to tease him, to taunt him. Each time I did, I could not regret it. “Promises, promises. More actions, less talking.” That made him laugh—a deep, throaty sound that washed over me and warmed my skin. It was a pleasure to bask in his mirth and share his smile; it was so full of life. With Aramon, I knew he was always true to himself and always able to look on the bright side. I had never known how much I needed that in my life, but I truly did.
He sauntered closer, his cock swaying tauntingly. It was beautiful—thick as my wrist, long, and crowned with a rounded head so dark it was almost black. The patterned bumps along the shaft were just as Evadne’s gossip had promised. But Aramon’s cock had another surprise: a piercing. One ring through the round, flared head, and bars forming a neat ladder on the upper side. His heavy balls hung beneath that thick length, swaying as he strutted closer. He called me pretty, but truthfully, so was he, and he made my mouth water.
