Marauder Read online

  When she didn’t respond fast enough, he grabbed her arm and led/dragged her toward the field where the Marauder waited.

  “War is coming,” Arton yelled at Rex’s back. “Unless you desert us entirely, you will be forced to choose a side!”

  She twisted her arm out of Rex’s grasp but kept up with his angry pace. “What was that about?”

  “Xorran, the tracker, thinks he found the entrance to the Sarronti’s cavern. Kage wants to try and draw them out. What he’s really doing is starting a war and I want no part of it.”

  Here we go again, she muttered silently. She was away from the Wheel for an hour and already there were serious changes. Did this star system ever slow down? She’d heard Xorran’s name before, but she wasn’t sure what it meant to be a tracker. She’d never heard the name Sarronti before, wasn’t even sure if it was a group of people or some new vile creature. “What or who is Sarronti? And what exactly is a tracker. I’d never heard the term until Xorran joined the Outcasts.”

  “Arton has been dream sharing with a female Sarronti. He said she has grown progressively more agitated and threatening, but he is convinced she’s real.”

  “Did this elf tell him to call her people the Sarronti?”

  “Yes.” Rex gestured helplessly with his hands. “I know it sounds foolish, but he’s very convincing. He also warns that the Sarronti might look ethereal, almost angelic, but they are dangerous. The one he’s been dream sharing with controls the battle cats, and they’ve already drawn first blood.”

  “If the Sarronti are real, why is Arton the only one who has seen them?” The entire thing was so bizarre. Adversarial elves and battle cats. It was like the harbinger spent too much time playing Warcraft.

  “You’d have to ask the elf. Even Arton isn’t sure why she chose him to be her contact person.”

  Rather than dwell on something they basically had to take on faith, she switched to the other topic. “And Xorran. Is tracker an occupation or an ability?” They reached the Marauder, so Rex didn’t reply until they’d been cleared by security. “You’re the commander. Do they scan you every time you board the ship?”

  “They better. I instigated the rule. Shapeshifters are rare, but there are several holo-masks that are pretty damn convincing.”

  She nodded. “The jerk who kidnapped Lily used one.”

  “That’d be Torrin Havier,” Rex muttered.

  She looked at him, confused by his apparent dislike. “Not a fan?”

  “I don’t know him well enough to dislike him, but his reputation is pretty dubious.”

  She chuckled. “So is yours.”

  They reached his cabin before he answered her earlier question. “Tracker is a Bilarrian ability. I’ve never asked him pointblank, but Xorran is rumored to possess it.”

  “Is he full-blooded Bilarrian? Most hybrids don’t have magic abilities.” As they stepped away from the door, it slid closed behind them and Thea’s pulse began to race. Even after two weeks of shared intimacies with Rex, her body still reacted like this every time they were alone together. “Whenever someone mentions Xorran, there’s a certain awe in their voice.”

  He shrugged, but possessive hunger flickered to life within his dark eyes. He stalked toward her, gaze narrowed and bright. “Why the sudden interest?”

  “Just general curiosity.” Possessiveness was a trait that usually turned her off, so why did seeing Rex’s jealousy make her hot and tingly? Unable to resist the temptation, she slowly licked her lips. “Even if it were more than curiosity, it would be none of your business.” She lowered her voice to a sensual purr. “You haven’t claimed me yet.”

  With predictable fervor, he lunged, pressing her up against the bulkhead and dragging her hands above her head. “Is that a challenge?”

  “Point of fact.” She met his gaze, fighting hard to keep the triumph out of her expression. She’d wanted to be back in his arms since they left Linusia. He’d been too busy to give her attention on the Marauder. Their return trip had been one minor crisis after another. Provoking him was the quickest way to get what she wanted—him buried deep inside her.

  Rather than bother with banter, he covered her mouth with his and showed her just how intent he was on claiming her. Her senses came alive with a flare of intensity, making her moan and arch. She returned the kiss wildly and rubbed against him, desperate to get closer.

  His fingers tangled in her hair and her wrists were suddenly free. She moved one hand to the back of his neck and became the aggressor in the kiss. She felt restless, consumed by a longing she didn’t fully understand. Each time they touched, and especially when they kissed, she sensed something wild and wonderful just out of reach.

  Their tongues dueled, sliding from her mouth to his and back. He only allowed her to lead because he was distracted by her clothing. She could feel the urgency building inside him as their link came alive, humming with desire and tenderness. He released her hair long enough to unbutton her blouse and drag the material off her shoulders. She freed her arms from the sleeves, then pulled the stretchy undershirt off over her head, momentarily separating their mouths.

  A throaty growl escaped him, and then he cupped her breasts, his palms warm and firm on her bare skin. She tried to guide his mouth back to hers, needing the sweet intimacy of their kisses. He had other ideas, other priorities. Encircling her waist to anchor her lower body against his, he bent to her breasts. Her nipple was sucked between his lips and she gasped, arching helplessly as tingles spread through her torso. He sucked firmly, teasing the other side with his fingers. And just when she’d adjusted to the sensations, he switched sides.

  She moaned. Her core tightened and her clit tingled, her body already craving the fullness of his. But she didn’t hurry him, loved the way he built the fire gradually and inundated her mind with emotion as her body burned. She arched her back, pressing her breasts closer to his mouth. Then she slid her hands up his muscular arms and buried her fingers in his hair. One encountered his familial braids, impeding her movement, so she moved to his shoulder, squeezing the firm muscle she found there.

  He suddenly swept her off her feet and carried her to the bed, his mouth finally returning to hers. They kissed, deeply, passionately, long after he reached their destination. He just cradled her against his chest like she weighed nothing while they shared their taste and breath with each other.

  Long moments later, he carefully placed her on the bed and pulled off her boots. Then he urged her over backward as he knelt beside the bed. She knew what came next, loved that he enjoyed licking her as much as she enjoyed being licked. She just wished he would occasionally allow her to return the favor. He’d only waited to join their bodies long enough for her to explore him with her mouth once since she’d gone down on him in the market. She knew it was a matter of control. Rex preferred to watch her completely lose it than surrender the same control to her. It was a preference she was happy to live with because the outcome was so pleasurable.

  Rather than undressing her completely, he simply tossed her skirt up and pulled off her underwear. Then he dragged her hips to the edge of the bed and draped her legs over his broad shoulders. She closed her eyes and rational thought scattered as soon as his mouth settled over her sex. His tongue traced her crease, teasing her with light, feathery touches.

  She stilled, focused entirely on his mouth and emotions. He longed for her, ached not just to be inside her but to claim her body, mind and spirit. The intensity of his need could be overwhelming, but tonight she felt empowered by the consuming hunger. Finally parting her folds, he pushed his tongue deeper, searching for and easily finding her clit.

  “Yes,” she moaned. “Oh God, yes.”

  He circled the sensitive bud, quickly driving her arousal to a fever pitch. She trembled as tension coiled beneath his mouth, quickly encompassing her entire abdomen.

  Come, baby doll. Don’t hold back.

  Happy to oblige, she surrendered to the pleasure, coming in blissful pulses
that contracted her core and curled her toes.

  Again.

  She was still dizzy from the first orgasm, but his mouth didn’t leave, didn’t stop its sensual caressing. One of her legs slid off his shoulder as he shifted, bringing one hand between her thighs. She was panting, her senses vibrating with sexual energy. He was so damn good at this. It should be illegal. His tongue kept up a steady orbit of her clit while he pushed two fingers deep inside her. He rocked his hand forward and back, sliding his fingers in and out.

  She moaned even louder, firmly squeezing his fingers, wishing they were something else, something larger. The soft circular motion of his tongue became a persistent flick and her hips jerked with each nearly painful contact.

  I won’t fill you until you come, he warned. Stop resisting.

  She didn’t realize she’d been resisting, until she let go. She released her inhibitions and cried out sharply as pleasure detonated deep inside. Her back arched, inner walls rippling as bursts of pleasure pulsed through her entire body.

  He frantically freed his cock and draped her legs over his arms, burying himself in her still throbbing core. They moaned in unison, but he was beyond patience, beyond gentleness or finesse. He drove into her over and over, head thrown back, emotions blazing into her mind.

  Arching up into each thrust, she opened her mind as well as her body. Emotions flowed freely now, desire, the need to protect, and tenderness in equal measure. She raised her arms above her head and surrendered completely to their joining.

  His fingers dug into her hips as his thrusts sped. Desperate hunger consumed the softer emotions until his mind was a conflagration of need. He cried out sharply, then drove deep one final time. Pleasure surged through his body, inundating his mind, then barreling across their link to overwhelm her. She yelled, arching clear off the bed as every pleasure synapse in her body fired. Wave after tingling wave washed over her, driving reality far from her mind.

  She floated in sensual nothingness, only aware of her mate and the love he felt for her.

  It was that realization that finally penetrated her muddled mind. Rex loved her, loved her deeply. And even more astonishingly, she loved him too. She hadn’t thought she was capable of love, that that part of her nature died in LA. But everything about this was new and different, harsher, more extreme.

  He brushed her hair back from her face, his dark eyes warm and liquid. “You okay? I sort of lost you there for a minute.”

  “I...” It still felt disloyal to speak the words, so she used their link instead, pushing tenderness and joy into his mind.

  “I love you too.” He smiled and kissed the tip of her nose.

  REX RAISED HIS HAND to the back of his neck and rubbed at the tense muscles. He woke up this morning with a headache and the dull pain had persisted despite his attempts to contain the throbbing. It was late afternoon and he hadn’t seen Thea since he left his cabin. Overseeing the dispersal of the cargo had kept him busy all morning. And by the time he’d gone looking for her, hoping to share the midday meal, she was off with Lily and their other two cabin mates, doing whatever females did when their mates weren’t around. Now the seedlings were being offloaded, and Kage and Arton had arrived to “help” him supervise the process. All in all, this was turning out to be a pretty shitty day.

  “How many varieties are there?” Kage asked. He stood to one side of the cargo ramp, arms clasped behind his back.

  “Two grains, four vegetables, and two fruits.” Kage only nodded, so he offered, “Dr. Foronti offers a no-questions-asked guarantee. If any of the plants don’t survive the first year, he’ll replace them.”

  “For the price he charged us he better,” Arton muttered.

  Kage shot his lieutenant an annoyed look. “It will be well worth it if only half the plants survive. We will not be truly free until we are completely self-sufficient.”

  Arton stepped forward so he could see Kage without craning his neck. “You intend to have us living in cabins and dragging water from the river?”

  Kage rolled his eyes. “Of course not, but I don’t want us to starve to death if several of the nutri-gens break down. I have nothing against technology. However, I don’t want to depend on it for the basic necessities of life. The planet has all sorts of natural resources, but harvesting and processing them requires skills we’re still learning.”

  “Well, I consider running water and automated waste disposal basic necessities,” Arton persisted.

  “Are you and Lily fighting? Why are you in such a shitty mood?”

  Fascinated by the interaction, Rex just stood back and watched it unfold. Everyone knew the two were close as brothers, but they tended to be all business around others.

  “It’s not Lily,” Arton stressed. “I was up most of the night trying to decipher my visions.”

  Kage stilled, clearly concerned by his friend’s admission. “New images?”

  Arton nodded. “They started yesterday, but none of them have made any sense. Something is seriously wrong, or something is about to go seriously wrong. Trouble is, I can’t even tell you who’s involved, much less what’s about to happen. It’s so damn frustrating.”

  “Do you need to go meditate?”

  With a groan, Arton shook his head. “I’ve been meditating for the last twelve hours. I need a distraction. Often if I think about something else, the vision will become clearer spontaneously.”

  “Understood.” Kage turned back to Rex. “I didn’t sense a mating bond, but you were gone two weeks. Has Thea agreed to mate with you?”

  “She’s close, but something is still holding her back.” There was no way he was going to discuss the details of his relationship with Thea with the overlord. It was none of his business, even if he had basically set the ball in motion.

  “Her first mate passed beyond three months ago,” Arton reminded. “Grief generally takes much longer to release its hold on someone.”

  “Have you offered to purge her mind of the pain?” Kage wanted to know.

  Rex shook his head. “She would never consider it. To lose the pain, she’d have to lose the memories and they are precious to her.” He also treasured his memories of his first family. Losing those memories would be another form of death, in his opinion.

  Arton’s head suddenly jerked up and his eyes clouded over, becoming entirely silver. The vison ended as quickly as it overtook him. “They’re by the new barracks.” Then more urgently, “We need to run!”

  Chapter Ten

  Thea laughed so hard her eyes watered and her sides hurt. This was the thing she’d missed most about her talkative cabin mate. Sara had a knack for finding the absurd in almost any situation and to keep others laughing for hours at a time.

  “I’m serious,” Sara insisted, her dark eyes shining with merriment. “The pepper was so hot Heftar spit it all over the table and rocked back and forth with his hand waving in front of his mouth. By the time he regained his composure, I was laughing hysterically—along with most everyone else in the room.”

  “How did Heftar react to that?” Lily wanted to know. “He didn’t strike me as having a good sense of humor.”

  “He was seriously pissed,” Sara admitted with a cringe. “I stopped laughing as quickly as I could, but he just nodded all stiff and proper like, then stormed out of the room. I haven’t seen him since.” She shrugged then tossed back her long dark hair. “That’s what he gets for bragging to a Latina about the spiciness of Rodyte food. Besides, anyone who can’t take a joke will have no chance with me.”

  “Where in the world did you get a habanero pepper?” Lily persisted.

  “I don’t know what it was. I just asked one of the guards to print me the spiciest pepper they had in the nutri-gen library. Judging by some of the dishes I’ve tried, and the color of Heftar’s face, it was damn spicy.”

  Lily sat beside Thea on a fallen tree trunk that ran parallel to the river. They were well into the shade of the trees, but still in sight of the Wheel. Across the river
another wide section of the forest had been cleared and several teams of Outcasts, most of them shirtless, worked on a massive oblong building. Thea had no doubt this was why Sara had suggested the location for their informal reunion. The building was to be used as barracks for the unmated males. All of the newly formed couples kept asking the overlord for private accommodations. Most of the existing cabins were occupied by four to eight people, so several had to be displaced for Kage to honor even one request.

  “I never thought of humor as a way to discourage suitors,” Lily said. “Apparently, it’s effective.”

  “Why would you want to discourage them? I can’t wait until mine come forward.” Heather sat on a large flat rock, knees drawn up toward her chest.

  “But I have seventy-two matches,” Sara objected. “I have to discourage about sixty before I can think seriously about any of them.”

  “Have you found out how many potential mates you have?” Lily asked Heather.

  Heather had moved into the cabin when Jillian moved out. Both events took place while Thea was gone, so she didn’t know Heather well. The young woman sat with her back to the setting sun and it made her wavy hair look particularly red, but her big blue eyes were lost in shadow. “Only three, but none of them have identified themselves. They must not be overly interested in claiming me.”

  Lily waved away her concern. “That’s nonsense. They might not even know about you yet. Arton has been releasing the announcements a few at a time, so the females aren’t overrun with excited suitors.”

  Sara nodded in agreement. “And males are terrible about checking their com queues. Even if Arton notified them, they might not know.”

  A subtle movement in the trees behind Sara drew Thea’s attention away from their vivacious friend. The hairs on the back of her neck bristled, and then time seemed to slow to a barely noticeable crawl. She felt each beat of her heart and sound became a static hissing in her ears.