Page 34 of Breed

She is begging me for mercy, and there is some part of me that wants to grant her wishes. There is a greater part that will never let her go under any circumstances. She is mine. She has been wrapped around my cock, she has embraced me with her hot, tight human grip, and she has taken my seed inside her. There is some chance that she is already brimming with new life — with the life I planted in her. I won’t let her go.

“Quiet,” I growl, slapping her ass.

I could lecture her more, but I find the fewer words the better. I will make her beg for mercy again, but first I want to know exactly what she has been up to.

“Why did you go and see Enforcer Avel?”

“I didn’t go to see Avel. I went to see Raine. Maybe it looked like I was going to see him, but that’s only because he has one of our captains,” she says, her eyes still wide with that same fear. “I need to get the captains back so we can leave this planet. It’s not good here. I don’t want to have a dinobaby. I’m not ready to be a mother. I don’t have any schools picked out. I don’t know what my favorite names are. I don’t even know how to do a diaper. This baby would have a mother that doesn’t even know the most basic things about babies. I don’t think I can eat cheese. Or can the baby not eat cheese? When do they get cheese? I don’t know…”

She is babbling, but it hits me in that moment that she is not merely something to take and impregnate without any consequences. She is intending on mothering her child. She is not intending on abandoning an egg somewhere and never thinking of it again the way my mother must have — the way most saurians do.

She emits a small squeak as I draw her up into my arms in a rare for me embrace. I hold her tight, feeling the soft fragility of her form against my own rougher, harder body.

“You are a good girl,” I murmur in her ear.

Lettie

He calls me a good girl and I fucking melt.

Those are the words I didn’t know I was waiting for, an affirmation of my worth to him. I wouldn’t have thought he would consider me such, given I escaped immediately after he told me not to, but I’ll take praise where I can get it.

It has been a very rare occurrence in my life to be told that I am good. Complimentary, approving energy is so seldom experienced that when I get so much as a taste of it, I lap it up. I would lick it off broken glass, if that was how it was delivered.

My breath hitches, and when it comes back, it comes with a little sob. There are tears flowing down my cheeks, and I realize I am crying just because he said something nice to me.

“Have I upset you?” He draws back, his brows quirked over those dark eyes that remain inscrutable to me.

“Why am I good?” I sob the question. I don’t know what prompted his praise, and I wish I did, because I would do that thing a hundred times over if it meant feeling that rush of rare relief from an almost constant guilt paralysis that I sometimes forget about because it’s the water I swim in.

“Because you care about this possible infant.”

“Of course I care! It would be my baby. And it would not be Wrath’s slave, I can tell you that much. If I were pregnant, I would get as far as possible away from this place where you all think that making some under-race of hybrid saurians is a good idea.”

It is bold of me to tell him that. Probably a dangerous admission. I don’t know why I said it. I wish I hadn’t said it.

He smiles and presses his lips to my forehead in a gesture of comfort that is almost as alien to me as he is.

“You don’t have to like what is happening, Lettie. But you do have to obey me.”

I’d almost believe him, if I hadn’t spent my entire adult life engaging in piracy. I love it when he calls me a good girl, but I’m not going to be good.

I’m going to be very, very bad.

“I have to deal with you,” he rumbles. “You might be good, but you were naughty today.”

Something about the diminutive use of naughty makes me want to squirm. There is warmth in his disappointment and judgement. I am in trouble, and I am going to be very sore as a result, but there is no true harshness or loathing in his tone or being. I know very well that Shan and I are linked in a way I’ve never been linked before. I’m safe with him, even though I am in trouble with him.

“I told you not to run away earlier today, and you did. So I am going to give you a reason not to so much as think about disobeying me again. I can’t risk it, but I can stop you doing it again.”

I draw away from him, but I know that won’t change what is going to happen. Shan looks determined, and that is bad for me.

He reaches for me, and I draw back again. It’s a little bit of a game. A silly game, a little test that is designed to see just how stern he will be with me. I don’t know why I am pushing my luck so much. I want him. I want all of him. I want his harshness and his dominance and his punishment and his… cock.

“Stay still,” he says. “I don’t want to chase you down. If you make me, I promise you it will hurt more.”

Even as he says those words, he reaches out, grips me before I can move away again, and pulls me over his lap, pinning me in place. It is all too easy for him. He is just so much more physically adept. For a moment, I am reminded of the state I saw Captain Sullivan and Raine in. I am just as they are. I am helpless (and wet) in the hands of a saurian.

SMACK!

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