Page 40 of Jewel of the Alien Bandit
“You were giving up your freedom to protect me. If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t be in the middle of a brewing war,” she lamented and shook her head in my embrace. I felt her push away from me, but I held firm. This would not be the reason I lost her.
“The war would have happened whether you came aboard my ship or not, but it is because of your sacrifice that your planet and all estrelds have a chance at coming out of it more or less unscathed. You were able to warn the Almder, and even gain the support of the Krelis Horde.”
“You make it sound like all of that was intentional,” she scoffed at herself, the compliment buried.
“Does it matter if it wasn’t?” With my thumb I dashed away a wet tear from her cheek.
“All because of who I am supposed to be,” she mumbled, a sadness laced in her words. She still believed she wasn’t going to make it back to her moons in time. I gripped her shoulders and pulled back a bit more to stare at those beautiful eyes. I couldn’tbe distracted by being between her legs when I tried to convince her of the truth before her.
“Because of what you represent. Possibilities. A future. Freedom.”
She smiled weakly, cupping my cheeks in her small hands before lacing them behind my neck, rubbing her thumb against my ear. The soft touch made me close my eyes and suppress a moan. Luan was the one pulling me back in, her legs pressing the back of my thighs to close the space created between us.
The loh on her arms glowed faintly, giving the room a hazy blue glow, scattering around us mingling with the dust in the air that hadn’t been filtered out of the room yet. Her fingers stopped moving against my skin, cold and prickled where her hands hovered.
Luan stared at the glow, and her mouth hung open, before the room darkened again, only lit by the small orbs in the ceiling. Whatever she was going to say caught in her throat.
“Don’t stop,” I pleaded with her.
Hesitantly she stroked one of my mating runes that ran up my neck, heat rippled down to my fingertips at the contact, and when I opened my eyes the faint glow had returned to her hand, traveling up her own arms.
“How is this possible?” she repeated to herself barely above a whisper.
Pulling her in closer to me, I whispered back, “Does it matter?”
The important thing was that it was possible, and her loh were healing. A vitality was returning to her, and everything inside of me needed to touch her, and never let go. I didn’t care how she was recovering, only that she was.
My hand warmed as it held her thigh. We both glanced down, and saw the loh glowed beneath her gauzy skirts. I movedalong her skin, and her loh ignited everywhere I touched. Her body shivered, and I smiled into her hair.
“It’s you,” she said between heavy breaths, finally realizing that her body was responding to my ministrations
I needed my name called out from those lips, nothing less would quench this growing desire within me. Leaning down I held her against me, groaning as her hips moved up to grind against my cock.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Luan
WITH EVERY TOUCHa soft hum of my radiation returned. Starved for the contact I pulled his neck down to meet me. My whole body hungry for more, I crashed my lips against his, and immediately a jolt of energy surged through me. I didn’t know how it was possible, and like Vareo said, did it matter?
Faintly, in the back of my mind I nagged at myself that I should slow down and think about things, but it was like an animal took over within me. My hands pulled, and tugged at him to be closer. Legs wrapped around his waist, I squeezed to feel the pressure of his firm muscles against me.
There were too many layers, too much between us. I tugged at his strained pants, reluctant to release my hold on him to allow the leather to be removed properly.
Vareo grinned against my lips, and a low rumble vibrated in his chest as he hoisted me from the desk to the much softer bed, larger than I would have anticipated for a guest chamber on a ship.
He stilled above me, and I tried to pull him close again to keep my loh glowing, to feel the warmth of life that he offered me, but his arms locked in place, and he steadied himself.
“Luan,” his voice was husky, strained to keep himself under control to speak, “tell me I’m yours. That you accept me as your mate.”
I blinked up at him. I knew he had said these mating runes were mine, but I couldn’t help thinking about the scientist he was willing to be a slave for, and how much I still didn’t know about him. Where his skin touched mine, I could feel my loh healing, and faintly warming from the contact. His touch would save my life. I wasn’t thinking about what this would do to him.
His words came back to haunt me, a mate bond with a shol was for life. Then his next words had stung as he admitted that he didn’t know who I was. Could I do this to him? Have him bond with me to save my life, and risk that he may get to know me and regret this decision a million times over when he thought about his scientist?
I closed my eyes, flushing with embarrassment that I had let my instincts for survival overshadow what I was doing to him. Nervously I gnawed at my lip. The glow of my loh faded, I could feel the heat leave my body, and my skin go cold once more.
Then his mouth was on mine before I could say a word. The fire ignited, and all thoughts left my head as my arms wrapped around him pulling him close. My hips moved against him, and his hands moved up my thighs between the slits of my skirts. He roughly brushed the fabric out of the way, and his mouth seared a path down my ribs, and kissed at the top of my hips. Those blue eyes filled with need searching my own for permission to continue.
I couldn’t deny him, not when everything felt so right, so perfect, and with every feeling I felt farther and farther from the grip of death, from being drained of my moon’s radiation. As if my hips had a mind of their own they thrust up, begging him to continue, and he did.
