Page 31 of The Captain's Bounty
He didn’t want to pull from the heat of her. He wanted to stay joined. He wanted to keep pounding.
That was the Rage talking, and it was the shock of realizing he wasn’t just courting Rage, he was deep in it, that finally made him move.
Every instinct roared for him to grab her, hoard her, keep her luscious body pinned beneath his, rutting until his strength and fury were exhausted… until the threat of her being taken from him was gone.
Until she was dead.
Shaking his head, Bruwes shoved off her, releasing wafts of the same intoxicating perfume that now bathed his cock, groin and thighs. He yanked his pants up, fastening the clasps with hands that shook to seize her again. To flip her onto her back, shoving her fully up onto the bed so he could get between her legs completely. He wanted to bury his face in her. His mouth watered with the need to lick and bite, and already his blood was pumping furiously along to the melody of cries he could already hear her making.
Get it under control!
Control? There was no such thing when the Rage was on him.
She was panting, her face flushed and her eyes closed. If she wanted sleep, she wasn’t going to get it, not for a long time.
His cock twitched, rising and hardening all over again.
He grabbed his belt and then his uniform shirt from off the floor.
“Bed,” he ordered her, not waiting to see if she obeyed him, but grabbing her arm and hurrying her into position. He tried not to breathe as he bound her hands once before behind her back, then blindfolded and gagged her again. Her smell lingered, taunting him with what he couldn’t—shouldn’t—have.
He had to get out of here.
Fleeing his bedroom, Bruwes marched as fast as his legs could go without running down the corridor to get distance between himself and the Rage-inducing scent of her arousal.
He hit the door lock on the Reflection Chamber, spilling into the room where he quickly locked the door again.
He sucked at the air, filling his lungs with breaths untainted by her arousal, except the smell was still with him. It was on his hands, soaking into his pants.
Storming toward the Atonement crystal, he yanked open the well beneath it and plunged his hands into the cool water. The Reformers would be appalled at his obscene show of disrespect, but then they’d be appalled at the decided lack of use this room had seen since their banishment. That it hadn’t been dismantled completely was due only to each of their unspoken fears that they might someday fall so far into Rage that a dose of the Rod might be the only thing capable of bringing them back into focus again.
He washed his hands, then got his pants open and quickly scrubbed his cock and groin as much as he was able. If anyone saw him now, they might guess he’d pissed himself, but he didn’t care. He had to get the smell off him before the red cloud took his vision completely.
The last time it had, he’d killed. The focus of his Rage back then had deserved it; but it was Lissa in his thoughts right now. Lissa who he couldn’t wait to get his hands on again.
Pacing the length of the room twice, he didn’t bother fastening his pants before dropping to the floor for a round of rapid pushups. He struggled to find his calm, burning every ounce of energy he had into brutal exercise until the sweat poured off him, he could barely breathe for gasping, and his heart felt as if it was going to burst right out of his too-tight chest.
He kept pushing, forcing himself to keep going because if he got up right now, he was going to walk right back to his room, bend Lissa over, and rut with her until the Rage had consumed him. Who knew what he’d find when he finally came back to himself.
Don’t think about him, Bruwes ordered himself, but already thoughts of Councilman Semir were intruding. The way the old man had smiled as he provided the boys in his care with sweet treats, good food, sips of good wine. The way the man had smelled the first time Bruwes had awakened in the middle of the night with the weight of the Councilman settling beside him. Atop him. He remembered everything right up until that last night, when he let go, hiding from the shame and hurt and misery in Rage. The unrecognizable pulp of meat waiting for him when the red cloud finally cleared was still dressed in the Councilman’s torn and bloody clothing. They said the Rage had held him hostage for almost three days before he’d come back to himself enough to realize what he’d done.
Even then, he hadn’t been sorry.
His father had been furious. Not because his son had spent years as a silent victim of that perverted old man’s lusts, but because Bruwes had failed to bear it quietly. Because he’d lost himself to a commoner’s ‘disease.’ Because he’d committed acrime so messily and carelessly, that it couldn’t be hidden. His disease had brought shame on his family’s name—his father’s name. Bruwes’s crime should have meant his death, but his father had powerful associates and somehow kept what Bruwes had done from going to the courts or the media.
In many ways, it would have been better had he been executed for the Councilman’s very brutal death, but he hadn’t. Instead, he’d gone quietly into the care of the Reformers, where he’d spent years at the mercy of their back-breaking rods, being taught how to control himself one lash at a time. Then his father gave him a captaincy and shipped him off world. He’d turned Bruwes into a kidnapper, a slaver of sorts, blindly fed on the lies the Councils told everyone—that the Product they took would ultimately be given a choice and that almost all accepted their new situation. Eventually.
Learning differently had been a bitter pill, but not an unexpected one. Somewhere deep inside him, having grown up on a steady diet of his father’s hypocrisy, Bruwes had always suspected things might not be as he was told.
It was Cory, the doctor’s alien mate, who had revealed the lies for what they were, making her the cause of their banishment. Not that he blamed her for that. When the choice had come down to jettisoning every living Product in their stasis chambers into space or disobeying the Council’s unbelievably cruel order, none of them had really thought twice.
Still, somewhere in the back of his mind, Bruwes supposed he’d always considered Doc Demin weak for his inability t0 control himself around his human bondmate and her arousing scent. Bruwes knew better now. That scent was no joking matter.
Collapsing on the floor, his shaky arms refusing to move, Bruwes closed his eyes and tried to bring his breathing back under control.
He wanted Lissa still. Not even exhaustion was enough to abate that, but at least he was able to think about something other than driving his cock back into her pussy.
Sort of.
