Page 23 of The Interstellar Rake's Irresistible Kiss
But even as almosteverything inside her raged against his possessiveness, a hidden part—the part that had refused to be cowed by verbal scorn or a drunkenly raised fist—knew she wasn’t being fair. Unlike the men she’d grown up with, Nor had never pretended to be something he wasn’t. He’d told her who he was. And what he wanted.
He wanted her.
And after her long, mostly blacked-out nightmare on Blackworm’s derelictspace station, she wanted to put a new spin on the stars, one thatshechose.
When she took a deep breath that should’ve made her steadier, the taste of ghost-mead and him in the back of her throat only made her knees wobble under her robe. But if she was taking back the night for herself, weak knees weren’t going to stop her.
She took the step that closed the small distance between them andflattened her palms on his chest. The heavy thud of his heartbeat matched the pulse between her legs.
“I do want this,” she whispered. “I do want you.”
His mouth crashed down on hers, as if her words were the only thing he’d been waiting for.
With a breathy moan, she snaked her arms up around his neck. He was so much taller than she was that he had to contort himself to reach down for her.
In the interest of saving his back, she murmured, “Take me to bed.”
But he shook his head slowly, dragging his lips with velvety seduction over hers. “No,” he murmured throatily. “We’re not there yet.”
“Rightthere,” she complained. The guest quarters in the estate were beautiful—as everything here was beautiful—but pretty self-explanatory. The bed was square and liberally strewn with varioussized cushions that she assumed could be used to customize the comfort for various configurations of alien bodies. It wasn’t like they were sleeping in zero-G or anything. “I can steer us if you’re not very good at this captaining stuff.”
His low chuckle rumbled through her. “Pirate, remember? I thrive on buried treasure. But I might need to do a little exploring first, identify any more threats—blackholes, quicksand, poorly aimed blaster, you know—and I wouldn’t mind a navigator.”
She rolled her eyes in mock exasperation. “I’m no brave new world.”
He brushed his lips across her temple. “You are to me,” he murmured. “Taken from your home, imprisoned against your will, and yet you fought back, and you want to see what else is in this vast universe that must seem so odd and threatening toyou.”
The note of admiration in his voice shivered through her, sloughing off a layer of defensiveness she hadn’t realized she’d been clinging to. She’d tried not to think of herself as a victim, but being merely a survivor wasn’t enough either. Maybe Rayna and Lishelle were right, and she had to reach for everything she desired.
Which right now was him.
She unsealed the edges of the blackofficer’s jacket he wore and skimmed her hands inside, reveling in the smooth ridges of muscle defined by the tighter undershirt. He angled his shoulders back, letting her strip away the first layer. Which probably meant she should take off a layer too.
For a moment, her restless strokes paused as uncertainty crept in around the edges of her robe. “Um, is there anything, uh, special I shouldknow about alien sex before we get naked?”
Rather than laugh aloud as she feared, he tilted his head thoughtfully, the sun-kissed locks of his hair darkened to dusk in the low light. “For all our differences, nearly every sentient species in the universe has a few things in common.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “We all invent fermentation and distilling. We are discontented and look tothe stars. And we wonder secretly—or not so secretly—whether we are physiologically compatible with every other species we meet.” When she chuckled, he hooked those three fingers through the sash of her robe to tug her closer. “And you know what we found?”
She gazed up at him. “We really like booze?”
“We are mostly”—another tug loosened the sash—“curiously”—the front of her robe parted—“somemight say cosmically”—one more tug and the robe slipped down her shoulders—“compatible.”
As the robe pooled around her feet, she caught her breath at the delicate rasp of the silky thin nightgown over her swelling nipples. Nor made a low noise in his throat, not quite a growl.
“In fact,” he said in a husky voice, “you might be perfect.”
A flush of yearning—not just physical but deeper too—madeher squirm, and a flash of anger followed immediately after. She didn’t believe she was perfect. She didn’t need or even want that sort of lovers’ lie, not from him. Maybe his universal translator was on the fritz, burning up from the combustion between them.
Aggressively, she flipped up the bottom of his shirt. “Let’s see what you are.”
With an obliging grin, he reached one hand over his shoulderand yanked off the snug layer. It peeled free inside out and grudgingly, as if it didn’t want to leave him.
She supposed she could see why.
Lord almighty, he was fine. Thanks to the fit of the ships fatigues, she’d already known he was a hard body, but…
The triangular shape of his torso, from wide shoulders to trim waist, looked like the most expensive ad from an upscale men’s magazine, andthe carved blocks of his musculature fit perfectly with the sculpted geometric forms of Azthronos. But there was a roughness to him too, an edge to his maleness that defied the aloof beauty all around her. He tossed his head, resettling the waves of his honey-brown hair down to those shoulders she so admired.
Shoulders that were hers to touch.
