Page 63 of The Interstellar Rake's Irresistible Kiss
“You,” he said huskily.
She tilted her head, and the braid fell across her shoulder. “Mmm-e?”
“Mishkeets don’t stutter,” he chided. “They scratch, they bite, they shoot.”
With each word, she took a step closer to him. “Shoot?”
“Maybe not that,” he admitted. “Maybe…cuddle.”
“Scratch, bite, and cuddle.” She pursed her lips.
“Even mishkeets like a big, soft, warm bed.”
“And heroes? How do they feel about bed?”
“Too big,” he said softly. “If they’re alone.”
With a soft sound of surrender, she crawled in beside him again. “I don’t want you to think I’m needy and scared and small.”
“I do not think that,” he assured her. “I saw you at target practice, on the space station, facing Blackworm. I know you are the hero. You didn’t have to command that stolen armor—Iwould’ve followed you anywhere.”
“Oh, Nor.” She threw one arm over his chest and burrowed her face into his neck. “Iwasscared. And Idoneed you.”
He cupped his hand at her nape to hold her close. “And you are exactly the right size for my bed. And for me.” Gently, he shifted his grip to lift her chin.
Tears trembled at the corners of her eyes, turning the hazel to a misty gold. “I’ve neverhad an alien boyfriend,” she said.
“I’ve never had an Earther girl, so I think on this journey we’re a perfect fit.” His throat tightened. “And I won’t need any ship. Just you.”
She boosted up against him to lay her mouth over his, not like the desperate last kiss in the exosuit, but a long, sweet, lingering promise of more to come.
He reached up to thread his fingers through her hair andunwind the locks around him in a golden curtain. Then he took her shoulders and rolled her beneath him.
When she smiled up at him from the chaos of pillows, he saw a treasure any pirate would prize. She squirmed a little, and the gown slipped down around her shoulders, exposing the creamy upper swells of her breasts.
She laced her arms around his neck and arched back. The hard, little peaksof her nipples peeped free from the neckline of the loosened gown. “We shouldn’t,” she gasped. “You’re hurt.”
“I ache,” he confessed. “And only you can save me.”
Ignoring the twinge in his side—what was pain and blood and regeneration when he had her?—he suckled her breast and then the other until she was moaning with her own ache. The triumph in him was unseemly.
And he loved it. As he lovedher.
Her bronze skirts were a cloud nowhere near as soft and beautiful as her body taking his, and when the powerful convulsion of her hidden core engulfed him, it was a cosmic orgasmic pleasure that would delight him forever.
And maybe even that wouldn’t be long enough.
Before she could catch her breath, or notice that he was bleeding again, he propped himself on one elbow and gazed down ather. “I’m an ex-pirate, and now ex-dreadnaught captain,” he told her. “And you are an ex-bride. But what if…one of those still came true?”
She stilled under him. “You want another ship?”
His pulse skittered nervously. “I want you. As my bride.”
Her embrace around his shoulders tightened. “From girlfriend to bride? That was fast.”
“Speed of light,” he admitted. “Or the speed of love.”
“Nor…”
