Page 41 of The Rebel and the Rogue

God, I wanted him. Needed him. He was my own personal addiction. I craved how he made me feel. His touch was like a drug, the pleasure it gave me was insatiable.

I doubted I’d ever stop craving and knew I’d want only what he could give me.

It was simple, the need. My body knew exactly what it wanted: him. My heart wanted him, too. It was his. Solely, completely. I had no idea when I’d fallen in love with him. We argued enough for me to want to hit him with an ion cannon not set to stun, but somehow, between all the shouting and bickering, I’d given him my heart.

My mind though… was the only logical part of me. He might make me feel good, might have my love, but it wasn’t enough. He’d made it clear that I wasn’t enough for him.

Yeah, I was thinking too fucking hard.

“I’m sorry I stunned you.”

He grunted at that, his hands gripping me tighter.

“When I saw him looming over you, knife to your throat… female, I aged ten years.”

I didn’t tell him I’d been about to die. That wouldn’t have helped a thing.

“We agreed you wouldn’t go off into danger alone.”

“You said I couldn’t go.” I didn’t want to argue. I was too raw. Too much had happened. I’d been too close to death, to understanding real loss. “It’s over,” I told him, staring at the plain wall. Talking about what had happened was so much easier than talking about my heart. “Gerian’s in a cell, or whatever it’s called on Rogue 5. He won’t hurt anyone else ever again.”

Zenos tensed behind me. “Yes. And Cerberus is dead. I am pleased to know it was by my hand.”

I’d learned so much about the Astra Legion in the short time I’d been with them. The moon base was a strange place, their customs so different than Earth, than fighting in the Coalition.

I understood Zenos’s frustration; I felt it, too. How the hell had I come to think of Astra Legion as a familiar place? As a home of sorts? I felt a kinship, a bond with everyone.

I understood it. I understood them.

For the first time in… forever, I’d felt like I belonged. Not just with Zenos but with Astra Legion. The camaraderie they shared was one I understood. They belonged to Zenos, and for some crazy reason that fact made them the family I’d never had. Never knew I was missing.

I rolled over to face Zenos, met his dark eyes, the gaze I’d thought I’d never see again. The hands I’d never feel on my body. His thumb stroked over my belly. We were so close our noses almost brushed. The hair on his chest tickled my already sensitive nipples. “Let’s forget it all.” Reaching down between us, I gripped his cock. “For tonight.”

“Ivy,” he groaned, his hips bucking into my tight stroke from root to tip. “I won’t forget how you endangered yourself.”

My eagerness wilted at his words. I could understand his anger, but why was he doing this now when I’d offered a truce? I was giving him a hand job!

“Are you trying to pick a fight?” I asked, letting go of him and pushing up to sitting. The sheet that had covered me fell to my waist. Zenos’s gaze fell to my bare breasts. The air was cool, but my nipples hardened further by the look in his eyes, not the temperature.

“You risked your life,” he countered. “I ordered you to stay back, but you wouldn’t. You stunned me.”

“I apologized. It will always be there between us, what happened.”

“Ivy.”

“Seriously, Zenos?” I stared down at him, wide-eyed. “I want to fuck, and you want to go all alpha? Now? Can’t it wait for a little while?”

He turned onto his back, tucked his hands behind his head. “We will fuck. First, we talk.”

I stared at him, thinking he was joking. When he did nothing but eye me back, I huffed. He wasn’t joking.

“Fine,” I snapped. “First, we talk.” Then we get wild.

“Explain to me the integrations. Cerberus knew of them. Understood.”

“He had them too.”

Zenos’s eyebrows shot up. That he had not known.

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