Page 90 of Galaxy Games Four-Book Box Set (Galaxy Games)

90

Cherish

S adie

I wanted this bestial male last night without benefit of any chemical inducement. I certainly don’t need anything now to entice me to want Anubis.

His body is taut with tension as he chuffs with excitement. Although it seems impossible, his cock is even more engorged than it was a moment ago, and his eyes are redder.

It doesn’t matter that the controller is out of his body. He’s still juiced up on whatever the Feds did to him as well as Zedd’s horny-hormone concoction.

Despite every chemical in his body urging him to throw me on the bed and rut me like an animal, he reaches out and cups my cheek in his palm, taking care not to slice me with his dangerous claws.

He’s sitting in the middle of the bed. I’m kneeling in front of him. My head isn’t at his eye level, but we make do.

“You saved me today, Anubis. We make a great team. Whatever happens, know this. I love you with all my heart. I wish you could talk, but even that doesn’t matter. I know your heart.” I place my palm over his heart, my fingers burrowing through his black fur as if they have a mind of their own.

The cameras are a given. We can’t get rid of them. I choose to ignore them. The only thing I want to pay attention to is me and my mate.

I lean close and whisper in his ear. What I have to say is for no one but us to hear.

“I know you’re part animal, Anubis. I don’t just tolerate it, hoping it will go away, hoping you’ll hide it. No. It’s part of you and I love it. I love everything about it. I cherish every part of you. I know in a moment you won’t be able to control your urges. That’s okay.”

I said that in full honesty and with zero fear. He may be the biggest, baddest being I’ve ever known, but one thing is certain—he’ll never, ever harm me.

My speech unleashed something inside him. A deep growl bursts from him. It’s not angry, it’s full of lust. It beckons a corresponding desire inside me. When he shutters his eyes, lifts his head toward the ceiling and breathes in, it tells me he scents my arousal. I just gave him verbal permission, but now he’s receiving permission from my body.

He easily pushes me onto the bed, then hovers over me, his nose sniffing a trail from my neck, between my breasts to the V of my legs. I turn off the part of my brain that narrates my experience and dive into the moment. It’s divine.

Jahzara Zedd

I’m watching three vid feeds at once, knowing these will become part of my private collection, when Kartom timidly informs me Commander Pleer wants me on comms. I know exactly which of the three couples he wants to discuss. Perhaps “discuss” is too benign a word. I think he wants to threaten my job—perhaps my life.

“What kind of an outfit are you running?” he demands. “Did I or did I not just watch that genetically-deprived piece of human trash bite out an expensive piece of equipment from an even more expensive piece of equipment? That is owned by the Federation? That you swore you would dispose of on galaxy-wide vid without giving away every high-level secret we possess?”

Pleer is a Hyperion male, with blueish gray skin and knobs ringing his head as if they formed a crown. He’s so angry, his skin has taken on a deep blue tone. Luckily, we negotiated for no Federation presence on this planet. We believed having the Feds around was part of the reason the Down to One game failed so miserably.

His mouth is a rictus of anger. If he were in the same room with me, I believe he would have killed me already.

“I do apologize, Commander,” I say, my tone as deferential as I can manage.

“I told you to take him down from a ten. Did you?” He stares directly at me as if he could discern the truth from a lie over holovid.

“Of course I did,” I lie.

He snorts. I don’t think he believed me,

“He killed a cave bear and that flying monster, Sir. The ratings—”

“You did this for your fucking ratings? No wonder he’s caused you nothing but trouble.”

“In my defense, she bit that device out of him so quickly we had no time to intervene.”

A vein is throbbing on his temple and he seems to be trying to shoot lightning bolts from his eyes.

“If you’d like, I can have one of my staff retrieve the device—”

“I do not need the device!” he thunders. “I need that product fucking dead! Do you hear me? Dead!”

“Yes, sir. As I promised earlier, that will happen tomorrow. The entire galaxy will be able to watch it. In fact,” I lower my voice conspiratorially, as if I’m about to let him in on a wonderful secret. “Once we play it for our pay-per-view customers, I assure you I will have it go out on every news broadcast for the next five days straight.

“There won’t be a living being on any planet who won’t have seen the geneslave’s spectacular death a hundred times.” There. That should shut the fucker up.

“A contingent of my top males is on their way to Ultera right this minute,” he says with a smirk. “If you can’t do your job, they’ll be happy to do it for you.”

My comm goes dead. Dead, that’s an interesting word. By the look on Pleer’s face, I’ll be dead tomorrow if this doesn’t go the way he wants. Lucky for me, there’s no way my plan will fail. And I didn’t lie about one thing. Their death is going to be spectacular.