Page 60 of Galaxy Gladiators Romance Box Set #11-19

Chapter Twelve

R aine

Somewhere in the confusion and commotion of an impromptu party at the Maximus house, Max and I plan out the next six months. At first, I thought it would be a foregone conclusion that we’d return to the life we’d begun to carve out for ourselves onboard the Devil’s Playground . But a little conversation and a bit of compromise brought us to a much better plan.

Although I have a loving family I’ll never be able to return to, Max has finally found his. My heart aches every time I think of how wonderful his childhood would have been if he’d stayed on Addai and been raised by his amazing parents. Such lost opportunities! But he has them now.

We’re going to stay on Addai for the next six months. His parents’ house is large. We’ve got a wing with a bedroom, bathroom, and den all to ourselves. We’ll have all the privacy a newlywed couple will need.

My beloved Maximus will be able to recapture some of what he lost with his family. Well, not recapture. What’s gone is gone, but he’ll be able to forge something new and wonderful. They’re amazing people and have invited me into their lives with no hesitation.

The idea of spending the next six months with them is exciting. I can’t imagine what will go wrong. Well, except every time Mema calls him Madd, a picture of Mad Max flashes in front of my eyes. It’s okay, Mel Gibson has nothing on Madd Durrun Maximus.

In six months’ time, we’ll figure out where to go next. Perhaps we’ll fall in love with Addai and want to stay. Or maybe we’ll decide to ask the Playground to pick us up so we can explore the galaxy. The sky’s the limit!

The goodbyes we share with the Playground’s crew are heartfelt yet happy. We’ll see them again before we know it.

After they leave, Mema drags me into the kitchen when she starts dinner. “I’m going to teach you to make some Addai dishes. Maybe Madd hasn’t ever tried them.” She pauses for a moment, a cloud of sadness sweeping across her pretty face. She shakes her head to force those thoughts out of her head. “He’ll try them now, right? And you’ll know how to make the ones he likes.” She gives me a sunny smile.

I used to love to cook. In eleventh grade, I was on a quest to find the best Bolognese sauce in the world. In twelfth grade, I learned the fine art of stir fry. Then it was study, study, study for me. I’m going to love learning Addai recipes, especially from Mema.

After dinner, Max pulls me onto his lap right in front of his parents. I can tell from their surprised expressions this isn’t exactly acceptable in polite Addai society, but after a swift raised eyebrow first from one parent, then the other, his father pulls his mother onto his lap and the four of us laugh.

“I’m sure you two are tired,” Mema says. If her skin wasn’t charcoal, I’m certain she’d be blushing.

A minute later we’re in our spacious suite which is thankfully on the other side of the house from the master bedroom.

Max pulls me into his arms and hugs me tight as soon as our door is closed. He sways with me in the silence, his chin on the top of my head. My head is on his muscled pec as I listen to the rhythmic thump of his heart.

I wonder if the mate-bond is gone forever, or if it can return. It doesn’t matter. The bond solidifies things between mates and ensures the male will be faithful forever. I don’t need his chest to glow yellow to know I’ll have that. Just one look at the formerly angry gladiator’s face set in peaceful lines and I know his love for me will last as long as Octavia promised.

“We started backward, you and I,” I hear rumble through his chest. “We had sex first and got to know each other later. I want our do-over, as you called it, to start now. Can we pretend this is our first time? Can we come together in the way it should have been?”

When we first met, he made it sound as if the only thing he’d longed for was a night in a four-armed Mordite’s arms. Now that I know him, it’s clear that deep inside he yearned for more than that.

“I’d love to have that, Max.”

He doesn’t change what he’s doing, he just hugs me tightly and sways in silence. His hand sweeps up my back from waist to neck and back again. Just being in his arms makes me horny, but the anticipation of what’s coming next is ramping my excitement even higher.

I wrap my arms around him and dive into the non-existent music. I’m only aware of the beating of our hearts and the connection of our souls.

Tipping his head, he brushes his lips against mine, back and forth. His tempo is slow, as if this is the best thing he’s ever done and he has all the time in the world to savor it. Just that soft graze of his lips makes my nipples prick into hard nubs of arousal.

“Raine,” the sound is like a prayer.

He nuzzles me, his lips sliding along my jawline, down the curve of my neck, and underneath the curtain of my hair at my nape. Although he’s traveled this territory hundreds of times, it’s different, intense, loving.

After working his way back to my mouth, he slides his tongue along the seam of my lips. The feeling, at first almost ticklish, fills me with yearning. Emotion spills over inside me. It’s only just this minute I realize how much I’ve been holding back—not just from him, but from myself. Dear God, I love this male. How did I keep it a secret? And why?

We’ve kissed before, it’s been passionate, full of sex and longing. But nothing like this. It’s so sexy and sweet I feel hot tears sting my eyes.

He slides his palms to the front of my waist and skates them up my abdomen until my breasts rest in them. He arranges us at the perfect distance for my hardened nubs to brush against him. His toga covers half his upper chest, the other is exposed. This gives my nipples two different experiences—one sliding against soft skin, the other against silken cloth.

Just this chaste brush through clothing is exquisitely exciting. Not just to my pebbled tips, but I feel the energy swirling in my pelvis.

I’ve seldom been around him when his cock wasn’t hard as a rock. First, there was my drug-induced arousal, then his mate-bond desperation, but now it feels different. He’s hard for me. It feels like it’s driven by affection and desire, not discomfort.

“The blue gown you wore earlier hurt my soul,” he whispers into my ear. “My parents told me that a mated female wears the color of her mate’s bond-mark at special occasions. Wearing another color signals your rejection.”

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you, Max.”

He shushes me.

“Even though you’re wearing yellow now, I must tell you how much I want to tear your yellow robe off your body.”

Somehow, I know his lips are tipped in an easy smile.

“You can do that right now, mate,” I tell him, loving how that word feels in my mouth. “I can’t wait to be naked with you.”

“I want to wait a bit longer, Raine,” he rumbles in my ear.

“I still have a lot to learn about you,” I tell him, trying to hide my petulance. “Like the fact that you’re a sadist.”

“If my translator is correct, it’s partially right. Yes to enjoying making you wait, no to causing pain.”

“For me, they’re the same thing,” I pout.

“Then I’ll have to fix that.”

He unwraps my toga with slow movements, exposing first one breast, then the other. Watching his face is a treat. He’s looking at me like he’s never seen me naked before.

He tosses the fabric into the corner, never taking his eyes from me, then lifts me so my legs surround his waist. Dipping his head, he laves my nipple, then sucks, then scrapes.

During our months together we’ve had sex hundreds of times. We’ve never made love. This? This is Maximus making love. To me.

He’s making happy masculine grunting sounds from the back of his throat as if I’m the most delicious thing he’s ever tasted. I kiss his head, an act of sweet affection I’ve never performed before. We’re both giving to each other in different ways than in the past. It’s all driven by love.

He strides to the bed and sets me on the edge in a sitting position, then starts to remove his toga.

“No. Let me.” I stand up so close to him he has to take a half-step back. “Can we pitch this, Max? It will forever remind me of the day I almost lost the most precious thing in the galaxy.”

“Mmm-hmm,” he intones indulgently.

I spend my time removing his toga, stepping around him as I tear off each layer. When he’s nude, before I allow myself to enjoy the adult wonderland that is his body, I put my full attention on tossing his robe to land on top of mine.

“Can that be behind us?” I ask.

“It already is,” he laughs as he lifts me and tosses me onto the bed.

“I want to give myself to you,” I tell him, not meaning the sexual double entendre. “I want to give all of me to you, Madd Durrun Maximus. I want you to know my thoughts, to feel my heart. I won’t shut you out again. Ever. You’ll have all of me, Max. I swear it.”

My words unleash something inside him. Whatever was holding him back a moment ago is untethered.

He splits my legs and bites his way from ankle to inner thigh using the flat of his front teeth. My eyes flare open in passion as hot spikes of lust follow his mouth’s path.

“I wanted to draw this out longer, Raine. I’m failing.” His golden gaze holds mine, his eyes blazing with a fire within.

“Let’s call it a success.” My brows raise in sensuous invitation. Draw things out? I’d say our three-day quest did a good job of that.

All restraint is lost when he sucks in a deep breath through his nose, spreads me wider, and pierces me with his tongue.

“Fuck!” His wild passion ignites something inside me. I don’t know why—or how—I held back for the last few months, but nothing can restrain me now.

I ordered my body to stand down when he announced he wanted to go slow. This? His tongue in me up to the hilt? All bets are off. I lie back, my head on the pillows, and moan.

Our sex has always been fantastic but weird because of our circumstances. We’re mates now? He gets to meet the real Raine. So do I!

Moaning isn’t good enough. I feel compelled to narrate this.

“Fuck, Max. So good,” I say as he tongue-fucks me without touching me anywhere else. Every time he pierces me he makes a little moan in the back of his throat. My mouth goes dry because of his sexy noises, knowing he loves the taste of me.

“Make me come,” I say as I arch to take him even deeper inside me.

He pulls out long enough to shake his head in answer. His huge hands glide from above my knees, up my inner thighs then split me wider, opening me for his enjoyment—and my own. His teasing tongue pierces my core but refuses to touch my desperate clit.

I try to pull his hand there, but he shakes his head again while still thrusting into me. I’m not even sure how he manages to press inside me so deeply with his tongue and not touch any other square inch of my body.

When I try again to pull his hand where I want it, he just grabs my ass with both hands, a clear statement of his intention not to follow his mate’s instructions.

Finally, he’s so engrossed in what he’s doing, his nose bumps my pleasure center and I practically levitate off the bed with just that one caress. When the bumping continues I realize it’s no accident.

“Naughty! Mean and naughty. I’m learning all about you now, Maximus. The truth finally comes out.”

He pulls out, spears me with a hard look, and barks, “My friends call me Max!”

Oh, I’m going to like this! We’ve always been so serious in our lovemaking; we were desperate and driven. Now we get to have fun in bed? Fantastic.

“You’re no friend of mine, Maximus,” I tell him with an equally serious stare. “Not unless you get back to work!”

My ass is protected by the bed so he can’t spank it, so he slaps my hip to register his disappointment, then does just as I commanded.

He lances into me with his firm tongue until my grip on his shoulders tightens, then he traces a hard line to my clit.

If I hadn’t known he was a gladiator before, I’d know it by his sexual style. This is less lovemaking and more of an assault. An assault on my happy little clit which is loving his attentions.

I watch, mesmerized, as his dark head bobs against my flesh. I love the contrast of our skin tones—his pewter against my soft tan. We were meant to be together. How did I miss every clue?

We’ve been together too many times before to be sexual strangers. He knows every spot, every technique to catapult me from aroused to ignited. Crackling heat flies up and down my synapses as I ratchet from aroused to supercharged.

“Max!” I say when his tongue attacking me non-stop is accompanied by one thick gray finger piercing into me. I love the intimacy, the feeling of being entered, taken, but one finger, even gladiator-sized isn’t enough. “Oh. More.”

He sucks my clit with a wet sound as he pulls it up from my body with suction that sets off a depth charge to my libido. My orgasm starts with tiny quivers in my thighs, not really an orgasm at all.

It’s only when a second digit and then a third join the first that my release explodes. Now that my core is filled, has something to clutch onto, my body finds the next level of pleasure. This is a DefCon Four level explosion of the first order. My hips buck wildly as I pray he’s strong enough to hang on for the ride.

Every muscle in my body spasms, clenching in bliss as I ride this orgasm like a wild bronc. I feel no shame as my nails dig into his back so hard I have no doubt I’ve drawn blood.

I want him to stop, to climb up next to me and kiss the daylights out of me. I’ll have to settle for round two, though, because he shows no hint of stopping.

He starts his second assault immediately. Obviously he’s never heard of the refractory period. I guess my body didn’t get the memo either because I start quivering when his facile tongue flickers so fast and so hard on my clit that I gasp in delight.

When he applies the tiniest bit more pressure and his fingers take up the tried and true rhythm he discovered is my favorite, my second orgasm hits me like a thunderclap. The bliss burrows deep inside me, then uncoils in spasms as it sets every inch of me on fire.

“Max!” Shit that was a scream. I hope his folks don’t have great hearing because I can’t control myself. “Max!” I shout again when number three barrels at me and hits so hard and fast I feel like my body is flying apart.

My spasms are deep inside me, which is good because I can’t feel my extremities. My arms and legs and lips are numb. My release is so cataclysmic I just lie back and float in the physical bliss, unable to move.

“Did I kill you?” he asks as he shimmies up the bed to put his face near mine.

I’m only partially aware of his kisses. He’s scattering them over my cheeks and eyelids and earlobes. It would feel terrific if I were fully conscious.

“Come back to the living.” He nips my earlobe, then kisses me some more.

It strikes me like an atom bomb. It feels so earth-shatteringly important I have to share it. “Love makes it better, Max.”

When I force my eyes open to look at him, his head is cocked, a quizzical look on his face. To explain, I say, “Me loving you, you loving me? It makes this better.”

“Good to know,” he husks into my ear. “You going to show me as soon as you can move your limbs?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Maximus

I wait for her to say more, but my mate fell fast asleep. I’m learning more about her. For starters, she has terrible timing. That’s okay. When she wakes up, we can start all over again.

I don’t have to wait long, though. She doesn’t doze more than ten minimas before her eyes pop wide open and she says, “Your turn!”

She slaps my ass, then says, “Sleeping on the job, Max? You’re such a slacker.”

This is the Raine I used to watch in the dining room. She’d laugh and joke with the females and their mates. I used to yearn to touch this part of her, this fun Raine who was happy and loose. I’ve got her now.

“My turn for what?” My friends call me a dracker , they’re right. I want to turn this conversation back to what I’ve been waiting for.

“I only have two arms, mate. I know you dreamed of four. Tell me where you want them while you drack me senseless.”

“I decided lunars ago you’re better than a four-armed Mordite, my love. Regarding your question, ass or balls, you decide.” I bite her collarbone. “As long as I can sheathe myself in your tight, hot xyzca .”

“You should have been a poet,” she teases.

That’s okay, I don’t need to be eloquent, she loves me just the way I am.

Those are the last words either of us says for a long time, unless you count the word ‘fuck’ which we both utter on numerous occasions.

She needs little encouragement from my teeth on her nipples or my fingers at her core. She’s ready for me; she always has been.

“Please,” she says, her voice soft and breathless.

I enter her in one long, slow thrust. It’s more meaningful than anything that can be performed in a temple. This. This joining of two bodies into one. It’s perfect. The interconnecting of two souls. We were meant to be together—mate-bond or not.

“Perfect,” she purrs into my ear as I stay inside her, not moving. My chest tightens when I realize she feels it too. She feels the connection of our inevitable joining.

I can only stay still for so long. I shuttle in and out of her with slow, even thrusts until she moans, lifting her thighs higher and cradling my hips with them.

“Perfect,” she says again as her hands stroke me everywhere. She squeezes my ass, then somehow reaches between us and cradles my balls. This sets me off and I can’t control myself any longer. I piston in and out of her, harder and harder, waiting for her to give me a sign that I’m too wild. If anything she urges me on.

“Fuck me, Max!”

Her hands are back on my ass, urging me to thrust harder, so I do.

She comes a couple of times. It’s hard to tell whether it’s one long one or a couple strung together. I don’t care. I won’t leave her wanting.

My balls tighten and I allow myself the joy of letting go, of jetting into her and releasing. She’s right, perfect is the right word.

Raine

You can only have so much sex, enjoy so many orgasms before you absolutely positively have to pass out. I have no idea how long we slept, but when I pop my eyes open I’m pleased to have my huge gladiator sprawled across my chest. He’s like the galaxy’s heaviest slate-gray blanket. I love being pinned down, as long as it’s by him.

I hope I didn’t wake him, but it’s adorable to watch his eyes crack open, see me, and then the slowest smile bloom on his handsome face.

“It wasn’t a dream?” he asks.

“I bet you say that to all the girls,” I slap his shoulder. “Keep it. It’s a pretty good line.”

“You better enjoy it. Now that we’re mated I don’t have to give you lines anymore, although I must admit, that was better than a four-armed Mordite.”

When I give him a mock scowl, he slashes me a real smile.

“We’re good together, Max.”

“True.” He slides the backs of his fingers down my cheek then kisses me soundly on the lips and bounds out of bed. “I’m starving.”

This day has been full of surprises—happy surprises. Perhaps the happiest surprise is the one I’m looking at right now—glowing yellow writing on his chest. I think the markings are different this time; there are certainly more of them. And there’s the sexiest ring of them right under the crown of his cock. Yum.

“Max?”

“Hmm?”

I point at him, he shrugs, and then he looks down to see it.

“The mate-mark!”

“Yep. Bigger, better, brighter than before.”

“Yes.”

“And look at little Max. He’s got a crown of yellow lightning.”

At first, he doesn’t get the ‘little Max’ reference, then he glances at his cock.

“Who are you calling little?” he thunders as he throws himself back on the bed and kisses me everywhere.