Page 21

Jaz

A yelp emitted from Xandros as Zyair rolled the ship and the viewports revealed only rock. “Give warning, bro.”

“Quiet,” hissed Rhodes.

The ship was engulfed in darkness as Zyair slowed it down, keeping one eye on the navcube, and another on the readings from the ship’s location radar. When the ship hit an outcrop in the narrowing cave and shuddered, he put her into a hover before lowering her landing gear to the rock below.

The large asteroid trembled with the multiple hits it endured. At least, I thought it was the blasts—I was shaking so hard I couldn’t tell for sure. I seemed irrationally focused on Zyair’s long fingers racing across the switches on the dash, shutting down everything except basic life support.

“Will their battlecruiser sense us?” I whispered. Even my voice shook.

“Depends,” he whispered back. “Would have helped to toss around debris other than a bunch of dead Drakes. Could have done Senaik too.”

The words seemed to vibrate from the big body wrapped around me. “I would have gladly tossed him,” I commented, but I didn’t really care about Senaik. My entire body burned like I still had a fever.

“We need him.” His voice was abstracted, as if he also wasn’t paying full attention to the topic at hand. Which, considering what pushed into me from behind, I was certain to be true.

“Do we just sit here?” I had to clear my throat part way through the sentence and my mind was filling with white noise. The heat of him was like being enfolded in a furnace of rock-hard muscle. “For how long?”

“Shh,” he murmured. His arms tightened slightly around me. “A while.” He almost sounded as if he would continue to speak, but stopped himself. Instead, he lowered his head to my hair, and inhaled.

I would never have thought hair sniffing to be a huge turn on, but I was already in more than a bit of a state. When he did that— fucking hell . The harness had me pinned to him, but my back arched anyway. I panted like a dog in heat.

But he was a Drake, dammit. What was I doing?

His big hands hesitated when I leaned my torso into his. “Your scent is calling to me, but you have to tell me what you want,” he murmured.

Want? It was not a strong enough word. My body burned for him.

He might be a Drake, but he was effing gorgeous.

No human male was ever going to compare to this…

“Can Drakes and humans… I mean—” I broke off as my mind warred with my body.

I had no explanation for this kind of craving.

Maybe we were resonating on a purely animal level?

“Oh, yes,” he breathed. “My brothers are mated to a human.”

Why did my breath hitch? “Xandros and Rhodes?”

“No. My elder brothers.” He pulled my hair away from the side of my neck, and trailed his nose along it, inhaling hard. “Do you want this? Do you want me? I have to know, Princess Jazmin.”

The way he said ‘Princess Jazmin’, with his weird Drakonian accent, sent shivers of anticipation through me. My body burned . Yes. Yes, I wanted him. More than I had ever wanted anything. Certainly more than I had ever craved any human…

A pulse of pure heat coursed through me. My lips formed and gave assent without conscious thought.

“Yeah,” I said. “I want you.”

The second I offered it, he ran his big hand up beneath my shirt and along my ribs. Strong fingers hesitated at the clasp, before he pushed the bra aside to cup my breasts. His thumbs flicked over nipples already standing at full attention. I moaned, and squirmed against what was pinned between us.

He released the harness with a single, impatient poke and lifted me as though I were nothing but a kitten instead of a full-grown woman. Okay, maybe I was a little on the petite side, but the way he spun me around to straddle his powerful thighs had me trying to climb him like a tree.

I was aching for him. Felt like I would die, if I didn’t get him.

I inhaled his unique scent—fresh, yet redolent of a forest after a rain, with a hint of fragrance that reminded me of sweet tobacco.

I pulled away long enough to rip off my shirt, and along with it, my bra.

His gaze dropped to the revealed breasts, and his eyes glowed brilliant emerald.

Then he reached up a huge hand to cup my jaw—the long fingers extended into my hair.

“You are gorgeous, Princess Jazmin,” he whispered.

“Kiss me,” I begged, keeping my own voice low. “And just call me Jaz.”

His eyes flared. “Kiss? Is that pressing our lips together?”

I blinked up at him. “You’ve never kissed anyone?”

He hesitated. “Drake females are scarce.” As his fingers traced fire over my lips, he tilted his head a little to the side. “So soft…”

I scanned his features. “Have you ever been with a female?”

He stiffened slightly. “Sort of.” Said a little louder, and he winced.

What? “How can you ‘sort of’ be with a female? ”

He shifted uncomfortably beneath me. “She used her mouth on me.”

Okay, he’d had a blowjob, so not completely inexperienced. But close enough. I couldn’t quite believe it. I took a deep breath, and whispered, “Let me show you how humans kiss.”

His eyes flared as I tangled my fists in his thick red-gold hair, and lowered his face to mine. He shuddered as I danced my tongue along the sensitive seam of his lips. Then I pressed mine to his, and kissed him.

I was totally unprepared for the explosion when our lips met.

I squirmed in his lap, caught up in a wave of lust and something I didn’t dare try to define.

Taste, touch, scent—senses that I most neglected, came alive.

He tasted of spice and fresh rain, like a mountain stream.

His lips were warm and smooth, but firm.

I was flooded with a feeling of rightness.

Like I’d been waiting my entire life for that kiss. It spoke to something deeper, and it almost gave me pause. Was my heart more involved than I wished to admit?

No. Heart was a commitment I wasn’t ready for. Not when he was a Drake, and I needed to be free…

For the moment, we both wanted this. And that was enough.

His hand wrapped around the back of my head, and he began to experiment on his own. When I pushed my tongue past his lips, he groaned, long and low.

That sound effortlessly carried me over the edge. I attacked him with teeth and tongue. I’d never behaved like this—it was as though I were possessed.

And he gave as good as he got. Fast learner, this Drake. His skin was satiny smooth, but it encased steel-like muscles. I couldn’t get enough of touching him. This was so much more than mere want, or need. It was a soul-deep craving that was almost scary.

Not scary enough to stop me, though. When something quivered against my midriff, I muttered, “Too much damn clothing.” I didn’t want to pull away from him to remove my leggings? —

He had another solution. He rotated his hand and placed the palm over my center…

Sprouting a talon from his thumb, Zyair ripped the seam of my leggings.

As I exhaled in surprise, my panties followed suit.

I never even felt the kiss of a talon against my skin, only the tug as the fabric parted.

It was a shocking demonstration of fine-tuned control. Then his fingers began to explore…

“Sure you’ve never done this?” I gasped into his ear.

“There are other ways to learn,” was his reply.

I pulled back enough to meet his gaze. “Don’t tell me you’ve read up on it.”

His answer was a suppressed but still rumbling laugh as he rose, lifting me with him. Cradling my torso with one long arm extending from my waist to my shoulder, he laid me back against the sloped control panel.

I looked up at him. My thoughts leaped and pounded in time with my heart, and the intensity as he caressed me with his gaze made it hard to breath. He dropped his head, and licked .

Okay, that should have been weird. But fucking hell, as his warm, wet tongue explored my throat, my breasts, and my midriff, it sent frissons of pure lightning through to my core. I ached for more, and my legs spread of their own accord.

He took the invitation, buried his face between my thighs, and laved…

I gasped and arched upward. Surely that tongue was longer than it ought to be? As it twirled and flicked and penetrated where no such thing had been before, my head fell back and my world dissolved in white noise.

Fucking hell . There should be poems and songs and movies about that tongue…

my entire body sang its praises. Everything tightened as I climbed higher and higher—but dammit, I didn’t want to explode like this.

I wanted to ride him. Wanted to slide his enormous shaft inside me, and reduce him to the trembling, aching wreck that I was, before I rode him to completion …

I buried my fingers in his hair and pulled him off me. His emerald gaze fogged with an emotion so intense it ignited something deep within me. Something so powerful that it frightened me. I pushed it aside, and simply whispered, “I want you.”

He uttered something inarticulate, and rose.

Rolling me so that my stomach was against the column, Zyair bent to fold his arms around me, until I was cradled within them.

My legs dangled over air, until I hooked my ankles around his powerful thighs.

Something warm but strong wrapped itself around my waist—for just a panicked second, I thought it was a snake.

I glanced down to his tail. He’d pulled it up between his legs, and now it supported my lower half.

He buried his nose in my hair and kissed the nape of my neck as his shaft quivered against my buttocks. I arched my hips, spreading my legs like a wanton animal. There. I wanted him there. Now .

He pushed against my entrance—his shaft was so bloody magnificent. I rubbed myself up and down against his burgeoning head, panting. But he’d frozen, as if afraid to move.

“We have to go slow.” The strain in his tone indicated he wasn’t talking to me so much as himself.

“Just give this girl what she wants, damn it.” Hard to be demanding in a whisper, but I managed it, squirming as I tried to push back against him.

He groaned, and his hips thrust just a bit, as if it were beyond his control not to. He was huge, maybe too huge. But that made him all the better. I wanted more, much more.

I was slick with desperation, and slowly, one glorious iota at a time, he slid within. When I gasped, he stopped, shuddering with the effort.

“Keep going,” I urged, pushing back onto him.

“Shaaaftz,” he ratcheted the curse in segments as he eased deeper. “You are like molten vevlat .”

I had no opportunity to ask what that word meant, because his tail lifted and held me. He was massive, but I stretched for him, and on the way, he hit nerves I didn’t know I possessed. I panted and squirmed and wanted him to move, damn it. I needed him to move ?—

Then something near his thick shaft began to rub.

While the length of it held me, the very tip of his tail danced and twirled and teased the most sensitive parts of me.

I panted and moaned, squirming against the tail’s hold, until its owner finally moved.

Slowly at first, and carefully, but when I took over the tempo, he picked it up.

His immense body leaned over mine, the Drakonian tongue flicking over my ear, before it traced the contours, shooting shivers of pleasure through me.

My breathing came in hoarse pants that he echoed. Every slick slide seemed tighter than the one before—either I was bearing down, or he was swelling, but I was soaring, higher and higher. His hips picked up the pace, each delicious thrust pushing me closer…

The tip of his tail joined in on the ecstasy and began to vibrate…

My thighs pulled inward, and with a cry, I shattered around him. He roared as he followed, flooding me with heat.

We pulsed and gasped as wave after wave carried through us until I lay limp, cradled in his arms and tail as we both stretched across the control panel. Still bent over, he rested on his arms to keep his weight from crushing me, and they trembled.

I was so content—never wanting to let this feeling end—when all of a sudden, something squeaked at me.

It sounded a bit muffled, and when I blinked upward, I saw Sookie’s furry face pressed up against the air duct.

Fucking hell. I tried to straighten, but Zyair’s hard body was in the way.

Sookie pushed the bit of paper she held in her teeth through the grate, to fall onto the dash. Oblivious to my panic, Zyair calmly reached for the note and unrolled it.

“Yani says she cannot get the shields repaired without parts.” He sighed.

My gaze was frozen on the hedgegopher. Who was wearing her damned harness. And camera .

Yani had said she enjoyed watching her cousin with the tentacle guy… holy crap.

“Get up, get up, GET UP!” It was less of a whisper than it should have been…

“What? Why?”

“She’s wearing a fucking camera,” I hissed.

“So?”

He really wasn’t getting it. “Yani can see us. It’s embarrassing.”

“No, it—it is not,” he countered. But I twisted my head to confirm he was smirking. Rather smugly.

“Nothing about this is funny,” I snapped.

He tilted his head. “It—it is a scintilla funny.”

“Get off me, Zyair.”

He shifted, as if to pull out—but he didn’t budge. When I glanced back this time, there was a hint of something else in his eyes. Panic? I couldn’t place it. “Cannot do, my Princess Jazmin.”

My gaze narrowed. “What do you mean? Why not?”

He grimaced and suddenly appeared apologetic. “I do not have any control over this.”

I squirmed, and that was when it finally occurred to me that he was not one iota less rigid. He seemed rather firmly wedged, no matter what I did.

It wasn’t uncomfortable—in fact, it was sending signals to my body to start all over again. But I couldn’t… could I? No. I couldn’t. Not with Sookie and Yani as an audience. But?—

My body insisted that yes, yes it could.

Dammit! Just as I squirmed, and Zyair exhaled hard, a mental impression of a massive explosion broke my reverie. “What the hell?—”

And something slammed hard into the Stardrifter .