Page 30 of The Captain’s Bounty (The Collectors #2)

“Nothing like playing with someone who could destroy you at any minute?” she quipped.

He smirked. “I knew you would not destroy me. I could smell you too intensely.”

She looked away, her face burning with that pleasant embarrassment that tickled up inside her worse than the storm of power. “I hate that you can do that.”

“Smell your desire for me?”

“Yes.”

“No other race affects us like yours.” His small smile faded. “I will find it difficult to say goodbye to you.”

She didn’t want to say goodbye at all. The realization hit painfully sharp, like an icepick straight to her chest. “Do we have to?”

She knew better than to ask that. She flushed for all new reasons, suddenly feeling stupid. It made her vulnerable on so many levels she wasn’t prepared for.

He looked at the wall. “If we do not, you will risk the same hunters that come for us. If we are taken, it will not be pleasant. I and my kind will be executed. You and Cory will spend the rest of your lives as the rut-slave of a male not of your choosing. He may be kind to you or he may be brutal and cruel. However, even a good man can go into Rage, and if so, he might kill you or simply beat you until you wish you were dead. And all that is only if my father doesn’t realize I have… gentle feelings towards you.”

The heated flush built instantly hotter, especially between her legs where the pulse of her quickening heartbeat throbbed in her flesh.

“Gentle feelings?” she echoed, trying not to smile.

He glanced at her out of the side of his eyes, almost ducking his head before he turned away. “You were my first,” he grudgingly admitted.

She bumped his shoulder with her own. “First captive, or the first one you ever tied to your bed?”

She didn’t for a second believe he meant the other kind of first, not until a faint blush stole up into his face, turning the craggy gray of his skin almost black. He leaned forward, elbows resting on his thighs and hands clasped tight between his knees, staring straight ahead as he admitted,

“My first first .” When her jaw dropped, he attempted to return her teasing shoulder bump. “Women on Me’Kava are not given to men such as me.”

He could have knocked her off the bed.

“Oh.” She really needed to say more than that, but her brain refused to come up with anything, except what eventually came tumbling out of her mouth: “I never in a million years would have guessed I was your first.”

He didn’t seem to know how to take that, and in the space of perhaps two seconds, she could see him picking apart each word, each letter, for sarcasm before he risked a narrow sidelong glance.

Their eyes met and whatever he saw in hers dispelled all suspicion.

He straightened, broad shoulders rolling back as a toothy smile took his face. “I did bring you great pleasure.”

She tsked, the scalding flush burning up through her chest to her face only half embarrassment. She should not have found his response to be even half as sexually stimulating as it was.

“Despite whipping my ass first,” she said, getting up off the bed because staying this close to him was too damn distracting for her own good.

Her clit was pulsing insistently now, and her belly churned with the warmth that only the press of his thigh to hers and the inconsequential brush of his arm as he sat up could do.

She’d have walked away, but before she took so much as a step, his arm hooked her waist and the whole room spun as he tossed her onto her back on the bed, rolling her underneath the hard press of his body in a way that made her libido soar.

“I did not whip you,” he said, seductively. “I would never treat you thus. My punishments were exceedingly gentle and, even you must admit, well-earned. Despite, you say? I say you liked them, too.”

Her instant denial launched up her too-tight throat only to die unspoken on her lips when he shook his head.

“Do not lie. I can smell how much you liked it. The hot core of your body weeps for the discipline of my hand.”

She’d have shaken her head if only he hadn’t put his hand upon her throat, holding her jaw in a way that kicked up the storm of butterflies now fluttering in her belly, and set her throbbing pussy on fire.

He held her in a way that could have cut off her breathing, but he didn’t.

He simply held her, directing her gaze to his and holding her attention captive as he let his other hand wander down her body, lifting the hem of her borrowed shirt up while he took his own measurement of just how aroused she was.

“Mm,” he purred, as his fingers parted her wet folds, rough bark-like skin becoming slick with her desire. “Nice.”

Her breath caught, her eyes almost closing as he found her clit.

Electric shocks zipped from nerve to nerve, lighting up her entire body invisibly from within.

Her breasts arched into empty air, taut nipples aching for his smirking mouth, while he played with her clit, now lightly pinching, now circling the sensitive tip with his wet fingertips and now?—

“Look at me.”

She made herself meet his smug gaze.

“You like this, yes?”

She couldn’t breathe. Every caress wound the tension inside, coiling the tightness building inside her until her legs trembled from the pressure.

“Tell me you want this, or I may stop.”

God, no.

She grabbed his wrist, afraid he might actually pull his hand back, leaving her to wither on the edge of coming. His eyes narrowed, that knowing curl of his smile growing before he tore his wrist from her grasp. Grabbing her forearm instead, he flipped her over.

She yelped, the sharp pinch of discomfort as he twisted her arm up behind her back nowhere near painful enough to warrant the volume of her cry.

It surprised her more than it hurt, but the eroticism of it kicked another notch higher when he straddled her thighs.

He shoved the hem of her shirt up to the small of her back, baring her ass to the caressing squeeze of his hand.

And did she push her ass up? She refused to admit to that little wiggle. Her legs were trembling, that was all. She was not consciously presenting him with a target, hoping he’d strike… holding her breath…

If she wasn’t so aroused, she’d be appalled by her body’s betrayal.

She buried her face in the rumpled sheets of the bed, closing her eyes against the mortification that hit her when every squeeze of his hand spread her bottom cheeks apart, giving him clear sight to every hidden part between her legs.

“Nice,” he said again, deep voice lowering into a husky growl. “So wet. You shine in the light.”

His fingers dipped into her from behind, sinking into her sheath, playing in her wetness, smearing it along her sopping wet slit and spreading it up between her cheeks. She shivered, her whole body reacting as she felt him circling the puckered rim of her anus.

“I am not your first,” she whispered, her legs quaking with anticipation. “There is just no way you haven’t had some experience.”

His thumb circled her once, then lined up with that forbidden entrance and pushed, slowly working his way inside her.

“You would say this to me? As an archeologist?” Now he tsked, stroking up against an entirely unknown cluster of nerves as he did so, bringing pleasure like lightning sparking through her body.

“I should have thought you, of all people, would understand that one can know quite a lot about things one has not personally experienced. And space-faring gives one a great deal of time to… think.”

Her breath caught, that slight pinch as his thumb invaded the tight ring of muscle trying to keep him out little more than a whimper of burning discomfort that died quickly under the wave of pleasure that accompanied the gentle in and out thrust as he fucked her bottom.

“I have thought about many things over the course of my life. Now I have you, and I am no longer hampered by merely thinking about them. Now, I can do real… What is the phrase? Hands-on research.”

He pushed his thumb as deep into her as he could, twisting with such exquisite mastery that she found herself arching her bottom up, tilting her hips back to give him greater access to anything he wanted. Because she wanted it too. She shouldn’t, but she did.

There were so many good reasons to run from this, but really, where did she have to run to?

With him, without him, she would be just as hunted.

Only worse, she had never had to run before.

She’d never had to hide herself. She’d never had to try to survive with nothing and no one to depend on. No money, no resources, no anything.

If she tried to go her own way now, she would be captured, enslaved, executed, or simply killed by her own ignorance and vulnerability within the month.

Any or all of which could also happen if she stayed with him, but at least with him, she had a chance.

More than that, though, with him she wouldn’t have to spend the rest of her life missing him, remembering the easy way with which he’d mastered her body, wondering if she’d walked away from the equivalent of a hot planet-side fling or the love of her life.

Withdrawing his thumb, he smacked her bottom.

“Ass up,” he said briskly. She heard the click of his belt buckle coming undone and tug of his fly as he unfastened his pants.

The pressure of his weight on the backs of her thighs lifted, letting her scramble onto her knees and push her hips back, offering up her ass for him to do as he liked.

As they both would like.

Her breath caught as she felt his cock prod between her thighs and along the pulsing seam of her sex.

Her exhale was a sigh of intense relief as he invaded her slick body, forcing her to open to his penetrating thrust, taking her with such slow, exquisite torment that it was all she could do not to impale herself upon him, forcing him to take her faster, deeper, until all she could feel was how full he made her.

He took her hips in his hands, holding her steady, forcing her to be still and simply accept what he gave her.

She wanted more with painful desperation, but he was quick to smack her naked bottom if she tried to take what he wasn’t ready to let her have.

And with every smack, the pleasure flew higher, hotter.

She moaned with it, her hands tightening into fists in the loose folds of the bedding as he took her, driving her to soar on waves of pleasure so intense all she could feel was herself going higher. She’d never survive the inevitable fall.

And yet, the fall truly was inevitable. Apart from phenomenal chemistry, what did they have, because it certainly wasn’t a relationship. Well actually, captor/captive was a kind of relationship, just not a healthy one.

But it was the one that made her clit spark and her pussy spasm. It was the one that arched her back until his hand slid up her spine to fist in the tangles of her hair, pulling her head back while he drove his cock into her harder.

He made her come like no one and nothing she had ever known before. He made her feel alive in ways that only felt possible when he was driving this deep. She loved the way he felt when he stiffened above her, pulling her back into his final thrust and releasing himself inside her.

Bending, he nipped and then kissed her shoulder, the side of her neck, and ended with the lobe of her ear. “Sleep. I will bring you food, presuming I can find something edible on this ship.”

He pulled out of her, leaving her feeling alone in ways that had nothing to do with the parting of their bodies. She watched as he dressed. She watched as he left without so much as a backwards look.

She had no idea what she was going to do, but she did know this: she couldn’t stay here, on this ship, with Bruwes.

She had to get distance between them before he became something to her too painful to be parted from, especially when she already knew she would never be anything more to him than a bounty he might or might not regret never collecting on.