The Bonding Read online

  He pulled her up and dragged his thumbs over her eye lids, under her nose, along her lips, then shoved her under again.

  It took three times, before she sucked in a long frantic breath, and he released one of his own.

  She was awake.

  And alive.

  Her eyes were still stubbornly closed but her pupils moved back and forth and her body shook with chills despite the heat of the water.

  Her arms splashed and her legs kicked out. She cried out. He had to dodge a heel that strayed toward his cock. She found his chest with a groping hand, and that seemed to steady her somehow. She slid her hand up over his flight suit and got to his neck, touched the skin there and held on.

  It was the first time anyone had touched his bare skin in over a decade. Even doctors wore gloves.

  “It’s okay,” he grunted. “Ssssh. It’s okay. Can you open your eyes?”

  But she didn’t understand him, she just panted back, clasping at his neck.

  Water clung to her skin, dripping down her chin, turning her thick burgundy lashes into wet spikes that laid against her the pale skin of her cheeks. Her cold hand fluttered against his neck. The water in the pool was hot but it was like she was freezing. Not just shivering. Quaking. Down to her bones.

  Her veins were blue along her wrists and forearms. Unnaturally blue. Something was wrong. She shouldn’t be so cold.

  He gripped her upper arms and shook her. Not hard, but insistent. “Wake up, damn it. Open your eyes.” He shoved her head under the surface of the water again, hoping to clear the gunk from her lashes.

  This time, when he pulled her back above the surface, she sputtered and it worked.

  She opened her eyes.

  Blinding green flashed at him, her eyes darting around the room, settling on his chest, on the soaking front of his flight-suit. Her grip on his neck tightened and her eyes widened like she was terrified.

  He hadn’t stopped to remove his clothes, hadn’t wanted to scare her by having her wake up naked, with a naked man, but apparently, he was terrifying enough even with clothes on.

  The weight of those green eyes moved up, over her neck, along his face and settled on his eyes, asking thousands of questions.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay. I’ve got you,” he said, over and over again and his voice was gruff, even to his own ears.

  She shook her head.

  He pulled her closer, needing to touch her, get her used to him so he could help her. He traced her cheekbones with his thumbs.

  Her teeth chattered. He pointed at the skin of her forearm, tracing a long finger over veins that spread in dark-blue webs. He tried to let his worry show on his face so she’d understand that something was wrong.

  She had to feel it. The sickness in her system. Goose bumps rose over her skin. Her nipples had darkened nearly to blue.

  She shivered, breathing fast, heart pounding a fast pulse in her throat. What the hell was wrong with her?

  “I’ll get you help. You need a healer,” Tam promised, but she didn’t understand his words.

  She shuddered against him, and the blue veins spread down her palms.

  “It’ll be okay. I’m going to help you.” He picked her up in his arms, keeping his eyes averted from her naked body, and carried her out of the pool to his room.

  “SHE’S DYING,” Tam announced flatly to the control room a scant minute later.

  He hated leaving her, even for a few moments so he could contact base again. He spoke to the hologram of one of Base Fleet Sierra-Six’s healers, Ajax.

  “Look at her stats,” Tam said evenly, glancing up at the HolCom of the healer. His ship’s computer had linked to the base’s mainframe and sent her medical stats for the healers to review. “Tell me what to do.”

  The connection was as shitty as ever. The three-dimensional HolCom of Ajax’s blond head appeared and disappeared, fading and crackling.

  In order to send transmissions across lightyears of space, they had to be relayed through a series of tiny portals, anchored at even intervals. The resulting delays meant fading images and choppy sound. Better than nothing.

  Ajax’s HolCom eyebrows furrowed as he reviewed the woman’s health status. He met Tam’s eyes but his voice stayed even and calm. “It’s a common form of hypothermia that results from long cryo freezes. It’s called the blue-tinge.”

  “Whatever it’s called, it gets worse every godsdamned second.”

  “Quite the find, Tam.”

  “Shut up and tell me how to fix her.”

  Off-screen, chatter surrounded Ajax, who stood in WarCom, a massive, dark conference room on Sierra-Six where the higher-ups made important decisions.

  Ajax tapped away at his own glass digi-screen tablet, probably searching for past patients with similar afflictions. “How far up her arms and legs does it go? From her mouth?”

  Tam frowned. “Last time I checked maybe mid-thigh, upper arm, and to her collarbone.”

  Ajax looked up from his screen, eyes narrowed. Tam hadn’t felt fear in a long time and he was embarrassed to admit its soft fingers stroked his neck as he studied his friend’s face.

  “Her fingernails?”

  Something in the lines around Ajax’s mouth warned Tam his answer wasn’t going to be a good one. “Dark purple.”

  Ajax cocked his head to the side and the hologram wobbled. An almost amused curve lurked at the corner of his mouth. Tam held his breath, knowing and fearing at the same time what that half-smile meant.

  “It’s time you started considering using your serum.”

  Tam rolled his shoulders, flexing his palms, glad that his dick, stiffer than his sword, was below the viewer of the HolCom feed.

  “Her body scans show her organs are similar to ours. We’ve never encountered a race as similar with whom the Bonding didn’t work. You can save her by Bonding with her.”

  “We don’t even speak the same language.”

  Ajax tilted his head slightly, regarding Tam with pale, laughing eyes. “I’m sure you can find some way to communicate with her. It’s a formal request. From Healing to you. You can say no.”

  That was a lie. There wasn’t a warrior on board Sierra-Six, hell on any base or colony of Argentus, who wouldn’t blame him if she died. Tribe warriors didn’t let females die. Not if they could stop it. Not ever. End of story. He’d never forgive himself.

  Ajax continued, “Forming a permanent union is drastic. But I’d say the situation is drastic.”

  When she’d opened her eyes, green, intense, unlike anything he’d ever seen, and she’d looked at him for the first time, he’d seen fear bloom. Part of him had died. She’d been so sick, too weak to do more than shiver.

  He didn’t know her name or age. If he used his serum to save her, she’d be stuck with him forever. How would she feel about that? He couldn’t explain the repercussions to her. It felt like a theft of her whole life. How would she feel about the method he had to use to save her?

  He wanted nothing more than to claim the female as his mate. But like this?

  How do you explain to someone that you need to fuck them or they’d die?

  If someone said that to him, he’d kill them. Dead before their ass hit the floor.

  Ajax locked eyes with someone off-screen. The admiral maybe. Tam wondered from how high up the commands came.

  “It’s a request,” Ajax repeated. But it wasn’t. Not really and Ajax knew that too. HolCom Ajax faded to black-and-white for a few seconds then blinked back into vivid polychrome.

  Ajax raised his eyebrows as the hologram flickered. “She’s dying, Tam. You can save her with your serum.”

  “You mean my semen.”

  “If you prefer that word. I’d say by injecting a life-saving serum into her mouth and then mating with her.” Ajax leveled an even gaze at Tam, meeting his eyes through the holographic feed across millions of miles of space. He tilted his head to the side coolly. “If you’re really uncomfortable with the idea, you could put her in a hot b
ath, pray like hell that she’ll make it, bring her back here. Another warrior could supply the serum.”

  “Like hell.” Even Tam was surprised by the growl that came from his throat. “She’s mine.”

  Ajax exhaled an amused laugh. “I thought so. Don’t let her die.”

  Tam wasn’t sure what to say.

  After a long silence, Ajax spoke again. “If your sister had become a woman, escaped danger in a pod and was found by a warrior, only to awake with the blue-tinge, what would you have told the warrior to do?”

  Tam swallowed heavily, trying to imagine what his sister would she have looked like, all grown-up. He blinked. “I’d have told him to save her. No matter what.”

  Ajax nodded. “And if you were her? Would you rather die?”

  “No.”

  “Understanding is part of the nature of the Bond. Go slowly. Don’t scare her. Your body’s chemistry will help you. Your kiss holds aphrodisiacs. The weaker she is, the stronger they’ll work.” Ajax lifted one shoulder. “Trust in fate, friend. It led you here. It’ll work out.”

  Tam scowled at the flickering HolCom of his friend. “What do you know about women?”

  “Nothing.” Ajax smiled thinly. “But I’ve studied the Bonding enough to know it’s a lot more than just chemistry. Serum isn’t just a medicine. It’s a piece of your soul that you give her with your Bond. You will know her heart, her language, her history. And she’ll know yours. It’s a transference of the cells in your body. It will change both of you.” He frowned, eyes unreadable. “This is a good thing, man. You get a wife. She gets a warrior who’ll stop at nothing to keep her safe.”

  Put like that it didn’t sound so bad. Still. It didn’t exactly answer the burning question in his mind. How the hell would he convince her to let him have sex with her?

  “Hey, Ajax,” he said as the other male turned to leave the screen.

  “Yeah?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Ajax smiled. “You’re one lucky prick, man.”

  The HolCom imploded in a burst of clear white light.

  Tam stared at black space beyond the windows of the flight deck. A hundred thousand stars stared back at him, polychrome clouds of distant galaxies, empty and merciless, gravid with silken promise and smirking rejection.

  Lucky.

  It wasn’t that simple. He’d gladly spread her wide open, spend a few days with his tongue inside that sweet pink pussy. He’d happily make her scream and writhe and he’d take her every possible way he’d ever even seen on the pleasure holos.

  If she were willing. But what if she wasn’t? He couldn’t exactly ask her.

  He shook his head, leaning against the hatch frame of his room, looking at her slim form under the covers. He was stalling, trying to decide a clear way to proceed.

  Once the Bonding was complete, they’d be joined permanently. He didn’t think a Bonding had ever been broken.

  He’d only ever been with one woman before, the dominess who had conducted his manhood ceremony, in which she’d taught him how to give and receive pleasure. And he remembered every second of the three sacred days he’d spent in the company of the Tribe dominess, his cock shoved deep within the warm comfort of her pussy. He’d loved every heartbeat of it. It had come as naturally as breathing. But he’d been young then and his serum hadn’t been fully mature. It was now.

  This would be something entirely different. The Bonding. Alone in his chamber, in the solitude of space, when he fisted his cock, he imagined a million scenarios. This hadn’t been one of them.

  He approached. Her hair spread across the pillows, red and wild as a silken vine. Even asleep, she was so beautiful it almost hurt to look at her. Every warrior’s instinct in his body called out to help her.

  And before he could save her, he had to actually make her his. He scrubbed his hands through his hair again, at a loss. Indecision. Self-doubt. Not emotions to which he was accustomed.

  “Fuck.”

  2

  Stardust and moonbeams.

  I have neither.

  HE REMOVED each of his weapons and placed them on the shelves near the hatch. He stripped off his harnesses and hung them on hooks. Boots, he unlaced and tucked meticulously under the bed.

  He knew what he was doing. Delaying. He sighed. Just get it over with, asshole.

  With a grimace, he laid his knee on the bed beside her, acutely aware of how awkward this could be. He touched her shoulder, the skin cool through the shirt he’d given her. The dark fabric pooled around her slender frame.

  He ran a hand over her shoulder and those incandescent green eyes opened. She clutched the covers up to her chin and chattered out her beautiful alien words. Fluid as music.

  He tried to smile reassuringly at her, looking smaller, less threatening, nicer. It felt awkward on his face. He pressed his fist to his chest. “Tam.”

  Her eyes widened.

  He repeated it again. “Tam.” He tapped her sternum.

  After a moment, she spoke, soft and tremulous. “Nissa.”

  He smiled. “Nissa.”

  She smiled, too, all wobbly and hopeful. He shifted his pants, hoping she wouldn’t notice his cock was all but waving at her. He raised his other knee to the bed and she pulled back a little but her eyes seemed less terrified. He wished it were true.

  His father’s favorite saying had been wishes are stardust and moonbeams, son.

  He had neither.

  Moving slowly so as not to frighten her, he stroked her hair back from her face. Her eyes registered surprise but she didn’t pull away. He lifted her arm, pointed at her forearm, traced his fingers along the veins spreading blue on soft skin. He shook his head. “Bad.”

  He tapped blue skin. “You’re sick.”

  She frowned, but nodded.

  He hoped she understood. Knew she didn’t. He barely understood as it was. The Bonding sometimes had weird effects with other races, something Tam had only seen briefly on the news. Even Ajax couldn’t entirely predict how this would work for them.

  It would save her though. That was all that mattered. He leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers. She gasped and backed up a few inches. He waited.

  “Nissa,” he whispered, hushing her gently the way he had done with the frightened animals back on his father’s farm on Argentus. Slow, steady, letting her get used to his smell and size and shape.

  “Tam?”

  He nodded but stayed close to her, waiting. “It’s okay. I can make you better.” It felt as if every muscle in his body swelled just for her. Fucked- up as it was, he’d never felt so proud in his life to be a man, to have a cock and know it would save this woman.

  He tapped her arm again, traced the blue veins. “It’s okay.” This time when he pressed his lips to hers, tentative, cautious, she didn’t pull away, though she had to be confused as hell. He was so hard his balls ached.

  Clenching his hands to control his body, he traced his tongue along the seam of her lips. Warm, and so soft.

  Emerald eyes, wide and curious, stared at him, so close they almost crossed. When she touched her tongue against his, his dick jumped a mile and he almost creamed his pants.

  He stroked her face, moving his fingers through her hair, taking in her scent, delicate, floral and so feminine, matching his breaths to hers so she could inhale his scent. He’d need to go slowly, so she wouldn’t get scared.

  “Please forgive me,” he whispered against her lips. “I swear I’ll be a good mate to you.”

  He stroked her cheek, pressing his lips over hers, meeting her tongue with his. The bones beneath her skin felt so fine in comparison to his own. Her skin gleamed, deathly pale with the spreading chill. He pressed a chaste kiss against her forehead, willing her to know this wasn’t what he wanted. Or...at least not how he wanted it.

  He hadn’t been this close to a woman in so long. He’d forgotten how silky-soft they were. His cock throbbed.

  He stroked a finger over her full, blue-tinged lips. Her mouth w
as soft, her tongue warm and velvety. He tried to show her he’d be gentle, gain her trust so she’d let him do this.

  Why in the hell would she let him do this? She didn’t know him. He couldn’t believe she’d let him get this close.

  She moaned against him and he’d never heard a prettier sound. Not ever. He slid his tongue in deeper, dragging his thumb down her chin, encouraging her to open wider, let his tongue in deeper.

  She gasped, pupils dilating.

  Surprise all over her face, she groaned, “Tam,” and pulled at him, forcing her hands into the opening of his flight-suit.

  Tam’s stomach clenched. Was that the aphrodisiac Ajax had mentioned? So powerful. Guilt stabbed through his belly. He wished he could speak to her, explain what was happening to her, why she needed him so badly. Instead, he helped her remove his suit until he knelt before her, naked, cock waving in front of her like a flagstaff.

  She stared at it for a long moment, eyes uncertain and a little scared, as if maybe she’d just figured out what was going to happen. “Tam?”

  He looked down at his furious cock, glimmering with serum. She licked her lips and he groaned at the sight of her pretty pink tongue dragging along those full red lips. Questions lingered in her eyes, but he doubted even if they spoke the same language, he’d have the words to explain.

  There was hunger in those eyes. Maybe it was just the aphrodisiacs at work, rooted in her system.

  He hoped not. Maybe she just liked his face. Or his cock. Either one. She was staring at his dick though. That wasn’t his imagination. She licked her lips, breathing hard, and he felt it like a gut punch. He nodded in answer to the unspoken question and apparently she didn’t need any more encouragement.

  She dropped down onto hands and knees, ravenous, and took his cock between her lips. He really hadn’t expected this to be so easy. “Fuuuuuck.” He exhaled, long and deep. Nothing had ever felt better. Nothing had ever felt worse. He couldn’t warn her. He couldn’t stop her. He couldn’t help her. Violation, absolutely, but also salvation.