The Bonding Read online

He growled, stroking that thick crimson hair. It took about three seconds of the warm, wet perfection of her mouth around him for a familiar hot tingling to spread from the tip of his cock to the base, radiating until it felt as though his entire abdomen and thighs were on fire. His balls quivered, a groan tearing from his throat, and he came hard. Harder than he had the decade-and-a-half since he’d last touched a woman.

  He growled a curse. Sweat beaded on his brow. It took every muscle in his body to keep from moving his hips, from pushing deeper as thick ropes of serum filled her mouth. Instincts clamored, desperate to pump his hips, to thrust his cock down her throat. He stroked his hands through her hair, wanting her to feel his gratitude and his apologies.

  He clenched his teeth so hard his jaw ached. His abdomen burned and quivered. She moaned, a long, happy musical sound of satisfaction that made him feel bigger and stronger and better than he’d ever felt in his life.

  Her mouth tightened around his cock, sucking hard, swallowing deep. Her lips curved, her cheeks hollowed out, her mouth full and somehow, her face became even more beautiful. It had been said that supposedly the taste of a warrior’s serum was uniquely flavored to appeal to his mate. He really hoped so, for her sake, because fuck, it would be unfair if something that incredible was one-sided.

  Tam cursed a long stream of filthy expletives, glad she couldn’t understand him. When he pulled the head of his cock from her glistening lips, she dragged a questing tongue along the crown. He shuddered at the lingering touch on oversensitive skin.

  He choked out an appreciative half laugh. “Ahhh, gods. You can do that again, woman. Anytime you want.”

  She settled visibly at the sound of his voice. “Nissa,” he said, pulling her upward to her knees, trying to put his feelings in his voice. “Thank you. Eyana.”

  The word came out of its volition. Eyana. My soul. It was an old Tribe term of deep respect for one’s mate. His father had called his mother that. He’d never thought he’d be able to use the term.

  A single thread of his serum stretched between her lips and his cock, glistening in the low light of the lamp he’d dimmed in the corner. He pressed his thumb to the corner, wiping her mouth clean.

  Those shimmering eyes locked on his. Breathing hard, face flushed, he could smell her arousal thick in the air. Slick shone on her thighs, beneath the hem of the shirt. He wanted to see her nipples. He wanted to taste her. He wanted to tell her why they were doing this. He wanted to swear that he’d never hurt her, that he’d always protect her, that he’d do anything, because soon she’d belong to him forever, and he to her.

  “Tam?” She looked confused, as if untold questions swirled under the mists of lust visibly building within her.

  The mattress bucked as he moved closer, taking her into the circle of his arms. The space was little more than serviceable—gray bedding, white walls, metal floors. The room had been designed for a warrior to sleep for short periods of time, not for a Bonding.

  He wished he could give her something nice. Anything nice. A candle or a flower. But he had nothing. Only the sterility and solitude of the ship and two strangers who knew nothing of one another.

  At least they had privacy, and his cock was still rock hard. He couldn’t stop a small flashing smile of pride. Tribe warriors could climax repeatedly, but usually they experienced at least a slight softening. His cock had not. It remained solid, rigid, pulsing and desperate for release.

  She lunged for him. Beneath the material of the shirt, her breasts were round and soft, her nipples stiff.

  He pulled the shirt over her head and only had a fleeting before she launched herself against him, climbing him like a tree. Her hands were everywhere. He couldn’t keep up with her. She was hotter than an exploding star, the serum already beginning her healing. He registered vaguely that her fingernails had faded from vivid violet to pale mauve.

  He closed a hand around the soft globe of her ass and sighed. Beautiful. For a moment he let himself imagine how this would be if she weren’t so frantic. Later he’d take more time. Later he’d spend a week with his tongue in her pussy. Right now, though, she was too sick to delay and too hot in the throes of his serum for slow anything.

  He could barely keep her still. She kept grabbing for his cock. “Tam,” she said, over and over again, like a mantra. “Tam. Tam. Tam.”

  “Fuck, eyana. You’re going to kill me. I don’t even know if you’re a virgin.”

  Her scent was stronger now, the unique, potent scent of female. Sweet and salty and incredibly sexy. He sucked a finger in his mouth, wetting it, before lowering it to slide over the soft skin on the gentle rise of her pubic bone. Her body shook in his hands, vibrating like a pulsar. His fingers skimmed over soft hairs, down to skin warm and damp and then to an opening hot as magma and wet as the sea.

  Her breath shuddered. With shaking fingers, he parted her folds, slipping his finger inside all that heat. She moaned and beautiful-babbled incomprehensible words that sounded like music, thrusting against his hand.

  A groan tore from deep in his throat as he felt her, all slippery and slick and ready for him.

  He pressed her down, so she lay on her back, her legs spread. Maybe he should have looked away but he just couldn’t.

  With a muffled curse, he brought his fingers to his mouth, unable to resist. She tasted as good as she smelled. Like heat and musk and sweet fruit. Like female. Like pussy. He’d forgotten how good that tasted.

  Quit wasting time. Bond her and be done with it.

  He pressed two fingers inside her and she groaned, bucking her hips. “That’s it, fuck yourself on my hand. Take what you need.” He lowered his lips to her breast, took her nipple into his mouth, traced its shape with his tongue. Her hands fisted his hair, pulling at him, her body writhing.

  He circled her clit until her hips rocked wildly. “That’s it, eyana, come for me.” Her body coiled and with a breathless, lilting cry, her shoulders raised off the pillows. Her thighs quivered, her body shuddered and her face contorted. Gods, what sight was more beautiful than a female in the throes of an orgasm?

  Moisture coated his fingers. He didn’t come on the spot but it was a near thing. His cock moved up and down in time with the rhythm of his heart.

  Her eyes were unreadable, glazed with lust. He was so close he knew he’d explode the second his cock touched her.

  “Nissa?” He asked it like a question, because it was the only word he knew in her language.

  “Tam,” she said, resuming her mantra. He pressed her thighs wide, moving them up to frame his hips. A bead of serum glistened on his cock head as he pressed it against the dark-pink entrance. She was so small he wondered if she’d be able to fit him. He pushed in gently and then with more force until thin skin stretched tight around his broad head.

  Lava hot and tight as a vise. He gritted his teeth. Resting his weight on his knees, he tried hard to hold his muscles immobile. The cords in his neck stood out and his arms shook, hands fisted. Muscles coiled to stop his hips from thrusting. His thighs burned and his ass clenched so tightly he knew it would ache in the morning. He craned his head back and squeezed his eyes shut, allowing his body only the slightest of movements. Just a tiny shove forward in her tight sheath, then back. Then forward again.

  She moaned, writhing her hips against him, trying to take him deeper.

  Tam stared at the wide eyes locked on his. Mouth open, she looked like a sex goddess come to life, curling hair spread behind her, pale skin flushed.

  She writhed, twisting and moaning around his cock like a wild thing. Tam’s brain knew it wasn’t enough. Tam’s cock, however, knew exactly where it belonged. He fought for control even as his mind shrunk far into the recesses of his consciousness, begging him to just let go, let his body take over for a while.

  Her arms wrapped around him, pulling at him. He grunted and let her pull him deeper, just another inch. He just couldn’t stop her. It was more than he’d dared hope for.

  He stopped, still
only a couple inches inside, and simply rocked within her, stroking her most sensitive of spots. Her gasps grew even louder, her breath fanning his face and her hips moving faster. When she came, she cried out and clutched at him, speaking in that melodic tongue.

  Tam groaned as her pussy convulsed around his cock, milking him for all he had. And he lost it. He unleashed torrents of serum inside her. They locked eyes and he registered the brightest, truest green he’d ever seen, with the same vaguely incandescent quality of her skin and hair, as if a light glowed behind them. Their bodies shook in a long, drawn-out climax.

  He was vaguely aware of the savage noises coming from his throat. He let her pull him all the way inside.

  Gods, she was as tight as a fist around him. Pressing forward, resting his weight on his forearms, he marveled that she could take him, but she did. He pressed deeper.

  She gasped at the pain but pulled him closer. He grunted, deep and savage, and then he was buried inside her warm tightness until his balls pressed against her ass and her legs were wrapped tightly around him.

  She should shove him away, scream in terror. Instead, she stroked him. Their hips moved together frantically.

  She milked him as though his cock were an icon and her cunt its own personal sacellum. Internal muscles tightened convulsively with the strength of a colossal demonic orgasm.

  Eyes wide, her pupils shrank down to pinpricks, even as she screamed long and loud.

  Space imploded. Time stopped. Light condensed into the twin circles of her eyes. Exploded outward in a violent onslaught of visual images as the Bonding took them. Their souls converged.

  Tam saw her as a child. A little girl learning to walk amid red ferns in a deep forest. Laughter, and song. An older child, tall and gangly, hair swirling behind her as she ran through gardens of red flowers, looking over cliffs that seemed to be made of glass. A smile that was wide and white. A girl on the brink of womanhood, stoically facing a future predetermined. A life spread before her of service to her people, the only female in her world who would marry a man elected by the people. Her father was a king, her mother queen.

  She would be the queen. Her husband would be the king the people chose. Then fully grown. Terror. Her race, threatened with extinction, trying desperately to hang on, and ultimately agreeing to enter the cryo-spheres. He felt her fear, her anger, her desperation and guilt at abandoning her planet and her people. He knew her language now, because he knew her. As Ajax had said, he knew her soul. And from the anguished look in her eyes, he knew that she knew his.

  They lived their lives together. Every moment he’d spent laboring on the farm back on his home planet, every happy moment with his family, every empty one after they died and all the trillion seconds that led them right there, to this spot. Bonded together. Forever.

  “Nissa?” he asked, stroking a hand over her cheek, his heart swelling as a piece of her lodged itself in the center of his chest.

  She stroked her hand down his cheek with a quivery smile. “Tam,” she answered.

  3

  I float, red hot and giddy.

  LATER, Nissa would learn that the red haze that settled behind their eyes, the sheer, dazzling lust that dominated her brain and stole her breath, was a normal part of the joining ceremony that was unique to Tam’s people.

  Their bodies flooded with a variety of bond-facilitating hormones that plunged them into the sexual frenzy the Argenti called the Bonding.

  The deep concern she felt for her family, her brethren in their own cryo-pods receded behind the onslaught of intense physical need. She would worry about her people, her family, even her planet, later. She would ponder her obligations to them when her mind was clear and her body sated. Now there was only Tam and what he did to her body.

  Panic gave way to lust. Through it all was the clear knowledge that Tam had saved her life, and as a result they would be together until they died. It terrified her. It thrilled her.

  All they’d done in the aftermath was fuck. Tam’s word for it and maybe it wasn’t elegant but it was articulate in its coarseness.

  Her body rejoiced at his touch. Reveled in his smell, voice, taste. As he did in hers. She lost track of time and reason. She lost sight of her consciousness, operated on pure animal instinct in the heat of their joining, reached an entirely different plane of experience—accessed the infinite.

  A part of her mind was vaguely horrified at her own wanton behavior. Her people simply didn’t act the way she had. But Tam’s did. The Bonding had changed her to the core.

  After, she lay with her head in the crook of his shoulder, against the velvety softness of skin pulled taut over broad, hard muscles, luxuriating in the steady thump of his heart, the even rise and fall of his chest. His arm around her was profoundly comforting, the large hand palming her hip mesmerizing, as his other hand toyed with her hair. She felt sore and shaky and feminine.

  They didn’t speak, although they could. She knew his language now, thanks to the Bonding. She’d lived his life along with him, right up to the anguished decision to bond with her.

  What would they say? He was so enormous it was impossible to imagine he could be so gentle. Blushing, she covered her eyes as flashbacks burned across her eyelids. He’d kissed her everywhere, lingering at her breasts for so long she’d pushed at him in silent protest. Demanding more. Her belly clenched as she remembered his languid half-smile before continuing his slow descent, stopping between her thighs to twirl his tongue around that tiny place that made her scream.

  He’d licked her long and slow in places she’d never thought anyone would touch. He had spread her thighs wider and when she’d thrust up against his tongue, seeking more, he’d indulged her, encouraged her and given her more. Always more. More. More. More as the hot red haze descended over their entwined bodies.

  When he only laughed darkly, she had panted and pulled him back by his hair, mewling as he tortured her just right, shuddering when he plunged his tongue deep.

  When she’d screamed, she had felt his pride in her. She’d been reduced to her animal self, with only one driving thought—more, more, more.

  She’d licked their combined fluids, desperate for more of his delicious flavor. She could savor the taste of him for a thousand years and it would never, ever be enough. Sweet and heady. Frenzied, she had sucked him deep into her mouth, swallowing blissfully when she was rewarded with his smooth, delicious serum. And still she’d demanded more.

  He whispered words in his language with no equivalent in her own. Dark words. Dirty words that made her breath hitch and the secret place between her thighs go liquid hot.

  The words thrilled her. And he knew it. Cock. Pussy. Fuck. No one had ever used words like that in her presence, the sheltered queen-designate.

  She’d known some of what went on in the marriage beds. From her secluded perch in the Red Gardens where she planted her herbs and flowers, she’d seen couples sneak away, watched them live, but she’d never seen, heard or imagined anything close to this. This was unimaginable. This was life and it was dirty, hot, hard, rough, beautiful and so much more.

  Better than the words themselves was the way he said them. He purred pussy as if it was a caress, as if hers was the rarest, most beautiful, most coveted thing in the universe.

  She had no idea how many times her body convulsed in release—how many times his body shuddered in climax—but it coated her skin. He’d scooped the flow from between her legs and rubbed it into her breasts, her scalp, her neck. He’d scented her, marked her, claimed her. Bonding her to him in a way that nothing and no one could ever break.

  It was a primitive, animalistic part of the Bonding that called to some creature within her. She’d sucked it from his fingers and begged for more like a beast gone mad.

  And he had given it to her. He’d given her more than she could have dreamed. Even he had been surprised by it.

  He laughed, discerning her discomfort, shifting her in his arms, muscles rippling. They were both sticky. A sec
ret part of her rejoiced in the darkness, the filthiness.

  “How long until we reach your base?” she asked, the first nonsexual words she had spoken since she’d awoken.

  He glanced at the clock on a shelf on a bulkhead nearby. “Seven hours.” He pressed a kiss to her temple, shifting away. “You need to eat. Then sleep. You need rest.”

  He slipped away from her and a pang burned through her chest at the loss of their connection. He was so beautiful her mouth watered at the thick ridge along the center of his abdominal muscles, over the hard-angled muscles that pointed toward his groin. His cock hung thick, heavy between his thighs, bobbing as he moved.

  Her mouth watered. She wanted the red haze to continue a little longer, just a bit more of a refrain before the wretched realities she faced had to be addressed. Nearly a hundred women were in pods, along with her mother, her father and Criamnon. Her planet was in need of rescue.

  Not yet. She could do nothing now. Later. He slanted a look at her. “Keep looking at me like that and I’ll get back in bed and you won’t get any food.”

  “Who says I want food?” Her voice sounded husky and sultry even to her own ears. She’d become unbridled and wanton and savage. She stretched her body seductively, posing for him shamelessly, and was surprised to find she felt no embarrassment. She’d seen herself through his eyes and he saw none of her flaws.

  She let her legs fall open, and his hot gaze lingered between her thighs.

  He growled, a low, vibrating thrum that did things to her insides, and she flushed. She felt powerful to have such control over a man like him.

  “I do,” he said grimly. “You’re so hungry I can feel it.” He took her mouth in a hard kiss and shoved a blunt finger inside her with a single thrust and another growl, lifting her hips off the bed. She gasped when he sucked a nipple deep into his mouth.

  When she gasped and bucked against his hand, he stopped suddenly.

  She opened her eyes.

  A wicked grin crossed his harsh face. “Hold that thought.” He rose.