The Bonding Read online

  He laughed at her sound of outrage when he pulled his finger away and her hips dropped back to the bed.

  She threw a pillow at his head, narrowly missing as he ducked through the hatch. Smug male laughter echoed from down the passageway.

  When he returned, carrying a plate piled high with strange foods, foreign breads, nuts, spreads, meats and vegetables, her stomach rumbled and she realized he was right. She was ravenous.

  They ate in bed, Tam sitting behind her, holding her between his legs, an arm around her belly, describing the foods, pressuring her to try everything long past when she’d eaten her fill.

  He was only appeased when she finished several glasses of water and tea and an electrolyte-rich juice he forced on her that tasted tangy and bitter. There were other juices that tasted better—ones she’d rather suck straight from the source.

  He stroked a hand behind her ear, in a place that made her arch her neck. “I’m sorry for what I did, eyana.”

  “For saving me?”

  “No. For the way I saved you.”

  She swallowed. Neither of them had a choice. Fate had set the table. It wasn’t his fault that his body had held her remedy. His future had been stolen as much as hers.

  “I’m not. I’m glad to be alive.” She pressed a kiss of her own along his jaw, and reached for the plate, feeling suddenly shy.

  She cleared her throat after swallowing a strangely salty fruit he called serrichols. “I saw through the bond that you feel respect.” She held his gaze for a moment, stalling. “Admiration, even love for some of your fellow officers, but are you certain that you trust them?” She paused, wanting to choose her words carefully. “Can we trust them with my people?”

  He cocked his head and set the food aside. He shifted, and the hard planes of his hot body pressed against her back. “Trust them how?” he asked. “Be more specific.”

  “Can I trust them with the women in the pods?”

  “They won’t be imprisoned, if that’s what you mean.”

  She’d meant that, sort of. But that wasn’t all. The wall in front of her was blank, sterile and cold. She’d never been warmer in her life. A shiver ran along her spine. What if Tam’s trust was misplaced?

  “Will they help me find my people? Will they protect us if necessary? Are they strong enough?”

  He popped a serrichol into his mouth and, in the silence, she knew he considered her question. She wasn’t entirely sure what he knew of her people from his side of the bond. They didn’t have unlimited access to each other’s memories or thoughts, but they could feel one another’s strong emotions through the Bonding.

  They had shared memories but she didn’t know everything about his culture, or how they made arrangements with the worlds they discovered. She had to assume that he didn’t know everything about her culture either.

  “Strong enough?” His voice rolled along her nerve endings, gravelly yet feather- soft. “Absolutely. We only have one enemy in the universe. The Vestige. They’re no match for us face-to-face, but they fight dirty.” He ran his hand along her skin absently. “And, yes, I think my commanders will want to help you find your people, the ones in the other cryo-pods. Beyond that, I don’t know. It depends on how many can be safely awoken.”

  He drew a finger idly around her nipple. “The commanders wouldn’t cause deliberate harm to anyone. I think we’d try to save as many as we can. Our primary goal, however, has never been to be intergalactic heroes.” He spoke softly, as if gauging her reaction to that statement. “We generally try to avoid other planets’ wars. But if there are females in jeopardy, we would mobilize. Base may request a favor in return.”

  “They’d want our women to be their wives,” Nissa said bluntly.

  He nodded, strumming his thumb back and forth over her nipple, waves of pleasure vibrated straight to her sex. “If they’re willing.”

  What more could she really expect? Why would they want to go to war for ninety- seven lost women and two men? What more could anyone do? Before they docked at Base Fleet, she needed to return to her pod. Locate her stash of belongings. Access the transceiver that would allow her to find the other ninety-nine cryo-pods out there. Each one containing a life, preciously familiar to her.

  That had to be her primary goal. Locate and retrieve the pods. And after that, get back to Triannon and save her planet.

  “You saw my memories,” she said.

  “Like I saw yours.” Tam nodded, sliding his hand down her belly.

  Her breath caught. “So you know who I am? To my people. You know what I am.”

  Through the bond, granite hard, determination and resolution simmered. “In theory, yes.” The ship around them hummed and buzzed but she’d never felt so treasured as in that moment, in his arms, as she turned to face him.

  His eyes were warm, his hands closed around her bottom, pulling her closer. He added, “But I know what you are to me now too. And I’ll fight like hell to keep you.”

  His cock pressed insistently against her belly. Nissa’s head dropped forward to rest on his shoulder. Some of them were family, others friends and still others strangers. But in the vastness of the universe those ninety-nine were possibly the only ones left of her race. They were hers. She wouldn’t forget them—no matter how strong her feelings for Tam.

  She cast a moment’s prayer that her mother and father would awaken safely. And that the others wouldn’t need her. That she could be free.

  When they got to Tam’s base, she would negotiate with the commanders of the Tribe to find those pods, awaken her people and take them back to her planet. Let the off-worlders be gone. Let my people thrive.

  “Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that,” she breathed, writhing her hips as his fingers tightened their grip on her ass.

  For now, she wanted a few more moments of the beautiful red spell they’d woven together. She pulled Tam’s lips to hers, pulled his hand back between her still-slippery thighs where it belonged. She reached for the thick, hard part of him that had given her so much pleasure. It was long, with a great, broad head, pulsing veins, and a smiling mouth at the tip. It thickened at the base. How had it ever fit inside her?

  In a few hours, there would be too much to do, too many people to see, too many horrible things to consider. Given how sick she’d been when Tam had unfrozen her, there would probably be people to mourn.

  She shook her head. For now, they had only each other and their desperate pursuit of pleasure.

  He met her mouth with a frenzy that said he understood. And when he was done, her body drifted in a place so soft and hazy that she didn’t even notice when she fell asleep, it came on so slowly.

  SOMETHING BIG and warm moved against her. Something big and warm and hard. Him. Tam.

  She slitted her eyes open. Tam’s nose traced her ear, soft breaths whispering over tiny hairs. The bristle of his beard dragged over sensitive skin. A rough palm stroked her stomach. “Wake up, eyana.”

  “No.” She tugged ineffectually at the covers he’d pulled from her.

  “Yes.” He sucked at the tip of her ear and scooped her up high off the bed. “We need to bathe. You’re covered in cum. Not that it bothers me, but it would be rude to arrive at base crusty and reeking as if we’d just fucked for eight straight hours.”

  She sighed. “Isn’t that what we did?”

  He carried her into a bathing chamber that, like the rest of the ship she’d seen, boasted hard metallic surfaces. A sunken oval pool steamed and bubbled.

  “Hell, yeah,” he said, smug as he stepped into the water. “But we don’t need to rub it in their faces. Some of the warriors have been without a woman longer than you’ve been alive.”

  Hot water, scented with something fresh and vegetal, roused her.

  “I’m not that young. It was my twentieth summer when I entered the pod.” She couldn’t hide the resentment from her tone at the thought of what had been scheduled to happen that summer.

  The look on Tam’s face told her
he knew what she meant through the shared histories during their Bonding. Her formal betrothal had been imminent. “Just in time,” he grunted, running a foamy cloth over her back.

  She arched under his touch, raising her arms lazily so he could wash her. It was brighter in this room than the bedroom and she suppressed an idle bloom of modesty.

  They’d long passed that. It was unreasonable to feel shy around a man who’d spent so long with various parts of his body lodged inside hers.

  For marriages on her planet, couples made agreements to the benefit of each party, with one major exception. Nissa, born to the king and queen of her people, was to have been married in her twentieth summer to a man selected for her. She would become queen in the summer of her father’s sixtieth year.

  Her husband would become the king.

  She was the only person on her planet, save her mother, who had no control over her own future, her own mate. Or she would have been.

  Their Bonding would upset her planet’s entire political structure.

  Tam wasn’t the middle-aged, seasoned politico who had won her hand in the Games. He was steady, strong and intelligent but her father, should he awaken, would reject him offhand because he wasn’t of Triannon. He would see only his great height, his muscled form, his foreign ways. Would only assess the brutality of his demeanor, the coarseness of his speech, the rawness of his manners.

  Tam’s gray eyes held hers, as if reading her thoughts. “It will work out, Nissa. We’ll find them.”

  She stared back at him.

  “I promise you, I’ll do everything in my power to retrieve those pods.”

  She swallowed thickly. And after that? What would happen when the pods were opened, when her father refused to accept their union? “You don’t know my father.”

  He swept the cloth between her legs where she was swollen and tender. “No.” He kissed her cheek. “And remember, he doesn’t know me. He’ll worry for you. And for his people.”

  “How long do we have?”

  “A little over an hour.”

  She leaned against him for a moment, her cheek slippery against the smooth wet skin of his chest, seeking comfort in the face of burgeoning memories.

  She didn’t know how much Tam knew but she didn’t see any reason to mention Criamnon. It was over. She had bonded with Tam. Bonds couldn’t be broken.

  She shrugged away cold memories of her last glimpse of her beloved home, the fiery forests and glassy cliffs and shimmering seas of the city of Trian. Her mother holding her in a tight hug, far longer than was dignified. She’d never seen the queen cry before, but her eyes were bright and red-rimmed when she released Nissa. Her father, too, had given her a hard squeeze.

  They took their time, washing each other, rinsing each other’s hair. Eyes closing as she ran her fingers along his scalp, Tam preened under her touch.

  When they emerged from the bath, he dried them both with a cloth, running his nose along her neck. He frowned with a low growl. “I need to fuck you again.” Straightforward. Honest. Rough. Her mate.

  “We just got clean.”

  His eyes blazed and he captured her hands in one of his larger ones. “We washed away all of my scent.” His voice was so low a shiver of anticipation trilled along her spine.

  He spun her around to face away from him. Her hips bumped into the counter.

  “That’s generally the point of a bath, isn’t it?” she asked archly, earning a swat on her behind.

  He ignored the question, brushing her wet hair out of his way. His mouth closed on her neck, teeth grazing her skin as he sucked. “I’m not taking you aboard a ship of a quarter-million unmated warriors without a fresh load of my cum in that sweet little pussy of yours.” His husky tone and the uncivilized words caused a catch in her belly. He stroked hard fingers between her thighs. “I want the other warriors to smell who you belong to.”

  4

  It’s not just the years,

  not even the centuries.

  It’s everything.

  TAM would have felt better if she had consented to eat one more time but she insisted on walking naked through his ship to her pod, where she pressed her fingers against small flat buttons. He leaned against a bulkhead, content to watch, admiring the curve of her ass as she bent over the pod. Her skin was flushed from their bath, hair hanging wet against her back.

  The swollen red flesh between her thighs glistened and he felt the familiar, constant need for her. Like an addiction.

  His mate. He’d never get used to the sound of that.

  The pod susurrated and a drawer opened.

  She pulled out a small bag and carried it over to a table nearby. He pushed away from the bulkhead, curious to know what was inside.

  As she undid the complicated straps, he raked his gaze over her perfect breasts. Just yesterday, he’d never have believed he’d stand here, beside a naked woman, his for the touching. Her nipples were chapped, he’d left a small red mark on the inside curve of her left breast and her skin was rasped between her thighs and along her neck from his stubble.

  He ran a hand along her hip, stroked her ass. There were a few more marks he’d be happy to give her. She gave him a quick, wry glance, warning him off.

  “I’m a little sore.” He frowned. He could be gentle. His cock, a little sore too, pulsed at the idea of showing her just how gentle he could be.

  He entertained the momentary thought of pressing the issue, stifling any complaints with a hand between her thighs, his thumb on her hot red clit, spreading her wide atop the table, making her convulse around his tongue.

  His balls clenched. Later, right before they docked, he’d give her one last gentle orgasm before life at base demanded their attention and time.

  He resented like hell that they couldn’t spend the rest of their life on board this ship, with no one else to answer to, just the two of them. Eternal space, their only cage. One another, their only rule.

  She set aside a large piece of red fabric she pulled from the bag, and a massive fistful of gold jewelry.

  After a moment, she removed a small rectangular object, about the size of his palm. She used her thumb to open it and, red lights moved across the screen. The writing of her people. She flashed an excited grin his way. He shook his head at the sun-bright beauty of her smile in that moment.

  Her face fell. “Tam.” Her voice was quiet and so soft he read her lips as much as heard her voice. “You need to tell base to locate the pods quickly.”

  He froze, waiting for her to continue.

  “The gel can only sustain life for so long. They did the best they could, but the pods begin degradation after five hundred years, within a decade or so.”

  He nodded again. Her eyes were big and so sad he didn’t need her to finish her next statement. Despair pulsed through the bond, pain broadcasting from her eyes. He pulled her into his embrace, stroking her neck where he knew it would give her the most comfort.

  She pressed her nose between the muscles of his chest and when she spoke, her voice was muffled. For the first time in his life, he held a woman who was his as she turned to him for comfort.

  His chest hardened. When he laid the flat of his palm across her back, it spanned her entire rib cage. He didn’t want to hear her words, because he knew they hurt her. “It’s been four-hundred-and-ninety-seven years.”

  5

  I’m glad you’re you.

  “IT’S SO BIG.” She couldn’t hide the breathless awe from her voice.

  “I’m glad you like it,” Tam said with a droll half-smile as he docked the ship in the bay Space Traffic Control had dictated.

  “Not that.” She pointed at the base in front of them. “That. Your base. Sierra-Six.” She’d seen it as they’d landed, the massive gray base punctuated with glowing blue, purple and green lights. Technically a ship, it was more a permanent space installation. “It’s huge.”

  It spread before them in either direction, hulking, massive, dark. It almost looked like a great
stone planet in its own right, save for the regularity of its features. In the distance something enormous glowed, round and bright as a miniature planet—a sphere made entirely of glass.

  He must have heard the apprehension in her voice, because his was gentle. “It’ll be okay. You’ll see.”

  She took a deep breath. She had to trust him to do everything he could. These were his people. For now, at least, she’d follow his lead.

  He unbuckled the straps of his pilot’s chair and turned to face her. The nexus of their bond had been on this little ship and now they’d arrived at Sierra-Six with all the demands of two races from separate planets. It felt like an ending of sorts, at least from the simplicity of the last few hours. Everything could only grow more complicated now.

  She tilted her head. “What are you thinking?”

  He rose and moved to her chair, squatting in front of her to unbuckle her straps. Golden skin, hair nearly black and thick, eyes dark-gray and stark against his skin. “I’m thinking,” he said, “that it’s going to be crowded as hell out there. Everyone with any reasonable excuse will have jockeyed for a place in that docking chamber. They’ll all want to see you.”

  She nodded. “I’m an alien. Aliens tend to have that effect on people.”

  “Women have that effect on men. Most of them have only spent three days with a woman in the last twenty years.”

  “I understand, Tam.”

  “They’re going to be very curious. They won’t mean disrespect, but...”

  “I won’t be offended. And I would never be rude to them.”

  They both stood.

  His hand trailed down her cheek and she arched into it. “I hope this doesn’t come out wrong but I just wanted to say that I...” He broke off, as if struggling for words. “I’d have done what I did to save you even if you’d been stupid and humpbacked and three times your age.”

  She laughed awkwardly. What would have happened then? He’d have spent his whole life wed to an old woman.

  The thought brought a new stab of worry. What if Tam had been wrinkled, and smelly and mean? Would she still feel the same way? Was the Bonding so powerful that it could force artificial emotions?