Carter, Beth D. - Star Mates (Siren Publishing Classic) Page 6

  “Shit,” Logan muttered. Emmarie glanced at him and saw that he, too, had seen Raiden’s bleak expression. “How many humans are here?”

  “It’s not exactly known in the Amarante system, since there isn’t a census for us,” Leona answered. “But there are about three thousand humans in Sparta, and some humans are on Dura working with the government, trying to gain Durian recognition. So, what was your profession on Earth?”

  Logan blinked at the change of topic. “I’m a linguist. That’s a person—”

  “I know what a linguist is,” she said dryly. She shifted her eyes back over to Pikon and they narrowed a fraction. “Take this one back to Willoughbee.”

  “Willoughbee thought he needed to acclimate.”

  “A person who can decode languages is best suited at the helm,” Leona reasoned. “We’re constantly in fear of a Kexian attack and learning their military strategies is always needed.”

  Pikon took his arm. “Come on, Logan Crusic, there’s a lot less estrogen there with Willoughbee.”

  Despite the heaviness in the room, Logan gave a smirk. “Yeah, I noticed.”

  He left without looking back. Emmarie felt sad at his cold indifference.

  “So what about you?” Leona turned to Emmarie.

  “I’m a singer,” Emmarie answered quietly.

  Leona blinked. “Really?”

  Emmarie nodded.

  “My lucky day then,” she replied with a bit of thaw. She shot Emmarie a wide grin. “I just happen to be in need of a singer.”

  Chapter Eight

  A loud crash came from the other room and Leona excused herself to investigate. Alone with Raiden, Emmarie felt his eyes on her and she turned to face him. “Is something wrong?”

  He shook his head. “You’re very beautiful,” he replied sincerely.

  She blinked, and then smiled shyly. “Thank you.”

  But instead of returning the smile, he frowned. “I bet someone would pay dearly for you,” he said, causing her smile to tremble and fall. “They’ll be coming after their merchandise.”

  “I’m not merchandise!”

  “To them you are,” he replied, his hand waving above him generically. “The Unarians like blonde hair and blue eyes because it’s exotic. You were chosen not for breeding, but to be a pleasure slave.”

  Emmarie recoiled, taking a step back and swallowing painfully. “Sounds barbaric!”

  “It is.” He walked over to her and took her by the arms. “They don’t care about our feelings or our dignity. I’ve heard stories of women being passed around like favorite pets.”

  She shuddered.

  “I’ll protect you, Emmarie. I promise.”

  Her heart leapt at his words and his touch. Even through the thickness of her sweater, she could feel his hands gripping her tightly and tiny sparks danced over her skin.

  “Why?”

  “Why do I want to protect you?”

  She nodded.

  He touched her hair and let the strands slither through his fingers. “You have this air of fragility about you.”

  “I’m stronger than I look.”

  Raiden stared into her eyes for a moment, before his gaze dropped to her mouth and suddenly her mouth felt as dry as the desert. She used the tip of her tongue to wet her lips and heard him let out a groan before he bent and covered hers with his own. The kiss started out with just pressure against her shut mouth, but she wasn’t content with that and opened her mouth under his. With another groan of pleasure, he sank his tongue into her, aggressively branding her. He pulled her into him, cradling her head in his hands to angle it, making her mouth fully accessible to his onslaught.

  His tongue met hers, twining together in a way that mimicked their bodies straining to get closer. His hands traveled over her shoulders, down her arms and around her hips. His hands grabbed her ass, each cheek gripped firmly as he pulled her into the crook of his thighs. He lifted her slightly and rubbed her up and down his hard cock. His hardness kept hitting her clit with enough pressure to make her juices run, invoking an overwhelming need deep inside her feminine core.

  Everything faded around her. She forgot how she got there, where she was, and even her own name. Never had she felt such an instant connection with someone. She seemed possessed, the raw compulsion for sex something new and foreign. Raiden tasted of mint with a hint of the pink alcohol, enough to ignite her senses and fuel a fire in her blood.

  She reached around him, gripping the powerful stretch of his back, the powerful muscles that held much of his passion back, and arched into him.

  He groaned deep in his throat. “Oh, Emmarie,” he breathed against the side of her mouth. “I want you. I want you naked under me while I take you. I want to hear you moan my name and clench around my cock as you come apart.”

  “Yes,” she answered back.

  His arms tightened around her just as the door opened.

  “And now for you—oh!”

  Leona’s voice cut through the passionate spell Emmarie had around her, and she jerked back from him with a guilty look on her face, her breathing coming out in pants.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Leona said, though she didn’t sound very sorry. “Pell, I thought you had someplace to go.”

  “Do I?” he asked harshly. Emmarie looked at him and he stood with his back turned to both of them, running a hand through his hair.

  “Emmarie will be staying with me,” she said, walking over and placing a protective hand on Emmarie’s shoulder.

  Raiden turned and glared at Leona. “And?”

  “And perhaps it’s best if you don’t come around. At least, not for a while.”

  Emmarie watched the interplay between the two, figuring out there was a whole lot of history between them just by the brief words they spoke to each other.

  “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do, Leona,” he growled. “Especially not about Emmarie.”

  “Pell,” Leona warned.

  “I’m right here,” Emmarie cut in. Both pairs of eyes snapped to her. “I don’t understand the undercurrent here, but I’m old enough to make up my own mind about whom I kiss.”

  Leona let go of her arm. “Fine,” she said, her tone going neutral. “The piano player’s name is Harpo, you should coordinate songs you’re both familiar with.”

  Emmarie recognized a dismissal when she heard one. With one last look at Pell Raiden, she turned and exited out of the small office, closing the door behind her with a soft click, unable to forget the look of longing the handsome captain had shown her.

  * * * *

  “What are you doing, Pell?” Leona demanded.

  “Don’t thrust your disagreement with Pikon toward me,” he warned.

  “I saw how you looked at her.”

  Raiden stilled. “So?”

  She cocked her head. “You’ve never looked at a woman like that. In fact you swore you’d never look at a woman like that.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “Really? That’s your comeback?”

  He ran his fingers through his hair, tugging slightly to cause a little pain. He closed his eyes. “You’re always telling me to lighten up.”

  “She’s going to have a helluva time adapting to this life. Is that the kind of lightening up you want?”

  He opened his eyes and gazed at her for a long, silent time. “I don’t know, Leona.”

  She crossed her arms as she looked at him.

  “All right,” she finally said. “But courtship first.”

  “Hell, Leona. Courtship?”

  “It’s a sign of respect. For her. She’s innocent, Pell, I can see it in her eyes, and I don’t want her hurt if you decide that you no longer want to look at her like that.”

  He gave a deep sigh, turned, and walked out.

  Chapter Nine

  Emmarie and Harpo worked the rest of the afternoon together. She had watched from the stage area as Raiden had left a few minutes after she had approached and introduced herse
lf to the piano man. Harpo stood slightly shorter than her own five foot four, and he had a head full of curly brown hair. His fingers constantly worked over the keys, even as he talked with her. Emmarie was delighted to discover they knew quite a few songs since his father had come from Earth and had taught Harpo all the hits from up to the time he had been abducted in the 1950s.

  After a few hours of rehearsing while Emmarie had sat on the stool next to him, Leona waved her over to the bar. Emmarie patted Harpo’s arm and left him. Leona had a glass of water waiting on the bar for her to drink, and Emmarie gulped it greedily.

  “I’m sorry about earlier,” Leona told her. “About my temper. All I can say is that it wasn’t directed at you.”

  “I kind of figured that.”

  Leona gave rueful grin. “Those boys bring out the worst in my temper sometimes.”

  “You work with them a lot?”

  “Quite a bit,” she said on a sigh. “My mother ran this bar before me, and took care of the new refugees finding their way from the other side of the belt. It was dangerous business then, because we didn’t have ground weapons at the time and Dura was still undecided about human colonists.” She shrugged. “When my mom died I took over. I help the refugees that come through get acclimated to freedom, but there are many who are still too scared to do anything.”

  “In medieval England serfs were controlled and maintained by fear of God, who they believed ordained their king. They feared punishment to themselves, their family, and their souls.”

  Leona nodded. “Yep. Sounds similar to us. There are several ships in our arsenal, and several pilots as well, but Pikon and Pell always command attention wherever they go. Natural born leaders, my mother always said.”

  “And how do you know for sure Pike cheated on you?” Emmarie asked, changing topic. “He didn’t sound like he did.”

  Leona sighed. “Actually, I don’t think he did, either, but I can’t think of any other reason why he might be coming from Lusty Lisa’s.”

  “You can always go ask Lisa.”

  Leona pursed her lips as she considered that. “Hm,” she finally said. “Never thought of the direct path.”

  “Sometimes, when you’re in love, it’s hard to see the whole picture,” Emmarie replied.

  “You know an awful lot about love,” Leona teased.

  “I’ve sung at a lot of weddings.”

  * * * *

  To say Emmarie was exhausted was an understatement.

  That evening she had sat on stage and sang every song she and Harpo knew together. The crowd had loved her and asked her to repeat some of her playlist, which she happily did.

  Before she realized it, half the night had sped by. Her throat had become scratchy and with a groan of reluctance from her audience she had bowed off stage. Leona had set her up with a room upstairs and she happily went to it.

  And even though she was practically dead on her feet, her mind just couldn’t cease thinking. Emmarie sat on her bed, a narrow strip of mattress on squeaky springs, and stared unblinkingly at the wall. The happenings of the day finally crashed through her mind and there simply wasn’t anything she could think or say to herself to make this cold feeling leave her heart. How was it even possible that she had been abducted by aliens, freeze-dried for the ride here, miraculously saved when they crashed on an asteroid, and then rescued by fellow human abductees? It was beyond belief, beyond strange, beyond even her imagination.

  And to top it off, Pell Raiden had popped up in her memory almost every minute. He was hard and rough under a thin veneer of civility, and so different from the men she had interacted with her whole life. Men like Logan. Logan was a scholar, a man who wanted to know how things worked. Raiden seemed to be a mass of barely contained emotions.

  And he hadn’t shown for her performance and she didn’t know which annoyed her more…her disappointment that he had missed her singing or the fact that she acted like a lovesick fool every time her head swiveled to the door. She’d just met him so how could he be dominating her thoughts so easily?

  Perhaps she’d been alone too long and was simply grasping at the first honest to goodness attraction she’d ever felt. Yes, perhaps she was making too much of Pell Raiden.

  With a sigh, Emmarie left her bed and headed for the door. The bar had closed some time ago but she hoped she could find something to settle her brain and help her to relax. Anything was better than staying awake and thinking.

  No light shown downstairs, and the only sound was her feet as she tread lightly to the wooden floor. A quick glance around revealed no booze, much to her disappointment.

  “She locks it away,” a husky male voice told her.

  Emmarie gasped in fright, spinning. Raiden sat in one of the back tables, his feet propped up on a table and a tall bottle of amber liquid resting next to them. His hand gripped a glass.

  “Couldn’t sleep?” he asked her, taking a swallow.

  “No,” Emmarie replied. “Thought a drink might help.”

  “Grab a glass down at the end,” he gestured with his a wave of his free hand. “You can share mine.”

  Emmarie hesitated for a moment. Her heart beat quickly with anticipation and excitement at being alone with him, but wondered if sitting in the darkened, deserted saloon was wise.

  “I won’t bite, Emmarie,” he replied, accurately reading her thoughts. “Not unless you want me to.”

  With raised brows she went and got her glass.

  “Do you often come here and sit in the dark to drink?” she asked, ignoring his innuendo as she sat down opposite him.

  Raiden straightened and put his feel back on the ground. He reached for her glass and poured each a generous helping of the homemade drink. “Only when I can’t seem to get a certain blonde-haired, blue-eyed Earthling out of my head.”

  Emmarie swallowed. “And does that happen often?”

  “No,” he replied and took another swig. He dipped his chin and rested his gaze on her. “Never has before, so what is it about you that I can’t seem to shake?”

  Emmarie bit her lip.

  “Speechless?” he mocked.

  “I’ve been thinking the same about you,” she admitted.

  “That damn kiss has given me a permanent hard-on,” he told her.

  Her eyes widened at that.

  “Does that shock you?” he asked.

  “I…I’ve never had anyone say that to me.”

  He snorted. “Men on Earth must be dumber than I thought.”

  She gave him a wry smile. “Not really. I just never found anyone I connected to.”

  She reached out to run her fingers along his arm. He sat absolutely still as she touched him, although she heard his breath hitch in his throat.

  “Unless you want me to throw you upon his table and sink so far into you that we would melt into each other, I suggest you stop touching me.”

  Her fingers stilled, but she didn’t take them away. “You don’t like me touching you?”

  “On the contrary, I like it too damn much.”

  He raised a brow at her in a silent question. Did she want to take this thing between them to the next level? Yes. No. Slowly, she pulled her fingers away.

  He gave her a soft, sad smile.

  “So, what are we gonna do about us, Miss Tice?”

  “Is that a rhetorical question?”

  “Not really,” he muttered, downing the remaining contents in his glass. “Could be.”

  “We could ignore each other,” she reasoned. “Since I’m not from your world and I don’t plan to stay here too long—”

  “Where are you planning on going?” he interrupted. “It isn’t like there’s another city to move to. Sparta is the be-all and end-all for the human population.”

  “I was thinking more along the line of returning home.”

  He blinked. “To Earth?”

  “Well, I don’t live on Jupiter.”

  He snapped his empty glass sharply on the table. “No need to be a smartass
.”

  “Sorry,” she replied, though her tone suggested she was anything but apologetic.

  Raiden ran a hand though his hair. “I wasn’t kidding when I told you and Logan that there wasn’t a way back to Earth. If I could get you back there, I would. If I could get all of us there, I would,” he shook his head. “But I can’t. The Merloni are superior engineers and if someone doesn’t stay behind and make sure that hub is destroyed, then the abductions will start all over. ”

  Her breath caught in her throat. “Who was killed on that raid?”

  His whole body froze, but he didn’t pull away. He sat for a long time, staring at nothing. “My parents,” he finally answered softly. “I was four, I think, maybe five. I still remember them. They left me with Leona’s mother, piled into a ship, and I never saw them again.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she told him. “My parents died, too, when I was fifteen. Needlessly and stupidly.”

  “Yeah, so finding out that the hub, the very reason why they died, is still operational, is a kick in my heart.”

  “But they succeeded for thirty years.”

  “Did they?” he all but growled. “How do we know you were the first? How do we know there hasn’t been a slew of abductees already?”

  She licked her lips and thought for a moment. “What caused the Merloni ship to crash in 1947?”

  He blinked. “I don’t know.”

  “And now they crashed again. That we know of. Perhaps the answer to making sure the Slip Gate stays dead permanently is knowing why their safety protocols don’t seem to be working.”

  He kept his narrowed gaze trained on her, but Emmarie had a feeling his mind drifted away. His eyes held a glassy, unfocused quality as if he were analyzing something and not finding all the answers.

  She stayed silent, studying him. Most people would have expected such a big man to lumber, be clumsy. But he carried himself in a way that made people part and heads turn. He walked with confidence, a bit of a swagger with loads of sex appeal.

  “It’s hard to believe that we’re the same species but grew up a universe away.” A dull throb echoed through her head. Emmarie rubbed her forehead to ease the sudden tension.