Page 21 of The Hunter's Mate
I cock my head. “You assumed this would happen.”
“Of course I did,” she says. “You’re part of an invading force on my planet. I knew your people wouldn’t let you off the hook.”
“So tell me,” I say. “What did you have in mind?”
She licks her lips. “We steal your ship. We fight in this war. And then, when we’ve helped humanity kick out the invaders…then we explore the stars together.”
I narrow my eyes and hum. “I have been part of the Hunt my whole life.”
“But you said that I’m yours,” she says. “Your mate. And when you told me you wouldn’t let me go, I accepted, which means I’m not going anywhere.”
She takes a few steps closer to me.
“I won’t let them separate us. Will you?”
I lift her into my arms…but I’m not sure yet what I will do.
“You should bathe,” I murmur.
I take her to the alcove and run a bath, but I don’t put her down. I hold her close to me and enjoy the sensation of her soft skin against my scales, her wet cunt on my belly, her lips on my throat. She’s already growing aroused again, but I can’t tell if she’s just tricking me…
“Are you trying to convince me to help you?” I ask.
“No,” she says. “I want you, Nyrik.”
She does not seem like the sort to lie.
I tell myself I would know if she did.
I strip out of my armor and join her in the bath, letting the hot water soak into my scales. Fawn rinses away the blood, which filters out into the ship systems. She watches me across the surface, drawing slow circles in the ripples.
I can see the arousal in the flush of her cheeks, the fullness of her lips.
Yet she doesn’t come closer.
“Let me mate you again,” I murmur. “I long to fill you.”
“No,” she says. “Not until you agree that we should be hunting the most dangerous prey.”
I hum. “That being?”
“The Hyperboreans.”
I bare my teeth and flit my tongue out to taste the air, trying to sense her intentions. All I taste is rage…and that hint of arousal.
She can barely resist.
But she will…until she gets my agreement.
“It would ostracize me from my Order,” I say. “I would be ousted, hunted.”
“They said they would already do that.”
“Unless I give you up.”
“And are you going to?”
Her face is stony, her lips thin even as they swell and redden with arousal.