Читать книгу Cyborg Seduction - Grace Goodwin - Страница 7

Lindsey Walters, Earth Freighter Jefferson, Cargo Hold

The nightmare always started the same way. Sunshine warmed my face and I couldn’t stop smiling. My son, Wyatt, walked beside me, his sweet little face excited as I took him to his favorite place in the world, the park near our apartment.

I wore a bright yellow and white striped sundress, one my mother and Wyatt had picked out for me on Mother’s Day. Yellow daisies with green stems were embroidered into the hem. Wyatt’s little blond head barely came to my waist, and his hand was warm and soft, so small and sweet in my own.

His father was long gone, a college boyfriend who’d heard the word pregnant and bolted like a coward. Not that it had been a big loss. The sex had been lackluster. No spark. No one had ever managed to light my fire. I hadn’t heard from him, nor seen him since, and I refused to put his name on Wyatt’s birth certificate. To me, he’d just been a sperm donor who couldn’t get me off.

Wyatt was mine, and I would do anything for him. Lie, cheat, steal, kill. He was my baby with pale blue eyes and dimples that made my chest ache.

Birds sang and a light breeze stirred the top of the trees. Wyatt lifted his head and smiled up at me…my heart nearly burst with love, and everything shifted.

We were in the car. Screeching tires. Explosion of glass. My baby screaming, then sobbing…then silent.

Blood. Everywhere.

The hospital, stark white walls and frowning nurses with pity in their eyes.

Wyatt’s small, broken body lying unconscious in the recovery room, the doctor telling me he might lose his leg. Never walk without pain. Never run. Never play on the playground he loved so much.

My heart pounded, as it always did, but I knew this dream well. When I looked around, I expected to see my exhausted mother sleeping in the cramped chair in the corner of Wyatt’s hospital room wearing wrinkled clothing and worry lines around her sharp blue eyes. Wyatt’s eyes. He’d gotten them from her.

Instead of the hospital room and my mother’s worried expression, a man stood behind me, his dark eyes looked as confused as I felt.

My hand burned, the odd birthmark I’d always had itching and red hot as if I’d been stung by a wasp. It hurt, but not badly. More…startling.

“Who are you?” he asked, his voice a dark rumble in my dream.

I blinked slowly and the hospital room faded. Wyatt faded until it was just me…and him. And God help me, he was hot. Sex-on-a-stick, I want to lick him all over, hot.

As dreams went, this was much better than Hospital 101, the dream I had almost every night. I knew that in the real world Wyatt was safe in his bed, that the car accident had been three months ago, that my mother was watching over him until I could return from this dangerous, desperate assignment. Wyatt wasn’t here. This wasn’t real. None of this was real.

But the man stood, motionless, like a predator watching his prey as he waited for my response.

“I’m Lindsey,” I said.

He walked toward me in this nowhere place. There were no walls, no floor. It was like we stood in a thick fog, staring at one another. I held my ground as he drew closer, eager to feel his touch, eager for this fantasy that my stressed-out mind had apparently conjured, to run its course. I could use a break. And if I’d been watching the new Superman movie a few too many times, and my sex-starved, stressed-out body wanted to conjure up a bigger, darker, sexier version of my favorite superhero…well, I wasn’t going to argue. This larger-than-life man was in my dream and I was going to enjoy every minute of it.

As he approached, I had to tilt my head back and I realized he was at least six-six, maybe taller, and built like a linebacker. His hair was so dark it was nearly black, his eyes a deep, seductive brown as dark as my favorite coffee but with startling golden flecks around the pupil. His skin was olive toned and flawless, a true Greek Adonis. He had just enough stubble on his face that I knew he’d leave whisker burn across my breasts if he kissed me there. My nipples tightened at the idea of those full lips sucking and tugging. He wore black boots, black pants and a black shirt that could have been from anywhere or nowhere. Non-descript, but I didn’t care about the details. I didn’t care where he came from, because wherever he came from, he was in my dream now. Mine.

Slowly, he lifted his hand to my hair, running the blond strands through his fingers as if hypnotized. I anticipated a rough touch, his size too great for anything this hesitant, but I was wrong. He was beyond gentle. He was tender, and so was his voice. “Lindsey. You can’t be real.”

I couldn’t contain my smile. Not real? Check. None of this was real. It couldn’t be. But I could feel the heat of his palm on my scalp and it almost tingled.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Kiel. I am a Hunter.”

A Hunter? Well, didn’t that just fit this superhero, hot-as-hell fantasy I had going on? Yum. “Are you hunting me?”

Please say yes. Please, please, please say yes. He could hunt me, strip me, shove me up against the wall and fuck me until I screamed. I’d never had an orgasm without my battery operated best friend. No man had touched me in five years.

Not since Wyatt. Not since the sperm donor. Being a single mother made the dating thing a real pain in the ass. I was never just on a date, I was auditioning dads, and so far, none of the men I’d met were good enough for my Wyatt. And if they were? Well, so far, none of them were interested in an instant family. I was too young, only twenty-four, and guys my age were still more worried about what kind of beer they were going to drink on Friday night than taking a four-year-old to preschool and packing lunches. I had baggage, which meant I slept alone.

Except Kiel was touching me now and I wanted more. Craved it. I ached for it.

I hadn’t had a dream this delicious since…well, ever.

He was staring at me, his fingers lingering in my hair, rubbing the strands between the pad of his thumb and first two fingers like he could taste me through his skin. He closed his eyes and I barely resisted the urge to reach up and touch his face, rub my palm over the stubble coating his chin. His lips were full and wide, and I wanted to touch those, too.

“I can’t smell you.”

That was weird. But okay. Yeah. I took a deep breath, testing the air in this weird, not real, fantasy landscape. There was nothing. Odd. “I can’t smell you either.”

His eyes opened, focused like lasers on my lips. “I want to kiss you.”

Jeez. Was this fantasy man going to get on with it or what? As sexual dreams went, this was ridiculous. I wanted him. Now. I didn’t want to talk. He didn’t need to tell me what he wanted. He could just take. Oh please, take anything he wanted.

If he didn’t get on with ravishing my body, I was going to wake up before we got to the good part. I wanted naked. Filled to bursting with an oversized cock. My body rippling in pleasure as he pumped into me harder and faster than any other man ever had.

My pussy clenched and my breath hitched. Screw this. This was my dream. I’d never been this hot for a man in real life. Never. Not once. I wasn’t going to waste it.

I lifted my hands, buried them in his silky hair and pulled him down to me. “Stop talking and get naked.”

God, I was a slut, but I wanted him. Bad. Dream man didn’t care if I was old or young, single or married, a mother or a virgin. He wasn’t going to weigh the pros and cons of fatherhood and adopting a four-year-old. If I was lucky, he was going to give me a good, hard ride and a nice memory.

Crushing my lips to his, I jumped up and wrapped my legs around his hips. His hard cock rubbed me in just the right place and I groaned, grinding against his thin black pants. I knew I was wet, so damn wet that I could smell my need drifting up between our bodies.

He was frozen under my assault and I broke the kiss, frustrated. I was going to cry. Was this just another nightmare? A new brand of torture my mind had created? Was this mommy guilt in its extreme form? Guilt for leaving my son? Guilt for taking this risk? Guilt that my son suffered and I walked away from the accident with nothing more than a few stitches?

Leaning forward, I rested my forehead against his cheek and fought back tears. What was wrong? Why wasn’t he moving? This was my dream, damn it! And in my dream, this gorgeous man would ravish me, fuck me raw, make me scream. He’d want me so badly nothing would stop him, nothing would stand in his way. He’d be the ultimate caveman and he’d think I was the most beautiful, desirable woman he’d ever seen.

I whimpered, then sighed. “Come on, dream man. Please.” I nibbled my way down his cheek to his jaw, felt the rasp of his whiskers against my lips. Frustration filled me because I couldn’t taste him. Not really. He was warm, but he wasn’t…real. I didn’t care. His hands clenching and unclenching at the small of my back felt real. His hard length rubbing my panties felt real.

“You aren’t real.” He insisted, but his hands lowered to cup my ass and I moaned as heat streaked through my body.

“Does it matter?” I kissed my way to his stubborn chin, then up to his lips. I answered for him. “It doesn’t matter.”

I knew the second I won, felt the shift in his being. His entire body moved, flowing, pure power. His muscles rippled beneath his shirt and he crushed his lips to mine, taking what I wanted so badly to give him. I opened for his kiss and his tongue found mine, plundering my mouth with a hunger so desperate it matched my own.

Yes. Yes. Yes!

He tugged my dress off my body and I laughed as he ripped away the thin scrap of my underwear. I wasn’t wearing a bra, my small breasts didn’t need one. With every other man, I freaked when it was naked time. I was oddly shaped, my hips and ass wide and round, my waist small, but I was an A-cup on a good day since I’d weaned my son. One more joy of motherhood no one tells you about—shrinking breasts.

But with him, I didn’t care. I threw my head back and let him look as I tore at his shirt. Seconds later it vanished, along with the rest of his clothes and I thanked the dream gods for naked. Big, hard muscle, powerful physique, dark hair. My Superman. And then there was his cock….

Just as I’d wanted, he backed me up and suddenly a hard, smooth surface appeared behind my shoulders, solid and cold and unbreakable. A room formed around us and I blinked slowly, barely noticing the stark surroundings. One bed. One chair. Very utilitarian. Military. No plush pillows or thick rugs on the floor. No color, no flowers or artwork or even a design on the sheets on the bed.

Black. Gray. Brown.

I was about to comment, but Kiel’s head dropped to my breast and I closed my eyes, tugging at his hair to hold him closer, demand more. His hand roamed around my ass to find my wet core and he pushed two fingers inside me without caution or warning. My back arched and I hissed at the glorious intrusion. I was tight and his fingers were big. I felt everything, the press and curl of those dextrous digits.

I nearly came all over him, my pussy clenching down on him like a fist.

“Do it,” I breathed. Who was this woman I’d turned into? “Fuck me. God, just fuck me.”

As if he’d been holding back still, his leash finally snapped, he slipped his fingers from me, gripped my hips to lift me higher over his cock and stopped, looking me in the eye. “Where are you?”

I blinked slowly, squirming to lower myself onto his rock hard length. Why was he stopping now? Why was he talking? “What?” I wiggled, but he held me pinned to the wall, his hot, muscled chest and arms holding me in place. I felt the slick heat of my arousal on my hip from his fingers. I knew what all of this felt like in real life. Knew what my arousal smelled like. Knew the sensation of wet fingers against my ass or my thighs. I was no virgin, and even though I knew this was a dream, my mind was filling in all the blanks…brilliantly.

“Where are you, Lindsey?”

My dazed mind couldn’t make sense of his words. “I’m dreaming.” Duh. I tossed my head back so that it bumped the wall behind me and I moaned his name. “Kiel. Please. Do it. I want you. Please.”

Begging. I was begging. But I’d never felt like this before. Never. The mark on my hand burned and he lifted both of my wrists above my head as I slid down onto his huge cock. I was wet, so wet, but he was huge and I gasped. Sobbed. Shifted my hips to take more. He opened me up, filled me deep, then deeper still.

He groaned as he filled me and I lifted my head to kiss him. But he wasn’t looking at me, he was looking up at my hands. Using one of his own to hold both of my wrists, he traced my birthmark with the other, the touch sending sharp bites of pleasure straight to my clit until I bucked and cried out.

He pumped into me, hard and fast, burying his face in my neck as if he wanted to smell me, scent me, soak me into his lungs. But he couldn’t. Not here. There was nothing of him for me to smell. Nothing to taste. I felt treasured and cheated all at once. I could smell the wildflower scent of my favorite shampoo, smell the wet heat of my pussy as I rode him. But that was all. I couldn’t smell him. The dream didn’t let me taste him. Smell him. God, I wanted to lick him all over, rub my cheek on his chest and rub his scent all over my flesh.

I wondered what he smelled like. Pine and wood chips? Musky? Like my favorite teak and ginger scented cologne?

He entwined my fingers with his, the gesture odd and romantic and so strange I was afraid I was going to wake up. Not now. Please, not now.

“Lindsey,” he said my name again and nipped at the base of my neck with his teeth, the added sensation pushed me over the edge and I shattered, the pulsing of my pussy pulling him deeper, squeezing him without mercy until he lost control and groaned, filled me up, his seed pumping into me as my mind added the details.

I could feel the heat of it coating my insides. And I wanted more. This dream wasn’t enough.

Something jostled me and I shifted, my entire body jerking to the side.

“No!” Kiel yelled, but it was too late. Dream time was over. Something was happening to me and I needed to wake the hell up.

I tried to kiss him, to say goodbye, but he faded too quickly.

Blinking slowly, I opened my eyes and fought back tears. He was gone, and that fact hurt me a lot more than it should have. I was alone again. Not alone, as in I didn’t have a boyfriend or a husband to share my life with. No, alone as in traveling through space, light years away from my hurt child. Getting farther and farther with every second that passed.

Of course, I wasn’t exactly emotionally stable right now. I was scared shitless and using every ounce of courage I possessed to do what I had to do. I needed to help my son. I needed to complete my assignment and get back to Earth. I’d worked two jobs and sacrificed a lot to get my degree in journalism. And this is what it got me? Broke. Desperate to help my son. Trapped inside a shipping crate on an alien world populated with savage warriors and killers?

Any dream was better than my reality. But Kiel, the Hunter, had left my heart aching, my pussy needy. He’d made me feel something besides fear, besides hopelessness. He’d made me feel protected, cherished. Loved. He was powerful, strong enough to lean on, to accept my need and not resent me for it. But Kiel didn’t exist. He was just a dream man and that hurt so much. Why was my mind so cruel?

I stared at the display screen on my standard issue Coalition Fleet battle armor. The conspirators on Earth had given me everything they said I would need. Even the bizarre technology that took bodily waste from me so that I would never have to visit the ladies’ room as long as I stayed within range of their transport technology stations. That had been one of the worst ‘exams’ of my life. Like the gynecologist but with space dildos putting alien gadgets inside my body. A cold, creepy shudder rushed through me as I remembered the cold, clinical look of the doctor as she’d shoved that stuff inside me as preparation for my trip.

And that was enough of thinking about that.

With a shuddering breath, I closed my eyes and tried to think about Kiel instead, tried to hold onto the pleasure still coursing through my body. My pussy was swollen and hot, the pulsing of my orgasm sending aftershocks through my system. My hand burned and I rubbed at it through the gloves I wore, wondering if the mark on my palm would truly be red, of if this was some strange, lingering delusion my mind was conjuring to torture me.

My dream man was gone. The nightmare about my son’s broken body was gone. And reality? Reality was staring at the inside walls of a Coalition Fleet shipping crate. No, it wasn’t pitch black. No, it wasn’t suffocating. I’d become used to the scent of dirt and trees from my corner where I had a comfortable chair, anchored in place. I had food and water, light.

It wasn’t ideal, but they’d given me a pill to help me sleep. I was calm—too calm—and I had a feeling that special pill worked a little too well. I’d always been sensitive to medications. They probably didn’t want me to freak out halfway through the journey, and I had to admit, neither did I.

If I thought about where I was going—what I had to do—for long enough, losing my freaking mind would be easy to do. I remained calm, slept, entertained myself with a tablet with movies. The perfect two-day “veg-fest” as long as I didn’t think about the fact that I was hurtling through deep space in a freighter at light speed.

Forty-eight hours I’d been locked inside this cube. Yes, I had a full suit of Coalition camouflage space armor and helmet. The squinty eyed-doctor in the Miami Processing center had promised me I could survive for two weeks on the air and energy processing units built into the suit. Much longer than the two or three day journey should require.

But I wasn’t sure I trusted that bitch. My head still hurt where she’d jabbed a needle into my skull to implant what they called a Neural Processing Unit, a gadget that was supposed to make it possible for me to understand every alien language I might encounter where I was going: The prison planet known only as The Colony.

The Colony was some kind of dirty little secret that no one was supposed to know about. Some of Earth’s troops were reported to be there, tossed away like garbage by our own government. A few months ago, Senator Brooks from Massachusetts had received word that his nephew, a Navy SEAL who had volunteered for the Coalition Fleet, had died on this far off world under mysterious circumstances. Captain Brooks apparently had a brother still out there somewhere, fighting.

The Senator loved his sister, and she loved her sons. The Brooks family was wealthy and powerful with a proud history of military service going all the way back to the Civil War. Mama Brooks had been furious when her sons volunteered for the Coalition Fleet. And now, with one still out there somewhere, and one dead under mysterious circumstances…well, she wanted answers.

And she was willing to pay to get them. Pay. Threaten. Cajole. Demand. She was willing to hurt my son to discover the truth about hers. I understood a mother’s love, the relentless ache of it. I’d agreed to take this assignment, not because I wanted to, but because refusing would cause Wyatt more pain. Success, however, would see his surgery paid for and performed by the very best doctors the Brooks family could afford.

And they could afford a lot.

And all I had to do was bring them the truth about the prison colony. The contaminated flesh of our warriors. The truth about what was happening to our military personnel.

Captain Brooks had served his country well, then volunteered to go into space as a Coalition fighter and battle the mysterious enemy no one had ever seen. The Hive. Rumors and conspiracy theories were everywhere. But these creatures were supposed to be terrifying beings straight out of Star Trek. Monsters so scary that the governments of Earth had agreed to the Coalition demand for brides and warriors to protect us from a Hive invasion.

A lot of people didn’t believe the Hive existed. That the whole thing was a government conspiracy, a cover-up, a way to sacrifice people to some strange alien force without raising alarm. Some thought our volunteers were nothing more than cattle being led to slaughter. The information shared on the news networks was vague. No pictures of these Hive were ever shared. They were just bad guys in space, far away, mythical things that could never hurt us. But that seemed to be just what the governments wanted us to know. People in power argued that if the truth of what was outside of our atmosphere, beyond our moon and the reaches of our space shuttles was shared, there would be pandemonium. Riots. Chaos in the streets.

They wanted the truth to remain hidden, it seemed, for our own good.

I didn’t care about any of that. I cared about Wyatt and my mom. If someone was willing to pay me money to get the truth, then I’d go. I wasn’t interested in the truth. I didn’t care about conspiracy theories or cover-ups. I was interested in the money this assignment would pay. The surgery Wyatt needed that this money would cover. I cared about healing my son.

And if I failed? Well, there was a price to be paid. They would hurt him. They would kill my mother and torture my boy. Those small details something they’d chosen not to share with me until the very end, of course.

But I believed the threat. Something in Mrs. Brooks’ fanatical gaze sent a shiver down my spine. She’d lost both of her sons and, apparently, her mind and sense of human decency. Too late to turn back now. The only thing I could focus on was getting back home to Wyatt, who was probably asleep under his Power Rangers comforter with a stuffed tiger named Roar snuggled under his sweet, innocent little chin at this very moment.

Space aliens weren’t my biggest fear. Wyatt not being able to walk normally, not grow, be forced to watch from the sidelines as the other boys run and play? That would break his little heart, and my baby hurting was not acceptable. Not to me.

And the threats made against him? I couldn’t bare to think about that. I simply would not fail.

I startled as the crate shifted under me and I realized it was moving, swinging a bit as if being lifted and carried through the air on the end of a crane.

Everything was happening exactly as they’d told me it would.

Two days on board the freighter, arrival at The Colony. We’d landed a few hours ago, the rumble of the ship’s engines nearly rattling my teeth out of my head as we’d landed. A slight jolt when it made contact with the planet’s surface. And now, a few hours later, I was being off-loaded, stacked in their new storage facilities. I was packed in with a shipment of seeds from the Salvard Global Seed Vault. I’d been staring at their logo for so long, I could draw it in my sleep.

Apparently, The Colony was working to terraform their new planet to make it more appealing. They were bringing in plants native to every Coalition home world. I’d been sleeping next to thirty-foot tall maple, elm and locust trees. Also in the hold were spruce and drought resistant shrubs of every variety. Huge trees, too big to send via their precious transport technology.

We were headed to Base 3, where the Governor had, according to my sources, recently been mated through the Interstellar Brides Program to a woman from Earth. All of this was for her, his devotion—or obsession, depending on who told the story—was so complete that he was creating an Earth garden just for her. I would be able to sneak onto the planet because of some woman named Rachel that I’d never met.

The ways onto the planet were limited. No one from Earth was allowed unless he or she was a Coalition fighter or a bride. I wasn’t the military type. I’d never even held a gun before. The other option was to volunteer for the Interstellar Brides Program, but I didn’t meet their requirements. I had Wyatt. I was a mother. Besides, I had zero interest in being a mate of a space alien, or in leaving Earth.

No. I just wanted to get the damn story and get home. And so I was being drop shipped with a bunch of Earth trees as if by FedEx.

How this was possible on a prison planet, I wasn’t sure. But then, that was the reason for my assignment. To discover the truth about The Colony. To expose it. To get word back to Earth about what was really going on here. The shipment really was of trees and shrubs, flowers and bulbs. There weren’t military-grade arms hidden away. I’d had two long travel days to have proof of that. So was the shipment really because a governor on the planet loved his Earth mate? If that was the case, why had I been dressed in armor and warned to avoid detection at all costs? This damn suit of armor recorded everything, every heartbeat and blink of my eye, every second of activity, everything I heard or saw. If it so dangerous on the prison planet, why the trees?

Didn’t matter. Didn’t matter. Get in, get the info. Get home to Wyatt.

Shit. The armor. Stupid people back on Earth would probably download the data from it and wonder why the hell I’d just had an orgasm. I hoped not. Please, no. There were some details better left alone.

Dreaming about hunky Greek gods shoving me up against a wall and making me scream? Yep. That was one of those private kinds of things.

The crate settled with a soft bang and I checked the timer. I was to wait exactly twenty minutes, use the tools they’d given me to remove the bolts, remove the side panel, replace it, and find somewhere to hide and observe. I was supposed to remain hidden and gather information. That’s it. I had to be back here, back inside the crate in three days for the trip home. I checked my wrist unit and sighed with relief when I saw the counter was functional. Seventy hours and five minutes until I got to go home.

I had a map of the base, but they’d warned me not to trust it. The information was at least five months old and things move. They change. Empty rooms might not be empty.

But I was sneaky, and small, and quick. I’d been a gymnast in high school. I could scale walls and hang from rafters if I needed to.

When the time showed twenty minutes and two seconds, I took two deep breaths and put on my helmet before lifting the small drill to the corners of the crate and getting to work. To say I was eager to get out of the crate was an understatement. I’d never been claustrophobic before, but I was ready for some fresh air, some windows even.

Five minutes later I was free, the side replaced. I took deep breaths to calm my racing heart. God, I was really doing this. I looked around. The main lights were off in the storage room, only a few emergency beacons gave the space a soft white glow. Every crate and tree were giant shadows looming above me.

I was alone on an alien world, but I felt hunted. Watched.

Even the trees seemed to be keeping an eye on me.

Shrugging off the feeling, I scurried like a mouse to the edge of the storage room and started looking for the vents. The map I had memorized detailed a large air control system, the vents big enough for me to walk upright. The system of air tunnels formed a maze beneath the base. I tried not to think about going from one small space to another. I took a deep breath and thought about my son.

He didn’t need a weak, frightened mother. He needed me, he needed me to be strong.

And like the proverbial rat, I entered the maze. I had no choice but to try to survive it.