Читать книгу The Rebel and the Rogue - Grace Goodwin - Страница 7

Ivy Birkeland, Transport Station Zenith, Canteen

Leaning back in the chair I had tucked into the corner of the dark room, I scanned the area for threats. I ignored the large males minding their own business at the bar, although one in particular caught my attention. I wasn’t here for that kind of meeting, but he was a sexy mountain of muscle and I was a red-blooded woman who knew what she liked. The hottie was Atlan sized, he made my usual issue of being too big obsolete.

The supersized aliens didn’t mind my six-foot frame. In fact I’d had my share of offers over my four years in the Coalition Fleet. The job, though, had always come first. Discharged from service, I now had a different reason for being out here in space. A personal mission to bring a Cerberus asshole by the name of Gerian Eozara to justice.

A quest for justice that I could not walk away from or deny, not without dishonoring my dead friends, dishonoring their sacrifice. Their memory. Their service.

Tears threatened and I blinked them away with a fury I rarely allowed myself to feel. Cerberus Legion was responsible for the Quell being sold in my sector of space. Quell was the reason I’d ended up crawling through the mud on Xerima, my friends dead, my body broken. When the Coalition Fleet’s Intelligence Core had announced the bounty to catch the one who was responsible, I’d jumped at the chance to bring Gerian in, dead or alive. But a quick death wasn’t enough for the Quell dealer and his cohorts. Torture would be better for him… and any other Cerberus scum I ran into.

Forcing myself to forget the past for a few moments, I enjoyed the vision of the big guy’s tight ass and massive shoulders—I might be focused on my mission, but I was female. And his armband was green. Astra green.

This is not the alien you are looking for.

The mental play on Star Wars dialogue made me grin. Back under control, I looked around again. It grew later, the canteen slowly filling up with people in search of food or drink, of a semblance of normalcy in a place where nothing and no one was normal, at least not to me. More than a dozen conversations rolled through my mind in half as many languages.

Prillon.

Atlan.

English…

Turning my head to the right, I saw a handful of fresh, young, human recruits slamming shots of S-Gen whiskey like they’d just seen their first contaminated Hive soldier. Judging by the way their hands shook and the brittle natures of their false smiles, they’d probably just realized exactly what would happen to them if they were captured by the enemy. I’d slammed down half a bottle of space-made tequila after my first mission. My captain at the time, a no-nonsense military man from Italy, had let us all drown our sorrows in drink, carry each other off to bed and sleep it off.

The next day we’d all pretended nothing had happened, but the truth had been obvious. Scary as hell. No one in my ReCon unit—in all of the Coalition—wanted to be caught by the Hive. We’d rather die.

Careful what you wished for, Ivy. My mother’s superstitious warnings echoed through my memories, and I rubbed the thick scar that ran from the base of my skull, down the back of my neck. Lower. Careful indeed. There had been many nights the last six months I would have rather been dead. Like the rest of my friends in my unit. Dead. Gone. Oblivious.

I grimaced at the bleak thought and swirled the dark gold tequila around inside the glass with my free hand. A full bottle rested on the table in front of me, but I hadn’t touched it. Not one sip. It was a prop only, used to blend in. I needed my wits about me. This wasn’t the place to stand out. Here, being noticed was dangerous.

Not for the first time I wondered what I was doing out here on the fringe of Sector 437, at this transport station, where criminals, spies and species from every planet interacted under the strict rules of the Coalition’s Intelligence Core.

The rules were simple. No fighting. No killing. No violence allowed within the walls of Transport Station Zenith. Those who disobeyed were executed without question—if they were caught. Their goods confiscated. Their ships, too. Breaking the rules was rare, and those who did so were usually desperate and very, very sneaky. Or they wanted to die.

Since the transport station was within Battleship Karter’s sector, barely, it was under Coalition control, which made it just safe enough to conduct business and just wild enough to keep respectable people clear. Or around for a purpose, like mine.

I used to be one of those people. Respectable. Now I was what I’d once reviled. I wasn’t Coalition any longer. Obviously I hadn’t returned to Earth after my discharge. No fucking way. I was a rebel in space, a Han Solo of sorts. It was funny how the will to survive could change one’s opinion on just about anything.

I owed it to my unit—my dead friends—to see this through. I’d survived when they hadn’t. I would not stop now. I would meet with the Rogue 5 operative, make the trade and get what I wanted: onto his home planet where I could hunt down Gerian Eozara like the animal he was.

Transport Station Zenith was a little rough, but I knew it had nothing on the infamous moon base my contact hailed from.

The meet wasn’t for several hours. I had time to admire the huge male at the bar once more. The dark green band circling his biceps had the Astra Legion’s symbol emblazoned in the center. I’d studied up on Rogue 5, knew the history.

Hundreds of years ago a Coalition ship of a few hundred fighters crash landed on Hyperion, a planet in the outer reaches of the galaxy. It wasn’t part of the Coalition; therefore it lacked all advanced technology. From what I understood, the native Hyperion population had been a few steps up from Neanderthals, unskilled and lacking any advancements the rest of the universe utilized.

For some reason I couldn’t fathom, some of the survivors from that crashed Coalition ship—Atlan, Forsian, Everian and more—mated with the Hyperions. Their ship was eventually repaired, and the survivors and their descendants rose from the surface, at least far enough to make it to Hyperion’s moon, Rogue 5. There, the Coalition crew, plus those Hyperion they mated, created a base to be their new home.

In the centuries since, they had survived by their wits, doing whatever was necessary to protect their home. They were little more than pirates and rarely allowed outsiders into their midst, but their Coalition and Hyperion ancestry remained. Because the survivors there isolated, almost all who lived on Rogue 5 now had Hyperion blood. But they were all mutts and Rogue 5 was the pound. Some were Hyperion and Atlan, Hyperion and Viken, Hyperion and Forsian, depending on who mated with whom in their ancestry.

To make it even more complicated, the moon base was broken into five legions. Everyone was part of one legion. At Transport Station Zenith—which was probably the only place they comingled with others—I’d come across dozens of members from all the legions, could tell them apart by their uniform colors, the insignia. Astra was one of the more respectable, as criminals went. Styx and Kronos as well. But the other two legions—Cerberus and Siren? They were ruthless. Assassins. Murderers. Thieves. They trafficked everything from weapons to slaves with no conscience or remorse. I had a feeling the operative I would meet later would be wearing one of their two colors.

The Astra Legion’s male at the bar was a forbidden fruit that I suddenly wanted very much to taste. Maybe I’d been wrong in my thinking. Maybe I could be here for my meeting and a little fun, too. When I’d been in the Coalition Fleet, we’d been told to steer clear of anyone from Rogue 5, regardless of their legion. They were rogue, just like the name of their moon base. Wild. They’d be called bad boys on Earth. No way could they measure up to Coalition standards.

But when it came to sex? Screw rules and regulations. I had no doubt he’d be as wild as his home world. The bad boy from Rogue 5 would be really, really good. I had no doubt he’d be up for a good time. A quickie. It had been a while since I’d had a male-induced orgasm, and based on the size of him, I had to assume he was proportional. Everywhere. My pussy clenched at the thought.

As if he knew I was thinking about him—and what he could do if we found the nearest horizontal surface—he turned and met my gaze.

My breath got trapped in my throat, and a flush of heat went through me as if I’d downed a few shots of the tequila. Holy shit, he was hot.

I pegged him at six-nine, two seventy. Easily. He was the largest male I’d ever seen, and I’d fought alongside Atlans in beast mode. He put football players, human strongmen competitors, hell, even mythical Vikings to shame. He had black hair and eyes so dark I couldn’t see the difference between iris and pupil. From across the room I couldn’t miss the sharp cheekbones and square jaw. Regal nose. Full lips. If he had on glasses and a tie, I’d rip open his shirt and find a giant S emblem on the shiny suit hidden beneath. His superpower would be panty destroyer, because mine were ruined.

The latest version of a superhero movie had come out just before I’d left Earth and volunteered for the Coalition, and this guy was a darker alien doppelgänger of my favorite ass-kicking hero.

He was going to fuck me. I was confident about that. Besides womanly instinct, his gaze didn’t falter, only raked over my face, my mouth, what he could see of me sitting down.

One look from him and lust burned through me until I trembled with it. I’d eyed a guy across a bar before, on Earth. Flirted. Fucked. I was a woman and I had needs, nothing I was ashamed of. But I was more aroused by just eyeing the alien before me than I had ever been from any guy on my home planet. Hell, any guy I’d ever slept with.

The alien was… potent, and that was at twenty paces. If he touched me…

I licked my lips, trying to imagine what he would taste like on my tongue, feel like beneath my hands. The small flicker of my tongue over my lips made his gaze narrow, and he moved toward me like I’d tied a rope around him and yanked on my end. Hard.

No one got in his way. No one dared.

He stopped on the opposite side of the table. Looked down. Pheromones pumped off him. He exuded sex, even smelled like it, and I had to plant the soles of my feet onto the floor in a conscious effort to keep myself from standing. Because if I stood, I’d move. And if I moved, I’d be wrapped around him in half a second flat. I’d climb him like a monkey, and that wasn’t the way to go unnoticed around here.

“You shouldn’t be here, female.” The deep rumble of his voice rippled across my skin like the bass beat through a speaker, and my nipples were instantly hard as rocks.

As they said on Earth, those were fighting words. Now that I was out of the Coalition, no one told me what to do.

“I can take care of myself,” I countered with a snap, eyeing him. Hell, eye fucking him. I took my time, inspecting every perfect inch. Those lips. So full. So firm. His disapproving gaze encouraged me to defy him all the more. I didn’t see fangs, but then I’d heard they only came out when these Rogue 5 hybrids took a mate. Since I definitely wasn’t his mate—I belonged to no one—it meant I wouldn’t get that experience, which was just fine with me. I liked sex a little wild, but fangs and biting?

He studied me in silence, and I stared back, refusing to look away. The standoff made my pussy wet with heat.

“Hey, Lieutenant? You all right?” One of the humans from the ReCon unit nearby called out to me and I frowned. Damn it. I’d been honorably discharged from the Coalition Fleet, but my neural implants were still active and could be scanned by other fighters if they were wearing their Fleet uniforms loaded with active tech. That tech in the newest outfits constantly scanned for friend and enemy alike, picking up Hive frequencies no matter how subtle.

When Prime Nial of Prillon Prime, the leader of the entire Coalition of Planets and the big boss in charge of all the military, said veterans contaminated with Hive tech could go home, well, figuring out who was going to be dangerous and who wasn’t had become a pretty big priority for the Coalition Intelligence Core. No one wanted a warrior, fighter or warlord with implants to get pinged with Hive signals and go on a killing spree.

So the new uniforms had scanners, and all service members had transmitters imbedded in their flesh that those uniform scanners could read. Bad news for me at the moment. Once a lieutenant out here, always a lieutenant, even if I didn’t wear the uniform.

Before I could respond, the giant alien in front of me growled, the sound a low warning to anyone who might think of interfering.

The ReCon team stood as one, their hands on their blasters, ready to take on an alien from Rogue 5 for me, which meant they would die.

Brave but stupid. No doubt the whiskey had clouded their heads beyond safe levels.

I rose and put my back to the alien, a calculated risk that made my skin tingle and my entire body want to weep with pleasure. Maybe he’d wrap a hand around my neck and pull me to him. Perhaps he would spread my legs and take me from behind while everyone watched. Somewhere in the last few years my fantasies had grown dark and needy. Taboo on Earth. Too wild.

Shoving those thoughts aside, I held my palms out toward the table of honorable fighters who were just trying to protect one of their own. It wasn’t their fault. “Stand down, ReCon. I’m fine. Don’t break the I.C.’s station rules for me.”

The man who’d spoken tilted his head and, looking over my shoulder, sized up the Rogue 5 male. “You sure, Lieutenant?”

I didn’t bother telling him not to call me that. He wouldn’t listen. “I’m sure. Thank you. Enjoy your time off.” I thumbed over my shoulder and grinned like I was sharing a secret. “He’s a friend.”

That brought a round of chuckles from the group and one wide-eyed look full of envy from the single female among them. “Damn. You go, girl.” She grinned back and raised her glass in salute just as a very large hand came to rest on the curve of my hip. His hand. His warm, heavy, even bigger than I’d imagined hand. God, yes.

I grinned back at her, wrapped my hand around as much of the large male wrist behind me as I could, and blindly dragged the alien male toward the nearest door.

Shoving it open, I pulled him through—I was well aware he was allowing me to do so—and slammed it closed behind me and activated the lock. Fortunately, we were in a deserted gaming room filled with more than a dozen empty tables, chairs and the space version of billiards.

When I turned around again, it was to find him grinning down at me, his cock an obvious and very large bulge beneath his uniform. I’d been right, he was proportional.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to be on Zenith Station? It’ll be really, really hard”—I glanced down at the hard cock I wanted him to think about—“for you to fuck me if I leave. And it will be impossible for you to do so with your pants on.” I pressed my back against the door to bar any kind of escape.

One dark brow winged up, but he said nothing. He wasn’t leaving. Oh, he was big enough to pick me up and handily move me out of the way, but he wouldn’t. Not with his cock pressing thick and long beneath the black fabric, and getting bigger as I watched. How had he walked around the canteen with that? How was it not busting out the seams?

I licked my lips, realizing all of that was for me. Because of me.

My eager need wasn’t as readily apparent, but if he were an Everian Hunter who could scent a female’s arousal, he’d know my pussy was hot, wet and primed for him. He could no doubt see how hard my nipples were. Space bras weren’t anything like the Victoria’s Secret bits of lace and satin I used to wear on Earth. But after four years with the Coalition Fleet and the last six months as a bounty hunter roaming the rogue-controlled fringe areas of space, I’d learned a space guy—an alien—didn’t give a shit about lingerie. Or weight. Or height. Bra size. High heels. Makeup. Hairstyle or what name-brand handbag a woman carried. None of the things I’d grown up worrying about.

Coalition or not, these alien males liked a female willing. Bare. Wet. Ready. And if she wasn’t any of those things and he wanted her, he’d get her that way.

This male would find out soon enough I didn’t need any help in that department. Except maybe for the naked part. I was already wet, willing and ready.

I wasn’t worried about foreplay, and I didn’t want to know his name. Neither were needed. Hell, just looking at the gorgeous specimen of a stranger was all the warm-up necessary. Because, wow. I wanted hot, wild sex and no strings. I wanted him. Now.

“And it will be impossible for me to lick that pussy with you wearing yours.” The deep rumble that was his voice had felt like a challenge out in the canteen. His current words were one sentence of foreplay. But the promise I saw in his gaze and the thought of what he planned to do to me caused a whimper to slip from my lips.

He heard it, and the corner of his mouth tipped up.

Damn and holy hell, he was too gorgeous to be real. But he was here, living, breathing, eye fucking.

Real or not, I wanted him to lick my pussy. God, yes. I was horny. I wasn’t ashamed. I was single. Alone in space. I wanted some cock, and I was going to get it. The dinner I’d eaten earlier had filled my body. I’d craved the food, and it left me sated. Now I craved him, and I wanted him to fill my body. He’d leave me sated, too, but in a completely different way.

“You’re still dressed,” I said.

His gaze darkened, his voice dropping to a growl. Another challenge that made my legs tremble. “So are you.”

For two people who wanted sex, we weren’t getting very far. We were at a clothing stalemate. We were positioning, testing our power, who would dominate. At this point it was even.

I liked that. A lot. But I knew he was holding back, could turn me and take me against the door at any moment. Knew that I wanted him to take me, make me wild, give me no choice but to let go and give in to the pleasure.

But I would never admit that, not to a dominant, bossy male alien like him. Because if I did, he’d want to own me. So I would give him the green light, get his cock inside me, and hope like hell he was as wild as he looked.

Our hands went to our clothes at the same time. It was as if we’d both reached the tipping point of need and neither of us wanted to pretend for another moment

Shutting out the world, my mission, my past, everything but this moment, this little sliver of time, I focused on him until he was all I saw. All I wanted. And we still hadn’t gotten to the good stuff.

My shirt went flying. His boot bounced off the wall where he kicked it. Pants dropped. We were both bare within seconds, everything we wore like a yard sale around us. There was only a locked door between us and the full canteen. The knowledge of that, the rush that someone might discover us, made this all the hotter.

The air was cool on my heated skin. When his gaze raked down my body, taking in every inch, I shivered. I wasn’t perfect. I had every feminine doubt Earth’s culture bred into women. I wasn’t a supermodel, not before the accident and definitely not after. I had a scar running down my neck and half my spine. A big scar, one giant among dozens of smaller battle wounds I’d earned the hard way. A ReGen pod could heal a lot, but not if it took too long to get in one. Not after the body had begun to heal itself. Even after ten hours in a pod, my scars remained, and I waited for him to notice the marks visible on my thighs, abdomen and shoulders, waited for some kind of reaction.

He stared at me all right, but his gaze flickered past my scars like they weren’t there. Instead he focused on all the right parts and in a very appreciative way. For him I was tall enough, but my boobs were too big, my hips wide. My ass… well, my ass was glorious. It was my vanity.

The way he licked his lips, it seemed he liked a whole lot more of me than my ass.

And him? Holy fuck. He was like Michelangelo’s David combined with huge alien hunk. Slabs of muscle. Shoulders as wide as Texas. Narrowed waist. Slim hips. That V thingy that made my mouth water. And between that V… porn stars would bow down to this cock.

It wasn’t so huge the size scared me, because who wanted to be fucked with a lead pipe? But it was big. Stretch me open and maybe hurt just a little, big. My pussy clenched in anticipation of this masterpiece before me. Thick enough he would open me up, rub over every hot spot I had and probably discover some I never knew were in there. Long, but not so long as to break me. I’d take him all, barely.

I liked the idea. A lot.

“I want you inside me now,” I said.

He shook his head as he slowly approached, his cock bobbing hard and erect before him. It aimed, pointed at me as if it knew I was its next conquest.

“No.”

No? Fuck, yes. I shivered. His denial made a bolt of electricity run through my flesh.