This woman was mine. I had thought to act honorably, to give her a choice. But now, seeing her, tasting her, touching her mind, I knew I would move the heavens themselves to keep her. Nothing would stop me from seducing her, from earning her love.
Her skin was softer than a newborn babe’s. Her sighs music to my warrior’s heart. She wasn’t fighting me, she was simply innocent, her mind unable to fabricate lies of passion.
I kissed her again, until her body trembled with need, the air racing in and out of her lungs in uncontrolled bursts.
“Your name, mate?”
“I’m not your mate.”
“By the Divine, you are mine. My marked mate.” I grabbed her hands and held them above her head, pinning her as I lowered my mouth to the side of her right breast. Her mark would be there. I knew this for a fact as mine was in the same location on the side of my ribs. She was mine. I nuzzled the swell of her breast with my nose, my mouth, my chin, rubbing two days of stubble over her sensitive flesh before kissing and biting through her silken gown. “You have a birthmark, mate. Right here.”
She gasped and fought me, but I held her hands in place and she quickly melted, her head thrashing side to side on the pillow.
I kissed that mark, pulled her gown away with my teeth so I could kiss her bare breast. The moment my lips made contact with her naked skin, she moaned. A firestorm of need arced between us as I kissed and suckled her birthmark, the sacred and magical mark that linked us. That made her mine. Proof. I saw it. Felt it.
“I’m coming for you, mate. Wait for me. Do not choose another.”
I moved to suck her nipple into my mouth and her hips bucked, her voice barely more than a whisper. “Warrior Treva said there would be eighty males to choose from tomorrow. He said I may choose any man I want.”
Flicking my tongue over her nipple until she cried out, I lifted my head at last and kissed her again before answering. “Yes. By law, you may choose any man at the Touchstone. But we both know you won’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because they won’t give you what you need.”
Her pulse raced and I lowered my head to kiss her at the base of her throat.
“What do I need?”
“My hand twisted in your hair as I fuck that sweet mouth. My long, hard tongue working your clit, filling your virgin pussy until you wrap your legs around my shoulders and demand I never stop. Until I claim all that is mine. Until you claim me in return.”
She was panting now, but there was more. So much more. I tilted my hips, rubbing her clit with my hard length through our clothes as she whimpered beneath me. I lowered my head so my warm lips would brush her ear as I finished.
“You need me to stretch your ass, take you hard and fast as I fill your pussy with my fingers, making you come again. And again. You need my cock buried balls deep in your pussy, fucking you bare, filling you with my seed over and over as you scream, begging for release.”
“Oh my god.”
She bucked beneath me, her eyes clouded with mindless lust. For me.
It was time to go. I wanted more, but could not give it to her. I’d done enough, made her as eager and hot as I was. She was aroused by me. Desired me. She might see other males, but I would be the one she longed for. I’d just ensured that.
“You’re mine, mate. Wait for me. I will find you.”
* * *
Alexis, Planet Everis, The Touchstone
“As you know, today is the meeting of males and mates here at the Touchstone.” The woman we knew as Officiate Treva stood in front of us, the group of twelve women who had been matched through the brides program and transported to Everis.
The female looked completely human, but she moved with an almost beautiful efficiency that made me watch her more closely than I normally would. All of the Everians I’d met looked human, but there was something about them, something that screamed more. Officiate Treva looked like she was a decade older than Katie, Dani and myself and had a confident bearing the rest of us lacked. Her hair was a dark auburn and hung in a smooth fall to the tops of her shoulders. Her eyes were a warm amber, the color of whiskey and she was the same height as Katie, just above average on Earth. Her uniform was dark navy blue, the marks of her rank on her arm and color in bright silver. I did not know the politics or rankings of people here, but she and the other Officiates were high in the pecking order. I hadn’t seen a single Everian argue with her, man or woman. Her bearing and confidence made me feel even more unsure, like a child trying to play in the grown-ups’ sandbox. The way Katie and Dani were fidgeting, they must be feeling the same.
We were on a new world, awaiting a roomful of males. I imagined twelve innocent little lambs about to be sniffed and assessed by a roomful of wolves. None of us were Everian, we’d never been to the planet before and knew next to nothing about being mated.