eyes as he dug his fingers into her face hard enough to bruise.
“I’ll tell you what’s going to happen next to alleviate your... fears, shall I?” he mused. “You will be tied down on the ceremonial beds behind us and the prophet will bless you both. Then you will be taken by as many warriors as the prophet deems necessary until you are with child. If that does not happen today, the ceremony will repeat tomorrow and the day after until you have conceived. You will then be secluded and monitored until you have birthed your young, and then the process will begin again. And again. Until your bodies are too old or worn out to bear young anymore.”
“You’re sick,” she spat back at him, trying to tear herself away, even though his nails cut into her skin. She couldn’t bear him touching her anymore, not looking at her with Nyek’s eyes... using his voice. “Sick and twisted. You think you can get away with this? They know where we are. Help will come and then you’re fucked!”
He laughed, the sound chilling. There was nothing human in it, no compassion, only ruthlessness. He shoved her away, hard enough that she stumbled into Gracie. “Oh, you mean my brother? I’m afraid, my lady, he has always been the runt of the litter. He will not come for you. He will run back to his imperial masters instead, tail between his legs.”
“Asshole! You might look the same,” she threw back, “but you’re not half the man he is. He’ll always be better than you!”
His lips quirked as the warriors around the two women moved in, grabbing their arms and hauling them apart.
“Oh, believe me, my lady, I am better than my brother...” He grabbed his crotch. “In every way, a fact that you will have more than enough time to appreciate.”
He nodded to the guards either side of them. “Get them on the beds, ready for the blessing ceremony. I get that one,” he pointed to Indra. “First. A matter of family... honor.”
“Honor?” she screamed as she was dragged away. “You wouldn’t know honor if it fucked you in the ass with a fucking bargepole. SIDEWA—”
Her breath was knocked out of her as the guards threw her against the side of the bed, the edge catching her in the ribs. She fought to breathe as they bundled her on the hard surface, still fighting as they manacled her down until she could barely move.
She closed her eyes, shutting out the hateful scene around her as she clung onto the one hope she had left. That Nyek would come to find them. But... a tear trickled down her cheek... what if what she’d heard had been right? That he’d slept with her, opened her heart... but never intended to claim her all along?
She sucked in a hard breath, disastrously close to a sob. She wanted that. After so many years of being fiercely independent, of keeping everyone, even lovers at arm’s distance, he’d been the one person she’d let in. The one person to get past all her guards and defenses to touch the heart she guarded so closely. She’d learned not to let anyone get close, that once you did, you were weak. Vulnerable. It was better not to love, and then no one could hurt you.
The tears flowed freely now, running down the sides of her face into her hair.
She’d lost sight of that, had fallen in love with a prim, stick-up-his-ass, sexy alien warrior who made her heart sing and her body hum with desire. She’d let him pin her down, tie her up and lavish her with such ecstasy that there would never be anyone else for her.
And through it all... he had never intended it to be forever.
17
“You do know this plan has a less than a forty percent survival rate. Don’t you?”
Nyek ignored Miisan’s voice in his ear as he spotted the pirate ship, his brother’s ship, coming into view around the edge of the asteroid.
They hadn’t been far away at all when Tavik had made the call, almost within sight of the base. Watching. Waiting. It had only been because most of the Cabal base had been powered down that Miisan and the automated defenses hadn’t picked up their shuttles when they’d boarded the base to capture Indra and Gracie.
“As long as that forty percent is just for me,” he replied finally, his lips compressing as he made his final approach to the raider ship.
The controls