Avenge (4 page)

She didn’t hush him but watched her blasting the assassin over and over until he wasn’t breathing or moving.

From that moment, her focus spun and another set of eyes was now walking toward the assassin. A blade came out and slit the man’s throat as his three eyes opened in recovery.

Aura knew that hand. It wiped the blood off the knife and then the image was running through the halls to sweep her into an embrace and lift her into his arms. A ball of light covered them both and then, he was striding into the medical centre at Home.

She watched the medical teams cut her clothing away and the healers who worked on her in a human-fashion surgery. She watched the hands of Randr stroke her hair back from her head and idly start to weave her hair into the arrangement that she had woken up with.

Images flickered as different points of view showed her during her surgery and then Randr’s hands bathed her slowly and she saw herself in a completely different light.

Blushing furiously, she jerked her hand away from the frame and turned to face him. “You saw me naked?”

He winced. “It was necessary.”

With a happy sigh, she draped her arms around his neck and smiled. “Well, what did you think?”

Chapter Six

Light shimmered around them as he bent his head to hers for a kiss.

Aura’s mind hummed with pleasure as his caress of her lips sent sparks of sensation through her body.

“Where are we?”

He bent and nibbled his way down her neck. “My quarters. I thought it would be better than defiling the library.”

She moaned and tilted her neck as his hands worked at her gown, easing it until it pooled at her hips. Randr worked at her belt and when the dagger fell to the ground, he pushed the dress after it.

Facing him in nothing but her breast band, panties and shoes, she blushed under his frank scrutiny.

“In all my views of time, past and present, I never thought that I could be more smitten than I am at this moment.” He drew his hands along her skin in a slow caress that showed he was enjoying all the textures he touched.

“Smitten is a pale word.”

“Enthralled, enraptured, entranced. Pick your word. I am busy.” He dropped to his knees and he pressed kisses to her skin as he removed the last bits of scarlet clothing.

He flicked her a gaze that showed heat in those swirling stellar eyes before he wrapped his lips around one nipple and suckled strongly.

Aura wove her hands into his midnight hair and arched into the pull of his mouth. Her knees started quivering as a riot began in her nerve endings. A prickling in her body beyond the sensual started and he trailed down her ribs and belly before pressing a swift kiss against the soft curls at the core of her and then grabbing her and tilting her to her back.

Power writhed around her, holding her up and just at a comfortable height for Randr to press his mouth between her thighs and part her with a long slide of his tongue.

She floated closer to him when he tugged on her flank and energy held her to him as he worked into her with wet heat and brought forth her own response in a wave of shivering, gasping energy.

Randr’s hands cupped her ass, pulling her firmly to him as he delved into her with abandon.

His sharp teeth were pressing against her clit as he flicked into her with his tongue in endless, wet slides. When he withdrew his mouth from her sex, he replaced the thrust of one appendage with two long fingers that curved and stroked the upper wall of her channel.

Mewling and helpless, Aura tried to grab for his head, but with the energy holding her in place, there was no way to sit up or move to grip anything. She was trapped with her nails digging into her palms while her body jerked with every caress of her g-spot.

Her voice panted and whined as she fought to gain her release, but it was when he wrapped his lips around the small bud of her clit that she screamed as the flick of his tongue sent her over the edge.

Aura’s hoarse shout was Randr’s signal to toss her to the bed. While she waited for the spasms of her channel to cease, Randr was stripping out of his clothing.

For a man with a pale complexion, his body was structured like a warrior who did nothing but fight and preparing to fight. Long limbs, slabs of muscle, lithe legs and wide shoulders gave her quite a bit to absorb, but the wide, flared cock that was taking center stage made her eager to get on with the assimilation.

Aura sat up to reach for him, but he pushed her back with gentle and insistent hands. He linked his hands to her, palm to palm, and as their fingers wound together, he worked into her.

She wanted to close her eyes to savour the feeling of his cock sliding into her, but facing him and watching his expression as he moved into her for the first time was too tempting.

The stars in his eyes, the swirling galaxies that she could see against the blackness, they hypnotized her and pulled her in.

As her body was swallowed by pleasure, her mind opened to see every moment of her past. Every disappointment, every moment of enjoyment and all images of her friends and family swamped her thoughts. All of her time came to her, crystal clear and she rocked with Randr as a new series of images filled her mind.

She saw Randr as a lover laughing with her in the morning light, her family as seen from a distance, being handcuffed in front of the seven and knowing that it would not end well, Tavik coming to her aid and a new branch of the Nameless taking form.

All of these images were hazy, blurred as if they were not yet set, but Aura recognized a few of them from her own past. If she was right, she was going to break some very big rules for the Nameless.

Light started to pour out of her, her skin glowing brightly in Randr’s embrace as she arched against his increasingly powerful thrusts. Each slide and rock drew a gasp from her and when she screamed, he shouted, grinding his hips to hers and his own glow met and mingled with hers, his timeline pouring into her mind.

His hands were still holding hers, his lips moving softly against her neck when she blinked herself back to the present.

She tried to kiss him, but she was firmly pinned to the bed. A low laugh worked its way out of her throat. “Defile the library indeed.”

He raised his head and pressed a kiss to her jaw, working his way up to her lips in minute increments. His smile kept the kiss from being more intimate, but she got the idea.

“Why can I see parts of your life in my mind?”

He looked surprised. “I haven’t heard of that before. Usually, we only share our viewpoints for the present.”

Aura braced her feet on the bed and rocked her hips slightly. “Does this kind of thing happen often among the Nameless?”

Randr feathered kisses along her forehead. “Not that often. We normally take casual lovers in the timelines we visit.”

“So, this is unusual?”

He pressed his lips to hers. “Not where you are concerned. The unusual is the everyday with you.”

“Should I be flattered?”

“It is a fact. Nothing about you is standard or usual. You are exceptional in every way.”

She closed her eyes and went through her view of Randr’s timeline. He had grown up on a high-tech world over a century ago. Despite his people being evolved, they chose combat as a method for settling their differences and he was a good citizen and went to war.

On a battlefield in the rain, he had been dying from a series of wounds inflicted by a shattering vehicle. A woman wearing a hood had come and knelt at his side. With surprising strength, she tore one arm of his blood-soaked uniform from him and draped it over the large puddle of crimson at his side.

She had simply lifted him and carried him Home in a burst of light.

Agrohan was his rescuer and her bondmate, Ickola, was his healer and tutor. He had learned the ways of the Nameless and begun to live a life after his had ceased.

“How are you doing that?”

She smiled at his question.

“I have no idea. There is so much inside me now, and I am not even counting you.” Tilting her hips against him caused an answering twitch inside her.

He retreated and slid forward, thrusting deep. “Concentrate on me, the rest will sort itself out in the morning.”

She laughed, “If this is part of my instruction, consider me an attentive pupil.”

As he rocked into her with short shifts of his hips, she shivered. Her first day as a Nameless might have started out rough, but it was ending with a bang.

Chapter Seven

Learning to move in space was easy at Home. Since it was a fixed point in space and time, removed from both, it did not move while one of the Nameless was stepping from place to place.

“Come on, Aura. We are not going to have breakfast unless you can walk directly to the refectory.”

Randr was sexier this morning than he had been last night and that was saying something. Today, he was wearing a dark crimson shirt, black trousers and black boots. For her, he had retrieved the Terran wear from the previous day’s selections.

“While that clothing is very form fitting, it is not that flattering to you. I much prefer you in the gown of yesterday.” He sighed heavily.

She laughed and concentrated on calling the Orb power within. “You seemed to prefer me in nothing yesterday.”

“True.”

“Then, shush and let me concentrate. These clothes are comfortable and let me move. That gown was a little restrictive.”

He snorted. “I am sure that Tavik is grateful for it.”

She gave him a dark look and got back to concentrating. When she managed to create a doorway to the refectory, she stepped through and had to stifle the frantic inner applause that her mind was generating.

Randr appeared at her side in an instant. “Well done. First lesson learned and passed.”

“Hardly my first lesson. For example, that thing you did with your little finger last night was completely new to me.” She laughed as he stood there with a shocked expression on his face.

This morning, she stayed on the safe side of the foodstuffs that had been acquired for the Nameless.

She sat and ate with her tutor, asking him anything that passed her thoughts. “So, nothing grows here because time is a static state?”

“Correct.”

“Then how was I able to heal at all, how are we able to speak and move?” Aura nibbled at her experimental food for the day, substance on a stick.

“The Orb gives us the ability to live outside of time, as for your wound, I sped up the healing process to allow you to live. It was the same way it was done for me and the same way it was done for everyone here.”

She chuckled. “So, the Nameless are a bit lemming-like in their habits?”

“I don’t understand the reference.”

“We tend to die a lot.”

“Well, yes. But, if our collectors are paying attention, then we are taken up at the moment that we die.”

“What if the collectors don’t get there in time?” It was a legitimate question. She wanted to know how many of her new people were missed in the shuffle.

“They die and are not healed and given the power of the Orb. They live and die a normal life.”

She shrugged. Billions of people died every day. Some had tremendous potential but died anyway. It was not fair, but life wasn’t fair.

Aura felt a searing pain and she clutched her head. Images of her beaten sister sobbing against her mother, the police standing in the living room and taking the information of the attack swarmed through her thoughts.

When she was fourteen, her nineteen-year-old sister had been out with friends and had been abducted from the parking lot of the bar while they were waiting for a cab.

Beaten and bloody, she had stumbled home, but her mother had refused to let her shower. With no recriminations and no shame, Aura’s mother had taken Carola to the hospital and stayed by her side while she gave the details to the police.

Aura was reliving every moment, but when the police arrived to notify Carola that her attacker had been killed, everything went bright.

“What is going on?” Randr’s whisper was concerned. “What do you see?”

“It isn’t right. I am seeing something that happened when I was younger, but I am seeing things from a different angle as if I was there.”

Randr rubbed her shoulder. “You are needed in time. This happens occasionally. When we need to be in a specific place, this sort of thing takes over our minds and bodies, giving us an imperative to go and take our place in time.”

“How can I do this when I don’t know what I am doing?”

“The energy will guide you, but you need to get a hood.” He wrapped his arms around her and lifted her in his arms.

There was a bright flash of light and they were in a building with racks, tracks and machines that whirred and chirped happily as they filed and retrieved objects.

Randr set her on her feet. “This is our storage facility. You can request anything and it will be found. Simply select your size and view the available objects, or request something and acquisitions will find it for you in an hour or so.”

Aura touched the knife belt on her hips. It had been a reflex to put it on, but based on what she had seen, she was going to have to use it soon.

She stood in line with six others waiting to use the machine. Randr was at her side and they both waited patiently, but her body had other ideas. It started to glow.

The woman ahead of her glanced back and then jumped. She tapped the man in front of her and they parted.

“Why are you doing that? I can wait my turn.”

The woman smiled. “If time is calling you, it must be urgent. Get what you need. We can wait.”

The entire queue parted to let her through and she quickly entered her measurements in and selected a large hoodie.

When the box was delivered to her, she put the black hoodie on and pulled the hood down to cast her eyes in shadow.

Randr frowned. “I do not think you should be going alone.”

She looked at him. “Is the procedure for going back in time the same as for my moving here at Home?”

He scrubbed his hand through his hair. “Not really. We will use the library. It will help you focus.”

She nodded and pictured the library in her mind. It didn’t take much looking to find the frame with the decade she wanted in it. She placed her palm on the edge and focussed.