Wicked Empress: The Onic Empire, Book 4 (41 page)

“Should I fetch that costume, Captain?”

Her seductive, superior attitude dispelled all his thoughts of apologizing. Kraft didn’t worry one bit about him taking charge, because she assumed she had the upper hand. His blushing and backing off made her think she could say or do anything, and he’d just turn away. Normally he would have, but not this time.

Slipping a finger under her chin, he lifted her face until she met his gaze. Fathomless black eyes held a smirk that he wanted to quash in a sudden rush. For the first time, she didn’t flinch away from his touch. She melted to him as he stroked his finger across her full, sensuous lips. More than anything in the Void, he wanted to kiss her. He wanted to taste every bit of her luscious mouth. Kraft had a body built for sin, but she had a mouth destined for seduction.

Jace lowered his voice as his mouth descended on hers. “Seems like a waste of time for you to put on all those complicated clothes when I’m just going to make you take them off.”

Her eyes widened.

Placing his mouth to her ear, he whispered, “Or did you want to dress up and then strip for me?”

She tensed and swallowed with an audible click.

He pressed closer. “I’ve never had a whore in my bed. If you’re familiar with the concept, maybe you could walk me through it.”

Kraft pulled back and narrowed her gaze. “After ten years of celibacy, I think a walk is all it would take.”

“Is that so?” Refusing to back down, Jace traced his finger along her ear to her neck. “Since it’s been a decade for me, I’m thinking you won’t be able to walk by the time I’m satisfied.”

Her jaw damn near hit the floor.

Jace took a perverse delight in shocking her, and her dismay made him even more determined to make her back down this time. Even if he had to say the most vulgar things in the Void, he would force her retreat.

“I can’t believe you’re surprised.” He stroked her lips with a forceful fingertip. “You can read me so well, right?”

She darted her gaze to the floor. “I told you, I can’t read you like that. I can read—”

Plush lips gave way below the thrust of his silencing finger. When her hungry eyes met his, he said, “Don’t try to distract me. I don’t care what you can read. You don’t have to read me. I’ll tell you what I want.”

Lowering his mouth to her neck, he nipped lightly. “I want you.” After pulling her mocha skin, marking her, he lifted his mouth to her ear. “I want you writhing and panting and sweating below my thrusting body.”

She placed her large hands on his chest, pushed him back and looked him right in the eye. The depths of her black gaze swarmed with heat, smoky and slightly unfocused. “You want me by force?”

He heard the catch in her voice and sensed her desperation. He smiled at her as he answered her question with one of his own. “How can I force you when sex is part of your contract, my lovely cook-whore?”

Kraft withdrew with a startled step back. She pressed against the metal door of his bunk and flattened her palms against the smooth durosteel to steady herself.

Closing in on her, he took a half-step forward and placed his palms on the door, encasing her with his arms. In a tingling rush, a fleeting ripple washed over his body, and he wondered if he could actually feel Kraft trying to read him through the door. He forced himself to contain the rush by focusing his mind and constricting his body to a tense stance.

Kraft stood taller. Confusion and fear darted across her expressive face. He wondered if the darkness in him caused her reaction, or if he’d succeeded in preventing her from reading him. Either way, he sensed his advantage.

Pressing his mouth to her ear, he whispered, “What’s wrong, sugar-britches? I thought you were all for this kind of dance between us, especially after what you said in the cargo bay.”

With her back to his bunk door, she lifted her face and the whole of her body until she met his gaze with level intensity. Since she couldn’t force him to retreat verbally, she now tried to force his retreat with the fierceness of her gaze, and it almost worked.

He fought down the urge to step back by moving closer. She radiated the scents of cooking, but below, he found that enticing hint of her musky perfume. Her scent was rich, intoxicating and alluring. He wanted to find the source of her fragrance and lose himself in it.

“Just give me the order, Captain Lawless, and I’ll ride you until we both collapse.”

One fleeting vision of her proudly riding astride him caused him to blush and turn away. The triumphant look on her face clarified she thought such a command a distinct impossibility.

She seemed pleased that she’d finally forced him to back down. He watched Kraft’s pulse jump below the smooth skin of her neck when he closed in on her and said, “That’s an order I’m not likely to give.”

Her lips parted in surprise. She lowered her face but not her gaze.

“I wouldn’t order you to ride me because I like to be on top.”

He forced her chin up so their lips came close without touching. “Stop giving me that submissive face when you’ve got nothing behind it but arrogance.”

Kraft stood tall. “I thought you preferred submissive women?”

“As a matter of fact I do.” Tracing his finger along the open V of her shirt, he smoothed the fabric against the curve of her breasts and popped open one of the small wooden buttons. “Do you like submissive men?”

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, but it caught in her throat. When he looked down, he discovered her nipples were pressed tight against the soft yellow fabric of his old shirt.

He chuckled and stroked the barest brush of his fingertip over the swell of her nipple. “Obviously not.”

His beast will have her beauty…but only on his terms.

Prince of Dragons

© 2010 Cathryn Cade

Orion, Book 3

Sirena Blaze has left a string of smiling males across the galaxy—but she’s not smiling now. After two attempts to sabotage her ship, it’s time to call for backup. Her warriors deserve the best, and that means recruiting a member of the elite Serpentian guard as co-commander.

One look at Slyde Stone, and Sirena’s smile returns. She sets out to indulge in the sensual delights for which his people are legendary.

Slyde would like nothing more than to bed the famous beauty, but a secret binds the hands that burn to take her. He is a half-dragon shifter, a race thought to be nothing more than a myth. He’s real, and so is the code he must live by—he can mate only once.

Sirena’s fury at Slyde’s refusal knows no bounds—until saboteurs loose a pair of deadly serpents on board the
Orion
. And the infuriating man has the gall to make a wager. If she finds them first, she can have him. But if he wins, she must agree to be his alone—for life.

Warning: Space cougar on the prowl, a handsome virgin in her sights. Hot love scenes, and even hotter dragon shape-shifting.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Prince of Dragons:

Sirena looked down at the naked male straining beneath her and smiled. She might be a siren, but she led males not to disaster, but to pleasure greater than many of them had ever known. And this one wouldn’t forget her any time soon.

“Ah, gods,” he groaned, his hands clamped on her hips as she rode him with sinuous abandon, letting his cock slide nearly out of her before enveloping it once again. His pleasure-glazed eyes were locked with hers. Sweat soaked his short dark hair and gleamed on his skin, enhancing the play of muscle beneath. “That’s so damn good! You are…unbelievable.”

Since he was approaching his third orgasm, she chose to believe him. She herself was far ahead of that number. She supposed this would be his last effort—human males were lucky to be able to achieve arousal more than twice in such a short time.

She rose and fell on him, closing her eyes to enjoy the sensation of the shaft working inside her, stroking her tight channel. Tipping back her head, she lifted her arms and twined them behind her head, knowing that the motion thrust her breasts out more prominently.

Her com-link beeped a tiny warning in her ear. She ignored it as the pilot surged upward, filling his hands with her breasts and suckling greedily on her nipples.

“Mmm, yes. Like that.” The pleasure began to tighten inside her, and she rode harder, feeling her orgasm begin.

Her com-link beeped again. Protocol demanded that whoever was paging her wait for an answer before opening a holo-vid link. She hoped for their sake they abided by the rules, because any commander who opened a link now was going to get an eyeful.

A hologram sprang up in sharp relief against the shadowed stateroom. It was Slyde Stone, watching her ride the other man. His stance was rigid, jaw clenched, his eyes flaming with such heat she was vaguely surprised her skin didn’t burn.

In the two lunar months they’d been working together, they’d been through a major crisis, trained new guards and improved the quality of security on the
Orion
. And through it all, the heat of desire hadn’t faded, and he still refused to act on it.

Her gasp of shock caught in her throat and, as their eyes held, it became a soft, escalating moan as she climaxed harder than she had all night, pleasure imploding deep within her pussy and then exploding outward through her body. Her co-commander’s voyeurism was as delicious as the cock inside her.

By the time she finally managed to open her pleasure-drugged eyes, he was gone.

A short time later Sirena stepped outside the pilot’s stateroom and stopped short, startled to see her co-commander of the Serpentian guard walking toward her. Walk—such a colorless word to describe the way he moved. He strode, he prowled like the magnificent male creature he was. His tall, heavily muscled body erect and graceful, his beautifully shaped head held high, he surveyed her with narrowed eyes.

His sculpted jaw was still clenched, his nostrils flared. Pushing back her hair, she eyed him cautiously. Great serpents, he wasn’t embarrassed. He was furious.

Perhaps it would teach him a lesson. He could have been the male groaning with pleasure beneath her.

Her own body hummed with satisfaction. She’d left her latest lover sprawled across the bed in the stateroom behind her. He wouldn’t wake for a long time, but when he did, it would be with a smile. As she recalled some of the things he’d done to her and with her, the corners of her mouth curled up with satisfaction.

If she’d sighed, feeling detached even as he groaned his eternal devotion, that was no one’s business but her own. As was the fact she’d come most deliciously of all with Slyde watching them.

“Commander Stone,” she said now, ignoring the way his narrow gaze made her want to touch her flight suit to see if it smoldered. Even after coming several times in the last hours, she still felt the usual low curl of desire at his nearness. But she’d resolved from the beginning that she wouldn’t hang on his sleeve. That was for dewy-eyed ingénues. Let the great beast tell her what was wrong, if he wished.

Otherwise, she was headed straight for a hot shower-dry.

Slyde berated himself in savage silence. What had he been thinking to confront Sirena here outside her lover’s door? Nothing coherent, that was certain. Since the instant he first saw her, he’d been thinking mostly with his cock.

After he’d refused her in the bar that first night, he’d seen the fighter pilot preen himself before her. Had known how it would end when the fellow swaggered out of the bar after her. And he’d watched the scene repeated several times in the last two months. The lovely, sensual Sirena was a typical Serpentian, sharing her body with any male she chose. And he was nearing the end of his patience. He’d done his best to show her how well they got along as they trained, planned and worked together, had even resorted to showing off in sparring. But still she turned to other men.

Tonight, he’d overridden a prime rule of courtesy on board ship and opened a com-link between them. He bitterly regretted his decision. Because now he had to do more than imagine the things she allowed her lovers to do to her—the things he dreamed of doing to her, with her, himself.

Now he’d seen her. Her lovely body naked, kneeling astride another male, riding him with perfect, sensual grace. Had seen the other man’s hands on the taut swell of her ass, his mouth on the perfect globes of her breasts.

Now he knew her skin was the same silken gold over her entire body, save for the dusky peach of her nipples and the delicate line of auburn that limned her mons. Knew how those scant curls looked soaked with another man’s seed, how the pink lips of her labia stretched taut around another man’s glistening cock as he drove it in and out of her.

Now he knew her soft, escalating moans as she enjoyed her orgasm. And the look in her eyes as she came, because their eyes had locked and he’d been unable to break away, drowning in those emerald depths.

Controlling his anger with a supreme effort, he stopped before her. Her golden cheeks were flushed, emerald eyes sleepy, her auburn mane tousled. Even the collar of her sleek top was crooked, which she would never allow on duty. It was obvious she’d just come from her lover’s arms. Arms that Slyde wanted to rip off and feed to the bastard.

He grimaced as her fragrances mingled with the stench of another male ripped at his sensitive olfactory glands like rotting Pangaean fruit.

She raised an arching brow at him.

“Commander?” she asked in her throaty voice. “Are you well?”

“That’s a question I might ask you,” he answered, his deep voice as rough as mountain stones grating together. “Were the answer not so obvious.”

She straightened, frowning. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Merely that a shower-dry is in order. You reek of your lover’s sweat.”

“Commander Stone. You forget yourself.”

“Forget?” he sneered. “I’m not the one who has lain with too many lovers to remember.”

She drew in a hiss of pure rage, her emerald eyes going molten.

Good—let her have a taste of the frustrated rage he’d been battling since he laid eyes on her and realized that here was the woman of his dreams—his fervid, tormenting dreams—and that she would never be his… unless she agreed to his terms, which she was unlikely to do. Why should she, when she could enjoy any male she chose, for as long as she chose, instead of pledging herself to just one?