Epilogue

Evie

“Ah, Aramon,” I moaned, my skin tingling, my body thrashing beneath my mate’s weight. He kept one firm palm pinned to my sternum, preventing me from moving away, while the other guided his cock. The blunt, round head with its piercing teased my clit, leaving my orgasm hovering just out of reach. “So close,” I panted as he stroked through my folds. Each brush of that cock head against my slick opening made me groan and yearn to press down. If he could just slide inside, it would feel so good.

“Oh yeah?” he asked darkly, his mouth twisting into a sinister grin. In his dark eye sockets, his red eyes glowed like coals, fixated on my folds and the way he manipulated my body, playing me like an expert. At this point, he was the expert on all things Evie. A month together had been more than enough for him to perfect all the ways he knew how to pleasure me—or so I’d thought. Then he surprised me with this weekend getaway and showed me just how inventive he could be.

“Not yet,” he warned, retreating so that I panted with frustration. That had become his favorite game: bringing me to the edge and then pulling back. It was frustrating, but damn, if the payoff wasn’t always worth it. Growling with annoyance, I canted my hips, spreading my legs wider to invite him in. Then I bit my lip, which he found endlessly fascinating, and just as I knew it would, it pushed him to the edge.

Growling, his grasp changed as he curled his hands around my hips; he hauled me close and sank his cock deep inside. Teased to the edge over and over, it was too much for my body—the drag of the nubs that lined his shaft, and the bars that lined the upside like a ladder, served to set my nerves on fire. I shattered with a shout, my nails biting into his forearms where I gripped.

All my muscles clenched and flexed around his thick invasion, making him tremble from the tight grip. His eyes glowed like fire, and his mouth twisted into a macabre grimace as he battled his own pleasure. “Not yet,” he growled—repeating his earlier words, but this time, to himself.

“Yes!” I demanded. “Now.” Shifting my legs, I dug my heels into his ass, curled up, and caught him around the neck with my arms. Pulling him down against me, I kissed him and then bit his lip. That did it, just as I knew it would. With a feral noise in the back of his throat, his hips jerked forward, and he started pumping into me with rough, deep strokes. At the same time, I bombarded his mind with all kinds of sexy images—memories of things we’d done last night: in the bathtub of this fancy hotel, against the wall just inside the door, and how I’d sucked his pretty cock in front of all those glass windows.

“Not fucking fair!” he snapped against my lips. Then he came, his body pushing deep, cock sinking into me as it spurted wave after wave of seed inside me. With a feeling of triumph, I let myself be caught on the waves of his pleasure and let them tip my body over the edge as well.

Later, we lay curled together, side by side, staring out of the window and over the cityscape to the huge, lush forests beyond. Darkness was just beginning to fall, and we hadn’t even managed to leave the bed yet. “When do we have to get back to the Varakartoom?” I asked. Not that I wanted this quiet interlude to end, but I knew there was only so long we could be away before it became too much of a strain on Aramon and Solear’s bond. I wanted Aramon’s twin to accept me, not resent me.

“Not yet,” Aramon murmured sleepily. “They are prepping for a mission, but I’m not required to be part of it.” I smiled but didn’t say anything. My mate claimed he hated downtime and being between missions, but I had a feeling he wasn’t hating it this time. “The Varakartoom is berthed over there,” he added and, with unerring precision, pointed to the right side of our view, where the spaceport stretched out. We were on one of the Viridara planets, and everything about their world was green and plant-covered, even the port, which made it hard to see much of it from here. Yet I knew he’d pointed right at the ship—or rather, at Solear on it.

I might not have been able to see the ship itself, thanks to the tall trees that blocked the view, but when a shuttle rose, its blue engines glowing, I could see that very clearly. “Is that one of ours?” I asked, staring at the trail of blue lights as it darted through the air and headed straight for the woods beyond the city.

Aramon raised himself on his elbow behind me and squinted at the window for a better look. “Oh yeah, definitely. That’s shuttle three. I recognize that light trail anywhere.” I smothered a laugh. Of course, he did! He knew every single thing there was to know about the flying vehicles aboard the Varakartoom—and the Varakartoom herself—which he often lovingly called Vara for short.

“Is it supposed to do that?” I asked when I noticed the light sputtering, then flaring brightly. My tone made him raise his head again, and then he leaped over my side and out of the bed, his hand reaching for his com.

“Fuck. Varakartoom, come in!” he said. But before the call could connect, he started cursing even louder. The shuttle’s light had spluttered again, but now we could see it was rapidly descending, spinning wildly. I didn’t need to know a thing about ships to know that was bad. It looked like it was crashing. And then the ship was simply gone—vanished without a trace into the deep, dark woods of Viridara Three. With a bleak expression, Aramon turned to look at me. “They lost contact.”

“Who was on that shuttle?” I asked, worried that it might be Solear, though I knew that Aramon’s twin hated flying with anyone other than his brother. I had the answer before my mate could even open his mouth. The information came from Solear, filtering through the bond with his twin. “Ah no, not Tass.” Not the young Viridara male who’d taken on the daunting task of sharing a bunk with Solear. I liked him. He was sweet. “Did he survive?”

Aramon’s mouth grew tight, and for a moment, I thought he might not answer me. I read it in his mind, because he couldn’t shield a feeling as big as the one he was experiencing now. No, Aramon didn’t think so. “There was an explosion—a really big one. There’s no way Tass could have jumped ship before it blew. He’s dead.”

THE END

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