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The step down to the dock was pretty high, and the chain on the shackles cuffed to his ankles was too short for all but the slightest movement. The guard only stared at him impassively when Ryan glanced back over his shoulder, mutely asking for help in getting down. Ryan sighed and shrugged, then jumped awkwardly down off the bottom step. He stumbled a bit. Righting himself, he turned to shuffle toward Balanescu and found himself nose to chest with the man.
Balanescu put his hands on his arms to steady him and looked down at him. Suddenly he reeled backward and did a double take. Theman’s beautiful eyes actually goggled, and he sniffed at Ryan, before literally recoiling in horror. Fucking sniffed at him like he had body odor. Entirely possible considering the lack of sanitary facilities on Beta 14, but Ryandidn’t think he was that bad.
Balanescuapparently didn’t agree, because he opened his mouth and roared at him. “What the fuck?”
He was so loud and sounded so furious, Ryan stumbled back from him in shock and sat down right on his ass in the middle of a mud puddle, the cold water oozing through his pants and making him gasp. He looked up into the angry face of the exotic bounty hunter, who then backed away from him holding out his hands as if to ward him off. Ryan was so shocked he couldn’t move, just sat there staring up at him.
The guards and the other big man looked alarmed and confused. The man with Blayde put a hand on Blayde’s shoulder only to have him shrug him off almost angrily. The man then stepped around him to extend a hand to hoist Ryan back up to his feet, but Blayde literally growled and jumped between them.
“Don’t touch him, damn it!”
“Blayde!” the man cried out. “What the hell? I was just trying to help him to his feet. ”
As Ryan watched in amazement, Blayde flushed a dark, painful red and shrugged, mumbling, “Sorry, Kyle. Just don’t touch him. Please. ”
Blayde whirled around and glared down at Ryan, extending a hand to grasp the chain between his wrists and haul him back up to his feet.
“Thanks. ” Ryan allowed him to help him stand back up. He glanced up at Blayde Balane
scu and felt the hot blood rushing to stain his cheeks. “Is-is everything okay?”
“Shut up, damn it. If I want to hear anything from you, I’ll tell you. In the meantime, shut the fuck up. ”
It was Ryan’s turn to flush and drop his gaze. Asshole. Fucking bastard. I only asked a simple question.
Once again the man he’d called Kyle stepped forward andtouched Blayde’s arm. “Calm down, Blayde. No need to scare himto death. ” He transferred his gaze to Ryan. “Sorry, human. Are you all right?”
Ryan nodded. “I’m all right. ”
“Good. ” Kyle bent over and picked up his bag from where the guards had thrown it, while Blayde grabbed his cuffed hands by the chain again and hauled him along after him, turning his back on Ryan. Ryan could hear the man Blayde called Kyle talking with the guards, but he was too busy shuffling and hopping along behind Blayde, trying not to stumble and land face first on the dock to pay anything else much mind.
“C’mon,damn it,” Blayde growled over his shoulder. “Move your ass. I need to get you somewhere so I can get you out of thosepants. ”
Chapter Two
Blayde drove through the desert, occasionally glancing over at Kyle, who watched him warily. He knew Kyle must be wondering what the hell was going on with him, but hecouldn’t say anything until they were alone.
He’d pulled the damn human over to the big jeep by the cuffs, not wanting to put his hands on him again. He was afraid that if he touched him one more time, he wouldn’t be able to control himself. When they came to the tall vehicle, sitting by the docks on high treads that made it possible to move through the deep sand terrain, he left him to clamber aboard by himself. The chain between his ankles was too short for him to manage, however, and he finally had to pick him up, practically throwing him in the back seat. He hadn’t meant to be so rough, but he had to get him out of his arms and quickly before he embarrassed both of them by ravishing the human right in front of Kyle. Ravishing the human? Where the hell had that old-fashioned expression come from? Yet it was strangely appropriate for what he wanted to do to the little human.
He glanced at the man in the rear view mirror and then quickly back. Goddamn, how could this possibly be happening? This was supposed to be an easy job, a quick pickup and delivery, with maybe a little fun along the way for him and Kyle. The hot little package in the back seat was born to be fucked, and the trip to deliver the human to the prison planet would only be a couple of days, but still tedious. What better way to relieve the boredom than by playing with the prisoner known in the world of porn as Randy Ryan, star of some of the sexiest damn porn films he’d ever watched? He and Kyle had actually talked about a three-way with the beautiful human. They had no plans to rape him, of course, but there was nothing to stop them from enticing him and maybe seducing him a little, if he was willing and up for it, so to speak. The bad joke now made him cringe.
Instead when the young man jumped off the transport, he got an immediate funny feeling and a whiff of something powerful and sweet that he’d never smelled before. Intrigued and almost compelled to get closer, he walked up behind him and when Ryan had turned and looked up at him, the shock almost knocked him off his feet.
Blayde’s brain screamed mate, and the strongest, most primal urge he’d ever experienced came over him, exhorting him to throw the man down on the ground, fuck him into the floor of the dock, and then carry him off somewhere to growl over him for a while. Mates for Lycans could be either male or female. In fact, many Lycans preferred males. This human male, in particular, was the closest thing to perfection Blayde had ever seen.
This human was his mate , his beloved, and he’d known it the moment he saw him in person. Even the human’s scent had called to him, a sweet, musky smell that made his cock stand up and take instant notice.
Before he could act on it, Blayde had jumped away from him and scared the human so badly he fell on his ass in a mud puddle. He might have yelled something at him too, he couldn’t quite remember. He was just happy he could control the compulsion as well as he had, because he had never felt anything so powerful in his life. He wondered briefly if this had anything to do with the ancient family curse, and then dismissed it from his mind. He could think about that later, when his mind wasn’t full of his mate.
So now what the fuck was he going to do? Blayde sure as h ell wasn’t ready for any damn mate. Mates were the beloved and spoiled spouses of the Lycans, who mated only once and for life. Never working outside the home, their mates existed to pleasure their wolves. In return they were well-loved, pampered and jealously guarded. They took a lot of care and attention, and Blayde wasn’t ready for any of that. He glanced back at the human in the back seat. He didn’t want or need a damn mate yet. Especially a two-faced, murderous, lying little messed-up sack of shit like the gorgeous young human sitting behind him, who was so damn beautiful it made his stomach hurt to look at him. Damn him! Why did he have to sit there looking so fucking adorable and so in need of protection. Don’t bite on that lip, damn it! That’s my job! And stop looking so fucking scared! What do you think I’m going to do, eat you? Well, hell, I just might at that.
Blayde was a Lycan wolf shifter like all of his race and a bounty hunter, a damn good one, too. On his planet, everyone was Lycan and a member of the same large family group. The Lycan shifters lived in packs, and were happier in close proximity to each other. Their pack had been isolated up here running the bauxite mines for over a hundred and fifty cycles, since the first transport brought the early settlers, all his wolf clan. Descendants of an ancient Lycan pack on the home planet, Blayde’s ancestors had come to start a new life on Lycanus 3, away from their political enemies back on Lycanus. Though those political enemies were long dead, the Balanescu pack had stayed on Lycanus 3, carving a good life on the desolate, yet mineral-rich planet.
It was only physically that they were isolated, however. Their occupations as voyagers made them unusually socialized for Lycans, who usually had little to do with other species, except for occasionally using them as mates or concubines. Because of this, they had a good command of many languages and tolerated the presence of other species much better than those on the home planet.
Because of their physical isolation, though, they’d been able to keep the bloodline pure, with only humans and a few other species brought in as mates, never as breeders. When they’d first settled the planet, the pack hierarchy, which had all but died out on the home planet, was necessary to keep order among the highly independent males. It was still firmly in place after all this time. Blayde was an alpha male, one of six alphas on Lycanus. The chiefalpha was Blayde’s older brother, Lucas, and then there were his four cousins, Kyle, Konnor, Larssen and Nikolai.
Luckily for them, only one of them was interested in running the pack, and that was Lucas. Neither Blayde nor his cousins wanted the responsibility, nor did they want to be tied down. Blayde became a bounty hunter and made a damn good living at it for himself and his pack. Kyle, Konnor, Larssen and Nikolai were also bounty hunters and voyagers, humping the bauxite to the far reaches of the galaxy and nowhere near ready to settle down. Kyle and Nikolai occasionally helped Blayde out when he had a full transport like he did for this trip, while Konnor and Larssen usually teamed up with their own bounties.
