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“I knew somewhere deep inside that I was made for something other than merely fighting these aberrations, even though for the first few decades of my life, I’d had no other ambitions. I lived to fight and fought to live. I tallied my personal wins against numerous scourge, and honed my skills to be the best fighter I could be.”
Sam shifted her position and reached for my head, her fingers sliding into my hair and rubbing my scalp. I closed my eyes and let the intimate touch comfort me. Her fingers caused the most enjoyable tingling feeling to spread across my skin.
“But things changed as my group continued to go from one failed mission to another, our mothership choosing our destinations for us. It is rumored that the Xarc’n military programmed the motherships to take contingents that had failedtoo many times to doomed planets, effectively sacrificing them so that resources could be allocated elsewhere.”
“That’s horrible. I wonder if Lenny could dig into the code and see if this is true. If so, and if we could alter it, it could save other hunters across the galaxy. Your contingent really got the shit end of the stick.”
I imagined a stick covered in feces being shoved in my face. These human sayings sometimes made a lot of sense, because that was exactly how it’d felt. And, of course, that quick brain of hers was already trying to find a way to fix the problem, to prevent the same from happening to other hunters. I really had misjudged her. She was good.
“So when we heard about Earth, I was one of the hunters who insisted we change course and come here instead. It wasn’t a difficult choice.”
It hadn’t just been to avoid another failure; I had been lonely. Hunters only worked with each other during the swarms, and even up on the mothership, we rarely conversed unless we were training. It was probably why many hunters spent so much time sparring.
I’d been so disheartened by our situation that I’d stopped training altogether. I wasn’t particularly close to any of the hunters anymore. So many had been lost that I no longer saw the point in making more connections. Getting to know another just made it all the harder when they perished.
I’d even wondered if it would be easier to go on my final battle and join those who were lost. It was usually something only done by the extremely old, or those injured beyond use. For them, it was an honorable exit, the proper thing to do. For hunters still in our prime, however, it was considered the coward’s way out.
That was what had stopped me from contemplating the option as anything more than a passing thought, but I did wonder how many hunters had faced a group of scourge too large to handle alone on purpose.
“You’d hoped you’d find something more here on Earth.” Sam’s words pulled me out of my dark thoughts. It was difficult to dwell on shadows of the past when she was around.
“Yes. But even more than that, I wanted to find a reason to live again, to fight again.” I watched her face in the flickering light of the lantern. Was she the one? Had I been so stubborn, so fearful that I’d missed the signs this whole time?
The lantern flickered again, and Sam turned it off. With our meals finished, we didn’t need its light anymore.
She snuggled back against me, and I wrapped her in my arms. I thought she was getting ready to sleep, but then she began to touch me.
“Sam…” I murmured.
“You did all the touching last time. I didn’t get to do any. It’s my turn. Quid pro quo.”
I had no idea what those last words meant, but I wasn’t going to question it, not when her hands were stroking down my abs. But it was only fair to warn her.
“If you continue touching me, I won’t be able to hold back. I’ll want to fuck you again.”
She only chuckled. Then she was curling her tongue over the shell of my ear, and I lost all ability to think.
I woke up with Sam’s perfect ass pressed against my front. It was just as enticing as it had been before. I didn’t know why I’d thought that fucking her once or even twice would be enough to get my brain to stop thinking about her. It hadn’t. I was just as caught in her web as before.
No. I was evenmoredeeply ensnared. Now, instead of merely thinking about tearing her clothes off and fucking her until she was screaming my name, I was thinking about keeping her in my shuttle and in my life. Forever.
But she was so small. So delicate. What if something happened to her?
Thinking and talking about my contingent had me remembering again all those I’d lost. What if she became my mate, and I lost her?
It would destroy me. No amount of betrayal would be as painful as that. I’d rather she betrayed me than to lose her, but I already knew from the time I’d spent with her that she’d never do that.
All my instincts were screaming that if I continued to spend time with her, the mate bond would start to develop, and it would be out of my control forever.
Even now, I wanted to fuck her again. I wanted to pound into her and claim her as mine, from her luscious golden mane down to her tiny pink-tipped toes. I was even starting to adore the way she put everything into neat little piles. Was this what it felt like to have a mate? It felt so out of control, like I was rushing headlong toward the inevitable.
But then, if I lost her because she was human and weak…
Self-preservation and sheer panic had me rolling away, being careful not to wake her. She started shivering almostimmediately without my body heat; the velvet-curtained fort was not enough to keep her warm. She rolled, reaching for me.
Krux.
I sighed and snuggled back in. I’d put some distance between us tomorrow, when it was no longer storming and she wasn’t freezing. With my chest softly purring, I went back to sleep.
