“Why?” she croaked, gasping as he struck her again.
“I vecking love everything about it. The sounds you make. The way your ass looks when it’s painted red by my hand. The way it feels under my palm.” He shoved her tunic up her back and licked a long line from the base of her spine to her shoulder blades. “The trust you show me when you submit.” He took his cock out and dragged the head through her moistened lips. “Vecking you afterward.”
She arched back, pushing her hips against the head of his cock to encourage his entry.
He rocked slowly into her, shaking with the effort of holding back. “Showing you my strength even though we both know ultimately—when it comes down to it—you’re in charge.”
“Lundric...please,” she whined.
“That’s right, little rebel. You’re already begging—just the way I want you.” He braced one hand on the washer beside hers and gripped the side of her hip with the other. “You give it to Lundric, now. Tell me who owns you.” He beat into her with his cock, pumping hard, slapping his loins against her ass, shoving deep and nearly lifting her from her toes with each instroke.
“Yes,” she gasped. “You own me.”
He knew she meant in this moment. In this moment, he owned her, not forever. But he would take what he could get while he figured out how to wrest the promise of forever from her.
Control slipped, and his vision tunneled. All he knew was the sweetest pleasure of Cambry’s pussy squeezing his cock. All he saw was her thick mane of hair sprawling down her back. All he heard were her panting breaths, the little grunts and cries she made as he pummeled her pussy with his cock, imagining he was marking it like his hand marked her ass, giving her something to remember him by, to keep the sensation of him with her when he went to sleep and she stayed up.
“Cambry.” He didn’t recognize the guttural sound from his own mouth.
“Take me. Take me, Lundric.”
Zandian star, he needed her with such desperation. He wanted to consume her, to rid the separation of their bodies until they became one. Inseparable. Being. He roared and heard Cambry echo with a scream.
His orgasm shook his entire body, limbs quaking as his ass squeezed and he shot his pleasure into the deepest reaches of her tight channel. Her muscles squeezed his cock, milking it for his seed, making his eyes roll back in his head.
He dropped his forearms to the washing machine, caging her against him as he caught his breath. “I should have asked before—” he started gruffly, then cleared his throat. “You didn’t say anything, so I’m assuming—”
“They gave all female slaves at the factory a shot to prevent pregnancy. It lasts at least another two years.” He didn’t miss the bitterness in her tone. Did she want a baby? Veck, he wanted to give her one with a desperation that stunned him.
“Yes, all right.” He kissed the back of her neck. “I’m clean of any disease.”
“So am I.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t ask the first time.”
She turned in his arms, peering up at him quizzically. Her eyes turned liquid again, and she reached for his face. “I keep thinking there must be a trick, here,” she croaked.
He covered her hand with his own, pressing it against his cheek. “What trick?”
Her throat moved. “No one’s ever been good to me without demanding something in return. Except for—”
“Who?” he demanded, unable to keep the sharpness from his tone. Was this the other male she’d loved?
“Family,” she mumbled, dropping her gaze.
Later, he would wish he’d pressed for more information about her family. But the moment was so raw, so perfect; he didn’t want to mar it with something that seemed to make her sad.
He kept his tone light. “Oh, I’m demanding, little female. I demand everything in return.” I want your vecking soul.
She smiled and lifted her face for a kiss, which he delivered with as much gusto as he knew how.
Chapter Six
Cambry landed the battleship on the rocky terrain, only skidding a few yards this time. A surge of satisfaction ran through her. She was ready. Maybe not to fly defensively, but to fly. To fly away.
“Nice work, Cambry,” her Zandian trainer, Vokart, said. He’d taken her and three others out for practice that planet rotation, much to Lundric’s fury. Lundric’s superior, an older Zandian named Master Seke, had arrived and had demanded Lundric’s attention in the sparring room. “Charl, your turn.”
Cambry climbed out of the pilot’s seat and swapped places with Charl, a young, dark-skinned human who said little but handled the ship like he’d been flying all his life. She missed flying with Lily, who had left with Rok to visit her mother and sister on the pod the Zandians considered home. Lily had confessed to being nervous before she left. Like Cambry, she’d been taken from her parents as a toddler, and so she had no memory of her mother and had never known of the existence of her sister, Lamira, until Lamira arrived with Rok to rescue her from the Ocretion Death Pod.