Enemy Overnight (19 page)

“Shauss, oh God.”
Oh please, no.
Jasmine felt fragile as spun glass. The way he was looking at her right now was worse than anything she’d ever dreamed, and after what they’d shared last night and this morning, the pain was infinitely worse. Her heart quaked with what she was losing.

She gathered the flimsy gown behind her with a shaking hand, chiding herself for her foolishness. What had she thought was going to happen when she refused the pheromone blocker—that he would just blindly accept that she was one of the hybrids?

“Something you forgot to tell me, Jasmine?” He didn’t sneer. In fact, he was just about dead in both face and voice.

“Shauss…” she said desperately.

Tiber stood beside him, looking stunned. “You’re Narthani?”

Jasmine took a deep breath. “Yes.”

Shauss stalked all the way around her. Then he bellowed as he struck out with one foot. The table flew across the room and crashed into the wall.

Jasmine flinched and made herself as small as possible as he continued to circle her, breathing so heavily he reminded her of a bull pawing the earth.
God,
she prayed,
please let it end quickly.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

The commander appeared out of a flare bubble. “What do you mean Miss King is Narthani?”

“She just confessed it,” Shauss spat.

Monica said, “Shauss, don’t hurt her.”

He immediately got in her face with one finger, “You!” Visibly reining in his wrath, he drew a loud breath before saying, “You stay out of this.”

Monica held her ground. “I’m serious, Shauss. Don’t you hurt her.”

Shauss pointedly ignored her. “Permission to treat Jasmine King as a hostile, Commander?”

“Granted,” Kellen said grimly.

“Monica knew about her,” Shauss said as he continued to stalk Jasmine. “In fact, she was helping her to deceive us. Tell him, Tiber.”

“Dr. Teague was replicating a hormone complex yesterday. I couldn’t place the chemical structure at the time, but now Empran has verified that it was a pheromone blocker. Miss King is a Sparnite—or rather, she’s
infalone
, which is the Narthani term for delayed development.”

“Monica, is this true?”

Jasmine kept her head down, watching him without looking. When he went behind her, where she couldn’t see what he was doing, it was torture.

“Yes,” Monica said, “it’s true but— No!”

Shauss struck. He grabbed Jasmine’s arm and stripped the gown off her, yanking it painfully out of her clenched fingers.

“No!” Monica shouted again, crowding between them and throwing her arms around Jasmine. “Stop it! Shauss, listen to me—”

“Get your mate out of my way,” he grated.

Monica’s arms went limp around Jasmine and she collapsed to the floor.

“No!” Jasmine screamed, fighting Shauss as Kellen leaned down to scoop Monica up. “Oh God, what have you done to her? Don’t hurt her! This is all my fault, not hers—please, Commander, don’t hurt her!”

She was relieved when Monica spoke. “I swear to God, Kellen, if anything happens to Jasmine, I’ll never forgive you.”

“Frankly,
sziscala
,” he said in a dangerous tone, “it’s my forgiveness that should concern you.”

The minister walked in, followed closely by Hastion, Zannen and at least a dozen others she didn’t recognize. Her nightmare was coming true—she was completely naked and surrounded by enemy warriors.

“Miss King has confessed to being a Narthani agent.” Kellen looked like he was barely holding on to control himself.

“All concessions granted Jasmine King in her mating bond are hereby rescinded,” the minister said in a dispassionate voice. “Lieutenant Shauss, as her primary mate, you’re authorized to extract whatever information you can from her and then dispose of her in any manner you see fit.”

Monica cried, “No! Father, please!”

“That’s enough, Monica,” Kellen said. “You can’t help her now.” He looked at Shauss and then they disappeared in a flair bubble.

“Keep me updated, Lieutenant.” The minister whirled and walked out, leaving behind his contingent.

“I have to commend you,
aramai
,” Shauss said. “You’re very good. Even after your first deception, I fell for your act completely.” He let go his excruciating grip on her arm. “Get on your knees.”

Jasmine swallowed a ball of nausea and dropped gracelessly to a kneeling position, her heartbeat drumming in her throat. Although the atmosphere was sultry, as it was all over the ship, she shook as if freezing.

When she gathered the courage to look up, he snapped, “Head down.”

He nudged her knees apart with the toe of his boot. “Cross your hands behind your back.”

Oh God, she was about to die, and that would probably be the easiest part of this.

With her head bent in submission, Jasmine looked at the blood and semen smears on her thighs and saw Shauss’ beautiful body arching over hers. Felt his hips anchoring her, spreading her, grinding her into the bed. Smelled the heady flood of his pheromones. Heard their mingled shouts of satisfaction. She’d let go completely, showing him everything she was, and in return he’d lost his vaunted control, sharing everything lovable in him.

Now he would exact revenge by showing her the true depths of his brutality.

Tears of dread and perverse excitement dripped from her eyes, disappearing as they hit the biologic pad between her thighs. Her complete vulnerability was its own terrible reward—she’d never felt so vitally alive as she did at that moment.

It suddenly hit her with crystal clarity just how much she wanted to stay that way. Shauss’ pheromones still clung to her skin and nasal passages, and edging into that dangerous subspace, she’d imagined she wanted to go to her death wrapped in the priceless scent of his desire for her. Now that attitude seemed ridiculously defeatist. She had to at least
try
to save herself.

When he reached for her, adrenaline exploded in her veins and she rolled away, jumping to her feet in one smooth move.

“Ooh, you’re going to fight me?” he purred. “I do enjoy a challenge—however short-lived.”

She didn’t answer, too focused on assessing everyone in the room. When Shauss swung a long hand toward her, she kicked it away with a sharp yell and then resumed her fighting stance, bouncing on the balls of her feet with her arms up in front of her.

Yes!
She wasn’t panicking this time. Without the hindrance of a tight skirt, the self-defense lessons were paying off when she really needed them.

He reached for her again and she blocked him with her forearm, following through with a side kick at his crotch. He jumped back with millimeters to spare and grinned as he grabbed for her again.

This time he managed to snare her wrist and her heart rate skyrocketed. She kicked out at his leg and he grunted when her heel connected with his kneecap. Immediately grabbing her own captured hand with the other, she yanked it free and drove her elbow into his gut with another loud
kiai
, and felt a surge of fierce satisfaction when the air whooshed out of him.

Dancing back, she resumed her stance and waited for his next strike.

“Every blow you land only adds to your punishment,
aramai,”
Shauss told her almost casually.

This was ridiculous, really, since there was no getting out of the situation even if she did manage to defeat him. But she just couldn’t help fighting for her life.

“It’s hard to get any deader than dead, Lieutenant.”

He shook his head. “You’ll only wish you were dead.”

Fear clogged her throat and all she wanted to do was curl up in a ball and cry her eyes out.

Shauss leaned forward and smacked the side of her head with his fingertips then pulled back before she could connect with his arm.

He showed her his teeth in a nasty smile. The bastard was playing with her!

Tears of rage spurted from her eyes as she attacked, advancing on him with a steady barrage of punches and kicks that would have taken down most of her old sparring partners, shouting her
kiai
with every strike. Shauss, however, retreated with so much speed and agility, she never connected once.

“Try a few more kicks,” he suggested. “The view of your cunt is spectacular.”

His callousness took her breath away.

“I hate you,” she said in a thick voice.

There was a long, significant pause before he said in a deadly tone, “So finally we hear some truth from you.”

Pain seized her. He thought she’d been lying when she told him she loved him.

Looking into his secretive black eyes, she knew she couldn’t die letting him think that. She couldn’t leave him thinking she was hard and mercenary enough to fake her feelings for him. If she had to die, she wanted to die as the real Jasmine King—flawed and weak and desperate for the love of a man who hated her.

Although every instinct in her screamed to keep fighting, she took a deep breath and let her trembling legs fold, kneeling with her knees spread and her wrists crossed behind her back. Staring into his startled eyes, she whispered, “I’m yours.”

A cyclone of conflicting emotions spun furiously inside Shauss.

“Is that so?”

She continued to stare at him through spiky tear-clumped lashes. “I’m not asking for your forgiveness because I don’t think it’s in you…but I’m sorry. So sorry.”

Because he couldn’t bear to look at her anymore, he ordered, “Head down.”

She obeyed immediately and a huge sigh shuddered through her. He circled her again, slowly, deliberately, knowing she was watching his boots with wary eyes.

Touching the gold clasp at the back of her neck, he murmured, “I should probably take this off before it’s damaged.”

Jasmine went stiff but didn’t raise her head. “Please don’t.”

“You want to die wearing my collar?”

“Yes.”

Pain lashed at him. He’d wanted her to die wearing it too—many decades in the future. What a fool.

“How touching,” he sneered.

When he passed behind her for the third time, he reached over her left shoulder and cupped her right rib cage. Then he reached under her ass with the other hand and heaved her up off the floor by her cunt.

She squeaked and grabbed his forearm with both hands but then hung unmoving in his grip, her heart fluttering against his wrist as he carried her facedown to an exam table. Her warm, fragrant weight in his arms conjured vividly sensual memories, and he hated how much he missed her already. It figured that the one female in the galaxy whose nook fit his spur, the female who fit him in every conceivable way, was a Narthani spy. Would the Powers never stop fucking with him?

Anger and humiliation and pathetic grief made him rough as he laid her across the table. He held her pinned there by the neck, her slender legs dangling limply off the side of the table.

Leaning down, he asked in her ear, “Are you afraid,
aramai
?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“You should be.”

“I don’t know anything useful, so you might want to just kill me now.”

Scraping her earlobe between his teeth, he drawled, “And waste a perfectly good piece of ass?”

When she tensed, Shauss chuckled darkly.

“
Déjà vu
, darling?” He raised up far enough to drag his zipper down slowly. “Don’t worry. I have every intention of following through on my promise this time.”

She blinked rapidly, her breath coming in short, tortured gasps, but she didn’t reply. Shauss had come less than an hour before and was far from aroused in learning of his mate’s deception, but only a dead warrior would fail to respond physically to the sight of her laid naked and submissive before him, utterly terrified of the punishment he was about to mete out.

He looked at Tiber.
“
Lubricant?”

Tiber gave him a measured look before striding to a cabinet. He flipped the cap open and tried to hand him the tube, but Shauss held his hand out until Tiber squirted a blob into his open palm. After he worked the chilly gel over his cock, he held out his hand again and had Tiber squirt some on his fingers.

Shauss separated her legs by bracing one knee against the underside of the exam table and slid a finger over the pucker of her anus.

Jasmine squirmed.

“You will relax every muscle in your body,” he reproved.

Tiber gave him an incredulous look but said nothing.

Jasmine took another shuddering breath and loosened her fists until they rested limply against the exam table on either side of her head. Her obedience eased the tightness in Shauss’ chest. At least something about this falsehearted female wasn’t a lie.

With a smug look at Tiber, he pushed one finger deep into her tight little ass and she tensed again.

“Breathe deeply,” he ordered. “Make noise, if you must. But do not fight my incursion.”

She took a deep breath and then yelped when he slid a second finger in beside the first. He twisted them and watched a tide of red wash up her neck into her cheek as she groaned.

“Whose ass is this,
aramai
?” he asked softly.

“Yours,” she gasped.

He withdrew and pushed in three fingers. It was hard to say whether Jasmine’s protracted keening as he worked them in and out of her was anguish or desire.

“I have no desire to challenge your authority in this bond,”
Tiber told him,
“
but if you harm her, I’ll have no choice.”

Shauss glared at him. All this concern—for a deceitful enemy!
“You’ll lose.”

“So be it.”

“She’s worth dying for?”

“You tell me.”

Shauss contemplated Tiber for a moment and then ordered,
“
Implant a biomet. You can monitor her vital functions and pain levels.”

Jasmine’s labored breathing was the only sound in the room while Tiber implanted the unit under her arm. She whimpered and stirred when it penetrated her skin.

Without further delay, Shauss withdrew his fingers and rested the head of his cock against her opening. “Don’t move,” he whispered as he let go of her neck to brace his hands on the table above her shoulders.