Mated to the Beast (11 page)

“Dax!” I cried, stunned by the surprising burn of his palm against my ass.

“Leave your hands where they are. Ass out.”

“I will not let you—”

Smack!

“You are not letting me do anything. I am giving you the spanking you need and you have no choice.”

His hands came around to the front of my pants and worked them open, then tugged them down along with my panties over my hips, then left them around my thighs. I felt cool air on my bare ass and I knew it stuck out for him to see.

“Dax!” I cried again, feeling more vulnerable than ever.

He didn’t leave me like that for long, but began to spank me then, swatting one side of my ass, then the other, never hitting the same place twice. It wasn’t overly hard, for I could only imagine how hard he could truly strike if he wanted. That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt, that my skin wasn’t heating up like fire.

“I am here for you. I’m not leaving you. I will find your brother. I will take care of you. I know what you need. You will not lie to me. You will not speak to me in a disrespectful tone. You will not deny your body’s needs or our match again.” He struck over and over as the tears streamed down my face in a river of anguish I felt like I’d bottled up for years, each swat of his hand like an emotional grenade as my control snapped.

I clenched my fingers on the wall, but had no purchase. “Dax!” I cried yet again, but now my voice was filled with raw emotion, not anger.

“No one is coming into this room. No one can see us. No one will think you are weak. Stop trying to deny what you need. Stop hiding from me. Let go.”

I shook my head then. “No.”

His hand stopped briefly, stroked over my heated flesh. “Ah, Sarah Mills, say these words: I don’t always have to be strong.”

After a minute, his hand patiently caressing my heated skin, I finally whispered, “I don’t always have to be strong.”

“Good girl.” He spanked me again and I startled. “I will be honest with my mate and myself.”

I repeated his words.

“I can trust that my mate will take care of me.”

I said those too and the spanking, in my mind, changed to something else. He wasn’t slapping my ass because he was punishing me, he was doing it because he had recognized something in me I’d never known existed. I had no idea how or why I needed a spanking, but just knowing that I was bent over and Dax was giving me no choice in it, that he was making me forget about everything, was liberating. The stinging swats had a wonderful ability to shut off my mind and I could trust that he was watching out for me. No harm would come to me as he did this. No one would see that my ass was bare and probably turning bright red. No one would see the tears on my cheeks. No one would see me, no one but Dax.

He wasn’t laughing at me. He wasn’t thinking I was weak. He was giving me a moment where nothing could hurt me and I could just forget it all. He was helping me release pent-up stress and emotions I wasn’t even aware had been choking me. Regret. Fear. Rage. Guilt. It was all in there, swirling like a tempest in my chest, pouring out of me in the tears streaming down my cheeks until I was empty, but calm, like the sea after a storm.

“I belong to Dax and he belongs to me,” Dax added.

I repeated the words, too tired to fight him or my own body’s desire. But his next words changed the mood in the room from calm to hot in the blink of an eye.

“Dax is mine. His cock is mine.”

I almost groaned at the dark tone of his words, my thoughts drifting to images of him fucking me from behind, right here, right now, in this stupid little closet. I repeated his words and the spanking stopped. I thought he was done, but his hand cupped my hot flesh, then slipped between my legs, over my folds to explore the heat I knew he’d find. He growled when his fingers encountered the wet welcome.

“My pussy belongs to Dax.”

I gasped as he slid two fingers inside me, then repeated the words. He leaned over my back so that his massive form pressed into me.

“You’re dripping wet, mate. I could fuck you now. Right now.”

His fingers slipped in and out of my empty core and I arched my back. All his carnal words had me primed for him. That kiss, his hands on me, even the spanking, made me eager for him. I knew that he would take care of me, that in this moment, I had to think of nothing but his fingers deep inside of me.

“You were a good girl and took your spanking so well. Now you can come.”

I groaned around a sob as he fucked me with his fingers, using two to stretch me open and one to rub my clit. As my tears dried, my mind blissfully empty for the first time in months, my body took over, needing release. Needing Dax to fuck me. I cried out as the first orgasm rolled over and through me, Dax’s thrust so hard and deep my feet nearly left the floor. It was impossible to remain quiet as the walls of my pussy went into a full spasm around his fingers, greedy for more. My sweaty fingers slipped down the wall and Dax wrapped his free arm around my waist, lifting me up until I was suspended in midair, my back to his chest, his fingers deep inside me.

He wasn’t finished with me and in seconds he’d pushed me to the brink again. I clenched down on his fingers as I came. Even after the ripples of aftershocks receded, he kept them still, but deep within. The pleasure, the stinging pain all coalesced and I cried again, tears I hadn’t allowed to fall for years poured from my body like acid. I let it all out: grief over the death of my brothers and then my father, fear that I’d lose Seth, the stress of command, guilt over the men I’d lost in combat. It felt as if a lifetime of bottled pain exploded from me.

He slipped his fingers from me and pulled me into his arms, hugging me close. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been hugged, the last time I’d truly been held. Sure, I’d had sex before, but it had been fairly emotionless, more hot release than true, intimate connection. My father had kept me at arm’s length, for he had not been a coddler. With three older brothers and no mother around, there had been no emotion, no tenderness in our house. It was more a
Lord of the Flies
existence, where only the strong survived. I’d never regretted my life, or my decisions. But being here, in Dax’s arms, made me tired, mentally and emotionally exhausted in a way I’d never allowed myself to feel, in a way it had never been safe to feel.

How had one big brute of a space alien seen past my armor—and it wasn’t the warrior clothing I was referring to—and known what I needed more. I was strong, perhaps too strong, and it had taken him all of ten minutes to crack me open like an egg.

Even against the hard plate of his chest armor, I could hear his heart beating. I was, for once, calm and remarkably at peace.
Nothing
was going to happen to me right now. I was safe and my mind was quiet.

“Better?” he asked, once my crying jag subsided.

“Better,” I replied. My body was soft and pliant, my ass fiery hot and sore. But I felt like someone was paying attention to me,
for
me. I didn’t know how, but I’d needed that spanking. Analyzing my reactions would just make me crazy, so I resigned myself to figuring that all out later.

I stiffened in his hold and realized my ass was sticking out. I tugged up my pants and fixed the fastening, once again putting myself to rights. I tried to walk away, shame chasing the contented glow from my mind the moment I’d lost his touch, but he stopped me with a hand on my chin, lifting my face to look at him.

“Watching you come is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” His thumb stroked my cheek and I couldn’t help it, I leaned into his touch as he continued. “You are mine. You will never be alone, never sleep alone, never fight alone. You are mine and I will never leave you.”

“Dax. I can’t think about that right now. I just can’t. I have to save Seth.”

“We will save Seth.”

“Okay. We will save Seth.” As much as I hated to admit it, having him help me was a huge relief.

“And then you will come home with me and we will begin a new life.”

I nodded, unable to deny him right now. All my carefully constructed walls were gone, torn down by my new mate with his strength and iron will.

“Good, because I want your throaty little sighs of pleasure just for my ears. Your pussy walls all but milked my fingers, but I want to feel you come on my tongue. I want to taste your mouth and your pussy. I want to hold you down and fill you with my cock until you beg me for release, and I want to make you come over and over until you beg me to stop.”

Holy shit, that was hot. Dax was blatant and completely unashamed in his desire for me. I’d never felt anything more real, more intense.

I felt his cock, hard and thick, against my belly. “What… um, what about you?”

He held up my hand and traced a path of dried blood that colored my skin, a reminder of all that we’d done today. “The mating fever could come upon me at any time. When it comes, my actions may be beyond my will to control. Just know that you are the only one who can soothe it. I will fight not to take you if you are resistant, but my life will be in your hands.
You
may have to take
me
.”

I imagined him flat on his back as I rode him like a wild woman, his cock thick and deep as I ground my hips against his, taking what I wanted from him. I couldn’t shake the idea of having this strong, powerful warlord on his back and between my thighs, mine to take. When he added a sly grin at the end of his declaration, I knew that while he was serious, he was also flirting. This big space alien covered in Hive blood was actually flirting with me. For once, I had no comeback.

* * *

Sarah

A sound woke me. I stared into the darkness trying to figure out what it was, where I was. I had on the usual tank top and shorts, my normal sleeping gear. The bed was soft and the constant hum of the ship’s systems didn’t allow me to forget I was no longer on Earth.

There, I heard it again. Someone was in the room.

“Lights, half power.”

The room brightened.

It all came back to me in a quick rush. I was in temporary housing quarters with my new mate, waiting for the magnetic storm to clear so we could transport. The room only had the one bed, no couch or other chair, forcing us to share. I was unaccustomed to sleeping with a man—usually a one-night stand didn’t include a sleepover. But this wasn’t a quick roll in the hay, this was my mate, and I’d fallen asleep with his huge body wrapped protectively around mine. While the bed was large, so was Dax, and I’d given up protesting when he pulled me against him and drifted to sleep.

Now, though, the sheets were a wild tangle. I was in bed but Dax was sitting on the floor in the corner. His hands were clenched into fists, his neck was arched, his bare chest glistened with sweat and his fingers tapped out a frantic pace against the floor.

“Don’t move. I won’t be able to save you,” he growled.

Worry cut through me but I stilled. “What’s wrong? A nightmare?” I knew many fighters who struggled with nightmares from the horrors of battle.

“The fever. Don’t come closer unless you want me balls deep and out of control.”

I remembered the strength he’d displayed as he grabbed the Hive soldier and ripped his head off. I worried my lower lip between my teeth as I wondered just how dangerous he was. “Do you think you’ll hurt me?”

“I don’t know what the beast will do, Sarah. I’ve never had the mating fever before. It can sense you, smell you. It wants you and you’re there,” he pointed at me, “in a bed and wearing just that skimpy clothing, your nipples hard. I can smell you—”

He shut his eyes to block me out.

He wouldn’t hurt me. Deep down, I knew that. I have no idea where the knowing came from, but instinct told me he wouldn’t hurt me. Not now, not ever.

Dax’s sleep pants were black and the loose material did nothing to hide the rigid outline of his cock. It tented his pants and it proved
all
of him was large. He’d said that the fever brought about rage, anger, the need for sex.

“You said it was the mate’s job to soothe the beast,” I replied, sliding from the bed and crawling toward him. “And you said I could ride you, Dax. You promised me.”

Every line of his body was tense, taut with restless energy and need. He was like a male model, all defined, hard muscles. His broad shoulders tapered into a narrow waist, a smattering of dark hair was between his brown nipples and tapered to a thin line that went beneath the band of his pants. He didn’t have six-pack abs, but eight. He didn’t need body armor to be rock hard. And lower, God, lower, his cock was like a hammer beneath the fabric of his pants. I physically ached to touch him, to feel the softness of his skin, the heat of it, the springy feel of his chest hair. The thickness of his cock. The
taste
of it.

“I don’t think you can soothe this, Sarah. When full mating fever is upon me—and this isn’t even it—the only way I can be soothed is to fuck. Not once, not twice. Again and again until I’ve finally burned off the restless energy, the need.”

I had no idea why the idea of having Dax unleashed was so appealing. I should be fearful, just as he cautioned, but I wasn’t. Not after the way he’d seen to me earlier. He’d spanked me, then made me come. While he’d been dominant, he hadn’t been hurtful. It had been… exhilarating when I’d finally relinquished control to him, when I finally understood that I didn’t have to be strong for him.

So while he was trying to be strong for me, it was my turn to give him what he needed.
I
was the only one who could.

“So you want to take me hard?” I asked. The very idea of him taking me without finesse had my pussy weeping.

His eyes were on my body. My tank top was snug, clearly outlining my bare breasts as I crawled toward him, my nipples already hard.

“Yes.” His eyes narrowed and the pupils were all but gone, leaving complete black.

“You want it rough?” I crawled closer. Perhaps we
were
perfectly matched, for I couldn’t imagine anything hotter than Dax going wild, which meant I wanted it that way.