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She is even smaller than I realized, weak and pale. She bares her teeth at them, and I see they are blunt, like a baby’s milk teeth. Is she a greenling? My eyes slide over the rest of her form. No, not a greenling. I let out a relieved breath. Beneath her strange, ragged garments, I see luscious curves, the swell of her hips speaking to the pleasures she will give me. The kings she will bear.
Today, I’ll show her my skill. Today, I’ll kill for her. Today, I’ll make her mine.
A bell rings, and he drops his cloak. I suck in my breath. He’s naked underneath, save for two knives, one fastened to each thigh with leather bands.
Hot
He’s fully erect—or maybe it’s always like that, I don’t know. Either way, it’s huge, straining against the wide strip of leather, and I can’t help imagining what it would feel like sliding between my thighs. My clit gives a buzz of approval. Yum.
:O
Wow, I’m a total space slut.
Same
he lowers his head to murmur something in my ear over and over. Alara. Alara.
“I want to understand you, Ada. I want to know your heart. Please, speak for me.” A king never begs.
“You are my Alara,” he says, the possessive note in his voice unmistakable. “It is the truth. I know you feel it, too.”
The least like my father, Nik is patient, perhaps to a fault. And he is singularly skilled when it comes to fighting. In fact, he trains most of Irra’s assassins, teaching them the arts of stealth, weaponry, and hand-to-hand combat on his bare, frigid planet where there are no other distractions. Training is his obsession, maybe because there’s nothing else to do on the icy ball of rock he calls home.
Zaddy
Nik is still in his chair, staid and unreadable as an elite assassin should be. He will fight as well as Thren if challenged, but he lacks the ambition to rule, which could be his weakness. He may not want to win, preferring to follow someone else’s leadership instead.
Ultra zaddy
Nik’s jaw clenches tight, waves of charcoal-dark anger washing over his face and disappearing beneath the high collar of his sveli as he struggles and fails to keep calm.
<3
Her best fairytale was about our dad. She told us he was a prince from a faraway kingdom who had to leave our family because otherwise he’d be banished by the king. She said it didn’t matter if we didn’t have official recognition; we’d always be royalty, and we should be treated as such, even if it was a secret.
“I’m so pissed that you’re good at this,” she chokes out. “I shouldn’t enjoy this so much.”
I wrap one arm around waist, holding her against me, and use the other to tease her opening with my cock. I drag the head back and forth through her folds until she moans with frustration.
“My brilliant little queen,” he breathes wonderingly, and I feel my cheeks flush under his attention.
Ada starts to sit up, reaching for one of the spoons, but I shake my head as a primal need unfolds in my chest. “I will feed you,” I growl, more bluntly than I intend.
Male pride swells within me. I am providing for my queen, strengthening her. She is mine, and I will treasure her and care for her until my ghost meets the goddess.
“Please,” I beg her, though kings do not beg. In this moment, I’m no king. “Lie to me, Alara. Lie to me so I can prove it to you.”
I wonder if his cock changes colors, too.
“If I claim you, I will never let you go. And I cannot bind you to me unless you feel the truth in your heart.”
In one piercing moment, he gives me all of it. Every inch. Every ounce. Every color.
The posture of all three females immediately shifts. They cross their arms, cock their hips, and scowl at me like a pack of priests.
Lothan drops to his knees and kisses the hem of my sveli. Raising his eyes to meet my gaze, he chokes out, “Forgive me, Alara, but you are the center of mine. Crown or not, queen or not, Irra or Elsewhere, you will always rule me.”
They will execute us when we land at the next spaceport, I expect—if they don’t starve us first. We will die together, so there is that comfort.”
“I laugh at my brother Nik, not at you. His planet—
“His planet is very cold, almost as cold as R’Hiza. He had to build his settlement deep underground in the heat of the earth. To think this is like your terrakin Hell...I often tease him that my father gave him the worst planet, and it seems we now have proof.”
Nostalgia floods me, thinking of stoic little Nik in the training pits, facing off against me when it was his turn to fight.
But Nik always performed his without hesitation, mechanically striking me as my father instructed, knowing his blows would build toward my obedience. He saved us both a greater punishment.
Lothan’s brother. The strong jaw and stormy gray eyes give it away. But there’s something more brutish about Nik’s face. Maybe it’s the jagged scar that divides it from hairline to chin, narrowly skirting one eye. Or maybe it’s just the stoic expression above his plain sveli, the same cut Lothan wears but made of worn, brown leather, free of any decoration. A pale, fluffy fur lining peeks from the edges of the collar, the color and texture a stark contrast to his stony gray skin that matches the wall behind him.
this is my brother Nik, Jara of Usuri and the most lethal assassin in the star system.”
I find the universe between her thighs, first with my tongue and then with my straining cock. I hold each moment in my mind, knowing it’s one of our last as I memorize it, prolong it, until every taste is a feast. Every breath is a comet. Every stroke is a prayer.
The ice of Usuri that hides riches underneath. The sparkling sands of Alak, reflecting the goddess’s favor. The wide, sweet oceans of Olethia and the depths of Endan’s fertile forests. Most of all, I see the faultless skies of Irra in her milky blue gaze—my home.
Hannah blurts, “No, your skin! It was greenish and now it’s...purple!”
To love is to risk. To be dangerously, beautifully vulnerable. Alioth knew it, and this is why she brought me my Alara, to teach me how to embrace the shadow of her favor—the promise of loss that haunts love like a ghost.
“You did nothing wrong. In fact, you did something right.” She tips Biinji’s chin up so she can press a kiss to his forehead. “You called me ‘Mom.’ I consider you my child, but that name is a gift I never expected to receive, and I was overwhelmed. Thank you, sweetheart.”
