He ran a sweep for listening devices. Found two and left them in place for the moment. He’d wait until they began to enter the portal, and he’d jam the signal to make it look like a system glitch.
He knew this particular transport was owned by a company friendly to Federation interests. Knew they had smugglers’ holds, too. Even better, he knew the location of several, including the one just above his head right that moment.
This would suit just fine. He locked the cabin door behind himself and headed back out, catching sight of one of the men he’d seen earlier. It seemed they had a tail, which did not please him, though he was not surprised.
As he rounded a corner going down the ramp out to where Carina and Andrei waited, he halted, lashed out and threw the man who’d been following them against the wall, Daniel’s forearm pressed to the other man’s throat.
“Just what do you take me for?” Daniel growled at him.
“Get off me! What are you doing?” the man wheezed as he struggled fruitlessly.
“If you continue this, you will die. Now, my question.” Daniel’s focus was on this man, on his pulse, on the sweat on his brow and on his dancing, darting eyes. The roar of calm slid over him, and he pressed harder, cutting off the man’s air to underline his first threat.
He stood as people walked past without even a second glance. Daniel pressed, taking him close enough to blacking out before finally letting go as the first tendrils of death curled.
“Shall we do this again?” Daniel kept his gaze burning into the tail.
“Just, you looked soft.” The man’s panic stank.
“You meant to rob me and my family?”
“Just looking. You can’t blame a guy for looking. Now I know, right? Now I back off and look elsewhere.”
There had been nothing but this path, Daniel thought as he continued to hold the man in place. He had to show the man that he would not tolerate being targeted at all and had driven the point home in the only voice a man like that would hear.
“You so much as look in my direction, and I will be very vexed with you. If you even think about my wife, I will gut you while you watch.” He pushed back, pressing on the man’s throat one last time before turning and stalking away.
Carina saw him coming, felt the wave of his rage, saw it on his face. Andrei squeezed her hand once and stood, bringing her with him.
“Is everything all right?” she asked, feeling rather breathless at whatever show of masculine force he was exhibiting. He was so very large and threatening, and she found her knees a bit wobbly. She liked it.
“Fine.” He put an arm around her, and she pressed her face into his chest. She felt alien in her skin just then, never so completely lost in another person like she was at that moment. She was sure he and Andrei shared some pointed looks and sneaky communication about whatever had brought all this protective instinct to the surface, but she didn’t care. He’d protect her, and that’s all that mattered. She trusted him to get her to Ravena alive.
He began to walk toward the transport, stopping here and there at the stalls, grabbing food, of course, and—she stilled—a scarf for her.
“I know you’ve been getting cold.” He handed it to her in its vibrant blue glory. “Is it all right? I can get another one if you don’t like it.”
She sent him a watery smile as she wrapped it around her neck. No one had ever been this nice to her. This man was not related to her; he wasn’t trying to get something from her father. He was a man with a job to do, but the way he treated her was above and beyond that job. He bought her a scarf. Because he noticed she got cold.
“It’s perfect. Thank you.”
He smiled. “It pleases me to see you happy,” he said against her lips as he kissed her.
“The two of you are going to make my teeth hurt,” Andrei grumbled, but Carina caught the edge of his smile. He wasn’t as hard as he wanted people to believe. Beneath that smooth exterior, a sort of darkness lived. Lived in Daniel, too, she knew. But both men were far better than they believed themselves to be.
“You could have had Nyna, you know. But you waited too long.” Daniel kissed the top of her head as he teased Andrei.
“That rat Marcus stole her out from under my nose.” There was no heat in the words, just a bit of regret.
“Nyna is one of my sisters.” He’d begun to simply answer her questions before she asked, knowing her so well. That made her weepy, too.
“I take it Marcus is her beau?” She looked Andrei up and down and wondered what man could outshine that.
“Her husband. They really are good together.” Andrei shrugged. “She’s too good for me.”
“I doubt that. Not that I’m not sure Nyna is lovely, but you’re a good man, so I doubt anyone is too good for you.”
He ducked his head, letting his hair, which he’d left loose, fall forward to cover his face.
As they went up the ramp to enter the transport, she noted Daniel’s posture had changed. He stood taller, spine stiff, and his gaze moved around the area, taking in everything and everyone. He was her protector now on a completely different level.
One man caught sight of them, the same man who’d been on the mercenary transport, and paled. Daniel sent him a raised brow, and the man scurried away in a hurry. She had a feeling this was the cause of Daniel’s earlier anger.
“You see him again anywhere near you, and you tell me. Understand?” Daniel demanded after they’d fully boarded and headed to their room. Andrei was right behind them. She was surrounded by a wall of maleness bent on protecting her. She breathed easier for that.
Andrei said he wanted to take a nap, and Daniel wanted to get in their cabin to hole up, so she followed dutifully, not minding the fact that they’d be alone at last.
He paused and turned her around, her back to his front. Bending down, he spoke in her ear. “Look over there, across the bay. Do you see that couple near the water tanks?”
She obeyed and saw them. A shiver bloomed, turning warm and loose. They embraced, the man pressing the woman against a wall in the corner. They wouldn’t have been visible to most people, but where she and Daniel stood provided a perfect angle.
One of the man’s hands slid up inside the woman’s uniform shirt, and she arched into him. Carina could see the woman’s mouth open on a gasp as she lifted her leg, her thigh at the man’s hip.
The man pressed forward; Carina imagined he was grinding himself against her, cock to pussy. Knew she’d been right when the woman’s fingers dug into his shoulders as he continued to grind.
Her breath shallowed as she watched, her nipples hard, her clit sensitized. Daniel spoke, his lips at her ear. “Does that make you hot? Is your pussy wet? He’s going to end up in pain that way; a man can’t come like that. Well, most of us can’t. She can, though. Look at her. His hand is in her shirt, his fingers are on her nipple, tugging and pinching. Drawing her closer until she comes. But she can’t make any noise, or they might be heard.”
Across from where they stood against their own door, the woman arched more fully, her movements frenzied, and then her head fell on his shoulder. He kissed her passionately, and they broke apart, hands held until they had to go separate ways.
“Her cunt will be juicy now. All for him. Every once in a while as she works, she’ll remember those stolen moments, and when they come together again, she’ll be ready, open, wet.”
Her hands fisted and relaxed as she tried to control her breathing. Watching had always been her secret pleasure. It hadn’t always been sex; she’d loved to observe people without them knowing it. But this, this with him speaking in her ear, saying all those deliciously dirty things as his hard cock pressed against her ass? This was breathtakingly sexual.
He stepped back and keyed the door open. “Let’s go in. The departure lights just went yellow.”
On shaky legs, she preceded him into the room, happily moving into his embrace.
“One more jump, and we’ll be in Silesia,” he murmur
ed in her ear. She held on tight, wanting the whole trip to be over but also being afraid of what would happen when they weren’t forced together this way. Her skin tingled with a new sort of awareness.
“I want it to be over, but I don’t want to be away from you. I like having you to myself, even if we are being chased by brigands and soldiers.”
He laughed softly, kissing her temple.
“Take me.” She tore her clothes off, leaving her totally naked and shockingly beautiful.
He double-checked that he’d locked the door and motioned her to the bed with a tip of his chin. As she moved to obey, he did all his usual stuff, setting personal alarms and laying out the jammer he’d use once they began the slip though the portal.
Something about how he looked, how he’d been that whole day drove her need. After that scene they’d watched, she wanted to rub herself all over him, wanted to lick him, kiss every part of his skin.
She sprang out of bed. “I changed my mind. I want to take you instead.”
“I’m all yours. Do with me what you will.” He held his arms out and smiled at her.
Her hands shook a little but got the job done as he bent to let her pull his sweater from his body. She paused to breathe in the scent of his skin, warm, and uniquely him.
Caressing every part of him she could reach, she managed to get his pants, undershorts and boots off. Once he stood totally naked and unashamed of his body, she circled him. Inner bells sounded on the transport signaling the impending slip.
He sighed softly as she pressed herself to his back, encircling his waist with her arms. The moment was perfect, clear, right, and she knew she’d never forget the pulse of love within her belly, spreading through her system like a drug. Just Daniel and Carina, naked to each other.
She circled to face him and pulled him back to the bed. Her gut pulled at the entry into the portal, and he reached out, hit the jammers and his hands were back on her before she could protest the absence of his body. He picked her up, devouring her mouth. She wrapped her legs around his waist, plastering herself against him.
Daniel’s head spun at how good it felt with her there, squirming against him, her naked, hot flesh stroking against his. Her power was heady, she owned it, owned her desires and took what she wanted. That appealed to him greatly.
The way she’d been as they watched the couple had ripped away everything left of his distance. He was in her, on her, she was under his skin in a way only she could be. How a woman could watch a couple getting each other off and still seem refreshingly . . . good, he wasn’t sure. But she was, she was everything good, his light, and he held that tight.
He took three steps, carrying them to the nearby wall, and set his legs just right to hold her weight.
“Sweet, should I fuck you now?” He teased around her gate with the head of his cock. She was hot and wet, ready for him.
“Why are you asking? Do it!” Her nails dug into his shoulders as she arched.
He laughed, thrusting up and shifting her weight down to fill her completely. “I asked because you said you wanted to take me, not the other way around.”
“This is . . . oh my gods.”
He pressed her against the wall a bit more solidly, relishing the way her pupils expanded and her breath gusted from that seductive mouth of hers.
“Yes?”
“I am taking you. Sort of. Whatever, whoever is taking, this is just perfect with me. I have this need”—she stretched the word out on a gasp of pleasure—“for you. It itches over my skin, I need you so badly. The moment you touch me, look at me, put me in your attention, things ease. I should feel shame for what you make me crave, how you make me feel, but all I feel is sated, and desired in return. You answer my need.”
He fell, tumbled into the abyss that was what he felt for this woman. Deep, bottomless, open as far as he could see, and he could not feel bad.
“There’s no shame between us. You are my need,” he murmured, continuing to fuck into her hard and deep.
She sank her teeth into his shoulder to muffle her cry, grinding herself against him as he thrust.
“That’s it, take it. Grind your clit on me,” he whispered, loving it when her pussy clutched around him, superheated and creamy. She groaned in what sounded like assent, so he kept going.
Her cunt superheated, tightening around him until he had to gasp in a breath at how beyond deliriously good it felt. She used her hands on his shoulders to lever herself up, to change her angle so she could get the friction she needed against her clit.
The heat of her stuttered breath against his neck drove him on, the sweetness of her body against his, the press of her nipples against his chest, the way her inner thigh muscles rippled as she moved herself against him, all worked together to drive him witless.
When she came, she knocked her head against the wall at her back, a hoarse cry pulled from her lips as she vised around his cock. He tried to hold on, tried to hold back, but the way she clenched around him, fluttering, wet and hot, he couldn’t resist and found himself on his knees, buried deep, as wave after wave of climax stole his breath.
The knowledge that in the short time he’d known her, he loved her, kept him on his knees searching for breath.
She kissed his cheek. “Each time I’m with you I can’t quite get past how it’s different than the last, but still intense and amazing.”
He opened his eyes to see her face, glowing and pleased, as she squirmed to get off his lap.
“Sorry, I must be squishing you.” She held a hand out, and he took it, kissing her palm.
He stood, smiling down at her, and she wondered just what he was thinking about. Probably more sex, which was, admittedly, just fine with her.
“I’m afraid that while we have more room here, the washing up will still be less than perfect.”
It was that he’d handed her a cloth, that he’d drawn the basin with warm water just for her, that wisped away any remaining ability to keep between herself and this enormous thing welling up inside her when she thought about Daniel Haws.
She was left there, bare to her emotions, bare to his gaze, and she was nothing more, nothing less than his woman. Whether he wanted it or not, it wouldn’t change what she felt, what she was.
He looked down into her face. Well, looked wasn’t the right word, it was as if he was committing every single bit of her to memory. She closed her eyes a moment, trying to paddle through the waves of emotion.
“I suppose you’re hungry?” she managed to say at long last. “Let me make you something to hold you until the evening meal.”
It gave her something to do with her hands at least, something to take her attention so she could get herself together.
He settled in, examining something in his pocket comm, so she left him alone, putting the food nearby. It surprised her when he took her hand and drew her down with him, arranged her into his side, all without a word.
She burrowed in, letting herself feel safe and adored. He stroked his fingertips up and down her arm, idly, as if he wasn’t quite thinking about it but didn’t want to not be touching her. She liked that. Felt it herself most of the time.
She wanted to talk to him. Openly. To speak of her past and her future in a way she didn’t feel she had to constantly monitor. She looked forward to that, to having a normal relationship with him, or the closest approximation to that they’d ever get, given his job.
It was on that thought that sleep came, that deep, dreamless sleep the body needed to truly rest and regenerate. Safe in his arms, his scent on her body, she slept.
Chapter 14
“Wake up,” Daniel murmured to her, shaking her gently. She’d dropped off shortly after they’d left and had slept through to the next day. She’d been sleeping fitfully on and off, and he knew she needed that rest, so he hadn’t bothered her, just checked to be sure she was all right and let her be.
Andrei had come by as they’d neared the portal. They’d exit in Silesia, the last Imperial-con
trolled ’Verse before the Edge. The Edge, while technically a buffer between Imperial and Federation territories, was solidly under the dominion of the Federation, though not always with total allegiance and safety for her citizens. They’d be on safer footing, or at the very least, have more access to their own people and intelligence far more readily once they left the Imperium behind.
She smiled and stretched.
“We’re going to be arriving soon. Get freshened up. We saved you some food from last evening.” He pointed to the wrapped bundle.
“Last evening? I slept all this time?” She pushed the hair from her face and got out of bed.
“You must have needed it.” He tried to sound matter-of-fact, but to his ears, he sounded a lot more like a lover than a keeper.
Andrei turned his back while she quickly washed up and changed, but Daniel knew he’d heard the tone.
“Cover your hair today.” He said it from instinct. As he did, she moved quickly to obey, wrapping her head in a nondescript scarf, knotting it effortlessly. He warmed as she wound the blue scarf he’d given her the day before around her neck.
Andrei quickly braided his and tucked it into the back of his shirt so that he appeared to have short hair. Daniel had let his go back to its normal color, and he was glad he had.
Something was up. He casually went outside their room and looked around as they coasted into the portal docks and were assigned an arrival bay. People seemed overly nervous. The tenor of the energy on the inner decks of the transport changed. No one looked anyone in the eye. Ducking back into the room, he sent a look to Andrei. There wasn’t time to play at hiding their conversation.
The feeling sharpened, ripened into urgency and he listened—acted.
He turned to Carina. “I need you to listen and obey me. Andrei is going to help you hide. Don’t make a sound. Get your weapon out, and don’t hesitate if you have to use it.” He kissed her hard. He could see it in her eyes; she wanted to ask questions, but she didn’t. Instead, she nodded and took Andrei’s hand, letting him boost her up into the smuggler’s hold.