Wild in the Highlands Page 8

  She wrapped herself around him, twining her legs tight around his waist, pulling him into her again and again. She reveled in how he stretched her and filled her, the perfect hot slide of his flesh against hers.

  “Rhys.”

  She chanted his name, telling him all the things she’d been holding back since that day in her office. Earlier, really. Since they’d met.

  He responded to each whispered revelation with deeper, harder thrusts and more passionate kisses. His hands stroked every inch of her, learning her by touch.

  She was burning, her skin like ash, ready to crumble with pleasure.

  Cassandra met Rhys’s dragon eyes and let that winding, tightening, building pleasure spiral out and higher. Her body clenched, squeezing him with rhythmic, fluttering pulses.

  She cried out, the words garbled between their lips.

  His thrusts grew harder, more rapid, that familiar rumbling swelling in his throat. He rode her through the long waves of pleasure as she fell apart, and then he followed her. Cassandra felt the throb of his thick shaft, the flood of heat.

  Just as he’d done when he’d come inside her at the office, Rhys roared his satisfaction.

  She held him as he shook and poured himself into her, stroking shaking fingers down tense, sweat-slick flesh.

  They collapsed, quiet and breathless, into a soft, warm, boneless heap.

  Rhys rubbed a kiss along her jaw, his voice a bass rasp in her ear. “Don’t think I didn’t hear what you said, little rabbit.”

  Cassandra smiled against his damp shoulder. She’d wondered if he would understand her whimpered confession, if he’d acknowledge it. She licked the salt from his skin, tasting smoke and sweetness and Rhys.

  “Good. And do you know what else, my dragon?”

  He sifted fingers through her hair, his obsidian irises sparkling. “What’s that, rabbit?”

  She kissed him, hard and sharp, her answering grin just as toothy and feral as his ever was.

  “I’m keeping you, too.”

  THE END

  Ever read science fiction romance….here’s your chance.

  Dreaming of Electric Love

  The alarm sang through the comm embedded in Jessa’s inner ear, a skull-buzzing ‘wah-wah-wah’ that made her grit her teeth. She jabbed a finger at the display on her wristlet, instantly calling up the location of the breach and silencing the warning claxon.

  Beside her, Unit MCK-397, her partner ‘Mack,’ watched her with impassive gray eyes. His face, square-jawed and sculpted to a level of aesthetic perfection that was designed to be intimidating, betrayed none of the intellect his complex Brain-Computer Interface was capable of.

  “Storage compartment on E deck,” she informed him, as if he hadn’t already accessed the station schematics via his neuralnet and pinpointed the exact sensor that had been tripped. “Probably some tube-rat gnawing on wiring.”

  The small rodents hitched rides in the ventilation tubes on the supply trawlers that arrived every six months and, unlike every other animal the Protectorate had attempted to acclimate to life on station, managed to not only survive but thrive.

  Mack didn’t offer an opinion on whether or not their intruder was animal in nature. Jessa didn’t know if he even had opinions. Despite having been partnered with him since she’d arrived on Lyra Station eight months ago, she still knew relatively little about his programming. He was a quiet one, and he didn’t seem to know any jokes.

  During her last tour of duty in the black (only rookies referred to it as being in space and Cantra Corp didn’t hire rooks), her Bio-mech partner (the PC term, though most people referred to them as cyborgs, or cys for short) had been running a sub-program for sarcasm.

  She’d had one partner with an entire database of cheesy knock-knock jokes. She didn’t miss him.

  If Mack knew jokes, she hadn’t heard one.

  “Central, door sensor in storage compartment E8 shows breach.” His voice was a deep rumble. “Officers MCK-397 and JS-824 responding.”

  He turned sharply on his black-booted heel and marched off, his back straight. The lines of the dark green body armor framed wide, muscular shoulders, narrow hips, and long, thick legs.

  Jessa followed after him, trying hard not to notice how the uniform pants clung to the high, tight globes of his ass.

  Unlike her last cy partner, who’d been around her own 5’10 height and wide as a tank, Mack was six and a half feet of sculpted steel-synth muscle fiber and dermaplas enhanced skin over a tungsten carbide skeleton.

  With thick, wavy black hair, pale gray eyes, and a face that could grace an ad campaign back on Earth, she was finding it harder than usual to remember he wasn’t a man.

  Despite how nearly human they looked and the vast capabilities of their BCI, cys weren’t human. Not that they couldn’t feel. That was a myth that was easily debunked the first time she’d partnered with one.

  They were capable of feeling the same range of emotions as purely organic humans. But that didn’t mean they thought the same way. Mack hadn’t been born, hadn’t grown up. He hadn’t had a first kiss, or gone through an awkward phase in high school before his fantastic physique filled out.

  He’d been manufactured from a mix of biological and mechanical parts in a Cantra Corp lab somewhere. He’d stepped off an assembly line as perfect as he was today and he would remain so, unless he took damage.

  It was a fact she needed to remember when an errant lusty thought caught her unawares.

  “Take the west stairwell,” she said.

  She didn’t bother raising her voice to be heard over the constant low hum of the stations gravity generator. Mack’s ears would easily pick up her words.

  “Copy.” He didn’t look back, but he obeyed her directive and took a left at the next intersection. One thing Jessa had learned to appreciate about having a cy partner, apart from their efficacy in veritably every situation, was their general lack of ego.

  She’d had enough experiences with human men who couldn’t reconcile themselves to taking orders from a woman. It was one of the reasons she hadn’t dated or had any other kind of romantic relationship in nearly two years. She hadn’t had any sex apart from the kind that involved a toy in even longer than that.

  Lips twisting, she wondered if that’s where the errant attraction to Mack was coming from. Her only sexual partner recently had been battery operated. Not much different from the walking, talking machine that was her partner.

  As they tromped down the west staircase to E deck, Jessa chewed her lower lip. She had to stop thinking that way.

  Though she’d never seen any of her cy partners naked, she knew they weren’t exactly equipped. It was one of the reasons there were no issues with partners of opposite genders sharing quarters. They cooked and ate, but they didn’t eliminate the way humans did. They didn’t procreate.

  And, as one tech had told her, “It’s not like they do things for pleasure, is it?”

  Jessa shunted the thought of pleasure and sex and, especially, Mack, to the back of her brain as they turned down yet another narrow, dim corridor. E deck was almost all storage except for a few machine repair labs in the south section. Because of the lack of personnel on that level, lighting was minimal.

  She slid closer to Mack and lowered her voice.

  “Let’s go quietly, just in case.”

  Mack gave a curt jerk of his chin to indicate he’d heard her. Instantly, the heavy thud of his steps was silenced. They crept along the corridor, Mack slightly ahead of her as was protocol.

  Cantra Corp Directive Ninety Seven stated that bio-mech agents were to always provide cover for their organic counterparts. It was why the Aspis Initiative had been instituted originally. Years ago, when she’d first hired on with Cantra Corp, it had bothered her. It had been a struggle to not feel like she was hiding behind her cy partner during fire fights. But she’d seen enough of them repaired from what would have been mortal wounds to a human to have gotten over it.

 
At the very end of the corridor, Jessa could see the black rectangle of the doorway to the open compartment.

  “Hsst.”

  Mack stretched an arm across her chest, blocking her forward motion still eight feet from the storage area. Jessa ignored the brush of his forearm against her breasts and suddenly stiff nipples and strained her eyes and ears, but she couldn’t see or hear anything that would make him pause.

  Of course, he had senses she didn’t. She’d learned to trust them.

  He bent, putting his mouth close to her ear. Warm breath puffed against her cheek.

  “Two heartbeats, very fast. Some sounds of distress. I believe it is an altercation.”

  A fight? Out here in a remote corridor of E deck? Surprise fizzled in Jessa’s blood. Lyra Station was one of the smaller orbitals devoted mostly to research. She hadn’t expected any trouble during her brief rotation.

  She nodded to let Mack know she understood and motioned him forward. He moved slowly, placing his huge feet carefully to minimize noise. It wasn’t until they were much closer, almost crossing the threshold, that Jessa realized what she was hearing over the sound of the station’s mechanical hum.

  Her hand shot out to grip Mack’s arm. She dug her short nails into the tan, silky skin bared just above his wrist, feeling the slight crinkle of dark hair against her fingertips. She knew it wasn’t just skin over muscle, but it sure felt the same.

  Mack froze, turning his head in her direction, a line appearing between his heavy, dark eyebrows. His lips pursed. She could read the question clearly on his face. She shook her head.

  Blood burned beneath her skin as the sounds grew louder. A deep grunt echoed out to them, the slap of flesh on flesh. Sharp gasps. A moan. It could be a fight… but Jessa didn’t think so.

  Her partner pulled away from her easily. Of course.

  He stepped further into the storage compartment before she could stop him. Jessa hurried forward to get between him and the couple who was feverishly going at it up against a shelving unit.

  Jessa was sure somewhere in his vast data banks, Mack knew what sex was, but she somehow doubted he’d ever actually seen it. She didn’t want him to assume there was danger and react aggressively.

  Not that he seemed to be a reactive model. In fact, in the last few months, he’d proven to be much more inquisitive and intellectual than any of her other cys. Still, this was the first time they’d encountered an unknown situation together. Best to be safe.

  She pressed her palm against the hard wall of his chest, ready to drive him back out of the compartment, but when her eyes fell on the couple it was her turn to freeze.

  They still hadn’t noticed their audience, too wrapped up in each other to care about anything but the pursuit of their pleasure. The woman was a brunette, naked, with a khaki engineering jumpsuit tangled around one ankle. Small breasts jiggled with each of her companion’s rough thrusts. She spread her long, toned legs wider and gripped the edge of the shelf in front of her with white-knuckled hands.

  “Harder,” she moaned, dropping her head to stare down between her own legs to watch the glistening length of her lover’s cock piston in and out of her pussy. She was waxed bare, making it easy to see each gliding push of his slick, veiny shaft between swollen, wet pink folds.

  Jessa’s eyes were riveted to the sight, too. Though far from the physical perfection of her cy, the man was definitely nice to look at. His button down shirt (olive for botany, she noted absently) hung open, revealing a chest furred with hair a lighter shade of red than that on his head. His face, narrow and a little pointed, but not unattractive, was flushed crimson.

  “Fuck, you’re so hot. So tight. So. Fucking. Good!”

  He punctuated each word with another thrust of his hips, burying himself over and over again. His hands were long and elegant, the fingers digging hard into the woman’s rounded buttocks.

  Jessa’s whole body heated. Beneath her lightweight armor, her breasts ached. Her pussy flooded with moisture at the erotic sight before her. She swallowed excess saliva, her heart tripping up.

  Her fingers curled into Mack’s chest. She heard a slight intake of breath, quiet compared to the noises of the copulating pair, but it drew her attention to her partner’s face.

  Mack’s winter sky eyes were intent on the couple, the line between his brows much deeper now. His mouth — which was entirely too full and sensual for a machine in Jessa’s opinion — opened and she could see the wet gleam of his tongue behind the straight line of his white teeth.

  He would speak soon. Jessa knew it. But on her other side, the couple’s pace had sped up. Their cries grew more frantic and lust-filled. She lifted a shaking hand and pressed her fingers to his lips.

  His eyes jumped to hers, brows lifting. She licked her lips, shook her head, and tipped her chin at the couple.

  Jessa had no idea what she was doing. She should allow Mack to inform the couple of their presence so they could get their IDs and issue the necessary citations for trespassing.

  But her gaze slid back to them, watching a rivulet of sweat snake its way down the golden brown skin of the woman’s back.

  “Oh, right there. Yes! Faster, Christof!” She craned her neck over her shoulder. Her companion — Christof, apparently… Jessa filed that away to check against the botany department roster — bent over her back to capture her mouth in a passionate kiss.

  She keened against his lips. He sped up, burying himself deep inside her, and then his pace grew ragged. He groaned.

  Jessa’s own throat ached with her silence. Slick mercury heat pooled low in her belly. Her whole body seemed to throb. Even her fingertips… But no, she realized. The pulse thrumming against her fingers was not her own. It was Mack’s.

  Unlike hers — and no doubt the couple’s — Mack’s heartbeat was steady and even.

  Still, the feel of it against her palm made her mouth go dry. Jessa finally remembered where they were and what they should be doing. She pushed as hard as she could, urging him backward.

  Mack could have remained unmoved if he wanted to, but he let her drive him through the open door.

  He didn’t, however, make any attempt to dampen the sound of his footfalls. She heard a gasp from behind her, but kept her eyes on her cy’s as she spoke.

  “Cantra Corp Security. An alarm was tripped. We’ll be waiting just outside to give you a moment to collect yourselves.”

  The low murmur of voices followed them back into the corridor. As soon as they’d cleared the door, Jessa jerked her hand away as if Mack’s chest was a hot stove. It might as well have been. Her skin still tingled from the contact.

  “Well,” he said in that rumbling voice that shook her to the bones. “That was... interesting.”

  Jessa let out a shuddering breath. Interesting was one way to put it.

  ***

  MCK-397 switched to night vision and ran another security diagnostic, but everything was quiet. He and Jessa — Officer JS-824 — had rotated off schedule two hours earlier. Apart from the anomalous incident on E deck, their shift had been uneventful. Routine.

  His partner’s behavior had not been, however. Then again, JS-824 was unlike any other officer he’d ever encountered.

  MCK-397 had been a security force unit for Cantra Corp since he’d been commissioned in a satellite lab nearly four decades ago. He’d spent the majority of that time on mostly unpopulated outer rim planets protecting isolated drone-operated mineral mining camps from pirates.

  Three years ago, the company had brought him back in for his scheduled maintenance and upgrades and moved him to active duty rotation on a series of space stations orbiting the galaxy to combat increasingly frequent pirate incursions on supply runs.

  In that time, he’d been partnered with over a dozen fully organic humans. Jessa was the only one who’d ever given him a name. Everyone else called him by his serial number, occasionally shortening it to merely ‘397.’

  But Jessa had stepped through the doorway to their sh
ared quarters the first day of her assignment, long blond hair pulled back into a tight braid, and extended a slender hand rough with callouses.

  “Officer JS-824. Call me Jessa. And you are?”

  When he’d rattled off his serial as usual, she arched one thin eyebrow, looked him over from head-to-toe with her intense blue eyes, and then nodded.

  “Nice to meet you, Mack.”

  At first, it had confused him. He insisted several times that his name wasn’t ‘Mack,’ that he didn’t have a name. Names were a human designation, and though he consisted of some biological parts, he was not really human. Some of his bio-mech brethren referred to themselves as ‘cybernetic humans’ to differentiate from ‘organic humans,’ but he’d never seen the point.

  His new partner merely ignored his assertions and continued to call him Mack.

  He persisted in reminding her of his number until one day, sitting over a game of chess in their private quarters, she said, “Look, I’m not calling you that, okay? I’m just not. We are going to be in each other’s pockets for the duration. By the end of my deployment, you’ll know me better than my own mother. So, I am Jessa and you are Mack. Got it?”

  Despite her casual verbiage, he had indeed understood her point. And, once he had, he found he enjoyed having a name. He enjoyed partnering with Jessa as well.

  His previous human partners had interacted with him hardly at all beyond the call of duty, and then only to issue orders. While Jessa was competent and professional, she treated him much the same way she treated the other humans on the station. Better, even.

  The first time he realized this, it filled his chest with a warm sensation he’d never experienced before. It took some researching on the neuralnet and several diagnostic runs before he identified the feeling as pleasure.

  It pleased him that his partner valued him and treated him with respect.

  In the past, he’d worked alongside his human partners and protected them because that was his job. His BCI was programmed with that imperative. He didn’t feel any particular way about them.