Trey stares at me like he’s never seen me before. Reaching up, he tucks my loose hair behind my ear. His hand lingers there before his fingers entwine in my hair, gripping the back of my head. He leans forward, while his hand in my hair gently pulls me closer to him. My heart has found its way back to my chest and now pounds in it like it had never been torn apart.
Trey covers my lips with his firm, enticing ones. I feel his other hand on my back; he pulls me to his chest. I melt against him. My arms slowly encircle the back of his neck while my mouth opens to taste him against my tongue. The most delicious pleasure I have ever felt winds it’s way through my veins. I want this; I want him so much that I ache from it.
My hands cup his cheeks. He hasn’t shaved since this morning; my fingers revel in the sandpaper-like feel of new growth against my skin. He groans as his tongue strokes mine; the sound he makes sends a hunger through me that I’ve never experienced before. I want to find a way to make him groan like that again.
“Kricket,” he whispers against my lips, “I’m not about to deflower you as a means of keeping you away from Manus. It would never work anyway. The minute he finds out about us is the exact moment that he gets rid of me and you become well and truly his. The fact that you’re untouched is the only thing keeping him from you.”
“Oh,” I say as I shift on his lap to meet his eyes. “But if I were your consort…then he couldn’t separate us, and it would be okay if I did this?” I lean forward and nuzzle his neck just below his earlobe.
“Yes,” Trey breathes as his hands rest on my hips. “If you were my consort.”
“And…this would be okay, too?” I whisper, nibbling on his earlobe and feeling his fingers tighten on my sides when my teeth gently graze his skin.
“That would be required,” Trey replies in a strained voice.
“And this?” I touch my lips to his as the flushed heat of intense desire builds between us.
“At least a hundred times a rotation,” he replies against my lips.
“At least a hundred a day?” I ask with a growing smile.
“You’re right…at least a thousand,” he smiles, too, and then it fades. “But you’d need Manus’ consent to commit to me. He’ll never give it to us.”
“You don’t know that. We just have to find something he wants more than me.”
“There’s nothing he wants more than you.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know it because he has the same look as must be on my face every time you enter the room.”
Trey’s lips turn down as his expression becomes grim. I lower my lips to his, gliding over them and feeling them soften their hard line. Tugging his bottom lip between mine, I nibble on it. He kisses me hard, like he can’t get enough of me. It goes on like that until I’m breathless with the need to consume him and be consumed by him.
“I wish I knew a way for us to always be together, Trey,” I whisper to him in his ear. “I would do it, no matter the cost.”
“I’ll find one,” Trey promises. His voice is rough as he grips me possessively.
Suddenly, something deep down inside of me feels very wrong. Pressure builds from within my head, like it’s an overblown balloon ready to burst. “Uhh,” I exhale a deep breath as searing heat, like sparks of molten dust from a white-hot sun pass over my skin. Fear and pain erupt in the core of me. I pull back from Trey to look in his eyes. As I gasp to take a breath, I whisper, “Trey...help me!” The world whirls around; something rips me away from Trey and thrusts me forward out of my body. I see myself from above as my body slackens in Trey’s arms. I feel cold in a way that I’ve never felt before.
“KRICKET!” Trey shouts, shaking my body that I have left behind, as the walls of the lodge crumble around us in flakes of ashy embers.
In seconds, I flash forward into the starry night. The sky bleeds above me like tears of black and the pinpoints of light streak horizontally with the speed of eternity. Instantly, I’m in stasis in front of the gates of the palace; the blue beams of the security fences illuminate the dark sky.
A military-style skiff is pulling up to the security gates, attempting to exit the palace. Inside, Drex and Fenton are seated in front, while I can just make out Jax, Wayra, and Kyon in the back. An instant later, I move from beyond the palace gate to the side of the skiff, standing by the open window as it pulls next to the security checkpoint.
The palace security detail moves forward to speak with Fenton through the window of the skiff. The guard has his weapon strapped to him, but lowered away from the interior of the vehicle.
“Prisoner transport to Skye—authorization Indie, Mega, Preston, one, seven, two…” Fenton trails off as the guard grasps his neck, pulling out a silver dart from his skin with a groan of agony.
To my horror, the guard begins to swell up, his hands and face inflating to grotesque proportions, before his eyes pop out of his head and his body explodes all over the side of the skiff. A vapor trail of blood hangs in the air where the guard had stood. Fear, like a paralyzing drug, roots me in place.
From the security house, a squelch tracker streaks to the vehicle, emitting a humming scream, while its green laser flails around it. Its long, silvery, razor-sharp point passes right through me, like I’m made of air, as it locates its target ahead.
“SQUELCH TRACKER,” Fenton shouts before the weapon penetrates his door, entering the cab and stabbing his side. Once it enters his body the lasers tear and cut Fenton to pieces in seconds, leaving no more than a pile of flesh on the front seat.
“AMBUSH,” Jax shouts, pulling his machine gun up and pointing it out the window. “REVERSE, REVERSE, REVERSE—” he orders Drex, as metallic, mechanized spiders tumble from the security house, scrambling toward the vehicle.
A second later, I’m inside the vehicle with them, sitting across from Jax in the skiff while it’s wildly careening over the manicured grass of the palace’s geometric gardens. Hearing a scurrying sound of metal tapping against metal, two mechanized spiders have forced their way through the hood of the skiff, disabling the engine. Our vehicle immediately falls to the ground, with a bouncing, jarring crash. Sparks fall on us from the roof before the metal groans as it’s pulled back like the lid of a tin can.
Wayra points his weapon at the sky, dispersing several bursts of electricity from it. The energy flashes out around a spider, frying its circuitry and rendering it useless. “AHHHH, I HATE THOSE CHROME-PLATED CHIGGERS!” Wayra shouts. “DON’T EVEN THINK OF MOVING YOU BLOND KNOB KNOCKER, OR I’LL PUSH A SANCTUM AMP DOWN YOUR THROAT,” he screams at Kyon, who’s struggling to try to remove his neck restraint.
The ominous sound of rapid gunfire splinters the air around our skiff. Glass shatters and sprays the interior of the vehicle, cutting through me as if I don’t exist. “I’M HIT!” Jax screams, the spray of his blood peppering the seat beside him. Blood is spilling unchecked from the gaping hole in Jax’s chest, as his eyes close in agony and he writhes in pain.
Light shines down on us; the powerful beam blinds me as the eerily quiet sound of an E-One helicopter hovers above us. Shielding my eyes from the light, I can just make out the growing smile on Kyon’s face as he’s plucked off his seat like iron to a powerful magnet and is gone from the skiff.