“I am too big for—”
Not wishing to hear her speak poorly of her luscious curves again, I simply lifted her onto my lap and settled the back of her head on my bicep so she would be able to look at me. I wanted to see her eyes, her lips. The rise and fall of her breasts. Feel her.
“Oh!” She wiggled a bit, but when my cock swelled beneath her round bottom, she stilled, her breathing quickening. “I guess this is better.”
“Much.” I lifted my free hand and gently cupped the side of her neck, the side of her face. Using my thumb, I traced the outline of her lips. “You are perfect, and I need to kiss you.”
“Okay.”
I froze. If I kissed her like I had in her bedroom, I would want more. I told her that as well.
She smiled. “Yes, I’m well aware of that. I want it, too. You are lethal, Wulf.”
“Yes, mate? Or no?”
Instead of responding with words, she lifted a hand and repeated my actions, stroking my neck and cheek, my lips. Her eyes darkened as she pulled my head down toward hers. “I think I need more kisses, too.”
I allowed her slight strength to guide my lips to hers. When she was so close I could feel the heat between them, she whispered, “We should really talk first.”
“Tomorrow, mate,” I promised. “Tonight, we do this.”
“I’m not your—”
I crushed her lips to mine, not wanting to hear the denial again. She was mine. My mate. I knew the truth, as did my beast. We simply needed to convince Olivia of our devotion, and I knew no better way than bringing her pleasure.
9
Wulf
The kiss turned carnal as I took what she offered. Her mouth. Her tongue. Just her. Her taste, her feel, her breath.
She was in my lap, and I curled her, lifting her so I could stroke from the back of her knee, up her thigh, over her soft, round ass, the curve of her hip, her waist, the side of her breast. I devoured her as I petted, learned the feel of her softness more thoroughly, enjoyed the way her body conformed to mine, settling into me as if filling every missing piece with her warmth.
“Wulf, the kids.” Her whisper barely carried, but I recognized heat in her voice, the lure of the forbidden. “What if they wake up?”
“Then you will need to be quiet when I make you come.”
Her response was a very wicked and very feminine smile against my lips. “I can do that.”
“Can you? You have offered up quite a challenge to my beast. We shall see.”
Moving quickly, she turned to straddle me so that we faced one another. “Take off your shirt,” she commanded. “Earlier, I didn’t get to see you.”
I chuckled, pleased that she was eager to claim what was hers, and pulled the shirt off in one swift motion. When my gaze returned to her, it was to find her staring as if transfixed. “You can’t be real.”
I looked down to make sure nothing was amiss. Unlike other fighters on The Colony, I had no visible integrations. I had plenty everywhere, but they were beneath the skin. Inside.
“I am very real.” Grabbing each of her hands, I placed them flat on my chest. The heat of her touch soothed and enticed me in equal measure. “I am real and I am yours.”
She shook her head as if to disagree, but her small hands moved and I leaned my head back to enjoy the first real touch of my female. The beast in me preened, eager to come out and play, to present himself to her, to be petted and touched and accepted. But I pushed him back with a ruthlessness that shocked me. He’d had his time with her against the door at the testing center. He’d fucked her. Claimed her. Made her run from us.
This time was mine. Her touch? Mine.
Her small hands roamed, and I soaked in the smallest flicker of her gaze, the breathless sound of her excitement.
“I thought you had some kind of cyborg parts, but I don’t see anything. Are the robot parts in your legs? Or somewhere else?” Embarrassment colored her cheeks, and she blushed a pretty shade of pink.
Slowly I shook my head, watched her. “No mate. I and a few others like me were contaminated with nanoparticles only. They live in my skin, in my muscle and bone. They are invisible to the eye but make me stronger and faster, harder to kill and better at killing.”
She frowned as her eyes moved across my torso. “Invisible?” Her palm settled on my shoulder, and she traced the flesh there as if the idea fascinated her. “Why? I don’t understand. Why would they change you at all? You’re perfect. Why do you call yourself contaminated?”
Holding her gaze so I could gauge her reaction, I laid bare my shame. My failure. My defeat. If she could not accept this, she would not be able to accept me. “I fought many battles against the Hive. Too many to count.” I took a breath, then continued. “But the last battle, myself and a small number of other Atlan warlords were captured.”
“I’m so sorry.” She leaned forward and placed a kiss in the center of my chest. I struggled to breathe, and it was a long moment before I could speak.
“Most Atlans resist the Integration Units, the Hive scientists who transform captured fighters into their newest foot soldiers.”
“That sounds like some nightmare out of Star Trek. You know, like the Borg.”
I had been asked about these fictional creatures within a few days of my arrival on Earth and had used their primitive computers to research the creatures about which she spoke. I shook my head.
“No. I have seen this television fiction and the creatures you call the Borg. The Hive is much more advanced. They do not clunk around on big square spaceships and recharge like batteries stuck in a port. The Hive integrates with biological material on a cellular level. There are no attachments or gadgets. The Hive become what they consume, which are Coalition fighters they capture. As I have now become Hive. That is why the integration of fighters is referred to as contamination. Most of the Hive technology becomes part of us. It cannot be removed. Mine is not visible, but it is there.”
She squeezed my shoulder. “Does it hurt?”
So much for not talking. No matter how much I wanted her lips back on mine, this was what she wanted, my words, and I’d give them to her. I’d give her anything.
“Not anymore.” I would not share with her the agony of the process as they’d dripped microscopic invaders into my bloodstream for hours on end. The agony and fire in nearly every cell in my body as the Hive pieces tore me apart on the cellular level and healed me again with new particles in place of the old. Hive particles.
“I still don’t understand.” A frown marred her forehead. “You escaped. You look normal. Why can’t you go home to Atlan? Why do all those poor veterans end up banished to this Colony place?”
Her hands traced a line from shoulder to waist, the innocent touch appearing to me a mindless caress on her part. For me, it taunted the beast, and my cock swelled nearly to bursting. My female sat in my lap, her legs spread wide, her voice and her touch soft and welcoming. Every cell in my body wanted to rip her clothing off and plunge deep. But not yet. Not yet.
I grabbed her hands to still them, settled them over my heart. “The Hive technology also infiltrates the mind. On The Colony, we are protected from their communication frequencies. Deep within Coalition-controlled space as well. We are a danger to our people, always at risk of falling prey to the Hive’s influence once more. That is why most of us do not choose to go back to our homes.”