Why couldn’t I remember?
“Drak?” Came a groggy voice from behind me.
I whirled around to see Merr-anda blinking at me. I rushed to her side, running my hands over her face. I’d requested the healer tend to her first, but I wanted to make sure myself her injuries were taken care of.
“I’m okay,” she said, and I marveled again at how amazing it was I could understand her. “Val is a good healer, and your medis is some powerful stuff. We don’t have anything like that on Earth.”
I nodded, not sure of all her words. Medis sounded familiar. Ah, that was what the healer had filled the needle with before she jabbed it into my shoulder. I glanced at the spot of the former injury, playing my fingers over the scales there that were good as new.
“Hey,” Miranda’s fingers brushed my jaw. Her gaze roamed my face, lingering on my throat scar before meeting my eyes. “Now that we can finally communicate, I have some questions, okay? I’ll try to make them yes or no.”
I nodded, urging her to go ahead.
She smiled. “When we first met, did you know your name?”
I shook my head, and she sucked in a breath. She licked her lips and swallowed. “Okay, that’s what I thought. You remembered that night you said your name on the roof, right?”
I nodded.
“Was that… the first memory you had in a while?”
I nodded again.
“When the Kulk called you a Drixonian, that made you remember something, didn’t it?”
I gestured around us to indicate I’d remembered I was a Night King.
“Okay so you remembered you were a part of this clavas.” She reached for me, her touch gentle but her words direct. “Do you remember why you were forced to leave?”
I shook my head. My skin felt too tight, and I forced down the agitation. I didn’t know. I didn’t know, and it pissed me the fleck off. What had happened? How dishonorable was I? When Merr-anda found out, would she send me away?
Her fingers combed through my hair. “Hey, hey, calm down. It’s okay.”
I forced myself to calm. I’d been panting with my fists clenched.
“I believe you, Drak. I believe that you don’t remember. And I also believe that whatever you did, you’re not that person anymore, okay?”
Wasn’t I? What if I was?
“Drak, it’s me. Merr-anda.” She pressed a kiss to my nose. My forehead. Each cheek. “Don’t worry about all of that yet. Right now, it’s just you and me. Just us.”
Just us. Like before. We didn’t have my hut or roof anymore, but that didn’t matter. We could pretend. She was my mate, and I was hers. No matter what this rotation held, or the next, or the one after, I’d always, always belong to her. My cora beat for her.
I kissed her, rolling us so she lay on her back, looking up at me with those deep brown eyes that comforted me like nothing before. Her hands smoothed down my arms, and her lips tilted up into that coy smile she always gave me before I took her. She liked my tongue and my cock, and I didn’t like a day to go by where I didn’t pleasure her with one. Both was better.
I kissed her, delving my tongue deep to taste her. She moaned and spread her legs, calves rising to press against my hips. I settled between them swiping her tongue with mine one last time before pulling back.
She stared up at me, her mouth wet from my attentions. “Drak,” she murmured.
I slid down her body, tugging off our clothes as I went. I hated them. When we’d been alone, we often went without in my hut. I loved seeing the way her large breasts swayed when she walked, and it’d been easy to slip my tongue between her legs whenever I wanted a taste of her.
When she was bared to me, I studied her sweet cunt with its dark curls. With my claws completely retracted, I spread her folds and slid my tongue from her entrance to her clit.
She arched her back and gripped my hair, tugging fiercely with a growly moan that made my cock ache every time. I ate at her, nipping slightly and swirling the balls pierced into my tongue around her sensitive flesh. Her heels dug into my back and her body shook as I pleasured her with my mouth.
I wanted to spear her with my cock, so I concentrated on her hard bud, sucking hard until she came with a trembling cry. I rose above my mate, licking her juices off my lips and chin before placing the tip of my cock at her entrance and surging inside.
Her neck arched and she hissed out a “yessssss,” as I plunged into her, a knee on the bed so I stroked her at the perfect angle, the one I’d perfected after getting to know her body so well.
She clung to my shoulders, eyes staring into mine, body jolted with each of my thrusts. I pounded her sweet body, wishing I could tell her how much she meant to me, how I’d kill for her and die for her. That she was the reason I remembered my own flecking name.
But I couldn’t. All I could do was grab her palm and place it around my throat. Her eyes widened as I chanted her name with each rut of my hips. “Merr. Anda. Merr. Anda. Merr. Anda.”
She blinked rapidly, and her lips parted. I kissed her, pouring everything I had into that kiss just as I came, releasing myself into her. My arms shook, and I fell to the side of her, keeping us connected as I liked to do, as she panted beside me.
Her palm remained on my throat. “Merr. Anda.” I whispered.
A single tear slid down the side of her face, and I licked it away.
Ten
Miranda
I loved him. Which was a total mindfuck. I went from Independent Woman to Devoted Mate in a matter of weeks. In the back of my mind, I had to admit to myself I’d thought the other women emotionally weaker for falling for these big blue guys. Despite the whole mate and loks thing, I figured they still just went along with it when I would have fought it.
And now look at me. Not fighting it at all. Hell, I would fight this whole clavas for Drak, and that terrified me. What if they refused to accept him? What would I do? I loved my girls, but I also couldn’t imagine being without Drak. He was the reason I felt I could win a hypothetical Survivor: Planet Torin television series. In the past, I’d either dated men who wanted to dominate me or who wanted me to be their second mom. I was never about any of that.
But Drak was my partner. My teammate. He lay beside me with his violet eyes swirling and my palm tingling from the rasp of my name on his tongue. I believed in my heart he was good. I would get to the bottom of why he was sent away and use every single courtroom skill I had to convince Daz to let Drak stay.
No one on this planet had met Miranda Glennon, defense attorney for the prestigious Michaels and Paulson law firm, but they were about to.
Silence was our norm, but now he could understand me, I found myself wanting to fill the silence. So, I did. I told him about how I was taken from Earth by the Rahguls and plopped on this planet like livestock. I explained how Daz and his males had been supposed to deliver us to the Uldani in exchange for Sax, who they had imprisoned. But Daz had no intention of ever handing us over to the Uldani. Sax ended up getting free on his own with Val, and we’d been living in these walls ever since.
“I went out with Gar and another male to learn some hunting techniques. We got separated and that was when the Kulks grabbed me. And you rescued me.”
He tried to say a word, his neck strained, and he grew frustrated when no sound came out. I wasn’t a lip reader, but I tried. “Are you saying safe?”