Confined in the red gown, too much fabric twisted about her, both draping and tight. Nudity would have been preferable; so much clothing altered the paradigm.

  Quinn drew in a deep breath and found the man’s scent, just like the fingers manipulating the nerves in her nape, unwelcomely sedating. Sovereign’s touch and his physiology had a chemical effect, forcing calm with little effort. The hand by her cheek curled, Quinn’s nails burrowing between bared ribs deep enough to draw blood. Sovereign allowed it. When her fingertips drew little beads of red, Quinn found it pretty, running the fluid from fingernail to tongue, unsure why she did such a thing or why the action earned Sovereign’s rumbled hum of approval.

  The imperial soldiers still haunted her room, Karhl watching her as he had before.

  A finger under her chin, Sovereign turned Quinn’s frowning face up so no other but him was in her view. “Why would you sleep for years, Sigil?”

  Brows drawing tight, Sigil held her breath to avoid the sedative scent. The pressure of Sovereign’s mouth descended upon hers; he breathed between her lips, undoing her effort and adding his taste as retribution. Smoothing back her hair, breathing in her impatient exhale, Sovereign held the agitated female, wrapped securely in limbs she would be unable to easily throw off. “Answer me.”

  Her tongue moved before she could fully stop it. “Que places me in cryo when I find I can no longer resist the urge to... do things,”

  Soft words tempted further explanation. “To prevent you from coming to me?”

  The strange cloying comfort diminished at the memory of just what things she’d done. “Sometimes I fall asleep and cannot be woken. Sometimes to prevent me from slaughtering everything between me and the meat I wish to gnaw off your bones.”

  He saw, Sovereign saw every last tick of excitement growing on his captive’s face as she imagined following through on the threat. “How many years have you slept total?”

  Licking the sharp edges of her teeth she muttered, “Decades I have slept so you could live.”

  The subtle shift in his expression altered from enticement to irritation. “How very generous.”

  How dare he look at her with disapproval. Quinn grew nasty. “I should have killed you on Condor. I should have dug through the rubble until I found you and ripped out your heart with my teeth!”

  Sovereign sharply pinched her neck, silently warning he would induce total submission should she lose her temper further. Eyes furious, Quinn wilted.

  The bastard kissed the tip of her nose.

  When the threat of his fingers on her nape disappeared, her audible breath—something growl-like—warned him she was nowhere near calm. Sovereign traced her angry flush with the back of his knuckles before his fingertips dug into her hair to work against her scalp in a more conventional effort to soothe. “There is no more war for you to fight. You may be angry, but you’ve lost nothing of your honor by my methods.”

  Quinn wiggled to prevent further contact. “I can almost hear Commander Dimitri in your excuses, ‘Honor, methods,’ it seems something he would spout while he had me tortured, vids of you fucking courtesans playing on every wall. I remember one female in particular. Her hair was blonde and she had pretty eyes like you do. I have seen you come in her, over, and over, and over. Dimitri enjoyed drowning and resuscitating me to that common performance. Every time you fucked her, I enjoyed the pain of stagnant water pooling in my lungs. There was a brunette; they only burned me when you mounted her. I used to pray you would. But, you had such a thing for that blonde.”

  An angry throat noise, Sovereign’s seeming sweetness ruined by naked malice. “Beloved, had I known—”

  “You would have chosen the brunette?” Quinn spat. “There was only one creature that has ever helped me.” She needed them to know she would fight for him until her heart stopped. “Have you hurt Que?”

  Sovereign schooled his features back into affability, brushing his lips over hers in a murmured, “No.”

  Her breath hitched, she thought she might bite down on that pouted lip, and fought to control herself. “Will you?”

  “Harming the Axirlan would be counterproductive to my goal.” The backs of his fingers ghosted over her cheek again, a tender gesture that did not match the growing violence in Sovereign’s eyes. “You are separated from his influence. He cannot reach you. Show me that you are willing, give me no cause to be threatened, and the alien’s free existence will continue.”

  Caught in those eyes, tossed between the worming desire to kill him and the need for him to feel her threat, she hissed, “If you ever hurt him I will rip you and all your kind apart.”

  Sovereign’s answer was paired with a slow stroke down her flank. “Then understand my position. If you seek him, I will kill him. The Axirlan has no place in your life.”

  A corded arm urged her to lay back so that his mouth might taste her throat, Quinn finding it difficult to remain pliant at the sincerity his thoughts echoed in the threat. “Promise me.”

  Attention was lavished along her jaw, the fragile lobe of her ear, Sovereign fitting his body to hers. “I do not mean to be harsh with you, Sigil. Understand I speak, and will act, out of jealousy and anger at his part in keeping you from me. Had he not interfered and stolen years of your life, it would have saved you decades of suffering.”

  Quinn gave a derisive snort. “His restraint made it so I could not hunt you, gut you, and eat what I found inside.”

  “You taste my blood and moan... growing so aroused I can smell it.” He nosed her throat, smirking as he licked her precisely where she had tasted him in her haze. “The hunt... this misinterpretation you cling to in your limited knowledge of your genetics and the effects of your indoctrination—what you experienced, the need, was a precursor to your fertile cycle. You sought me to breed.”

  An unintentional pop of psionics and she shoved out of his clutches, her arms tight around her middle as she backed away. “You are wrong. I am sterile!”

  She had tried everything to conceive, to give Que what she knew he desired. How dare Sovereign say differently.

  Sovereign, already beside her, splayed large fingers over her womb. Bearing an expression of exultation he said, “Inducing ovulation requires sharp pressure,” he brushed her hair aside, to press a kiss to her nape, “here, and the sperm of a genetic equivalent. Your Axirlan could never give you children as I can. Nor could he love you as I do. The species is physically incapable on both counts. Let’s not pretend you do not know their laws. Were your Que to hear these things he would give you to me willingly, unable to regret it, because I am best for you and will provide what is missing in your existence.”

  Quinn’s attention went to Karhl, as if the large warrior might shake his head and negate such a cruel statement.

  He did not.

  “Sovereign is correct, young one. Axirlan code would never allow him to upset the natural order, or your place in it.”

  Her heart was breaking, her eyes unable to part from the sea glass of the Lord Commander’s. “Que saved my life. After Condor I was... when he found me I knew nothing of the universe but pain, survival, and rage.” Sensing the deep hate both men harbored in their thoughts, she defended her only friend. “I tried to murder him, to steal his ship when my beacon drew him near. He still took me in, though I was feral and didn’t speak for years. Que is the only family I have ever known. Harm to him would kill me!”

  “I won’t execute the Axirlan because I do not wish to see you saddened,” the words were breathed over her clavicle, Sovereign answering her pleas where she could not see the abhorrence on his face. “See, I can be reasonable.”

  What she could sense from him signaled honesty, but it wasn’t enough, not when she could hurt him now, then Karhl... the soldiers. Feeling almost herself again, thinking violence—a grand slaughter—would be better than trusting something she hated, Quinn let her nails dip into Sovereign’s open shirt to draw more blood.

  His head raised, mouth a little swollen from use, and those oceanic eyes met hers with no shame. “I can sense your growing bloodlust and would prefer not to force you to end it. Show me you will try and the issue of the Axirlan will not be spoken of again.”

  Biting back her vile retort, Quinn froze, feeling him bunching up the layers of the ridiculous gown. He pressed her back to her bed, seeking soft skin that felt forbidden simply because it had been covered. The sickening anticipation, the puffing juicy flesh between her legs swelling in expectation of slow encroaching fingers, she could hardly understand.

  As if he appreciated her internal war, Sovereign whispered, “You need this.”

  Careless that the Lord Commander and four converts stood in the room, Sovereign delved into the slippery folds, his tongue dipping into her mouth, undulating in a kiss far more lecherous than any she’d known.

  Que never kissed her, the act foreign to his species and one she seldom took part in with others. To have someone do it now, to taste the man... felt forbidden. With each sweep of his tongue, sensation stirred as it had when he’d held her to the floor. Hooked fingers tangled inside her pussy, a sure thumb bobbing Quinn’s swollen clit. When her breath began to croon, hips involuntarily rocking, Sovereign observed, fascinated, absorbing the way slender brows drew together, the beauty of her lips parting just before her moist core spasmed and clenched tight.

  She found the lesson.

  Even after orgasm the madness was still multiplying, the need to hunt growing. Physical pleasure had done nothing because Sovereign’s part to play was not over. He needed to come inside her so her body could register... what he was.

  It seemed he asked permission, though he didn’t ask at all.

  Rolling to give him her back, she sought the illusion of solitude where she might gather herself and breathe through the urge. Unsure if he had misread her movement as an offering, she squeaked when his teeth found her spine. Yet Sovereign only sucked softly and did not bite.

  Breathing heavy, his hand tucked into her bodice to pluck and twist a nipple with fingers still wet with her juices. “Trust me.”

  He asked for trust but expected hostility. Holding her tight, Sovereign freed his cock from his clothing, and pulled her to sit on his thighs so he might enter from behind, his teeth prepared at her nape.

  A bulbous glans smeared through the slippery remains of her climax and slithered decadently into her core.

  It killed her, the exuberance of her moan, hating herself for relishing the sensation of one evil man burrowing deep. Eyes screwed shut, trying to escape how very devastating his possession could be, Quinn was unprepared to feel another set of lips brush hers. Startled, lashes lifted and she found Karhl had seized her mouth with an expertise that shook her. His tongue teased at her lips and the white-haired warrior stroked under her skirt to stimulate the apex of her sex.

  The power in which they destroyed her resistance, pulling her between aggression and tenderness was frightening in its success. In tandem they decimated: Sovereign fucking so fast the wet sounds of brutal thrusts were not drowned out by even her mewls. Karhl’s tracing the sensitive roof of Sigil’s mouth while gently massaging the stiff little bundle of nerves until climax brought her to scream. Any last trace of violence shattered at that first splash of answering come. Drained of superfluous strength, she sagged. Sovereign pawed over her womb, sucking the side of her neck as he continued to spill, Karhl fingering the labia stretched tight around a thick twitching cock to extend her pleasure.

  With one sucking kiss to her bottom lip, the Lord Commander pulled back. His hand trailed from under her skirt so he might answer the distressed look in her eye. “Do not fret, young one. Sovereign holds the greatest claim, but as the only female of our species, some will see you as mother, others sister... the strongest of us will desire you as lover.”

  The Lord Commander’s earlier possessive behavior began to make sense. Knowing it must have been sanctioned by the emperor still gushing inside her, Quinn muttered, “I am to be shared.”

  There was a look of compassion in the rugged edge of Karhl’s eyes. Wiping a trace of saliva from her lips, the white-haired warrior clarified, “You are the Eve of our people, Sigil. Your daughters are something we have longed for, for a century. Submit to Sovereign. Be healed, bear his offspring, and your brothers will be well-pleased and patient to see our numbers swell.”

  Sovereign growled, contented, gripping Quinn’s breast in the way he found made her skin bump and throat constrict. “Do not try to hide your resurfacing compulsion again. I will not allow you to suffer.”

  Quinn thought of the grate in the lavatory, far too overwrought to argue. Sovereign was inside her far more than physically. She could feel the chemical interactions, the softening of her organs to allow him as deep as he wished to go—the minutia had been missed in her previous panic, and something about noticing it as he held and stroked her, as he whispered he adored her, left her boneless.

  Staring off into space, Quinn muttered, “Que once brought me a male who looked like you, unaware of my appetite. I… did things to him. My friend couldn’t stop me; not without shooting me three times and digging a blade between my ribs. By then it was too late. It took four years in cryo for my brainwaves to normalize. When I woke the first thing I remembered was the taste of that stranger’s heart.”

  “What did it taste like?” Sovereign asked, kissing her damp temple, hearing her old pain.

  “Bitter.”

  “Did you regret it?”

  Sigil blinked once. The corners of her mouth turned down. “I still regret it.”

  Sovereign confessed his own sin. “At the birth of the empire I found a courtesan with hair almost the same shade as yours. I brought her to the palace, rode her day and night—made her think I cared for her, all the while imagining you. But she wasn’t you.” Sovereign’s hands toyed with a length of plum stained waves, eyeing the altered color with distaste. “I grew bored and cast her off. She killed herself.”

  At the birth of the Empire Sigil had still been only a child. “I suppose we’re both monsters.”

  Black hair hung in his eyes as he turned her chin to taste her mouth. “At least I didn’t try to eat her, lost lamb.”

  Chapter 7

  She had been fed, the soldiers having dug through her supplies to create a plate, offering it as if it was theirs to give. Sovereign had not left her to Karhl, instead he remained, watching her every move as if calculating her thoughts.

  But he was not an empath.

  Even so, she looked so worried Sovereign did not need to be. It was in the way she fingered the almost healed scabs at her nape and kept to the corner furthest from her guard. Fidgeting with the dress kept her hands busy, for it was tight, cumbersome with all its layers—designed, she imagined, to slow her into stuttering steps.

  Sovereign offered her a book, an actual book with pages discolored by time and use. It was such an odd thing to see, her fingers could not help but reach for it. The old earth artifact was fascinating, had a scent to it that was both dusty and appealing. When she found a place to sit, her back to the wall so, should one of the unwelcome males in the room move, she would know.

  She read through the tome quickly, familiar with the language but unaccustomed to such a collection of stories. Unsure if she misunderstood, she read it again. Her eyes broke from the page, the frown returning.

  “The book did not please you?” Sovereign was staring at her, assessing.

  “The concept is unusual. This bible is full of violence and contradictions: a vengeful god, the pacifist, accepting messiah whose friends used his resurrection to further their beliefs and influence. They were obviously lying. Humans are power hungry and can never be trusted.”

  “Those humans do not exist anymore.”

  Her eyes went to the soldiers, the changed beings that even after modification were a far cry from her genetics. “There are still free humans. I have seen their societies.”

  There was no judgment, only curiosity when Sovereign asked, “And they cast you out?”

  “No.” There was no need to say more, Quinn’s interactions with humans had not gone well, but they’d never cast her out.

  Sovereign understood the silence. “They hurt you.”

  “The same way you did.”

  She could see it on his face, the misunderstanding evolve to abject fury. Only her wounded child form would have been weak enough for a human to harm. “These humans, where are they?”

  “Long since digested,” Quinn said, looking to frighten the man.

  Sovereign took a step closer, his voice infinitely soft. “Why did you eat them?”

  Quinn reply was as icy as her eyes. “I was starving.”

  “And when the humans were gone?”

  Bored, Quinn sighed. “I was alone on a planet where the flora made me vomit and the fauna took more skill to catch than a person.”

  “This world you lived on...” Sovereign kneeled, his fingertips landing lightly on Quinn’s knees. “You built yourself a throne, you played queen?”

  She had done that with supply crates at the vacant brigand outpost, made a court of skeletons to talk to. Sovereign had been there, he had found that wild place. “I was just a child.” She grew defensive. “Children play.”

  “But you were never allowed to play,” Sovereign said, a dark light in his eyes. “A nurse once gave you a toy in secret. They made you kill her when the doll was discovered.”

  No, he was wrong. Breaking the nurse’s neck had been mercy. Her handlers were torturing the woman, peeling off her skin. “I killed her because I wanted to.”

  “And the doll?”

  There was no reason to think on old things. “I do not want to talk anymore.”

  “Are you afraid of Condor?”

  A wicked smirk graced her mouth. “Who fears a pile of ashes?”

  “But you did not burn it down.” Sovereign shook his head. “Your brothers found old records, recordings, the notes of your handlers. I watched what was done to you, what made you this way.”