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Chapter One
Jenie
I know he’s there, though I can’t see him.
I can’t hear him knock; the door is too thick. It’s made of
an impenetrable marble, a gray slab that blends seamlessly
with the wall.
If I open it, he will be standing there—waiting for me.
My heart pounds against my ribs, and I step forward,
closer, drawn to the door like a puppet on a string. I
shouldn’t. There are so many reasons why I should leave the
door closed, why I should move away from it and forget it’s
there. Why I should forget him.
But I ache, from the core of my body, like a craving
from my soul, and I’m tired of resisting it. So exhausted by
forcing myself to ignore the needs of my own body.
The dirty things I want from him, raw primal things
that are so wanton I don’t dare dream about them, let alone
act on them. Let alone ask him if he would do them to me.
I pause, breathing, feeling the war between longing and
fear raging through my blood.
I can’t open the door. I shouldn’t. But I do.
The handle turns, silently. Light streams through and
blinds me. I squint, thinking it’s the sun, until my eyes
adjust, and I see it’s him. He is the light; his body glows with
ethereal iridescence. He is not human. And I don’t want
him to be.
“Will you let me in, lulipah?” His voice drips with
sensual concern. I didn’t know those things could be a
combo. “I can help you.”
My pulse slows and grows heavy—heavy with a need for
everything I hear in his voice. His tone drips with promises,
the kind my body is throbbing for.
He reaches for me, but his hand doesn’t come through
the door. He doesn’t touch me. “I want to know you. I can
feel the want radiating from your body like a curse torturing
you.”
I swoon on my feet and grab the doorframe for support.
I can’t help staring at him.
His body is visible through the sheer covering he wears.
His alien form is foreign in its perfection. Like nothing I’ve
ever seen before. He’s a work of art, every muscle flowing
and yet carved into the next—the hardness of his chest, the
mold of his shoulders, and the bulge of his biceps combined
with the taper of his waist. I don’t dare glance below his hips.
What’s there is no doubt visible and as gloriously flawless as
the rest of him.
What’s most entrancing about him, though, is his skin
swirls with a rainbow of colors, blending and flowing in wide
swaths of brilliant sapphire, vibrant crimson, and deepest
midnight. I watch a wave of azure brushes across his firm
chest and downward. Seeing it fills me with a feeling that the
color waves are undulations of desire weaving within him.
As though he visibly echoes and reflects the same desires
aching within me.
His fingers and palm strain toward me. All it would take
is a step for me to walk into his caress over my cheek. The
temptation seethes within my center, and resisting it twists
my stomach.
But I’m afraid that the slightest stroke of his skin
against mine would merge my desire with his, and it would
storm through my veins like a reckless hurricane, ravaging
my self-control.
I cut my head to the side in rejection, the tiniest negative,
the only one I’m capable of.
He lowers his hand. “Why do you resist? I don’t
understand.” Confusion pinches his lips. Oh gods, his lips…
thick and delectable. The perfect shape to…
He bites his lower one as though he knows I’m staring at
it, as though he intuits what I’m dying to do to him myself.
“I would satisfy you.”
A needy moan sounds from my chest, and my mouth
is open, the acquiescence on my tongue. I could let him
through the doorway. I could let him fulfill his promises. I
could submit to every drive to let him pleasure me.
“Tell me what you need,” he croons, almost begging.
“I’ll give it all to you.”
I could tell him—tell him that my body betrays me, that
giving into what he’s offering and I’m needing would wreck
me. I could confess the truth, how I want him to ravage me
so fiercely that I don’t care if it’s what I should or shouldn’t
have.
But the hard truth I’ve told no one is that I have no
control over what happens to me if I take another lover.
My body rules me now. My hormones have changed and
will latch onto the next person I let into my body. I will be
attached to that person for life and will have no say in who
or why, craving that person like I need air in my lungs.
It is nature. I am not fully human but half Ulreya. I
prayed I would escape this curse, the one that ravaged my
mother’s heart. But there is no denying it. The Ulreya urge
to mate awakened in me three days after we landed on this
planet. My body is in heat, and it won’t rest until it can form
a permanent mating bond. I no longer have any control over
what it needs. Even if what it needs from this alien would
likely overwhelm me with pleasure beyond my wildest
dreams.
I step back from the threshold, grabbing the door.
Shock and disappointment rages over his expression.
“Jenie, please. Don’t do this.”
I close the door in his face and seal it.
I jerk myself awake.
I open my eyes, my lungs gasping, my skin coated in sweat.
“Jenie, Jenie!” A face appears in front of me, a female
voice calling me back to consciousness.
I look at her and am relieved to see Leinita, my secondin-
command while our general is away. I am leader of our
crew. Our small metal shelter is illuminated by track lighting
along the ceiling, and Ilena, our chief medical officer, stands
there, too, her face etched with the same anxiety that mars
Leinita’s features.
I groan in frustration and stare at the wall. This is the
third night in a row I’ve woken them with my dreams.
“Another nightmare?” Leinita asks gently, her hand
resting on my shoulder for comfort.
I nod, not wanting to correct her. They’re not nightmares,
exactly, these recurring dreams of needing him, though this
is the first one he’s actually appeared in. Perhaps it was a
nightmare. Giving in to what he offers me is my worst fear.
Ilena hands me a vial full of a creamy liquid. “Here,
take some of the antidote.”
I swallow it without question. Its effect is immediate;
a coolness washes through me, eases the demanding ache
between my legs and soothes the fire of desire raging
through my veins. But it doesn’t stop the desire pounding
through my body, the one the antidote won’t touch, the one
my hormones and my Ulreya heritage pour into me. It’s an
emptiness in my heart, an incompletion in my soul. My very
being demands a partner, a lifelong mate.
Which would be contrary to every goal I’ve ever had
in my life. I am a military woman, a leader in the rebellion
against the Ten Systems Empire. I have too many people
depending on me, too many people whose lives are at stake.
Taking time to indulge my alien sex fantasies isn’t on my todo
list. If I fall for someone who isn’t of my mother’s species,
I risk emotionally and biologically tying myself to a person
who can’t possibly return the lifelong Ulreya bond. If I bond
to someone who rejects me or leaves me, I risk losing my
will to live. It happened to my mother. She was never the
same after my human father left her.
“Better?” Ilena asks.
I take a deep breath. “Yes.” They don’t know about my
other problem. I haven’t told them. My need for a mate is
contrary to our mission. It would be a waste of my time and
theirs to dwell on it.
Leinita squeezes my shoulder. “You need to feed the
desidre. Remember, Koviye said just the antidote isn’t
enough.”
I flinch at his name. Koviye. I haven’t told them he’s the
one in my nightmares either. “I know. I will.” I lie. I will
not be feeding the desidre like Koviye said. It’s not my real
problem, though I’ve let them think it is.
Ilena crouches beside my bed. “We can help you, if you
want.”
Leinita nods agreement. “Whatever you need.”
They’re so generous. They’re offering to help me with
this desidre, this sex fever caused by a toxin in the air on
this gods-forsaken planet. We crash landed here a week
ago after our ship, the Origin, was attacked by the Ssedez
people, who we’ve since realized are our allies against the
oppressive regime we escaped from, the Ten Systems.
I landed here in an escape pod with Ilena and Leinita,
and the three of us had…well, a very pleasurable experience
between us when first confronted with the planet’s desidre.
My mating bond hadn’t awakened yet. My first three days on
this planet were lovely. We discovered a chemical antidote
to keep the fever away, though the toxin cannot fully be
released from the body without sex. Alone helps, but with a
partner, it’s better.
The desidre was dangerous before we developed the
antidote. It’s not life threatening anymore, but we still needed
regular, daily orgasms. It could’ve been an inconvenience,
but now that the crew has fallen into a pattern, it’s turned
out to be bonding. The relationships between them are
solidifying. They’re growing and learning to care for one
another beyond mere comrades in duty. It’s good for them.
For everyone except me, all because my drive to form a
mating bond awoke five days ago.
I have to decline their offer of sex. “I’m okay. Thank
you, though.”
“Do you want us to give you some privacy?” Leinita
asks gently.
I can’t help heat flushing my face. She’s giving me the
opportunity to masturbate by myself, to feed the desidre
alone. “I’m fine, really.”
Ilena frowns. “You must feed it every day. You skipped
yesterday, didn’t you?”
I’ve skipped every day for the last five, since my urge to
mate started. I’m afraid of how it will be different, or if it
might actually be painful now without a partner.
But I do have another excuse besides my bond.
“Yesterday was a big day.” The Ten Systems, the evil empire
we’ve rebelled against, the ones whose goal is to conquer or
destroy every alien in the galaxy, showed up three days ago
on a space war ship, the Hades. We attacked and sent them
into retreat. They took off from the planet, but they took
Assura with them.
Assura…a captive of her worst enemy, Dargule, captain
of the Hades and a foul, evil monster. There is no word to
describe the depraved, psychopathic general who was one of
the many reasons we rebelled and escaped the Ten Systems
military.
Leinita lets go of my shoulder, and her voice comes stern
and certain. “Jenie, you know she’ll escape. Assura can take
care of herself and is probably glad to have the opportunity
to kill that sick motherfucker, finally. She deserves that. It’s
a good thing.”
“She’ll come back, victorious,” Ilena agrees, no less
confident. “We all know it.”
They’re right. Assura will take care of herself. She’s
tougher than even me—and that’s saying something. But
she’s so vital to our rebellion, and to me. It was due to her
tactics we escaped the Ten Systems a month ago. She’s my
former lover and dear friend—I miss her and our times,
before my Ulreya need to mate started, when sex was free
of complications.
I need Assura now. I cannot manage this rebellion
without her, and my heart feels like it will break into pieces
if something happens to her. Though I hide this extreme
reaction from my crew. We’re soldiers. We’re not supposed
to grow attached to each other on this level, or we weren’t as
part of the Ten Systems military. Now that we’ve rebelled,
we’re rewriting all the rules, and I’m not sure what they are
anymore.
“She’s likely to communicate sometime within the next
ten hours,” Leinita says analytically.
Ilena stands and moves back toward her bed. “It’s three
hours to sunrise. Time for more sleep.”
But at the thought of closing my eyes again, I bolt
upright in bed. “I need a walk.” If I go back to sleep, I’ll fall
back into my dreams of Koviye, and I’m not sure I’ll have
the will to resist him again. It’s too dangerous to allow even
my imagination to indulge in the fantasy. The consequences
of it happening in real life, of me forming a mating bond for
a Fellamana, one of the free-loving species who inhabit this
sex planet, would be too severe. Even thinking of sex with
Koviye, of the exquisite act of creating the bond, has me
aroused again.
Oh gods, his hands…
The first time I met him, he touched me. It was merely
a grasping of hands, but something happened, something
extraterrestrial, outside the realm of my human or Ulreya
experience. When his skin met mine, an energy came from
where our skin met, and I nearly melted with what felt like
a scorching orgasm, which should’ve been impossible from
just the touch of his hand. Ridiculous. I told him to stop, and
he let go of me.
The next morning, I woke to the burn of my mating
bond urge raging through my body. I refuse to believe it was
because of him. It’s because my body reached its saturation
with the desidre. It took three days, but it’s this planet that
awakened the bond—not him.
But every time I’ve seen him since, in his visits to our
camp, as he’s helped us adjust to life on his planet and
introduced us to his Fellamana people, I’ve had to fight
overheating from this terrible need to fuck him…like
tear-my-clothes-off, get-on-my-knees-in-the-dirt terrible.
Which, if it weren’t for my fear of forming a mating bond
with him, might actually be fun.
He is the last person I should ever want to bond with.
It’s only the curse of this desidre that has my attentions so
obsessed with him.
His culture knows nothing of monogamy. His very
DNA lacks the ability to commit and attach to a lover for
life. I’d lose my soul to him, because he could never return
my bond.
My lifelong, lose-my-heart-to-you-forever bond.
I ignore Leinita and Ilena’s protests that I need sleep
and go toward the shelter exit. “Don’t worry about me. I’m
sorry I woke you.”
I open the door, escaping into the humid jungle air—
escaping from thoughts of him.