Amanda
Grigg growled, and damn my traitor pussy, it clenched hard, closing around emptiness with an ache that wasn’t welcome.
“If you refuse the collar, any unmated male who sees you may claim the right to court you for thirty days.”
I could take care of myself, so what was the issue?
“What if I tell him no?”
Rav sighed. “You can’t, Amanda. You have been sent to us by the Interstellar Bride Program, a declared bride, a matched mate perfect for the warriors of Prillon Prime. Should you refuse us, another has the right to claim you for the thirty-day courting period. It’s too late to change your mind. Any male you refuse will simply be replaced by another, and another. Death matches will be fought. Good warriors will die for the chance to court you.
That was medieval. Stupid. “Death matches? That’s crazy.”
“It’s custom. If someone were to try and claim you, Amanda, I would fight in a death match for you. I would win.”
I wasn’t sure if Grigg’s confidence was because of the strength of our match or the skill of his fighting.
“What happens if I have a daughter? She has to be mated when she’s born? She can’t go anywhere without a man? That’s ridiculous.”
Grigg’s answer rumbled through his thick chest. “Of course not. Females are respected among us. Honored. Those born on Prillon are protected by all the warriors of their clan until she is of mating age and chooses to take a mate’s collar.”
“What happens if there are no more warriors left? If she’s an orphan? Or a widow?”
It was a little late to be worried about the details, but I just couldn’t imagine bringing a daughter into this crazy mess, ever, if she was going to be treated like property. Of course, I wasn’t going to be having children. I wasn’t here to be a mate. Not really. I had a job to do. I needed to remember that. I had barely finished the thought when Grigg’s next words almost made me smile.
“The question is irrelevant. Any male who looks at our daughter will be eliminated.”
Rav chuckled, but actually answered my question. “If all the warriors of a clan are killed, any remaining females are allowed to choose from the remaining warrior families for protection and belonging. No one is ever left alone. That is the primary reason all Prillon brides on the front lines are honored with two mates. Should Grigg or I be killed, you will have the protection and love of your surviving mate to take care of you and any children.”
“And then what? I get another second mate?”
“Generally, yes. If your surviving mate is still active in combat, you will be allowed to choose another second.”
I stared at the seemingly benign strip of black ribbon in my hand and forced air in and out of my lungs. I’d been so damn cocky agreeing to this assignment.
Go out into space? Sure.
Go through an alien bride-matching program? No problem.
Fool my new mate into trusting me and then send intel back to Earth? Not looking so easy.
And maintaining a clear head? Professionalism? Staying calm and in control?
As the mind-blowing orgasm I’d just experienced had proven, I was fucked. In more ways than I cared to admit.
Rav watched me closely, as if trying to read the play of emotions running through me. If they had a gadget to test my arousal level, I had to wonder if they had something that could read my mind too. If they did, Rav wasn’t waving it in front of me.
He couldn’t tell that I felt anger, frustration, regret. Guilt. That one shocked me. I’d known these men for a ridiculously short time and already I was feeling guilty for my inevitable betrayal. And why? Because they made me feel beautiful? Feminine? Because the orgasm was out of this world—literally—and now I was going to be a slave to my urges? An idiot who couldn’t control her emotions or her body? I’d been through too many levels of hell out in the field to surrender my sense of self so quickly.
At the same time, I had two gorgeous men who obviously wanted me. They knew just how to get me off without a clit sucker thing. What woman was stupid enough to deny herself what these men could give her? Hot, holy-fucking-hot orgasms. I could get the intel and get laid at the same time. Maybe I owed it to all women on Earth to get all the threesomes I could get while the getting was good.
Rav nodded at the collar. “Your choice, Amanda, but I promise you, we won’t make it out of the medical station without challenge if you are not wearing it.”
“But I was only matched to you. Why would any other warriors want me?”
Grigg rolled his shoulders, as if preparing for battle. “Because you are beautiful, Amanda. And an unclaimed bride. Women are rare out here. They would be more than willing to take their chances with you, and eager to take you to bed to convince you.”
Wanting to reclaim a bit of control, to push back, as they’d just pushed me on that exam table, I asked one more question. “What if I don’t want to put it on?”
Rav, gentle Rav’s honey-gold eyes turned a dark, dusky shade of amber. “Then Grigg and I will fight every warrior between here and our private quarters if necessary.”
I scoffed at that, but Rav’s face was completely devoid of humor. I twisted in Grigg’s arms to see he bore the same grave expression. They were serious.
“A death match?” I asked.
“I am not aware of how it is on Earth, but the mating process is serious. Crucial. Elemental. We have an advantage, because you have been matched. We know that you are perfect for us,” Rav clarified.
“We will kill any warriors who try to take you from us,” Grigg added. “You are ours.”
What, exactly, had I gotten myself into? In order to leave the room, I had to put on the collar. If I didn’t, all hell was going to break loose. While I’d never had men fight over me before, this didn’t sound like a bar brawl. The term “death match” seemed pretty self-explanatory and I didn’t wish anyone to come to harm. I’d wear the collar, keep people alive and get to work. Perhaps get laid while I did so.
At the same time, I sensed this was important to Rav and Grigg. This wasn’t me just putting on a necklace. This was a symbol of their…ownership of me. It was important to them and wearing it for false reasoning seemed to diminish that. Again with the damn guilt.
Shaking now, I lifted the collar to my neck and wrapped it around, as I’d seen them do. The ends sealed together on their own and it felt like the ribbon grew warmer, wet, as if it were melting into my skin, fusing to me—
Seconds later I gasped as my mind and body were flooded with feelings that were not my own. Lust. Hunger. A primitive urge to hunt. To protect. To claim.
Emotions and need filled my mind and I couldn’t process it all. “What is happening?” I was going to vomit. The room was spinning. I was drowning. I covered my mouth with my hand.
“Breathe, Amanda. I’ve got you.” Grigg’s voice became an anchor and I clung to it desperately to still the whirlwind of emotion rolling through me as Rav spoke.
“Lock down your emotions, Grigg. You’re drowning both of us.”
“I can’t. Not until I’ve claimed her.”
Rav cursed as Grigg stood and marched me out of the small, private exam room into the hustle and bustle of a busy medical ward. At least ten patients and staff turned with curious eyes to track our progress as Grigg carried me through the room. I saw two others wearing Rav’s green, one a male of the same race, big and golden, and one smaller female with an odd pair of gold cuffs around her wrists and long, cherry-red hair pulled tightly into a braid that fell to her hips. The patients were mostly huge warriors in various stages of undress, their black battle armor in pieces around them, bare, bulky chests heaving with pain.
I was a red-blooded woman still half-aroused after an unbelievable orgasm. I looked. I couldn’t help it. I was mated, not dead.
“Close your eyes, mate. Now, or I will be forced to remind you exactly who your wet pussy belongs to now.” Grigg’s order made me grin, for I hadn’t realized my feelings at looking at the attractive giant were sensed through the collar. I obeyed, not wanting to start trouble by staring overlong at the biggest man I’d ever seen in my life. “What kind of alien is he?”
Grigg growled as he continued walking but Rav answered, as per what I was discovering might be the usual. “He’s an Atlan Warlord. They are one of the rare races whose warriors are larger than those of Prillon.”
Grigg’s hold on me tightened as he finally did something other than snarl. “The Atlans are fierce warriors and are in charge of all the Coalition infantry units. They fight the Hive on the ground, in close combat. That was Warlord Maxus. He has been fighting with us for seven years, and must leave soon, his fever is upon him.”
“Fever?”
“Mating fever. If the Atlan warriors do not find and claim a mate capable of controlling them, they become beasts, berserker giants a third again as large as the one you saw.”
“Their mates control them?”
“Yes, in a way. Their mates are the only beings capable of calming the rage of their beast. Without a mate, they lose control and must be put down.”
What the hell? Put down? Like a dog? “Put down, as in killed? You can’t be serious. That’s cruel.”
“No, it is necessary. You are not on Earth any longer. You are not even in the same galaxy. Out here we fight for survival, we fight to defend all the Coalition worlds, including your Earth, from a fate worse than death. We do not have time for jokes. An Atlan in berserker mode killed six of my warriors on my first command before I shot him dead. He was a friend, a man I’d fought with and trusted. My hesitation cost lives, Amanda. The Atlans live by a different code of honor, a strict code designed to safeguard all they fight to protect. As he lay bleeding out, he thanked me.”
I tried to imagine the strength of conviction, the depth of pain, one would feel executing a friend and my heart broke a little for the warrior carrying me. There was much humanity did not know or understand about the alien warriors under whose domain we now lived. But, that was a big part of the reason I was here, to learn, to understand, and send information back to Earth.
I heard a door open and close, then another. Soon the faint sounds of others faded and Grigg was settling me on my feet. For reasons I could not explain, even to myself, my eyes were still closed as he’d ordered. His story made me sad, and made me hurt for him. He was so damn hard, so trapped by his choices, just as I was.
I didn’t want to like him overly much. I didn’t want to have sympathy for him either. Today was not going to be my best day to remain strong and detached. Perhaps it was the collar, perhaps I just liked these men. Perhaps their sense of honor and service was not so dissimilar to the veterans who served at home.
No, they weren’t men. They were aliens. Prillon. And it didn’t mean they were right. Soldiers followed orders. For better or for worse, that was the way things had always been. And these warriors, my mates, were first and foremost, soldiers. It was up to me to discover the motivations and truths behind those issuing the orders.
When my feet touched the floor, Grigg allowed the sheet to drop and pool at my feet. His arms were around me, pressing me close, holding my cheek to his chest, the loud thumping of his heartbeat oddly human and reassuring, even through the hard press of his uniform. After a few moments, he ran his hands up and down my back, tracing my curves to the apex of my ass, then back up to my shoulders as if the feel of my skin soothed him.
“Rav?” Grigg’s voice was softer than I’d heard it yet, an apology in that one word, regret in the emotional tornado my collar forced me to feel.
“Yes.” That fast, the doctor was behind me, his heat like a fire at my back.
“I can’t control myself.”
“I know.”
“Take her.” Grigg shifted slightly, gently pushing me to take a step back into Rav’s arms. “Open your eyes, Amanda.”
I did, to find him backing away to sit in a large chair near an even larger bed. His gaze would have burned holes in me if in physical form and I realized there was a roiling of emotion building like a caldera in his chest. I sensed it, the intensity of it, through the collar.
“What are you doing? I don’t understand.”
I knew his cock was rock hard and desperate to fill me. I knew he wanted to touch me so badly he was afraid he would hurt me if he did so. He was afraid, afraid to lose control, afraid he would be too rough and frighten me. As he stripped naked, the massive muscles of his chest and back made my mouth water.
Rav wrapped his arms about me and I wasn’t sure if his hold was to keep me from escaping or because he wanted to feel me. He held me pressed to him, my back to his chest as Grigg stepped free of his pants, kicking them aside, his huge cock straining to reach me. It was swollen and thick, the blunt head so wide. An artery pulsed up the bulging length. I saw the drop of pre-cum on the tip, watched it slide down the smooth crown. I licked my lips, unable to stop myself from imagining what that little pearly drop would taste like burning down my throat and into my belly, or rubbed over my breasts. And it was like fire. The liquid had heated my clit somehow and I knew that it would do the same to the rest of me.
Rav’s hands rose to cup my bare breasts and Grigg, watching every move, shuddered.
“Yes, Rav. We will claim her now. Fuck her. Do exactly what I tell you,” Grigg growled.
Through the strange link forged by our collars, I felt Rav bristle at Grigg’s high-handed demands. The collars were a powerful and heady tool. I sensed things, knew things I shouldn’t, having just transported. Somehow, I knew that Rav was used to taking orders from his commander and would do as he said, even fucking me. It was an easy order, for he was too eager to touch me to refuse. The cock pressing hard and thick into my back told me that he was more than ready to do anything Grigg wanted him to. We were both at Grigg’s mercy—I, certainly, was at both of theirs—at his whim, and for some reason, that thought made me so fucking hot I began to shake.
Grigg settled back in the chair, his knees spread wide, his cock at attention, and his arms spread across the armrests like a king sitting atop his throne. The king spoke, “Lift her and carry her to the edge of the bed. Lay her down on her back so that her head is hanging over the edge. I want her looking at me.”
I didn’t fight Rav’s hold as he lifted me and settled me on the giant bed. The bedding was soft and a deep blue just a shade lighter than my mates’ collars. Rav positioned me on my back, as ordered, my head hanging down over the edge where I had to look past Grigg’s cock, up to that enormous, muscled chest to his golden face. In the dim light his eyes looked nearly black as they devoured me, lingering on my breasts where they thrust up into the air. When his gaze met mine, I shuddered at the intensity of the lust flowing through me from my men.
God, I loved the collar. I knew, just knew, how much my men wanted me. This wasn’t a game. This was…primal.
Grigg’s grin was pure cocky male, and I studied his face, this man I’d just met and was about to give myself to.
“Do you like it when I watch, Amanda?”
What? I’d never! I’d never admit it to him. “No.”
“Does it make your pussy wet?”
“No.” What did he want from me here? I was already naked, on my back, at their mercy. Now he wanted me to tell him I wanted him. Tell him I wanted him to watch like some pervert? No. No way. I knew Rav was kneeling at my feet, waiting, anticipation making both of us struggle to breathe.
Grigg’s gaze narrowed. “Do you want us to stop?”
Shit. No. No I didn’t. I wanted this, whatever it was. I’d never planned on having two mates, never planned to be dominated so completely. It disturbed me, how badly I wanted this. But I was too far gone to stop. I was here, in space. And these men were mine. Fucking mine.
“I can sense the lies through the collar, Amanda. Your mind may try to refuse, but your body will never lie to me or Rav. You’ve lied once. You shouldn’t do so again. I will ask again, do you want us to stop?”
I felt their power, their need, their strength, their arousal through the collar, which meant they could sense mine. I couldn’t hide. I could bare my body but the collar bared my soul. I licked my lips, uttered the words I could deny no longer.
“No. Don’t stop.”
Satisfied, Grigg held my gaze as he issued his next order to Rav. “Spread her legs and tell me if her pussy is wet.”