Captured Rapture: 3 (Mercy) Read online

  “Insane,” I snarled back, baring my teeth. Trouble is, at this point in time, I wasn’t one-hundred percent sure I showed Torr my teeth because I wanted to kill him or fuck him. In all honesty, the answer was probably both. “Crazy as a cut snake.”

  Green fire flared in his enraged eyes. “Because you finally experienced true rapture, Rai’nia?” he asked, although something about his smooth, deep voice told me he already knew it was the truth. “Or because you finally discovered who you really are?”

  “Ha!” I barked, fighting against his crushing weight as much as I fought the urge to yield to it. “And what am I, Torr? A bloody big lizard? That flies? In space?” I curled my lip, letting him see the contempt I felt at the very idea. “Do you see my wings?”

  “I don’t need to see them to know what you are, chyre. I can feel them.” His nostrils flared and he pressed his lower body harder to mine, driving one thick, muscled leg and then the other between my thighs. “I can feel you.” His raging hard-on pushed at my folds, and once again, I had to bite back a groan of traitorous pleasure. Shyte, I hated him.

  Yeah. Hate. That’s what I’m feeling right now.

  “What do you need to believe, Raina Mynn?” He brought his head closer to mine, barely skimming my cheek, my temple, with his lips.

  I drew in a breath, and I’m ashamed to say it was a trembling one. How did the insane man do this to me?

  I let out a sharp sigh and shook my head. My body still burned from the absolute rapture of our coupling and I—

  Oh, who am I kidding? There’s no way the word “coupling” even came close to describing what Torr and I had just done. But that still didn’t excuse the lunacy of seeing myself as a giant, iridescent, coppery-red dragon. I shook my head again, wishing I could see his face. All I could do was feel his body pressed to mine, his long, hard desire nudging my sex. Feel his warm breath on my neck. Smell his musky, somehow smoldering scent. Taste that scent on my lips and tongue.

  Gods, I was in trouble. Four of my five senses were fighting on the side of the enemy.

  “What is there to believe, Torr?” I tried to make the words sound harsh. “You would have me believe I am some mythical creature, a…a…”

  “Wyvernian,” he said, his smooth voice deeper than thunder. My sex constricted at the word and my heart rate doubled. He chuckled. “Dragon shapeshifter,” he went on, his lips almost but not quite nibbling on the outer curve of my ear. “Sometimes called volitilis everto. Roughly translated—the winged destroyer.”

  “Some mythical creature,” I continued through clenched teeth—his lips had moved on to teasing the side of my neck and my body thought that was just fine and dandy—“that the GU destroyed centuries ago.”

  Torr stiffened, his lips stilling on my neck. He lifted his head and stared at me with unreadable eyes. “The Galactic Union did butcher the Wyvernian. For no other reason than fear. Slaughtered everyone but one small boy…and one tiny babe.”

  I blinked. Despite the fact I was still clinging to the surety there were no such things as dragon shapeshifters, the obvious pain in Torr’s statement made my chest squeeze.

  “And that one small boy has waited,” he whispered, the emptiness in his voice gone, replaced with the smug arrogance I’d come to expect from him. “Waited for that babe to find her way back to where she belongs.”

  “Kept prisoner in a cave on a lifeless moon?” I offered, trying to sound sarcastic.

  Torr’s lips played with a small, entirely too sexy crooked smile. “In my arms.”

  Mine to claim. Mine to fuck. Mine to—

  “So you’re telling me I’m centuries old?” I swallowed, my pulse hammering in my neck, though whether my elevated heart rate was the result of Torr’s statement or the thick dome of his cock head pressing at my clit, I’ll never know. “I’m scaly and massive and ancient?”

  Yes, I knew how absurd the situation was. Two minutes earlier I’d tried to beat the crap out of him, and two minutes before that I’d been screaming in the throes of sexual rapture, but think about it from my point of view. My lover—who may or may not be a friggin’ flying space lizard—had just told me I was something killed off centuries ago. What would you have done?

  Torr laughed, the same relaxed laugh that had so affected me earlier. It did the same thing now. Made me want to laugh with him. I don’t need to explain how crazy the situation is again.

  “Do you want to know the real answer to your age, Rai’nia? Or are you just humoring the lunatic weirdo on the moon?” His eyes sparkled with mirth, and I swallowed the unexpected urge to blush.

  “Shoot, lizard boy,” I ordered instead, trying not to squirm beneath him. If I moved even an inch I would feel his cock part my folds, and no matter how much I wanted to be filled by that impressive organ again, I needed to keep my head clear. Not the easiest thing to do, given my naked state and position.

  He looked down into my face, his gray eyes intent. “I can feel the years you have lived in your very soul, Rai’nia. And I can sense the years you believe yourself to have lived, but those years are just a lie your mind clings to.”

  I swallowed, my throat tight. “A lie?” I wanted to stop this conversation. I wanted to cease the surreal notion of discussing my age while buck naked and astride the most amazing lover I’d ever had and just lose myself in his body once more. But I couldn’t. I needed to know. I really did.

  Torr’s nostril flared. “Female Wyvernian seemingly age similarly to New Earth humans throughout their puberty and adolescence, but their infant years…years of required hibernation…those years can last centuries.”

  Centuries?

  I gaped at him, incapable—or maybe refusing—to digest what he’d just stated. I’d spent centuries hibernating? As a baby? What the fuck?

  “Female Wyvernian infants hibernate for hundreds of years,” he went on, watching me. “Changing little physically but growing so much in their souls, preparing for the fire of their first shift into dragon form. Preparing for the heat of finding their one true mate and the power of their joining.”

  A blush did spread through my cheeks just then, as the memory of my adolescence came back to me—tumultuous days hungering for affection in the cruel prisons of the Galactic Union orphanages. Nights craving the very man now staring into my eyes, craving his touch, his domination, his desire in dream after dream after dream. I licked my lips and swallowed the lump in my throat. Torr had been with me since I was a girl not even old enough to understand what I longed for the most. What did that mean?

  It means everything you continue to deny, Rai’nia.

  I closed my eyes at his unspoken answer to my unspoken question. Would I ever get used to this cerebral connection? What the shyte was I doing pondering that possibility anyway?

  Torr waited, silent, as if letting me wrestle with my own confusion, and I wanted to punch him for his consideration. Or kiss him. Argh. Was nothing clear-cut and obvious anymore?

  I glared at him. “So according to you, I spent hundreds of years curled up sleeping as a baby? Just lying around in a cave somewhere? Sucking my thumb? And then…what? I stumbled out at the age of two, looking for a mom who was no longer alive, and the GU swept up my clueless little dragony-self? Threw me into an orphanage?”

  His jaw bunched. “I didn’t know where you were before now, Rai’nia. If I had, I would have come and protected you.”

  My glare intensified. “Because we’re the last of our kind.” Sarcasm dripped from my voice. “Destined to be together.”

  He drew a slow breath. “Destined to be together,” he repeated, his exquisite body motionless.

  I snorted. “Keep going then. Tell me about what I am. About what, according to you, I’ve always been. Tell me about the wings and the scales and the gravity-defying stunts.”

  Mirth twinkled in his eyes again. “Don’t you mean the gravity-defying fucks?”

  “Get on with it, lunatic.”

  He chuckled, and I felt the vibrations all the
way through his body into mine. We seemed to be sharing everything now. Thoughts, bodily fluids, laughter…

  “I do not know who took you as a babe, I only know I heard your cries in my soul as you were torn from your mother’s arms. I only know that I lay awake for many nights hearing it, alone in the very depths of this moon. And then your cries were silent, and all I had left was the memory of your tears.”

  Torr’s statement made me frown. He just shook his head and pulled me closer to his body. “For centuries, I held on to the memory of you, even when I had no knowledge of whether you were alive or dead.” He paused, his expression indefinable. “But as it turns out, much to my relief, you were just in hibernation somewhere.”

  “Somewhere…” I whispered, feeling wisps of memories so faded they were little more than ghosts playing with my sanity. A terror so consuming I thought I would die. A hunger that gnawed at my stomach until I wanted to die. Cruel voices. Pain. The sounds of flesh hitting flesh. Screams. And then an unfathomable darkness, a bone-chilling emptiness.

  A confusion heavy with slumber.

  A harsh light in my face. Harsher voices…

  And finally, the GU orphanages and the hell of growing up without any fucking clue who I was…where I’d come from…where I should be…

  “You should be here,” Torr answered the question that had disturbed me for as long as I could remember. “With me. ”

  “A flying lizard?” I narrowed my eyes, trying to look skeptical. Inside however, I was feeling all sorts of…things. Like my body, my soul was nodding to everything Torr said, even if my head was trying to tell me the whole story was a load of shyte.

  He chuckled, a knowing gleam in his eyes. He could tell what was going on in my head and heart, damn it. “A flying lizard.”

  “So, my mother—whoever the fuck she was—was a flying lizard? And I was taken from her as the GU butchered my kind centuries ago? For what? Being space dragons?”

  He studied me with an unwavering gaze. “Taken. Hidden.” His intense stare softened a little, and I mean a little. “As our kind were butchered for being something the GU could not hobble or corral or control. A species destroyed because of fear. Lost to existence. Expect for us.”

  I frowned. “If this is all true, how come I’ve never sprouted wings and barbequed people with my breath? If I’m a Wyvernian, why do I feel human?”

  The thought that Torr’s every ridiculous word could be true unnerved me and made my chest feel tight. Or at least, I thought it did. It wasn’t until Torr spoke again that I realized what “unnerving” and “tight” really meant.

  “The female Wyvernian does not reach her transformative stage until she has been claimed.” He paused. For a heartbeat. “By her mate.”

  I stared up at him, unable to breathe. Mate? I mouthed the word, incapable of finding the air required to make sound. Mate? As in, what animals do?

  “As in, what the Wyvernian do,” Torr answered, lowering his head closer to mine. “Bonded for life to their one true mate.” His eyes shimmered green and his nostrils flared again. “As in, what we have done, Rai’nia.”

  Mine to claim. Mine to fuck. Mine to—

  He crushed my mouth with his, and before I knew what I was doing, I was kissing him back.

  I lifted my right leg and wrapped it around the back of his thigh. The move spread my pussy, and with a single stroke, Torr entered me. His cock stretched me again and I welcomed the pain. Reveled in it. He fucked me against the wall, his hands never lessening their punishing grip on my wrists, his mouth never easing its punishing assault on my lips, and I welcomed that new pain as well. Someone wiser than me once said there is a fine line between pain and pleasure, and they were right. Torr’s fierce ownership of my body hurt like hell, and made me hotter and wetter and more aroused than I’d ever been. I never wanted it to end. Ever.

  Fyre’s tooth, neither do I. Torr’s voice slipped through my mind, smug, arrogant, dominating. Vulnerable.

  He filled me with his shaft, pumping its length deeper and deeper. I rode him hard, our bodies slick with sweat, our tongues mating with fierce abandon, and refused to think about anything except the way he made me feel. Pleasured. Desired. Wanted.

  Needed.

  He thrust into me over and over again, and at some stage his hands left my wrists and found my ass, squeezing each cheek as he took my weight, carried me across the room and lowered me onto a wide, soft pallet, his cock still embedded in my sex, his mouth still possessing mine.

  Soft, dense fur caressed my skin as I stretched out on the surface. The tickling sensation only added to the delicious bliss consuming my senses. I tangled my hands in Torr’s hair as I locked my ankles at the base of his spine—imprisoning him in my hold. Lifting my hips, I met him mid-thrust, moving with him to bring us both closer to release.

  His hands raked down my body—insatiable in their need to explore every inch of my exposed flesh. He dragged his mouth from mine and tasted my neck, my collarbones. I shivered, my nipples growing erect. He moaned with appreciation and took one tight little tip into his mouth, suckling on it with greedy fervor. I moaned and arched my back, dragging my nails to his ass.

  “I have tasted your flesh for over a lifetime, chrye,” he groaned against my breast, stroking its curve with his fingertips. “I have been driven mad by my longing for you.”

  He moved his mouth to my other breast, taking its nipple between his teeth. Little shards of blissful pain radiated through me as he bit the nub of flesh, and I gasped, digging my nails into his butt.

  He sucked hard, soft. Laved my flesh with his tongue and branded it with his teeth. I writhed beneath him, feeling his cock grow thicker, longer inside my sex. The wild sensation made me whimper and I pulled him harder into my cunt, slipping one hand between our bodies until I could cup his balls.

  They were heavy and swollen, and when I gave them a soft tug, Torr ground out a raw moan. “Oh fuck, Rai’nia.” He tortured my breast with his mouth, his thrusting penetrations growing faster. “It was never like this. Never so…”

  Right. The thought finished in my head, and for the first time since we’d come together on the moon’s surface, I recognized his fear.

  Torr’s power and strength were undeniable. But beneath the menace of the Wyvernian’s rage and arrogance, beneath his absolute need for domination and control, his longing for me ruled. The longing to have me by his side, in his arms. I was his destiny and he was mine, and he feared losing me to the world, to the life I’d grown up believing. He was the last male of our kind and he’d found me. In all the universes, I had come to his, and found him in return, but he feared I wouldn’t stay. Feared I’d deny our destiny.

  Destiny. A word I’d never believed in. A concept I’d always considered shyte.

  And then Torr…

  I squeezed his balls and thrust my hips upward, taking him deeper, deeper. Letting him fill me, possess me. Letting him consume me—and he was correct. Even in my dreams it had neverfelt this right. And that was frightening. And wonderful.

  Mine not just to claim, to fuck, but mine to—

  Love?

  I cried out at the impossible notion, my orgasm detonating in my core, incinerating rational thought. Torr roared and I felt his body shift, his muscles strain and flex and coil. Liquid heat flooded my sex, and through the rapturous surge of my climax, I heard him roar again.

  I opened my eyes—for a split second—and witnessed the man fight the dragon he was. Fight the shift trying to transform him. The sight terrified and elated me, and I came again.

  I let the absolute perfection of our mating take me away and came one last time, Torr’s name bursting from my lips.

  Chapter Six

  Y’know those corny New Earth vids where the hero and the heroine have earth-shattering sex and then fall asleep in each other’s arms? The kind the Galactic Union deemed illegal and perverse and banned from public access? I’ve always thought they were sappy, gag-inducing shyte completely fabricated by
the deluded minds of some fragile, needy females incapable of seeing life for what it really was—cold, harsh and brutal.

  But I was currently living one.

  I don’t actually know when I fell asleep wrapped in Torr’s arms, his warm, hard, naked body pressed to mine, but sometime after we’d both climaxed for about the tenth time or so, sleep claimed me. Blissful sleep filled with blissful dreams of surreal happiness and contentment. Dreams of making love time and again to the man holding me. Dreams of moving through the darkness of space with nothing but Torr and the beat of my wings to keep me company.

  Good dreams. Dreams that felt more real than the life I’d spent living.

  When I finally woke, the warm memory of those dreams lingering in my subconscious, I lay perfectly still and listened to Torr’s soft snoring. I could feel his breath on the back of my neck; gentle, even exhalations that tickled the hairs at my nape and made my nipples pinch tight.

  Lying in Torr’s arms now, the feel of his body molded to mine on the soft, fur-covered sleeping pallet, the absolute sense of safety and contentment his presence awakened in me was the single most wonderful experience of my life.

  I had to get out of there.

  Now.

  I slipped from his embrace, ignoring the dismay slicking through my body like an icy fog and moving away from the sleeping pallet on silent feet. I’m very good at moving silently. My instructors at the academy had noted the fact many times during my Enforcer training. Fraz called me a freak, but something about the way he said it always made me kinda smile. I could move completely without sound and I was fast. Very fast.

  At this point in time, I’d never moved faster or with more stealth.

  I crossed the carved-out room, a distant part of my mind telling me why I could move so quietly and so quickly. It all made sense now. Of course I could move faster than the wind and without a sound. I was Wyver—

  I cut that thought dead and turned my attention to locating my clothes. They had to be here somewhere, otherwise I was heading back to Port Mercy buck naked.