Creations 1: The Perfect Creation (7 page)

Personally, Rafe couldn’t wait to see what Sernal would do to the corrupt peacemakers, if Sernal was even around. Gar should have been able to get through to Sernal by now.

Especially through their personal channels, a Mardu hotline all of the brothers shared on a special communicator never far from reach. Rafe could only hope Sernal fared well, and that perhaps his brother had to remain incommunicado for a mission’s sake.

Sighing, Rafe tucked away his unease and focused on Erin. For the right price, Herm would forget he’d ever seen them, especially once Rafe promised to send better peacemaker protection his way. Of course, Herm wouldn’t know who had sent them, just that a reliable

‘friend’ of Cheltam’s would make good on the promise.

Now to dump Herm and move before Gar sicced Drekk on them. Because Gar wouldn’t be denied, and he wanted Drekk to watch over his ‘little’ brother. Rafe fumed. He didn’t need the help, but overprotective Gar couldn’t hear “no” past his stubborn brain. He didn’t like Erin and would no doubt destroy her the first chance he had if she turned out to be a Creation. The old Gar would have given her a chance, but this tougher, harsher Gar would kill her without a qualm if she threatened his brother’s life. And Rafe refused to let that happen.

* * * *

“That little whelp hung up on me.” Gar glared at his communicator, ignoring the chuckle from Drekk.

“I told you as much. Hell, Gar. He’s you but with a sunnier attitude. Of course he won’t take your help, not when there’s a pretty female needing him. He’s too tenderhearted for the job. I told him so before.” Drekk sighed and leaned back on a plush divan, clutching the back of his neck with a grimace. “Damn, that girl put me down hard. I think I like her.”

“Took you out like a boy fresh from the fields. Tears, for Flor’s sake. She suckered you with damned tears.” Gar glared at Drekk, not seeing the humour in any of it. That female was no more an experiment than he was. He’d stake his life on it. She fought too well, and that form, those eyes… She wasn’t normal, and if Blue Rim wanted as much for her as they were asking, Erin would bring Rafe nothing but trouble and pain. With Sernal also gone missing, Gar didn’t know what to do. Rafe, at least, he had a tentative handle on. But Sernal never took time away from his new job as both commander of
Lady Justice
, his ship, and of the new Peacemaker Central satellite station,
Libetter
. Worry filled him, an instinctive call to protect his own that he would heed this time. He refused to lose anyone else he cared about ever again.

“Gar, don’t worry.” Drekk rose wearily to his feet. “I’ll take care of Rafe. You deal with Sernal. Because of the two of them, Sernal’s going to be more trouble than I can handle.” Gar couldn’t help the small smile that escaped. “Admit it, he’s a pain the in the ass.” 

“Of course he is. All you peacemakers are. But Rafe, him I can tolerate. More than you,” Drekk muttered, offered Gar an obscene hand gesture, then simply vanished.

Gar stared, wide-eyed, at how Drekk had gotten his hands on a personal micro-teleporter and shook his head. “Show off.” He sighed.
Now to save big brother, most likely from
himself.
Sucking in a breath, Gar did what he’d been dreading. He dialled another number, this time off his vidcom, and stared into Sernal’s likeness—Catam. “Well now, if it isn’t the baby of the family.” He tried for normalcy, hoping it bled through his pores like a fine sweat on a hot day.

“Gar?” The hopeful anticipation in his youngest brother’s hesitant smile cut Gar to the quick. “How are you? I’ve missed you—”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been busy.” The thought of the last time he’d called, of the sound of children giggling in the background, pierced the dull armour around his heart, and he ignored the ache in his chest, wishing more than anything he could undo the past. “Sernal’s missing. I don’t have time for chatter. Now shut up and listen.”

After three silent hours of nonstop movement through the forest, Erin wanted a break.

Not that she needed it, but she sought a handle on the man at her back, at the male staring holes through her every time she glanced behind her and caught his piercing gaze. More worrisome than Cheltam’s changing attitude, however, was the fact that the more time she spent in his presence, the more she wanted to bow to his favour. She found herself desiring to ask him what he wanted, if the pace suited him, if the direction was to his liking.

Stop it, Erin. He’s not your Handler. You are no man’s servant, not ever again.
Yet her constant reprimands made her that much more aware of his natural dominance, of the light breaths he took while they marched at a warrior’s pace, keeping even with her. So strong, so masterful. And so damned tightlipped about what he thought.

“Okay, I’m taking a break.” Erin stopped at a nearby stream and sat down on waist-high rock, just daring him to argue.

“Fine.” He shrugged off the pack he’d insisted he carry. To her consternation, he didn’t look a bit winded. Her body shivered, wanting another taste and touch of such firm muscle, to feel his warm heartbeat pulsing under her hand again. “Thirsty?” He held up a cup taken from the pack and nodded at the water.

“No, you go ahead.”

He shrugged and crouched low, gathering the water for a long, slow drink.

Small beads dripped down his mouth to his throat, and Erin watched, riveted, as his throat moved in time with his swallows. His full lips hugged the metallic container holding the precious liquid, and his long-fingered hand cupped the small container, cradling it with a firm gentleness that would be devastating on her body. She could all too easily imagine Cheltam’s callused hands on her naked flesh, easing the material off her shoulders, her arms, baring her breasts that even now swelled in anticipation of his touch…

Erin cursed under her breath, suddenly overly warm. She kept her eyes averted from Cheltam and threw off her jacket, taking in great gulps of air. Her hair felt like a blanket over her head and she threaded her hand through the strands, allowing air to pass over her heated skull. Something was very wrong, because her entire body began shaking, overheating. And without thinking about it, she took two steps to the right and threw herself into the ice-cold water of the river, sighing with relief when she slowly regained a measure of normal body temperature.

Stranger than strange. I feel better, yet still tingly, not quite myself.
She shook her head, smoothed her hair back, and sighed at how good that felt.

“What the hell are you doing?” Cheltam asked in a croak, staring at her.

“I was hot,” she answered lamely, not sure what to say. The air around them had cooled considerably, and their trek hadn’t been that arduous. She had no idea why she’d grown so hot, and now that she’d resumed a normal body temperature, she began to shiver as the wet cold penetrated her clothes to her skin.

He simply stared at her, but as his gaze travelled over her with deliberate slowness, she saw that the heat in his gaze wasn’t so much from anger as from arousal. Following his stare, she saw the clinging fabric of her thin blouse clinging to her breasts and stomach. The light colour of the shirt, unfortunately, turned transparent when wet, showcasing her stiffening nipples just visible under the ends of her hair.

“Come out of there.” His flat voice gave nothing away, so it surprised her when he leaned forwards and yanked her the rest of the way out of the river. He plastered her to him and kissed the breath out of her before she could blink.

As before, the moment their lips touched, all thought left her. Sensation swamped the corridors of her body, washing her with a need so great she wanted to do whatever he asked to realise satisfaction.

“Baby, you are so fucking sexy,” he moaned, sucking on her lower lip. His hands drew up her ribs to rest under her full breasts. “These I have to see. Now.” His voice brooked no refusal, and the sheer command in his voice forced her to obey.

With trembling fingers she parted her blouse, taken with his thickening breaths.

“That’s it. Take off that wet shirt. You can’t stay in your clothes. Don’t want to catch an illness, do you?” he asked smoothly, running hot hands over her chest. “Mother of Night, your nipples are loving my hands, aren’t they, Erin?” Erin didn’t want to talk, she wanted him to touch her. She wanted his mouth over her breasts, the way he’d done before. She wanted him to fill that aching void between her legs, to put himself inside her the way the couple had in that bar…

“Answer me,” he ordered, staring into her face as he helped her remove her blouse.

She blinked hazily up at him, completely his. “Yes, they love your touch,” she whispered, not understanding when he frowned.

“You’re pulling me in with that godly scent, aren’t you?”

“No,” she answered, lowering her gaze as she’d been taught. She surprised herself with the truth. Though her instinctive response to threat was to lure in her prey, this time with Cheltam felt different. “But you are.”

“I am?” he sounded uneasy, but his touch grew warmer as he fondled her. He stepped closer and pulled her trousers down her legs. “Tell me what I smell like.” He left her body to tug off her boots and leggings and then her trousers, leaving her completely bare.

“Like warmth, like pure
areesia
in bloom,” she moaned, craving his touch. “Please, Cheltam. Tell me how to please you.”

“Not Cheltam,” he rasped. “Rafe. Call me Rafe.”

She nodded. “Rafe.”

“It’s another name I go by, and we don’t want to let anyone know who I really am,” he continued, as if she needed an explanation. She would call him whatever he wanted so long as he put out this damnable fire within her. He stood and walked her backward until she leaned against a large rock. “Sit back.”

She rested her buttocks against the boulder but was unprepared when he nudged her legs apart with his knee.

“You are so blessedly beautiful,” he breathed, staring at her from top to bottom.

Erin didn’t feel the cold of the air or the rock at her back. She only had eyes for Cheltam—Rafe—until he met her gaze, then she instinctively looked away. Submissive…

Fingers under her chin tilted her gaze back up. “I want you to look at me.”

“Yes, Rafe.”
Yes, Sir.

He exhaled heavily. And when he inhaled, he frowned again. “You really aren’t overpowering me with that scent.”

“So what?” She arched closer to him, wanting his hands back on her. But it wasn’t her place to be aggressive. Rafe had to tell her what
he
wanted.
No, Erin, no. Fight it. You’re in
charge. You’re the Handler, not Rafe, Cheltam, whatever he wants to be called.

“
So
…your body is like a furnace, and every other time we’ve been together you’ve been throwing out pheromones left and right. Yet now, nothing? When I can clearly smell your cream?”

“My cream?” Puzzled, she stared at him, watching in bemusement as he fell to his knees in front of her.

“Your cream.” He put his hands on her sensitive thighs and spread her to his gaze, his stare centred on her swollen folds. “That sweet honey I’m going to eat until I’m full.” Alarmed now, she wanted to protest. The Mardu wanted to
eat
her? The self-preservation that should have kicked in didn’t. She waited for him to do whatever he wanted, her body thoroughly ensnared by his heady scent that thickened as he watched her.

An ache thrummed within her, and she moaned as his face neared her mound, helplessly caught in a war with her body she couldn’t win.

The speed with which his mouth found her sex startled her, as did the pleasure that shot through her.

“
Rafe.
What are you doing to me?”

He grunted his satisfaction and tightened his grip on her thighs as he sucked on her clit, pulling more and more cream towards his mouth. He licked with a tongue that stroked in all the right places, and like before, she burst into an incredible orgasmic bliss. Energy spiralled out from her core, his mouth electric as it wrung more and more pleasure from her.

But when he inserted a long finger into her, she tensed at the intrusion, her body making way for something larger than her own digit. And still it was not enough. The orgasm continued to wrack her as he pushed deeper, while he licked and sucked her clit.

“More,” he growled and pulled on her flesh with his teeth as he added
another
finger into her sheath. “So damned tight.” Working into her, he thrust repeatedly in and out of her channel with his fingers until the small pressure holding back further penetration broke. A huge burst of ecstasy ruptured the small spurt of pain until a plane of unimaginable rapture filled Erin’s world.

She distantly heard Rafe’s curse, felt his fingers slipping from her body as she blinked into a world layered atop her own. Colours became brighter, noises louder yet softer at the same time, soothing her into a state of utter peace. And then warmth covered her body, the rasp of Rafe’s shirt against her breasts pulling a moan from her. Unbidden, her body released a torrent of perfume, tying Rafe to her in an unimaginable hold.

Blinking up at him, Erin watched his eyes glow like twin suns as he pushed inside her with something more than his finger. He practically purred his pleasure as he pushed deeper and harder into her, until he fully seated himself inside her. Instead of the discomfort she would have thought to feel, however, excitement and a feeling of utter right lit her from the inside out.

“Erin, dear Flor, you’re in heat,” he moaned, pulling out only to slam back in. Rafe claimed what no male ever had, drawing from her sensations she’d never before felt. “Fuck. I have to have you. All of it, again.”

Still floating in that state of pleasure, she felt the eddying climax swell, pushing her sated body towards the crest of fulfilment yet again. As Rafe filled her with himself, a part of their energy overlapped. His pulling hers back to the forest, and hers pulling him onto a plain of conscious pleasure she never wanted to leave again.

“Yes, yes,” he moaned as his pace increased.

She felt his body overtaking hers, experienced the awareness of enveloping another, of feeling his body press hers in intimate places that sparked greater and greater pleasure. Rafe locked his mouth over hers, devouring her lips and breath as he took her harder and faster.