Thieves In Paradise (7 page)

"I want you now.” He whispered the words against the smooth skin under her ear and punctuated his demand by pressing her hips against his.

Charity nodded. The urge to be fucked had come over her like a wave the moment he touched her. She'd have obeyed any request at this point, done anything to have him inside her again. With little prompting, she wrapped her arms around his neck and mounted him, desperate to feel the rigid heat of his erection between her legs. He turned with her in his arms and while he burrowed his big hands under her damp shirt, he walked her toward the lakeshore.

He had her on her back in the firm sand a second later and tore her wet clothes away, exposing her body to the scorching heat of his gaze as well as the bronze light of the still-rising sun.

Naked now, she spread her legs for him, a wicked invitation, made with abandon. Coherent thought fled and she became nothing more than an instrument of pleasure, seeking, demanding to be used for one purpose only.

Wasting no time on unnecessary foreplay, A'Kosu stripped away his own clothes and fell upon her. Charity squeezed her eyes shut and bit her lower lip against the shock of his first rough thrust. Every sensation was in contrast—the warm, semi-hard sand beneath her back cushioned her, while above her and inside her his body was hard as steel, rigid and unyielding. The faint breeze dried the water on her skin causing an all over chill, matched against the heat of a rising orgasm that built within her.

She clung to him, absorbing each impact of his body against hers until the inner wave broke. The tremors ravaged her and involuntarily her body arched, rising to meet him. “More,” she pleaded. “Do it to me again."

He obliged by fingering her clit while he continued to pump. The combined pressure of his large fingers against her sensitive flesh and his huge cock laving her inner walls set her off again. This time she screamed when her body convulsed, every nerve ending raw with the power of it.

A moment later, his own climax sent a rush of liquid heat through her, melting her, finishing her completely. Weakened to the point of exhaustion, she lay beneath him, eyes closed, imaging herself sinking into the earth and becoming one with the planet itself.

A'Kosu held his position above her a moment longer, until the last of his seed trickled onto the sand, then he collapsed beside her, drawing great breaths of the humid air. Finally he rolled over onto his back and shielded his eyes with his forearm. “I hadn't planned that."

Charity mustered the strength to turn her head in his direction. He looked like a mountain range, all craggy peaks and deep valleys, and his pale eyes reminded her of the icy lakes of upper Celrax.

"If you do that well spontaneously, imagine what you could accomplish if you
set out
to seduce someone."

"That was no seduction.” His voice was low but firm.

"No?” Charity stretched her limbs, enjoying the loose feel of her muscles. She fought to keep her eyes open.

"No. It was a response to the pollen. Just like last night. It seems we breathe it in and once our systems are saturated, we have a sexual response. I think water intensifies the effect."

Despite her exhaustion, Charity drew herself up on her elbows and crossed her ankles. “That's your theory?"

"It makes sense. It's an entirely involuntary chemical response."

"Involuntarily. So ‘I want you now’ just came out of your mouth of its own accord?"

A'Kosu raised a brow. “I suppose it did. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, we should get back to camp. We need to find something to carry water back—"

Charity bolted upright and glared down at her naked companion. “Gotten it out of the way?"

He sat up also, reaching for his wet, discarded clothing. “It may not be something we can avoid in the future, but it certainly isn't something we should dwell on."

"I have no intention of dwelling on it. And I don't want to continue being the object of your sexual"—she floundered for the right words—loss of control."

His neutral expression infuriated her. “I doubt you'll object if the urge strikes us again. We both seem unable to resist it."

She rose now, making certain to kick a little sand in his direction when she turned on her heel and strolled down the shore. She didn't get far before she realized if she wanted to get her clothes back on, she had to go in the other direction.

Half dressed now, his damp shirt hanging from his hand, A'Kosu looked like a bronzed warrior statue in the orange light. Even without her lungs full of sex-inducing pollen at the moment, Charity had to admit he was hard to resist. Sated as she was, her body responded to him, and that only made her more angry at herself. “I do intend to object. In fact, I refuse to participate in any more unbridled ... fornication with you."

"And how do you plan to control yourself? The urge was so strong, you forfeited your chance to escape. I might not have found you if you hadn't called out to me."

"I wasn't trying to escape."

He squinted at her, obviously perplexed. “Then why did you run from me?"

She bent to retrieve her clothes, refusing to look at him while she explained. “It's just instinct. My earliest memories are of running from authority. My mother was a Reiki healer. She practiced her craft long after it was banned on Celrax during the Dedicant uprising. Because physical contact between the sexes was prohibited except during sanctioned procreation, she was persecuted relentlessly as a heretic. I can't count how many times we'd have to pick up and leave our home in the middle of the night to escape the Dedicant patrols. When I'm being pursued, the fear I remember from those times just takes over."

There. She'd confessed the shame she'd borne since childhood. The daughter of a heretic could expect no better life on Celrax than that of a fugitive. She expected no sympathy from A'Kosu and she got none. He merely grunted acknowledgement and stalked away, shrugging into his wet shirt as he walked.

Kol ignored the pang of regret that tightened his chest at the prisoner's story. He'd grown used to hearing lies and excuses from his targets, and this had been the truth. The strength of her voice, the undertone of deep sadness touched him, but he didn't dare admit it.

He climbed the ravine slope and offered his hand to help her up beside him. The touch set his already raw nerves jangling with the uncharacteristic desire to take her in his arms again. If nothing else, she was right about one thing. They had to find a way to fight the strange effects of the pollen. If they continued to behave like rutting animals, they risked too much—the outside chance he might seed her womb, and the very real possibility that a mating bond would form, making it impossible for him to turn her over to Gar Gremin. That would lead them directly to the circumstances he saw in his damnable vision.

"The gem sack is waterproof,” he said, forcing his concerns out of his mind once again. “And if we put all the rations in one container, we can use—"

"Why don't we just move our camp to the lake shore?"

He spared her a glance over his shoulder. Clean now, her skin glowing in the coppery light, she was ... stunning. He hadn't noticed the almond shape of her eyes before, or the graceful planes of her face. His hands ached with the memory of touching her, of molding her hips and feeling her sex pulse around his and his breath caught. “We will ... be too far away from the locator beacon of the shuttle. Our rescue ship might not find us."

"
Your
rescue ship."

"Regardless of how you refer to it, they will not search all over these valleys for us."

"That's a shame."

Their interlude had done nothing to mellow her, not that he expected it to. Could he blame her for not wanting to face the authorities on Valencia? She was a thief, and they would not deal kindly with her. The Magistrate's reputation was somewhat brutal when it came to criminals and Kol had no doubt she would suffer at his hands. But that was not his concern. He was not judge and jury, merely the means to ensure that thieves like Charity Foster did not get away with taking what belonged to others. “Why did you choose to steal from Gar Gremin? Raw selenite is pilfered all the time from the mines on Nexus."

Disbelief colored her tone, and she increased her pace to draw even with him as they made their way back to the widest trail. “Let's get a few things straight here. One, I didn't steal from Gremin. I won those crystals playing High Aces. He accused me of cheating to take away the sting of losing to a woman. The only reason he allowed me in the game was because he assumed I couldn't play very well, and he was dead wrong.” Taking two hurried strides for each one of his, she held even with him. “Two, I'm not a scavenger. I'm a professional. There's an entire fleet dedicated to lifting handfuls of selenite from the mine transports. What little they manage to scrape together can feed one or two colonies on the Rim for a month here and there. My winnings will buy a year's worth of medical supplies and rations for lower Celrax and power one of the defense stations out beyond Ione. Sitting in Gremin's stock house, they're worth nothing to anyone but him."

Kol impaled her with a glance. “You expect me to believe you didn't cheat the Magistrate?"

"I don't care what you believe. He knows the truth. He gambles with selenite when hundreds of thousands of colonists sit in the dark and scrape together just enough credits to buy expired rations and bootleg medicine. Maybe what I did was wrong, on some grand level, but it was
not
for my own profit."

Kol laughed. She'd almost had him for a moment. He'd been a breath away from believing she might have a noble cause. “But you were willing to split your ‘profit’ with me. Don't tell me you weren't expecting to dine like a princess and kick back on a luxury asteroid for a while after you sold your wares on Gossamer."

She stopped mid-stride as though someone had erected a stone wall in front of her. “No. I won't tell you that. I was hoping for a decent meal or two, something that didn't come out of a crylon packet for a change. And I was hoping to settle someplace where I wouldn't have to run from my home in the middle of the night. I suppose that makes me bad, but I won't apologize for it."

Kol turned around to face her. “I suppose it makes you human."

"And being Antarean, you're above wanting anything for yourself? What is Gremin paying you, really?"

Kol took a step closer to her and she had to crane her neck to meet his gaze. “He pays me nothing. All of my earnings go to the A'Kosu tribe where they will be distributed to those in need. I'm given what I require to survive comfortably, nothing more."

Her shoulders drooped. “You work for your tribe?"

"Yes. Everything I do is for the A'Kosu. When I am in need, everything they do will be for me in return."

"And you aren't even allowed to have a name."

"I told you, I have a name. I don't share it with strangers."

"I'm not a stranger anymore, am I?"

Kol whirled away. Instinct told him to respond, to give her that power over him by sharing his name, but that would only lead to a deeper intimacy that flew in the face of what he was. “We need to get back to camp and prepare to collect water."

"And we should eat first,” she responded as she hurried ahead of him. “I'm just starving for some crylon packaged rations bars, aren't you?"

The rest of their trek back to camp passed in silence with Kol struggling to keep his eyes off of the female's swaying hips. The pollen had settled for the day, but surely nightfall would bring cool breezes that would stir up the yellow dust and set all the mammalian inhabitants of the forest to desperate copulating again.

How could they resist? How could he keep himself from her then, when he wanted her even now?

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After two trips back to the lake to carry water, Charity's legs felt like rubber. She sank onto the thermal blanket A'Kosu had provided for her bedroll and let out a long, weary sigh. “No more. I'm finished."

He loomed over her, his massive shoulders blocking the burnished light of late afternoon. “We have enough water to last us two days if we're careful. You may rest."

"Oh, may I?"

Rather than rise to her sarcastic bait, he reached behind him and pulled the laser cuffs off his belt. He snagged one of her wrists and clamped the restraints on her before she could wriggle free. “What the hell are you doing? I'm too tired to move. You don't really think I'll try to escape?"

"I'm going to sleep now, so that I can remain awake later when the sun goes down."

"And you still don't trust me?"

He blinked. “Why should I trust you?"

"Because ... because that last trip, I got back here first and I could have scooped up the selenite and run with it, but I didn't."

"I was directly behind you. You wouldn't have gotten far and you know it."

She cursed under her breath as he rose and moved off toward his own bedroll. “What am I supposed to do while you sleep?"

He retrieved a ration bar from the case and tossed it to her. She just managed to catch it between her bound palms. “Enjoy some protein and keep watch on the forest. If you see or hear anything unusual, wake me."

Oh, she'd wake him all right. In fact she'd already picked out the rock she planned to throw at him. Just let him close his eyes.

While she stared daggers at him, she opened the ration packet and took a bite of the brick-like protein bar. Unconcerned, A'Kosu made himself comfortable on the ground and promptly fell asleep.

Charity wondered how angry he'd be if she did throw a rock at him. She was certainly willing to risk it, just to push him over the edge of emotion. She liked him better when he was rough and uncontrolled, like in the lake when he'd grabbed her. She couldn't have refused him if she wanted to and, damn it, she'd seen emotion in his eyes. More than animal lust, she'd seen desire when he thrust inside her, sophisticated pleasure of a man well-trained in the art of lovemaking when he watched her come, and pure satisfaction in those pale eyes when she'd begged him for more.