no. Earth wasn’t going down without a fight, and she was determined to be on the front line. She’d been William Arthur’s right hand for fifteen of the eighteen years she’d been in the service. She was behind him when he ordered a preemptive strike against the Sueni that had blown one of their ships out of the sky, and she was behind him when he worked to consolidate the military forces of Earth to create a global defense system.
But more and more often in the last few months, she’d questioned the orders Arthur had given. His new campaigns seemed to be less about protecting people than they were about gathering more power for himself.
She swallowed, clicked off the TV, and scrambled to her feet, all but running to her bedroom and slamming the door behind her to shut out the truth. Dread cramped her belly. She didn’t want to think about this, didn’t want to consider what it meant.
The ramifications were even more terrifying than the Sueni shuttles that came and went despite the warnings and missiles fired from Earth. Other than the one ship down, the Sueni hadn’t lost a single person and had deflected further attacks. So far they’d done nothing violent. They hadn’t even retaliated for the lost ship. It made her uneasy. The shuttles stayed no more than a few hours in one place before leaving again. They could be searching for something—someone—as they’d said, or they could be scouting out vulnerabilities for a violent, bloody endgame.
How much would Arthur’s little white noise device, his new secret weapon, actually help them in driving away the Sueni? She didn’t know. No one did. Yet. The one question that kept resurfacing in her mind was: when did it end? If they finally managed to get rid of the Sueni, what would be left of the world? Would Arthur hand military control back over to individual countries? If they tried to break away from him by force, who would win?
No one. That was the answer. Everything circled back to this being a no-win situation. Shrugging out of her robe, she flopped into bed and beat her pillow into a comfortable shape. If she could learn to nap through bombs going off outside her tent in a hellish desert, she could snooze through stress and doubts—doubts that might not be founded in anything other than sleep-deprived paranoia. She closed her eyes, shut down her mind, and willed herself into slumber.
But it wasn’t dreams that found her. It was him. Again.
Heat screamed through her body, a sudden sexual awakening that was as much pleasure as pain. The shift was so abrupt, it was almost terrifying. Almost.
The moment sleep claimed her, he was over her, on her, in her. Her body arched on the mattress as his cock filled her. And filled her. Her pussy throbbed, clenching tight. Her fists bunched in the sheets, her hips writhing as pleasure rocketed through her. She tried to jerk back, tried to escape the onslaught of ecstasy, but there was no escaping her own mind. He came to her like this, in her dreams, flooding her thoughts with sensations so real she couldn’t tell where the fantasy ended and reality began.
She wished it were just a dream, a fantasy, but she knew it wasn’t. It was him. Farid. He was doing this to her. The Kith nobleman was using his mind to fuck her senseless. As much as she craved it, she hated it—him—hated the power he wielded, hated that the sensual alien had shredded her world when he’d landed on Earth.
Fire licked at her flesh, and she bit her lip hard enough to draw blood, fighting him, fighting herself. It was no use, she knew. She’d struggled every time he’d reached for her psychically, and every time she’d failed. He sucked her into the maelstrom of carnality, drowned her in feelings she usually avoided at all costs. She hated the lack of control, the inevitable betrayal of her own body.
God help her, it felt so fucking amazing.
The sensation of being stretched beyond bearing was so vivid, she thought she would die. The last tethers between her and reality ripped loose as he began thrusting inside her. Then she was there, somewhere lost in a dream. The bed was still beneath her, the soft sheets rough against her sensitized flesh, the thick, hot summer night breeze still brushed across her naked breasts, and yet he was with her, in her.
His green eyes sparked as he looked at her, a physical manifestation of his power. The more excited he was, the faster the sparks would come, bursting like tiny fireworks in his irises. A distant part of her wondered if the sparks would stop when the white noise device was turned on, then she tamped down on the thought as fast as she could. The man was inside her head. He could read her thoughts.
He froze over her, as though he sensed that her mind had strayed to something besides what he was doing to her. She struggled to lock away the secrets she knew, scrambling for something to distract this enemy who was deep within her. Licking her lips, she watched his gaze zero in on her movements. His cock throbbed in her pussy, and she squeezed her inner muscles around him. He shuddered, groaned, and began thrusting again, caught in the tempest as much as she had been. She gasped when he ground his hips against her, forcing her thighs wide. A whimper escaped her when his big hand closed over her breast and he pinched her nipple hard between his fingers. Her body bowed under the lash of pleasured pain.
“Brenna,” he breathed, and the word echoed in her mind. His need crackled through the connection between them, driving her desires higher. “Bren. My little khalaa.”
Her hands left the sheets, reaching up to bury in his hair. The silken strands sifted through her fingers and they both shivered. He leaned into her touch, his eyes closing as something beyond ecstasy flickered across his expression. Some part of this had to be pure dream. The man was never this open in real life.
Then he withdrew his long cock, only to slam deep inside her pussy, and nothing mattered but this moment. There were no secrets and no lies, no hiding. She didn’t care what was genuine and what wasn’t, only that he could give her what she needed. His heavy muscles played against her, the heat of his flesh branding her as their hips rolled against each other. The friction of his rougher flesh on her clit made her cry out, ecstasy reverberating through her. His strong hands slid under her, his fingers bit into her ass, and he lifted her into each hot, hard penetration.
“Oh, my God.”
Sweat slipped down her temples to tickle in her hair. She shivered, sobbing for air as her nails dug into his flesh. A low growl rumbled in his chest, and the other side of his nature flashed in his eyes. The animal, the beast, the shape-shifter. Long fangs curved from his mouth and he hissed softly when she grinned at him and raked her nails down his back.
“Always pushing me, Bren.” He shook his head.
She laughed up at him, mocking him and his control. If she had to be stripped of her control and if she couldn’t win the fight against him or herself, she was dragging him down with her. Clenching her internal walls around his thick cock, she closed her eyes and smiled when he gave a low, helpless groan of pure need. His muscles bunched and released beneath her hands as he hammered into her, his thrusts picking up speed and force. The impact of his skin slapping against hers echoed in her bedroom, the sound shockingly carnal.
Her heart raced and her excitement built to a screaming fever pitch. She could feel an orgasm rising like a tide inside her, threatening, beckoning. God, she wanted it, threw herself toward it. If she couldn’t have the self-discipline she always craved, she’d revel in the lack of it. It made her blood rush in her veins, her breath come faster, her muscles shake with pleasure and fear of how that pleasure overwhelmed her.
“Now.” She wrapped her legs around his flanks, digging her heels in to lift herself higher into his thrusts. “Make me come.”
“Yesss.” His groaned tangled with an almost feline hiss. His chest heaved in bellowing breaths, great shudders wracking his body. “I…can’t hold on much
