His eyes narrowed then widened with pleasure. I felt his gaze drag up and down my body, trying to see what I had to offer beneath my clothes. It felt dirty and I was uncomfortable.
Wasn’t this supposed to be love at first sight?
“Nice to meet you, Mya,” he murmured, his voice low, gravelly, masculine.
“Likewise, Prince Radock,” I managed to murmur before looking away.
Something about this didn’t seem quite right. For a long moment, everything was completely silent.
And that’s when the entire Celestial Mates Dating Agency station tilted and shook. Like we’d hit an asteroid or some debris, only when it happened for a second time, I knew that wasn’t what it was.
Someone yelled beside me.
We were under attack.
Deep in my belly, I knew it was something terrible. I wondered if it was the Vakarrans. If they’d finally come to take me away from all this.
Chapter Three
Talor
The moment I’d intercepted the interstellar communication with Mya’s files, I’d known I had to have her. I’d shown my comrades and they wanted her too. And the moment we decided she was ours, it was already done.
Mine.
She was human, genetically compatible with my kind. Just begging to be taken with those pretty blue eyes and pouty red lips and hair the color of fire.
I was Vakarran. We were conquerors, invaders, men to be feared across the far reaches of space. We took what we needed, when we needed it, without asking for permission first.
And we were going to take her.
It was what my species was known for. Not long ago, we’d found Earth, which had provided a steady stream of women for us for ten years now.
Well. Not exactly for me anymore. We were exceptions to the rule. We didn’t have any women of our own. It wasn’t an option.
I and my three comrades, Dex, Ejan and Biran, were once a part of one of the key intel divisions of the ISS Starrider. We ran data, found potential planets with biologically compatible species, intercepted intel that might be important to us in our conquests. Only that wasn’t our official title anymore. Not since we’d been exiled anyway.
Some time ago, Commander Strohass had taken over the Starrider, our main military space station, making him our immediate superior. He hadn’t liked how we’d responded to one of his mandatory orders, one that required us to frame an innocent man for a crime Strohass himself had committed. We’d refused to manipulate data and plant evidence at his request and he’d exiled us for it. The political corruption in the upper levels was awful, based entirely on nepotism and bribery.
Fucking asshole. Last I knew, he’d actually been murdered or something, but the investigation hadn’t produced the perpetrator. He’d replaced with someone new. Some Commander Nix, from the recent data I’d come across. I didn’t know much about him otherwise, but I really didn’t care. Probably an equally disgusting bastard cut from the same cloth. That’s how things worked within the upper ranks of power.
No matter. We were better off without them anyway.
We had our own spaceship, The Vengeance, and we went where we wanted, when we wanted. We made a living obtaining particular merchandise for a choosy clientele, some of it legal and some of it illegal. I made my own rules now.
Like deciding to take a woman just because we could.
I wanted her. We wanted her. And we were going to take her and claim her as our own.
We’d changed our destination coordinates immediately once I announced our plans. My comrades could hardly contain their excitement. They were ravenous, ready for a new adventure as we’d just been skimming revenue through online hacks for some time now, pinching small jobs here and there, traveling across the galaxy in search of another big haul. I and my comrades needed a challenge. And we’d found the biggest one yet.
A biologically compatible woman. A mate to bear our children.
Fuck. My dick hardened just thinking about it. I narrowed my eyes, watching the fancy space station come into view before us.
Hyper speed had brought us straight to the dating agency through a wormhole. Travel had been less than fifteen minutes once I’d punched the coordinates into the mainframe. A basic scan of the station indicated adequate defenses. I noted that there was a pretty powerful shield protecting the whole thing, as well as a few weapons that were mainly for defensive purposes. It was a stronghold to most everyone else, except for us, the Vakarrans.
I activated one of our antimatter missiles and set it free. It didn’t make a dent in the shield, but it announced our presence to the massive station, shaking it a little. Alarms started going off inside and after a long minute, I sent off another in warning, one more powerful that jolted the entire mainframe.