He pumped into me, hard and fast, burying his face in my neck as if he wanted to smell me, scent me, soak me into his lungs. But he couldn’t. Not here. There was nothing of him for me to smell. Nothing to taste. I felt treasured and cheated all at once. I could smell the wildflower scent of my favorite shampoo, smell the wet heat of my pussy as I rode him. But that was all. I couldn’t smell him. The dream didn’t let me taste him. Smell him. God, I wanted to lick him all over, rub my cheek on his chest and rub his scent all over my flesh.
I wondered what he smelled like. Pine and wood chips? Musky? Like my favorite teak and ginger scented cologne?
He entwined my fingers with his, the gesture odd and romantic and so strange I was afraid I was going to wake up. Not now. Please, not now.
“Lindsey,” he said my name again and nipped at the base of my neck with his teeth, the added sensation pushed me over the edge and I shattered, the pulsing of my pussy pulling him deeper, squeezing him without mercy until he lost control and groaned, filled me up, his hot seed pumping into me like lava.
I could feel the heat of it coating my insides. And I wanted more. This dream wasn’t enough.
Something jostled me and I shifted, my entire body jerking to the side.
“No!” Kiel yelled, but it was too late. Dream time was over. Something was happening to me and I needed to wake the hell up.
I tried to kiss him, to say goodbye, but he faded too quickly.
Blinking slowly, I opened my eyes and fought back tears. He was gone, and that fact hurt me a lot more than it should have. I was alone again. Not alone, as in I didn’t have a boyfriend or a husband to share my life with. No, alone as in traveling through space, light years away from my hurt child. Getting farther and farther with every second that passed.
Of course, I wasn’t exactly emotionally stable right now. I was scared shitless and using every ounce of courage I possessed to do what I had to do. I needed to help my son. I needed to complete my assignment and get back to Earth. I’d worked two jobs and sacrificed a lot to get my degree in journalism. And this is what it got me? Broke. Desperate to help my son. Trapped inside a shipping crate on an alien world populated with savage warriors and killers?
Any dream was better than my reality. But Kiel, the Hunter, had left my heart aching, my pussy needy. He’d made me feel something besides fear, besides hopelessness. He’d made me feel protected, cherished. Loved. He was powerful, strong enough to lean on, to accept my need and not resent me for it. But Kiel didn’t exist. He was just a dream man and that hurt so much. Why was my mind so cruel?
I stared at the display screen on my standard issue Coalition Fleet battle armor. The conspirators on Earth had given me everything they said I would need. Even the bizarre technology that took bodily waste from me so that I would never have to visit the ladies’ room as long as I stayed within range of their transport technology stations. That had been one of the worst ‘exams’ of my life. Like the gynecologist but with space dildos putting alien gadgets inside my body. A cold, creepy shudder rushed through me as I remembered the cold, clinical look of the doctor as she’d shoved that stuff inside me as preparation for my trip.
And that was enough of thinking about that.
With a shuddering breath, I closed my eyes and tried to think about Kiel instead, tried to hold onto the pleasure still coursing through my body. My pussy was swollen and hot, the pulsing of my orgasm sending aftershocks through my system. My hand burned and I rubbed at it through the gloves I wore, wondering if the mark on my palm would truly be red, of if this was some strange, lingering delusion my mind was conjuring to torture me.
My dream man was gone. The nightmare about my son’s broken body was gone. And reality? Reality was staring at the inside walls of a Coalition Fleet shipping crate. No, it wasn’t pitch black. No, it wasn’t suffocating. I’d become used to the scent of dirt and trees from my corner where I had a comfortable chair, anchored in place. I had food and water, light.
It wasn’t ideal, but they’d given me a pill to help me sleep. I was calm—too calm—and I had a feeling that special pill worked a little too well. I’d always been sensitive to medications. They probably didn’t want me to freak out halfway through the journey, and I had to admit, neither did I.
If I thought about where I was going—what I had to do—for long enough, losing my freaking mind would be easy to do. I remained calm, slept, entertained myself with a tablet with movies. The perfect two-day “veg-fest” as long as I didn’t think about the fact that I was hurtling through deep space in a freighter at light speed.
Forty-eight hours I’d been locked inside this cube. Yes, I had a full suit of Coalition camouflage space armor and helmet. The squinty eyed-doctor in the Miami Processing center had promised me I could survive for two weeks on the air and energy processing units built into the suit. Much longer than the two or three day journey should require.
But I wasn’t sure I trusted that bitch. My head still hurt where she’d jabbed a needle into my skull to implant what they called a Neural Processing Unit, a gadget that was supposed to make it possible for me to understand every alien language I might encounter where I was going: The prison planet known only as The Colony.
The Colony was some kind of dirty little secret that no one was supposed to know about. Some of Earth’s troops were reported to be there, tossed away like garbage by our own government. A few months ago, Senator Brooks from Massachusetts had received word that his nephew, a Navy SEAL who had volunteered for the Coalition Fleet, had died on this far off world under mysterious circumstances. Captain Brooks apparently had a brother still out there somewhere, fighting.
The Senator loved his sister, and she loved her sons. The Brooks family was wealthy and powerful with a proud history of military service going all the way back to the Civil War. Mama Brooks had been furious when her sons volunteered for the Coalition Fleet. And now, with one still out there somewhere, and one dead under mysterious circumstances…well, she wanted answers.
And she was willing to pay to get them. Pay. Threaten. Cajole. Demand. She was willing to hurt my son to discover the truth about hers. I understood a mother’s love, the relentless ache of it. I’d agreed to take this assignment, not because I wanted to, but because refusing would cause Wyatt more pain. Success, however, would see his surgery paid for and performed by the very best doctors the Brooks family could afford.
And they could afford a lot.
And all I had to do was bring them the truth about the prison colony. The contaminated flesh of our warriors. The truth about what was happening to our military personnel.
Captain Brooks had served his country well, then volunteered to go into space as a Coalition fighter and battle the mysterious enemy no one had ever seen. The Hive. Rumors and conspiracy theories were everywhere. But these creatures were supposed to be terrifying beings straight out of Star Trek. Monsters so scary that the governments of Earth had agreed to the Coalition demand for brides and warriors to protect us from a Hive invasion.
A lot of people didn’t believe the Hive existed. That the whole thing was a government conspiracy, a cover-up, a way to sacrifice people to some strange alien force without raising alarm. Some thought our volunteers were nothing more than cattle being led to slaughter. The information shared on the news networks was vague. No pictures of these Hive were ever shared. They were just bad guys in space, far away, mythical things that could never hurt us. But that seemed to be just what the governments wanted us to know. People in power argued that if the truth of what was outside of our atmosphere, beyond our moon and the reaches of our space shuttles was shared, there would be pandemonium. Riots. Chaos in the streets.
They wanted to the truth to remain hidden, it seemed, for our own good.
I didn’t care about any of that. I cared about Wyatt and my mom. If someone was willing to pay me money to get the truth, then I’d go. I wasn’t interested in the truth. I didn’t care about conspiracy theories or cover-ups. I was interested in the money this assignment would pay. The surgery Wyatt needed that this money would cover. I cared about healing my son.
And if I failed? Well, there was a price to be paid. They would hurt him. They would kill my mother and torture my boy. Those small details something they’d chosen not to share with me until the very end, of course.
But I believed the threat. Something in Mrs. Brooks’ fanatical gaze sent a shiver down my spine. She’d lost both of her sons and, apparently, her mind and sense of human decency. Too late to turn back now. The only thing I could focus on was getting back home to Wyatt, who was probably asleep under his Power Rangers comforter with a stuffed tiger named Roar snuggled under his sweet, innocent little chin at this very moment.