In Heat Read online

  Heat shot through his body. It was a Jimlee gesture of love between mated couples. And, in his present state, it was more erotic than anything he'd ever encountered before in his life.

  "Waverly, that wasn't smart." He lowered his head and ran his tongue over her lower lip as lightly as she had on his.

  She groaned, arching her head back into the pillow below her. Slowly, she reached up, grabbed his head, and pulled his lips to hers.

  Her action was unexpected. Jax felt the kiss run through his already heated veins and blast through his body. The soft feel of her lips gave way to the heat of her mouth as she opened for him. His tongue touched hers and his desire exploded over him, so strong, so intense he couldn't think.

  As if she felt it too, Waverly wound her legs around his thighs pulling him closer to her core. Jax broke the kiss when he felt the tip of his erection touch between her legs.

  "Listen to me," he said between pants. "If we go this quickly, you're going to be exhausted long before it's over." He framed her head in his hands, his gaze meeting hers. "Waverly, the waves will smooth out soon and run about one every hour. We need to take this slow and steady."

  "Okay," she said, shifting her hips so that his shaft pressed against the slick heat between her legs. "Let's take it slow." She pulled his head down to run her tongue along his bottom lip again. Was she teasing him? Did she understand what she was doing? He met her gaze and knew she did. He could see the swirl of her own desire in her eyes, on her half-parted lips, and in the heat of her body.

  "Dammit," he said, and drove himself inside her to the hilt.

  For a moment, all he could do was rest his head beside hers. He couldn't believe it. He didn't think there were any virgins over fifteen summers left in the galaxy. And here he was, inside one that must be close to his own twenty-five years.

  It turned him on more than anything else could have. His cock swelled larger than it ever had before, causing her already tight sheath to grip him tighter.

  "Why didn't you tell me?" he ground out.

  "Would it have changed things?"

  Jax looked into her blue-blue eyes. "Yes." No. Maybe. "No." He didn't know and his body didn't care. She held him so tight inside, he felt as if they were one.

  "I told you this was a bad idea. You didn't listen."

  "No," he said again. Jax started to ease out of her but another wave hit him and he was gone. He raised his head and crushed her lips beneath his, while his fingers found her clitoris. She would come, at least, he thought. He'd make sure of it.

  He tried to be gentle, but the tight fit of her body around him made him insane. The smell of cinnamon filled his head, as his tongue stroked into her mouth in time with his other penetration. Her legs were still twined around his and she gripped him hard, holding on tight.

  "Jax," she whispered and he felt her come. The tight milking of his cock triggered his own release, making him shout.

  It was all over within seconds and yet he was more fulfilled than he'd ever been before. "I'm crushing you," he whispered against her ear.

  "Umm," she answered, and seemed to snuggle deeper into him.

  He pulled himself free, and slid over so half of his body touched the bed, the other half still pinned her. Jax started to fall asleep. He'd never felt so content during the six other times he'd faced the mating ritual, but he'd always fought the rising heat for as long as he could. Maybe he shouldn't have fought it.

  Unconsciously, he moved so one arm and leg went protectively across her body. And then he slept.

  CHAPTER TWO WHO IS THE SEDUCER?

  Waverly moved, or tried to. She lay pinned to the bed by the huge hulk of a man who had bought her from Alexander. This whole day had been so surreal, she still couldn't wrap her mind around it. From the moment they had been paid by the Junkeaters early this morning, she'd had a premonition things were going to go wrong.

  First, she felt herself going into heat about four days earlier than she should have. Then Alexander started acting strangely. She knew why now. When the drug hit, she had fought it for several long minutes before she'd passed out. She remembered Deek saying, "Alexander, this is one of your stupider ideas. When The Gunny finds out what you've done, you'll be in a hell of his making. No one messes with this guy and lives." What guy? she'd thought and then everything went black.

  When she woke up, she realized that the once-monthly heat she could usually control with simple breathing exercises and meditation, had grown into a raging inferno. She'd been so confused by this and the man she'd found herself in bed with, that she hadn't even realized she wasn't wearing clothes for the majority of the conversation.

  When she couldn't take the heat building inside her any more, she reached up and licked him across the lower lip, tasting the maleness of him. That move, and his reaction to it, sent her over the edge. All she wanted was to feel him inside her as soon as she could. She goaded him into it, even after he had warned her of the consequences.

  Waverly gazed at the sleeping man on top of her. He seemed peaceful, almost boyish, although he must be over six and a half feet tall. His hair was so light, it was almost colorless, cut unfashionably short. He had green eyes, she thought, trying to remember, and the harsh, angry slash of his mouth had turned out to be soft and skilled. She'd gone through a stage where she had kissed a large number of her male friends when she went to flight school on Cronus. He'd beaten them all hands-down.

  To be fair, she was a very different person now than she had been then. With the death of her whole direct family, she was an anomaly in Alterian culture. A free-floating entity in a world where every person was defined by their family ties. She could have married into one of the lesser houses. There were many who would want her for her wealth alone. But instead, she had left to seek her own destiny as a transport pilot.

  Waverly looked at Jax and felt a rush of heat pool between her legs. Then she crashed emotionally when she considered that she might be pregnant. As much as she wanted children, there was no way she would bring a child to life without the support of a family network. There wasn't a day that went by she didn't miss her family so much her heart clenched and bled.

  She would have to go into Bazarat tomorrow and see a Healer there. Most likely this night produced a child. The thought depressed her. Tears formed unexpectedly. She wouldn't have to do this if her family still lived. Alterians valued children to the point they accepted them into families without the importance most other cultures placed on the family lines of the father.

  "Why so sad?" His voice was low and rough, but had a caring pitch to it as he rubbed a tear from her cheek.

  "No reason." She tried to move away but he kept her pinned below him. "I need to sit up, Jax."

  He rolled fully on his side and she sat, turning away and pulling her knees up to her chest. She thought again of her lost future. Marriages on her planet were only completed between love matches, probably because women were the head of the family. It made sense that love and family would come first when women were in charge. She hadn't known her own father, although she knew he was an off-worlder from her height. She stood well above both the men and women in her own family. If only they were still alive. But then, if they were, she wouldn't be here.

  "I'm sorry," he said behind her. He sounded like he really was.

  "I am too." She turned her head back to him and forced herself to smile. "But Alexander will be the sorriest of us all once I catch up with him."

  Alexander. She wasn't surprised he'd done this. When she couldn't get work with one of the big outfits, he'd hired her to run cargo of another kind. It was a slippery slope. From there, she moved on to a variety of thefts, finding she had an aptitude for walking away from places with her pockets full of other people's belongings. She liked to think her experiences as a pilot allowed her to keep her cool under adverse conditions. She just didn't get upset or easily spooked.

  Well, her association with Alexander was over now--or would be after she killed him for sel
ling her like this.

  "I'll take care of him." He said it like a promise.

  His eyes are green, she thought, watching him gaze intently at her.

  "Don't worry yourself. I know where to find his hidey-holes. And I owe him and Deek both for this."

  He ran a finger down her back, making her shiver. All at once, she wanted him again.

  "Who's Deek?"

  "He's partners with Alexander and me."

  His hand stroked down her back once more. "Come back under the covers where it's warm."

  Waverly was freezing. Why not get close to him and share his warmth? She was rationalizing, she knew, but she still slid under the covers.

  "So you're called The Gunny?" she asked.

  "You know who I am?" Lying on his back, he pulled her partially onto his body.

  "No. I heard Deek say something to Alexander like, 'When The Gunny finds out what you've done, you'll be in a hell of his making', right before the drugs took me under." She rested her head on his chest.

  "I picked up the name a couple years ago."

  Waverly actually felt a tremor of heat run through his body. He sucked in his breath.

  "What was that?" Her own body responded to his tremor with an answering bolt of desire. She realized they were each playing off the other's desires. His heat seemed to accelerate hers. She had never felt this turned-on before. In fact, she normally only felt revulsion when other men touched her for longer than a few moments. It was why she still remained a virgin when all the women she knew her age were not.

  "The next wave." He tightened his arms around her, bringing her body tight alongside his. "How are you feeling?"

  She pulled herself up to straddle him and leaned over to lick his bottom lip in a slow motion. "I feel good," she said, then scraped her teeth in a soft bite over the bottom of his mouth. He moaned.

  "I don't think you know what you're doing to me," he said, his face serious, even as she felt his erection strengthen along her leg.

  "I can't seem to control my desire to do that." She really couldn't seem to stop. Maybe she just liked the response he gave every time.

  He pulled her head down and kissed her. Waverly slid her lips from his and placed small kisses on his neck down to his shoulder. She bit softly, feeling him purr deep in his chest.

  "Does this feel as good to you as it does to me?"

  "Better. Waverly, I need you."

  "And you'll have me Jax." Waverly felt the power she had over him fly through her. She shivered and tried to control a strange desire she had to bite down his body. She stopped fighting it after a few moments and added, "After I bite you all over."

  He moaned when she started nibbling down his chest. She scraped her teeth over his nipple, then down across his flat stomach. Curving around his hip, she ran her tongue along the outer side of his thigh. He stopped her there and dragged her up.

  "Straddle my legs again," he said, his tone serious. She did as he demanded, right below his erection. "Now lean down so I can bite you back."

  His hands guided her body to his mouth, and he licked across her nipple. It beaded into a painfully tight peak. It must be the fact I'm in heat, she thought. That's why I'm responding to him when I've never even felt a twinge of desire for another man. Her breasts seem to swell and turn heavy. He pulled back his mouth and blew on the wet spot he'd left. Combined with the cold air in the room, her nipple throbbed. She lifted a hand to rub it while he suckled on her other.

  Moaning loudly at the insistent motion of his mouth, she felt as if she needed something, and needed it badly. Her breath came out in gasps and her stomach tumbled with desire. She reached her free hand to grasp his shaft. He hummed into her nipple, shooting awesome desire from her breast down to her core.

  He pulled his head back. "I might have been wrong." His tongue went to press into her breast, making her lose her train of thought. "By putting it off, I might have made the mating ritual worse."

  "What?" she whispered, her whole body beginning to shake with wanting him.

  His lips moved to hers. "Slide me inside you," he murmured into her mouth. That she understood. Rising up on her knees, she lowered herself onto him. She stopped when his head was inside her, concentrating on how good it felt to just hold him. His hands gripped at her hips and put pressure on her to lower herself. She resisted, slowly letting her weight take her down. Pressure began to build, as she moved slowly down his shaft.

  Suddenly, he held her tightly in place while he sat up, ramming fully into her. He kept going, pushing her onto her back and lying down between her legs. He didn't let her adjust, pulling out only a small amount, then bringing his body forcefully into her.

  "Waverly, Dammit," he said. She didn't think he was angry. After the slow pace she'd set before, she struggled to keep up. "Look at me." When she did, he said, "I'm coming, right now."

  She watched his face as his orgasm hit. It tightened and his green eyes opened to gaze at her with an emotion in them she couldn't understand. He lowered his forehead to rest on hers for several heartbeats. She lifted her hands to wrap them around him.

  Suddenly, he was gone, moving down her body, his hand separating her so his tongue could rub across her clitoris. Waverly's hips arched off the bed, and she screamed his name in surprise and muttered it again and again as her own orgasm began to build. His whole mouth suckled her and she wanted to scream with frustration. She was right there, right there. His tongue came back to stroke across her again. When he dipped a finger deep inside her, she came, her whole body tightening under him.

  Jax moved back up beside her, pulling the blankets over them. Waverly felt a slow satisfaction spread throughout her body and she snuggled close to sleep again.

  Instead of falling into a peaceful slumber, a shrill noise made them both jump. "Security breach in level three. Security breach in level three," a woman's computerized voice repeated.

  CHAPTER THREE SECURITY BREACH

  Jax was on his feet before he could even begin to think about the ramifications of the breach. The bank of computers flickered to life as he neared them. Level three was the area around the second of the three doors into his house. The first, main door came through the foyer, the second was supposedly a hidden door off a hallway that dumped into the room after the foyer. The third door lay below his feet, although you couldn't tell from looking at the floor.

  He punched the security camera view, but he could only see a blank screen. Behind him, Waverly made rustling sounds as she put on her clothes. Even in the middle of this emergency, his body was tuned to her. He flipped the screen to show the motion detector grids. They were programmed down to one foot length square grids. He could literally watch someone walk across a room, even if the cameras lost their picture.

  Three of the squares lit up, so more than one person was involved. He watched them reach the first of two doors that stood between Jax and his unexpected company.

  The intruders would take quite some time to get through to him. Jax estimated twenty minutes a door. He swung around to watch Waverly pull her shirt over her head. Beautiful, firm breasts, big enough to fill a man's hand, disappeared with only a flash of her dusk-colored areolas.

  "Come here," he growled before he could stop himself.

  She started towards him. "Who is it?"

  "I don't know yet." He swung around to turn on the camera to the room outside his door. "We'll try to catch a glimpse of them as they come into the next room." He turned back, pulling her onto his lap, and gave in to his need to kiss her.

  She struggled. "Jax, you have a security breach," she said, when he let her lips pull back.

  "It should take them around twenty minutes to cut through each of the doors."

  Her gaze moved to the screen. "Can they cut the power and get through faster?"

  "The backup generator will come on thirty seconds after the power is cut. During that time, no doors in the house will open."

  "What happens if the generator goes down?"


  He liked the way she thought, and the calm way she handled this.

  "There's a way to manually over-ride each door but they would have to cut all sources of power." His arms tightened around her. "We've got bigger problems, though."

  "Bigger than someone coming who might kill us?"

  "The next wave should hit me right about when they get in."

  "You're still having them?" She seemed surprised.

  "I've only got another eighteen hours to go." He said it deadpan, but he could see the humor in it.

  "But you didn't have them while we were sleeping."

  "I'll be honest. I don't understand this mating cycle. It's not like any other I've experienced."

  "Weren't you taught about this?"

  "No." His eyes strayed to the screen showing the status of each of the doors. Still intact. They would have to cut through four bolts to get it open. "I'm finishing up the last year of exile from Jimlee. I missed my learning ritual seven years ago by two months."

  "So you've just been living through them blind?"

  He scooted toward the terminal to switch the view back to the room the intruders were in. Still dark. "Yep," he said, distracted.

  "That's terrible, Jax. I don't know what I would do if I hadn't been taught to control my body when I go into heat."

  He hugged her close to him, rubbing his chin into her hair, taking in a deep breath of cinnamon. "This has been the easiest cycle I've been through. I wouldn't usually be able to function so far into it." He kept pressure on her until she relaxed in his lap.

  "Are we stuck here?"

  He forced his gaze away from the screens to her. "We can get out. I have some body armor I want you to put on when they get through the first door." On second thought, I should move her to the tunnel. I don't want her getting caught in the crossfire.

  "If we get out of here, I can fly just about any transport made."

  He grinned. "We're not running. We're staying. This is my house, you're my woman and I'm not going anywhere."