The Intergalactic Duke's Inconvenient Engagement Read online

  “Maybe. Remind me how that part goes…”

  He half closed his eyes, but behind the shield of his lashes, his gaze brightened, more intense than the energy from the black hole had been, and she knew from her readings that most of that energy was invisible, pulsing above and below the limits of human detection. What would she find if she opened herself up to him?

  Exposing herself to the singularity would’ve meant breaking out into space itself. Here, now… She didn’t know what it would mean, but she suspected it would be every bit as thrilling, beautiful…and perilous.

  And though she would’ve sworn an oath—on any god around—that she didn’t need anybody, in that moment, she wanted Raz above, below, and deep inside.

  Canting up to her tiptoes, she lifted her lips to his. After a nanosecond’s hesitation—she counted—his mouth crashed down.

  All the awkward fumbling of that first kiss, even the memory of hesitation, burned away on the impact of their mouths. Maybe before she had been overwhelmed, so recently awakened from her imprisonment, but this time she knew exactly what she wanted.

  She twined her fingers into his black hair, tugging down the shoulder-length strands and thrilling in his demanding caress as his hands plunged past the tight strictures of her belt, flaying open the edges of the robe. She still had on a thin nightgown underneath—she hadn’t been stupid enough to come out to meet him wearing only a robe—but the lightweight, silky material seemed to act as an accelerant to the urgent roaming of his hands.

  He made a low noise in his throat, half groan, half growl, that reverberated in her bones and rattled loose a moan of her own. She stroked her hands down his bare arms, reveling in the hard clench of his muscles as he lifted and spun her toward the starry fireplace. They sank together to the thick rug in front of the fireplace that now showed a fiery comet plunging across the heavens. How appropriate. They would burn up on entry in a glorious immolation.

  “Rayna,” he murmured. “My little honey-bird.”

  She gasped as he trailed his lips down the column of her throat while his restless caress drifted upward to cup the heavy, aching weight of her breasts. The breath hitched in her throat as his thumbs teased the tight buds of her nipples.

  He laughed hoarsely, a sound as dark as space and riddled with stars. “Ray,” he murmured. “You are my ray of light. Guide me.”

  With a sharp inhalation of pleasure, she clutched his one hand to her breast and guided the other down to the juncture of her thighs. He curved his big palm over her mound through the thin, silky material, his fingers stroking restlessly. When he brushed her clit, swollen and throbbing, she sucked in another mewling breath.

  “Ahh,” he breathed. “There? That is where you guide me.” He stroked her again, leaving her trembling. As he pinched her nipples through the nightgown with more force, she arched helplessly into his hands, keening out another breath. When she slid her hands up inside the hem of his tunic, the ring caught the trailing edge, dragging it higher. She grasped at the hard ridges of his abs to hold herself upright. The harsh gusting of his breath only fanned her need, each convulsion of his hard gasps against her palms echoing through her as if he was already inside her.

  “Raz,” she gasped. “Oh God…”

  “Just a god,” he murmured. “Not the only one. Although I would gladly be your only.”

  She didn’t have the power to laugh at his arrogance, not when his lightest touch was so close to sending her over the edge. But she would tease him unmercifully when it was her turn…

  She skimmed her hands lower, past the drawstring of his pants—the ridiculous rock on her finger catching there too—and clamped her fingers on his haunches. His hips bucked toward her, and the long, thick, hard shaft of his erection jutted against her belly. Oh, he would fill her in ways no man ever had. Maybe because he wasn’t just a man.

  With a masterful heave, he lifted and turned her, laying her back on the rug with the astro fireplace at her head casting its dazzling glow into her eyes. Though it was nothing compared to the dazzle of him suspended above her. Now she would see what this arrogant alien duke was made of, besides starlight and ego.

  But instead of getting naked as she so dearly desired, he nudged back the edges of her robe and resumed his potent stroking.

  She arched up into him, with a whine of dismay and desire. “Raz, fuck me.”

  “I’ll give you what you need,” he growled, and the intensity in his voice was a promise, an oath. “Look at me,” he demanded. “I want to see everything I am in your eyes.”

  Dazed by the ferocity of his command, she parted her lashes wide and uncertain. What did he mean, all that he was? Above her head, the astro fireplace spun with a now familiar solar system of a star and planets and moons and an asteroid belt, all his, as her body yearned to be his.

  Oh God, he was sooooo arrogant, thinking he could claim a solar system and her with one touch. Then his finger sank inside her and crooked with a come-hither gesture that nailed the secret heart of her pleasure just as his other hand clamped around her tight, aching nipple and his mouth came down on hers with unerring, irresistible grace.

  She spasmed around his hand with a shocked cry that would’ve woken Earthers back on her distant planet if not for his mouth shielding hers. His groan of satisfaction trembled through her, igniting another spasm and then another as he pressed the heel of his palm to her still pulsing clit. “Rayna,” he chanted in a rough voice. “My lady Ray. Mine…”

  His… Her deepest inner core convulsed around his claiming hand, as if he had the right to possess her very pleasure. But when she reached for him to reclaim some of that control, he brought his mouth down for a demanding kiss and she forgot anything she wanted that wasn’t him.

  As their breaths calmed and they sank back onto the rug, he stretched her out beside him and curved her into the shelter of his body.

  “Raz,” she murmured with the first prickle of returning awareness.

  He hushed her, brushing his lips over the sweaty, tangled hair at her temple. “Just lie here a moment,” he said, “and be with me.”

  She petted the hard curve of his pecs and rested her chin on his shoulder so she could admire the sparkling rock. “What is a honey-bird?”

  “A small avian creature, common on Azthronos. It’s the only pollinator for one of our major exports, a flower that is processed into a psychotropic drug and a popular ethanol-based beverage called ghost-mead.” He tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “The nectar produced by the honey-bird is exactly the color of your hair.”

  She grinned. “You’re calling me a hummingbird?”

  “Do your hummingbirds defend their carnivorous flower fields to the death?”

  Carnivorous flowers and ghostly booze… With a sleepy blink, she fisted her ringed hand under her chin. “Actually, I’ve heard they are rather fierce for their size.”

  “Honey-birds are much prized on Azthronos.” He tightened his embrace.

  Maybe it was unfair of her, but it was his own fault for making her so sated that she fell asleep.

  Some time later, she made a soft noise of protest when he lifted her and she realized he was carrying her back to the bedroom. “Stay,” she whispered.

  With the light of his solar system fading to some deep-space darkness, his eyes were shadowed. “Sleep,” he said and kissed her gently.

  She couldn’t keep her eyes open but she said sleepily, “On Earth, the fairytales end with the rich, handsome, titled dude kissing the girl awake.”

  “Duke, not dude,” he corrected. “Also, you’re not on Earth anymore.”

  With that line—half amused, half menacing—ringing in her ears, she fell asleep.

  Chapter 10

  “Personally, I hate balls.”

  Raz took a hefty drink of his ghost-mead and sidelonged a glance at the captain next to him. “I had no idea pirates were obliged to attend many formal engagements. How disappointing.”

  Nor tugged at the crava
t around his neck. “This is my first one. But I decided I don’t like it.”

  To his surprise, Raz couldn’t hold back a chuckle. The younger male looked so disgruntled. Raz imagined maybe he would’ve looked that way. If he hadn’t been exiled up until now, of course.

  He hefted his half-full tumbler of mead and waggled it gently. “I think you’ll find these occasions less onerous with a beverage in hand.”

  Nor stopped fiddling with his neckcloth only to pull at the tails of his formal coat instead. “I didn’t want to drink anything,” he said in a low voice, as if it were a heinous confession. “I don’t want to do anything stupid.”

  Considering the younger male had apparently been a pirate, Raz couldn’t imagine what worse stupid thing he was imagining.

  Maybe…fingering an Earth girl until she orgasmed and then watching her fall asleep in his arms?

  He took another drink of mead to hide his smirk. That didn’t feel stupid; he felt smug.

  But his satisfaction paled as he glanced over the rim of his glass at the gathered throng. As he’d warned Rayna it would be, it was a crush, but even he hadn’t anticipated just how crushing it was.

  The expecting dignitaries and nobles were all accounted for, but the presence of Octiron Corp had brought in a different kind of riffraff. He saw several winning contestants from their current fan favorite show, the Great Space Race. These winners had been gifted riches that rivaled his own.

  The show’s losers often wound up dead.

  He jerked his chin at one of the recording crews that was playing at unobtrusiveness, mostly so they could rifle the buffet. “I can’t believe my mother invited them,” he growled. “Azthronos doesn’t need that kind of coverage.”

  Nor stopped fidgeting with his clothes. “It’s easy money,” he said. “Easier than pirating.”

  Raz grunted. Now that the formal receiving line was over and the majority of the guests arrived, he knew Rayna would be making her appearance at any time. His nerves itched knowing it.

  “Here.” Nor held out his hand. “Take this.”

  Raz stared at him suspiciously. “What is it?”

  The captain rattled his closed fist, and reluctantly Raz held out his hand.

  Nor dropped a small device, no bigger than the last joint of his thumb, into Raz’s open palm. “It’s a scrambler,” he said.

  “Personal ones of this size are illegal,” Raz pointed out.

  “Highly.” Nor reached out to scoop the scrambler back.

  Raz closed his fist. “I won’t forget this.”

  The younger male grinned roguishly. “You mean that you won’t forget it at my court martial, or you won’t forget it when I ask for a favor someday?”

  “Whichever comes first.”

  The captain laughed. “I guess it depends on how this night goes,” he drawled. “That one Earth girl intrigues me.”

  Raz stiffened. “Not Rayna.” Not his ray of light.

  Nor clamped a hand on his shoulder. “The dowager told me to advise you on your inconvenient engagement. You want my advice?”

  “No,” Raz growled.

  “Give her exactly that look when you claim her. She’ll fall at your feet.”

  “I don’t want her at my feet,” Raz objected.

  “Huh. I thought that’s what dukes wanted: the worlds at their feet.” Nor shrugged. “Well, let me know how that works for you.”

  “I’m sure the scrambler will be useful.” Raz slid the device into his coat.

  “I know it will, Your Grace. I meant the seduction.”

  At that moment, a soft, lilting fanfare sounded from the far end of the ballroom. Raz’s stomach clenched with anticipation and unease. The Octiron crew abandoned the buffet tables and hurried toward the grand staircase. The lights in the hall dimmed except for one bright spot at the head of the stairs.

  His ray of light.

  She was coming. And what he wouldn’t give to have her coming again in his arms, alone together instead of here.

  He cursed his mother’s decision to sell their privacy to Octiron. Worse, he hated the inherited responsibility that made him understand why she’d done it. Was it too late to grab Rayna and make a run for it? Certainly the questionable Captain Nor had an unmarked vessel hidden away somewhere, probably with a large engine and low trackable emissions. Raz held his breath, thinking of all the wonders of the universe he could share with her.

  But not at the expense of his own corner of it. His gut clenched at the knowledge he would never abandon his solar system and the souls who looked to him for guidance and galactic credits.

  So he stood there, his fingers clenched around the tumbler of ghost-mead until his knuckles ached.

  And then she appeared at the top of the stairs.

  The earliest flower of spring on Azthronos was the lush, delicate dusty-mauve beauty called the yili, and he had to grant his mother’s virtuosity in ornamenting Rayna as one. The wide, light layers of skirts and sleeves floated on invisible anti-gravs like fragile petals, and the purplish hue of the gown brought out the deep honey-gold of her skin as if a rising sun was touching her for the first time. Smooth, clear icestone crystals were woven into the edges of the petals and… What had they done to her hair? He’d seen it tangled from her escape, sleeked from the sonic shower, and wild from the way she’d thrashed her head when he stroked her to release. But this was yet another facet of her. The brown waves were gathered high, exposing the slender column of her neck, except for a single curled tendril on either side of her face, framing her cheeks with a braided mauve ribbon. More crystals sparkled in her hair and the ribbon as she tilted her head to survey the room below.

  If it had been him up there, he knew he would’ve stumbled. It was too much: the brilliant light that still wasn’t as glaring as the focus of the whole assembly, the sudden hush among hundreds of beings that seemed to create a vacuum in the ballroom, the mortification she must be feeling knowing that everyone staring at her now had mere moments ago been speculating on her fate.

  But if she had any misgivings, it didn’t show. She paused, poised as any debutante he’d had thrown at him on his tour of Azthronos, but not coy. She stood square to the light and the crowd, her head angling high again.

  She took one step, and icestone sandals glinted between the shivering layers of her skirts, the heels so high his gut felt pierced by the points and by the agonized fear that she would fall.

  But she took one more lilting step, and then the center panel of the stairs began to descend toward the ballroom floor, so smooth she didn’t even wobble.

  Unlike his heart.

  “Lady Rayna Quaye,” intoned the estate steward. “Of Earth.”

  “Of Mud,” someone whispered in a sly aside. Raz overheard a few titters at the common joke at the closed-worlders’ expense. But he didn’t have time to berate—or maybe beat—the ignorant guests. He was too busy pushing forward to the base of the stairs.

  As he approached—his gaze fixed unfalteringly on her—he saw the hectic flush on her cheeks wasn’t artful cosmetics but more than a touch of panic. A string of tear-shaped crystals strung along her brow glistened like water droplets and made her wide, dark eyes look fathoms deep.

  He would willingly fall.

  As, it seemed, would a dozen other males who jostled ahead of him to be at the foot of the descending stair when she arrived. He waited for his ducal prerogative to sink in, but they were oblivious to him, focused as they were on the lovely Lady Rayna. So he threw an elbow at one, twisted his shoulders to pass a second, and hip-checked a third. He was first in line with the stair still a breath above him.

  Rayna’s gaze met his and slayed him where he stood.

  The stair touched down, and when she took her first step toward him, a hundred icestones hidden among her skirts fell to the polished stone floor and shattered. The scintillating cloud belled out from her feet, catching the lights so she seemed to be walking on a nebula.

  The crowd oohed in delight, and
Raz almost forgave his mother’s ruthless manipulations when Rayna’s lips twitched in amusement. The panic left her eyes, and she gave him the barest wink. Tiny crystals in her lashes winked at him too.

  The nebula reached his boots as he strode forward to take her hand.

  “Lady Rayna,” he murmured. “You are indeed a ray of light.”

  “Your Grace,” she murmured back. “You are so full of it.”

  He quirked a grin at her, but her tease sent a shaft of lust spearing through him. He wanted her to be full, of him, and not just his one lone finger. The formal trousers cut into his groin as his flesh swelled with need for her. Fortunately, the ballistics-grade material restrained any obvious erection.

  He lifted her hand to his lips, and the ring blazed brighter than all the icestones together, the molecular lattice inside the gem shattering and recrystallizing in time with her heartbeat. As the Eye of Zalar glinted, the crowd fell silent, then a low buzz swelled outward from their central point, like another rolling cloud of icestone dust.

  As he tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and led her forward, the assembly parted around them. If there were any more whispers or tittering, he didn’t hear it, focused as he was on the woman beside him. For her part, she kept her gaze straight ahead.

  “Your mother said to find her to make my presentation,” she said from the side of her mouth.

  “I’d say you presented yourself quite well enough.” A twist of jealousy annoyed him that she thought she needed anyone else.

  Besides him, of course.

  “I see her in conversation with the Octiron producers,” he said grudgingly. “Let’s leave them to their conspiring.” He angled her away from the denser throng around the dowager. “Would you like something to drink? Are you hungry?”

  “I would throw up if I ate anything,” she informed him. “I swear these weird contraptions that keep my skirt floating are making my stomach flip too.”

  “Not just nerves?”

  “I told myself not to be nervous. It’s got nothing to do with me, what happens tonight. I’m just doing my part until the Earth envoy comes.” She slanted a smile at him. “Also, I am well armed. Or well handed, I guess.” She laid her palm over his forearm, flashing the Eye of Zalar ahead of them. “It’s practically a laser beam. I feel invincible.”