Pharon's Demon (3 page)

She eyed her captor. She’d enjoy kissing this
one more.

The corridor’s walls were smooth hewn, with
strategically placed light spheres bobbing every twenty yards or
so. Dark green veining marked where the places where topaz shot
through the coarser, more common hardstone of Zeberget’s core.
Mining carts filled with debris trundled by on a regular basis.
Presumably, this meant predictable surface access as the carts must
go somewhere aboveground to unload their cargo. If she had to, she
could sneak a ride on one of them and avoid a three hundred yard
upward climb. Her arm muscles would thank her for that one.

Mkhai looked down at her, clearly sensing her
curiosity and wanting to distract her. “Tell me your name,
captive.”

How charmingly warrior-like. She resisted the
urge to kick his arrogance somewhere painful.
Play along,
Bennu
. Be sweet. Be sexy. He’ll take you where you need to
go.

So, instead of explaining to him the current
state of women’s rights in their galaxy (highly advanced, unlike
some of the further galaxies where the males still regarded their
females as convenient chattel and proposed chattel-like
arrangements with them), she smiled coyly and said, “Bennu.”

“Bennu,” he repeated thoughtfully. “An
interesting name for a female.”

Like she cared if he approved or not.

They emerged abruptly from the corridor onto
an overlook that dropped abruptly away at their feet. Hundreds of
yards below them. Pharon workers entered and exited the tunnel
points that honeycombed the enormous cavern. When Mkhai appeared, a
ripple of apprehension ran through the workers. Dark eyes flickered
nervously over him and then dropped away.

Interesting. Her golden companion and his
brethren were clearly the hired muscle. And, boy, they made a
handsome addition to the mines. Since she hardly wanted to tip
Mkhai off to her interest in the access points and loads of raw
jewels headed aboveground, she settled for visually inspecting her
companion.

Gorgeous.

Her nipples tightened beneath his interested
gaze. Did he like that? Good.

“Strip,” he commanded. He couldn’t be
serious. They were on a damn ledge. One misstep and they would both
plunge to their deaths. Apparently, he liked a little risk with his
sexplay. So did she, but this went beyond prudence.

His hands patted over her curves, looking for
weapons.

Let him look.

He wouldn’t find anything that she couldn’t
do without.

“Here’s the thing,” she said, trying for a
tone of camaraderie. “You’ve had your fun. Now untie me.” She
waggled her bound wrists for good measure.

Mkhai simply stared back at her, raising a
brow. “I don’t think so. Let us explore this—
fun
.”

He pulled out a long knife. “This comes off,
now.” He slid the fine edge of the blade underneath her collar and
tugged.

“Look, buddy,” she said, “that knife isn’t
going to cut through this fabric.”

He looked intrigued.

“And I don’t need to waste a perfectly good
outfit, even if it does only come in standard issue black.”

Time to compromise, she decided. After all,
it wasn’t as if a half-dozen of his best buddies hadn’t just seen
everything she had to offer and more. She pulled the neck and the
suit parted easily, the fabric sliding away from her body with a
welcome rush of cool air. Mkhai hadn’t been kidding about the
summertime heat; her blacksuit was set to automatically control her
body temperature and keep her cool, but even the suit was having a
hard time compensating for the temperatures.

It was a relief to step out of the blacksuit
and kick it away. Dressed only in thigh high boots only, she turned
to face him.

***

The little
femi
’s face lit up with a
delicious greed. Mkhai could not tell, however, if her excitement
was for the riches that surrounded them or for his own person.
Hekate knew, he’d never laid hands on a female so deliciously
sensitive or easy to arouse. And for her to appear during the
summer heat appeared nothing short of miraculous. He would enjoy
exploring every sensuous inch of her as he taught her not to thieve
from the Pharon.

Below them, the miners emptied the day’s
findings into the small, motorized carts that would carry the cut
stones back into the camps where the polishers lived. The huge
piles of dark green stone were dull now, but Pharon’s craftsmen
would polish and shape the stones until the jewels glowed with a
liquid green fire unique in all the galaxy.

His cock throbbed eagerly, reminding him that
he had another lesson to teach his
femi
. His brothers had
taken their share of his hunt, as custom demanded.

Now, it was his turn.

He pulled her into a recessed cave. The area
served as a storage room, one of many that lined the corridors
above the main mine shaft. Oddments of mining equipment filled the
space, along with spare parts, and—fortunately for him—piles of the
brown felting the miners wrapped around the stones to protect the
precious surfaces from scratching on the journey to the surface.
Good. The soft material would protect her skin as well; he found
himself oddly hesitant to bruise her.

Well, he smiled wickedly, other than her
delightfully curved backside.
That
was fair game. The rest
of her, however, he would keep safe.

With a firm hand, he pushed her backwards—he
was just coherent enough to notice that his captive did not fight
the fall in the slightest, rolling with him to absorb the shock of
their landing—and then he was pushing her legs apart.

“Open up,” he breathed into her ear. He
placed his hands on her thighs and moved them further apart. She
hesitated, then gasped as her sex slowly parted, the lips parting
like well-oiled petals in a smooth rush.

Oh gods above. Pink and glistening, she was
spread open before him like the
haururu
flower that bloomed
in the abovelands. He caught the same rich, exotic scent as he
inhaled deeply. Moisture ran from her sex, the small opening
already fluttering in tiny spasms. He stroked a finger around her
hole and she moaned, her flesh clinging to his.

Mine
.

No more sharing.

If his touch brought her no pleasure, he
would not be able to bear the shame and disappointment.

He left the tip of his finger hooked in her
hot sex and bent his lips to the stiff clit begging for his
attention. Moaning softly, she pressed her legs wider—no
reluctance, no fear of the demon between her thighs. Satisfaction
and something stronger throbbed through him.

Why she did not fear him when so many others
did was a mystery—but he no longer cared. He was merely grateful.
“I will give you pleasure now,” he promised.

She panted beneath him and, for the first
time since he had been ruthlessly pulled from the vortex and formed
for Pharon’s pleasure, Pharon’s needs, he felt powerful. In
control. “Pleasure for my
femi
,” he vowed.

She was a prisoner, his captive. Pinioning
her hands behind her back with one of his, he spread her thighs
wider with his shoulders and then he ate her. His tongue licked
roughly, demandingly at the hard kernel of her clit. He suckled her
without mercy, withholding the orgasm from her.

“You will not come,” he ordered. “Not
yet.”

“Wanna bet?” She stared up at him, dazed with
her arousal. Oh, gods, he loved the sight of her. But her words? He
laughed darkly. Oh, that was a challenge that she would lose. He
had spent a lifetime learning sexual restraint, sexual discipline.
And he had all the night hours that remained to show her.

***

This time, when Mkhai held her swollen, wet
lips apart, he placed himself inside her.

Bennu shuddered with the pleasure. His
fingers had teased and tormented her, delivering an orgasm that had
left her limp, drained.

This was better.

Thicker, fuller, sliding in and out with a
sensuous rhythm that made her want to dance beneath the heavy
weight of the male body that pressed her down.

And yet he held her still. In. Out.

His dark eyes glowing down at her in the
dusky stillness of the cave.

Otherworldly.

She didn’t care. All she wanted was that
orgasm that he held so tantalizingly out of her reach—and that he
was strong enough to give her. This partner, she thought with
delight before pleasure rendered her incoherent, this partner could
make her come for hours.

His eyes, though…. His eyes changed as his
lower body in a faster, deeper rhythm, surging inside her with
powerful strokes that claimed her, marker her as his.

She pulled a hand free—she registered his
surprise that she was able to do so, but, really, with three older
brothers you learned wrestling moves—and stroked the side of his
face. “Your eyes are glowing.”

His eyes
were
glowing, a deep
bronze-gold that lit up the room. He lifted himself up off her
body, his hips still thrusting against hers. Pleasure uncoiled in
her, more slowly this time.

“Does it matter?” He answered her question
with a question of his own. Damn, she hated when they did that. It
always meant that the answer was a bad one. A very, very bad one.
This wasn’t going to be a simple genetic manipulation or a
technological enhancement designed to help him see underground in
the mines.

“Yes.” She squeezed her inner muscles around
his hard cock, letting her pussy milk the thick shaft. Two could
play at sexual domination, even if she
was
the one on the
bottom. “Tell me, now, Mkhai or we’re done here. Answer the
question,” she gasped. Oh, she wanted answers. Now.

“Summer heat,” he said, moving faster,
deeper.

The other demons had had golden eyes—but none
had glowed with such ferocity.

She slipped her ass down their impromptu bed,
and his next thrust was shallower. He cursed and his hands reached
for her hips to steady her.

“More details,” she demanded, thoughts
slipping away from her. “There’s more to it than that.”

“Mates,” he groaned against her neck and she
froze, sanity flooding back to her. “Our eyes glow gold when we
choose a mate.”

“No,” she protested. She was here for hot sex
and topazes—in that order. Demon mating was not on the agenda. Not
tonight.

Even as she scooted away, he flipped her over
onto her stomach, her hands caught beneath her stomach. “There,” he
promised darkly, sliding the hot, thick length of cock deep inside
her aching sex. “If
I’m
not good enough for you, you may
pleasure yourself.”

He rode her with deep, fast, rough strokes.
One bronzed male hand held her shoulder to the pallet, the other
slipping between their bodies to grab her hand and place it on her
aching clit. Each hard thrust of his body forced her body into the
pallet and against her own fingers.

“Stroke,” he commanded. She knew four
different kinds of martial arts. Even pinned beneath his demanding
weight, she was not helpless. And yet the fiction aroused her, as
did his graphic commands. And he knew it.

“Gods, you like this,” he whispered into her
hair. “Mate or no mate, you like
this
.” She could only keen
with pleasure in response. His fingers and hers tangling together,
stroking and tugging at her clit, massaging in deep circles around
the pulsing point.

The orgasm, when it came, ripped through them
both.

***

He was a demon in search of a mate.

Apparently, the Director’s intel had been
rather lacking in that regard. He’d mentioned unfriendly natives
and venomous snakes; he’d provided tidal charts and weather
forecasts that clearly indicated that the planet Zeberget was in
the middle of a summer heat unlike any it had experienced before.
What the Director had not known about—and, if he had and had kept
the information to himself, she
would
kill him this time—was
the fact that Pharon’s guards were a very particular kind of demon
They were demons in heat, stoked to a blazing ferocity by the
summer winds sweeping the world above them. Searching for mates to
ease that fever.

You didn’t mess lightly with a sexed-up
demon. Nor did you steal from a protection demon. Combining the two
was beyond insane. And yet Pharon had done it, like some sort of
blithe science experiment. If she ever met the man, she’d have to
consider gutting him.

No. Most demons were fiercely possessive,
ruthlessly violent, and about as uncivilized as you could ever hope
to encounter. Stealing from a demon was tantamount to suicide—and
here she was, with a mission to steal from a demon who declared her
his mate.

“My dedication to my job is positively
saintly,” she whispered to the small room as she slid slowly off
the bed. Her demon was sleeping heavily, another anomaly, she was
sure. She doubted Mkhai ever relaxed his guard enough to sleep. On
the other hands, this summer heat appeared to wreak havoc with all
their systems.

In this instance, it was an advantage.

His deep sleep allowed her to unbar the door
and slip out into the corridor.

She had topazes to cut and a mission to
fulfill.

The corridor branched rapidly; fortunately,
Bennu had a good memory for directions, an invaluable skill in her
profession. It did not take her long to find her way back to the
overhang where she and Mkhai had paused. From there, numerous,
smaller tunnels branched off in all directions. She picked the one
her handheld indicated had the highest density of topazes; she
wanted to be in and out this time.

Eventually, Mkhai would wake up.

She also would prefer to avoid his friends.
While their attention had been delightful, she doubted they would
be any more open to her blatant theft of their topazes than Mkhai
would be. If he wanted a mate, it was likely that they did, too.
There just wasn’t enough of her to go around.