Elite Starfighter, Game 3 by Grace Goodwin

2

Lily

Oh,shit. I should have left my romance novels at home. But when considering the rest of my life, I only wanted to read Wuthering Heights or Odyssey so many times. The classics were, well, classic, and I’d brought along hundreds, if not thousands of dollars’ worth of books, but I knew I would want something fun to read. Sexy. Stories that made me happy when I turned the last page.

The rest of my life was a long damn time.

And now Darius was looking at me like he was a hungry lion and I was dinner.

“Lily?” He walked toward me, pulled me to my feet with gentle hands until I faced him. I wanted to look away, but the slightest touch of his fingers on my cheek and I was frozen in place.

“Darius.” I was drowning in his eyes. Drowning. My heart pounded, my legs were shaking.

“I asked you a question, Titan.”

Titan? Was I a Titan? One of the biggest, baddest tech warriors in the Starfighter program? Six meters of walking, talking, destruction? Truly?

Perhaps I was all those things in a game…no, not a game, a training program I’d believed was nothing more than a video game back on Earth, Starfighter Training Academy. Sitting in my living room behind a controller, I was unhinged. Fearless. But in the flesh? Real tough I was turning out to be. A real lady, too. Ladies did not want the things I imagined Darius doing to me. And what now? How could I tell him I wanted to try everything I’d read in my beast books, but I’d never been with anyone before.

“I should finish unpacking,” I whispered, staring at his lips. Why couldn’t I just say yes? Why? Need was a living, burning beast within, but I choked on the word.

I had been raised to be respectful and quiet. Demure. A lady looked after the needs of others before herself. My mother had taught me to never let my guard down with a man. Never trust. “Use every asset at your disposal to get what you want,” she’d once said to me, “but don’t ever give a man your heart.”

I’d watched my father’s stoic indifference break my mother into a thousand tiny pieces. I’d watched her try to drink herself into not caring. But she loved him anyway. Still did, for all I knew. They usually sent an email with photos from a new exotic locale every few months, my father busy with “work” and my mother amusing herself with “lessons” at the Country Club or the latest resort. I’d learned early on this was my mother’s prim and proper code for fucking whatever they could, wherever they could. My mother would never be so crass as to say the word fuck, but that’s what she meant. It had almost become a game to them. A competition.

I didn’t want any part of it, and so I had steered clear of men. In all honesty, foraging around for a penis to take my virginity hadn’t seemed worth the effort when a discreet, electronic toy gave me perfectly acceptable orgasms with none of the drama. After one disastrous dating montage in college, I had learned to ignore men. All men, except digital versions who couldn’t break my heart.

If I didn’t want to get involved with men then standing here in front of the live version of the man I had literally built from the ground up in the game, every detail of my partner chosen from the dark, sexy voice to his hotter than hell body and cocky, dominant personality was all kinds of wrong. Big mistake. Darius of was a real, flesh and blood Velerion who had spent hours filling out questionnaires and surveys in order to create the game version of himself, all in the hopes of being selected by a Starfighter. Selected by someone like me. My perfect partner, and he had heartbreak written all over him in bold, capital letters. Crazy, but I’d fallen for him long before I knew he was real. If I let him touch me the way his eyes said he wanted to, there would be no going back.

Not that my body was listening to a hint of common sense. My nipples hardened into aching pebbles. My core was tight and pulsing and so very empty. I wanted him to pound into me like a beast.

“Lily, talk to me.”

The air left my body in a whoosh, and I licked suddenly dry lips, my tongue brushing the tip of his finger. He stared, taking the opportunity to slowly stroke my damp bottom lip with his thumb. I lifted my hand to his chest and settled it above his heart. “I don’t want to talk.”

His turn to stop breathing.

My words were honest. The absolute truth. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to lay my soul bare or ask him for anything. I sure as hell didn’t want to tell him the only knob I’d ever handled had been battery powered. Playing by the rules had done nothing but earned me a lonely, dead-end job at a library so old it smelled like a morgue for books. Most days I was the youngest person in the building by an average of two decades. I loved books, loved the classics, but I was tired of reading about adventures and never having one of my own.

Darius, tall, dark, sexy Darius was standing in front of me looking at me like he wanted to rip my clothes off. I was on another planet. Earth Lily was dead now. I didn’t have to behave like her another moment.

Starfighter Lily Wilson could be the Titan Darius had named me. I could be brave and sexy and wild. Powerful. Fearless. Important. Adored.

Could I not?

If I were so brave and sexy and wild, why did my heart threaten to pound its way out from behind my rib cage? Why did I feel like I was about to faint? My body drifted and swayed like whispers and smoke, the only thing anchoring me to reality the heat of Darius’s thumb on my lip.

I watched as he lowered his head slowly, his gaze moving at the last moment from my eyes to my lips. So, so close. The heat of his breath was like fire in my throat as I soaked him in. His scent. His desire.

Nothing existed but us. Time stopped. We drifted toward one another.

Contact.

His lips were firm. Hot. Demanding.

That was the end of me. I lost my bloody mind.

“Off. Off. Off.” I tugged at his clothing, the soft black clothing he’d changed into when we’d been shown to our new quarters. “Take them off. Now.”

Darius didn’t answer, but his hands went to the hem of his shirt and tugged it off over his head, breaking our kiss just long enough to pull the fabric from between us before devouring me again.

It wasn’t enough.

Reaching down, I pulled my hoodie off over my head, revealing the black spaghetti-strap tank top I wore underneath. Peeking at him from my shoulders were the straps of my hot pink bra, the only sexy bra and knickers set I owned. There was nothing extraordinary about me. I was average in every way—height, bra size, hair color. I was no runway model or stunning beauty. I was just me.

Darius reached for me, his hands settling at my waist as he inspected the close-fitting tank top and flirty pink bra. I stopped breathing as the silence stretched. Tried to pull away.

He stopped me, kissed me again, then pulled me close. Darius lowered his hands to my hips and pulled my lower body into intimate contact with his hard—rock-hard—length, leaving me no doubt that he very much liked what he had seen.

Darius

I kissed her,and she pulled away.

I asked her questions. She refused to answer.

What the fuck was I missing here?

“Lily? Talk to me. Tell me what you want.”

Silence. A blush to her cheeks. I could barely think straight staring at her lips, feeling the softness of her pressed against me. The taste of her on my tongue. I was the one who was supposed to be leading the way between us. This was my planet, my people, my war. Not hers. Just as I was not yet hers, and I fucking wanted to be. Needed to be.

My broken pieces were in the palm of her hand, and she was supposed to glue me back together. I’d found my pair-bonded mate at last. A true pairing. Like minds. Complementary skills. We would forever be better together than apart. I’d spent hundreds of hours fighting next to her in our simulation training, learning her moods and the sound of her voice through the recordings she’d made for her avatar. She knew me, yet acted as if we were strangers. As if I did not know her.

Damn her. Maybe I didn’t know her at all. Perhaps I was the fool here.

Her pulse raced at the base of her throat, and she licked her lips. A groan slipped from mine. “Are you ignoring me, or trying to seduce me?” I asked, my tone deliberately neutral.

“I don’t know,” she countered. “I don’t know what I want.”

“That is a lie, Lily.”

Her gaze shot to mine as she gasped. “What?”

“You heard me. You know what you want. What I don’t know is why you won’t be honest with me. I am your pair bond. I am yours, Lily. I’m yours until the day I die. Do you understand?”

Her smile was a bit sad. She lifted her hand and pointed to her temple. “Do I understand here?” She lowered her hand to cover her heart. “Or here? They are two very different questions.”

“I only have one answer to give you. You’re mine.”

I’d never taken the jeans off a human female before, but they were easy to strip away. I grunted when I tugged off her panties as well until she was bare from the waist down. She wiggled her hips to help me undress her and actually kicked the jeans away as if they were an annoyance once they were pooled at her feet.

“You are mine, Lily. Your orgasms? They’re mine.”

I circled her entrance with the lightest touch, teasing her as I stared down into her eyes. I kept my touch brief but deliberate, explored around and around her core so she was squirming, eager to take more.

“Do you want me to shove your back against the wall and take you like a beast would?” I asked, brushing my thumb over her clit, careful to only make her more desperate. She wouldn’t be allowed to come. Not yet, not until she understood how things would be between us from this moment on.

“Yes.”

At last. An admission. Desire. The truth.

Perhaps she wanted my touch as badly as I needed to touch her.

I claimed her mouth once more, guiding her until her back hit the wall of our bedchamber, and she whimpered in response, her lips molten and wild, her hands frantic, tugging at my clothing.

“Like this?” I lowered my hand to her hip, her ass. Caressed the soft skin there. Lifted her so that her wet heat was where I needed it so I could fill her, take her, make her mine.

Her fingers tangled in my hair, and I moved to kiss the curve of her jaw, her neck. The soft arch of her shoulder. I tugged the tight, black top she wore over her head until her breasts were displayed in a pink contraption that matched the tiny underthings I’d removed with her jeans.

Perhaps I should have left those on.

I pulled the fabric down with my teeth until her lush nipple was on display, and then quickly sucked the taut peak into my mouth.

I moaned as an orgasm drew tight in my balls, threatening to spill from me when she moaned and tugged my hair, and I knew the taste of her skin was already an addiction.

There was no doubt she felt my cock, hot and throbbing against her hip. There was no hiding her effect on me, my desperation. How badly I needed her. I was a Velerion warrior, and yet, she had no idea exactly how much power she would have over me.

“Oh God, Darius,” she groaned.

Her deep breathing, her cries of obvious pleasure filled the small room, went straight to my cock.

Holding her up with my left arm, I slipped my right low, to her center and slid two fingers deep. The wet heat of her pulsed and clamped down on the invasion, and she thrust her hips toward me with a sudden jolt. “I want you.”

“Not yet. Come for me. Give yourself to me.”

“No.”

She gasped when I withdrew my touch, then pushed deep. “Yes.”

“No. Not like this. I want you inside me.”

Fuck.

Was she a weapon sent to destroy me?

Face pressed to her neck, I breathed in the scent of her skin, her arousal, her hair. I listened to her breathing, her heart racing. Every whimper sent lightning down my spine. She didn’t remain still. No, she shifted her hips in time with the movement of my fingers, taking them deeper. Her skin bloomed with sweat; her head thrashed, her hair a wild tangle against the wall.

Her eyes were closed, her mouth pressed to my ear. “Fuck me, Darius. Fuck me now.”

I lost control. That reserved voice and clipped tone. Begging. For me. To do exactly what I wanted more than I had ever wanted anything.

My wet fingers fumbled with the opening of my pants as I pulled my cock free and positioned myself. “Lily?”

“Yes,” she breathed.

“I won’t be able to control myself. I can’t be gentle.”

“I don’t care.”

The sound that came from my throat as I pressed into her, filled her, fucked her, made her mine was a mixture of pleasure and pain. I used both hands to hold her by her thighs, open and exposed and mine to take, just as the beast had done in her story.

Buried balls-deep, I pulled out slowly, then slammed deep.

Her panting turned into a keening wail as her core pulsed and spasmed around me, as she gave me the orgasm I’d demanded.

“Yes, yes! Yes!”

“That’s it. Give yourself to me. Your control. Come, mate. Again. Fucking come again.”

I moved hard and fast, fucking her until the only sound in the room was the slapping of skin on skin, until she surrendered to me. Again. And again. One orgasm rolled into another. Her entire body tightened like a bow, a scream erupting from her throat as she clenched and gripped my cock.

Seeing her pleasure was my undoing. My body shuddered, arched, the orgasm like a painful fist twisting my balls into a release that stole my breath and my sanity. I would never be the same. I knew and accepted the truth with an ease that would have shocked me mere hours ago.

I belonged to this woman. She was mine, and I would do anything—anything—to protect her.

Long minutes later my body cooled, and I tried to catch my breath, to be able to fucking see clearly. I still held her pressed to the wall, but she was soft and submissive in my hold, her hands stroking my hair now, no longer pulling.

This new, peaceful side of Lily filled me with contentment like I’d never known. I never wanted to move, wanted to remain buried inside her soft body for the rest of my life.

“Wow.”

The word broke me from my trance, and I chuckled, male pride making me smile. “Did I do your beast justice?”

She turned her face away, her cheeks pink. Gently I kissed her jaw, her cheek, her face until she gave me her lips. When I had tasted her again and made my cock hard, I held her gaze and willed her to give me more truth.

“I want you again, Lily.”

“You’re still inside me.”

I shifted my hips and she gasped. “Wall or bed?”

“I think I want to try the bed this time.”

“Excellent choice.” I carried her to the bed and settled her down so I could strip out of my clothing. Skin on skin. I needed to feel every inch of her, mark her, explore, touch, learn. Make her mine.

Tomorrow we would go on our first mission. Tomorrow we would be thrust back into the war.

Tonight she was mine.