Zero's Heart (Lathar Mercenaries: Warborne Book 1) Read online

  Silence stretched out between them. Comfortable, but charged. His hand swept up her arm, and her breathing caught, heart starting to thunder as the fine hairs rose in the wake of his touch. She tilted her head back as his hand cupped her nape, her entire body flooding with warmth at the dark heat in his eyes. His gaze flicked down to her lips. His tongue darted out to wet his lips and she almost groaned.

  She wanted him. So badly she ached. She wanted him more than she’d ever wanted a guy in her entire life.

  Surging forward, she kissed him, a shiver of pleasure bursting through her body at the first contact of their lips. Her hands weren’t idle, spreading over his chest… every part of him she could touch as she tilted her head and deepened the kiss, the impatient aggressor as her need to claim him as her own rode her hard.

  She got to keep control of the kiss for a few seconds. Then he growled in the back of his throat and turned her on the bed, pinning her beneath him even as he braced himself on his arms to keep his weight off her. His kiss was ruthlessly efficient, and she whimpered, the sound lost beneath his lips as she clung to him.

  There was no more conversation. There was no need for words. Heat flared between them like a super nova. She gasped as he broke the kiss to pull her head back and kiss down her neck. His lips left a trail of fire that tingled over her skin and her body clenched in response. She tore at his shirt, needing to get it off him. Needing to touch him.

  He pulled away for a second to yank his shirt up and over his head, and her higher brain functions short-circuited at the display of carved male muscle and satin skin. Taking advantage of his movement, she leaned up on her elbow to kiss his chest. His breath caught, the small sound the sexiest she’d ever heard. Until she slid her hand down the front of his body, cupping him through his pants, and he groaned.

  “That’s a sound I want to hear far more of,” she whispered, flicking her tongue over his nipple. He flinched and hissed, his hand pushing hers out of the way to tear at his fly.

  “Oh, you’ll hear more of it. I promise,” he rasped, his cock springing free.

  She bit her lip as she wrapped her hand around him and stroked. He was long and so thick she couldn’t get her fingers to close all the way. That just sent a spike of anticipation through her so intense she almost whimpered again.

  “Fucking hell!” he whispered explosively, his hand mangling the pillow by her head. He dropped his own head forward, eyes closed and expression taut as she learned the length and shape of him. She stroked and teased along his shaft before cupping his balls.

  The soft movement broke the dam. He pulled back, yanking at her clothes.

  “Naked,” he ordered, voice clipped. “Now.”

  She grinned, shedding her shirt without a word. His eyes darkened as she snapped her bra off and dropped it to the floor. Normally she’d have wanted the lights off, but the dumbstruck expression on his face eased any reservations she had about her body. He looked at her like she was the sexiest woman in all of creation, which turned her on more.

  Arching her back, she thrust her hands in her hair, sweeping it up as she posed for him and showed off her body. The cooler air of the room washed over her, raising the fine hairs on her skin, but the look in his eyes made her shiver.

  He spat a harsh curse in a language she didn’t understand, his hands on her hips to strip her of her pants. They hit the deck a second later, along with her panties, but she didn’t care. All she cared about was the heavily muscled guy parting her thighs with a rough shove of his knee. The roughness didn’t bother her, not with the look in his eyes, somewhere between tortured need and unbridled desire.

  Biting her lip, she locked gazes with him as he settled himself between her parted thighs, reaching between their bodies to set himself against her. A rush of heat escaped her as he slid the broad head of his cock between her pussy lips, brushing against her clit. He rolled his hips and she swore. With every rock, he stroked her clit, pushing her arousal higher.

  She growled and hooked her hand around the back of his neck. “Zero, if you don’t get inside me right now, I’ll—”

  Grinning, he leaned down and stole her words with a kiss.

  “Gentle exercise, remember?” He broke away to whisper against her lips.

  She lifted a leg to wrap it around the back of his hips. She didn’t want to think about how easy the movement was or the fact that less than a few hours ago, she was facing down a life of… she cut the thought off before it could form.

  “Gentle is good. Just… now,” she begged, trying to pull him closer.

  His reply was to bear down. She gasped as he breached her. Her hands gripped his shoulders, fingertips finding purchase against skin and warm metal as he slid into her slowly. He filled her, parting her body widely around his thick shaft. She murmured in pleasure and delight. He was deliciously thick, rubbing against her in ways she’d forgotten existed. Her social life hadn’t exactly been full these last few years.

  “Now is also good,” he rumbled, his lips brushing hers as he bottomed out. For a moment he held still, throbbing within her, but then he began to move. Slowly at first, watching her reactions as though he was scared of hurting her, but she saw… felt the control he was exerting over himself.

  That care and control melted the last little reserve in her heart. But rather than complain and tell him he wasn’t hurting her, she decided to show him instead. She kissed him and rolled her hips in demand. He gasped, rearing back a little to check her expression, but then his eyes darkened. His next thrust was harder. Faster.

  They moved together, finding their pace and rhythm. Skin slid over skin, lips clinging as their tongues stroked and tangled. She felt every inch of him as he thrust into her, taking her over and over again. Claiming her as his. She arched into him, trusting to his strength as her curves fit against his harness perfectly.

  But slow wasn’t enough. She felt that as clearly as he did, urging him on silently. With a growl, he dropped down, caging her with his bigger body as he picked up the pace. And she was lost. Wrapping herself around him, she lost herself to the pleasure of touch and need. It built within her, an unstoppable storm of sensation and emotion.

  It didn’t take long for her to climb higher, hovering on the edge of ecstasy. She opened her eyes, wanting to see his face as she came.

  “You’re mine, Eris, for now and always,” he whispered and he smiled tightly, cords in his neck standing out as he sped up.

  The first harder thrust took her by surprise, the second took her to the edge of the abyss and the third threw her over it. She threw her head back and cried out, shattering apart in his arms. Pleasure coursed through her, rewriting her view of the world.

  He grunted and slammed into her, each hard thrust sending new waves of ecstasy through her. She watched him through half-lidded eyes as he thrust a last time, throwing his head back as he came with a growl. She felt it, the heat of his release as his cock jerked and pulsed deep within her. And she saw it, the pleasure on his face as he gasped and looked down at her.

  Their gazes locked and amid their combined pleasure she felt their souls connect… Mesh…

  Then become one.

  10

  “Do you know what they are doing to those females?”

  Talent burst out as he stormed onto the bridge. It was so unlike the usually unflappable medic that both Skinny and Fin turned in their station chairs in surprise. He stood in front of T’Raal in the captain’s chair, practically bristling with rage, his eyes wild.

  As always, T’Raal didn’t bat an eyelid. Most males would be anxious to put some distance between themselves and the highly trained and very dangerous former imperial warrior, but he just looked up.

  “Who? And what females?” he asked.

  “The humans!” Tal broke away, shoving his hand through his hair as he paced the small briefing area at the back of the bridge. “They… what they did… Draanthic!”

  Skinny turned fully to watch, concerned for his comrade. Since
coming aboard, Talent had proven himself to be a capable warrior and ferocious in battle. Otherwise though, he was easygoing, so whatever the humans had done to rile him up so much, it must be severe.

  “Calm down. Think and then speak,” T’Raal ordered, his tone level as he rose from his chair, joining Talent at the back of the bridge. Folding his arms over a chest like a barrel, he watched the younger warrior in concern.

  Tal took a deep breath, his expression tortured. “I’ve treated Zero’s woman, Eris. Her wounds were not life-threatening but instead would have been life-altering. She sustained damage to her neural systems and without intervention would have been paralyzed from the waist down.”

  T’Raal’s expression tightened for a moment, as did Skinny’s. The idea of a female being injured in such a way was anathema to them. Even though they were Warborne, and not considered to be worth much to the “elite” of the empire, they were still Latharian through and through. Every female was precious and something to be protected. Apart from their own Red. Any attempt to protect the hard-as-nails half-breed female usually resulted in bruises.

  “I’m assuming you managed to successfully treat her?” their leader asked.

  Tal looked almost offended at the question and nodded sharply. “Yes. I fixed the damage and reconnected the pathways I could. She’s with Zero now, with orders to rest and recover.”

  Skinny’s eyebrow shot up toward his shaved hairline. Given how obsessed the big cyborg had been with the station chief since he’d first seen her a few weeks ago, he very much doubted the couple were resting right now.

  “And you disagree with something the humans did?” Fin broke in, obviously just as curious as Skinny was. “Or do you simply object to their existence at this point?”

  “That!” Tal pointed at Fin in agreement and started to seethe again. Visibly. Shit, whatever they’d done, it must be serious. “Those imbecile draanthic are performing surgery on females to put them in those suits. Adding implants to allow them to control the things.”

  Sitting at the comms console, with feeds from all over the ship, Skinny hadn’t been able to resist taking a look at the feeds from the cargo bay where Red was working. The human armored suit was something else. He’d never seen anything like it. It reminded him of the power armor the Warborne wore for space combat, but much bigger… like a cross between an imperial drakeen and combat armor.

  The soldier in him wanted to take it for a whirl, especially with those big guns mounted on its shoulders. Still, even though he was no engineer, a glance at the open cockpit made him sigh. It was built for the tiny frames of humanity. He wouldn’t even get his big toe in there.

  “And this is a problem?” T’Raal was the voice of reason in the face of the enraged medic. That unflappable nature made him dangerous and had elevated the Warborne from simply a mercenary unit to the most famous mercenary unit in history.

  “Draanthing right, it is! They put that shit in their bodies and they can’t take that kind of load. Maybe a Lathar could, with the right enhancements, but a human? A human female? It’s burning out their nervous systems and leaving them paralyzed!”

  Skinny blinked.

  “Wait… what? You mean Zero’s woman wasn’t an anomaly?” he demanded.

  “No! That’s my point!” Tal’s outburst was loud and filled with fury. “They’re doing this knowing it’s going to damage these females, and they don’t care!”

  Skinny’s jaw dropped, no words making it past his lips. His astonishment and growing anger mirrored on both Fin and T’Raal’s faces.

  “But… why?” T’Raal demanded, the deepening of his voice evidence of his rage.

  “Because they have so many females they don’t care,” Tal hissed. “They’re seen as disposable.”

  “Fuck!” T’Raal exploded, his bellow of rage punctuated by a crash as his fist connected with the bulkhead by the bridge door. His knuckles came away scarlet, his chest heaving with anger as he looked at Tal.

  Skinny and Fin half rose out of their chairs, everything else falling away as they watched their leader carefully. Waiting for his next move. They’d all seen him angry but never this furious. He’d always kept it together before. Always. So much so, Skinny had a side-bet with Fin that he had Izaean blood somewhere in his family tree and that one day he’d blood-rage out. It said a lot about the bat-shit crazy nature of the Warborne that they actually looked forward to the possibility of that happening.

  Then he shook himself, like a deearin shaking water from its back.

  “Find out how many and where,” he ordered. “If they’re going to do that to females, they don’t fucking deserve them.”

  “Jesh!”

  Zero jerked awake, screaming again and convinced he was surrounded by fire and pain. His onboard argued with him as it gave constant readings on his surroundings, reassuring him his body temperature was normal and he wasn’t sustaining the epidermal damage he thought he was.

  But try as it might, his onboard couldn’t get a foothold against the survival instincts screaming at him. The battling instincts, biological and cybernetic, kept him locked in place, his two halves vying for control. The glitch usually had him shorting out and already he felt his senses start to fade.

  Then a soft hand landed on his shoulder, sliding around to his chest as a soft body pressed against his back.

  “Hey,” Eris murmured, her voice rough with sleep. “I got you. Don’t worry.”

  He sighed, all the tension draining out of his body at her touch. It managed what his onboard could not, reassuring him that the dream was just a dream. He wasn’t burning alive. He covered her hand with his, pressing it over his still-thundering heart as he closed his eyes and worked on calming down.

  She was here. Everything would be alright. Everything was alright.

  Her soft lips brushed against the side of his neck and she laid her head against his shoulder.

  “I had nightmares when I first came out of the military,” she said in a soft voice. “The accident that damaged my legs? It was in battle. I caught a grenade on my right leg. The armoring was substandard, parts made down to a price.”

  He rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand as she told her story, not interrupting her. Several times during their lovemaking she’d pushed his touch away from her scars. Especially a big starburst one on her hip. Instinct told him it was important not to push and just let her go at her own pace. She reminded him of C…

  The thought slid away before he could grasp it. Normally he’d have been frustrated but now, with her here, it didn’t matter. He was more interested in her story than his unreliable hide-and-seek memories.

  “I couldn’t move, so my unit left me to cover the rear while they took the objective,” she carried on, and he registered the change in her voice. The tone was flatter, monotonous, as though she were merely an observer rather than a participant in the tale. “They walked into an ambush… somehow the enemy had shutdown codes for their suits. That wasn’t even supposed to be possible. They were supposed to be on tight-ray modulation and uncrackable… but they did.”

  She shuddered as she leaned against him. “I had to listen as they were cut down, unable to move, unable to help them. In the end, I cut the motors free so I could drag myself to them… give some covering fire. But I was too late. They were already dead.”

  The deadness in her voice tore at his heart. “What happened then?” he asked softly.

  “Medical evacuation. When I got back to base, the powers that be told me I had PTSD and hadn’t heard it right. That I was making up stories because of survivor’s guilt.”

  He growled in the back of his throat, but she shushed him up. “It’s in the past.”

  Her lips brushed his shoulder again as she cuddled closer. “So I know what it’s like. I’ve been there. It’s okay. You’re safe.”

  The sigh punched free from his chest before he was aware it was there. Lifting her hand, he kissed her knuckles. “Thank you. For being here.”


  “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked softly, not moving from her position against him. He felt the soft curve of her breasts against his back and the steady beat of her heart. A sense of guilt hit him hard and fast.

  “You’re supposed to be resting,” he argued, only to get a soft, sleepy chuckle in reply.

  “We’re just talking. Not much exertion in that. Is there? We had our gentle exercise earlier, remember?”

  His lips curved, and he twisted quickly. A second later, she was in his lap, a soft squeak escaping her.

  “The nightmare made me forget,” he lied, gaze on her lips. “What gentle exercise was that?”

  Her eyes darkened as she smiled up at him, lifting her lips for a kiss. “Oh dear. Memory problems. Perhaps I should call the doc…”

  “I think all the treatment I need is right here,” he murmured, lowering his head and claiming her lips for a long, slow kiss.

  They didn’t come up for air. The slow kiss exploded into torrid need and he turned them over, making her straddle him. They both gasped as he slid inside her again, and he spent the next few hours proving just how good a cyborg’s memory was…

  Zero really was the sexiest man she’d ever met.

  Eris lay on her side, still warm and comfortable in a nest of the blankets on the bunk. They still held the warmth of his body and his scent, so she was in no hurry to leave them. Not when her view was so lovely as well.

  Zero moved around the tiny cabin with the kind of grace some big men had, and it fascinated her.

  “These rooms are tiny… for you guys I mean,” she commented, watching him clean his teeth. The attached bathroom was so small he was half in and half out of it. If anything, it was smaller than her bathroom back on the station, and she hadn’t thought that was possible.