Oath Forger (Book 4) Read online

  Uthan laughs off my concern. He actually flexes his muscles when he lays me down on the grass as if I weighed nothing. “Tib might be a lesser spirit, but he’s still a powerful spirit.”

  My heartrate speeds as I look into his golden gaze.

  He’s come back. He’s here with me. He’s not dead.

  I almost lost him. I’m not sure which is sharper, my relief or my desire when he touches me.

  A desperate need overtakes me to celebrate life in the most basic way possible.

  Chapter Eight

  UTHAN’S WARM LIPS are on my neck, trailing down.

  “I have a theory,” he murmurs against my skin.

  “Mmmm.”

  “I think you’re a mystic.”

  “Right.”

  “I’m not kidding.”

  He reaches my nipple and sucks it into the hot wet heat of his mouth, so we’re both silent for several seconds.

  “That place inside?” he says at long last, when I’m a limp noodle on the grass. “Only mystics have it.”

  “Anybody can have a good imagination.”

  “Not like this. Does this feel like it’s just in your imagination?” He gently closes his teeth on my nipple, then applies pressure.

  Need shoots through me.

  “Okay.” I pant. “That felt real.”

  He chuckles and nibbles on me a little softer. He’s smiling when he looks at me, but then, in another second, he grows serious. “The man who took me down was a fourth-level mystic. You healed me. You undid what he did. Which would mean, you’re a higher level.”

  “I’m a third-level mystic?”

  “I’ve never heard of a third-level mystic being able to enter another mystic’s sanctuary at will and remove him like you did with me.”

  I laugh with exasperation. “So you think I’m a second-level mystic. Some spirit was one of my grandfathers or grandmothers?”

  He dips his head back to my breast. His tongue and teeth punish me for my skepticism. As he nibbles his way further down, in a straight line to my bellybutton then past it, my back arches off the grass.

  What are we talking about, again?

  He has a finger inside me! And his tongue... It’s...mystical. The way the swirling tip applies the exact right pressure in the exact right spot drives me mindless with need. I open my thighs wider.

  It’s not like it’d been with Koah and Tiam. Everything feels amplified. Maybe because this is a daydream? My brain is really going into overdrive here.

  I move against Uthan’s mouth in wild abandon, because, hey, this is just in my imagination. I can do anything here. I let myself fly high on the wings of passion, moan as loud as I need to, shout his name as I come.

  “A few days ago Tib visited you.” He rests his chin on my pubic bone and looks up at me with a look of deep male satisfaction. “And today, when you called, he came.”

  Really? The man expects me to talk? Okay. Okay. I try to gather my thoughts as I catch my breath. My thoughts won’t gather. They’re like the colorful birds in Uthan’s jungle. They’ve taken flight and scattered.

  I blink at Uthan, dazed. “So you think, what?”

  Sunlight caresses his mottled, golden-bronze skin, and glints off the rows of golden hoops in his eyebrows. He is like a mythical creature come to life. He’s mesmerizing.

  He grins his sexy genie grin. “I think you’re a first-level mystic.”

  I lose my breath all over again. Impossible. I can’t even find the words to respond to him. I shake my head.

  “You said you didn’t know your father,” he says.

  The gears in my mind slowly start up. A thought forms. The gears come to a grinding halt once again.

  Oh. No way.

  Uthan can’t possibly mean what I think he means.

  I don’t even try to keep the incredulity out of my voice. “You think Tib is my father?”

  The idea is hard to reconcile with reality as I know it, especially since the first time I saw Tib, she was a woman.

  Uthan smiles. “You brought me back from death.”

  “You weren’t dead.”

  “Close enough.” He dips his head and laves me with his tongue once again.

  “Wait! I’m trying to have a serious conversation here.”

  “Later,” he says without looking up. “Right now, I have a pressing need to celebrate life.”

  And how can I argue with that? I feel the same. He had almost died.

  He licks, he scrapes, he bites, he sucks, he nibbles. Once again, he brings me to the edge, to panting, with ridiculous ease. By the time his hard cock enters me, I’m ready to beg him to finish me off. He hooks my knees and pushes them up, pushes them apart, opening me even more fully to him. He’s too thick! I breathe through the invasion, grateful when he stops and holds still so I can adjust to his oversized girth.

  There’s some pain and pinching, but, at the same time...

  I feel the endless pleasure that he’s feeling from being squeezed so tightly. It’s like our brains are merged. We are in each other’s minds.

  “I can feel what you feel,” I gasp the words. Oh wow. “Is that possible?”

  His head jerks into a nod. Heat boils in his golden gaze. His lips are pressed tightly together, as if not moving requires all his control. I think he can feel my reactions, too.

  He knows when I’m ready. He pulls back at last and rocks into me, hitting every nerve ending in a new way. Pleasure builds faster than a rising sandstorm. It obliterates everything else. It’s around me, in me, all-consuming.

  “Stars.” He groans the single word.

  Stars indeed.

  Feeling both my reaction and his might be too much. I can’t catch my breath. I can’t keep up. And that’s before he kicks it up another notch.

  As Uthan plunges into me again, we are in my garden one second, then in the warm lagoon of his ocean the next. We are standing in the water, my legs wrapped around his waist, my arms hanging on to his shoulders as he pushes into me over and over, the waves lapping gently at our skin.

  I’m making love in the ocean.

  How does my mind know so well what this feels like? I’ve never seen an ocean in real life. Yet I could swear this is no figment of my imagination. Pleasure rumbles through me like a space rocket. When I kiss Uthan’s neck, I can taste the salt of his sweat, mixed with the salt of the water.

  I blink, and we’re on his beach, rolling in the sand. I feel every single grain. He’s careful not to get it anywhere uncomfortable.

  Then we’re in his jungle clearing, the forest recovered, the air redolent with the scent of exotic flowers. Insects and birds are serenading us, creating music I’m never going to forget.

  I’m making love with Uthan in an emerald cathedral.

  The pleasure and tingles at the base of Uthan’s spine echoes the pleasure and pressure that’s building up behind my pubic bone. When I scream my release, above us in the canopy, the birds take flight in an explosion of rainbows.

  We’re back in my garden as we recover. He’s lying on his back on the grass, while I’m half-sprawled over him.

  “You said only a higher level mystic can take another mystic out of her sanctuary,” I say when I can finally speak. I tilt my head enough to see his face. “You took me from my garden to your beach.”

  “You took us.” His eyes glint. “You can pop in and out of my sanctuary as you please.”

  I look carefully, but see no trace of resentment in his expression. If anything, he’s looking at me with pride and pleasure. “You don’t mind?”

  His hands cradle my cheeks, and he presses a kiss to my lips. “Everything I have is yours, my Ava. I want you with me, always.”

  I’m so freaking happy and relieved. He is alive, and he is mine. I could stay in this moment forever.

  We go to sleep in each other’s arms, and come awake in the med unit on Uthan’s ship. There are three medics in the room now, bustling around, checking display screens. As I clear my throat, they
all snap to stare at me.

  “Thank the stars.” Dason appears from somewhere behind them, pushing them out of the way. He grabs for my hand. His stricken expression morphs into one of gratitude and wonder. His tone is ragged as he says “I thought you were both going to die.”

  I’m lying in a healing machine identical to Uthan’s. His machine is next to mine. I seriously dislike the whole coffin feel. Maybe Uthan does, too, because he reaches up and pushes the top of his machine aside, unhooks himself, slips free, then sets me free next. Better.

  He draws me into his arms. Best.

  As he surrounds me with his strength, I melt into it, cling to him with my arms around his waist. He is back. He’s fine. He’s mine.

  What we’ve just done in our minds... He had his face between my legs! And I spread them wider for him. My cheeks burn.

  “My Ava,” he whispers into my hair.

  I don’t want to look up. I can’t meet his eyes.

  “How long was I out?” I ask Dason instead. Hours? Days?

  “Just now.” His voice is still thick with worry. “You lost consciousness. We got you into a med unit instantly. They barely finished hooking you up.”

  No more than a few minutes, then. I look up at Uthan’s face at last. He was healing. Maybe he doesn’t remember what we’d done.

  His happy, languorous smile says otherwise. He licks his lips, and his eyes heat.

  My cheeks must be as red as the palace guards’ uniforms.

  Stars.

  BY THE TIME WE return to the palace, Koah, Tiam, and Roax are there.

  Tiam suggests that we talk in the garden, in case Uthan needs to finish recovering. I need a shower first. I might have been washed clean in the daydream, but I’m still covered in Uthan’s blood in reality.

  There are plenty of volunteers to help me under the spray mist, but I grab a clean uniform, insist on some time for myself, and lock the bathroom door behind me. I’m alone. That saves me from a barrage of questions, for the moment, but it doesn’t save me from my mind replaying everything that had happened while I was lying in that med unit.

  When I’m finally clean and my fingers wander between my legs, I feel swollen there and tingly. I had made love with Uthan somehow on his beach.

  Mind. Boggled.

  I dress, comb my hair, and remind myself that I’m a tough-chick Oath Forger. I roll with the punches. And the licks.

  I groan at my pitiful sense of humor as I exit.

  Outside in the garden, we sit on the grass. Uthan, too, has cleaned up and changed. He’s wearing one of his signature bronze uniforms. There’s no trace left of his near-death experience.

  I clear my throat. “I have accepted Uthan.”

  The kreks all stare at me.

  Dason asks, eyes wide with incredulity, tone edged with envy “When?”

  Uthan answers. “It was a mystic joining.” He pauses to smile at me. “Ava is a mystic. I think she’s first-level.”

  Heavy silence fills the clearing as every gaze hangs on me.

  I’m not sure if I’m allowed to tell everyone exactly what happened between Uthan and me, if I can tell them about our inner sanctuaries, or if that’s some mystic secret I’m supposed to keep. I keep my mouth shut. If they’re bewildered, so am I.

  Because if Uthan is right, it means Tib is my father!

  I can’t wrap my mind around that right now.

  Uthan reaches for my hand. “Have you learned to gain better control of your powers while I was gone? Have you practiced?”

  He’s changing the subject, and I take the hint.

  “I practiced.” And I’m not sure I ever want to practice again.

  Tiam shakes his head, amusement glinting in his silver eyes. “It didn’t go well. She shot a ray of power straight up by accident. Could have taken out a transport ship.”

  Uthan’s gaze cuts to his. “I have a theory about that.”

  We wait for him to extrapolate.

  “I think, the more of us you accept,” he tells me, “the more control you will have.”

  Tiam frowns. “She had two of us accepted when we tried on the hillside.”

  “Now she has three,” Koah puts in, and the look he flashes at Uthan is more than vaguely threatening.

  “She should have five,” Roax pronounces.

  All eyes snap back to me.

  Right. I can still barely process that I’ve accepted Koah, Tiam, and Uthan. Three men! This is so not the future I’d daydreamed about as a little girl back on Earth.

  Sometimes when I’m with the kreks, it feels natural, and even necessary. The right thing. At other times... Having five men seems pretty excessive, okay? I’m not some great femme fatale. How could I possibly be enough for all of them?

  I push to my feet. “I said I’d try, but I can’t promise.”

  I walk around the circle The Five make on the grass. I can feel my connection to Koah, and Tiam, and Uthan. It’s as if they’re inside me. They are part of me somehow. And it feels a little as if I’m losing myself.

  I’ve lost my home, my planet, my family, everything that was familiar to me. I used to be Ava Smith, scavenger, nobody. Now I’m the Oath Forger. I’m filling one of the most important posts in the Federation. And I’m supposedly a mystic. Possibly a first-level mystic.

  Mind. Blown. Ka-POOM!

  Truth is, just now, I no longer recognize myself. I feel like I’ve been through the Big Bang, blown apart, and disjointed parts of me are floating through space.

  “You do as much as you can,” Roax says, in a tone that’s uncharacteristically mild for him.

  “And if I can’t accept you?”

  His expression freezes, a contrast to the dark fires in his eyes. When he speaks, his tone is measured, sure. “Then I’m going to have to learn to live with that.”

  My heart clenches at the thought of him leaving and me never seeing him again. And more importantly... “Would you still sign the peace?”

  “I think it’s too late for me to go back to the way I’ve been.” His hard, masculine lips stretch into a reluctant smile. “You’ve changed something inside me, Ava Mine.”

  He grunts at the realization, and looks so affronted for a second that it makes me smile.

  His dark eyes narrow dangerously. “When you do accept me, I’m going to punish you for that smug look. Expect it.”

  For some reason, that makes me smile even wider.

  To give myself a break from the heat in Roax’s gaze, I look at Dason. If I don’t accept him, will I lose him?

  “I could never leave you, Oath Forger,” Dason says in a quiet tone that reaches all the way to my heart. “I’m yours until you send me away.”

  A tension-wrought silence settles between us as we both consider the prospect.

  I don’t think I could ever send him away, maybe not even if keeping him was unfair to him. The selfishness of that thought hits me hard.

  Koah breaks the silence, shooting a question at Uthan, “What happened with the poison merchant?”

  Uthan tells him about the pirates, about the fourth-level mystic who nearly killed him. “If it weren’t for Ava, I’d be dead right now.”

  The men look at me with respect. But also with pride and confidence, as if they never doubted that I could bring someone back from the dead.

  I don’t deserve that look, but my heart melts anyway.

  “I’ve hacked the Confirmation Committee’s communications going back a full year,” Tiam says after a few seconds. “I found no connection to either the poison merchant or pirates. I think Senator Seke told us the truth. She was only behind the hacking of Ava’s display system. She doesn’t have anything to do with Taly’s death. And I don’t think the rest of the committee does either.”

  “But somebody did try to kill Ava and got Taly instead.” Koah frowns. “And somebody did order Olipha’s kidnapping. And somebody did order the murder of four senators.”

  Roax’s face is a hard mask. “We don’t know if those three t
hings are connected.”

  “We don’t know that they aren’t,” Dason puts in.

  “I still think the Zebet played a role in some part of this,” I tell them after taking a few seconds to consider all the things we know for sure. “Could there be a small power alliance in the Zebet? A group within the group? Zebet members have been killed. And the same pirates who had the body of the last murdered senator, also kidnapped Olipha.”

  When the Federation is between Oath Forgers, the Zebet is the most powerful inter-planetary ruling body. When an Oath Forger appears, however, the Zebet is essentially demoted. They’re the only ones I can think of who’d want to remove me. I don’t think all those hundreds of senators are corrupt, but a few? It’s a definite possibility.

  “Let’s focus on the threat to your own life first,” Roax suggests, except his tone and expression make it clear that it’s anything but a suggestion. “So far, we had a murder attempt against the Oath Forger that resulted in Taly’s death, all linked to a poison merchant, who’s linked to space pirates.”

  “Pirates with too much access to, and too much information about, Federation affairs,” Uthan says.

  We all think about that.

  “What if the poison wasn’t to stop me from siphoning power from the Zebet?” I think out loud. “The purpose of my office is to bring peace. What if the goal of the murderer is to prevent peace?”

  Koah raises an eyebrow. “In whose interest is it not to have peace?”

  “The pirates for one,” Tiam puts in.

  He’s right. As long as the kreks fight each other, they’re not banding together to fight the pirates, and the pirates have free rein on the Frontier.

  I wrap my arms around myself to keep in the anger that’s bubbling inside me. I hate the freaking pirates with a hot, burning passion.

  I look at Roax. “We can’t just focus on me. I think the deaths of the four Zebet senators and Olipha’s kidnapping are connected to the poisoning.”

  Roax holds my gaze for several seconds, but then he nods. “We know for certain that everything is connected to the pirates, one way or the other. The fourth dead senator was found with the pirates who stole the Federation ship and kidnapped Olipha. Pirates supplied the poison to the merchant who supplied Taly’s killer.”