Rebel Kato (Shifters of the Primus Book 1) (7 page)

I see him watching me squirm with enjoyment. He is smirking, but I see the pleasure in his face as well—the hunger to fill me fighting his desire to toy with me. He pushes in again, deeper this time. My pussy is tight against the size of his cock and I already wonder how I will take much more of his length. He thrusts again, the smirk fading from his face as his lust takes over. His cock is so warm and the way it vibrates against the walls of my pussy sends shocks of pleasure through me. My clit throbs with my heartbeat.

I reach down to rub myself but he grabs my hand. “You will cum when I want you to come. No sooner.”

I’m so desperate that I try again to reach my clit but he holds me fast, grabbing my other hand and pinning it over my head. I can no longer move at all, and the only sensation is the slow sliding in and out of his cock as he torments me with anticipation. He increases his pace, pushing deeper and deeper still until I can’t believe there is still more cock left to fill me. I feel the entire length of my hole hugging against his cock, squeezing it.

He leans over me until his face is against my ear. “My
kouva
. Do you want to cum?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“Say it.”

“I want to.”

“You want to what?”

“I want to cum.”

“Beg.”

“Please make me cum,” I whimper.

Then the speed of his thrusts increases. His powerful hips rock against mine. I push myself against him, the bare skin of my legs pressed against his hard ass. The ridges of his cock and its vibrations filling me and withdrawing sends me over the edge. My back arcs as I cry out. The change in position pushes his dick into my G-spot. I immediately cum again. It feels like small explosions shock my body starting from my pussy. He rams in and out of me so fast and hard that I scream in pain and pleasure, another series of climaxes taking me. I begin to worry that I will lose consciousness again, but I will myself not to. The pleasure is too much to miss. My eyes roll back and I scream until my throat is hoarse.

Just when I think I can’t cum any more, that my pussy has used up its quota of pleasure for a lifetime in thirty minutes, he slows his pace. His eyes squeeze shut and he roars. I feel his hot seed fill me. He lets himself relax atop me, his dick throbbing inside me. I slap his ass.

“Holy shit,” I say.

Kato shows his cocksure grin again. “This expression I know.”

I
lay beside Liandra
, her cheek against the bare skin of my chest and her hand still resting on my cock, as if she does not yet wish to be done with me, even in sleep. This woman is strong, fertile, and makes me hungry. I feel that I could spend the rest of my days in this small cottage at the edge of Njordem in the Frozen Pines, fucking my female until she loses consciousness from pleasure. But I know this cannot be. Though I do not burden her with the knowledge, my father’s clan is the largest on the planet. There may be separatists and factions that align themselves against him, but when he learns the full scale of my rebellion, he has the resources to bring scores of warriors down upon us.

Worse, my father may very well decide to strike against her people just to spite me. And I knew that Liandra would never find satisfaction in this life if she knew it came at the cost of her species. If it came to a decision between the hundreds of thousands aboard her ship and Liandra, I knew I would choose my female, even if she hated me for it. So no matter how much I may want to spend the rest of my days here, enjoying my female, I know I cannot rest. Our time together now will have to sate my lust until I can find a way to set matters right.

Liandra eventually wakes, giving my cock a playful squeeze and looking up into my eyes. “I feel like I just ran a marathon.”

“You spent a night with an Umani Prince between your legs. This is more taxing than a marathon.”

“I have to agree. But it’s a lot more fun, too.”

I smile, standing. She reaches for my cock but I pull back, waving a finger in her face. “I do not have time to wait for you to recover again. We must begin making plans to officially rebel against my father. We will need numbers if we hope to succeed. Without them, we will only hope to find good deaths. And if you die under my protection, even the most worthy death will not protect me from my shame.”

She sticks her bottom lip out and reaches once more for my cock. “I promise not to pass out,” she says.

Her flirtations do not reach me now. My thoughts are elsewhere. A darker place. I think of the shame I brought upon myself and my family when the genetic plague struck our females so many years ago. I think of the thousands of times since that I have looked back and wondered how I could have acted differently, how I could have saved them. Now, I can’t help feel as though this is my chance for redemption. I can walk the path differently and save those under my protection without sacrificing my pride. I won’t fail again.

I
look
at his troubled features and the grin slips from my mouth. It’s the same clouded look I saw before, as if something painful inside him has jabbed him and made him bleed. The thought of my warrior in pain makes me want to heal him, to find whatever is hurting him and fix it. “What is wrong?” I ask.

Like before, he quickly smooths his features and tries to play it off with a smirk. “I was only thinking of spending a moment away from your warmth.”

I roll my eyes. “Don’t patronize me. Something is on your mind.”

“Yes. How to protect you.”

“There’s something else. Something deeper. Let me in. I can help.”

He seems on the verge of telling me and then his face hardens. “I do not need help. You will wait here until I return.”

He stalks from the room and shortly after I hear him knocking at Davoso’s door. Then the knocking gets louder. And then I hear him knock the door down.

I rush outside, running to see if my sister is okay. Inside, the walls are covered in dark blue blood. My eyes quickly scan for any red blood, indicating my sister was harmed, but I find none. Four blue-skinned Umani I’ve never seen lay in various states of butchery. One is cleaved in half from forehead to crotch. Another is missing both legs beneath the knees. One has no head and the fourth lays motionless, hands still clutched at his stomach to hold his insides in.

Then I see them. Kato is already pulling Davoso’s motionless body from atop my sister. Two spears are broken off in his back and he’s bleeding from half a dozen other places. But I hear him cough as Kato lifts him. I nearly cry with relief when I see my sister’s body shaking, but apparently unharmed.

“Are you okay?” I ask Mira, rushing forward to cradle her head in my lap.

She smiles. “Davoso saved me. He was amazing.”

“What happened?” asks Kato.

Davoso’s voice is weak, but he surprises me by answering the question. “King Altak’s men. They were going to take Mira to the human ship. They wanted use her to gain entrance and destroy the vessel. They didn’t expect to find me.”

“You did well, brother.”

“Before he died, one of the warriors said King Altak will still make an all-out attack on the ship to destroy the humans.”

Kato sits down, a stunned expression on his face.

My mind churns. For a moment, I don’t see the purpose. I thought he wanted to stop Kato from choosing me, so why go after everyone else? But it makes sense. On one hand, he probably suspects I won’t be able to sit by while my race is destroyed. On the other, if I don’t come out to stop him, there will be no females but my sister and I. And we couldn’t exactly repopulate the planet by ourselves. “So we’re screwed either way?” I say.

“She is wise,” says Davoso.

Kato nods, his pride clear. “I believe you are correct, my
kouva
. But I think Altak is wrong. As Prince, I still have the power to bring you before the Sacred Tree and gain fertility. You and I could create a new species. It would take time, but we could do it.”

“And just leave my people to die?”

“They do not treat you right,” Kato says, folding his arms. “I will protect you, even if it means letting them die. Altak will never be more vulnerable. His men will all be away for the attack and we will have the perfect opportunity to strike.”

“I can’t believe you’re suggesting this,” I say. “How could I live with myself if I knew my entire race died just so I could live?”

“Fuck them,” says Mira. The harsh words sound strange from her mouth. I can’t see in the dim firelight, but I know she must be blushing fiercely.

I turn to her, shocked.

“They have never done anything but shit all over us, Lia. This is our chance to start over new, to make something good out of humanity.”

“No. No way.” I look Kato in the eye, moving close enough that I can smell his scent. “If you let my people die to save me, you will lose me. Do you understand?”

His jaw flexes and a long moment passes before he responds. “If I must lose you to keep you alive, I will do it.”

Kato leaves the room and I feel emotion well up inside me. It’s all I can do to keep from sobbing. But instead I turn to Mira.

“I can’t believe you,” I say.

She shrugs. “Name one decent person from our lives before.”

“It’s not that simple,” I say. “Yes, most of the people we knew were asshols and dirtbags. But we can’t condemn the last of humanity for that. For tens of thousands of years, people have dreamed of what kind of lives their children will lead. What kind of lives their children’s children will lead. Every single person up there is the seed of someone’s hope. Maybe they won’t all take root, but if even some of them do, we can’t take that away from them.”

Mira crosses her arm. I can tell she wants to relent but something holds her back. Davoso’s presence, maybe.

“Think about it,” I push on. “We wouldn’t just be signing the death warrant for 5,000 people. We’d be killing every life that ever would have come from them if they lived. Millions maybe. Billions. Even trillions. We have no way of knowing.”

Mira looks down, tears filling her eyes. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I mean, yeah, I still wish we could just let the Umani go up there and slap some decency into them but. . . Yeah, you’re right. I think. . .
this
just had me all twisted around.” She gestures toward a dismembered arm lying near her foot.

I cup her face and kiss her on the forehead. “I know. It’s okay.”

Then I realize I don’t hear Kato anymore. “Where would he go?” I ask Davoso.

Davoso pulls himself to a sitting position, his gruesome wounds already healing. He pulls the two broken spears free and tosses them aside. “If he means to strike your father while he is weak, he will go to the Separatists. They have the manpower he will need.”

“Where can I find them?” I ask.

“It’s no secret that the Separatists have a base out of the local church of The Sacred Tree. You could try there. Take the lift at the edge of this platform. You’ll reach a small platform. The church is there.”

I look at my sister and hesitate, not sure if she’s in more danger where I will be going or staying here. Davoso seems to read my thoughts and waves them away with his hand.

“Don’t worry about her. This will heal in an hour and I have another place I can take her. We will be safe, and Kato will know where to find us.”

“Thank you, Davoso. You’ve already saved Mira once and you’re probably saving her again.”

“Anything for Kato,” he says.

I move outside, clutching the gown I threw on quickly before leaving our hideout. The cold bites through the thin cloth. My bare feet slip against the frozen bark beneath me and my teeth are clattering within a few seconds of being outside. I make it to the lift and have to fiddle with the controls for a few moment before I get it moving where I want.

As Davoso said, it drops me on a small platform with a single, steepled building at the edge. Though the windows are barricaded with wood, I can sense that Kato is within. I push open the creaking doors and step inside, my bare feet slapping the wood.

I find him at the center of a group of nearly one hundred Primus males wearing hooded cloaks. They have their hands over their chests and kneel on one knee in a crowded circle around him.

“Kato,” I call.

He turns to regard me, pain in his glance. He really is planning to sacrifice my people to save me. I can’t let him. I don’t know how I’ll stop him but the foggy edges of a plan are forming in my mind. I begin speaking before I have the full grasp of my idea.

“Warriors of the Primus. You have chosen to follow your Prince in rebellion,” I say, trying to project my voice. I pause a split second, almost expecting someone to correct me. For all I know, Kato didn’t ask them to follow him in rebellion; he might have just asked them to give us a ride back home. But no one objects and I press on. “He believes the most honorable thing to do is save me, because he knows that there is no hope of defeating all of Altak’s army. I come to you with another way. A way to destroy the king and his entire army
and
to save my people.”

Some of the warriors share glances, a few murmur.

This is the part where my plan gets fuzzier. In the time I spent fiddling with the consoles on
The Hope,
I came across a few very specific capabilities of the ship. Some of them, I remember thinking, seemed pointless. But when I think back to when I first saw Kato and his men enter my ship, I remember the warrior at the back of his group. When he passed near the pipe my sister was working on that had been venting helium two, he had clasped the spot on his arm as it began to bubble.

I described my plan to the gathered warriors and felt my heart swell at the look on Kato’s face when I finished. He looked as if he might pin me against the wall and take me in front of all the warriors here. The thought got me a little wet. Okay, it got me really wet. But that’s not something I plan to share with Kato. It’s not like I’m actually some kind of exhibitionist. It’s just the thought of it, the idea of him claiming me so publicly so that all would know how much I am his and he is mine.

As he and I head to a military hangar run by the Separatists, I begin to really believe my plan could work. I have doubts, of course, but. . . I think it could
actually
work. My mind even fills with images of Kato and I strolling the treetops with starlight at our back, my belly heavy with child. I imagine Mira hand in hand with a strong, handsome Primus warrior as well. It’s nice to dream, at least. When I think how far I have come from the greaser who was playing tricks on her boss to vent years of frustration and disappointment I almost laugh. Even if this plan gets me killed, I would take these three days over a lifetime of what I had before.