I extricated myself and lay where she patted.
Then she climbed on top of me, taking her time as she slid me inside her.
With her on top, her gorgeous breasts were on full show.
She worked me hard, working toward her climax…
It was the most incredible sight I could imagine.
She rode me hard, taking every last inch, bucking wildly like a bronco.
I reached up and cupped her bouncing breasts in my hands.
Her body grew slick with sweat—matching mine.
She slid back and forth, her body writhing like we’d done it a thousand times.
She grasped her hair in her fists as she drove me deeper inside her.
She let out a scream as she brought herself to orgasm.
And seeing that spiked my excitement.
I spurted inside her, with her, at that same exquisite moment.
She must have felt me inside her, as she flopped forward and lay with her head on my chest.
We both panted, out of breath, my seed inside her.
“That… That was… amazing,” Isabella said.
“The best,” I said between gasps.
“Not bad for your first time,” Isabella said with a cheeky grin.
I smiled at her but was a little sad that this wouldn’t be my first time, it would be my last.
The lights flickered once more—or maybe they flickered many times only we’d been a little busy.
This time, it cut out for good and cloaked the room in darkness.
Only light from the nearby moon picked out the quarter’s skeletal details.
“What’s happened?” Isabella said.
“They’ve hacked into the computer system. They’ve taken down the shields and the engines. The ship is under their control now.”
Isabella was quiet for a moment.
We both wanted to luxuriate in this moment, the moment before our nightmares became real.
“I’ll never forget you,” Isabella said. “Even when… Even when they… I will think of you and this moment.”
I didn’t want to think about what they would do to her.
It broke my heart.
“I failed you,” I said.
“You did your best,” Isabella said. “You had amnesia! You fell from the sky! There was nothing else you could do.”
“I could have saved you. If only I could go back and live it again… If only I could remember what my mission was right from the start…”
It would be the last thing that passed through my mind when death finally came to claim me.
How I had failed her.
And I had failed her, no matter what comforting words she said.
“I don’t regret a single thing that happened between us,” she said. “I wouldn’t change anything. Because I met you.”
I didn’t regret meeting her either.
I only regretted how it ended.
But there was one silver lining to all this that they could never take away from us:
I had claimed her with my seed and now there was no going back…
My seed…
I claimed her…
With my seed…
Now, why did that ring a bell?
Why did that echo like a gunshot in the endless corridors of my mind?
Something about claiming a fated mate…
About claiming her with my seed…
But what?
What was it…?
I cycled through the forgotten memories at the back of my mind, and returned to one I had experienced in its entirety earlier that day…
The discussion with my father…
But no.
He had only alluded to it.
There was something else, something I learned later…
But where?
Where?
Then it came to me, like a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky.
It’d been part of our training, the key to claiming our fated mates…
I sat up and placed Isabella on the bedspread beside me.
No…
That can’t be right…
Can it?
“What?” Isabella said. “What is it?”
“Can you feel him out there?” I said. “My Shadow? The one who pretended to be Liam. Can you sense Sar out there? With the bond?”
Isabella focused on the door to the captain’s quarters, her eyebrows drawn together in concentration.
“No. I can’t. I don’t understand. What does that mean?”
I leaped up and ran to the bathroom.
“Put your clothes on. We need to get out of here.”
We both hurried.
We didn’t have long.
My Shadow and his entourage of armed guards would be here soon…
And when they appeared, we’d best not be there.
We would take the elevator down to the cargo hold and…
No, that was no good.
The power was out.
Then how were we going to get out of here?
Then it hit me.
The emergency evacuation process.
I ran to the desk at the back of the room.
I knelt and pressed a button on its underside.
A hatch opened beneath the captain’s chair.
A slide that would take us to the shuttlecraft bay.
This system had been set up for a situation such as this.
If a captain was captured, the crew would be powerless to keep themselves from doing whatever the hijackers wanted.
That was why this system had been set up.
It was our one chance of getting out of there alive.
I extended my hand to Isabella.
She took it and before she could say a word, I shoved her down the tunnel and leaped in after her.
We had a narrow chance of success but with any luck, it might just be enough.
Isabella
The tunnel was long, and every time I thought I spied the end, it only turned out to be a long corner.
With a ship this size, I supposed it was no surprise the journey took the time it did.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the sex.
It’d been incredible.
I’d never been an innocent—at least, not until after I moved to the city—and enjoyed some energetic sex in my time, but never anything quite like that.
Ras excited me more than any man I had ever met.
He was in awesome shape, better even than a top athlete.
And his horns were growing on me.
It gave him a demonic appearance that drove me wild in bed.
When he speared me relentlessly, I saw that demon inside him begin to seep out.
And I wanted more.
Boy, did I want more.
But I wasn’t going to get it.
Not from him, and not in a way I was going to enjoy.
And now he might have come up with a way for us to escape.
Again.
I knew I shouldn’t have let myself hope this time it might be
