Captive Desire (Planet of Desire) Read online

  CAPTIVE DESIRE

  A PLANET OF DESIRE NOVEL

  ROBIN LOVETT

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by Robin Lovett. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

  Entangled Publishing, LLC

  2614 South Timberline Road

  Suite 105, PMB 159

  Fort Collins, CO 80525

  [email protected]

  Scorched is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

  Edited by Tracy Montoya

  Cover design by Cover Couture

  Cover photography by Shutterstock /Arthur-studio10;

  Depositphotos/Timbrk; Depositphotos/JohanSwanepoel; Shutterstock/ Conrado

  ISBN 978-1-64063-698-9

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition November 2018

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for supporting a small publisher! Entangled prides itself on bringing you the highest quality romance you’ve come to expect, and we couldn’t do it without your continued support. We love romance, and we hope this book leaves you with a smile on your face and joy in your heart.

  xoxo

  Liz Pelletier, Publisher

  Chapter One

  ASSURA

  It hurts—my body burns like it’s on fire. I am agony.

  Through the haze of pain, I see it. The first break in the trees since I crash-landed on this godsforsaken planet a week ago. I stumble from the jungle, my vision blurring.

  Days of no one and nothing but this fever scorching through my veins. It’s not a normal fever. I don’t know how it’s possible, but it makes me want and think of nothing but sex. I’m pulsing between my legs, craving to be fucked, feeling I will burst into flames if I’m not. I’m chafed between my legs from days of giving myself orgasms, trying and failing to relieve the lust raging in my veins, the side effect of some gaseous poison in the air.

  I fall to my knees on a stretch of runway. I see buildings, starships, people. Civilization. I start to shake. I can’t hold myself up. My will to keep fighting is gone.

  I crumble to the ground, writhing in pain.

  Voices sound all around me. Whoever is here…they may be friendly, they may be my enemy, but I’m not capable of finding out.

  I’m too exhausted to open my eyes, but someone touches me, cradles my head in their lap. I want to scream at them to stop. I can’t bear to be touched; being held hurts like a thousand knives scraping my too-sensitive skin.

  “What is your name, human?” The deep voice resonates with a trace of revulsion. My humanity is something he doesn’t like. By his accent, heavy on the consonants and slow on the vowels, I think I know what language he speaks. Which means I likely know why he would hate me on sight.

  I open my eyes and see nothing but his face—his golden face. His skin shimmers metallic in the sunlight, and the sharp planes of his features glint in its rays. The darker gold waves of his hair nearly sparkle, and his eyes shine a blue so bright, I swear I’m looking into a cloudless sky. He looks divine, like some sort of god descended from a faraway mythical paradise.

  I recognize his species. He is Ssedez, and I wonder he hasn’t killed me; one of his warriors already tried several days ago. But I’m a special kind of soldier, the kind that’s not so easily killed. They attacked and destroyed our ship. I was stabbed, given a wound that still festers in my side. It’s his fault I’m stranded on this planet and had to spend a week alone wandering its toxic jungle.

  But for a reason I don’t understand, this Ssedez is not attacking me, and I have no energy to fight him anyway.

  “Your name,” he demands again.

  There’s a ring of authority to his tone, and it makes me want to do as he says. If I’m going to survive, I need medical attention. I need his help. “Assur,” I answer, but the word twists my stomach. It’s what my commanding officers called me. It’s not my real name. “Assura,” I correct.

  The burn, the fire, surges in my body again, and I can’t stop the cry of agony escaping my lips. I fist my hands against the urge to touch myself. It’ll only hurt. Breathing the air of this planet infects me with an endless and unquenchable need for release, even past the point of injury or exhaustion.

  I feel something swelling under my head in his lap. I turn my cheek and feel a long column of rigid flesh hardening behind the leather of his uniform—his cock.

  I don’t give a shit if he’s my enemy. I’m so desperate to relieve the flames torching my insides, I’ll do anything to be fucked, to have him thrusting that into my starved body.

  I claw at his thighs, bite my teeth at the leather shielding him from me. I’m moaning hungry sounds and hallucinating about him fiercely pouring his come in my mouth. Then, something is put in my mouth, a tube. It’s not a cock, but I’m so hungry for it, I suck on it like it is one. A creamy liquid pours from it into my mouth. I swallow it, starved and praying it will satisfy me, not caring if it’s poison meant to kill me. Dying would be better than enduring this any longer.

  But it’s not poison.

  It slides down my throat and cools me from the inside out. The feeling spreads through my chest and into my limbs. I go motionless, the burn blissfully fading away. My breath is heavy with relief, and I glance up into the Ssedez’s face again and whisper, “Thank you.”

  His ethereally blue eyes blanch in surprise and don’t look away. He examines my face, and he must see something he likes. Heat infuses his expression, desire contrary to anything that should be possible for a Ssedez to feel for a human.

  Exhaustion overtakes me. My eyes fall closed, and he lifts me. My cheek rests on his wide chest, and his inhumanly strong arms support my weight. His voice rumbles beneath my ear, his skin cool against the heat still fading from me.

  The contours of his muscles are hard and chiseled beneath my hands. The feel of him is alien, too, smoother than human, refined like aluminum, not forgiving like human flesh. His bare skin has the characteristic impenetrability of his species. He’s not soft, and he’s cooler in temperature. I burrow my overheated body into his, blissfully chilled by his skin. I shudder, wondering if he’s like that everywhere.

  All I can do now is rest a
gainst him, but later, I will find out. The fever may have faded, but the desire that was ravaging my body still echoes in my core like a dull murmur.

  When I wake, I hope he’s there to fuck me.

  Chapter Two

  GAHNIN

  I loathe the sight of her.

  I touch her because I have orders from my commander to care for her. No other reason could motivate me to do so. And so I am forbidden from killing this Assura.

  She cries sounds of erotic need and writhes in my lap. And unbidden and indisputably, my body reacts to her.

  I gape at her in shock and search myself again to see if it is true.

  As disgusting as it to me…

  I want her.

  It is an untenable response. Something that defies every desire I have had since her kind, the humans of the Ten Systems Empire, killed my mate in a brutal war against the Ssedez a century ago. My existence, the drive of every part of my life, has been for vengeance. And yet, I feel a desire that defies my decades of hatred, a need that interrupts what was to be two centuries of mourning for my lost mate a century too early.

  I want to satisfy this human, to relieve the planet-driven lust that is paining her. To slake the same lust that is brimming within me, filling and hardening me with a foreign desire for a human that is as unwelcome to me as nails in my heart.

  I hold her head, so she cannot rub and provoke my arousal. Tears of agony drip from her eyes, and her nails dig into my forearms with such ferocity, if I had vulnerable human skin, she would draw blood.

  But I am Ssedez, and my skin is invulnerable to her pathetic attempts to free herself. What is more shocking, her nails imbedded in and scraping over my skin feel…pleasurable, as though if I could, I would let her do this to my entire body, and it would provoke my craving for her only further.

  It is intolerable. For me to feel such things at the touch of a human is revolting. I don’t care if my commander Oten has formed the Attachment, a sacred Ssedez mating bond that is both biological and emotional, with this Assura’s General Nemona. It matters not that Nemona and Assura, along with all the humans aboard their ship, the Origin, are in rebellion against our mutual enemy, the Ten Systems. I agree with Oten that it was a mistake to attack the Origin, causing it to crash-land on this planet, and that we must make amends by helping these rebels. I’m aware it is my duty to care for Assura, but no amount of duty can cure my impulse to hate her. I am still appalled at my own body’s traitorous attraction to her.

  It is undoubtedly due to this planet, Fyrian. The Fellamana, the native species here, say the fever-like state of intense arousal both the humans and Ssedez have experienced here, a condition they call the desidre, is caused by toxins in the atmosphere. They gave me an antidote on landing here, but it must not be working for me. Assura needs the antidote, too. Perhaps it will work on her.

  “Assist her!” I shout at the medical attendant. I’m surrounded by the medical team of Fellamana who met us here on their landing platform. My commander left on our ship, leaving me and a team of Ssedez here on the planet Fyrian to establish diplomatic relations with the Fellamana.

  One of the Fellamana responds in a language I don’t understand.

  The male Fellamana beside her, whom they introduced as Koviye, seems to translate my words for her. She registers understanding and rushes forward, pulling a round tube containing the liquid antidote from her bag and placing it between Assura’s lips.

  The human sucks on it greedily, her cheeks hollowed, and I am besieged by a fantasy of my cock in its place, of her soft pink lips wrapped around my hard, gold flesh, pleasurable moans vibrating from her as I satiate her mouth. I grimace and will the image away, pretending I never saw it. She is a forsaken human.

  She relaxes, her body soaking in the relief of the antidote. Her eyelids flutter open, and she whispers, “Thank you,” in a rasping voice. I am enraptured by the swelling of gratitude in her eyes.

  I want her to give me that look after I have driven her body to climactic ecstasy.

  She closes her eyes again, and I am grateful. These lustful notions about her that are permeating my brain must stop now.

  Two more Fellamana, their iridescent robes swirling about their legs, come forward with a stretcher, intending to transport Assura to the hospital, I presume. But I shove them off. “I will carry her.”

  It is unnecessary. Beyond the requirements of my duty, but for a reason I do not want to contemplate, I cannot let anyone else hold her. I lift her in my arms, cradling her to my chest. She drifts into unconsciousness, leaving me embroiled in confusion at myself and clinging to the assertion that it is only this place making me want to touch her.

  It cannot be because I actually desire a human.

  In the hospital, they uncover an infected wound in her side. It elicits my first feelings of guilt toward this woman. The wound was undoubtedly sustained in the battle aboard her ship. One of my fellow Ssedez warriors stabbed her.

  The best I can do to make amends, as Oten has commanded, is help her heal.

  The Fellamana medics must reopen her wound to treat the infection. Assura is still unconscious, but I hold her shoulders down in case the procedure awakens her.

  I press her shoulders firmly into the mattress that automatically molds itself to her proportions and weight. “Ready,” I say and Koviye translates. The medic injects her with an anesthetic then makes the first cut into Assura’s side.

  She jerks awake and tries to fight me. Terror contorts her features. She does not know where she is or what is happening.

  “They are treating your wound,” I say in her language, not in my own.

  She grits her teeth and grips my arms but does not fight me. She stares at my face, and I give her more words of comfort. “It will be over soon.”

  Our gazes lock, and I do not know what to call the communication between us. It is as though a temporary truce is met.

  The medic finishes, and with the procedure over, Assura slips back into unconsciousness.

  I sit in a chair by her door. Day and night.

  Only because I communicated with Commander Oten, and he reiterated his order for me to watch over Assura. He may be on a ship en route to our home world, but I must still obey his word as law, given our military chain of command. He is a fair leader, and I trust him. He is on a mission with his new mate, General Nemona, to get supplies that may repair her ship the Origin, which crash landed not far from here after we destroyed their reactor in our attack.

  My entire life, I thought of humans as untrustworthy and intrinsically selfish by nature. Humans have warred among their own kind from the dawn of their existence. They cling to violence as a way of life, and their need to conquer other species without mercy is embedded in their genes. Now that my Commander Oten has mated with one, I am faced with the truth that not all humans are thus, but merely the Ten Systems.

  It confuses every instinct I have to be here, guarding a human whom I have been trained to kill at first sight.

  Which is what we did when the Origin entered our home planet’s airspace. Their ship bore the markings of a Ten Systems warship. We did not know that Nemona and her crew had escaped the empire using one of its ships. It was the first Ten Systems vessel we had seen in decades.

  I’ve never actually met a human before, though I have been conditioned by my military training and my wartime experiences to hate them.

  Everything about Assura is like the human enemy I was trained to kill, from her hair, dark as midnight lying over her shoulders, to her pert little mouth, pinched with pain. Though her limbs are molded with strength as fine as that of my warriors, her skin is something I have never felt before.

  I know her language. I studied it for years in my warrior’s training, in my lifelong study of our human enemies from the Ten Systems Empire. But when she writhes and moans in her sleep, she doesn’t communicate with words—but the noises she makes seem to me like sexual want. The sound she makes is throaty and resonant and sends a bolt of
lust through my body. It is something I should not be able to feel—not so soon after my mate’s death. It’s been only a hundred years. According to our traditions, I’m supposed to wait another hundred more before my desire for another reawakens, and certainly not for one of the species who killed a million Ssedez and attempted our genocide a century ago. At that time, we feared our annihilation by the Ten Systems so severely, we destroyed our home planet in a catastrophic bombing to fake the extinction of our race. Our plan succeeded, and we’ve kept sanctuary on a planet unknown to the Ten Systems since. No matter what my commander orders, it doesn’t change the fact that the Ssedez lost everything because of humans.

  Assura stretches her long limbs in wakefulness, her firm breasts and rounded hip outlined by the thin sheet. Bright daylight streams through the floor-to-ceiling windows and onto her bed, and her eyes open, full of all the desire emanating from her.

  Her expression is still lax from fatigue, but her gaze is fully aware. “What’s your name, Ssedez?” She mirrors my question from yesterday, and her voice comes out stronger than it did then. It sends a tremor through my limbs. I have to force myself to focus, to not stare at her lips forming the words.

  I sit forward. “I am Gahnin.”

  She breathes in and out slowly, as though her tired mind requires time to speak. “You attacked our ship.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why are you here?” Her tone is all skepticism and confusion.

  “Because I was commanded to watch over you.”

  “Why? By whom?” Her soft brown eyes slant, narrowing on me. She does not yet believe I am a friend. Good, she should not.

  “My commander charged me to watch over you until they return. Your General Nemona, she is his new mate.”

  “She?” She eases upward in her bed, growing more confused. “Your translation is wrong. General Nem is male. And he would never mate with a Ssedez.”

  I sneer at her insinuation that it is my error. “I speak your language perfectly. Nemona knew you. She wept when I showed her the image of you on the communication vid. She believed you dead.”