His Virgin Mate E-Book

Grace Goodwin

• Herausgeber: Grace Goodwin
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Interstellar Brides® Program- The Virgins
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 259

Beschreibung

After a life on the streets, Katie chooses the Interstellar Brides Program for a chance at a new life, a new identity. But when she arrives on Everis, her Marked Mate refuses to claim her. As an Elite Hunter, Bryn has to travel to Hyperion, a known world of gangs and vicious evil to bring an assassin to justice, and leave her behind.She might be innocent in body, but Katie knows her honorable mate is walking into a foreign world, a world she knows all too well. If she must seduce him, she will. If she must steal away on his ship and follow him to another world, she will. And if she must seduce the sexy-as-sin leader of the criminal legions they meet to save her mate? Well then, her innocence is a weapon, and she's not afraid to use it.

Leseprobe

His Virgin Mate

Interstellar Brides® Program: The Virgins - 2

Grace Goodwin

His Virgin Mate: Copyright © 2017 by Grace Goodwin

Interstellar Brides® is a registered trademark

of KSA Publishing Consultants Inc.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electrical, digital or mechanical including but not limited to photocopying, recording, scanning or by any type of data storage and retrieval system without express, written permission from the author.

Published by KSA Publishers

Goodwin, Grace

Cover design copyright 2020 by Grace Goodwin

Images/Photo Credit: Deposit Photos: diversepixel, aallm

Publisher’s Note:

This book was written for an adult audience. The book may contain explicit sexual content. Sexual activities included in this book are strictly fantasies intended for adults and any activities or risks taken by fictional characters within the story are neither endorsed nor encouraged by the author or publisher.

Contents

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Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Epilogue

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1

Alexis Lopez- Interstellar Brides Program Testing Center- Miami

Fingers stroked gently over my cheek. Featherlight and soft. Even so, I felt callouses, and the stark contrast sent a shiver down my spine. I couldn’t see the man, but I knew him. Felt more than just his caress. I felt his desire, his eagerness for me. How? I had no idea. It made no sense, but I didn’t want to think too much. I just wanted to feel.

“Cold?” he asked, his voice a dark rasp.

I shook my head. I was hot. My breasts were heavy and sensitive. Between my legs, my pussy clenched and pulsed with need, with want…with something precious I’d never felt before. Lust.

On my hip, a strange heat spread through me, somehow connecting me to this man, this stranger. I didn’t know who he was, but I knew the mark. It burned, sending lightning through my blood and straight to my clit with a powerful jolt I’d never felt before, never dared imagine.

But no. That was wrong. I had a mark like that, but not on my hip. I licked suddenly dry lips, wondering what it would feel like if he touched my birthmark. Mine was on my…

“Don’t do that, love.” His finger moved to my bottom lip, sliding back and forth. “If you wet your lips like that, I’ll dream of you licking my cock.”

Heat flared in my core and I whimpered. Memories lingered on the edge of reason, but I couldn’t quite reach them. Somehow, I knew this man, knew his scent and his taste. I craved him, and I’d never wanted any man.

Nothing about this made sense, but I didn’t want this dream to end. Ever. All my life I’d wondered what the other girls sighed and giggled about. They’d talked of little else for a while now. Me, the odd man out. Or woman, I suppose. I’d never been interested in a man’s attentions, never felt lust when I looked at a man, especially one I didn’t know. I’d settled on being odd, a cold fish. Broken. But suddenly, with him? My body was alive with lust. With want. I could think of little else but tasting him, feeling him. I knew, somehow, in the way one knows things in a dream, that he was going to take me. He was going to fuck me and make me his forever. And I wanted it, so badly, my entire existence narrowed to him. His scent. His voice. The rough calloused fingertip still stroking my lip.

“Do you want to taste my cock again, mate?”

Mate? What? Confusion hindered me for a moment, but this new me, this dream me, wanted him. Now. I gave myself to the moment, eager to have my curiosity assuaged. I’d never been with a man. I wanted to know what it felt like to have him inside me. This man. He was mine. And the picture he painted with his words was exciting.

I knew about a man’s cock. I was a virgin, not an idiot, but I didn’t know the nuances of what he’d do to me with it. I didn’t know what it would feel like inside me, or what he might taste like on my tongue. Blow jobs were talked about. A lot. In high school, girls even gave them on the school bus. Me? Never. I had no interest in any of the boys I’d gone to school with, let alone their pencil dicks.

But him? My mouth watered to taste his cock, to feel the thick, heavy weight of it on my tongue.

His finger slipped away, replaced by his lips. He was kissing me! This wasn’t like Bobby Jenkins from tenth grade. We weren’t behind the gym. This guy didn’t have braces.

No, this wasn’t a boy. This was a man. With a hand cupping my nape, he angled me as he wanted, his mouth firm and insistent. He put his tongue in my mouth and it was so good. Incredible, licking into me in slow, luscious strokes. This was what it was supposed to feel like? Heat spread through my body like molasses through my veins, thick and slow.

“Has a man ever kissed you before?” he asked, his lips brushing over mine, then along my jaw.

I shook my head in his steady hold.

“What else have you done, mate? Who has touched this soft skin? Kissed you here?” His lips traced my collarbone and I swayed in his arms, longed for his lips to travel lower, to my nipples. Maybe even lower. I’d never had a man’s mouth on me before, not down there.

God, I’d never done anything. What a joke I must be to him. “No one. No one else. Ever.” I forced the admission past my closing throat and waited for his laughter or raised brow. Who would believe it these days? A twenty-one-year-old working-class girl who was still a virgin. If I admitted it back home, I’d be laughed out of the neighborhood.

I swallowed, then whimpered again when he nuzzled my ear, lightly nipped the lobe. His hands wandered from the small of my back to cup my ass, his thumb stroking over the sensitive mark on my hip. My legs nearly collapsed as shockwaves of desire made me tremble. I was naked, completely naked in his arms, and his rough clothing brushed against my sensitive skin like sandpaper. My nipples pebbled and I moaned, leaning my head back to give him better access to my neck. I’d never done that before either, but I would give this man who called me mate anything. Everything.

“I never wanted anyone before.” Sad, but true. I’d never felt like his. Hot and wet and achy.

“Good,” he whispered. “You’re mine, and I don’t share.”

That was just fine with me. Closing my eyes, I reached for him, trying to bury my hands in his hair and pull him closer. But as hard as I tried, I couldn’t seem to find a grip. It was like he faded, my hands closing around empty air.

He pulled back and I felt cold. Alone.

“Come back,” I pleaded.

“You are a virgin?” he asked. While he no longer touched me, I heard the need in his voice. I’d made him sound that way. Me!

“Yes.” I nodded my head and my hair fell over my cheek. I heard tears in my voice, not sad or angry tears, but love and happiness filled this body so full it hurt. Somehow, I knew him, knew he was mine. Somehow, I knew he loved me, really, really loved me. The tears were like my heart leaking onto my face.

“Do you want me to be your first?” I could no longer see him, but his voice whispered over me from right behind my ear.

“Yes.”

“Will you accept my claim? And claim me as your mate in return? Forever?”

“Yes,” I repeated. I didn’t know him, but somehow, this body did. I felt like I was someone else, someone magical and powerful, someone not so afraid of being a failure in bed. If he made me feel this good from just a kiss, what would it be like when he touched me in earnest? What would it feel like to have his hard, hot body, his skin, pressed to mine? His cock inside me? His mouth claiming mine as he thrust into me slowly, taking his time, our hands entwined.

Every romantic notion I’d ever had was flooding my mind and I knew he’d give them to me. He was the one. He was going to make me happy. So happy.

“Dream of me.” His voice faded to little more than a whisper and I tried to hold on, but the dream slipped away like water through my fingers.

Dream of me.

My eyes opened then and I took in my surroundings, blinking. It took a few moments for my brain to kick back in gear, to realize none of it hadn’t been real. The man. The kiss. Nothing.

My cheeks were wet, and I realized I’d actually been crying. Now they fell for a different reason. Loss. I was bereft. Empty. Back to my cold, calm center that so far, nothing had breached. Nothing but him.

I was in the Interstellar Brides Processing center. The testing room was small, utilitarian, with a table and chairs, looking more like a drab doctor’s exam room than a space-age matching facility. It was the testing unit I sat in that stirred my memory. My wrists were restrained to the metal arms of a chair not much different than the one I sat in at the dentist.

Still, the restraints bothered me. I knew women convicts could volunteer to be brides. Perhaps the restraints were required since they were prisoners when they arrived. Maybe they tried to break free from here. Maybe, they were just violent or mean and the testing program didn’t want to take any chances.

But I wasn’t a convict. Me? I hadn’t even stolen a pack of gum from the corner store in junior high like my stupid friends. I didn’t cheat on tests or lie to my mother. I was boring and sad and pathetic and so lonely I could barely function. The warden had said the cuffs were for my safety. When she strapped me in, I worried about how dangerous the testing would be. But then she walked away from me with a smile and ran her finger over that tablet and I remembered nothing else.

That dream wasn’t dangerous. Dangerous to my virginity, maybe. My ovaries were certainly awake now.

I shimmied in the curved seat, but I wasn’t going anywhere. It was curved and angled back as if I were going to get a cavity filled, not be matched to an alien mate.

“Are you okay, Alexis?”

Thankfully, the warden had her name on her uniform to help me remember. Egara. She was quite nice, especially considering the Interstellar Brides Program was so streamlined and efficient. Even a tad militaristic. But she’d eased my mind, made me feel good about my decision to be tested. The ads I’d seen on TV promoting the program showed women happily mated to aliens from other planets. The love on their faces—and the obvious well-fucked glow about them—had piqued my interest, but I hadn’t done anything about it. Until now. Until I had absolutely nothing left to lose.

Now, I was ready. My dad was dead, my mom had been gone for two years and my Golden Retriever, Rosie, got freaking bone cancer a week after my dad passed and I lost her, too. My best friend since I was eleven, that dog listened to more crying and horrible pop music than any animal ever. But she’d stayed by my side, slept in my bed when I was home, and kept me company at my dad’s bedside when no one else was around.

I loved that dog. I loved my parents, too. But they were all gone now. Everything was gone but the big rambling house I couldn’t stand to be in. The yard was huge, the house a four-bedroom monster I didn’t want to keep. Being in that house, looking at the pictures on the walls, the furniture, the smells…

Being there felt like being in a shrine to my dead parents, and I just couldn’t do it anymore. So I sold it, put the money in a trust for my cousin’s new baby girl, rented a car and drove to Miami. Three days from Denver. I’d barely slept. Eaten even less.

I felt empty. Totally empty. Until now. Until that dream. And the tears just kept coming, like a silently leaking faucet. That man made me feel. He made me want. Hunger. Lust. That girl in the dream was so unlike me. She was full of hope and love, and had joy bubbling in her veins like fizzy candy under her tongue.

I wanted that. I wanted to feel like that.

“Miss Lopez? Can you hear me?”

I blinked at the warden, clearing the cobwebs from my thoughts. Those thoughts were for the past, the tangled, twisted, painful past that I was leaving behind. Today. Right now.

“Yes, I’m all right. That was fast.” It seemed like just a minute ago I settled into the chair in my drab hospital-style gown with the Interstellar Brides Program logo printed all over it.

“Yes, it was,” she replied. I heard the surprise in her tone and I frowned, felt dread settle in my stomach.

No guy had ever made me feel a tenth of what I’d felt in that dream. I’d never had the hots for a guy on Earth. Ever. I’d gone to the doctor about a year ago to find out if I had a hormonal imbalance or something, but she’d just smiled, looked at my bloodwork and told me everything was perfectly normal. She said there was nothing wrong with my body. I was healthy as could be.

She’d even suggested I visit a counselor of some kind. A therapist. Then she’d started asking me about my papa and uncles and I’d shut her up and gotten the hell out of there.

I didn’t have secrets like that in my past. Even if I had, and I had friends who had suffered abuse and rape, they weren’t like me. They worked through their past, found a way to be in relationships. They, at least, wanted to try.

Me? No. There was definitely something wrong with me. Hank had called me frigid when I pushed away his advances last year. Of course, he was handsy and smelled of garlic. Robert had said I was a prude, not interested in giving him a BJ after our second date, payment, he’d said, for taking me out to dinner. Twice.

I’d left him sitting in his car in front of my apartment with his dick in his lap. After seeing the bulging, veinous head, I had to wonder why any woman would want to put that in her mouth. Even now, I shuddered at the memory.

Every kiss I’d ever had, from the peck on my cheek from Will Travers in fifth grade to the first French kiss behind the bleachers in tenth, had left me feeling nothing but sloppy, cold and wet.

I didn’t fit in. Clearly, men didn’t find me appealing and my clit must be broken. I felt nothing when it came to men. I even wondered if I was gay. I’d spent a month after Robert and the cock incident looking at women, studying them, wondering if I might find myself attracted to their bodies. I’d asked a friend of a friend, Meg, who was a lesbian, how to tell if one was actually gay. She’d said if I didn’t want to dive in the bushes, then I probably wasn’t interested in women.

She kissed me once, because I asked her to. And I felt nothing. Nada.

Since the thought of putting my mouth on another woman, down there, held about as much appeal as putting my mouth on Robert’s cock in the parking lot, I figured I wasn’t a lesbian. Which kind of sucked. I didn’t care who I might fall in love with, I just wanted to fall. I wanted to feel desire. I had loved my parents, but that wasn’t the same. I loved my dog. I had friends I cared deeply about in high school. Cute memes of kittens and puppies and babies online made my heart lurch. So, my heart worked just fine.

Since I wasn’t into women, and no man I’d met made me hot, made me pant like I saw on TV, I finally gave up. I just buckled down and worked. I went to school and studied to be a chef because the only thing I was passionate about was food. The tastes, the textures, the surprises that could roll over my tongue when I combined spices or ingredients in unexpected ways. I’d spent the last three years in school, learning everything I could at the culinary institute downtown.

I excelled in class, but I felt like life was parading in front of me in a twisted and cruel taunt. As the monotony of caring for first one ill parent and then another wore me down, I discovered that going to class made me feel twice as lonely heading home at the end of the day as I did in the morning. The people in my classes were working in real kitchens, earning their place already while I had to squeeze every moment of study I could into my day.

Eventually, I had to stop going to class and take care of my father. We couldn’t afford a nurse, or a nursing home. And I couldn’t’ bear the thought of him wasting away in a place like that while I sautéed mushrooms and made cream sauces for wealthy tourists.

I took care of my father, and every day I thought more and more about the Interstellar Brides Program advertisements. They assured their matches were ninety-nine percent successful. Those were crazy numbers since the divorce rates I’d heard quoted for regular Earth marriages were around fifty percent.

Ninety-nine percent sounded really damn good. And if I didn’t have to go on any more dates with guys like Robert, and I was guaranteed a guy that was perfect for me, then I was all for it. What the hell? I had nothing to lose.

Even if that guy was an alien.

“Hmm.” Warden Egara paced beside me, her dark brown hair up in a bun and her total attention on the tablet in her hand. She didn’t look happy anymore. She looked worried.

Maybe I was really, really broken. Maybe their system didn’t work on girls like me, stupid, scared virgins who had no idea what to do with a man, let alone an alien.

Oddly, that thought dried the tears immediately. Pain and loneliness I could deal with. Hope hurt a hell of a lot more.

“It didn’t work, did it? You couldn’t find me a match.” I sighed, tried not to let the disappointment make my voice quiver. “I knew it.”

“Knew what?” she wondered.

“That I’m broken, that there’s something definitely wrong with me when it comes to men.”

The warden offered me a sad little smile. Yeah, I was that pitiful. “Oh, no Alexis. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were worried. I should have spoken sooner. You have been matched.”

My heart skipped a beat and my eyes widened. “I have? Really?”

There was someone out there for me? Who was waiting for me right now?

“Really,” she repeated, now smiling fully.

“Who?” I knew I sounded breathy and excited, but I couldn’t help it. Today, the dream, was the first time I was hot for a guy. Ever. And I had no idea who he was, or where he was.

With a swipe of her finger over her controls tablet, the restraints retracted. I sat up, rubbed my wrists, although the hold hadn’t been too snug.

“All brides are matched to a planet first, then a mate. For you, and this is quite interesting, your genetic profile matched you to Everis.” Her shrewd gaze raked over me. “It seems you have met the special requirements that are very specific to that planet.”

“Oh? What kind of requirements?”

She tilted her head to study me. “Let me see your palm.”

I didn’t know which one, so I rolled my hands over, palms up so she could see both.

She frowned. “Strange.”

2

Lexi

I looked down at my hands. “What’s strange?”

“All Everians are born with a mark on their palm.”

She didn’t say more than that, just eyed me. “In order to be matched to Everis, you must have a mark somewhere. Do you have an unusual birthmark anywhere on your body? A large birthmark that runs in your family?”

Holy shit. “Yes.” Instinctively, I lifted my arms and wrapped them over my breast to hide the mark there. “Why?”

Her dark gaze followed the movement of my arms, but she smiled. “Long ago, Everian explorers colonized many worlds. Some of their ancestors made it all the way here, to Earth.”

“And? What does that have to do with me?”

The warden’s face was kind, but her words made my head spin. “Their descendants carry the birthmark you are trying to hide. Your ancestors make you a potential marked mate of an Everian Hunter. Your genetic profile alone would have sent you to Everis. The processing protocols confirmed your psychological compatibility.”

“What?” What? Was she saying that I was an alien? “I’m from Denver. My family is from Vera Cruz. My abuela still lives in Mexico. I’m not an alien. I went to East High School. I was born in Denver.”

“Of course you’re not an alien, my dear.” She whirled and waved her hand in the air to indicate the chair I still sat in and the bank of computers and screens built into the wall. “You’re just the descendant of one.” She glanced down at her tablet. “According to your genetic profile, you are seventeen percent Everian and eighty-three percent human.” She smiled proudly, like a mother bragging about her child’s accomplishments in school. “Even after thousands of years, the Everian DNA is very resilient.”

“What? If you already knew I was some kind of alien, why did I even go through the test?”

“Your DNA profile placed Everis at the top of your probability matrix. However, the testing you just completed uses many variables to define your wants and needs in a mate based on conscious and subconscious thought. Planets are removed from your options one by one based on these until only one planet remains. At the end of the testing, sexual compatibility is analyzed and ultimately, a recorded mating ceremony is fed to your core brain processing for verification.”

I tried to translate her complex wording. “You mean I watched a sex tape from Everis in my mind? Dreamed it?”

She nodded as she sat at the table across from me and crossed her legs like we were at a tea party or something. “Technically, your body experienced sensual data recorded by the neural processing unit implanted in another bride. But, if you’d like to think of it as a dream, then yes.”

“But I didn’t dream about sex,” I countered, blushing. I could only imagine what a dream with actual sex in it would have been like. A mental porno. “How do you know I’m compatible if I didn’t dream about sex?”

“Perhaps you did not dream of intercourse.” She lifted a brow and now I felt like she was looking into my soul. “But you did feel desire, did you not? Lust? Hunger? A yearning so fierce your entire body shook with wanting his touch?”

I flushed hotly. All over. I couldn’t look her in the eye. God, how did she know?

“You must be a virgin. Correct?” she asked.

I bit my lip and nodded, ashamed to tell her what I was thinking, that I wasn’t a virgin by choice, but because I was broken. Then I remembered I was sitting in a gown and that I was naked beneath the soft cotton. I also remembered that she’d probed my deep, inner thoughts.

“Do not be ashamed. On Everis, virginity in a mate is highly honored. Your mate will be pleased, and eager to claim you.”

I plucked at the hem of the gown. “But doesn’t my mate need to know that I’m…frigid?”

Warden Egara’s mouth fell open, snapped shut and opened again. “Clearly the men you’ve dated were all assholes if you were told that.”

I snorted at her word choice. She looked so prim and proper in her uniform and she was talking about asshole guys like we were besties doing tequila shots at my favorite bar. I felt much better.

“I am not a doctor, Miss Lopez.”

“Lexi, please.”

“Lexi, did it ever occur to you that perhaps you were frigid for other men because they weren’t your one true match? Because he wasn’t Everian?”

I thought. And thought. Was that true? Could that be true? Had my body been waiting for an alien? Did that seventeen percent of my DNA make me not feel attracted to human men?

Pain knifed through my chest. Ah, there it was again. Hope. Maybe I wasn’t broken. Maybe I was an alien girl who just didn’t like human guys. The thought made me cringe. What was worse? Being frigid? Or not being human? And what about my parents?

If one of them was like me, no wonder I was an only child. It wasn’t like they were chasing me out of the bedroom when I was little. They’d always seemed so kind to one another. But passion? No. They’d been more like best friends.

Suddenly my entire life was twisting and turning in my mind. My mother. She had a mark like mine on her back. She’d had me late in life, been almost forty when she married my papa. Had she been like me and given up on finding passion?

Holy shit. My mother was part alien, too?

Before I could digest that, the warden was talking again.

“Your testing was one of the shortest ever done. That is because you were immediately matched to Everis and, due to your level of sexual experience, they do not wish for you to have any predisposed idea of what will happen sexually with your mate. There is nothing wrong with you. Your match is ninety-nine percent perfect.”

She watched me closely and I gave her a small smile. Predisposed ideas? Like what? Was I supposed to pretend I had no idea what was going on? That I’d never seen porn? Never tried to feel something?

Still, ninety-nine percent perfect sounded really, really good to me.

“Okay.” I didn’t know what else to say. I was matched, there was a guy out there for me. An almost perfect match. It wasn’t as if I could argue with her further. My new mate would find out whether or not I was broken soon enough.

“Okay?” she repeated. I nodded. “Great. For the record, state your name.”

I cleared my throat. “Alexis Lopez.”

“Are you legally married?”

“No.”

“Do you have any biological offspring?” When I eyed her funny, she continued, “I know. A virgin having kids, but I have to ask for the record. You are a special case.”

“No. I’m not the Virgin Mary. I don’t have any children.”

“Do you accept the match that has been given you by the Interstellar Brides Program processing protocol?”

Did I want to leave Earth and go to Everis? To a male who wanted me as pure as the driven snow? Who would revere me for it?

“Yes. I accept.”

“Excellent.” The warden swiped her finger a few more times on the tablet.

“Thank you, Lexi. By accepting the match, you are no longer a citizen of Earth and are now a matched bride of Everis. As Everis requires unusual protocols, you will not be transported directly. You will transport with two other matched women. I believe one is still being processed. When all of you are done, you can meet. Once Everis has given us the transport coordinates for the Touchstone, you will return here to this room for processing.”

She stood, tucked her tablet under her arm.

“If you’ll follow me, we’ll go check on the others.”

I followed the warden down a short, brightly lit corridor. The cold tile floor made me wish for some slippers or booties or something. Feminine voices were muffled by a closed door, which the warden opened without knocking.

“Do you have the birthmark, too?”

I heard the question as I walked behind Warden Egara into the room, one hand on the back of my testing gown to keep my butt from being exposed. The small space was an actual conference room with a table and chairs. Two women were huddled together in gowns that matched mine and looked up at me.

“You’re here!”

They both stood and came over to me, big smiles on their faces. Their easygoing personalities and bright eyes helped soothe my frazzled nerves. Their excitement was a little startling, but it was reassuring to know they weren’t scared of what was happening to us.

“I’m Katie and she’s Dani.”

“Lexi.”

“Did they ask you about the birthmark, too?” Katie asked. She was tall and thin, perfect breasts and curvy hips. Her long brown hair went halfway down her back and was artfully done. Her makeup perfectly framed dark blue eyes that seemed too big in her face. She looked like all the girls in high school who made fun of my curves, but the smile she gave me only felt friendly, not malicious.

I exhaled, not realizing I’d been holding my breath. “It isn’t just me then? Who knew we were all aliens?”

They both laughed.

“We’re all matched to Everis.” Dani went back to her chair, tugging me by the wrist to sit beside her. She was strikingly different than Katie with her gazelle-like looks. Her hair was very blonde and pulled back into a ponytail. There was something graceful about her, as if she were a ballerina. Her body was slim—narrow hips and small breasts—that only added to my perception. She was small and fragile looking, but her gaze was fearless. Katie sat on her other side and I sat beside them, my darker skin, black hair and curves making us all unique. And we