His Virgin Mate
(Interstellar Brides: The Virgins Book 1)
By Grace Goodwin
152 pages
Published March 13th 2017
By KSA Publishing
Twenty-one and single, Alexis Lopez hopes her lackluster
response to men is a problem she's eager to solve by
volunteering for the Interstellar Brides Program. One look at
the large, dominant alien who claims she belongs to him sets
her body on fire. When he tells her, in explicit detail, how
he'll claim her in every way, she is eager to give her
mate everything, body and soul.
Von of Everis is a ruthless and high ranking Hunter who's
spent years fighting in the Hive wars. But his bed, and his
life, are empty until Alexis arrives. One look at his innocent
little bride and he knows she belongs to him.
Simple, right? Nope. The match is challenged by one of the
most feared warriors on the planet and stolen kisses and
mind-numbing pleasure won't save Von from a deadly duel.
But Von is a Hunter, a warrior, a protector, and someone is
trying to take what belongs to him. Only him. He will do
whatever it takes to protect, save and claim his virgin mate.
What an amazing book. It was so packed with alpha male bad
assness and romance. This book is so well written and thought out.
I so cannot wait for the next book.
Oh how I love these sifi romances. This was so much fun to read. It
is a short book, but wow what a read. I loved how the Alexis and
Von connect though their dreams when they are a marked match.
How they meet in the dreams and remember the dream when they
wake. Oh and Von has such a dirty mouth. And I loved reading
every word of it. And oh what a turn on it was for Alexis. Oh how
I cannot wait to read the next book.
Now before I ruin this for you I will leave off here. I hope you
enjoy this book as much as I did. If you do like this book, please
consider leaving a review. The Authors really like it when you do;
they value your opinions too.
Chapter One
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.”
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?”
Once upon a time, a young girl was born into an average,
working class family. The wee little girl, convinced she was
not an average child but was, in fact, a fairy princess,
longed to leave the mundane world behind and live her
dreams. She grew up, went to school, and when she’d
grown too big to wear tutus and tiaras in public without
drawing unwanted attention, turned to writing down her
fantasies instead.
Now a bit older, her fantasies have grown to include sexually
dominant men who know how to ensure a woman’s pleasure.
Grace believes all women should be treated like princesses,
in the bedroom and out of it, and writes love stories where
men know how to make their women feel pampered,
protected and very well taken care of.
dominant men who know how to ensure a woman’s pleasure.
Grace believes all women should be treated like princesses,
in the bedroom and out of it, and writes love stories where
men know how to make their women feel pampered,
protected and very well taken care of.
She currently lives in Oregon where she spends her days
writing, and her nights in the arms of her very own Prince.
writing, and her nights in the arms of her very own Prince.
No comments:
Post a Comment