Craving Maul (Star Joined Book 1) Read online

  “Everything is not ruined,” he says calmly.

  And that calmness just flips my switch.

  I lay into him, crying, “It is, it is!” Kicking and punching until something wraps around my wrists.

  A weight comes down on top of me, sinking me into the bed.

  I can’t move, I can’t even squirm, but there’s something about the weight that begins to soothe me.

  It’s almost like I need this bondage, this constriction.

  Slowly, painfully, I peel my eyes open. Panting, I stare up at him. At his silvery alien face that’s becoming more and more familiar by the second.

  The rage I was feeling begins to fade away, replaced by the strongest desire to kiss him.

  “Everything is not ruined,” he repeats more firmly as he stares into my eyes. “I will help you and together we will find your sister. I swear to you— ”

  Arching up, I smash my mouth against his mouth. He freezes on top of me, his entire body going stiff.

  I move my lips against his, urging him to join my rhythm, but at first his lips are slack. It’s not until I moan and run the tip of my tongue along the plump swell of his bottom lip that he begins to respond.

  With a groan, his mouth opens and his tongue comes out to meet mine, but his movements are slow and awkward, like he’s inexperienced.

  “Is this your first kiss?” I breathe against his lips.

  “Kiss?” he repeats the word as if it’s foreign to him. Then he groans as I nip his bottom lip with my teeth. “Yessss…”

  I feel his excitement growing against my thigh and there’s just something about knowing that he’s never done this before, that I’m his first kiss, his first fuck, his first everything, that’s starting to drive me a little wild.

  I thrust my tongue hard into his mouth and nearly come when he thrusts his right back.

  Our tongues duel, his eventually overpowering mine as he gets the hang of kissing.

  His tongue isn’t as smooth and soft as it should be, it’s a little grainy and scratchy, but I like it. I pull his tongue into my mouth and suck on it.

  He jerks above me and I swear I just felt his cock twitch.

  Something warm and wet begins to leak down my thigh.

  I move my legs, rubbing my feet up and down his legs then dig my heels into his ass, urging him to enter me. He ignores my feet, all of his attention focused solely on our kiss.

  I moan into his mouth and arch beneath him.

  Now that I need him inside me the tail wrapped around my wrists is becoming an annoyance. I want to run my hands all over his silvery body and explore him. There’s something about his taste and touching his skin that’s becoming rather… addictive.

  Unable to tell him what I what with his tongue down my throat, I probe at that little connection I felt earlier and push my desire towards it.

  Immediately, he stills above me.

  Did it work? Did he feel me?

  I push again, sharing my ache, sharing my need to have him buried deep inside me. Filling me… Stretching me...

  He shudders and with a deep, rumbling groan his own desire crashes into me, sweeping me away into oblivion.

  His lips begin to move against mine again, hungry, needy, and desperate. I feel something hard probing at my entrance and shiver as I get a hint of his pleasure. I don’t know how I know but I can just sense how much he enjoys my taste and my soft inviting wetness.

  My thighs spread wider as he begins to push himself into me, as if it could somehow help accommodate him. He’s so big, even though we’ve already done this twice, I still have that little nagging fear that he just might split me in half.

  There’s a little pinch and then I’m full. So full. With him inside me, I feel complete. It’s almost like all my life I’ve been empty and missing this connection.

  Somewhere deep in my mind, I hear his voice. I hear him saying my name with a wonder-filled reverence.

  “Lexi.”

  But it’s so soft, so faint, it must be just my imagination.

  He begins to withdraw, easing himself out of me, and then he slams himself back in as his tongue thrusts into my mouth at the same time. Penetrating me.

  In and out, he works both his cock and his tongue, and I feel his pleasure, his happiness, that he’s finally found me.

  His tail tightens around my wrists and at the same time I feel the need to grab onto him and hold him tightly, as if I’m afraid he’ll somehow get away.

  My thighs tighten around his hips and my walls squeeze him inside me.

  “Lexi,” I hear again from far, far away.

  I don’t know how he’s doing it but it’s like his feelings are somehow bleeding into my feelings.

  I suddenly want to thrust deep and spill myself inside him.

  My hips buck up, picking up his rhythm.

  As one we move, rocking against each other, chasing the explosion that will make us one.

  Knowing and feeling that he’s so close, that it’s taking everything in his power to keep himself from coming before me, is my undoing.

  His hips crash into my hips and I burst wide open. Colors flash in front of my eyes and I scream into his mouth. He swells inside me, somehow growing even larger, and then I’m flooded with warmth.

  So much warmth.

  “Lexi,” he fairly purrs, tearing his mouth from my mouth to nuzzle his nose against my cheek.

  The flood of warmth continues. It just goes on and on. By the time he stills above me, I’m so full, I can feel his cum leaking down my thighs.

  He pushes up, his tail unwrapping from around my wrists, and stares into my eyes.

  We were connected, completely connected for one, brief glorious moment.

  And perhaps it’s because I feel so good, or perhaps it’s because old habits die hard, but that dark pool of mine opens up inside me and without even thinking about it I dive back in.

  I fall and fall inside myself. Instead of a thick fog wrapping around me, sheltering me, protecting me from feeling, the hole inside me is a black bottomless pit.

  “Lexi,” someone says my name angrily.

  I’ve felt something similar to this before. One night I got so drunk when I closed my eyes and tried to go to sleep I couldn’t because I felt like I was falling through the bed.

  “Help me,” I call out and then something tightens inside of me and I’m suddenly yanked back.

  Gasping for air, it’s impossible to process all the things overwhelming my senses. Light, air, smell, and touch. Everything is too bright, too sharp and too harsh.

  I squeeze my eyes shut, though I loathe the darkness now, and then my muscles lock up tight. My body spasms, forcing me into a painful contortion.

  “Relax and just let it happen,” my alien says and brushes my hair back.

  I try. I try to relax, but it’s so hard when everything inside me is tight and pinched. I scream just to relieve some of the tension.

  “You’re going through withdrawal now. Your body is purging all the toxins from your system.”

  “Make it stop,” I hear myself scream over and over again.

  In and out, I drift between falling and my body contorting.

  It’s endless.

  Torturous.

  But Maul stays with me, nursing me through all of it. He offers me soothing words and words of encouragement.

  When the pain finally stops, when my muscles are too tired to twist and bend, the emotions hit.

  It’s almost as if I’ve been storing up a backlog of feelings in the back of my head. Every ounce of anger, fear, grief, and sadness I’ve repressed over the past few months comes back with a vengeance.

  “Talk to me,” Maul encourages me, holding me close and stroking my hair back.

  Talking to him keeps me grounded to the moment. It seems to be the only thing that keeps me from falling into the black hole of despair again.

  I tell him my whole life story. I tell him about growing up next to Jack. How close we were, how he was my bes
t friend. How everything was almost perfect, everything was going as it should go, until I lost both my parents in a fatal car crash when I was a freshman in college. Then, at nineteen years old, I felt responsible for taking care of my little sister Isla.

  “Isla? She’s the one you’re searching for?” he asks, tucking my hair behind my ear.

  “Yes,” I answer him and then my eyes spill over with tears. Once they start, I can’t seem to stop them.

  I sob as I recount all the fights Isla and I had about her finishing high school. She was only seventeen when our parents passed and she started to rebel. Before they passed, she was a straight A student. Then, after they died, she started skipping classes, staying out all night, and suddenly hanging out with the wrong crowd. I know it was her way of coping, but at the time I was still trying to cope as well and I came down on her hard.

  So hard, she ran away and never came back.

  “How do you know she was taken? Could she not be back on Earth?” he questions.

  And I wish she was. More than anything, I wish she was safe back on Earth, especially after what little I’ve already glimpsed in the slave market.

  “I know she was abducted because I was keeping tabs on her,” I tell him.

  I was already studying and training for the Bureau at the time she disappeared, and after our last blow up fight, I figured out the only way I could take care of her was by giving her space but being there if she needed me. I knew where she lived, who she hung out with, who she was dating, and where she worked.

  Every week, I’d check in on her until one week she just wasn’t there.

  Like so many others, she just disappeared off of the face of the Earth. She didn’t show up to work and none of her friends could get ahold of her. I scoured the city for her, but there was no trace left behind. She walked home from work one night by herself and never made it back to her apartment.

  “I know she’s not dead,” I explain to him. “I can feel it in here.” I slap my hand over my chest. “I know she’s alive, I just know it. She’s out there, somewhere, enduring god only knows what, and it’s all because I wasn’t there to protect her.”

  “It’s not your fault,” he tells me and tries to nuzzle my cheek.

  I turn my face away.

  “It is.” All the guilt, all the self-loathing swells up inside of me and threatens to break me in half.

  For weeks after Isla disappeared, I was frantic with my helplessness. I needed to do something. Anything. There had to be some way to get her back. And then, one night, I stumbled upon Yarrel while checking out a lead.

  And suddenly I had a plan.

  “How long have you been taking serenity?” Maul asks as he grabs me by the chin and forces me to look at him.

  “I don’t know, about six months,” I answer him honestly. “After the first couple of months, it was really hard to keep track of time.”

  “Months?” he repeats incredulously and his eyes fill with fear. I don’t like the look on his face. Someone who looks like him should never look like they’re so afraid they’re about to piss their pants. “How many rotations is a month to you?”

  “A month is thirty days or so on Earth…”

  Maul pulls me close and crushes me against his chest. He shudders. “You could have been lost before I ever found you.”

  Could have been?

  Somehow, I feel like I already am.

  Chapter Ten

  Lexi

  For two long, miserable weeks, I suffer serenity withdrawal. When I’m not struggling to keep from falling into the black hole that’s opened up inside of me, I’m struggling to control all the emotions that have awoken from their long slumber.

  I cry, I rage, and I despair.

  And through it all, Maul is there, taking care of me.

  He holds me, protects me, takes my punches, and wipes away my tears. If I were him, I would have thrown my crazy ass out of the airlock long ago, but he’s a better person than I am. He asks nothing of me and he doesn’t leave my side.

  He’s always near. Always where I need him.

  I tell him everything. Every little thought in my head. All the bad shit I’ve done in my life. All the good.

  All my fears.

  I don’t know what’s happening between us. I don’t know if it’s because he’s taking care of me or if it’s because I’m going crazy, but with each breath I take I feel closer to him. I feel more connected to him.

  I’m starting to need him as much as I need air.

  I need him near me. Whenever we’re too far apart, I’m filled with this hollow ache that throbs until one of us moves closer. It’s worrisome but I also understand it could be more psychological than physical.

  I’m probably using him as a placebo, trading one addiction for another.

  I try not to think there’s something more to it, something stranger…

  Last night I fell asleep crushed in his arms, and it was the best sleep I’ve had in ages. For the first time in days, I didn’t suffer a single nightmare.

  When I wake up, though, it’s to see him peering down at me with a frown of concern.

  “How do you feel?” he asks.

  “Like I’ve been run over by a truck a few times,” I croak. After all the raging and crying I’ve done, my throat is incredibly raw.

  He bobs his head in understanding.

  “But better?” he asks hopefully.

  I take a quick stock of myself. I feel disgusting. Like I’ve been drenched in sweat, wrung out, then drenched in more sweat. Overall though, everything seems to still be in its rightful place.

  My body, if not my heart and mind, is in working order.

  “Better,” I agree, and try to give him a smile but it’s been so long since I’ve smiled I don’t quite remember how to do it. My lips don’t quite achieve the proper movements and the smile turns out to be more of a grimace.

  Maul sighs, relieved, and then his lips brush against the top of my head.

  Inside, I shudder. I feel so disgusting, I don’t know how he just did that. I’ve had a few trips to the medical bay and a couple of showers over the past couple of weeks but most of my time has been spent in this bed.

  I smell like I’ve been living in a sewer.

  “I need to wash,” I croak again and then clear my throat.

  With a nod, he just scoops me out of bed and carries me out the door.

  “I can walk,” I protest weakly for the sake of my pride, but honestly, I rather not.

  The need to touch him in some way, to press closer to him is just too strong right now. It may be wrong of me but if he’s willing, I’m going to use him as my crutch to lean on. I don’t know about this whole bonding for life thing but I’m certainly bonding to him right now. Will this last forever? Who knows… but what other choice do I have? He’s already made it very clear he’s not giving me back.

  And for right now, I’m cool with that.

  When he sets me down on my feet, I press up against his front as he works all the buttons of the shower. After a moment, he gives me a little nudge, expecting me to move back.

  I shake my head and press even closer to him.

  He sighs as if he’s put out but there’s a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips. I don’t know how I know but I know he’s pleased by my clinginess.

  His arms work around me and then water starts to rain down on us from above.

  I don’t care that I still have his shirt on. I’m not willing to let go of him yet to remove it. Tipping my head back, I close my eyes and just enjoy how good it feels to have warm water running through my hair.

  “Dear one, this would be much more effective if you would remove your clothes,” Maul points out to me after a few minutes pass.

  Begrudgingly, I have to agree with him. The water feels really good but with my clothes on I still smell nauseously bad.

  I try to work up enough will to peel myself off of his warm chest but my body doesn’t seem to want to obey the commands
my brain is sending it.

  “I can’t move,” I say as I press even closer.

  “Can’t or won’t?” he teases.

  “Both,” I murmur and start to rub my cheek against his hard silver pec.

  I know, I’m absolutely shameless, but the more time I spend with him, the more I’m attracted to him. He’s fucking gorgeous. Tall, built, and powerful. I want to run my mouth and hands all over him.

  He shudders and then he’s grabbing me by my shoulders and setting me away from him.

  I pout at him and immediately try to fight his grip.

  “Hey,” I grump, so not happy with the little bit of distance between us.

  “Dear one,” he says with regret. “If you do not stop, I fear I won’t be able to resist loving you again.”

  And that’s a problem, how? Right now my brain isn’t computing it.

  Lifting my chin into the air, I thrust out my breasts, my nipples poking through the soaked fabric covering them. “Then don’t resist.”

  He groans and his head drops forward before he shakes it.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask, wilting under his resistance and feeling suddenly self-conscious. “Did I do something?”

  Is he just now realizing how very different we are? Him, with all his beautiful silver skin and scales, and me with all my pasty white skin and ugly dark hair.

  “No,” he says firmly and his head comes back up. “You’ve done nothing wrong, but you do need your rest.”

  I roll my eyes but his fingers tighten around me.

  “You do need your rest, little one. I know you’re feeling tender down there, and if I love you again, it will only get worse…”

  He’s not wrong. We have done it a lot, and I mean a lot, over the past couple of weeks. Whenever a strong emotion would hit me, I sought out and used his body for relief.

  We must have done it at least once an hour, sometimes twice…

  And he’s not exactly a small guy.

  “Fine,” I grumble and grab the bottom of my shirt. I yank the shirt up, ripping it over my head.

  I feel a little twinge of satisfaction when I hear Maul suck in a sharp breath. I toss the shirt to the side and square my shoulders. I try to look him in the eye but his glowing green orbs are rooted to my breasts.