From SITHE Book 1:
I am a lesser, a servant-world resident, a nobody.
The Blades came from space. They conquered Earth in a day.
That was long before my time.
But they left something behind.
It was an accident. A forgotten artifact. Something that wasn't supposed to react to lessers.
Something that infected me.
It's made me insatiable. I crave something I can never have--until I meet him.
The grim reaper of the conquerors.
Cloaked in assassin’s gray, metal scythes fused to his wrist-bones, he can’t stop his body from reacting to mine.
Good.
Now I -- the confused, the broken, the lesser -- am intertwined with the deadliest male in the universe.
And he's just starting to realize what he's been denied...

*** From the author of the Lords of Atlantis and Onyx Dragons comes a dazzling new series full of unique alien shifters, fierce passion, and loyal warriors who find their fated mates in the stars. Each full-length book is a complete romance with an epic happily-ever-after. Claim your conqueror today!

WARNING - This series is SPICY and this Look Inside is also SPICY!!!
From SITHE - Chapter 9 - After he breaks the rules to take her and before he faces the consequences...
~ CATARINE ~
I feel like crap.
There’s no equivalent in Arrisan Standard. The language we learn in school, the one we use to communicate because it’s the language of the empire, is a formal and controlled language. They don’t have expletives or negatively charged words. You have to construct “crap” by using the building blocks to describe “unsanitized waste products that belong in a recycler,” which doesn’t have the same ring.
Crap is a word I learned in elementary school while following my father across the devastation of America and siting new bridges and great works. English is a delightfully flexible language, and so it has survived in crevices across the world.
I don’t think mainland America will ever flower into a land of a hundred languages like old Malaysia. But it’s hard to say. There were once eight million of us and over a hundred living languages, and now there are less than two million, and we can barely cling to our official Malay. My father used to sing me lullabies in my grandparents’ disappearing languages with great sadness. We weren’t even hit the hardest by the great floods.
I most often talk and dream in a pastiche of argot. But on Humana, we still have a lot of words that have no translation, and one of them is crap.
Why don’t the Arrisans have a specific word for unsanitized waste products that belong in a recycler? In school, teachers would say it’s because of their superior diet. And considering that Arrisan kibble tastes like pebbles and has the same crunch, I almost believe them.
Chewing hard food causes straight teeth and broad jaws, so maybe they know some secrets after all.
Regardless, I feel like I’ve been punched in the face. In the mouth, at least. I want to roll over until I feel better, but I can’t move.
Huh.
It’s because I’m snug beneath a…a tree? I’m wrapped completely up in some sort of bark-like gray shell. My face is shadowed by overhanging roots. I’ve been eaten by the earth.
This bed has a strange, immobilizing warmth. It’s really hard, but also kind of comfortable, like a body-sculpted chair. The room, visible in a narrow view, is tinted. This must be like their hood technology. In a sudden hull crack, this little bed would survive as an escape pod all by itself.
Because the Arrisans are super careful about space travel.
I bet the honeycomb bunks in the dorm I vaguely remember from yesterday…yesterday?…could seal with the same technology.
Yesterday is a planetside word, like today and tomorrow.
In space, ships set their chronometers to Arrisan Standard time, which counts out sets of ten. Ten instants equals one click. Ten clicks, one cleg. Ten clegs? One shift.
Two shifts equal a day, but days are not twenty-four hours like on Humana. Oh no. And clicks aren’t exactly minutes, and clegs aren’t exactly hours. But after ten clegs, you’re ready for a rest, that’s for sure.
So, yesterday-ish, a lot happened.
Things are really different now.
I wriggle to get my hands free.
Moving loosens the shell. The gap widens as the hood recedes. My shoulders, thighs, calves, and every muscle twinges with acid buildup. The boots pinch my ankles.
Maybe I’ve been in here longer than I think.
Tugging my dress free, I clamber out.
Sithe perches on a bar overhead. This is a vertical room, increasing the illusion that I was resting beneath the roots of a tree. He drops down and lands on the balls of his feet. The barest whisper of air flutters across my skin. He is soundless.
He rises and faces me. His hood falls back, revealing his strange silver eyes. They focus on my forehead, and his lips part.
I’m beginning to see more things in his expression that I couldn’t tell before. This parting of his lips is him focusing. And then his lips close and his brows slightly lift. He’s upset about my injury, but also accepts it. “You respond well to the ointment.”
“Yeah, I don’t even have a headache. You returned in the nick of time.”
He looks away, brow lowering, and his jaw flexes.
He’s upset.
Oh no.
I touch his arm. “Thank you.”
He looks down at my hand on his forearm, then flicks his gaze to my profile and turns away.
On the cruiser, I would have thought he was angry, but I don’t think he is. Or if he is, he isn’t angry at me.
Saving a lesser must be nothing to him. Like putting a crane fly outside instead of crushing it with an idle swat. My thanks makes him uncomfortable. Perhaps he feels awkward and doesn’t know what to say.
I sit in the same wall seat as last night.
He opens the hot sand brazier and pours a stimulant pack into a copper cup. It has a handle about as long as his forearm and rests on the cool ceramic cover. He dispenses kibble into a bowl that looks like a neatly sliced eggshell with a mottled outside and a pleasant blue interior. This is what he served the stimulant in last night.
It’s interesting watching him use traditional utensils I’ve only read about. It’s peaceful, these relics from the Arrisan home world that has ceased to be.
And totally different from the honeycomb dorms where the crew—and apparently he—usually sleeps.
Here is definitely better than the examination room in the science office.
But it opens up a whole new realm of questions. “What happens now?”
“I await my next assignment.” He hands me the stim-kibble soup, closes the brazier, and sits in the wall hollow across from me.
Raw stim grates on the palate with an almost choking bitter taste, and it barely softens the grist. Humans used to separate the chaff from the wheat, and I don’t care what the resource scientists say, kibble is the chaff.
I choke down a too-big mouthful. “And me?”
“You come.” The taut skin around his eyes very slightly softens. “Unless you prefer to stay.”
“Stay? Won’t I be taken back to the science office?”
He tips his head in confirmation.
“No, I’d prefer to go with you, thank you.”
His expression returns to neutral.
Oh. Was he making a joke?
I eat what I can, and again he finishes the extra food for me, drops hot sand over the bowl so it hisses to sanitize and cleanse it, and then seals up the brazier. My stomach isn’t completely sure I’ve eaten food, but resource officers at school assured us we would be healthier if we switched from noodles and curry over to nutrient cubes, so it must be fine.
Humana has a very small intergalactic export business with a few cool storage-stable fruits and spices. Our food isn’t very palatable to the rest of the empire.
Sithe resumes his seat and folds his hands.
We wait.
I’m okay with waiting. Especially considering the alternative.
My forehead itches.
The expression on that science officer’s face as we left—slightly maniacal grin, entirely confident in himself—plucks chilly fingers on my spine.
I’ll see you again.
The sooner we leave this dreadnought, the less opportunity he has to fulfill his dark promise. “When will you get your assignment?”
Sithe fixes on me. His breathes deeply for one full cycle. I saw him do this last night before I fell asleep. This and rub his blades against each other as if he’s training to murder the entire ship. “I don’t know.”
“They don’t have work for you?”
“After we changed rooms, my new assignment was deactivated.”
After he rescued me. “Is that normal?”
The muscle in his jaw flexes again.
Uh-oh. “Did you get in trouble?”
“Not yet.”
Not…yet?
So he’s going to get in trouble? “Are you going to have to give me back to the science officer?”
His blades twitch at his wrists. “He will never touch you.”
“What happens if they order you? Can you say no?”
He compresses his lips.
Does he have no answer? He’s so certain that Ukuri won’t take me, but if he can’t say no…
Maybe this is a much bigger deal than I realized.
I know how everyone looked at me on the way to the science office. I heard the crewman who approached us in the dorms for the short time we stayed there. Lurid curiosity colored his tone.
As a single blade, Sithe walks among alien races all the time, but maybe the average Arrisan doesn’t. And now I’ve come to them stinking of their aphrodisiac metal.
Sithe has gone to the group orgies before, but most of them probably haven’t, or they’re like the science officer, stricken from ever reproducing. The Arrisans are poster children for eugenics. They worship rules.
Sithe broke one to save me.
This room is very nice.
Maybe he broke more than one.
“Are you going to be okay?”
He flips his wrists upright and examines the chevron pattern where his blades emerge. “I will be fine.”
He can’t fight everyone on the ship. Does he really intend to try?
He honed his blades for a long, long time last night.
I can’t imagine going against the empire. Sithe has impossible weapons, but he’s still just one man. I walked the halls with him yesterday. He got on the hands-free elevator and flew up an air tube, and I saw just how big it is on the inside and how many Arrisans are in here. This dreadnought’s not even a small city. It’s a big one.
And the science officer has blades, too.
So does the engineer, Atana.
How many have Sithe’s same capabilities?
He’s stuck his neck out for me in the most literal sense. The Arrisan empire is terrible to its lessers and vassal planets, but it’s not a whole lot nicer to its own people.
I am less than nothing to him. A few clegs ago, we didn’t even know each other existed, and he’s just potentially doomed himself for me. “Why?”
One brow lifts. A question.
“Why did you stop Ukuri?”
His gaze unfocuses, and he nods as if he’s been asking himself this very question for some time. “Lessers invest in families, an inefficient distribution of genes, and so when a lesser family loses its child, they weaken their empire. You are the only child?”
I nod.
“Your father and mother gathered all their resources to train and perfect you?”
My throat tightens. “Yes.”
“Then your small empire must endure. There is no risk to the Arrisan empire. If you’re a singular case reacting to the lusteal, then there’s no reason to hurt you, and if you’re not a singular case, the empire can study another. Go back to Humana where you belong.”
He saved me because he saw the picture of my family?
Sithe looks convinced of his principles, but there’s no denying that he’s uncertain how it will play out. I don’t know how to honor the choice he’s made or express the gratitude I feel for what he’s done.
I stand and cross to him.
He turns his wrists down and rests his fists on his thighs. A gesture of surrender, of peaceful intentions. But the skin around his silver eyes tenses. Wondering if I’m going to berate him. Tell him he’s an idiot. I’m guessing that’s the source of his tension, because I can imagine those types of thoughts.
And so instead I loop my arms over his shoulders and press forward, between his parted knees, and rest my chin on his head.
He very gently leans against me. We are just two creatures in this vast universe. All I can give him is comfort. And I have to rely on him for literally everything else.
His arms settle around my waist. “Is this foreplay?”
“No, this is comfort.”
“Comfort?”
“To convey feelings that have no words. Like, ‘I thank you. I honor you. I gift you the softness of my arms and the steadiness of my heartbeat, and I promise to share my emotional strength. If you need someone to show you kindness, I will show it to you for a little while.’”
He takes a deep breath and lets it out. “Like a mantra for rest.”
The Arrisans don’t pray, but his actions last night did look like prayers. “It can be like that. We share this comfort with our families and others we want to help feel better.”
We stay another long moment. His breath tickles my bare collarbone. The earthy vanilla of his suit mixes with the bitter raw stim and the hot sands into a unique yet almost addictive scent. I inhale deeply. My breast brushes his cheek.
“I am not unwell,” he says.
“Sure.” I pull back. “I didn’t mean to imply you needed to feel better because you’re ill. It was the first one. To convey feelings without words.”
He catches my left wrist in his hand. His thumb strokes the soft inner skin.
Though I haven’t mindlessly craved sex since he cleared my head, I could just enjoy it with him. I could enjoy it very much.
“Is this foreplay?” he murmurs.
“Anything can be foreplay—any glance, any touch—between partners who have consented.”
“There is always an order.”
“We can follow any order that comes naturally.” But I’m describing nature to a man who takes a snifter of a mineral—I think—and then enters some crazed group orgy. What would he consider a natural order for sex? “Um, naturally, you become aware of shared feelings. A desire to explore and learn about your partner, find out what they enjoy, and then give them pleasure.”
He studies my face.
I’m not lying. I lift my free hand in initiation. “May I?”
“You may.”
I cup his jaw and, with my thumb, stroke his cheek. His skin feels smooth like mine, but rougher, more masculine. I have no plan right now. I just want to know this man who might have sacrificed everything for me. We are together in this beast, perhaps the jaws have already snapped shut, and all we know together is the darkness.
Who is this Arrisan Sithe?
He feels as human as me. I trace my fingertips along his even brows, down his ordinary nose, across his malleable mouth, over his firm chin, and back toward his hairline. All such normal features.
Except his ears. They look like mine up to the curve, and then he has four small spikes pointing behind him. I expect them to be hard, but like his nose or ear, they are warm cartilage.
When I reach his earlobe, he catches my wrist. Now he has both of my wrists trapped. “It feels strange.”
“Strange like…” There’s no proper word for what I’m asking. “Ticklish? You want to laugh?”
“Not laugh. Something…” His gaze drifts lower. To the hollow between my breasts. And back up. “And then?”
“You can continue exploring with your fingers, your hands…”
“Your mouth.” He remembers my description of foreplay from the cruiser, clearly.
“Yes, an early step of trust and intimacy is a kiss.”
He inclines his head.
Since he still holds both my wrists, I lean forward, rest one knee on the bench beside his hip, and lower my face to his.
His lashes flutter. He doesn’t understand what I’m about to do.
“A kiss means you touch lips.”
His gaze flicks down to my mouth and then back up. He pulls my wrists very gently, drawing me forward into him.
Our lips brush.
He doesn’t move at all. The press of my mouth to his is the same as my thumb to his cheek. Curiosity from him, but no reaction. And so I press again, more firmly, and a third time, with intent.
He no longer pulls my wrists. He’s gone slack.
I draw back.
His gaze centers on me. He parts his lips, rubs the lower one with his tongue and teeth. “I feel something.”
I do too. A shift in my center, the flooding of heat into my core, awakening, preparing, inviting. “There are more nerve endings in our lips than in our palms or our sex organs.”
“Kissing engorges the spongeflesh.”
I’m really not familiar with this terminology, but it’s hard not to make something into a euphemism for sex when that’s all that’s on your mind. “Yeah.”
“And then?”
“And then…you do what feels right.”
“Which is?”
“More kissing or touching or exploring. Whatever you want.” Oh, and in case it’s not obvious, “And your partner agrees too.”
The little divot appears between his brows. This concept—that there are no rules, that he’s allowed freedom—seems foreign to him, I guess. He releases my wrists and sits back. “Show me.”
I hold on to his shoulders and straddle him, pulling up my puffy dress so my knees rest on either side of his slim hips on the bench, my butt on his thighs. He is like rock, like iron. Like sitting backward on a chair. It’s easy to find my balance and settle in with several inches separating my breasts from his chest, more space between our bellies.
He makes no move, so I pick up his hands and curve them gently around my waist. Securing me. Then I cup his cheek again and find my way to his mouth. His lips are damp now, and he meets me more firmly. I will lead this dance, and he will follow.
It’s funny, but I don’t have a fraction of the experience with kissing that I have with penetration. Before my illness, I had boyfriends. One I even planned to marry someday. But that was over four years ago, and my feelings about intimacy are still jumbled up. This is a bit of trial and error for me too.
A simple push, pull, a little nibble with my lips followed by tugging with my teeth, and he parts for me, meshing and splitting, languorous and sweet. I must taste like bitter stim and kibble, but he tastes indescribably male. Heat pinches my breasts, and the hard rods of his legs stimulate my pussy.
I tease his lips with my tongue and meet his, testing him. He mirrors my actions, and when I sup from him, he steals the same penetrating taste from me.
His strokes feed my hunger. And he tilts his head the opposite direction, driving me back and then luring me forward. He makes me crave something within him that I can’t identify but also can’t live without.
And his breath gusts out. His arms slide around my waist. He pulls me forward so that I straddle his waist, a clinch that drags my taut nipples and heated pussy across his hard planes.
His suit is impenetrable, but I can feel what’s beneath. I hook my fingers at his collar. He leans back and rests his fingers beside mine, allows me to peel the suit apart to bare his chest.
This upper torso I have felt but never seen. He has some markings that I don’t understand on his right shoulder. Thin, black lines like scars, but not accidental.
His large hands knead my waist.
And I peel his suit down to expose his abdomen. No body hair, just smooth planes that ripple when he subtly shifts me, adjusts. The suit parts below his waist, revealing the points of his hips. His cock springs out, hard and ready.
I’ve seen this before. His cock is hard as a coil, thick and warm with his blood, and it pulses in my hands. His testes are smaller, flatter disks, tucked up against his skin despite his heat and arousal.
He stills. I suppose that’s normal when you cup a man by the balls, no matter how many blades he can impale you with.
And I’m finding this exploration fascinating myself. He’s not inhuman. If we met under a different circumstance, I would probably not think we were that different at all.
And yet there are some differences.
He pushes at my dress. “Do I bare you?”
“If you like.” I feel enough wetness between my throbbing lips that I could put him in me now and ride him hard. “There are no rules.”
He curls his fists in the fabric and tugs. The seams complain. “There are always rules.”
I move his hand to the fastener hidden beneath my arm and close his deft fingers around the tiny bit of metal. “The rule is that you both have to enjoy it. And ask for it and agree to it and want it.”
He parts my dress and explores my body just as I have explored him. His gaze flicks between what part he’s stimulating—my nipples, my clit, my whole pussy—and my face. Waiting for me to shout at him to stop, that he’s done something wrong, that he can’t just do as he wishes so long as I agree.
This is such a strange thing for him. This man who has always lived under strict rules.
And when I’m a limp, heaving mess of needs and hungers, he draws me against him and seats his cock deep inside me. We face each other, totally bared, but seeing each other for perhaps the first time.
His grip on my hips tightens. This part, he feels confident about.
Rocking in our own rhythm, he torques his cock into me, wringing another mess of little climaxes that well up into an unstoppable fountain of mind-altering, soul-shattering release.
And because we’re facing each other, I know when he comes. He goes totally still, except his elbows tremble. His expression doesn’t even change. In comparison, with all my arching and crying out and moaning, I must be like the wave crashing against the shoreline.
But given enough time, even the shoreline will completely change.
And sometimes the collapse happens in one single wave.