Shayn Read online

  “Anything?” That tone would have been evil coming from anyone else, but this was her mate and she couldn’t be afraid. Never of him.

  She leaned forward and laid her lips against his naked chest, claiming what she could for herself. He tasted like home and she wanted to get him in her mouth, to show him pleasure and bring him to the brink just as he’d brought her.

  “Anything?” Shayn asked again, his breath going ragged as her pelvis rubbed against his thickening cock.

  “Everything,” she promised. “Need you inside me.”

  His hands were on her pants in an instant, and before she knew it she was naked and writhing under him.

  SHAYN HAD STARTED THIS game for a reason, but now that he had his mate under him, wet and desperate for their joining, he couldn’t remember why. He didn’t care. His mate needed him and he was there to provide.

  His lips found her wet heat and her taste exploded over his tongue, earthy and feminine and his. In the back of his mind he realized they should be quick. There was no telling when his brothers would return from their errands, and he didn’t want things to end before he gave his mate her satisfaction.

  When they had their own quarters again, he was going to lock them inside their bedroom for a week and hope that could begin to slake his hunger. He doubted it would ever abate, and as she squirmed under him he knew it would be a tragedy if it ever did.

  “Inside me,” his denya gasped as his fingers joined his tongue, playing with her and making her desperate for their union. His own cock was rock hard, and he wanted nothing more than to sink into her depths and seal their bond once more.

  He shucked off his pants and positioned himself at her entrance, looking down at her and seeing his mate with eyes filled with love and contentment. He’d never thought that he’d meet someone like her, and he’d never hoped that the bond between them would bloom so fast or so true. How could he have expected a human psychic trapped in the depths of the Oscavian Empire? If the existence of the denya bond hadn’t already proved that fate existed, Naomi would.

  They joined together, their bodies well acquainted now that they’d had time to make love whenever they could steal a moment. Fewer moments than he would have liked, but if he had what he wanted they would have never left the bed.

  His denya’s fingers dug into his shoulders as she begged him to take her fast, to bring her pleasure and make her ache with it. And he could no sooner ignore her command than he could stop breathing. He captured her lips with his, the long denied kiss a celebration of their love and their joining, a declaration that no force in the galaxy could keep them apart for long.

  And when his mate moaned against his mouth, her body shuddering against his and rippling around his cock, Shayn wasn’t far behind, emptying himself as he crested and cried out her name.

  Several minutes later as they lay spent on the bed, their formerly neatly folded clothing in piles on the floor, he remembered what they’d been talking about earlier. Something was bothering his mate, something she wouldn’t tell him. “Did you have a disturbing vision?” he asked, laying kisses along her naked shoulder.

  Naomi snuggled into him. “Not disturbing, not exactly. Some visions are... delicate. If things are disturbed then the entire thing won’t come to pass. And this is one of them. It’s best I just keep it to myself.”

  “If it disturbs you I don’t want you to face it alone.” There shouldn’t be an enemy that he couldn’t protect her from.

  “It’s not really disturbing,” she promised. “And if there comes a time when you need to know more, I’ll tell you.”

  “Is it about us?” he wondered. Why wouldn’t she share if it was?

  “No,” she said quickly. A little too quickly.

  “Then what about Dekon or Brax?” Had she seen something about one of his brothers? Were they in trouble? He shot up, ready to go off and find out what was wrong.

  Naomi put a hand on his chest and guided him back down to the bed. “It was about Brax,” she confessed. “But nothing is wrong. I’m not sure when or where the vision took place, but he was perfectly fine. And if it does happen, it’s something he needs to face without my interference. Or yours,” she added with a poke hard enough to sting.

  Shayn grabbed her hand and sucked her finger into his mouth before letting it go. “Loving you is going to be an adventure, my denya.”

  She grinned. “The best.” Then she laid back and sighed. “I guess we need to get all this cleaned up before your brothers get back.”

  He looked at his mate, sated and lying naked in their bed, and had to regretfully agree. That sight was for his eyes alone, and he’d never get tired of it. “I look forward to our days in privacy,” he confessed.

  Naomi kissed him before sitting up. “And I look forward to our years together. Now let’s get cleaned up.”

  Years. Yes, Shayn looked forward to those too. He and his denya, his family, and the family they would grow together. What more could he ask for? He had everything he’d ever dared dream.

  A case of mistaken identity, a bounty hunter with a heart of gold, and a mate bond that ties two would-be foes together. The Mated to the Alien series continues with Braxtyn.

  Thank you for reading Shayn! I’d appreciate it so much if you would consider leaving a review.

  Need more sci-fi romance from Kate Rudolph? You can get a free, full length novel by joining her reader club. Download Ruwen today!

  Get caught up with your favorite aliens by reading the Mated to the Alien series. Each book is available at your favorite retailer and you can follow along as this doomed race finds out that all hope might not be lost.

  Mated to the Alien

  Ruwen

  Tyral

  Stoan

  Cyborg

  Krayter

  Kayleb

  Shayn

  Braxtyn

  Keep up to date with what’s coming soon, get access to exclusive giveaways, and hang out with me online in my Facebook group. Kate Rudolph’s Detyen Dreamers is where Kate Rudolph fans can hang out and talk about the latest in alien romance. If you’d like to read chapters from my books months before they reach the bookstores, please follow me on Patreon.

  Keep reading for a sneak peek at Soulless.

  Also by Kate Rudolph

  Sci-Fi Romance

  Snowed in with the Alien Beast

  The Alien’s Winter Gift

  Crashed

  Mated on the Moon

  Mated to the Alien Dragon

  Alien Outlaws

  Rogue Alien’s Escape

  Rogue Alien’s Woman

  Rogue Alien’s Secret

  Rogue Alien’s Legacy

  Mated to the Alien

  Ruwen

  Tyral

  Stoan

  Cyborg

  Krayter

  Kayleb

  Shayn

  Braxtyn

  Detyen Warriors

  Soulless

  Ruthless

  Heartless

  Faultless

  Endless

  Paranormal Romance

  Marked

  Bear in Mind

  Alpha’s Mercy

  Gemma’s Mate

  The Mate Bundle

  The Alpha Heist

  Entangled with the Thief

  In the Alpha’s Bed

  Find more by Kate Rudolph at www.katerudolph.net

  About Kate Rudolph

  KATE RUDOLPH IS A DERBY girl who lives in Indiana. She loves writing about kick butt heroines and the steamy heroes who love them. She's been devouring romance novels since she was too young to be reading them and had to hide her books so no one would take them away. She couldn't imagine a better job in this world than writing romances and sharing them with her fellow readers.

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  Preview Soulless: Detyen Warriors Book One

  A SHOCK OF something ripped through Raze in that moment when their eyes locked. He faltered and pain scored his chest as if claws raked him from shoulder to hip. In a blink it was gone as the pirate woman flung grit at him with astonishing accuracy and was off running like an Oscavian hound was on her heels. He stumbled for a moment, heart pounding so hard it threatened to beat out of his chest.

  He clenched his fists and for one crazy second his claws threatened to slide out of his hands as something they couldn’t define washed over him.

  Find her, that foreign urge demanded. Protect her. Claim her.

  He could almost feel it, could almost recognize what it was, but his mind rejected the impossibility even before his feet moved and the chase was on. He didn’t pull out his blaster. Though the pirate had quickly recovered from the stun, far more quickly than he’d thought possible, two shots in such a short amount of time might do permanent harm to her. Why he cared about that, he wasn’t sure, but his gun remained in its holster all the same.

  She glanced back and that was her undoing. He had height on her, and endurance. He could run for days and not give in to exhaustion or pain. No pirate training was a match for a Detyen warrior.

  Though he wondered why she hadn’t cried out, hadn’t tried to raise an alarm. Surely she must have some allies in the nearby settlement. They were probably too far away to be heard, but didn’t creatures such as she rely on hope like that for survival? Or were her enemies too numerous that she doubted help would come?

  He closed the distance between them in easy strides until he could almost reach her with a swipe of his arm. Just as he launched the final step, she dropped and rolled to the side, her hand coming up with a small knife he must have missed on her person.

  “Fucking pirate scum,” she spat as she rolled to her feet, knife held confidently in her hand and absolute disgust written across her features.

  Pirate scum? “You’re the pirate,” he replied without thought, keeping his distance. His claws should be out now, with her on her back at his mercy, her cheeks flushed and breath coming in hard as she panted under him. What that stirred froze him in place, his body rocking with sensation he hadn’t known in years, sensation he could barely remember.

  The distraction cost him and she took advantage, swiping in with the knife in a move that showed practice and training to rival his own. His instincts took over and he rolled with her, taking her arm and flipping her as she cut a ragged wound across his shoulder. The hot flash of pain brought his focus back and they rolled together, neither able to take a position of advantage on the ground.

  The woman—not a pirate?—sprang back up and jumped on the balls of her feet, those cheeks flushed like he’d imagined and her eyes glinting bright in the moonlight. “Of course a giant like you isn’t going to make it easy for me. What are you, anyway?” The run and the fight hadn’t winded her and as his subdermal translator worked, he realized she wasn’t speaking IC, interstellar common. His translator identified her language of origin as English, an Earth language. Strange.

  Remaining silent would frustrate her, but Raze couldn’t stop himself from answering. “Detyen.” He should have kept it hidden in case she escaped and reported back, but he found himself wanting to talk to her, and he hadn’t wanted anything in so long that he couldn’t deny this one simple thing.

  She blew at an errant strand of hair, ruby red in the moonlight, as her eyes narrowed. Her eyes flicked down to his hip, where his blaster remained holstered. The distance between them wasn’t long, both of them standing just out of reach of one another, but it might as well have been a deep chasm.

  “Why aren’t you shooting me?”

  “I don’t—” he couldn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t know how to finish the sentence. In the last ten minutes, he’d been more alive than he’d been in two years and his control was shot. If Toran or Kayde saw him, they’d order him put down in a second, and he’d deserve it. He wasn’t thinking clearly, wasn’t operating at acceptable capacity. He wanted to... he wanted and for a soulless Detyen, there could be nothing worse.

  That narrowed gaze of hers relaxed a fraction and she took a step back, her knife still out, but the hold not quite as threatening as it had been only a moment ago.

  They stared at one another, neither sure of what action to take. No, Raze knew what he should do, what he must do. Anything that would give him the information he needed about his men so that he could retrieve them and complete the mission, find the data they’d been assigned to retrieve and return home to his bleak existence, where nothing awaited him except years more of gray emptiness until he came to his natural end by his own hand or that of his fellow soldiers.

  And that should bring up no reaction in him except acceptance. He’d chosen the path when he let his soul be ripped apart in the name of the survival of his people.

  But in this endless moment between him and this strange woman, he wished that he’d taken another path, one he’d never realized was there in the first place.

  The woman broke him out of his daze. “You’re not a pirate, are you?”

  Before he could answer, he caught a hint of movement and light out of the corner of his eye. He moved without thought, launching himself at the woman and tackling her to the ground, his hand clasping her wrist and keeping the knife away from anything important. For a moment, their hands met, skin to skin, and agony ripped through his body and he held it close with a silent scream.

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