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...