Collision Course by Zoe Archer

want that, Kell.”
    “Yes…Mistress.”
    She almost laughed, but the sound was lost as he groaned out his release. She felt it, the heat of him spilling within her, shockwaves moving through him, through her.
    For some time, they remained as they were: panting, sweat-slick, Kell still deep inside her, holding her tightly to the wall as her arms and legs wrapped around him. Clasping him to her as if she feared letting him go.

    They draped across the bed, still partially dressed. Neither had the strength to adjust their clothes or take them off, so all they could do was lie there, temporarily sated, as evening began to fall.
    She lay on her stomach, he on his back. Their hands drifted, brushing against each other, creating little fires of sensation. It was warm and comfortable and intimate.
    “I was a princess,” she said.
    He turned his head to gaze at her, expression opaque. “On Argenti.”
    “The Skirens are one of Argenti’s finest and oldest families.” Faint ridicule shaded her words. She had heard that phrase most of her life, and almost believed it was inscribed upon the family’s crest. “Involved in all levels of the government. Upstanding citizens. One of my great-great-grandmothers is on a cred card. Our annual Solstice Gathering is broadcast to every corner of the planet.”
    The cameras had always been there, as the Skirens made offerings to the Goddess, as they danced. Years went by before she realized other children did not have cameras at their Solstice Gatherings. For them, it had been about family and celebration, not presenting an image of honor to an avid public.
    “From the moment of my birth, I was groomed to create alliances. That’s what children are to the first families of Argenti. Pawns used to further ambition. It was no different for my siblings and me. Before I learned how to speak, my future mate had been selected.”
    He shifted on the bed, but said nothing. The idle brush of his hands had stopped. She had no idea what he was thinking, but she couldn’t stop the words that came from her now, too long held inside.
    “A good match. Even I knew that. Piers was a Gavril. An alliance with his family would have profited everyone. And he was growing up to be a decent-looking man. A little quiet, a little easily manipulated, but there was nothing terrible about him. He and I were supposed to join in the mating ceremony the day after my sixteenth birthday. The planning of the event began two years earlier. ”
    Kell touched her then. He picked up her right hand and examined her wrist. “No mating band.”
    “About six months before the mating ceremony, I went to my mother. Told her I couldn’t go through with it. I needed to make my own decisions, chart my own course.” A rusty laugh scraped from her. “ That wasn’t well received. My family tried everything to get me to change my mind. Pleas, bribes. Threats. Punishment.” She still had the marks on the soles of her feet.
    His grip on her wrist tightened, the slightest increase of pressure.
    “Finally, my father said I did not have to mate Piers.”
    His grasp eased until he released her.
    “But if I didn’t, I would be cast out. Not just from the family, but from Argenti. The Skirens have enough influence to have someone banished.”
    He rolled over onto his side and stared at her. She couldn’t meet his gaze, just kept staring at the silk-draped walls, dappled with colored light from the lamps. Shabby attempts to make the room elegant, so different from the jewel-encrusted columns and lavish tapestries that hung on the walls of her ancestral home. Her home that wasn’t her home. It never had been. Everything had belonged to her family, even her.
    “I spent my sixteenth birthday on a freighter heading off-world. Didn’t know where I was going. Didn’t know anyone. I knew nothing about how to live on my own—being a princess does that to a girl. All I knew was that I could never go back, or else face