by Kate Rudolph
“You know how to dance,” he murmured, lips brushing against her ear.
Her eyes darkened and she swiveled her hips, arching up against him and then spinning back. “I never said I couldn’t. Just that I didn’t.” She clutched his shoulder with one hand and ran her fingers down his other arm, unconsciously tracing over where a Matching mark would go. It wasn’t something Solan wanted to think about, not when he had a beautiful woman in his arms and no reason to care about anything else until morning. Trouble could find him then.
Night didn’t fall naturally, but a large automatic canopy came up overhead and blotted out the sun, leaving them dancing under the soft light of the decorative bulbs inside. His own skin had a natural iridescence to it, but he’d never realized a human could glow like Lena did in the soft light. The gold of her dress and skin made her into a living flame, one he couldn’t hope to tame.
It would burn him up from the outside in. And he wanted to be consumed. His house was only a minute away; they could sneak away before anyone missed them.
The setting was romantic and intimate, and Solan was having more fun than he could remember. He looked down at her and licked his lips. It would take no effort to kiss her, to lean forward and take a taste. To see if they moved as well when their lips were pressed together.
Lena stared at him, eyes big and brown and wondering what he’d do next.
He wanted to kiss her almost more than he wanted to breathe. He’d known temptation before, but nothing like this. Nothing like her.
But he couldn’t.
This thing between them wasn’t like that. It couldn’t be. If he kissed her now they could steal away for a night of pleasure. But morning would come. It always did. And with it would come all of the regrets and problems he was ignoring for this one dance. He wouldn’t do that to her.
So he let go and stepped back, offering a small smile. “Thank you for coming with me tonight. And for the dancing.” And then he was walking away.
Sometimes the only smart move was retreat.
CHAPTER SIX
WHAT THE HELL DID SOLAN want?
That was the question that had been rolling around in Lena’s head since he’d walked away from her at the wedding and hadn’t come back. Not technically the worst end to a date she’d had. There had been no firearms pulled. But it was a bit of a bummer to have the guy walk off after one of the sexiest dances of her life.
He was supposed to kiss her.
No. Absolutely not. Kissing her was the last thing he was supposed to do. She wanted to do the Matching thing with him because of the position it could give her. That was all.
And now she felt like she was using him.
Great.
She was using him. Or she would, if he agreed. But that was the important thing. He’d agree. He knew the score. And that made it okay. Lena hoped that made it okay. She didn’t see another way out of this, not one that would get her what she wanted anytime soon.
She had to get him to agree to the bond. And she couldn’t fall in love with him. Easy.
Easier before dancing. She hadn’t expected him to move like that. To hold her close, their bodies pressed flush, fitting together more perfectly than she thought two bodies could fit. He’d be amazing in bed. It wasn’t a question. A man who could move like that could fuck with the best of them. And it had been quite some time since Lena had anything more than fingers and her imagination.
Six months held prisoner by the Apsyns. And another two years since she’d had a fling with a fellow agent that had fizzled out.
She missed sex. She might have been a woman who wasn’t big on one night stands or weekend flings, who’d had a total of one semi-serious relationship in her life, but she loved sex. Once she settled this whole Matching thing with Solan she was going to get some. Not with him. He didn’t want it, and she didn’t either. Workplace relationships were more complicated than she could handle right now, and if she took the plunge with Solan she might be risking her entire future.
Lena didn’t know how Emily did it. It had seemed like one moment Emily hated Oz and the next they were inseparable, bound together by something that she barely understood. How could she have risked it all? It made Lena’s palms sweat to think of it.
“Any regrets?” she asked her friend who was sitting at her desk, glasses askew, hair half-falling out of her ponytail.
“Regrets?” Emily tossed a paper down and leaned back. “I regret agreeing to look at these papers when I could be back in bed with Oz.” A dreamy smile crossed her lips and her gray eyes softened. Cartoon hearts were practically floating around her head.
“That’s not what—” Lena cut herself off. Clearly Emily didn’t want to change her decision.
“You’re worried I jumped into things with Oz too fast.” Emily took off her translation glasses and played with the frame.
“Worried might be a bit much,” but yes, she was. Emily was so young, and as far as Lena knew this was her first serious relationship. And all of that was happening in the biggest upheaval a person could undergo. “You did only meet him a month ago.”
“Like six weeks now.” Emily’s cheeks flamed. “Okay, yeah, it’s fast. But he’s my freaking soulmate. Did you see the part where I grow wings now?” She shifted her shoulders but didn’t let her wings flare out.
“The wings are pretty cool.” She paused, “You do still say cool, right?” Most times the fact that she and Emily had been plucked out of time thirteen years apart wasn’t a big deal. Then Emily said something about watching television shows on her cell phone or mentioned something called TikTok and Lena was completely lost.
Emily rolled her eyes. “Yes, old lady, we still say cool. Now was I hallucinating or did I see you dancing with Solan after the ceremony?”
And suddenly Lena could look anywhere but at her friend. “I’m sure I danced with a bunch of people.” Or not. Just Solan. From the second they’d hit the dance floor he’d dominated her attention until the rest of the place melted away. And he’d almost kissed her. She was sure of it.
She would have kissed him back.
“You’re allowed to like the guy,” Emily said.
“It’s not that.” Lena had been holding this in since she received the results, and if she didn’t talk she was going to go crazy. “Remember how they had my DNA for the Matching test? Well, the Bureau got in touch.”
“Bureau?” Emily waved a hand in front of the papers. “There are like sixteen bureaus that I’m dealing with for our immigration cases, so I’m going to need a little more info. And I thought they loved bureaucracy back home.”
Lena didn’t know how Emily did it. The red tape had almost driven her mad. And the paperwork. But Emily had studied to become a lawyer and she was determined to do the same now that she was settled in Osais.
“The Matching Bureau,” Lena clarified. She shifted in her seat, already starting to wish she’d kept quiet. But there was no point. If Solan agreed to the bond, everyone would know soon enough.
Emily’s head snapped up, eyes wide. “You have a Match?”
Lena nodded and waited to see if she figured it out.
She was a bright kid. “Solan?”
Lena nodded again. “I got the notification last week. We’re...” What were they? Nothing, at the moment. They hadn’t even confirmed if the Bureau was right. “It’s complicated.”
“Do you want him?” Emily asked. Her tone was neutral, but Lena could sense the lawyer shark within and knew her friend was ready to pounce at the first hint of blood. She could appreciate the trait in prosecutors, but she didn’t like being on the other end of it.
“It’s not like that.” Lena cursed herself as she shifted in her seat. Moving was a sign of weakness in a witness. She wasn’t a witness. This was a friendly conversation. Yeah, right. “Solan isn’t looking for a girlfriend, and I’m not looking for a boyfriend. But you got a position in the military because of your connection to Oz. I was thinking the same might be true for me.”
>
“I was conscripted,” Emily scowled.
“And I want to enlist. But they won’t take me if I’m just a human. Solan’s my ticket in. And I can’t let emotions get in the way of this shot. We’re stuck here, and we’ve got to make the best of it.” Lena was about to burst out of her skin and she wanted to jump up and start pacing, but she didn’t.
Emily took a deep breath, but let it out without saying anything. She picked up some of the papers and organized them into a pile before speaking. “You’re both adults. If that’s what you want, I’m sure you can work something out.”
Those were fighting words. Lena opened her mouth to say something, but stopped at the last second. Emily clearly didn’t agree with her approach to the whole Matching thing, but she didn’t understand Lena’s position. She couldn’t. And Lena didn’t want to argue with her closest friend about this.
She’d made the decision to see if the Match could go anywhere. She wasn’t turning back.
“I need to head into the city. Solan and I are supposed to do some training, something about testing our compatibility.” She stood and headed for the door. “Will you be around tonight?”
Emily didn’t look up from the papers. “Oz is picking me up for lunch and we’re taking a long weekend. We’ll be back on Space Monday.”
Lena laughed. The Synnrs used Kilrym to determine their weeks and years rather than the rotation of Aorsa. Their years were four hundred days long, which made for convenient ten day weeks separated into ten forty-day months. The humans had taken to referring to the days as Space Monday, Space Tuesday, and so on with two Space Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. Any Synnr who heard them talking thought it was weird, but Lena got a kick out of it.
“Have fun,” she said. “Remember to hydrate.” And she ducked out of the office before Emily could throw something at her in response.
THE GYM SMELLED LIKE every gym she’d ever walked into, and it was so unexpectedly comforting Lena could cry. But she wasn’t going to let herself tear up over body odor.
She found the Synnr equivalent of a locker room and was happy to find a locker she could disengage with her handprint. It took a minute to figure it out since she didn’t know how to read the directions, but there was a helpful picture next to it, and after a minute she was in workout clothes and ready to kick some ass.
Solan wasn’t there when she arrived at the main gym. It was pretty empty, with only a few Synnrs working out at various machines or running laps on the track that circled them on the second floor. She watched for a few minutes as Synnrs climbed a high rope, then let go and let their wings catch them as they floated down.
Her shoulders twitched. She wouldn’t mind a set of her own.
“You ready to get started?” Solan’s breath tickled her ear he was so close.
Lena almost jumped. She’d been too caught up in what she was looking at and hadn’t paid attention to her surroundings. She had to be more careful. A mistake like that in the field could get her killed. “More than ready,” she said, rubbing her hands together.
Solan led her away from the main gym, but Lena stole one more glance at those electric wings cutting through the room.
“How’s this?” He opened the door to a small training room taken up mostly by a sparring mat on the floor, windows along one wall with mirrors down two others, and a rack of weights in the corner.
“Looks good. What were you thinking?” He’d invited her to train and Lena had jumped at the chance to see a state of the art gym. But Solan hadn’t been specific.
“I’ve seen you disarm an unsuspecting soldier. I thought it would be good to see what you can do when it’s a fair fight.” He shrugged off his jacket to reveal a workout outfit similar to her own, with pants tight enough that she didn’t need to imagine anything.
But she wasn’t going to look. They weren’t going to do that.
“No such thing as a fair fight.” Lena had learned that young. Fighting fair meant losing too often for her tastes.
Her partner grinned. “Fairer, then. No wings. No weapons. I’ll set the timer and we go until it runs out or one of us yields. How does that sound?”
“If we end on time, how do we know who won?” Lena’s competitive instincts were kicking in. “And what does the winner get? Traditional prize back home is a beer.”
“Beer it is,” he agreed. He looked around the room and Lena followed his gaze to the weights. He walked over and scooped a smaller one up, putting it in the middle of the mat. It couldn’t have weighed more than five pounds and it was covered in a rubber-like material. “Winner is whoever has control of the weight when time’s up.”
“That I can work with.” They took their time to warm up, stretching and doing exercises in place for several minutes. Lena’s blood was humming by the time they were ready to start. She surreptitiously eyed Solan, looking for weaknesses. Nothing was obvious. He stood a few inches taller than her and had plenty of muscle. If their skills were even, he’d destroy her.
She’d have to act fast and ruthlessly to gain the upper-hand. A gun would be nice, or a club. Something to use against him. But she wasn’t going to waste time wishing for things she couldn’t have.
Solan stood and it was time to brawl. They met in the middle, the weight in between them, and the timer beeped, announcing the start.
With another partner, Lena might have circled around, waiting for an opening. Right now she moved. She swept the weight from between them and launched herself at Solan, wrapping herself around his body and using her legs to take them down to the floor.
He was one big motherfucker and he didn’t go down easy, bucking against her and flipping her off of him. She scrambled back, not letting him get on top of her. If that happened it was game over; she’d wear herself out fighting him and he could isolate any one of her limbs to cause massive pain and make her tap out.
He was slower getting to his feet and Lena took advantage, kicking him when he was down. In a real fight, not some exhibition or competition, there were no rules, no honor. She had to keep the enemy down, keep him from taking her out. She could feel herself slipping into that killer space in her mind and she didn’t fight it.
Solan struck, she countered. He fell, she took advantage. He reached for the weight, she kicked it out of his way.
She was drenched in sweat and had no idea how long they had left. He was just as soaked and lightning glanced in his eye. There was a trickle of blood down his cheek and Lena’s own knuckles were bruised.
And she’d never felt so alive.
He got in a lucky shot, clipping her chin and sending her sprawling back. Lena missed knocking her head on the weight by an inch, but she rolled into it, grabbing it and using it to add power to her next punch.
Brutal.
Solan went down with a grunt and he didn’t look like he was getting up any time soon, but she wasn’t going to buy that until he was out.
She got on top of him, getting her knees right under his armpits to control his movement and prevent him from bucking her off again. And then she reached for his throat.
Solan stared up at her, defiant. He wasn’t going to tap out.
Her body hummed with energy, tight and ready for anything.
Anything. She was on top of him. She could do whatever she wanted. And she was almost certain he’d reciprocate.
But Lena forced herself to dig her hands in deep. It wasn’t a good choke, but she didn’t want to risk getting close. At the last moment, she remembered the fangs he had hidden in his mouth and she didn’t want to become a vampire’s bride.
Not that he was a vampire, but he had a built-in weapon of his own. And she hadn’t forbidden him from using it.
She didn’t recognize the beep ending their fight at first, but Solan went limp under her. She stood up and offered a hand up.
“I win.”
They both said it.
What was he talking about? Before Lena could open her mouth to ask, he waved the weight in front of her
.
“I was about to choke you out,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I wasn’t out yet.” He was grinning and waving the weight from side to side.
The skin of his neck looked a bit gray and Lena worried that she’d done some damage. But he didn’t seem concerned. “I had you,” she insisted. She should have squeezed harder. There was no way he could argue he’d won if he was unconscious when the bell rang.
Who was she kidding? If the shoe was on the other foot she’d argue until she turned blue in the face.
He pulled off his shirt to wipe at his sweat and Lena had to bite her tongue to keep from making an undignified noise. Damn, he looked nice. Rippling muscles. A tattoo running down one arm. More muscles. Shimmering skin that somehow was shimmering even more from the exertion. She wanted to run her tongue all over him and see what he tasted like.
The mat was a bit springy. They could make it work.
But then she caught sight of her hands and shuddered. “I’m going to need some ice.” Already they were swollen and bleeding. She hadn’t held back. If she and Solan went at each other like that often, there would be no need to worry about Apsyns defeating them. They’d defeat each other.
Solan wiped at his brow and then looked at his own bloody knuckles. He looked back up at her, face serious. “We don’t know if the Match is real.” His thumb raked over a knuckle, smearing the blood even further. “We can find out right now.”
Lena looked down at her own hands. The suggestion went against every safety guideline she knew. But blood to blood contact was how to figure out if a Match was true. That much she understood about the process, even if she still had a lot to learn. “What are you waiting for? Let’s do it.” She held out her fist.
Solan hesitated. Lena wished she could read his mind, could figure out what was going on behind those eyes of his. He was so serious, but then he showed her his playful side, and his sexy side, and gave hints of all the sides he was hiding from everyone else. She wanted to know him. And it didn’t have to be romantic. If she was his Match, she’d be his partner. They’d be closer than just about anyone else on the moon and she’d get to know him better than even his own family.
