Seduce Me in Flames

by Jacquelyn Frank

  Perhaps it was because her people were high from the dramatic, life-improving changes that her regime had been instilling seemingly nonstop since her coronation, or perhaps it was because the common people weren’t quite as prejudiced against Tarians as her father and his brutal military sect had been, or more likely it was because they had come to respect this particular Tarian as they realized he was good at what he did, fair in his actions, and quietly intelligent as he thought things out. Whatever the reason or combination of reasons, they had looked very favorably on Rush. And therefore much more favorably than expected on this, their sanctioned betrothal ceremony, and the impending wedding to follow sometime within the next cycle.

  “It doesn’t hurt that you look incredibly delicious in Allayan uniform,” she whispered to him.

  That made him laugh, completely out of protocol, which required them to stand apart, eyes forward, on quiet display for nobles, guests, and commoners alike for a good half hour before they could relax and begin the party. The idea was that all involved could judge them, come to an opinion about them, and then let it be known how they felt about the union to come.

  But in his amusement the Tarian threw off protocol and lifted the hand that was threaded with their queen’s to his lips, pressing the most sincere of kisses to the back of it and looking so baldly into her eyes that there was not a person in sight who couldn’t see the love for her that was radiating out of him like a storm.

  Every woman in range released a collective sigh.

  It was only a moment after that that he was ringing her around the waist, drawing her up close in a romantic sweep, her dress with its brocade and platinum panels sweeping around his strongly braced legs. He did not kiss her. Did not need to. He touched his forehead to hers as their eyes met and held.

  “I want to invite my friends to evening meals. Frequently. I don’t wish to grow apart from them,” he said to her, brushing back the red and gold cape of her hair.

  “Anytime you like. Does that include Justice?”

  Rush frowned. “I will invite her, but it doesn’t follow that she will accept. She’s still sore at me.”

  “She’s here,” Ambrea whispered.

  Ambrea, in this case, didn’t mind being thrown over for another woman. Her husband-to-be jerked to attention and his eyes swept the room. There she was, leaning out of sight, trying her best to not be where she was and definitely not stand out in the process.

  He grinned. One thing Justice had never understood was that she was too much woman and too much Tarian to ever successfully blend in with non-Tari-infused cultures like this one. She was wearing her dress uniform, although she had not been asked to come in an official capacity. A little bit of protective armor, he supposed.

  “She’s coming around,” Ambrea noted softly. “And whether she wants to admit it or not, she misses you.”

  “I miss her as well,” he said deeply.

  “You miss all of them,” his bride-to-be said a little sadly.

  He smiled at her then, drawing her into his warmth once more.

  “I’m far too busy to miss them most days. It’s when I stop and stand still like this that I realize it.” He touched gloved fingers to her temple. “I don’t regret my choices, Ambrea. I’m far too content for things like regret to show their ugly faces.”

  Her lips turned up. “Even when I force you to dress in uniform and parade you in front of the entire continent?”

  “Even so. But I do regret not being more social with my friends.”

  “Then we will remedy that, Rush. I never wanted you to completely cut yourself off from your family.”

  “I know.” Rush shaped the curves of her face with the gentlest touch of his fingertips, wishing he could shed the dulling gloves he wore and actually feel the softness of her skin. Time had only proven to more strongly bond his heart to her, and, he had no doubt, hers to him. It was ridiculous how much delight he took simply in watching her go about her daily business. And Rush knew she often took time out of her busy schedule to come down to the headquarters of the Imperial Guard and watch him train soldiers to a proper way of thinking and acting. A fair and legal way.

  “I love you terribly,” she breathed suddenly, her free hand coming to grip his wrist where his fingers revered her face. “And once we are done settling this country, I want to start a family with you.”

  Suddenly Rush recognized that there had been a tinge of longing in her earlier observations of Ravenna. A whole new anxiety gripped him down the length of his breastbone, but it wasn’t the paralyzing and adamant denial he had always felt when faced with this concept in the past. It was no longer about his genes, or even her genes. They both had risky material to play with, they knew.

  “I think I might make a terrible father,” he admitted to her.

  “Liar. No one knows better the importance of true family. I, however, might make a terrible mother.”

  “Liar. No one has a better example of what not to do to a child than you do.”

  She smiled.

  “Then it is settled. We will start a family.”

  He gave her a dirty look.

  “Trickster,” he accused her.

  “Perhaps,” she breathed as she leaned against him. “But I have never known you to fall for anything you weren’t willing to fall for.”

  Rush had to agree with her. She had known him such a relatively short span of his life, and yet she knew him so incredibly well.

  “Aye,” he admitted on a whisper, before he totally blew protocol out of the water and drew her mouth to his for a soul-defining kiss.

  The cheer that went up around them was powerful enough to shatter that bright protective glass.

  Read on for an excerpt of

  Jacquelyn Frank’s first book

  in her Three Worlds series

  SEDUCE ME IN DREAMS

  Available now from Ballantine Books

  It pissed him off royally, but Commander Bronse Chapel couldn’t help stumbling once again as the sand shifted from under his fast-paced footing. He corrected himself with a hard, jolting body movement in order to keep his balance, and the jerking motion elicited a soft, barely discernable groan from the burden on his back.

  “How goes it, Chief?” he asked, pausing in his stride to request the answer and to allow his fellow soldier a few beats to grit out the agony that had to be washing through him by then.

  “Just waiting on my encore, sir,” Chief Trick Hwenk responded with the traditional gung-ho attitude of an ETF officer, his young voice sounding suddenly much younger and far weaker than it had two miles back.

  Chapel hesitated and then shifted the weight of his human burden up a little higher against his spine and shoulders, wishing that the grip Trick had on him was not getting so obviously lax. Bronse could smell the injured soldier’s blood just as easily as he could feel it soaking through his gear where the man was slumped over his back. The commander had a well-powered grip around the younger man’s thighs and knees as the soldier rode piggyback. But if the kid couldn’t hold on to his shoulders, they’d be in deep shit, and Bronse felt that fact clear to his straining bones.

  “All right, Chief. Just hang by your grip for three more miles and we’ll be in the nest. Of course, that means you’ll have to listen to the medics bitch at you for a few days,” Bronse noted, using the jovial reminder as a cover for restarting their staggering progress across the ever-shifting sand. Bronse narrowed his eyes behind his goggles, peering at the west sandline. The wind was getting antsy, but he couldn’t yet see a cloud forming on the line. That was a blessing, at least. Provided it stayed that way. The last thing they needed to contend with was a sand hurricane.

  Bronse went back to concentrating on where he was putting his feet, and how fast he could risk going without jostling his precious burden too dangerously. His every muscle burned from the exertion, but he welcomed it. He preferred being soaked in sweat, working himself to the limit of his endurance and pounding out whatever was necessa
ry to see a certain goal achieved. He’d always felt the most in control when he had that kind of dedicated focus, and he supposed that was what had gotten him the command position on the First Active squad of the ETF in the first place.

  Then again, he had wanted to be an Interplanetary Militia soldier since …

  Well, his matra would swear it was since they cut the cord, and his patra would have proudly boasted that it was set down in his very genes, but Bronse remembered the first time he had seen a BioVid of the history of the Interplanetary Militia’s ETF when he was six years old. The IM was an intra/interplanetary peacekeeping and defensive military outfit, and it had existed for well over a century. The IM had been created as a joint military effort among the three inhabited planets in the system: Tari, Ulrike, and Ebbany. It had more or less succeeded in its charter of keeping the treatises of coexistence among the three entities, as well as managing missions of peace and humanity on and among the individual planets.

  The IM had several specialized branches, but nothing compared to the Special Operations sector known as the Extreme Tactics Force. To a six-year-old the ETF had sounded deadly, dangerous, and exciting as all hell. Watching the BioVid had only confirmed what Bronse had already dreamed of. Being in the ETF was a good way to get an adrenaline rush and have an opportunity to do things with nothing but your balls and your skills to get you out of hellish situations. Not to mention that it was an excellent way to get important body parts blown off.

  Unfazed, Bronse had known right then that he was destined to be one of those elite soldiers, and nothing would stop him. Learning that kind of goal setting and determination at that young an age had served him well. Now, here he was, commander of the crack team of the First Active ETF soldiers. First Active meant they were the lead team and were always called first for an assignment, and it meant that his team was the best of the best. They were the ones who went to do the impossible in the worst situations, maintaining a no fear/no fail/no fatality motto that was rarely betrayed.

  That motto was balanced on Bronse’s back at the moment, losing blood too fast for what remained of a three-mile hike. But Bronse was doing his damndest to make them the fastest miles ever to be hiked on sand. He’d never lost a team member in the field, and he wasn’t about to start with a rookie communications officer who had balls the size of jumbo adder crystals. The kid had more than proved his grit today. Trick might be their newest and youngest member, but Bronse had known the minute he’d laid eyes on him that he was the perfect fifth for his group. They’d been searching for a communications officer for a whipsnout’s age, going through three washouts before Trick had sauntered onto the base, fresh out of the grueling ETF training program.

  Trick had those blond boy-next-door good looks that you could see a block away, riveting blue eyes that penetrated at every glance, and the disarming manners and engaging charm to go with them. He’d been in the mess hall hardly ten minutes before he’d had a small harem of female officers and noncoms all around him. They had been laughing and flirting with him like they weren’t already surrounded by a cafe overflowing with virile, accessible men. Keeping in mind that militia women were not something one toyed with lightly, or at all for that matter, Trick’s magnetism was impressive.

  Bronse had turned to Lasher and said that any boy who could communicate that well with IM women deserved their team position as communications officer. Lasher had agreed, looking mighty impressed himself. Another recommendation in and of itself because very little impressed Bronse’s second in command. So Trick had joined Bronse, Lasher, Justice, and Ender’s First Active ETF team all of two months back, and this had been their third mission out since the team had been locked in. The first two missions had been sterling. Chief Hwenk had proved himself capable of jacking into everything from TransTel satellites to the antennae of a Flibbean ground slug. The boy was a damn miracle worker.

  The third mission, however, had run into a bit of a snafu.

  Bronse had to stop again, this time so they both could toss back a few gulps of nutria-treated water. The sand and sun, not to mention Bronse’s labors, were sucking the hydration right out of his body. The Grinpar Desert on Ebbany was merciless in that respect. Actually, it was merciless in all respects. Only the Great Being knew why anyone would want to fight over the right to live on such a forsaken piece of hell-acre. The sand hurricanes alone could rip solid stone out of the ground. A person caught aboveground was as good as dead, or at least scoured to a bloody stump.

  To make matters worse, the sand was black.

  That meant it soaked up the rays of the sun all day and could melt or burn the hell out of anything that touched it, stumbled in it, or outright fell down looking to bake their face. Only the special protection of the soldiers’ boots and clothes kept them from this type of fate. That and Bronse’s impressive sense of balance.

  The faster they were out of that hostile environment, the better, Bronse thought as he began to trek off again.

  For this mission, the team had split up to do reconnaissance at two separate locations. Bronse hadn’t recommended or approved of that plan. However, due to the sand hurricanes and an awkwardly timed insert by their command center, they hadn’t had the time to recon their target sites in succession. Their limited circumstances had meant hitting the recon objectives simultaneously, which meant either aborting to a later mission or splitting up a single team right then. Abortion meant doubling the danger of detection, doubling the risk to lives. Bronse had given in to his upper command and split his team. Justice, Lasher, and Ender had taken the north site, and Bronse and Trick had taken the northwest target. Bronse and Trick had been filling PhotoVids with recon information when they’d been made. Bronse still couldn’t figure out how it had happened. They’d been silent and—wearing black—all but invisible. The Nomaad patrol had jumped them from behind, six to two, and the indigenous life-form’s guards had been very skilled in hand-to-hand fighting.

  Still, nothing compared to ETF training. Especially when it came to hand-to-hand fighting. Bronse and the kid had moved like lightning to eliminate their threat, working silently so as not to alert any other patrols. Trick hadn’t even cried out when he’d been pig-stuck by a wicked Nomaadic knife with a dual edge and hooks in the hilt meant to either hold the knife in, or rip flesh violently away if the wielder recalled the blade. Trick had done the smart thing, bracing a hand to hold the knife in place as he cut off the Nomaad’s hand at the wrist. No small feat that, Bronse knew.

  Though he rarely made a sound to reflect it, Trick still had the six-inch blade stuck deep in his gut, the hilt of which Bronse could see if he glanced past his arm on the left-hand side. Removing the blade would guarantee Trick’s death. Moving Trick, every step and every slide in the sand, jiggled sharpened metal against the fragile pink tissue inside the young soldier’s belly. But Bronse had no choice. The area had been too hot for a pickup with the light transport ship they’d brought for the recon. Plus, covert reconnaissance produced little advantage if you announced you’d been there with the screaming engines of a flight ship.

  With luck, a sand hurricane would hit within a couple of hours and the patrol that had jumped them would be considered lost to it. There certainly wouldn’t be any traces of bodies or blood. Bronse had already seen to that. In and out like ghosts—that was how ETF preferred to do their work. It was such a habit for Bronse to cover his own tracks that he could cook a four-course meal in a stranger’s house and leave them none the wiser for it by the time he’d finished. His ex-wife, Liely, claimed he’d done the same thing to their marriage. She’d insisted that, for the two years they had been wed, she had hardly known he was there.

  He’d never understood why she’d been so surprised by that. What had she expected it to be like? He’d been ETF born and bred—ate it, breathed it, practically made love to it—and she’d always told him that this was a major turn-on for her. She had sought him out, not the other way around. Having a relationship had been nowhere on Brons
e’s radar. He’d learned years ago that the Extreme Tactics Force and long-term liaisons did not mix. But Liely had come on strong, oozing attractive enticement, hero worship, and a hell-acre of wild and adventurous sex. It wasn’t often that a soldier argued with that kind of easy fortune. She’d been smart, witty, and sizzling hot, seemingly with a good head on her about what it meant to hang around with a First Active soldier who shipped off in a heartbeat when called. With the volatile politics and disturbances of three planets to manage, that tended to be fairly often. Hell, she’d waved him off and hugged him hello every time without a single complaint, and after a while he believed that he’d found the rare fortune of a woman worth asking to marry. She’d said yes before he’d even finished popping the question.

  And that was when everything changed. Or nothing changed, according to his discontented wife. Liely had bitched and moaned nonstop about his “inaccessibility” and how lonely she was all the time. Why wasn’t he home more often? He had a family now, so why didn’t he change—work a desk, get promoted so he’d make more money. Her logic was lost on him when she told him she’d expected it to be “different” once they were married. He’d been dumbfounded. He’d never once intimated that he saw himself changing for any reason. Still, Liely thought he should make concessions to coddle a whining wife—just because.

  Grounds for a segregation? Yeah, inevitably it had been. Like every other fight, he’d done it quickly and quietly, putting an end to his mistake as soon as he legally could.

  Bronse wasn’t introspective at heart. He had a very basic makeup and that never required much self-discovery. However, he moved better when he kept his mind occupied with a lot of things at once. He kept his attention on the terrain, checked the sandline, and kept an ear out for any agony on Trick’s part, but the rest of him did whatever it took to make travel through the awful conditions fly by faster.