Baird smiled tightly, grabbed the hem of his black tunic, and pulled it off over his head. The sight of him cut off the laughter. His magnificent chest more than fulfilled the promise of those broad shoulders. Every inch of it was plated in thick muscle, beautifully defined, forming a lovely sculpted V covered with a pelt of chest hair that looked tempting and soft. He saw the eyes locked on him and shrugged. “Don’t want to ruin the tunic.” He folded it neatly, his biceps bunching and rippling with the movement, then placed it on the bar running the length of the room. Then he turned to stride toward Jogox, now rising endlessly from his table.
Like all Zurines, Jogox was well over two meters tall—he never met a doorway he didn’t have to duck under. His skin was white as milk and tough as plate armor, and he was so broad, he looked like an animated wall. He had four sets of bright red eyes that glowed against his pale face, a mouth full of razored teeth and huge, seven-fingered hands. I’d seen drunken Marines run from him, but he was normally a very sweet man.
Normally. In a fight, he underwent a personality change. There weren’t many men I’d hesitate to mix it up with, but big, sweet Jogox was one of them, because sometimes his instincts overcame his judgment. And then people tended to get hurt.
My shipmates had hastily cleared all the tables and chairs from the center of the room so the two would have a place to fight. A crowd already ringed the space, so I stood up on my chair to get a better view of the proceedings. My mouth was dry as sand, but I had to wipe my damp palms on my unisuit-covered thighs.
I wasn’t sure even a Commanche Class Warlord had the strength to mix it up with Jogox. A Pershing, maybe, but the Commanche Class, though inhumanly strong, was designed for speed and agility. Baird could end up badly hurt. That would solve my problem, true, but I found I didn’t want it solved like that.
“Hey,” Lyonet said suddenly, looking at me as she stood on her own chair. “I just realized something. That tattoo on your cheek looks just like the one he’s wearing. What’s the deal?”
I ignored the question, too busy concentrating on Baird and Jogox as they stood on either side of the circle, sizing one another up. Captain Drunna stepped into the middle of the space, obviously ready to play referee. “Okay, gentlemen,” he said. “I don’t want anybody hurt badly enough to need an extended stay in Regeneration. Begin.” He moved back.
And with a blur of movement, they did just that.
Jogox came in charging, probably figuring to knock the Warlord cold. Baird Airell just flowed away from his attack like liquid mercury, the long, powerful muscles in his bare torso shifting as he ducked and spun. He also gave Jogox something to remember him by as he danced away: a hard punch in the gut that tore a grunt from the big, pale alien.
Jogox eyed Baird a moment, and something malevolent slid through his four red eyes. His lips drew back from those razored teeth, and I swore under my breath.
“Ooooh!” Lyonet gasped. “He’s pissed Jogox off! The shit’s hit the turbos now!”
I chomped down on my lip. Jogox was going to rip off his head, and it would be all my fault. Stubborn, stupid stallion, more balls than sense…
The Zurine charged Baird again, swiping at him with one of those huge hands, and again the Warlord ducked. But this time Jogox was waiting for him; a backhanded blow caught him across the face and sent him flying like a spiked grav ball, slamming into the crowd behind him. People tumbled amid a chorus of yelps and curses, and chairs went flying at the impact. I caught my breath, hoping the Warlord wasn’t hurt….
Then he catapulted out of the mass of bodies in a low, hard rush, those dark eyes glittering, no expression at all on his bloodied face—not rage, not fear, just cold, inhuman determination. I was probably the only one in the room who knew what that look meant.
Baird had entered riatt. Like the Viking berserkers, a Warlord in riatt becomes insanely strong, but what’s more, he feels no pain or pity. He will keep going, relentless and remorseless, until his enemy falls or he dies of injuries too severe for his supercharged body to survive.
The crowd he’d hit were still regaining their feet when Baird rammed into Jogox like a torpedo, one big fist scything out to hit the long white nose. A spray of lilac flew, Zurine blood. The big alien staggered, then regained his balance and struck out, rapping Baird hard in the jaw. The Warlord shook off the blow as if it were nothing.
The next few minutes were a blur as Baird and Jogox pounded at one another, flat footed, trading punches like boxers. I caught my breath. The Zurine was so much bigger than the human, yet Baird’s ferocious blows staggered him, while the Warlord himself didn’t seem to feel the impact of those huge white hands at all. In minutes, the watching crowd was spattered with red and lilac and sweat as they fought.
“Damn,” said Lyonet, awed. “I’ve never seen a human hold his own with Jogox before. The big guy’s actually looking worried.”
Baird, on the other hand, simply looked feral, the gold striations in his brown eyes expanding as he went deeper into riatt, sweat and blood rolling down his magnificent torso. His powerful arms worked like pistons as he shot punches into Jogox’s white hide, the thick muscle of his chest rippling with every blow.
I had never seen anything like it. I grew up hearing my mother’s stories of the Warlords, been quietly envious as my sister boasted, but the reality was breathtaking. It was all the more unnerving when I knew what his real objective was.
Me.
Baird never looked at me, never took his eyes off Jogox; he was too utterly focused on his opponent. But I knew. In his mind, I was the prize he was fighting for.
I tried to reject the thought. No one would fight like that, suffer like that, just to clear the way to me. What was I, after all? He was doing this for his own pride, his own honor.
Yet deep in my mind, some illogical Fem part of me saw a message beaten out in the rhythm of every punch and kick: I’ll have you, I’ll have you, I’ll have you.
Suddenly he finished it. There was a blur of movement, as Baird swarmed up Jogox’s massive back. He wrapped his powerful thighs around the Zurine’s torso and both arms around the thick white neck, applying a vicious choke hold. Jogox fought it, clawing at Baird’s arms so hard he left bloody furrows. Still the Warlord clung and choked him. I saw disbelief in all four red eyes as the Zurine realized he was losing to a human.
He slammed down on his back, trying to break Baird’s hold, but the Warlord would not release him, though Jogox’s weight was crushing. Somehow Baird managed to flip them both so he was on top, riding the Zurine like a horse.
And that treacherous Fem part of me showed me an image—myself, stretched out under Baird’s masculine power. But in the dream, those big, hard hands were gentle and skilled on my skin.
I shook it off.
“Enough!” Captain Drunna called, throwing both arms up and stepping into the center of the ring of spectators. “Don’t kill my Zurine, Baird.”
It took the Warlord a moment to come out of riatt enough to obey, but finally he released Jogox and let him gasp in a hard breath. Baird rolled off the alien and shot to his feet, staggering a little.
Drunna put out a hand to brace him. “Easy there, Airell. Damn, I didn’t think you could do it. Guess you really are gene-gineered.” He clapped one thick, bloody shoulder. “You’re in, boy. Welcome to Drunna’s Rangers.”
Baird’s gold shot eyes went to me and narrowed. “Thank you, Captain.”
The rest of the crowd pressed around him, slapping his back and congratulating him while medtechs raced to tend Jogox.
“What a fight!” Lyonet said breathlessly. “I’ve got to meet him. Come on, Kyna. Let’s introduce ourselves.”
She scrambled down off the table and I followed mechanically. My first impulse was to run, but I’d never run from anyone in my life. I wasn’t about to start with Baird Airell. So I stayed where I was, listening to the sounds of backslapping and congratulations as my comrades welcomed the Warlord into our midst.
&nb
sp; I heard a shout of approval as Jogox made it to his feet. There was another surge of movement as folks started toward him to commiserate and compliment him on the fight.
Then Baird stepped out of the crowd and started toward me. Frozen with a kind of feminine panic I’d never known before, I watched him come.
He gleamed under the rec hall lights, his skin slick with sweat, muscles rippling as he stalked me. Blood marked him in red and lilac like alien camouflage, and the silken hair on his chest was slicked down and matted.
He kept coming until he loomed over me. Every muscle in my body tightened, including those down low in my belly.
Baird stared down at me. His brown eyes looked wide and wild still from riatt, and the gold striations snaking through them gave his gaze a manic glitter. I met his stare uneasily, taking in the tight triumph on his face, the hungry line of his sensuous mouth.
“You said you would not leave your crew,” he rumbled in a dark, purring bass so much deeper than the voice he’d addressed the captain in. “So I have joined it.”
I clenched my fists, feeling panic rise. I couldn’t handle him, and I knew it. “Baird…”
“You wear the half circle,” he interrupted, simply plowing over what I was going to say. “I mean to fill it.”
I lifted a hand to touch the tattoo on my cheekbone. It was different from the one on his—except for one mark: a half circle that hung from the bottom point. When I became bonded, my mate would add the other half of the circle, showing my new status. And I’d do the same for the one he wore.
Baird lifted one hand and brushed his index finger across his blooded lip. Frozen, I watched his big hand approach my face, felt his fingertip press against the half circle. Covering it with a full circle of his blood.
I closed my eyes as the tips of my breasts began to tingle.
The hand brushed my lips, and my eyes flew wide as I tasted the smear of blood he left. Leaning forward, he took my mouth in a kiss.
It seared me as no touch ever has—the softness of his mouth, the feeling of his long, powerful body pressing against mine. I felt the sweat and the blood and the heat of his battle, and I gasped.
Jerking free, I did the only thing I could do.
I ran.
Fems are genetically engineered for speed, and there are few that can outrun me. But I’d barely hit my full stride in the corridor when Baird Airell’s big hand closed on my arm and pulled me to a stop. I wheeled on him, snarling.
“Let me go, Baird!”
“Not until you do me the courtesy of telling me why you run!” A tendon ticked violently in his broad jaw, but every muscle in his powerful body was tight with self-control.
I opened my mouth to growl something insulting, but looking into those dark eyes, I saw confusion and hurt. Almost at once his face slid into expressionless lines, but I knew what I’d seen. And it surprised me. I hadn’t realized my rejection would hurt Baird. I thought he viewed me as nothing but a broodmare, but now I saw I’d been wrong.
I groped to explain. “Baird, I wasn’t raised on Vardon.”
He frowned impatiently. “None of us were raised on Vardon, Kyna. They drove us from the planet thirty years ago.”
“But you told me you grew up on one of the colonies. I didn’t. We lived on mercenary vessels. My father was a Warlord, but he was killed when I was five. I have lived all my life in that culture. I don’t know if I can submit to you.”
The hard lines of his face softened into a smile. I thought again how breathtakingly handsome he was. “The submission is only in bed, Kyna. You are my equal otherwise.”
I shook my head. “No, I’m not. And that’s the point. I’m at least twice as strong as any man I’ve ever been with. But you…I’ve practiced with Jogox myself. I didn’t last five minutes before he put me halfway through a bulkhead. You not only lasted with him, you put him down.”
He lifted a dark brow, that beautiful mouth curling in a one-sided smile. “What I have in mind for you is not a contest of strength, Kyna.” Suddenly the smile faded, and shock flooded his dark eyes. “You don’t think I would hurt you?”
I made a dismissing gesture. “No, no.” The Warlords might play hard in bed, but they’re also strictly raised to honor. They’re taught never to turn their formidable strength against anyone under their protection, particularly bond mates and children. To abuse one’s own is a mark of great dishonor.
“If you don’t fear my strength, I don’t understand your objection,” Baird said. “Aren’t you tired of sleeping with civs?” He spread his beautifully muscled arms, and for a moment I was distracted by the play of shifting sinew. “It’s like trying to make love to a soap bubble. I dare not release my passion lest I deal some injury. By Our Lady, I have had to confine my attentions to my own hand.”
Hooo, boy. “How long have you been celibate?”
He shrugged, the play of contours in his torso a marvelous thing. “Five months, perhaps.”
Which, for a man with a Warlord’s appetite, is a very long time. Lust would be riding him hard. For a moment my treacherous imagination summoned an image of what it would be like to have all that ravenous hunger turned on me. I felt my nipples harden. What would it be like to share one night in a Warlord’s bed? “Perhaps…”
His dark eyes sharped on mine, and I saw calculation flicker in their depths. Then, reluctantly, he said, “One coupling would not be enough for me, Kyna.”
I lifted a brow at his honesty. “Another man might have taken me to bed, thinking to seduce me into yielding.”
“Aye,” he said steadily, and reached out a big hand to touch my cheek, his fingers leaving a wake of heat. “But another man would not be me.”
And another man would be easier to resist, I thought. But I could not yield to him. I knew what it meant to be bonded to a Warlord, and I did not think I could submit so utterly.
“But perhaps,” he said softly, “you’ll allow me to court you as a civ male would. Give me a chance, Kyna.”
I looked at him, at the warm, heated chocolate of his eyes. “Very well,” I said, before I knew what I was about.
Then, silently, I cursed myself.
One month later
I watched Baird’s long fingers close gently over the black queen and move her into position to threaten my king. “Check,” he said, his deep voice amused.
Damn it. I scanned the board, realizing he’d beaten me yet again. He’d ruthlessly, systematically stripped me of my pieces, and I had nowhere left to go. True, I’d made inroads of my own; all he had left were his king, a knight, and the queen, but even so, he’d managed to trap me.
With a groan, I tipped over my own king in a gesture of defeat. “Damn, Baird, you got me again.” Laughing, I looked up into his eyes—and froze.
His dark gaze was hungry and fixed on my mouth. “Ah, if only you meant that.”
I felt heat roll from my belly all the way into my face. Disgruntled, I knew I was blushing. I never blushed. I looked away from his face and began putting captured pieces back on the board, concentrating hard on what I was doing. “Another game? You’ve won ten games to my eight, and I want revenge.”
“I think not. I find I am too…restless.” He stood. I didn’t look at him, knowing the sight of that big, hard body clad in a snug black unisuit would do serious damage to my eroding self-control.
But as he strode away, I couldn’t help stealing a look at his muscular butt. Oh, Lady.
Lyonet blocked my view of it as she stepped up to the table we’d occupied in the rec hall. “On behalf of women everywhere,” she said, and swatted me across the side of the head.
I yelped in shock. “Hey, what was that for?”
She leaned across the table and glared into my eyes. “Every woman on this ship would give her left nipple to sleep with that man, but the only one he looks at is you. And all you do with him is play chess. He gets up from this table with a hard-on that I, personally, will dream about for weeks, and you just sit there playing wi
th your pieces. Are you flatline?”
My fingers tightened around Baird’s knight. “It’s more complicated than you think.”
“It must be complicated as all hell if you’re playing board games when you could have both legs wrapped around that incredible ass. And don’t tell me you’re not tempted, because I saw you leering at it as he left.”
“Yeah, I’m tempted, but he wants a lot more than one night of hot sex.”
“Good. Give it to him.” Lyonet dropped into his abandoned chair.
“You don’t know what he wants.” To give my hands something to do, I gathered up the remaining pieces and put them briskly on the board.
Lyonet leaned forward and looked hard into my face. Her jaw dropped. “You’re scared of him. I didn’t think you were scared of anything. What’s going on?”
I didn’t answer as I carefully lined up the pieces, concentrating on getting them in mathematically straight rows.
“Talk to me, Kyna,” Lyonet said, one of her hands wrapping around one of mine. “I’ve seen you charge mercs twice your size with a grin on your face and mayhem in your heart. Why on earth would you be afraid of sleeping with the hottest thing either of us has seen in years?”
“He’s a Warlord, Lyonet. Genetically engineered.”
“Yeah, I figured that out when he kicked Jogox’s ass. So? And what the hell’s a Warlord?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
I sighed and picked up Baird’s black knight again. Nervously, I began to turn it over and over in my hands, concentrating on its smooth contours. “About three hundred years ago, a group of colonists settled this planet called Vardon. It was back when all those weird little colonies sprang up, all those religious sects and lunatic groups. This one wanted to form a matriarchy—women running the show. They thought they could create a perfect world if they eliminated male aggression through genetic engineering, making their male citizens more like women.”
“Sounds like a real good way to get a lot of lousy lovers,” Lyonet said, rolling her eyes.
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