by Lee Savino
Trying to poison me? “That is not necessary. Just the bath.” I shut the door on his face and hold out the bag to Alice. “Do your worst, healer.”
She takes it from me with a roll of her eyes and empties the contents of the bag on the bed. “Do you read Cotari?”
I nod. “Yes, I implanted it before I landed.” I reach for the bottle she’s holding out to me. My fingers graze hers, and once again, the bite of the rathr recedes, and Alice’s warmth takes its place. Inexplicable. Magical.
She’s staring at me, waiting for an answer. I force myself to focus on the label. “It’s a sanitizer. And the other bottle on the bed is a sedative. No sedative. I have to stay alert.”
She frowns, takes the bottle of sanitizer back from me, uncorks it and sniffs experimentally. “I’ll assume it sterilizes the wound.” She picks up a small square box. “And this is the needle and the thread. Thank heavens the package is sealed.” She takes a deep breath and turns toward me, her eyes filled with worry. “I’ve never treated a Zorahn,” she says seriously. “I don’t really know what I’m doing. Fair warning: this could all go dramatically wrong.”
It’s incredibly hard to kill a Draekon. We were engineered to be the perfect, indestructible soldiers. “I place myself in your hands, Alice Hernandez.”
Her eyes widen fractionally, and then she nods. “Okay. The floor is packed mud, so that’s no good. You need to take off all your clothes and lie on the bed, stomach down.”
I imagine her saying that to me under different circumstances, and my cock jumps to attention. Her gaze slides away from me. “I’ll stand by the window. You tell me when you’re ready, okay? Don’t worry, I’m a doctor. I’ve seen naked men before.”
She’s leaking embarrassment from every pore. “Have you seen a naked Draekon before?” I tease as I remove my trousers. “Is this all a ploy to get me in your bed, Alice?”
“Asshole.”
Is she peeking? I can’t tell. The bed creaks as I position myself as she desires. Alice glances over, takes in my supine form, and immediately looks away. Is that a touch of redness on her cheeks? “I’m ready.”
“Okay.” Her voice sounds strained. “I’m going to clean the wound first. It will lower the risk of infection.” She touches my shoulder. “Brace yourself. This will hurt.”
No. When you touch me, the pain disappears.
The sanitizer stings my skin and spreads coolness in its wake. “I wish I had a local anesthetic,” she frets. “I’ve never sewn up someone without something to numb the pain.”
“I will be fine, Alice.” Just keep touching me.
“Okay. Needle time. Do you know your blood is blue?” She sounds nervous. “Human blood is red. And I’m babbling again. Of course you know your blood is blue.”
My lips twitch. The needle pierces my flesh. It’s a small sting, barely noticeable.
The instant she starts, I feel her emotions even out, and her training takes over. She’s not nervous anymore. The needle pierces my skin rhythmically, the thread draws tight, binding the wound. “There are so many scars on your back,” she says lightly. “Do you make it a practice of getting hurt often?”
She’s teasing me. Nobody has ever teased me in my life. “I’m a warrior,” I respond, feeling an absurd sense of warmth spreading through me. “Scars are badges of pride. Like yours.”
“Like mine? What do you mean?”
“You have kept the scar on your cheek, the way I’ve kept mine.”
“Huh.” She stops sewing for an instant, and then she continues. “You can get rid of your scars? That’s interesting.”
She doesn’t appear to want to talk about her scar. Sure enough, her next words are about something entirely different. “On Earth,” she murmurs, “When we say someone has blue blood, it’s an expression that means that they’re royalty.”
Those words sting. “I’m not Highborn,” I retort stiffly. As the scientists reminded me repeatedly, I’m not even a person. I have no bloodline. No family. I am a tool. A warrior, a pawn. That is all I am, and all I ever will be.
“Sure,” she says. “I mean, Earth has a population of seven and a half billion, and of them, royalty is what, less than one percent of us? I’m assuming it can’t be too different here. If there are too many royals, who will do the actual work?”
A Highborn can say whatever they want, within reason. Not the Draekons. If I’d spoken those words to the Supreme Mother, she would have called them treasonous. She would have increased the concentration of rathr for everyone in my squadron. That was always the real threat, the one that quickly ended any defiance. Punishment, not just for you, but also for your friends. None of us had the heart to watch the others suffer.
First did.
I push away that thought. Old hurts, old misunderstandings. Everything that lives in my memories happened over a thousand years ago. It doesn’t matter.
I’ve been daydreaming. Alice is bandaging my back. When she finishes, she touches my shoulder, the merest whisper of her skin against mine. My cock hardens again, and I shift on the flimsy bed, making it creak. “I’m done,” she says, her voice pitched higher. “You’re all set.”
Is that desire I read in her emotions? Is that arousal?
For me?
If I turn around, would her gaze fall to my cock?
Would she like what she sees?
Would she want me?
She’s a Highborn healer. The Supreme Mother hisses disapprovingly in my memories, angered by my audacity. You are not her equal; You will never be her equal.
The reminder jolts me back to reality. “Thank you. I am getting up now.”
I turn around. For a second, her eyes lock on mine, and I can read the hurt on her face. And then her expression shutters. “Fine. I’ll go to the refresher while you get dressed.” She marches away, her shoulders stiff.
I’ve wounded her feelings.
My dragon growls, displeased. I wrestle it into silence. I’ve bedded Highborn women before. They came to us in secret, driven by their curiosity. Did our cocks work? Were we indeed as endowed as the rumors? Would we turn into the dragon when we were aroused?
Curiosity seekers and thrill chasers. Most women that bedded the Draekons fell into one of those two categories.
Sex with them left me empty.
A thousand years have passed. The Supreme Mother no longer controls my every movement. This is a new life, and in this version, I don’t want curiosity. I want true desire.
Alice is still in the refresher. I pull on my pants and cross the room to knock on the door, to explain my past to her. Before I can, there are footsteps in the passageway outside. “The bath,” the innkeeper calls out in his reedy voice.
No. Too many footsteps.
It’s not the bath. It is an ambush.
7
Kadir
Like the motopo, the innkeeper does his dirty work in the darkness, preying on the weak and the wounded.
As much as I condemned him for turning the other way when I brought in a supposed child into an inn in the middle of the night, I wouldn’t have attacked him for his greed. But now he brings the fight to my door?
Thank you, innkeeper.
“Alice, we have a problem.” I speak louder so she can hear me through the closed door, and voice my warning in English, my tongue tripping over the strange and unfamiliar syllables. “Stay in the refresher.”
Then I open the door, and the six Infar mercenaries stand there, the innkeeper hovering in the back.
The coward has arranged to split my purse with the cutthroats.
The Infar in the front holds a knife in his hand, the metal blade sharpened to a point. As the scientists discovered tonight, there are no lasers permitted in the Coter star-system. No warpguns, and no fleshmelters. This will be hand-to-hand combat.
The man is stocky, almost as wide as he is tall. Light stance. Despite his size, he will be quick on his feet. His emotions leak a confidence that borders on arrogance. Boredom even.
“I love rich, foolish offworlders who think with their cocks,” he sneers. “Did you think the girl would be so impressed with your gift of water that she would jump into your bed?”
The innkeeper speaks up from the back. “Our deal was that you’d leave the child alone,” he says insistently. “Don’t forget, draksha.”
Well, what do you know? Either his bondmate has nagged him into doing the right thing, or the innkeeper has belatedly grown a conscience.
“What do you want?” I ask idly.
“Well, let’s see. I personally just want your credits, but Nakima wants you dead. She really seems to have taken a dislike to you.” The man looks indifferent at the prospect of murdering an unarmed traveler. “There are easy deaths, and there are painful ones, Offworlder. Choose wisely.”
Six against one. He must think he has the situation firmly under control.
Battle red drenches my vision. I bare my teeth in a feral snarl. “Let’s go then.”
The Infar leader lunges at me. I turn fractionally, and his blade stabs the air. I grab the man’s wrist and bend, and the bone breaks. Before he draws in a breath to scream, I lock my hand around his throat, lift him in the air, and fling him away, over the heads of the other Infar. He slams into the corridor wall, legs first. More bones shatter, and the mercenary slides to the floor. His legs are broken; he’s not going anywhere.
I was built for agility.
The innkeeper’s mouth hangs open.
Two lean mercenaries rush me, knives drawn, their faces contorted with rage. They’re slowly realizing that they’re at a strategic disadvantage. I’m blocking the doorway, and all six of them—well, five now—can’t attack me at the same time. They’ll have to approach me one on one, or two on one, and that’s not the way the Infar like it.
My skill was formed in the crucible of a thousand battles.
I drop low and slam my fist into the nearest Infar’s knee. He drops. Grabbing his jaw, I smash his head into the mud floor. His companion tries to edge around me into the room, aiming a kick at my side, but I lock my grip around his ankle, pick him up so he’s hanging upside down, and propel him at the remaining Infar.
I am stronger than you.
The innkeeper remains frozen in place. An Infar, braver than his companions, detaches himself from the heap on the floor and rushes me. I stab him through the heart with his own knife.
I am faster than you.
I stalk to the innkeeper, rage red still tinting my vision. The rathr gnaws my nerve endings, drenching me in agony. “You thought you could rob me?” I growl. My dragon roars in fury, demanding to join the fight. I will tear the innkeeper from limb to limb. I will burn him alive. I will burn this inn down, and then this travesty of a city. They tied Alice up. They made her endure the heat of the desert sun without water. They discarded her in the gutters like she was trash. They do not deserve to live, any of them. They will all die, screaming in fear and pain, for their sins. “You thought you could ambush me when I was injured? Fight me, Cotari. Fight for your insignificant, wretched life.”
A small hand touches my back, sending warm relief through my body. “Kadir,” Alice whispers.
I turn to her.
Her eyes are wide. She’s impressed.
Her reaction fills me with absurd pleasure. Being a weapon of war has never brought me joy, but when she looks at me, like I’m her savior, all I feel is happiness. The red haze recedes, and my dragon settles down, content.
“I think that’s enough, don’t you?”
I look at the shattered bodies of those that thought they could fight me, and then I stare at the innkeeper, who has wet his front. He was going to help the child. You are not First.
“The next time there is a knock on my door,” I snarl, injecting menace into my voice. “It better be the water I paid for. And Innkeeper, if we are disturbed again, I will personally break every bone in your body, carve your flesh open with a dull knife, and stake you out in the desert for the vukutur to feast on.”
The man swallows, nods jerkily, and flees. I shut the door and turn to Alice. “Earlier,” I say awkwardly. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”
She tilts her head to one side and surveys me, an unreadable expression on her face. “I know.” She touches my chest. “Turn around. Let me look at your back. I want to make sure you didn’t tear open your stitches.”
8
Alice
Well, damn.
I work in the ER. You know what I see, day after day, night after night? Knife wounds. Gunshots. The former we can do something about, most of the time. The latter, not so much. I don’t think people appreciate how destructive a bullet really is. I know I didn’t, not until my mother was murdered.
I have a very firm belief that fighting is stupid and has no place in a civilized society. If you’d asked me ten minutes ago what kind of guy I’m attracted to, I would have told you that it’s the professor type. Smart, well-read, and intellectual.
Then I saw Kadir fight.
He moved like a lethal whirlwind. He smashed everyone in sight. It was like watching a brutal, beautiful, violent dance. A ballet of destruction.
I feel safe. If someone comes for us in the middle of the night, Kadir will take care of it. After months of torture and captivity and pain, the feeling of being protected is the most powerful aphrodisiac in the world.
Someone examine my head for signs of a concussion, because I’m turned on. Painfully so. As I supposedly examine his stitches, I can’t stop touching Kadir. I want to lick the drops of sweat off his back. I want…
Earth to Alice. Have you lost your mind? You know nothing about this guy, nothing about his motivations. You have no proof that you can trust him. He shows up out of nowhere, claims he’s here to rescue you, offers you chocolate, fights off some baddies, and that’s all it takes for you to be horny for him? For all you know, the attack could have been staged, a ploy to convince you that Kadir is trustworthy.
Except that doesn’t make any sense. Kadir towers over me. He’s physically so much stronger than I am. He picked me up with laughable ease and carried me through the streets of Akan as if I weighed no more than a feather. He has no reason for such deception.
There’s another knock on the door, jerking me out of my reverie. I realize I’m still touching the muscled alien, and drop my hand, my face flaming. “Your stitches look fine.”
He flashes me a grin. “It wasn’t much of a fight. Put up your hood again, I don’t want the innkeeper to see your face.”
I’m surprised he’s even opening the door. “You’re not worried someone might try to jump us again?”
He shakes his head. “The Infar are mercenaries. They got paid for one attack, they mounted their attack, and so they’re done. They don’t hold grudges. If I go out to the common room, they will invite me to drink with them.”
“How do you know all this? And what about the innkeeper?”
“The innkeeper is a coward,” he replies, his lips curling into a sneer. “He thought I was weak, and therefore a target. He has learned otherwise. He’ll leave us alone.”
He sounds very sure of himself. His confidence is contagious. I raise my hood, hiding my face, and perch at the edge of the bed. Kadir opens the door. The innkeeper and three helpers enter the room, carrying a large square bathtub. They place it in the center of the room and leave, only to return almost immediately with buckets of hot water that they pour into the tub. A servant sets up a privacy screen. The innkeeper places folded robes and bottles of lotions on the ledge and bows his way out, his shoulders stiff with nerves.
“For you,” Kadir says. “Humans bathe in water, yes?”
I gape at him, stupefied. “Umm, yes, we do.” We’re smack dab in the middle of a desert. Water is scarce here. The toilers in the scientists’ lair used a chemical spray instead of water. Tanya and I weren’t given water to bathe, just sand to rub on our skins. Earlier today, the Cotari traders wouldn’t even give me water to drink, so I
’m well aware of how precious it is on this planet.
His gesture is wildly extravagant. “Why?”
He stops what he’s doing and meets my eyes. “You have been taken from your home,” he says quietly. “You have been kept captive, subject to pain and torture. The High Empire has not treated you well, Alice Hernandez, and I am, whether I like it or not, part of the High Empire. Consider this a small recompense.”
Kadir hulk-smashed six people into smithereens less than ten minutes ago, leaving broken bones, shattered limbs, and carnage. Now, he’s offering me an immeasurably thoughtful gift.
“Thank you.” I force the words past the lump in my throat.
He inclines his head and tests the water. “There is no temperature regulator,” he grumbles. “This is a maggot-infested, pus-filled sore of a planet. You should bathe before the water cools.”
Maggot-infested, pus-filled sore of a planet. This guy should be a poet; his curses are works of art. I feel another attack of the giggles coming on. Before I laugh in his face, I move behind the privacy screen, take off my clothes, and sink into the steaming water with a sigh of pleasure.
Oh God. This is better than chocolate. This is even better than sex. I haven’t bathed in seven months. “This is glorious,” I moan out loud, and then wince. I sound like I’m in the middle of an orgasm. Stop giving him sex voice, Alice.
There’s a strained silence, and then he responds from the other side of the screen. “I’m happy you are enjoying yourself.”
My cheeks flame, and I bury my face in my hands. Say something else, quick. Find another topic of conversation.
“How come the food you gave me tasted like chocolate?”
Kadir chuckles. “I might have guessed you wouldn’t let go of that. The nutrient bar was formulated for humans and incorporates a taste you might find pleasing.”
He has a nice laugh, rich and warm. “Why do you have nutrient bars formulated for humans? You said you were here to rescue me. Why?”
