“I’ll return the favor,” he replied.
“You seem confused about the chain of command,” she said, grinning at him.
“Off duty,” Seaghdh ordered, pinning her with a glare as he rose. “Or I’ll tell Aunt Kys about that third-year cadet you seduced just after graduation.”
“You wouldn’t! How did you know . . . ?”
Grinning at her, he waved and stepped into the lift. “Sleep tight.”
CHAPTER 19
ARI finally closed Seaghdh’s computer console. She’d gone fishing in his files, looking for information to add to her growing intel files on the Chekydran, Kebgra, and the Armada. She’d been parsing data for the past hour and still couldn’t wring any sense from it. Guilt prodded her into saving a copy of her reports and calculations to Seaghdh’s files. He’d need it and she owed it to him since she hadn’t exactly asked permission to muck around in his computer system. Leaning back in her chair, she tabbed on her handheld, bringing up another language lesson. She’d shed the uniform jacket and draped it behind her. The Claugh insignia dug into her back as she stretched and yawned.
Ordered off duty, Seaghdh had said when he’d fetched her from medical. He’d leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, that cocky grin lighting his face.
“You’re learning Claughwyth,” he’d said. “Quick study, aren’t you?”
“What? Not really,” she’d replied. She hadn’t wanted anyone knowing about the language lessons. Or how swiftly she absorbed languages. Especially since the Chekydran had done something to enhance her ability. She’d been so busy hiding her handheld that it had taken several seconds for his chuckle to make her realize he’d spoken in his language and that she’d answered him in kind.
He’d been elated.
Sighing, Ari closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. His scent, his presence, surrounded her in his cabin.
She heard him stir in his bed. The rustle of bedclothes from the other room and the shush of his bare feet on carpet told her he’d come to look in on her.
“Ari?”
“Quarter light,” she said in Claughwyth and opened her eyes. He stood in the doorway between his office and his bedroom. She had to smile. He wore a ragged pair of workout shorts. Add a threadbare T-shirt from his last energy blade competition and he’d match what she’d worn for bed aboard the Sen Ekir.
“Nice outfit,” she said in her own language. She was too tired to rake her memory for vocabulary.
He rubbed a hand over one bare shoulder and frowned as if that would keep her from seeing him flush.
“Sorry I woke you,” she said.
“I’d sleep better if you’d get some rest,” he replied.
She looked away.
“What is it, hwe vaugh?”
“Hwe vaugh.” She waited for the words to resolve to something she could understand. They didn’t. So much for being a quick language study.
She shrugged. “I’ll never have my command back, will I?”
She’d spent the past hour forcing herself to think, to face what she’d blinded herself to until now. She’d been compromised by three months in Chekydran captivity. Armada Command couldn’t promise her a ship. They couldn’t know what kind of security breach she represented. She’d be lucky to ride a desk. Damn it, she didn’t want to be a scientist working in her father’s labs for the rest of her life. A PhD was no substitute for a command.
“Not that one,” Seaghdh murmured. He rounded the desk, caught the chair, and spun her to face him. He knelt before her, his hands warm on her arms.
She nodded and felt something dark and poisonous crack open inside her chest. Yet another wound she couldn’t grieve. She’d gotten used to that. But it was another tick on the side of “nothing left to live for.”
“Ari,” he growled, warning in his tone.
She cursed. Of course he’d seen every desolate thought playing across her face. The unhappiness in his expression as he stared at her made her breath catch.
“I’m still a prisoner,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m not on that damned ship anymore, but they destroyed so much, I might as well have stayed and died.”
“No,” he ground out.
“What does it mean to have survived if the life I knew, the life that kept me resisting, kept me from giving up, is ripped out of my grasp?”
“You build a new one!” he insisted. “You find something worth fighting for and you go after it every day.”
Her laugh sounded cynical, bereft. “When I’m being shoved around like a pawn on a chessboard? I am all out of fight.”
Seaghdh rose and extended a hand. “No. You’re not. I’ll prove it to you.”
She blinked and put a hand in his.
He lifted her to her feet and led her through his bedroom to another door, one she had taken for a second closet. It wasn’t.
“You have a dedicated practice floor? On board a ship?” Ari marveled, padding in bare feet to the center of the dueling grid.
“Privilege of rank,” he said. “Now. About that rematch.”
A glimmer of life woke in her body. She tried to smile and found she could. Nodding, she stripped down to uniform trousers and undershirt.
Seaghdh put a dueling jacket on her, smoothing the seam closed with exaggerated care over her chest.
She laughed at the flood of desire turning her knees to jelly. “I’m on to you and you will not distract me this time. It isn’t just your language I’m learning.”
He flashed a devastatingly sexy smile at her and shrugged into a jacket of his own. When she sidled close to seal his jacket, he planted a kiss on the tip of her nose. He backed hastily away, however, when her fingers slid between the edges of fabric to caress his bare chest.
He returned with practice blades.
“We’ll start at the beginning,” he rumbled. He circled her, stepped in, pressing his chest to her back. Tucking a hilt into her right hand, he put his mouth next to her ear. “Hold it like you would a lover. Firm. Confident but not too tight, otherwise, you’ll choke off . . .”
She darted out from under him, gasping with laughter, her body clenching with want. “You had better guard, Seaghdh. I am very clear that lesson one reads, ‘All’s fair in love and war.’ ”
Golden eyes dancing with mirth, he met her in the center of the grid, his look avid. They crossed blades.
Excitement sped her heartbeat.
“Nice and easy?” he suggested. “Warm up?”
She snorted. “Oh, hell no.”
Ari attacked.
It was an utterly different contest than their first match. More dance than duel, they tested defenses, probed for weaknesses in technique, in finesse. They both knew they had no reason to hold back, to pretend they were any less skilled than they were.
Since she’d taken and held the TFC blade title, Ari had known she’d have trouble finding willing dueling partners. For the first time in years, she had an honest challenge. The rapid-fire clash and fizzle of energy blade contacting energy blade was exhilarating.
She felt the pressure of his blade tip on her ribs before he said it.
“Point.”
They broke apart, breathing hard, wiping sweat from their faces.
“Nice,” she said, meaning the compliment. “Never saw it.”
Pleasure glowed behind the thoughtful expression on his face. He jerked his chin at her sword arm. “Old injury?”
She nodded. “Shoulder blade shattered four and a half months ago. Good as new after surgery and bone regen, but I still have three more months of physical therapy.”
He counted back four and a half months. Chekydran. His expression darkened, but he left it. “You drop your blade tip defending outside right once the muscles get tired.”
“Damn.” She shook her head. “You’ll have to become part of my physical therapy routine.”
“I intend to, I assure you,” he said, leering at her.
“Ah, ah,” she warned, wagging a finger, savoring the sudden
thunder of her heart. “He who is easily distracted is easily skewered.”
His grin widened.
She groaned at her choice of words and choked on a ripple of panic. Damn it. Not now. Not while she was actively having fun, actively enjoying Cullin Seaghdh’s company.
Maybe that was the trigger. He was the Auhrnok Riorchjan. She was still a prisoner and his assignment. Why shouldn’t his charm, his warmth all be an act?
He either saw or sensed the change in her. Frowning, he closed his free hand around her left arm. “Breathe, Ari,” he urged.
Fear for her in his voice. One part of her felt it coursing through his body. Maybe he wasn’t acting. Unless he enjoyed using his position to take advantage of women, to humiliate them in the process of pumping them for information. She stumbled over the mental turn of phrase, then shook it off. Couldn’t be true. The look in his eyes when they’d dueled aboard the Sen Ekir had plainly said he hadn’t enjoyed belittling her—unless that had been the act. Ari’s head spun.
Thrice-damned Chekydran. She couldn’t go on second-guessing herself into paralysis her entire life. She didn’t want to go on living in the wasteland of never knowing, of never having tried to recover some small bit of herself. So what if Cullin Seaghdh was pretending?
One thing she knew for certain. After the Chekydran, she could survive damn near anything. She wanted the man. So what if her heart was entangled? She’d live even if Seaghdh all but dumped her out an air lock the minute he was done toying with her.
Only she could decide if what she felt in his company was worth the risk of heartache. She drew in a deep breath and focused on Seaghdh’s concerned face.
“Guard, Blade Master,” Ari whispered. “Or the next time a woman falters in the middle of a duel, you may end up dead.”
He scowled. “You weren’t acting.”
“No. I wasn’t.”
His gaze searched her face and he relaxed. “Which is why you didn’t take a point from me.”
“You have two seconds before I do,” she countered. “I haven’t forgotten your advice in the medi-bay.”
His grin back in place, he nodded and danced away. “A blade master takes every advantage?”
That was the one. She intended to take every last advantage he’d afford her. Anticipation shot a heated, heady mix of craving into her blood.
They met in the middle, touched blades. She looked him in the eye. She didn’t know what he saw in her face, but his humor died. Desire smoldered in its place. Fire stabbed through her, speeding her pulse and robbing her of breath.
“Fight,” he whispered. A ripple of power in his voice wrapped around her, suggesting a very different contest than this one.
Ari sucked in a slow breath and delighted in the rush of need lighting up every nerve ending. “Cheater.”
He laughed and attacked.
She couldn’t take much more. She ended it quickly, charging him, locking body to body, blade to blade. Once more, she felt leashed strength coil in him. She trusted she hadn’t made a mistake, one that would shred the tiny sliver of hope blossoming in her heart. A thrill rippled through her. He stared, his expression unreadable.
“Lesson two,” he said.
“Never offer what I can’t afford to lose,” she finished for him. “I am lost already, Cullin Seaghdh. Help me find me.”
Growling, he took the blade from her hand and threw both weapons against the wall, then pulled her tight against him. His mouth covered hers and he kissed her as if he’d been dying of hunger for her. She returned the favor. The feel of his skin under her hands and the taste of his lips drove startling urgency through her. She wanted more. Much more.
He gave it.
She tried to remove his jacket. With delicate kisses to each of her palms, he stopped her. She tried to take off her jacket. He pulled her hands behind her back.
“What is the First Point?” he whispered against her lips.
Her overheated brain worked in slow motion. He wanted her to recite the lesson points of the Art of the Blade? “What?”
“First.” He brushed his lips against hers. “Point.”
Gasping as he nibbled his way down her throat, she stuttered, “P-patience.”
He tucked her fingers into the waistband of her trousers at the small of her back. “Patience.” He tripped the seal on her jacket and, easing the fabric open, explored what little skin was exposed.
She strained against him, biting back a groan. Her body ached for his touch. “Stop coddling me,” she managed.
His mouth on hers cut her off. When he broke the kiss, he looked at her with so much fire in his eyes that her will melted. “That is the last thing I’m doing.” His hands eased the jacket from her shoulders before caressing a path to her breasts. He traced the outlines through the thin fabric of her undershirt.
She had to force her legs to go on holding her. “You are.”
“I’m not.” He dipped his head, his mouth taking over where his hands had been.
Breathing hard, barely able to choke out the words, she said, “You’re not what?” It had finally occurred to her that he was talking her in circles and enjoying doing so.
“Going to stop.”
Raw hunger burst through her body and shorted out the rest of her brain as he dropped to his knees. He tugged her undershirt out of her trousers.
Ari tensed. Three scars wrapped her torso, mementos from her stay in a Chekydran prison. She did not want to remember which of them had been self-inflicted and which hadn’t. They were the few physical reminders that surgery hadn’t been able to erase.
Seaghdh brushed his lips over the fine, white lines. Wrapping his arms around her hips, he rested his cheek on her abdomen, on the reminders of her past and hugged her hard against him. Her heart thundered so loudly she could barely hear him when he said, “You deserve to be coddled, Ari. To be treasured. Let me.”
She groaned and, ignoring his implied order to keep her hands locked behind her, threaded her fingers through his hair. “Hurry. Your dallying is killing me.”
Laughing, he surged to his feet, hooked a hand in the loose waistband of her pants, and drew her into his bedroom.
“What is the Sixth Point?” he said.
“Seaghdh,” she growled from between clenched teeth and reached for him.
He dodged her grasp, swung behind her and pulled the dueling jacket down her arms where it tangled, imprisoning her. He used the coat to pull her back against his chest. “Sixth Point,” he murmured, puffing breath into her ear.
Sensation sizzled across her skin, shaking her to the core. She caught in a sharp gulp of air and struggled for possession of her hands.
His chuckle sounded wicked and he closed his teeth softly on her earlobe.
Excitement, augmented by far too many hormones, thrilled through her body. “S-sixth Point. By the Gods, how do you expect me to think?”
“The blade master . . .” he began as he nuzzled the sensitive skin below her ear.
Choking on a moan, she said in a breathless rush, “The blade master conquers his opponent by first conquering himself . . . you wouldn’t.”
“Hwe vaugh, I already have.”
“Hwe vaugh.” Her brain picked that moment to translate his words. “My heart.” Ari’s breath stopped and her own heart clenched hard.
Seaghdh folded his arms around her, brushing a hand up under her shirt to caress one breast. The friction of his palm against over-sensitized skin dissolved every thought in her brain. She dropped her head back against his shoulder.
He murmured approval against her collarbone as he eased her trousers open and began exploring her body’s secrets.
She cried out.
He took his time, too damned much of it. Every fiber quivered, waiting for the next sensation. It was a little like torture where nerves coiled, taut, anticipating each new hurt. It was utterly unlike it, in that now, she luxuriated in the pleasure Seaghdh lavished on her body. She felt stretched tight, nerve endings ris
ing against her skin, silently begging for more while she gasped at the exquisitely gentle way Seaghdh soothed and massaged and drove her to the brink of sanity.
He explored every inch, removing clothes as he went, finally freeing her to revel in her desperate desire to touch him.
She shook with the force of the want he’d built in her, but she took her time easing his jacket from his shoulders. Indulging her need to trace each line of his muscle with her lips, she tested his control, halting her caresses at the waistband of his shorts. Sixth Point indeed. Did he really believe he couldn’t be mastered just as she had been?
He groaned, swept off his shorts with trembling hands and urged her to her feet before she could do more than admire the rest of his magnificent body. When at long, achingly last, he pushed her onto the bed, he shifted against her. His eyes closed and he paused. Savoring? Or tormenting?
She thought her heart would burst. “Now,” she demanded in a strangled voice. “I need you now.”
“The blade master never forces a point,” he rasped, his breath trembling, and pressed home in one long, deliriously slow stroke.
She arched, imploring him to hold nothing back. His body heard and responded with abandon, until the white-hot fire he’d built between them went abruptly and shockingly supernova.
CHAPTER 20
WHEN her heart rate slowed, Ari choked out, “Match. Who won?”
Seaghdh cracked open one eye and laughed. Gathering her into his arms, he pulled her tight against him. “Draw.”
“Nothing for it then,” she mumbled as her eyes drifted shut. “Rematch.”
“You’re trying to kill me.”
She smiled, opening her eyes. “Didn’t I tell you? It’s all clear now, my programming.”
For a moment, he tensed. Then he pinched her backside.
She yelped.
He turned her around, tucking her back against his chest and wrapped his arms around her waist. “Rematch,” he breathed into her ear. “What is the Third Point?”
He drove into her, quick, fierce, hot.
She gasped. “E-endurance! Gods, don’t stop.”
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