by Bevan Greer
“You don’t have a lick of sense, do you?” She mumbled something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like Vembi whores and flounced back to her bed, no longer expressing worry.
Ren closed the panel behind him. How could a simple Fenturi could keep him so off-balance? As he washed and changed into clean clothing, he thought about Dare.
She captained a hugely successful pirate vessel commanding several dominant creatures—Jace, a man who looked like he would never bow to anyone’s will other than his own, Roc, a Rovi with the strength to easily crush her entire crew under his fist, Shea, a red-haired spitfire who happened to be the most wanted thief on Lynar, and Mra, a Stalker cat that acted more like her companion than her pet.
Dare also possessed the uncanny sensuality, beauty and arrogance that had made the Bylarans so fearful and envious of the Fenturi for so long. Her exotic dark hair streaked with odd tips of gold and red beckoned his fingers to run through it, to recall its silken texture. Her lips never failed to tempt him to sample the ripeness of their taste. And if he stared at her a little too long, he found it difficult to break away from her laser-sharp gaze.
He turned the solar bath temperature to cold. Once more determined to keep his odd desire for the female under control, he strove for the right amount of distance and a faint trace of disdain before he joined her again.
He opened the door and found her staring at her bared shoulder in the reflecting glass by the lav. Such creamy, golden skin…
“Don’t you ever knock?” she snapped and quickly pulled her shirt back over her shoulder. He noted with surprise she wore some of the spare clothing he’d found on board the ship after a rather adventurous party thrown by the twins.
In the Vembi clothing, she looked so very feminine in the thin purple shirt and skirt that looked as if they’d been made for her. His own Vembi pleasurer, he thought with a grin.
“What?” She looked down at her feet, encased in the rough black boots she’d arrived wearing. “I’m not going barefoot.”
“Come with me.” He motioned her to follow him. Staying any longer in the privacy of his rooms with her would be a monumental mistake.
They moved together down the hall to the galley. He found Phin sitting at the table ingesting a bowl of something still squirming. Ren’s stomach heaved at the sight, but he willed the feeling away and forced himself to sit next to the Informa.
He uttered a soft command, and a hot cup of Seven java appeared before him. Dare blinked down at the bowl of Bylaran porridge he’d requested for her.
“How did you do that?” she asked in surprise.
Phin beamed. “It’s the latest in Nexian technology, my dear. A food transformitter and preparer. Of course, you have to make sure to have a fully stocked galley, but for the Bylaran Stalkers, no expense should be spared, I say.”
Ren said nothing, guzzling his cup like a thirsting man. Every time Dare shifted, he caught the provocative scent of apples and woman. He finished one cup and ordered another.
The day promised to be a long one, indeed.
Dare watched Ren with amusement. After much thought this morning, she’d decided to brave the devil in his den. Instead of the brusque warrior she’d been expecting, Ren had appeared hung-over and miserable. Not at all the brute who’d whispered last night that he could take her if he wanted to, but he wouldn’t.
She hadn’t liked his tone, had sensed the thread of darkness in his mood. But he’d left her alone, once again feeling oddly safe around a man she should consider her enemy.
Her curiosity to understand this man kept pressing at her until she thought she’d do almost anything to find out more about him. Not a good thing. She needed a diversion, stat.
Curious as a cat, she continued to subtly watch him as she ate. He looked terrible. He had an abrasion under his left eye and a bruised lip. He wore a sleeveless tunic, and his arms showed a few more scratches to match the ones he’d gotten from the Olm pirates, yet his golden skin glowed beneath them all the same.
She wondered if his chest and ribs wore bruises and flushed as a sudden heat enveloped her. Stop thinking about him, idiot. She focused on her food. Once finished, she looked up and found Phin staring at her.
“However could you not know you’re the Mari?” His small, beady black eyes watched her with fascination.
“How could you know I am the Mari?” she countered.
Phin stabbed an escaping piece of his meal before he spoke. “I’m an Informa. I see things most creatures ignore as unimportant or just plain don’t notice. I must say, though, you do a fairly decent job of hiding it, as you’re doing now. To the untrained eye you seem as desirable and beautiful as a Vembite pleasurer. But not unusual. Yet to me, your skin has a faint luminescence you never seem to lose. Plus, your bright blue eyes gleam with Fenturi energy. Don’t they Ren?”
“Hmm,” Ren murmured over his cup, though he stared at Dare as Phin did.
She squirmed, hating to be the center of attention. “I think I could look like just about anyone in the System. A Vembi? Sure.”
“But not to me,” Phin argued. “The Vembi have a darker skin tone, though with so much crossbreeding anymore, you could maybe pass as a Vembi half-blood. Yet I still see too much Fenturi in you. It’s in the way you move, Dare.”
“What?”
“Your movements are fluid and graceful, not deliberately seductive like the Vembi. Don’t get me wrong, you’re plenty sexual,” Phin said earnestly.
Dare felt her face flame. Ren, she noted, stared into his cup with a wry twist to his mouth.
“But yours is a natural byproduct of your blood, not a desirability created by falsity and cosmetics,” Phin added. Would the Informa ever shut up? He glanced over at when they entered, then he leaned closer to her. “Watch what I’m talking about,” he whispered and nodded toward the Hams.
They appeared as haggard as Ren, but without the bruises. Nesh and Ned acknowledged Ren and Phin. But the pair stopped suddenly when they saw Dare. At once, she felt a familiar surging in her body and realized with confusion the truth of the matter.
“You’re Fenturi?”
They stared back at her, recognition burning in their heated gazes. So alike she couldn’t discern any differences between the two, only by their different colored tunics could she differentiate Nesh from Ned.
The one in blue nodded to her before the one in black did. Their eyes glowed for a moment before a small movement from Ren had them banking their expressions and moving down the table from her, sitting near their captain.
When she glanced at the Informa, he nodded. “You see?”
Ren seemed angry, which further baffled her.
Though she didn’t understand what had just happened, something inside her had flared to life in recognition of the two men of her race. Yet something in them still seemed foreign to her.
She ignored Ren for the moment and studied the twins, searching inside her for a deeper sense of knowing. Both large and handsome, with an air of danger only adding to their appeal, they sported shaggy, light-brown hair and startlingly blue eyes. Their skin, like hers, seemed to be muted, as if they too tried to control their outward appearance. Dare experience a searing curiosity, connected to them in a way, but still so very different from them.
“Enough,” Ren growled, and the twins looked down at their food, consuming it as if the meal might very well be their last.
Dare snorted. “Odd for a man who hates the Fenturi to have two of them in his crew, hmm?”
The twins grinned until Ren’s sharp reply erased any sense of humor in the room. “I don’t think that’s any of your concern now, Mari, is it?” He leaned over the table, his aggression more than apparent.
Dare blinked, startled at a strange insight. She sensed an odd similarity between him and the twins. For a moment, things seemed crystal clear, as if the answer to all her questions lay in his light green gaze.
“Destination Nexios, one hour.” Primo’s voice over the int
ercom broke the sudden silence in the galley.
Ren pulled back quickly and stood. “If you want that tour, come on. You two—” he glared at Nesh and Ned “—make sure you eat enough to rebuild your strength. The stars only know how much energy you expended last night.”
Dare followed Ren out the door, but one last look over her shoulder at the twins startled her into hurrying after him. The need heating those Fenturi warriors spurred unfamiliar surges in her own body. She held a hand to her head, puzzled at what she was feeling. A connection? An emotional and…physical…connection?
For some reason, her nature seemed to be calling out to her Fenturi brethren. By the Goddess, could she possibly be projecting some of that sensuality Jace always teased her about? It would make sense, considering the sensual nature of her people and the twins’ odd reaction to her.
She stared at Ren’s broad back as he took them above deck through a stairwell. Had she done that to Ren as well? Perhaps he did have the right of it in accusing her of bewitching him. But no, he had bewitched her.
She frowned. She didn’t understand the changes in herself lately and wished she’d never gotten involved with the warrior before her. Things had been so much simpler with her crew on the SpaceStalker.
She bumped into Ren when he stopped suddenly, and he turned to glare at her. The door to the Green room stood open. Was Mra—
“Will you cease this?” he snapped and clasped her shoulders to keep her from him.
“Cease what?” she snapped back, confused and angry that she had to be here in the first place. “I’m here because I’ve been kidnapped and ordered to be here. I’m not the Mari. I know very little about my own past save what Mra has told me over the years. And if you keep shoving me around and telling me what to do, Legionnaire or not, I’ll make you sorry you ever set eyes on me.” She ripped herself out of his hold and would have hissed were she a cat.
Ren stared down at her, and a small grin curled his firm lips. He gave a small chuckle, and she wanted to slap and claw that smile off his face. Heat coiled within her.
A warm, purring body broke her concentration, and she unconsciously sought Mra’s comforting presence.
Let it go, Dare. Mra weaved around her taut body. This is not the way.
Dare realized what she’d been calling forth and eased the tight energy from her, slowly releasing it. Except she must have released it into Ren, because his eyes turned a neon green and his pupils thinned and elongated. He stepped toward her, seemingly unmindful of anything that had just transpired, and stared at her mouth with a deep hunger.
Mra stood on her hind legs and pressed her paws against his chest—just as Dare would have moved into his waiting arms.
Not yet, Garen, the feline warned. The time will come when you will finish this. But not here, and not now. Leave her with me before the Starfire builds again.
Ren blinked and stepped back, a comical expression of both wonder and confusion on his face. “Stay with Mra,” he barked the order and took off.
She would have argued with his tone, but had he not left when he did, she feared she might have done something awkward. Like jumped the man and pinned him to the wall while she had, as Shea would have said, her “wicked way” with the man. Whatever that might be.
I am in so much trouble with that man.
She stroked Mra, and they sat in silence and watched for Nexios to come into view.
Ren could still see Dare’s face in his mind’s eye as he left the scent and feel of her behind. He forced himself to move away, when he really wanted to go back up and feed the unspoken hunger building between them.
By the Dark World. He needed to get her to Nexios then back to Zebram before he did something royally stupid, like take her to bed.
He didn’t like the possessive feelings that had overcome him during the breakfast session. He’d seen the raw desire on the Hams’ faces as they’d watched her. Hell, he’d felt it as well. But to see it in another man had almost driven him to bloodlust.
He returned to the galley, centering himself. The Legionnaire captain, not the Fenturi, needed to be in charge. Once inside the galley, he nodded to the Hams and felt no hostility.
He requested another cup of java and took a deep breath, then let it out, determined to carry on like usual.
“It’s all right now, Captain.” Phin smiled. “You do know you can’t blame the female for this, don’t you?”
“You’re telling me not to blame that woman for instigating mass jealousy and confusion on my ship? I saw the way she stared at those two.”
The Hams didn’t react, still eating. Good night, but they sure could put away roasted rollak.
“No, you don’t see. Good thing I’m aboard.” Phin sighed. “You’re half Fenturi, Captain. Do you know nothing about your own people?”
Ren’s felt everything inside him shut down and clenched his fists, trying to calm his ingrained disdain of anything Fenturi.
Phin continued. “A prime Fenturi female emits a certain pheromone that attracts prime males to her. And you have to admit the Hams are prime.” Phin chortled.
“So you agree. Like I said, she instigated this.”
“No. In fact,” Phin paused, frowning in thought, “considering how ignorant Dare is about her role as the Mari and how surprised she looked when the Hams really glanced her way, I’d say she has no idea of what she’s doing.”
Pheromones? “So she’s, in heat?” The idea sounded ridiculous, but it made an odd kind of sense.
“Not necessarily,” Phin said in a comfortable voice, happiest when imparting knowledge. The Informa loved to share information almost as much as they loved gathering it.
“In Dare’s case, I’d say she hasn’t been around the Fenturi much. It’s a natural Fenturi response to revel in sensuality. Come now, Captain. You’re no stranger to pleasures of the flesh. The Hams don’t seem to have a problem getting willing participants either. It’s in your blood.”
Perhaps Ren had been wrong in assuming Dare meant to bewitch him. The more he reflected upon it, she had seemed almost as bewildered and out of control around him as he seemed to be around her.
“Sometimes she seems to be exceptionally…attractive,” he admitted. “I assumed she purposefully sought to beguile the crew to get out of here. But you’re saying she’s having a hard time adjusting to other Fenturi? That somehow the twins are affecting her, even though they don’t mean to?”
Phin nodded. “Yes. I believe you and the twins are stirring her mating instincts. It’s a natural cycle, you know. All life seeks to replenish itself by producing stronger offspring. Being the strongest Fenturi here, you must offer her the biggest temptation, though the Hams are powerful men as well. Poor Dare doesn’t understand this. You should go easy on her, is all I’m saying.”
Ren sat for a while, pondering Phin’s words after the alien left. The twins finally finished eating and joined Ren at the table.
“We’re sorry,” Ned started.
“For whatever we did to the female,” Nesh finished.
“But it’s been so long since we’ve seen anyone like her and it’s—”
“—arousing as well as confusing.” Nesh shook his head.
“I’m beginning to understand that,” Ren murmured. “Didn’t you two get it all out of your systems last night?”
Nesh sighed. “You’d think so, but there’s not a male alive that can resist a beautiful Fenturi, especially one like the Mari.”
Ned agreed. “We’re not trying to be offensive, Ren. But if you knew more about your Fenturi side—”
“—you wouldn’t be asking these questions. You’d simply accept what is,” Nesh explained. “We’ll keep our distance, if that helps.”
Ren sighed, knowing the twins had validity in their words. “No. I’m beginning to realize how much I don’t understand about the Fenturi.” He asked them a question he’d long wanted to ask. “How is it that you two are so accepting of your Fenturi heritage? You were both raised o
n Bylar outside the kingdom.” Close enough the Zedrax’s bigotry and hatred should have infected them as well.
Ned and Nesh looked at each other in understanding. “Because we cannot change who we are,” Nesh said.
“No matter how much the Bylarans wish we did not exist,” Ned added.
“—we do. We’re stronger and faster, but we acknowledge we aren’t better,” Nesh said solemnly.
“Well, I’m better,” Ned joked. “Better looking, better dressing…”
“Oh please. The Vembites come to me first. You’re a leftover Legionnaire.” Nesh snorted.
Ren shook his head, smiling, and watched the twins leave, still arguing.
When he’d selected them to join the Stalkers years ago, he’d been unaware of their Fenturi blood. Yet he’d been drawn to them both. Their strength and agility had naturally made them two of the finest fighters in the Legion. But now he realized he’d been attracted to their Fenturi nature.
How could they be so comfortable knowing they held enemy blood within them? But then, they had not been taught to hate themselves. He knew their mother had died in their youth. Their father, a Bylaran soldier, had obviously raised them to be proud of themselves and their heritage.
It no doubt helped that they had fought their tormenters together, relying on each other for support through the dark times.
Ren stared into his now empty cup. He looked out the galley portal and noted Nexios clearly in view. They’d be docking soon.
He hated remembering the past, bringing up darker times and acknowledging he wasn’t the pureblooded soldier he should have been. Sun and stars, he was tired. His body still ached, and now his heart felt uncomfortable in his chest, beating with the blood of an enemy that no longer felt so terribly wrong.
For years he’d been taught to revile anything Fenturi. Yet weeks after learning of the twins’ bloodline he’d turned a blind eye and had taken them on as his crew, both in defiance of Zedrax and to assuage his own feelings of isolation and guilt.
