Chapter 10

Evie

My device worked again after some fiddling. It had turned on suddenly, rushing energy over my skin that made my hair crackle, but it worked. Aramon’s expression had grown dark and grim the moment it happened, and my chest felt light and warm because of it. He didn’t care that I wasn’t Evadne, that I wasn’t a princess. He’d barked at me to turn the device off, frowning angrily, and that had made me feel like he preferred the pale, washed-out me over lush emerald skin.

“Your hair is dyed too, isn’t it?” he muttered as soon as I’d switched the illusion off. I nodded, not certain where he was going with this. Then I was moving, Aramon rolling us across the bed until I was pinned beneath his huge, heavy body. He kept himself propped up on one elbow and grabbed a hunk of my hair with the other. “You’re a redhead,” he said. “Aren’t you?” The wine red of his eyes glared at me in an accusing manner, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. When I dipped my chin slowly, my pulse pounding in my throat, his mouth split into a wide grin. “I knew it!”

He’d shrugged out of his long robe and was wearing only his leather pants. An array of clever pouches lay piled on the table next to the bed, chock-full of supplies he could hide beneath his ‘costume.’ What remained of his attire was even less capable of hiding his magnificent body than the black armor he usually wore. It made me all too aware of how close we were, how little space he’d allowed between us. Aramon, like me, felt the intense attraction—the passion that simmered beneath the surface. If I tilted my head a little, raised myself on my elbows, we could kiss. It wouldn’t take more than a few inches, and it was so tempting to do that.

Right now, in the safety of these rooms, I was myself for the first time in a long while. Aramon didn’t hate what he saw; he liked me—he’d said so. I vividly recalled how he said he’d like me even if I looked like a Rhico, an alien that resembled a rhinoceros. Clearly, his tastes were varied.

I also recalled the anger he’d clearly felt when I told him about being kidnapped from Earth and my rescue by the Xurtal. It was hard not to feel grateful for all they’d done for me and how privileged my training and education had been. I’d also had a princess as a best friend growing up, but all Aramon heard was how they’d put me in harm’s way my entire life. How they’d used me as a decoy for assassins, better me dead than their princess. And he was not okay with that.

He was also as changeable as the sea, flicking from one intense end of the spectrum to the other as easily as a switch. Angry one moment, cheerful the next. Maybe, like my haughty princess mask, that was an act, but he was quirky enough to truly work that way. I was okay with that because I was starting to believe that behind all that frenetic energy and rapid context switching, Aramon had a heart of gold. Flexible morals in some ways, yes, but when it came to loyalty, unbending. I had his loyalty somehow, and I wanted to do everything in my power to keep it. I had never had anyone so solidly in my camp before, and it felt good.

“Red, orange, copper,” I said through dry lips. “Once the dye grows out, that’s what it would look like, I think. I haven’t seen my own hair color since I was eight.” That made him frown again, so I hurried to distract him. I didn’t want him to get off me either. It felt safe to be pinned beneath him on the bed, and something inside of me was allowed to stretch and unwind. I felt relaxed for the first time in years. “Your twin, is he all right?” I asked.

I had not forgotten that he deflected my question about it earlier while prying into my secrets. When my illusion failed and Aramon discovered the truth, I felt exposed, followed by a wave of overwhelming grief for Evadne and the guards. Zandrios, Mikalys, and even the former head of her guard, Platorix. All dead. All gone. And that had done something to his twin, somehow. I didn’t understand it, but I wanted to.

The genie was out of the bottle now. For the first time, I could stretch my proverbial wings as Evie, and Evie was curious. She didn’t care nearly as much about being polite as Evadne did, either. Thankfully, Aramon did not mind context switches or mood changes.

His eyes glittered scarlet in his face, his mouth pulling into a grin that should have looked macabre with the skull-like markings, but it just looked like him—familiar by now. “Solear is not stable. He was buried alive for nine days when we were teenagers, trapped beneath rubble after riots and firefights broke out in the quadrant of the city where we lived. They were instigated by Jalima so he could move in afterward and set up shop for his drug-making facilities.” Aramon’s chest rattled with a growl, but his words were coolly matter-of-fact as he continued speaking.

“The riots killed our father, who had hired Asmoded and his mercenaries to halt Jalima’s advance. The captain rescued both of us, and we’ve been with him ever since.” That put the captain first and foremost on Aramon’s list of people he was loyal to, I could see that immediately. “But Solear… he hasn’t adjusted, he hasn’t healed. He was trying to help me figure out how to comfort you, and then… you spoke of death, and I flashed back to the riots. That is not a good place for our minds to go.”

Aramon rolled to the side, doing what I hadn’t wanted him to do: he retreated. So far, in all our meetings, he’d been the one to push while I cut him off or withdrew, but things were different now. He was a loyal male, but I could be loyal, too. I rolled to my side next to him and scooted closer, my hand sliding over his bare chest soothingly.

His arm was tossed up over his face, obscuring his expression, and he’d clenched his jaw. “I’m sorry. Is there anything we can do to help him?” I knew about being stuck in the dark—it was bad—and I’d sooner not think of it if I could avoid it. To imagine that Aramon’s twin lived with that kind of darkness all the time... it was sad.

I should have known this was a trap. Aramon was the most confounding male I’d ever met. His arm didn’t lift from his face, but the other? It snapped out and caught me around the shoulders, hauling me on top of him with implacable strength. His chest shook, and now I recognized that for what it was: laughter.

I slapped his chest, but it was a half-hearted gesture. “How can you laugh right now!? You are crazy.” And to add to the craziness, he was aroused, his cock a hard bar that burned with heat against my thigh. He lowered his arm from his face, his eyes twinkling like fireflies. That hand caught me between the shoulder blades—a firm, warm pressure that slid down my spine, and lower. Then he was cupping my ass, sending a spike of arousal through me at the unexpected touch.

“Because laughing is the only way you can deal with that shit. And that helped, by the way. Asmoded helped too; he sparred with my twin until he collapsed, and now his mind is open to me again.” He winked. “He says thank you for the offer, but he’ll find his own female.” Then his expression sobered from mirth to something much darker, instantly looking grim because of the white markings on his face. “That was the right answer. I don’t share my mate.”

The word sent a bolt of lightning through my veins. Mate. Yeah, I knew that. I had known that from the start, even though humans didn’t do that whole fated mate thing the way many species in the Zeta Quadrant did. There was only one reason I responded the way I did to Aramon, and that was it. “I’m glad you’re not a princess, you know,” he added. “I would have hated living in a palace.” Then he tipped my chin up and covered my mouth, inhaling my surprised gasp and filling my lungs with his air, with him.

That kiss set fire to my blood; it roared through my veins with a heated tingle from the crown of my head to the tips of my toes. Pleasure surged through my abdomen, clenching tightly, and Aramon responded with a wild growl against my lips, his hips bucking beneath me. Then we were rolling, nearly all the way off the side of the bed because he didn’t do anything half-assed. With my head tilted over the edge, my neck was exposed, and he took full advantage, his sharp teeth nipping at my throat, his tongue gliding along my skin. “So pretty,” he murmured, awe in his tone that could not be mistaken for anything else. “So mine.”

I wanted to protest his claim, yet I didn’t want to at all. The lost little girl inside me wanted to belong more than anything, and since Evadne’s death, she’d been untethered, adrift. Another part of me wanted to know who I was without having to pretend to be Evadne. But could I do that when I was his?

When he lapped at the slope of my breast, such heavy thoughts fled from my mind. All I could focus on was the pleasure he drew from me, the way his presence surrounded me, warmed me, and yes, claimed me. Buttons popped and scattered as he yanked the lapels of my jumpsuit apart. I didn’t care about any of that when he closed his mouth around my aching nipple and sucked. I jolted beneath him, moaned his name, and clutched at his head.

“That’s it, princess,” he drawled with a satisfied smirk, a smirk full of mischief. This time, being called princess did not feel like a weight on my shoulders; it did not feel like a reminder of the impostor I was. It felt like a caress, a compliment. That’s how Aramon saw me: as someone special, someone to be treated with care. He dipped his head and licked a path to my other breast, then gave that nipple the same treatment.

I let myself have that moment to chase away the bad memories that plagued both of us, and by extension, Aramon’s twin brother. Dragging my nails across his naked back, I felt each bump of his spine and then the edge of his pants. He growled when I did that, so I did it again. “Keep playing with fire, I dare you,” he whispered in my ear, then bit me. Not a hard bite, but a nip against my sensitive lobe, and goosebumps spread across my flesh.

I did not like to be dared, definitely not in a tone like that. My body rebelled, and with a few well-placed taps against pressure points, I had him rolling away from me. He landed with a thud on the floor, followed by a louder thump when he dropped his head against the tile and started to laugh. “Naughty, naughty female. I’ll get you for that.” He started to advance, and I scrambled backward on the bed, my hands and feet sinking into the soft mattress.

Rolling to my feet on the other side, I made the cowardly move of ducking into the bathing room. I was about to slam the door in his face when he slid his foot—his bare foot—between the door. I winced, yanking back the old-fashioned, rustic wooden panel at the last moment so I wouldn’t hurt him. Our eyes clashed.

Every inch of him was larger than life, flushed with power. His chest, a sculpted masterpiece beneath his red skin, rose and fell with barely controlled force, and his cock strained against the leather of his pants. It was a very impressive, very sizable bulge, and my core clenched as I vividly pictured what it would feel like inside me. Didn’t Asrai have rigid lines of bumps along their shafts? I vaguely recalled having a conversation about that once with Evadne, huddled under the blankets while she told me in scandalized tones what her friends had gossiped about.

“You cannot leave my sight. Captain’s orders,” Aramon growled. He was no longer the teasing, mischievous lover from a moment ago, but every inch the possessive male who had called me mate with a slip of the tongue. I’d seen the way a Xurtal male reacted when he encountered his female—they surrendered to their baser instincts. Supposedly, the Asrai weren’t that different, and he was exhibiting all the signs. His pupils were blown, his erection still hadn’t gone down, and his pulse was pounding so fiercely that I could see it throbbing in the thick vein along his throat.

Self-conscious, I yanked my jumpsuit closed over my chest. Of course, his cock had stayed hard; my boobs were still out. “I need a moment, okay? It’s too much. I…” I wanted to go back to kissing him on the bed—that’s what—but this was not the time nor the place. People could be watching. The lives of millions of Xurtal depended on the formation of this new alliance. I had to be at my best, and I couldn’t let my own wants and needs take precedence. If Aramon really was my mate, he’d still be there when this was over, wouldn’t he?

“Leave the door open,” he snapped. It sounded like a concession, but he leaned forward on the balls of his feet and bounced. That buzzing, frenetic energy was back, restlessness shivering over his skin. He did not want to let me retreat; he wanted to push. When he spun away and stalked out of the bedroom, it felt like he took my racing heart with him.

I turned my shower to cold, and trembling, I got out not five minutes later to dry myself and stare at my bedraggled reflection in the mirror. I was being an idiot, and I needed to march out there and talk to him—get my facts straight and treat this like a negotiation. We needed some ground rules. I just couldn’t see how he’d want this pale, messed-up girl instead of the regal princess.

Then my eyes landed on the shirt lying on the edge of the counter, and my breathing faltered. He’d been in here, and he’d left that for me. How much had he seen? If I knew him even a little, he had seen everything.