11. Chapter 11

I had been watching Dzur-Khan surreptitiously all afternoon. Good God, just watching him walk made me wet. That man was sheer perfection. His body didn't just look like it had been created; it looked like it had been sculpted. There were muscles on him I had never seen on a man before. He was massive, but not bulgingly so. Everything on him was well proportioned, down to his deep skin color, which drew me in even more in its exoticness.

As if his perfect body wasn't enough to make a girl weep in desire, his facial features made him downright unreal. Hard and chiseled, with perfect, prominent cheekbones that made the skin underneath appear sunken and dipped in shadow. It should have given him a sinister appearance; instead, it only lent him more severity, making him look like the ruler he undoubtedly was. Power emanated from his physique, his posture, and the arrogant line around his lips. All that only added to my arousal as he kneeled between my legs, expertly licking and sucking on my clit, taking me to the brink of my third orgasm within an hour.

I had sensed that having sex with this man would be beyond anything I had ever experienced before, but the reality of it took it to a whole other level. Fire was pulsing through my veins when he took me from behind earlier. My eyes still wanted to roll back at the memory of it. He had thrust so fast and hard into me I had seen stars, but in the best way possible. Not to mention the magic of his cock. His magic ripped, vibrating cock! What a surprise that had been. For a second, I had thought Mister Naughty was using a vibrator, but it had been way too lively for that; plus, where the hell would the king of barbarians find a vibrator? No, this was all him, and oh my God , what a ride!

Now, as his teeth carefully teased my clit, my nails scraped along the rock, futilely looking for any kind of purchase. I felt the mother of all orgasms build inside me and helplessly held on to the rock as my legs tensed around Dzur-Khan's shoulders.

And then I exploded. I exploded so violently and hotly, my entire body tensed and spasmed simultaneously. I cried out, I cried out his name, "Dzur-Kahn," as I rocked and rocked against him as he mercilessly licked my clit and lapped at the new excess of juices dripping out of my pussy.

My head fell back, hung over the edge of the rock, and I panted for breath.

"Mercy," I pleaded as his tongue made another powerful stroke down my slit .

"Are you alright?" His voice held a teasing quality to it that made me curious enough to sit up on shaking elbows to glance down at his face between my legs. Right then, as if he had timed it—which the devil probably had—his tongue swirled over his lips before he smacked them. Tilting his head, he moaned, "Delicious," sending another ripple of pleasure through me.

Fuck, that was the best sex since… who was I kidding, it was the best sex of my life. A girl could get used to it—something I had avoided like the plague until now.

"I think so," I managed to smile and sat up further.

Effortlessly, he rose from between my legs, rose and rose. It took all my willpower not to fan myself. His muscles danced, and… what the fuck. Was that a dimple in his right cheek? As if he hadn't looked devastating enough without it.

"Need help?" He offered me a hand to get off the rock, which I needed. My legs felt boneless, and his presence made me tremble like a teenage girl meeting her beloved movie star idol. I had never been struck by a man like this before.

My body creaked and cracked as he helped me into a standing position, making me seem like a klutz next to him, even though I prided myself on my excellent physical shape.

He turned and walked to where I had dropped my clothes earlier. I blinked my eyes. His backside was just as tempting as his front. All hard muscles and… ass cheek dimples! Of course, he had to have ass cheek dimples.

He handed me my clothes and watched me get dressed as he slipped back into his leather pants. For a second, I played with the idea of picking up the piece he had ripped off to keep as a souvenir, but then I got irritated with myself because I was not a simpering fangirl. I wasn't, never had been. I took what I wanted when I wanted it.

Dawn used to say that I could break any man's heart, even that of the lead singer of the band we had, astonishingly, both liked, no matter how famous they were or how many girls were throwing themselves at them. You have that quality that makes a man want you , she said with a heavy dose of envy. We were twins; we looked the same, and yet it was me men flocked to.

"That was… unexpected," he said, and it took me a moment to understand the last word.

I grinned. "Ditto," I replied in English.

He cocked his head in the most sexy way, making my pussy all chummy, and grinned arrogantly. He knew exactly how many orgasms he had wrung from me.

"We catch up with group." I brought him back to the present, hating not knowing the missing words for the sentence. I needed to work more on learning Vandruk.

His face tightened, and he gave me a tense nod.

We didn't talk as we retraced our steps, following the tracks the others had left behind, giving me time to process what had just happened between us.

I was willing to concede to a strong, very strong sexual attraction between us, but nothing more. I never got emotionally involved with men I had sex with or men, period. Or women. As far as I was concerned, emotions only got in the way of… yeah, Amber, what exactly ? A snarky voice inside me asked. Life , I replied back just as snarky. It wasn't that I was a career-oriented woman or anything like that. I nearly dropped out of high school because I was bored. I managed a semester in college before I got my degree online while working for the Navy.

I took the job in Navy Intelligence because it promised some intellectual stimuli, and it had for a while until it was time to renew my contract. That's when I decided to take a month off before I planned out the next four years of my life. Figuring I deserved a vacation, I went to New York because everyone had to see New York in their life. That's where I met Stanislav. Stanislav was the head of the Russian Mafia on the East Coast and introduced me to a new, luxurious lifestyle.

Did I know that you could buy pants for three thousand dollars? Yes, but it had never crossed my mind to do so until Stan took me shopping. And guess what? The difference between a pair of pants for three thousand dollars and a pair of pants for thirty is vast! Once I tried them on, I was hooked. Just as I was hooked to twenty thousand dollar purses, half a million dollar earrings, shoes that cost more than I made in a month, and most of all, I was hooked to Stan's apartment. A penthouse, of course, overlooking Central Park on one side and the Hudson on the other. It was decorated with millions of dollars' worth of couches, tables, paintings, knick-knacks, and whatnot.

I was tired of Stan before I was tired of the lifestyle.

Thankfully Stan took me on a trip to Vegas for a high-stakes poker game. A game I had played since I was six. Stan bought me in as a joke, as a distraction to his opponents, and by the end of the night, my bank account had swollen to two and a half million dollars, which answered my question about re-enrolling with the Navy. If I stayed in the Navy, I wouldn't be able to afford five hundred dollar thongs—and I had grown quite fond of those. At the end of the poker trip, it was goodbye to Stan and hello to my new life as a professional poker player.

Stan and I remained friends; a periodic night in the sheets guaranteed his goodwill toward me, and he was a good enough partner to keep me interested enough in him for an occasional hookup. Other men didn't like it very much when the eye candy turned out to be a better player than them. I tried to tone it down by throwing a game now and then, but overall, even after paying my taxes—Stan showed me a few tricks on how to keep that on the low end—I was on my way to add the coveted last zero to my bank account to make it a billion.

In a way, it was ironic that suddenly scrutinizing a leaf was as fascinating to me as trying to figure out if my opponent was bluffing.

Years of wearing five hundred dollar thongs had been replaced by Dawn's ten-bucks for a twenty-pack bikinis, which weren't that bad, really. All my life, I had been drifting, chasing one shiny new thing for another, looking for intellectual stimulation, which nobody seemed to be able to give me, and suddenly, none of that seemed to matter in this alien world, which held a totally different fascination for me. And yes, that included this gorgeous alien who had just literally fucked me senseless .

"Camp." The object of my last musings put a stop to my train of thought.

Not far ahead of us, I made out a few plumes of smoke rising into the slowly darkening sky. Night was falling fast here. The smell of roasting meat hit my nostrils, and my stomach grumbled. It seemed I had worked up an appetite.

"Hungry?" Dzur-Khan asked.

"Famished," I replied in English.

"Famished." He nodded with such a sexy grin I feared my panties would become all wet again.

Dzur-Khan's two warriors stood cooking around one fire while the humans sat around two others. Women and men intermingled, all of them staring at the warriors and the food being turned on the hotrock—a flat stone mounted over the fire, used to heat the meat, vegetables, and whatever else they were cooking.

Tents had been erected, ten to be exact, and I figured my time living it up in one by myself was a thing of the past. It looked like I would bunk down with the exiled Queen Bees and their cohorts.

"My tent," Dzur-Khan pointed at the largest.

"I figured," I replied, nodding my acknowledgment because I had spoken in English, and I doubted he understood me.

"You." He pointed at me. "Sleep in my tent."

"Ah, that's sweet. But no thanks. Nek, peldin." I answered partially in Vandruk. Peldin meant please and thank you at once, which could be wildly confusing, as in this instance, which was why I shook my head for emphasis .

His brow creased. "Amber, have my tent," he tried again, and I finally figured out what he meant.

"No, thank you, nek." I waved my hands in front of me.

"Is everything alright here, Dawn?" Willis joined us from out of nowhere. I groaned inwardly. I had hoped to have a more private exchange with him when we spoke for the first time.

Since he was here, though, I assessed him from head to toe. All muscles, not an ounce of fat, strong as an ox, were the first words filling my mind, followed by definitely not Dawn's type.

Hard, light gray eyes penetrated mine. If he was trying to send me a message, I wasn't getting it. Dawn would have never stared back at him, so I lowered my eyes to the ground, grinding my jaw. Men like him needed to be stared down and needed to know a woman wasn't intimidated by them. Damn you, Dawn .

"Go back to your men," Dzur-Khan ordered, but of course, Willis didn't understand him. He hadn't taken the time to try to learn a word of Vandruk, I supposed.

"What'd he say?" Willis grunted out to me.

"He wants you to go back to your men," I translated, keeping my voice low and my jaws pressed together, cursing my sister some more.

"Are you okay?" Willis insisted, putting his hand under my chin to force my head up.

With a growl that reverberated inside my stomach and sent another trickle of desire through my pussy—damn, he was hot—Dzur-Khan pushed Willis's hand back. "Don' t touch!"

"Don't touch me," Willis cursed, repeating the same words in English.

I jumped to the side, not because I was worried about getting in the middle of their grabbing match, but because Dawn would have done so.

"I'm okay," I shouted at Willis. "Please, I'm fine."

"You don't tell me what to do, alien." Willis's attention was now solely focused on Dzur-Khan.

Dzur-Khan's warriors stepped away from the fire and joined their leader, which of course, called in Willis's men, who outnumbered the aliens three to one, but I didn't think for a second their advantage in numbers would mean a win. No, my money was on the Vandruks.

"Now what?" Sandra screeched from where she still sat by the fire. "I'm hungry. Can't you tone your testosterone down until we have eaten?"

Nobody paid her any attention; instead, humans and Vandruks held a staring contest.

"Go back to your area," Dzur-Khan said, lifting his hand and pointing to where the guards had set up their tents.

"We're not done." Willis stared at him with such cold eyes that a chill rippled down my spine. And not the good kind. I knew that look. It was a promise of retaliation. The Vandruks had taken the human's weapons, and even if the Vandruks refrained from using theirs, they would still beat the humans, and Willis had to know that. The first rule of a commanding officer was not to underestimate your enemy .

Willis might be a bully, but I was willing to bet he had served, so if he thought he could win a fight against the Vandruks, he had to be holding some kind of ace up his sleeve. I needed to keep an eye on him, and I needed to warn Dzur-Khan that I had no intention of getting caught up in a fight between the two parties. My objective was to find Dawn's killer and to eliminate him, not to wage war.

I had left that part of my life behind a long time ago, having learned how futile it was to try to prevent a war when all the powers were set to go at each other.

I took the opportunity of Dzur-Khan's momentary distraction and made my way to the tents closest to the other women. There were seven of us, including me, so three in one and four in the other tent, I figured.

"Which one has a bed for me?" I asked no one in particular. Sandra scoffed toward me as if I wasn't worth her time, but Kenley lifted her hand and pointed at one. "You can sleep with us."

Great, just what I needed. Kenley had been the one who betrayed Gwyn, luring her to where the others had waited, ready to kill her. Not that I was worried about a bunch of women, but I would have preferred to sleep out in the open rather than with them. A quick glimpse at Dzur-Khan, who was staring at me, probably trying to figure out how I had escaped his clutches, reinforced the notion that he would probably drag me into his tent if I slept outside. Not that the image arising inside my head was abhorrent or anything. He could drag me anywhere, anytime, but tonight, I was on a mission and didn't need any distraction.