Chapter 9

Chapter

Nine

Torq

I leaned back in bed and glanced again at the timepiece on my bedside table. Where was she? More importantly, what had happened to me?

Only a short time ago, the idea of having a girlfriend, much less a human one, would have been unthinkable. I was a high-born Drexian who was expected to marry well and enjoy sampling as many females as possible before then. But then I’d met Jess, and she had changed everything.

I released a long breath as I thought about how I’d gone from instant fascination with her, despite her clearly lower birth and her unusual independence, to a barely controllable desire. My hunger for her had driven me to blackmail her and then to fall for her body and soul. It was hard to remember what I’d been like before she consumed my thoughts, but I knew I’d been insufferable and arrogant. I knew, because Jess had no problem reminding me.

“Infuriating female,” I muttered to myself, although I could not suppress the grin that emerged every time I thought about my mate.

In truth, I loved that she challenged me and kept me humble. It had been a first for me, but I had grown to value her opinion. Before her, I had relied on the opinion of my clan, even though I had rarely measured up to their cruelly impossible expectations. Once I had freed myself of them, and their toxic influence, I had been able to fully embrace Jess and her oddly fulfilling concept of “keeping it real.”

If I was too cocky, she told me. If I acted like an elitist, she reminded me that we were all equal. If I tried to control her, she was quick to tell me that she was not my property.

That did not mean I agreed with everything. Despite her protests, Jess was still mine. I might not own her, but she was mine. Mine to love. Mine to possess. Mine to protect.

I missed her when she was not with me, and I worried when she was late—like now. Jess had been on her way to meet me in my quarters after the meeting in the Stacks. I had been the one who had agreed to make a quick trip to the kitchens to snatch some warm bread with Volten and Kann, so why was she not here?

I had disrobed and slipped beneath the sheets, or I might have been tempted to storm from my room and search the corridors for her, something she would not like. We were still feeling our way around the parameters of being together as cadets, and hunting her down would be overstepping my boundaries .

I released a low rumble of displeasure as I stole another furtive glance beside me and saw that virtually no time had passed. I would go mad before the night was out, especially if I let myself think of all the things that might happen to her. She’d already been put at risk because of me. Was I being a fool for not making sure she was not in danger now?

It took little to convince myself that finding her was imperative, so I tossed back the sheet and stood. Before I could put on clothes and leave my room, the door slid open, and Jess hurried inside.

She stopped short when she saw me standing completely naked beside the bed. Her jaw dropped, and her cheeks mottled a pale shade of pink. “I…”

“You are late,” I rasped, my voice harsher than I’d intended.

She pulled her gaze up even as her chest heaved. “I know. I’m really sorry. I lost track of time.”

“On the way from the Stacks to here?” Even though I was supposed to be upset with her, I could not stop my body’s natural reaction to her presence. My cock twitched to life, thickening as I tried to retain my rightful indignation.

She gave me a sultry smile as she walked to me. “You know I would rather be here than anywhere else, don’t you?”

I cleared my throat as she closed the distance between us and pressed her hands to my chest. How had this woman gone from a shy, unsure creature to a confident seductress? I wanted to believe that my sex tutoring had been the reason, but I knew I could not take all the credit. Jess had always been a wildcat waiting to be released .

My cock ached with need, and I curled my arms around her waist. It did not matter that she had been in my bed last night and the night before that. I could not get enough of her. I would never tire of the feel of her, the taste of her, the sound of her when she shattered in my arms. I was so lost in thoughts of her that I almost forgot the question that I’d been asking myself half the night. “Where were you?”

She hesitated, her breath catching in her throat. She ran her fingers over my bare chest, the sensation sizzling my skin. “Do you really want to talk now?”

I unwound my arms from her waist and closed my hands over hers, stopping them from drifting farther. “Are you hiding something from me?”

“No,” her answer burst from her lips. “It’s nothing to do with us.”

Now my curiosity was piqued. “What is nothing to do with us? What are you not telling me?”

She let loose a tortured sigh as she peered up at me. “Every other woman can distract men with sex, but you aren’t going to let this go, are you?”

I smiled at her. “Trust me, cinnara. You are distracting me a great deal.” I leaned closer so she could feel just how much, and her eyes widened. “If I hadn’t been sitting here for a long time worrying, your seduction might have worked.”

She bit her bottom lip. “You were worried? Of course, you were. I’m really sorry. I didn’t think we’d be with Tivek for so long.”

“Tivek?” That was a name I had not expected to hear, and I was not sure I had heard right .

She sighed again. “You have to promise not to breathe a word of what I tell you.”

“Does it have anything to do with academy security? Will anyone be in danger if I keep your secret?”

Jess wrinkled her nose. “No and no.”

“Then you have my word.”

She nodded and her shoulders relaxed. “Tivek was helping Fiona prepare to play against Vyk in the card game. He took us to the admiral’s secret study, although it’s more like a lair than anything.”

I would have never guessed this in a million light years. “I have been there. How did Tivek know about the game?”

Jess bobbed one shoulder. “Who knows? I get the feeling the Drexian knows everything that goes on in the academy.”

I often got the same feeling. “You have been in the admiral’s private lounge all this time?”

“I got distracted by all the books, then Ariana made us cocktails…” Her words drifted off and she pressed her body closer to mine. “I’m happy to be with you now, though.”

“My quarters are not as luxurious as Zoran’s lounge, with his collection of books and liquors.”

“No.” Jess gave me a mischievous grin. “But you have something that his lounge doesn’t have.”

My pulse spiked as she slipped her hands from beneath mine and dragged her fingers down my chest to the ridges of my stomach. “And what is that?”

“Why don’t I show you? ”

Jess slid her hands lower as she dropped to her knees. I barely had time to think before she’d curled one hand around the base of my cock and closed her lips around the crown. I tangled my hands in her hair as she sucked my length deeper into her mouth and made my eyes roll back into my head.

Grek me, she had gotten so good that I couldn’t imagine giving her any instruction. Not when she took my cock down her throat like she’d been doing it for years. Not anymore. Well, there was one thing I wanted to tell her.

“Don’t get too comfortable on your knees, Jess, because soon it will be my turn, and I’m going to have you on your back and screaming my name.”

She laughed, the sound reverberating through my cock. Then she dragged her mouth up the length of me and pulled away for a beat. She gave me a hard shove, and I fell backward onto my bed. “You first, Drexian.”

Vyk

I detected voices before I even reached the doors to the staff dining room, and I hesitated before walking through them. What was I doing? I’d agreed to join the card game so I could form closer bonds with my colleagues and dispel any lingering mistrust they might harbor against me. But now, I’d turned the card game into a face-off between me and Fiona. She wanted to prove herself to me, and I wanted to do what I always did when it came to Drexian cards. I wanted to win .

Memories of past card games—of smoky backrooms that smelled of stale liquor and sweat, of surly aliens glaring at me across the worn tables, of scooping up credits as my opponents cursed me—made my fingers buzz with anticipation. It might not be fair to accept Fiona’s challenge without telling her of my prowess at the card table, but this was not about playing fair. I’d gone from wanting to use the game to show her that I was not the evil commander she believed me to be, to wanting to prove that I respected her enough to play my best.

You want more than that.

I forced the taunting voice from my mind as I entered the dining room. Two of the long tables had been shoved together to make one large square, and I recognized most of the instructors sitting on benches around it.

Kann and Volten sat next to each other on one side, as Kann shuffled a deck of cards. He rapped the glossy cards on the wooden surface before cutting them and placing two equal stacks next to each other.

Across from the two friends sat Fiona and Ariana. My heart squeezed when I saw that the captain wore her wavy, blonde hair loose, so that it fell forward as she leaned her elbows on the table.

She glanced up when I entered, her eyes flaring in challenge. “I thought you might have decided to back out.”

I let out a gravelly laugh. “Never.”

“Back out of the game?” Kann’s brow wrinkled. “Why would the commander back out of a friendly card game? ”

“Because it’s not a friendly game.” Fiona leaned back, her gaze never leaving me. “Commander Vyk has accepted my challenge to a one-on-one match.”

Volten and Kann both flicked their gazes between the captain and me, as if waiting for one of us to reveal the joke.

“She is telling the truth,” I said, as I strode forward and took a seat perpendicular to all four players. “The captain issued a challenge, and I accepted.”

Kann opened his mouth, as if to reveal that I was the last person Fiona should play against, but then he met my severe expression and clamped his lips shut.

“First, we will play as a group,” Fiona said, tearing her sharp gaze from me and smiling at everyone. “The last thing I want to do is spoil the fun for everyone.”

A pair of Drexian instructors entered, one an Iron and one a Blade, and they greeted everyone before they took seats across from me. Then Volten produced a bottle of Noovian whiskey from under the table and plunked it down next to the cards.

Ariana eyed the bottle and then him. “I hope you don’t expect us to pass it around like we’re outside a 7-11 at midnight.”

“Not sure if that means anything to anyone but me,“ Fiona told her with a grin, as the rest of us exchanged bewildered glances.

“There are glasses.” Kann stood, threw one leg over the bench, and walked to the back of the dining room where the tables usually held platters of food and pitchers of drinks. He stacked several glasses inside each other, making a tower that he could carry back with two hands. Once at the table, he unstacked them one by one and set them around the bottle .

Ariana beamed at him, her expression filled with affection. “Now that’s more like it.”

For a moment, I wondered why she wasn’t sitting next to her mate, but I suspected her choice of seat had a lot to do with supporting her friend when she played me. The pair of female human instructors had appeared to be fast friends from the moment they’d arrived at the academy, and a part of me envied their easy friendship.

My arrival at the academy had not brought me any new friends, even though there were other Drexians who shared my Inferno Force past, others who had also gone through the academy like me, even others who had been Irons. My reputation as a brutal Inferno Force commander had precluded any connections. It had only provoked fear and wariness, which I’d proved to be warranted through my involvement in the scandal of the trials.

But I had never been easily accepted into groups. Not at the academy when I’d been a poor boy from a no-name clan, not in the Irons when I’d had no lineage of proud Irons to boast of, not even in Inferno Force when I’d quickly gotten a reputation for being fiercer than any other warrior. I had been reserved when others had been loud, serious when others had been pulling pranks, and determined to win when others played for fun.

Kann unscrewed the top from the bottle and poured a measure of the whiskey into seven glasses. “Should we start the game with a toast?”

We all picked a glass and lifted it into the air, then clinked them together in the center.

“To playing fair and having fun,” Volten said .

Fiona met my eyes and downed her drink in a single gulp. “All’s fair in love and war.”

I was not familiar with that Earth expression, but I could not have agreed more. I slammed back my shot and let the whiskey scorch my throat.

There was nothing fair about what I was about to do, but I could not stop myself, even if I’d wanted to.

Which I did not.