The next evening was another round of the Tournament, and Talia didn’t feel her normal reluctance about attending.

She wanted to see Desh fight.

She wanted to see him win another round.

She was absolutely sure that he would.

It was a strange feeling and one she couldn’t remember ever experiencing before. Something akin to pride.

She didn’t mention it to Jenelle as they took their seats in the leisure suite section. In fact, except for telling her friend that last night had gone well, she didn’t talk about Desh at all.

But she felt restless and jittery as she looked around at the packed arena and waited for the fights to begin.

“What happened last night?” Jenelle asked out of the blue.

Talia stiffened her shoulders. “What do you mean?”

“You think I can’t see how you’re feeling? I told you not to romanticize. It’s work, Talia. Nothing but business.” Despite her words, Jenelle’s voice wasn’t sharp. It was almost gentle.

“I’m not romanticizing. I’m not doing anything at all.”

Jenelle slanted her a dubious look.

“All right,” Talia admitted with a sigh. “I’m feeling… I do like him. I… I enjoyed last night more than I’ve ever enjoyed being with a man. But I’m not being stupid. I promise. I thought it was all right to enjoy it.”

“It is.” Jenelle’s expression was subdued, but she didn’t continue the conversation. That fact alone was enough to make Talia worry.

She didn’t have time to worry much, however, since the announcer was speaking and the Combatants were starting to enter the rings.

Five combat rings this week.

Talia waited breathlessly until she saw Desh walk out in his mask. The other Combatants were playing to the crowd—shaking their fists and raising their arms—but Desh didn’t do any of that. He ignored the cheers and walked over quietly to take his place.

He looked almost small next to the monster of a man he had to fight tonight. For a moment Talia was worried.

Then she remembered he’d spent years on Mel Tana. He’d taken less than a minute to defeat his opponent last week.

He was better at this than anyone.

He would be fine.

As the Combatants waited in place for the buzzer to sound, Talia noticed Desh turning his head in her direction. From this distance, she couldn’t imagine he could actually see her in the audience, but the move of his head seemed to acknowledge her, as if he were thinking of her.

She hugged her arms to her chest, trying to hide a shiver of pleasure.

“Damn,” she heard Jenelle mutter under her breath.

Talia would have turned and asked about the soft curse, but the buzzer was sounding the beginning of the fights.

She was excited as the Combatants advanced, but her excitement soon transformed into something very different.

After the first couple of minutes, she was concerned. Desh didn’t seem to be doing as well.

After another few minutes, she was cringing, her heart racing up in her throat. Desh’s opponent was twice his size, and Desh couldn’t seem to get a handle on him.

After a few minutes, Talia was hiding her eyes, peeking out from between her fingers and trying not to whimper.

Desh had gotten thrown bodily across the ring, and before he could get to his feet again, the big man had grabbed him in a ruthless hold that looked like it would break his back.

As Desh struggled futilely to free himself, Talia had to look away, closing her eyes and afraid she might be sick.

She was going to be sitting here while the man killed Desh. Combatants weren’t supposed to kill their opponents, but it did happen occasionally.

There were no real rules or boundaries in these fights. Combatants could do what they needed to do to win.

“What’s happening with him tonight?” Jenelle asked breathlessly. There were four other fights going on at the same time, but she was obviously focused on the same one Talia was. “He did so much better last week.”

Talia tried to answer but couldn’t. She’d glanced back over and almost choked as she saw the big man had forced Desh to the floor. She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed to any force in the universe that might hear her.

“He’s got it,” Jenelle said in a different voice. “He’s gotten control of it again.”

Talia breathed again as she opened her eyes to see that Desh had indeed regained his footing. She watched openmouthed as he evaded his opponent’s reach once. And then again. And then again.

Then Desh managed to get behind him and, with some fancy footwork, kicked out at the other man with a sharp impact on the back of his neck.

The big man went down and didn’t get back up.

Talia slumped in relief as the crowd roared in excitement.

Desh was hurt. She could see it in the way he stood, the way he walked.

But he’d won this round, so she could breathe easy again.

***

Two hours later, she went to Desh’s room.

They hadn’t made a firm appointment, but the way they’d ended the night before had made it clear Desh wanted to see her again. Even if he wasn’t up to sex tonight after the fight, she needed to make sure he was all right.

When the door slid open and Desh wasn’t in the doorway, she stepped in, looking around.

She gasped when she saw Desh sitting on one of the straight metal chairs.

She’d assumed he’d gone to get medical treatment for his injuries, but he clearly hadn’t. He hadn’t even washed up after the fight.

He still wore the trousers he’d worn to fight in and nothing else. Blood was drying on the side of his face and the back of his shoulders. He was leaning over, supporting his head with one hand on the table.

“Desh!” she cried, hurrying over. “What the hell are you doing?”

He didn’t answer. Just stared at her with pained blue eyes.

“You’re hurt! Why didn’t you go to the med unit?”

He opened his mouth and then closed it again.

“Desh?”

He finally rasped, “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. You’re bleeding. Let me take you to—”

He pulled away from her hands with a slight wince. “I said I’m fine.”

“Well, you’re not fine.” She stood and stared at him, anxious and confused. “You really won’t go let them fix you up?”

“I don’t need to be fixed up. There’s nothing serious.”

He didn’t sound like himself. He sounded tense, clipped.

She was too worried to work out why though. She went to the sink in the nook with the bathroom and wetted down a soft cloth. When she returned to Desh, she started to wipe the blood off his face.

He leaned away from her. “You don’t need to do that.”

“Would you just shut up?” She was so rattled she sounded almost bad-tempered. It wasn’t the right way to talk to a guest in the Residence, but she’d completely lost her patience with him. “If you’re not going to go to the med unit, you’re going to put up with me.”

He started to object again. She saw it in his face. But then he stopped himself and sat still as she wiped the blood off his face.

He had several cuts, but the deepest was on his temple and just above one of his shoulder blades.

The skin was ripped too much for a cloth and bandage to do much good.

She looked up and saw that Desh’s eyes were focused on her through the mirror over the table.

She shook her head at him. “You really won’t go to the med unit?”

“I said I’m fine. I’ve been injured a lot worse than this, and there are no med units on Mel Tana.”

She gave him a little scowl, fed up by his stubbornness, but then she saw him cringe as he shifted in his chair.

“Do you have any broken bones?”

He started to shake his head but then admitted, “A couple of cracked ribs maybe.”

She made a frustrated noise in her throat. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

“What are you—”

“I said stay here.”

When she left his room to hurry down the halls of the Residence, she felt the almost irresistible urge to wring his neck.

What kind of stupid, stubborn man would just sit there in pain when he could do something to feel better?

What the hell was wrong with Desh?

When she reached the med unit, she asked to borrow a handheld medical device—an all-purpose unit that could deal with most injuries—and on her way back to Desh’s room, she felt less annoyed and more concerned.

Desh wasn’t just being stubborn.

He’d almost lost the fight earlier when he shouldn’t have.

Something really must be going on with him.

When he let her back into his room, he hadn’t moved from the chair. She went over and started running the device over his body, starting with his head. It mended the torn skin in just a few seconds and then took longer to work on the cracked ribs.

It even had a setting to make a person unconscious. If Desh was too frustrating, she might be tempted to use it on him.

He was going to be covered with bruises, but even technology couldn’t do much to fix that.

Desh sat in stiff silence as she worked over him, but she saw his posture change as his wounds were mended and the pain was relieved.

When she was done at last, she put the med device on the table and went to rinse out the cloth she’d been using earlier.

After rewetting it, she started rubbing it over his skin again, cleaning off the remaining blood and the dried sweat on his face and body.

She felt shaky and strangely tender as she cleaned him up.

When the silence became too deep, she said, “See? If you’d just gone to the med unit right away, you could have felt better in fifteen minutes instead of being in pain for hours.”

His blue eyes held hers in the mirror. “The injuries weren’t that bad,” he said hoarsely.

“But they were still injuries. Why shouldn’t you make them better?”

“I’ve had far worse before, on planets without med devices.”

Her eyes widened. “So what? So just because you’ve suffered before, you have to suffer now?”

He broke her gaze, staring blindly at a spot across the room.

As her words lingered in the silence, she suddenly realized they were true.

They were entirely true.

Desh did feel like he was supposed to suffer.

Part of him even wanted it.

He’d spent years depriving himself of the most basic kinds of comforts, depriving himself of sex, of any sort of pleasure.

He wanted to suffer.

“Desh,” she whispered, on the verge of tears. He was mostly clean now, and the physical pain was obviously gone, but he looked haunted, broken, lonely.

She reached out for him instinctively.

“Don’t,” he muttered, easing away from her hands.

She stared at him for a long time, trying to figure out what she should do, what she could do.

Finally she asked softly, “What happened in the fight this evening?”

He let out a breath and turned his head to meet her gaze again. He gave a very slight shrug. “I… I lost focus.”

She didn’t know what to say to that, so she just stood staring at him, shaking slightly.

After a minute, he went on, “I knew better, but I lost focus. My mind was on… something else.”

She suddenly understood why he kept pulling away from her. “On me? Was it… my fault?”

“It wasn’t your fault. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have… let myself take what I wanted.”

“What? You think because you had sex you somehow lost focus? That’s crazy, Desh.”

“It’s not crazy, Talia. That’s exactly what happened.” He stood up and met her eyes evenly, looking strangely hard, strangely cool. “I knew better than to indulge myself, but I did it anyway. And I almost lost everything because of it.”

She clenched her hands at her sides. “What do you mean you lost everything? You won the fight, and surely this Tournament isn’t the most important thing anyway. What about you? What about what’s good for you?”

“What’s good for me is to do what I’m here for.”

“And what’s that?”

He kept looking at her but didn’t answer.

“Desh?” she prompted. “What is it? What’s so important about this stupid Tournament that it’s worth suffering for, denying yourself everything for?”

“It’s not the Tournament. That’s not why I’m here.”

“Then why are you here?”

He opened his mouth like he would answer, but then he seemed to recall himself. He jerked slightly and turned away from her.

Then he took a couple of steps away and sat down on the edge of the bed, suddenly looking very young, very vulnerable.

Talia was almost in tears, and she couldn’t have explained why. She went over to the bed to sit beside him. “Desh, please talk to me. Why are you here, if it’s not for the Tournament? What’s more important than you being happy?”

He didn’t reply. He didn’t even look at her.

At the end of her patience, she reached out and turned his head so she could see his expression. “Desh, tell me. Why do you think you always need to suffer? Why won’t you let yourself feel good?”

They stared at each other with a strange intensity, and then suddenly something broke inside Desh. She saw it happen. His features twisted briefly, and he made a rough sound in his throat.

Then he was leaning into her, taking her head in his hands.

He kissed her.

He kissed her so urgently that he pushed her down onto the bed.

She’d never been kissed before—not really and definitely not like this. Her job was sex, and kissing had never been part of it. But she kissed him back immediately, instinctively. There was no way she could stop herself. She tangled her fingers in his thick hair, still damp from sweat and the wet cloth she’d wiped his face and neck with. She opened her mouth as his tongue nudged at her lips, and she moaned as the kiss and the weight of his body generated all kinds of tingling pleasure.

Her tongue played with his as arousal tightened between her legs. He was hard against her. Already. She rocked up into his erection, loving that he was so eager for her, that it took so little to turn him on.

“Oh fuck, Talia,” Desh breathed, finally breaking the kiss to nuzzle at the hollow of her neck. “What are you doing to me?”

The helpless question just made her even more needy, more excited. She arched up into his body, running her fingernails down his bare back. He was hot and damp and smelled like effort. He filled her senses.

He lifted up enough to fumble at her clothes until he’d untied her tunic. He stared down at her hotly for a moment before he lowered his face to one of her breasts. He teased it with his lips and tongue until she was crying out helplessly. Then he moved to the other one, suckling until she couldn’t hold still. She squirmed and moaned and clawed at his back.

When she couldn’t take any more erotic torture, she undid his trousers and reached inside so she could find his cock. He gasped and jerked against her as she wrapped her hands around him.

“Talia,” he rasped, closing his eyes. “What are you doing to me?”

It was the same question he’d asked before. He was rocking his hips slightly into her hands, but he wasn’t making any further advances. A flicker of worry caused her to ask, “Do you… do you want this?”

“I want it more than anything.” The admission seemed to be ripped out of him, and he finally opened his eyes. “I want you so much.”

She groaned in relief and spread her legs farther to make room for him. She was very wet, very aroused, and she desperately needed to feel him inside her. She helped him align his erection at her entrance and then bent up her knees as he started to edge himself inside her.

“Oh fuck,” he moaned as the penetration deepened. He was holding himself up on straightened arms above her, and his face was twisting in obvious pleasure.

She bent her knees up even more so she could feel him more deeply, and she dug her fingernails into the back of his neck. She rolled her hips, and he groaned again.

His responses were raw, helpless, uninhibited.

Utterly genuine.

She loved that she could make him feel so good.

He held himself tensely above her, not moving his hips, so she wrapped her legs high around his back and lowered her hands to his firm ass.

She rocked her hips up into him a few times until he started to thrust.

His motion was fast, urgent, uncontrolled, and it felt so good she arched her neck and cried out her pleasure. She moved with him, squeezing around him on every thrust.

“That’s right,” she heard herself panting after a minute. “Faster. Harder. Take me harder. Desh, please!”

The bed was attached to the wall, but they were shaking the mattress vigorously. She could hear their flesh slapping together, and the rawness of it intensified her pleasure.

Desh was grunting like an animal now, his eyes fierce as they gazed down at her. He’d finally let himself go, and all the passion and effort he’d controlled for so long was pouring into this one carnal act.

She felt her pussy clamping down as an orgasm hit her unexpectedly, and she choked on a loud cry as her body shook and spasmed. Desh gave a strangled exclamation as she squeezed around him, but he didn’t stop fucking her. He pushed into her even harder, his grunts so loud they were almost shouts.

Then he was coming too, his face contorting and his body jerking clumsily as it rode out the spasms.

He’d obviously come hard, so hard it took everything he had. After his final bellow of release, he collapsed on top of her.

She held him with her arms and her legs, her body still making little aftershocks of pleasure as it relaxed.

They were both gasping loudly in the otherwise silent room, and Talia was so hot and damp that she thought she might melt.

Her body felt so incredibly good.

And so did her heart.

So did her heart.

She didn’t want to let Desh go.

Eventually, however, her legs started to cramp up, so she carefully unwound them and stretched them out.

Desh moaned as his softened cock slipped out of her with a sound of wet suction. He finally lifted his weight off her as he rolled over onto his back, still panting unevenly.

She stroked his chest gently, and he turned his head to meet her eyes.

“It’s okay for you to feel good sometimes,” she murmured.

“I don’t know.” He shook his head slowly. “But there’s no way I can help myself with you. You… shatter me.”

She didn’t know what to say to that.

He shattered her too.

Finally she said, “If you really think I’m not good for you, I don’t have to come to your room anymore.”

“You have to come,” he said thickly. “I can’t do without you anymore.”

She smiled. She couldn’t help it.

No one had ever felt that way about her before.