Kinyi’s words haunted Tane’s sleep. Even after he’d given up on resting, their echoes followed him around his small flat. They dogged his every step as he brutalized his body in a workout that left him drenched in sweat and blood, his hands torn, his knees raw. He showered beneath the pounding stream of icy water. Even when his leg muscles quivered so much he had to sit beneath the water flow, he still heard her words.

“So, we’re going to die.”

He’d heard her acceptance, and perhaps that was the worst part of all. That was the true phantom after him. It wasn’t just the promise of the words. Anybody could have said them and he couldn’t have cared less, even if he’d known they were about Kladuu. But hearing them from Kinyi, on her lips, with that fucking acceptance on her tongue, bothered him.

He’d known she would be a problem the moment he’d smelled her. Her scent was like the tangy, almost bitter citrus fruits he bought from the street vendors that always made his mouth raw. Most people used them to clean the grime from their windows because the acid in the fruit chewed right through it. But he ate them. He savored them. And he endured having a sore tongue for days, but he lived for the days when the vendors had them for sale.

He’d pay the price of pain over and over because they were fucking delicious.

Kinyi smelled just like them.

That evening, he went to work. The upstairs bar was already well into its night of business. The bartenders nodded to him as he passed, and the waitresses, with their short skirts and high breasts, gave him bright smiles. He’d never once dabbled in the well of waitresses. They were all too young and too damn hopeful. They saw him as a way out, a way up. If they could land him, they would be saved from working at a bar where metal hands wandered, the tips were small, and the work was hard.

But they still smiled, and he still nodded back because he couldn’t bring himself to be a complete asshole, which maybe strung them along in the cruelest way.

He made his way downstairs. The basement was clean and quiet. The cage’s metal fence gleamed, and the mat was as sanitary as it could get after the morning cleaning crew had scrubbed it within an inch of its haggard life. They could always buy a new one, but Tane liked the rust-colored stains, the rips and tears, the marks of age and wear. It added to the atmosphere, and Tane understood that mat well.

Some days, like today, he identified with that beaten-down feeling all too easily.

Before he reached the back room’s door, it opened and Chance stepped out.

“Don’t you ever go home?” Tane asked.

Chance let out a soft snort. “Somebody has to do the work.”

“You gunning for my position?” Tane stopped in front of the young cyborg and crossed his arms over his chest. Back in the day when Chance had first started working at the club, they would spar. It was the only time Tane had come close to finding an opponent or a fight like what he’d had back on Kladuu.

“Every day,” Chance said with a smirk.

Tane laughed and walked around him. “Good to know.”

Chance called out, “You won’t like what you find back there.”

Tane groaned. “You’re fucking with me.”

“She was waiting outside when I got here.”

“She’s crazy,” Tane muttered.

“Maybe you should listen to whatever she has to say.”

He leveled a long look at his friend. “Why do you say that?”

Chance shrugged. “Seems important if she’s so persistent. Look.” He held out his hands. “I’ve never asked and you’ve never told, but we both know you’re not from around here. She’s not from around here either. If you have shit you need to take care of, then go take care of it. I can run this place until you get back.”

Tane’s mouth fell open slightly. He’d always thought he’d been good at hiding his secret, but Chance had seen through his act all along. But if the secret had to be out with someone, he was glad it was with this cyborg.

“Fine,” Tane growled. He flung open the door and stomped down the hall.

At his office door, he took a quick steadying breath. He told himself he was controlling his temper so he didn’t kill her, but he wasn’t stupid. He felt the flutter in his stomach. The twitch of his cock. This motherfucking female was going to kill him.

He flung open his door harder than the hall’s door.

Kinyi looked up from where she sat behind his desk, reclining in his leather chair with her boots propped on top of a stack of papers. She had his vidscreen playing the news, the blue light flickering over her face. The scales she’d torn from her skin looked more healed today, less angry and raw. She wore tight leather pants, thigh-high suede boots, and a top that revealed a large swath of pale abs. She was nothing but trafficking bait in a get-up like that, especially in this neighborhood.

“That,” he growled, pointing to his vidscreen, “is password protected.”

“It’s cute that you think that.” She held up a half-eaten donut. “These are good. What do you call them?”

He stalked around the desk and snatched the gooey, glazed mess from her hand. “Not for you.” He crammed the rest of it into his mouth, causing her to smirk. He knocked her boots off his desk. “Get up. Get the hell up. Didn’t you hear me when I told you not to follow me anymore?”

She crossed her legs in a long, slow motion that had him gritting his teeth. “I didn’t have to follow you. I know where this place is all on my own.”

“Do you disobey all the males back home too?”

She threw back her head in a waterfall of blonde hair and laughed, the smooth column of her throat on full display. She was the most vexing female he had ever met, but a nagging urge to kiss the skin under her jaw consumed him. The strength of the urge completely threw him off guard.

“They don’t even bother trying to tell me what to do anymore,” she said when she’d finished laughing. She wiped beneath her kohl-rimmed eyes. “But thank you for that laugh. It’s been a while since something was that funny. Stupid, but funny.”

She backed down from nothing. No one. Either she was incredibly brave to have come to his office, or Kladuu was in that much trouble. He figured both. And dammit if her reckless, fearless nature wasn’t a complete turn on.

And he was really craving some of that bitter fruit today.

He told himself not to do it. That it was a bad idea. But the words were already rolling off his tongue. “Get up or I’m going to kiss you.”

Her lips quirked into a smirking challenge. “Oh, really?” She pretended to consider her options for a moment, her hand on her chin in thought, then said, “Guess you’ll have to kiss me, then.”

He surged forward and grabbed her hips. The leather of her pants was warm against his skin, heated by her body. He jerked her upright.

She laughed again. Her hands went to his neck. She twined herself against him as he slammed her hips against his. With their mouths crashing together, he spun her toward his desk. He dropped her on top and swept everything but his vidscreen off with one sweep of his arm. Kinyi hooked her legs around his waist and yanked him to her. Her mouth was greedy against his, matching his frenzied pace.

He drove his hands through her hair to crane her neck back and pull her closer to him. She hissed, and he froze. “What?”

“Careful with my face, caveman.” She pulled his mouth back to hers, but not before his eyes had gone to the angry, red wounds on the side of her face. They’d started to bruise as if her body was rejecting the lack of scales.

“That’s really fucked up,” he mumbled against her mouth. “You shouldn’t do that to yourself.”

She grabbed his chin and jerked his face to the side, exposing his neck to her teeth. He shuddered as she nibbled at his flesh. “Just shut up,” she commanded.

“Fine by me.”

He released one hand from her hair and ran it down her side to her exposed stomach. Her muscles twitched beneath his touch. He normally liked his women soft and curvy, but there was nothing soft about Kinyi. Her body was pure steel against his, matching him for everything he was worth. He couldn’t touch enough of her fast enough. He shoved her shirt up and palmed a bare breast, rolling her nipple between his fingers and pinching.

Her legs clamped crushingly tight around him. With a growl, she wrapped her hand around his throat and pulled him down on top of her. The desk groaned beneath their weight, and Tane had this horrible image of them crashing to the floor in a spray of shattering wood. But the image flashed away as Kinyi shoved her hand down the top of his pants and fisted her hand around his achingly hard cock.

Upon finding that her hand couldn’t wrap fully around his width, she froze. He leaned back enough to smirk down at her. Her lips parted as she ran her hand up his length to his tip. She ran a finger across his slit, collecting the bead of pre-cum. As he watched, she withdrew her hand from his pants and placed her finger and his cum in her mouth.

He forgot how to breathe for a second.

She sucked her finger one last time and released it from her mouth with a moist pop. “Tasty.”

“Fuck,” he hissed.

He shoved her shirt up the rest of the way and lowered his mouth to her pert breasts. She arched up against him and rolled her hips against his cock like she knew every way to ride him and then some.

His heart was beating out of his chest when the vidscreen’s blue light flashed, followed by a brief emergency signal. The local news anchor droned on about the space station, but Tane heard nothing but the ringing in his ears from Kinyi’s delicious skin as he tongued her nipples, sucking one and then the other.

“Wait.” She pushed him back and sat up on her elbows so she could watch the vidscreen on the desk beside her. “Hang on.”

“What?” He stared at her breasts, which were red and moist from his attention. It took him a second to pull his focus up to her face.

She wiped a hand across her mouth. “Are you not hearing this? Turn it up!”

“Computer, volume up,” he told the vidscreen once he’d pulled himself back to reality. The anchor’s voice filled the small office.

“—mass evacuation on the Zynthar International Space Station after an alien attack. Casualties are reportedly low thanks to the containment of the fire. Small explosions have been reported, along with air quality concerns. As we speak, evacuees are being transported into the Chicago area for processing and receiving.” The anchor pressed a hand to his ear. “And this just in! Commander Gideon is reportedly missing. Perhaps taken hostage by one of the alien invaders.”

“The station is attacked all the time,” Tane said. His eyes went from the vidscreen to Kinyi and back again. She jerked her shirt back down in place.

“No.” She shook her head, still listening to the anchor droning on about what could have happened to the humans’ commander. “This was us.”

“You? As in, the Draqons?”

“As in Maxsym, our unmated Swarm Master, went to the station to assassinate Gideon. Fucking hell.” She raked a hand through her hair. “Gideon isn’t missing. He’s on Kladuu. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I have to contact Zayd. He might need me back there.”

He blinked at her. His thoughts were nestled around his still-hard cock, and he was having a hard time catching up, especially with her lips swollen from their kisses and the scent of her arousal so thick in the air. “Why?” He cleared his throat. “Why would Zayd need you?”

She shook her head and jumped off the desk, forcing him back a few steps. After adjusting her pants, she looked up at him, her jaw clenching. “Because the war might have already started.”