Fear.

Iskar understood the concept all too well. Fear was a crucial ingredient in that elusive concoction called power.

Fear was a useful tool, but in order to be effective, it had to be tempered with hope.

The tactician in him knew the female in his arms was afraid of him, but he’d shown just enough restraint to offer her some hope. In contrast, the savage in him grew more and more restless with every passing siv.

The way her curves molded perfectly against his broad chest, one would think her body had been designed just for him. Although his shoulder still ached like crazy—the nanites in the fibrogel would have done a basic patch repair, just enough to render his arm functional—he didn’t care. The savage in him demanded this closeness; this unexpected, secret intimacy.

How surprising.

Even more surprising was that he’d tried—and failed—to put a dampener on his inner savage. The bulge in his pants was proof of that.

“It’s down here,” she said softly, pointing down a narrow, shadowy street. Her low voice wrapped its silken tendrils around him and dragged him deeper into the depths of this exquisite madness.

“Here?” He tried to conceal his disbelief. The area she’d directed him to was even more decrepit than the narrow streets he’d passed through before. Iskar’s booted feet sank into soft desert sand as he avoided scattered pieces of metal and synthetic debris. On either side of them, humans had tried to cobble together some semblance of order, constructing flimsy structures from odd pieces of junk, some of which still had the packing labels attached.

“Not the fanciest digs around, but it’s home.”

“Hm.” For once in his life, Iskar was speechless. This vexing, seductive creature, who had walked up to him with such confidence on the Glory Strip, momentarily robbing him of his senses, lived in a hovel.

This was unexpected.

Earth’s officials had given him the impression that theirs was a prosperous, utopian society, but all was not as it seemed. Behind his scarf, Iskar’s lips curved into a bitter half-smile. Why was he not surprised? It was the same all over the Universe. Officials always lied.

Was this what Torin wanted him to see? Yet another depressing truth?

“The blue door. That’s where I live.” The human pointed to a metal door coated in powdery, flaking blue paint. An unreadable word was scrawled across the door in black human-script. As they approached, she yelled something in a guttural, rapid-fire Earth language. It sounded like a warning.

“What was that?” Iskar’s voice grew sharp.

“Voice activation,” she said quietly. It was obvious she was lying.

“You know better than to try and lay some sort of trap for me, don’t you? The only reason I didn’t kill the Touched One back there was because you asked me nicely.”

The female nodded. “I-I understand.” Her body trembled slightly, betraying her fear. She was right to be afraid of him. Right now, Iskar held all the power. She was injured and helpless, and they were alone in a deserted street.

He could do anything.

“As long as you don’t do anything stupid, I won’t hurt you.”

“Got it.” Her voice wavered slightly, and she closed her eyes with a sigh. A look of defeat softened her exquisite features.

Somehow, that look punched through the shell of Iskar’s battle-hardened heart, and he was filled with a strange new emotion.

What is this? He couldn’t quite identify the feeling, but it made him hold her a little tighter, forcing her to look up. “I’m helping you, remember? We are going to go inside, and I will tend to your feet.”

“Tend?” Brown eyes fluttered in alarm.

“Tend,” he agreed. Why did it bother Iskar that the idea of him tending to her seemed to cause such trepidation?

“Why would you help me? I stole from you.”

The truth was, Iskar hadn’t thought about it all that much. It went against his nature to personally involve himself in the affairs of others, but here he was, holding a human female in his arms as if she were his personal property.

Victory had come easily, but it felt empty. He took no pleasure in her capitulation, and as he understood more about her existence, a strange sense of guilt rose inside him.

In this world, she was powerless. She stole to survive, and he had run her down like a common enemy. Physically, she was no match for him, and the chase had left her injured.

Iskar couldn’t just leave her like this. He would use the remainder of his incredibly rare and expensive nanite-impregnated fibrogel to heal her feet. It was the least he could do.

“Human, do not ask complicated questions. I have pledged my assistance. Just accept it for what it is.” He eyed the entrance to her dwelling with suspicion. “Well, aren’t you going to invite me in?”

She slipped her fingers into the pouch at her waist and retrieved a ring of small dangling metal instruments. “What are you, a vampire? You’re going to have to let me down so I can unlock the bolts.”

“Your front door does not have voice activation or identification sensors?”

“What are those?” she asked sarcastically, slinging the metal ring around her index finger. “We’re in the Dust Alleys. These are called keys. Now if you’re going to enter my house, can you please lose the hood and the face-scarf?”

Iskar tipped his head in acquiescence as her curious stare burned into him. “What, have you never seen a Kordolian before?”

“Actually, you’re my first.” Red lips parted, giving him a tantalizing glimpse of her pink tongue.

Was that intentional, or just a slip of the tongue?

Fuck. His cock strained.

There she was again, the temptress. Irrepressible, despite her fear of him.

This is the point at which Iskar knew he should just take her inside, hand her the fibrogel tube with instructions, and leave, but he couldn’t.

“Let’s go in,” said the thief, unaware that she was inviting the High Commander of the Kordolian forces on Earth into her den. Would she recognize him without the disguise? Did Iskar even care?

As if reading his thoughts, Torin raised him on the comm. “You lost, Commander? I thought you would have caught your thief by now.”

“There was a slight… delay,” he muttered in Kordolian. “I am attending to some unfinished business.” No way in Kaiin’s hells would he admit to Torin that he’d been shot by a human. How embarrassing. In his haste to catch the female, he’d been sloppy. It had been a little too long since he’d been out in the field like this.

“Nothing you can’t handle, I presume.”

“Indeed.” His voice became a low rumble as he stared at the intriguing creature in his arms.

She stirred his basest desires in the most unexpected of ways, eroding his famous self-control. Iskar was a principled man, a disciplined man, who never let his own needs interfere with duty, but now he was caught in a bind.

The human aroused his lust.

And in this empty dustbowl of a street, in this lawless part of town, on this primitive backwater of a planet, who the hell was to stop him from doing as he pleased?