Coalition Academy Instructor Kira Dahl, The Colony, Base 3, The Fighting Pit

“I see the way you’re panting after him. I don’t blame you; that Atlan is so damned hot.” Hearing the words come out in my friend’s cute German accent almost made me burst into laughter. Years of discipline saved me.

I turned and glared at Melody, gave her my infamous instructor narrowed-eyes look. Actually, it was my Don’t-Fuck-With-Me cop face, but she didn’t know that. It had worked pretty well on the streets of Toronto, but Melody was a friend, and apparently, unaffected by my hard-won glare.

She glanced from the Atlan warlord, who was about to fight in the pit, to me, giving me that all-too familiar sweet and innocent look. “What? Don’t tell me I’m wrong. You’re eyeing him like an all-you-can-eat dessert buffet back home.”

I turned back to the scene before us, pursing my lips and hoping my cheeks weren’t turning bright red. While I refused to admit it, my Earth friend—and senior cadet—was right. The Atlan was one fine male specimen. Tall, dark and handsome wasn’t enough to do him justice. He had to be close to seven feet tall with a physique that made me think he ate Crossfitters back home for breakfast. But since he was standing—shirt off, I might add—in a fighting pit, he had the hard edges, the cut muscles, of a male who’d survived ruthless action. Battle. Devastation. He was scarred, and those scars made me hot. So freaking hot. I wanted to trace every single one of them with my tongue.

He had cyborg parts like the rest of them on The Colony—both of his arms were covered in the shining silver of circuitry and muscle implants. He had a thick scar on the back of his neck, but I had no idea if that was from the Hive or something that had happened in battle. After almost a year of bringing recruits to The Colony for training, I was used to seeing the silver parts of the warriors who lived here. I was no longer surprised when a fighter had glistening metal embedded in his flesh. The implants meant nothing to me except as badges of honor. He’d battled the Hive, fought hard, survived. Everyone on this planet had and I respected every single warrior here.

But this Atlan made my body go on red alert. I couldn’t see his legs, as they were covered by pants, but his back and chest were bare. Hot muscular perfection that I wanted to touch. And lick. And pet. And kiss.

My body hummed with a surprising need. My libido had gone into hibernation in recent times; as an instructor, there was no fraternizing with the cadets at the Coalition Academy, even if I was only a few years older than most of the new recruits. Abstaining hadn’t been a problem. And since the other instructors and administrators didn’t push any of my buttons, it made my no-men, no entanglements rule pretty easy to follow. But looking at the Atlan, I licked my lips. Rule or no rule, I wanted a piece of that.

“If that’s him normally, I wonder what he looks like in beast mode,” she added, leaning in and murmuring in my ear. She pointed at the way the Atlan paced, eyeing his foe from the edge of the fighting area, clenching his hands open and closed into fists. That only corded the muscles and tendons in his forearms. Holy shit. Him in beast mode? Bigger, bulkier, more dominant. Intense. Ruthless.

My pussy was yelling at me, yes, please! And the fighting hadn’t even begun yet. It was…elemental, this interest I had in him. Visceral. I didn’t know his name, his life story. He hadn’t even taken me to a dinner and a movie and yet I wanted him. Instant attraction. This was not like what I’d been told about the Everians and their Marked Mates. Nothing so intense that I couldn’t walk away and be able to function. But one Everian cadet had left mid-term because his mark had awakened, and he’d lost focus or interest in anything but tracking her down and claiming her.

What I wanted with this very large piece of man candy was a…one-night-stand kind of thing. Hot and hard. Fast and primal. I was so bad, but everything in me was screaming at me to strip naked and jump him. Name. No name? My pussy didn’t care. I wanted a man-made orgasm and my body had decided this Atlan warlord was the one to give it to me.

His opponent, from the caramel coloring and sharper facial features, was a Prillon. He paced on the far side of the pit talking with a few others, most likely discussing strategy. He was smaller, but that only meant he was well over six feet. Two huge aliens were about to face off in the well-known pit. By the size of the crowd watching from the seats that formed a semi-circle around the fighting area, it was an off-duty pastime. The buzz, the hum that came from everyone was heady. Everyone we’d met on this planet was intense, their pasts with the Hive certainly setting the tone. The fighters had rage and pain to release and the fighting pits—even if they were just watching—was an outlet for that.

“You know what they say,” Melody began. “That the size of his hands is indicative of the size of his—”

I laughed as I put a hand over her mouth, stifling the rest of that sentence. She waggled her eyebrows. So much for my well-practiced intimidation face.

“Okay, enough!”

She and my pussy were telling me one thing—jump the giant—my brain, another.

She pursed her lips together, but I could tell she was dying to say more. Our friendship went far beyond instructor/cadet. We were both from Earth, the only two in this year’s academy. While she was from Germany and I was from Canada, we had so much in common. Especially being a galaxy away from home. She was almost finished with her training at the Coalition Academy and would move on to an official fighting assignment upon graduation. I was an instructor there; the youngest the Academy had ever had. Because of my age, I had more in common with the cadets than with the other teachers.

And Melody? She was a riot and I adored her. Except for right now. It wasn’t often she could poke fun at me—we didn’t have tons of downtime when I wasn’t her instructor and there were rank protocols to follow then—and she was enjoying herself. Immensely.

It was also rare that we weren’t on Zioria. Off-planet training missions occurred in the last few weeks of a term, and only with those about to graduate. It was our last chance to run full-scale battle simulations and try to prepare them for what was coming. There were a few other human instructors, most of them ex-military or CIA. Strategy. Weapons. We called the young, aggressive, naïve recruits zygotes. Babies. All of them. From every world. They had no idea what they were getting into.

We did. We knew what was out there. I’d been with the Intelligence Core for over three years now, the Coalition Academy teaching position my cover for sensitive operations. But I had a job to do with these recruits, and I took it seriously. The better we did our job training them, the fewer had to die.

That was why we were all on The Colony, doing mission simulations with this term’s graduates. But those were completed, and now we had a night for the group to relax. For me to relax.

Or fuck an Atlan.

“He is hot,” I offered, then bit my lip. When she rolled her eyes, I added, “Fine. He’s absolutely gorgeous if you like that dark, brooding giant type.” I sighed. “Which I do.” Oh, I so do.

“There are no rules against getting it on with a hot Atlan beast,” she replied.

“We’re here on The Colony for cave training,” I reminded her. My specialty was stealth training. Get in, get out, don’t get caught. As far as the warriors knew, if they were captured by the Hive, it was over. No one was coming for them. And ninety-nine percent of the time, that was true. But for the other one percent, there was the I.C.—the Intelligence Core. In teams of two or three, we went in and recovered high level targets.

It was dangerous, but important work. The Hive couldn’t be allowed to break open the mind of an I.C. team member. We knew too much. About everything.

Two fighters walked along our row and we stood to let them pass, both of them huge Prillon warriors. They looked at us like we were candy and sat not too far away, on my left.

Testosterone overload. Too many hot warriors. We were literally surrounded.

The Prillon duo stared, made sure I knew they were interested. But I only had eyes for one warrior at the moment. And he was magnificent. My entire body went into heat at the sight of him. God, that Atlan was fucking hot. I’d only run into an Atlan a couple of times. They kept to themselves at the Academy, their instructors huge Atlan warriors themselves just in case one of them lost control of his beast during training.

Their women didn’t go into beast mode and didn’t fight in the Coalition, which I refused to have an opinion on. I knew their males were big, protective, dominant—big.

The shiver that raced through my body had nothing to do with the Prillon warriors scooting closer, and everything to do with the play of shadows over the Atlan fighter’s abs. I wanted to lick him there, make my way down…

“Training’s been over for two hours,” Melody was talking. Why was she still talking?

She sat back down and prattled on, oblivious to the Prillon warriors and their obvious interest. “You’re the one who dismissed us all and told us to have some fun for our last night on the planet. Our transport back to the Academy isn’t scheduled until tomorrow. You have all night.” She leaned toward me, bumped her shoulder into mine.

More spectators filled the stands until it was practically overflowing. They all wore the uniform of their position and rank prior to arriving on The Colony. Every warrior was covered in light-weight battle armor, most camouflaged black and grey for deep space battle. Melody and I were the only ones in Academy uniforms, hers gray, mine black, indicating my role as instructor.

“I’m not looking for a mate.” Absolutely not. Men complicated everything. They were selfish. Controlling. Difficult. Assholes. At least the ones I’d tangled with on Earth. Because of that, I’d avoided the ones in space, even the alien hotties that had crossed my path working for the Academy and my side stint in the I.C. The warriors in the I.C. weren’t selfish, but they were definitely controlling, dominant and would be difficult to deal with in an intimate relationship.

I didn’t need a man telling me what I could or could not do. I was not ready to settle down and be a baby machine for an alien when there were people out there who needed me, people I could save.

The way I hadn’t been able to save my parents.

“Who said anything about a mate? I thought we were talking about hot sex here, sister. And he’s practically screaming with hotness.”

“If I wanted a mate, I’d have joined the Interstellar Brides Program,” I added, making it blatantly clear my stance.

“Okay, but you have had a fling back before? Back on Earth? At least one?”

I offered her a shrug in response. Earth was behind me. What I’d done there was irrelevant to my life now. Although I could say I’d never seen such a fine specimen of the XY chromosome on display as in the fighting Atlan.

All at once the crowd cheered, many stood, some put their hands to their mouths and shouted. The two fighters in the pit began to pace back and forth. I didn’t know how this fighting thing worked here, what the rules were. There was no ring, no ropes, no corner stool. There weren’t mouth guards or headgear either. No referee.

“Well?” Melody asked, and I remembered her original question.

“Yes, I had a couple one-night stands,” I replied, as if I was weird if I hadn’t. “Nothing all that wild.”

She laughed and pointed at the Atlan who was moving to the center of the pit. “That’s because there is nothing as wild as him back on Earth.” Her hand came up and she fanned herself.

No, there wasn’t.

The two fighters kept their distance, about five feet between them, as they circled. I could see the play of muscle across the Atlan’s back, the way his shoulders bunched and relaxed as his arms moved in front of him. Even with their size and heft, their feet were quiet on the packed earth. These weren’t newbies at the Academy, fresh faced and eager to prove how brilliant and ruthless they supposedly were. No, these two had met the Hive personally, seen too much and were most likely jaded, dark edged and ruthless.

The Prillon warrior was handsome, in his own way. Big. Muscular. Focused. But I barely noticed him. I couldn’t take my eyes off the Atlan.

Based on my Coalition training, I knew they were sizing each other up, discovering their dominant stance and other tells. They spoke to one another, their low, baritone voices making my pussy clench in heat. His voice. God. I leaned forward, trying to hear their words. The threats. The challenge.

I wasn’t normally one to enjoy violence, but I had to hit my thighs with fists to keep myself from standing, from yelling at the Atlan to end him. I knew my Atlan was going to be impressive. His size. His strength. The intensity in his eyes. I wanted him to be powerful. I needed him to be magnificent. The need was shocking, but pounding through my blood like a low level electrical current. Like a pulse. And I couldn’t look away.

I held my breath and waited for the first strike. This was going to be quite a match.

The Atlan came about so he faced us once again. His eyes were on his opponent, laser sharp. His left leg was forward, his left hand up, open handed, his right lower and guarding his center.

“Yes! Go, go go! Do it!” The words exploded out of me with a violence that was shocking. I wanted to hear the strike of his fist on the Prillon’s flesh. I suspected I was losing my mind a bit, maybe overreacting because of all the stress I’d been under the last few months, but I felt wild. Totally out of control. I needed the satisfaction of watching my Atlan pound his opponent into dust.

My pussy wanted it too, so hot and wet I was throbbing with need, like this was foreplay, not a pit fight on what amounted to an alien prison colony.

For some reason, he glanced away, into the stands. He smiled, said something to the other fighter. I didn’t have to hear the words to know it was a taunt and I wished I could hear what he’d said. Right or wrong, I knew it would turn me on.

Once again, he looked to the audience, this time though, his eyes met mine.

Held.

My heart skipped a beat. It was that weird feeling, like riding in a car and going over a rise, the plummeting sensation that makes one’s skin hot, sweat breaking out on a cool brow.

“Holy shit,” Melody mumbled. I felt her grip my elbow, dig her fingers in, but I didn’t turn my head. I couldn’t.

Those dark eyes looked at me. Saw me. Held me pinned in place. My breath was trapped in my lungs. My breasts were heavy and hot and I couldn’t move.

“Um, Dahl. He’s looking at you.”

No shit.

The Atlan, seemingly brought out of his stupor over me—which was ridiculous because I was far from exciting in my plain uniform, my hair pulled back in the usual low ponytail—began to move again, doing that circling thing once more, but he continued to watch me.

Me!

“He’s going to get knocked out if he doesn’t focus on the match,” I murmured. I bit my lip, suddenly worried for the big guy. Distraction was not what he needed at the moment.

My ovaries liked that I was his distraction though. My pussy clenched, my nipples got hard from the way he was watching me. God, it was powerful. Was this what the Everians felt like when their marks awakened?

No, this wasn’t like that. I didn’t feel it in my soul. This I felt in all my female parts. Every single one of them. This was pure lust. I was aroused by him. Seriously turned on. I wanted him. Not to keep, but to make this ache go away. And if he was as big everywhere as Melody had been joking about, then it would be an amazing ride.

I did have twelve hours free and clear of my duties. No teaching, no missions for the I.C. Nothing but downtime where I could relieve this ache that was growing by the second. And I wanted the Atlan to take care of it for me.

If he didn’t end up in the med unit first.

The Prillon let out a bellow and attacked. I sucked in a breath as he charged, fists at the ready. The Atlan didn’t look away from me, not until the very last second when he punched, lightning fast.

The crunching sound of bone breaking could be heard over the din of the crowd. Blood spurted from the Prillon’s nose as he fell, like a redwood in the forest, to the ground. His arms didn’t go up to stop his fall, indicating he’d been knocked unconscious immediately.

One punch. That was all it took. The fight was over.

The Atlan took a deep breath, let it out, and I watched the ripple of his eight-pack abs as he did so. He gave the Prillon a quick look, glanced at the medical team, who was already running toward the fallen warrior, then looked back at me.

He strode across the pit and to the edge of the stands, straight toward me, like we were connected by a wire.

The crowd parted like the Red Sea before Moses and they turned to see what held the Atlan’s attention. Behind him, the Prillon was being assisted and I could see he was coming to, his blood staining the dirt. His jaw at an awkward angle, obviously broken.

Ouch.

“Um, Dahl, he’s really staring at you.”

I glanced at the others who had come to watch the fights and they were all looking at me, too.

When I looked back at the Atlan, he had his hand up and he curled his finger. Beckoning me.

I gulped. Swallowed. Was he really talking to me?

I looked around. Everyone was watching me, waiting to see what I would do.

Oh, shit. All me. I wasn’t imagining things.

Melody pushed me and I stumbled forward. “Go, woman!”

I stepped down a row, closer to him, glanced back at Melody. She had a sly smile on her face. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Well, no, do a whole bunch of things I wouldn’t do.” She nodded her head, giving me some kind of reassurance for going after the Atlan.

I licked my lips, looked at the Atlan again. Oh yeah, I wanted him and he obviously wanted me.

His skin had a slick sheen of sweat that only highlighted each and every one of his rippling muscles. He turned his hand over, palm up, saying without words that I should take it.

I went down the rows, one after the other until I stood before him. He was so damned big, well over a foot taller than I was, closer to two.

Pheromones must be pumping from him because all I wanted to do was lick his neck and taste his salty skin. Run my palms over his torso and lower to the button on his pants. To grip his cock, stroke it. Rule him.

I wanted to own him. Pet him. Ride him. I wanted him, all of him, just for me. Filling me up. Making me beg. Making me come all over his huge—

His fingers came up, stroked over my cheek and I held my breath. The feel of the gentle caress was unnerving and surprising considering his size.

“Mine,” he said, his voice loud, as if he were telling everyone who could hear that I was off the market. I thought of the crestfallen looks that were probably gracing the faces of the two Prillon warriors behind me and stifled a smile.

For now, for tonight, he was all mine.

So I put my hand in his, ready to spend a wild night with an Atlan—and hopefully, his beast.