SIX
“Female,” Devix started, ending the targeted training program with the Com on his forearm. The flickering image of an Azatian—Sarkon’s idea of a jest—faded into nothingness, but the stinging slice on his arm from the hologram’s blade didn’t disappear, reminding him of the danger had she walked in a moment earlier. Something tightened in his chest, but it was anger in his voice when he said, “You should not be in here.”
Cara—her name floated through his mind like a warm Luxirian wind—was staring at him. Her eyes raked down his bared, heaving chest before saying, “This room wasn’t off limits. I was curious.”
“I am making it ‘off limits,’” he snarled, frustrated with himself. Weapons lined the walls, his own little arsenal he’d collected over the rotations he’d been under Sarkon’s employment. “It is dangerous.”
“Afraid I’ll steal one of those?” she tested, gesturing to a long blade he doubted she could even lift, given her small frame. “Afraid I’ll hurt you?”
Devix approached her with a growl, his footsteps eating up the space between them rapidly. She had the good sense to recoil a bit, her eyes flickering with wariness. Good, he told himself, even though his Instinct rebelled inside him, hating him for frightening their mate. It was better that she fear him.
Then her eyes caught on his nipples, on the bold gold bars that pierced through, evidence that he’d completed Luxirian warrior training, joining one of the elite. Her lips parted, her feet halted…and then that tantalizing scent, the one he’d scented on her before, her arousal, met his nostrils. It floated up from her body like steam, filling the room, making it hard to think, fogging his vision.
His female was aroused.
Her scent called to his Instinct, to the beast rumbling within him. His cock pulsed in response, growing impossibly thick and hard. The horns on his skull stiffened, rising from his crown.
Cara had been aroused in the hallway earlier, when he’d been frighteningly close to pushing her up against the steel wall and rutting between her thighs like a crazed animal. The mating call was at work, already had a strong hold over his mind and actions. Devix worried that the longer he denied his Instinct, the stronger it would become. He worried that there would come a time when he wouldn’t be able to control it.
“Female,” he rasped, close enough where he could make out every little hair that lined her eyelids. “If you manage to steal one of my blades and draw my blood, then I deserve it.”
Cara sucked in a breath, her black pupils roving over his features. The whites of her eyes, something Luxirians did not have, made her eyes more expressive, he realized.
He could not have predicted her next words, however.
“Teach me.”
His lips turned down. “Rebax?”
As if she understood his language, she repeated, “Teach me. I want to learn how to fight, to defend myself.”
His Instinct recoiled in his chest, insulted and appalled. Did his female not think he could protect her?
Nix, he thought, shutting his eyes against the painful remembrance. Not his female. She belonged to Sarkon now.
“Nix,” he told her, his expression grave. “It is dangerous.”
She expelled a sharp breath, her expression morphing into something he didn’t recognize. She pushed at his chest. The contact of her skin made him want to groan out loud. He felt it sizzle and settle into every part of himself, reaching places he thought long had been cold and blackened.
Her eyes flashed, but not in lust this time. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those overbearing men who think women can’t do anything but cook and push out babies.”
“Rebax?” he asked, confused at her words. On his planet, females did bear many young—or at least they used to before the Plague—but they were also skilled in many other tasks. Fighting, however, was unheard of. Females were precious and highly respected on Luxiria. Any harm that fell on them was a wound worn by all males. The thought that they could become injured during battle was unfathomable. “Females do not fight.”
“Oh my God,” she breathed, eyes widening. “You are one of those overbearing men.”
No, he was a Luxirian warrior, he thought with irritation. Or at least, he had been.
“It is not because I do not think females capable,” he explained. “No male would allow their female to be put in danger.”
“Good thing I’m not your female then,” she hissed.
Even though his Instinct felt her barbed words sting, Devix wanted to laugh. And he hadn’t laughed in eight rotations.
He liked her fire. He liked the way she stood up to him.
If they had been mated already, he thought, if she had accepted him into her heart, her body…he would punish that mouth with a thorough fucking that turned those words into pleasured screams. And then he’d probably give in and do whatever she’d wished for in the first place.
His belly tightened with lust.
Tev. He’d be a pushover as a mated male. Now he understood why his mother had been the ruler of their family unit, not his sire.
The memory of loss sobered him and he stared down at his female, crossing his arms over his chest. Her eyes caught on his muscles, muscles that had taken most of his life span to develop and hone through training, through war.
Instead of looking at her form through the tinted lens of lust, he looked at her from the perspective of a war general surveying a new recruit.
Cara was smaller than Luxirian females. The top of her golden crown hit the middle of his chest. The tunic was large on her, but he could see her slim arms and legs, with hardly any muscle definition. Whatever tone she’d had had been lost during her captivity in the Pit, no doubt, he thought solemnly. She looked undernourished, hungry.
Devix didn’t know what he could teach her in just six spans that would defend her against beings three times her size, three times her strength.
But then he remembered her fire. The smoldering embers that burned deep within. What she lacked for in physical strength, she made up for with a strong mind and perhaps even stronger determination. And that was what made a better warrior. A cunning one. A smart one.
“You cannot train in just a tunic,” he told her, giving in.
Cara’s eyes lit up and that was enough for Devix to know he was doing the right thing. For once. If she wanted to learn, he would teach her whatever he could. There would be a time in the near future where he might not be there to defend her.
“I can make pants if you give me material,” she said, her tone hopeful.
“Tev,” he said, inclining his head. His Instinct was appalled at him, that he would teach a female these things, that might harm her. He would push her body to a breaking point, make her hurt in the process. But Devix knew that the skills just might save her one span.
Because I will hand her over, because I will not be there if she needs me, he thought, disgust and self-hatred settling deep.
“Craft your coverings this span,” he said, pushing out those dark thoughts. “We will begin later this night.”
Devix might not recognize human expressions clearly yet, but there was no denying the pleasure on his female’s face. Something clicked into place for him, a lightness, a rightness. His only purpose in life should be making her happy and bringing her pleasure every single span of their long lives together.
In a simpler time, perhaps that would have been possible.
It wasn’t now.
* * *
Devix swiped his hand over the washing tube screen and hot water flowed from above. Cara was in her quarters, right across the hall, working on her leg coverings. He’d given her material, woven thread, and a sharp pin to act as a needle. He’d been slightly wary over the latter, but he’d decided to trust her with it. Cara hadn’t faked her desire to train. Why would she harm herself or try to harm him?
Devix undressed, his cock bobbing angrily against his abdomen when he stepped into the tube. Glancing down, he saw the ridges and hardened knobs lining the top and bottom of his length were engorged and throbbing. Pearlescent pre-cum dripped from his tip, sliding down his cock, readying his sex for mating.
Devix growled in frustration. He’d had no desires since his exile. A part of him had feared he’d lost his drive completely, just as Sarkon had suggested. But it seemed the lost rotations had pent-up his lusts, only to have them released with full force the moment he saw his fated mate.
Devix tried to ignore his cock for as long as he could stand. He bathed and washed the training session from his body. The cut on his arm had already begun to disappear from where the hologram had wounded him.
And yet, his erection would not cease.
With a growl, he leaned one arm against the tube, bracing himself, as he gripped his cock with the other hand.
A snarl rose in his throat when he dragged his grasp down his length, tightening his palm at the base. Fates, he was sensitive. Pleasure made his muscles tense, but it was an empty pleasure. He knew manual release would only take a slight edge off. It wouldn’t even begin to satisfy his needs. Only his female would be able to do that. And she was untouchable.
He saw her in his mind. Circumstance had changed him, warped him. Acts that would’ve appalled the old Devix now aroused him.
His dark fantasies centered on her. He saw her golden hair, her pale, soft, vulnerable skin, her wide, brown, expressive eyes. He imagined them in the command center of the vessel, imagined her bare and bent over the panels at the waist. Her wrists were chained behind her back, the metal chilling her delicate skin, making her nipples tighten into stiff peaks.
He increased the pressure on his cock, his muscles bulging, back arching. His belly sizzled with dark desires when he fantasized about marking her lush backside with the very palm stroking his cock.
“Vrax,” he cursed, increasing his speed.
He’d seen it once, on Petrika. A Virmep striking a prositute’s backside, darkening her green flesh to emerald. She’d been moaning. She’d been aroused at the pain. Devix had seen the trail of her arousal drip down her thighs himself.
He’d been uncomfortable watching it then, but he hadn’t looked away. Luxirians were taught never to harm females in any way. Striking them willingly, especially during something so sacred as mating, was taboo, forbidden.
Yet, he hadn’t looked away.
And now, it was resurfacing, building.
He wanted to pinken his female’s flesh, wanted to make her moan and squirm in her chains, wanted to see her wetness gush down her soft thighs.
And only when Devix was ready, only when he had satisfied his dark needs, would he take her. He would nudge her legs open and fuck her from behind, right there in the command center, with her breasts pushed against his controls, with the stars laid out before them. She would scream his name because in his fantasies, she knew his name, knew who was master over her, who owned her cunt and lush body and heart.
Devix bellowed in the washing tube as his cum erupted from his pulsing cock, but it was over too soon, the unsatisfying pleasure already fading.
Panting, he laid his horns against the glass, squeezing his eyes shut, unsettled by his imaginings. His cock never softened against his belly and his varx were still drawn up tight between his legs.
If anything, that orgasm had just increased his lust. It had done nothing to douse it.
Devix pushed off the tube, irritated with himself, with the Fates, with the female who drove him to this torment. He finished washing, but knew that he needed another session in the training quarters to work off his newfound frustration.
Perhaps it was a good thing he’d be training Cara. At this point, he would need the extra physical outlet.
The other part of him, however, also knew he’d be inviting disaster. Fighting was like fucking. It was driven by intensity, by emotion, by control. It was a release, as rewarding as it was exhausting.
Training his fated mate would test the limits of his control.
And if fighting was like fucking, when it came to her, Devix knew he needed to focus on the former.
The line between the two could not blur. No matter what.