Commissioned In White (Art of Love Series) (26 page)

To her astonishment, Synar laughed at her. Really laughed. She could only stare at how attractive he was without the stoicism it had taken her almost two years to get used to. What the Helios was wrong with her today? She couldn’t get her mind off sex.

“Why are you mocking me, Synar?” Gwen demanded, pushing away her awareness of him as a male. “Better yet, why are you smiling at me so strangely?”

“It would take me days to explain my amusement well enough to satisfy your doubting human mind. Since we do not have days to spend, you will just have to learn as we go,” Synar said firmly, leaning back in his seat. “Now I need silence to prepare myself. Ease up, Gwen, you’ll figure this all out soon.”

When he said silence, Gwen knew it meant Synar would be praying or meditating or whatever the ritual was the Norblades all did before a confrontation. She leaned back and watched her captain roll a second set of dark eyelids down and zone out. That act was just freaking weird no matter how many times she watched Synar do it.

Just as well that he closed his second set of eyelids, Gwen decided, frowning at Synar. Her captain was looking more and more like a damn Earth tiger, and it continued to bother her. Even his normal eyes were creeping her out today. Her own apprehension was far more worrisome and interesting to her than some hypothetical demon master, which could still be no more than a joke at her expense.

What concerned her about his lack of real answers was that Captain Synar seemed to be preparing for more than just a simple extraction of a high-ranking hostage from a mostly peaceful situation on the officer’s home planet.

It was her business to understand the risks, minimize them, and make sure one of the two of them returned to the keep order on the ship. So far she had made damn sure Synar always returned. She had no intention of letting anything change that record, not a demon or a demon master.

Her thoughts were chaotic and troubled, and then she felt intense waves of body heat followed by a giant wave of calm floating over her tight muscles. She fought back the huge sigh that wanted to be released, refusing to look at the origin of those pleasant sensations.

Spiritual counselor my ass, Gwen thought, clamping down on her body’s reaction to Zade.

“You are wise to be concerned, Gwen. Life is going to change for all of us today,” Dorian said softly, leaning down from his much larger height to whisper into Gwen’s ear.

“And I suppose you know exactly what’s going on?” Gwen complained bitterly, unable to keep the resentment from her voice or from squirming in her seat as she felt another wave of relaxation go through her. Sirens emitted calming vibrations naturally, but that didn’t mean she had to appreciate the fact.

“I was with Captain Synar when he and Ambassador Looren were mated. And I was there when she was brutally attacked and almost killed. What happened after was destiny, but Liam does not yet accept it. Today he must stand and face his worst fears,” Dorian explained in a whisper. “He will need you to be strong for the sake of the crew.”

She sat up straighter in her seat, fuming quietly at Dorian Zade’s lack of respect for her position. He rarely used her title to address her. Instead, he always used her personal name. While from time to time Gwen admittedly wanted nothing more than to hear Zade calling her name over and over, she just wanted to be riding him to bliss when he did it, not sitting through one of his patronizing lectures about his perception of her duty.

“There are good reasons I was assigned to be first mate instead of you, Lieutenant,” she said coldly, refusing, as she always did, to call him by his personal name.

Dorian inclined his head at her defense of her role, his expression revealing nothing of what he thought about her statement.

“Indeed there were good reasons. I do not disagree. It is precisely for those good reasons that I stepped aside to let it happen,” he replied easily.

Gwen snorted in derision at the complete lack of humility in his words. “Two years and you’re still singing that same old tired song. Get over yourself, Zade. I got the promotion fairly, and I
deserved
it.”

Seeing no further words would reach her mind while Gwen remained determined to resist all new knowledge, Dorian merely turned back in his seat to wait for their arrival at the planet.

It irritated him that he’d once again felt overwhelmingly compelled to try to help Gwen today, and worse, obligated to do so when he saw Liam unable to confess the truth of the situation to her. Dorian was sorely tempted to tell her the truth even though it would be extremely disloyal to Synar.

He conceded that Gwen deserved to feel her resentment for Liam’s lack of disclosure. After all, she could well be the person Liam would have to leave in charge of the ship and crew if things went awry. Not preparing her for that inevitability was a bad leadership decision in his opinion. And Liam rarely made bad ones.

But helping the crew and Liam hadn’t been his only motivation for helping Gwen, and that was Dorian’s real problem.

No—he had been utterly compelled to warn Gwen personally that she was in for a big shock today. The human female was way too young and disrespectful of change to fear the magnitude of what could happen in this instance.

There ought to be a law against any being who wasn’t at least one century old serving on a ship, Dorian thought, allowing himself to feel the bitterness festering in his spirit about it all.

Maybe he was just getting old and starting to worry too much about the wrong things. He had seen it happen, even to his species who sometimes lived for several millennia. At his advanced age of six hundred and twenty-three years, even Liam’s age of just over two and half centuries seemed much younger to him most of the time.

In fact, the longer he served on this ship, the more Dorian was of a mind to quit and go into retreat on his home planet. Maybe a century spent in quiet reflection would end his present torment, which unfortunately involved the first mate, Gwen Shenu Jet.

At barely thirty-five years old, Gwen was like an infant to most everyone on the ship, though admittedly a fierce one. She was also the least experienced crew member. Even the males Gwen bedded on a regular basis to relieve her physical needs were all at least a century old, though Dorian doubted she’d ever asked any of them about it.

Not that her bonding habits were his concern. Her passions were as shallow and fleeting as her anger was when ignited. And if her wiggling was any indication, she had virtually no control over her nervous energy even though she was half Thelorian. It was the Earthling side of her that always won in every behavior conflict, just like it was that same side of her that created the curvy body he couldn’t keep from admiring, despite his meditations to prevent his interest.

Shades of Kellnor
, Dorian swore, realizing where his distracting thoughts had gone. It was difficult to remain neutral while Gwen shifted restlessly in her seat, brushing her extremities against his over and over. The female was nothing but a temptation to his peace of mind. How he could possibly want such a one dimensional creature was beyond his understanding. Her single-minded focus on her job role kept her personal growth stunted worse than Synar’s did.

Would she be capable of understanding that if he told her?

Of course not
, Dorian thought, answering his own question. Her lack of respect for her spiritual life was why he had never acted on his vicious physical need for her.

Who needed the kind of responsibility she would require?

He certainly didn’t.

And how she loved reminding him that she was the captain’s first mate. Hadn’t he been the one who told Liam to choose someone other than him? Maybe she was the first mate, but only in the Earth definition of such things, Dorian decided, allowing himself to feel anger about it at last.

In his many centuries of working alongside them, Dorian had observed that all full humans and most hybrid ones were every bit as arrogant as Gwen Jet. Those who spent long spans of time on Earth without traveling among other species were the worst.

Dorian privately thought the best event in that primitive planet’s history was being forced into the Peace Alliance. Now all manner of creatures had settled there, forcing Earthling awareness past rudimentary differences to larger ones. Yet the mix still produced offspring that grew up to be like Gwen, regardless of what culture shared the gene pool. Earthlings still had not figured out that longevity came from peace and calm, from using your inner intuition as a guide, and not from fighting every bloody conflict you felt.

When Gwen continued to shift restlessly, Dorian turned to watch her throw her head back and sigh in frustration. He acknowledged his instinctive urge to soothe her, but worked to let it pass away just as quickly as it had arisen.

Admittedly, he had tried to talk Liam out of taking Gwen on as first mate. Thelorians with their energy awareness had their uses on every ship, but Earthlings were always poor choices for crew. Their volatile emotional states led to breakdowns over extended time periods. They got bored easily and then they caused trouble.

Only two Earth years had passed and already Gwen was nearing the end of her patience with life on their ship. He sensed her growing restlessness like it was his own.

“This mission will not involve any risk to you or the captain,” Dorian said finally, tightening his jaw at his inability to stay silent when concern for her peace of mind lit a burning fire in his natural compassion for her.

“Well, that would make a nice change from our usual messes, wouldn’t it?” Gwen said, irritated at the effect Zade always had on her, hating that he made her want to sigh and be hugged by him.

Yes, it was quite obvious which side of her nature ruled her, Dorian decided, turning away and letting anger have it’s moment within him again as he studied her energetically. Gwen thought herself a peace keeper, but it was her biggest illusion as far as Dorian was concerned. If anything, Gwen was a peace disrupter.

“Do you ever sit still for any length of time?” Dorian demanded sharply, the words spilling out despite how unwilling he was to speak to her further.

“Bite me, Zade,” Gwen said, promptly regretting her slang when her mind decided to show her a literal image of him doing just that.

“Don’t tempt me,” Doran said fiercely, hoping he sounded irritated instead of like a rough-tongued male in heat. The female was getting to him, and raging fires of Helios, he had a decision to make about it soon. His body needed her despite how much he fought it.

Gwen Jet was the third Earthling female in his life to cause him the kind of anguished longing that made him turn to complete abstinence rather than claim her. In six centuries, he had never understood why his body only seemed to want females from Earth for mates. It was doubly annoying because all of them, even the hybrids, aged quickly and died. Losing a mate after so short a time definitely lowered his contentment.

Neither of his previous mates had lasted much longer than a century no matter what care he had taken to preserve them. The only thing Dorian had not done was to share his life force, but that was altering the greater plan all beings participated in too much. His beliefs forbade it. True—with the first human mate he hadn’t known how to do it, and with the second there had never been sufficient motivation.

At the end of each mate’s life span, Dorian had grieved the loss of them from his life until he was mad with it. Caring, losing, and grieving was not a cycle that he wished to repeat. The last thing he’d expected was to so quickly find yet another mating connection when Gwen had joined Liam’s crew. Getting over the loss of his last mate was one of the reasons he had taken a post on the ship to begin with.

When Liam’s head came forward and his eyes opened again, Dorian’s attention came out of his thoughts of mating Gwen to marvel at the change in his long-time friend. Liam Synar had been a student where Dorian had been teaching. In his face now, Dorian saw someone he had not seen in a while. He saw a male who knew his true purpose, someone excited about life again. Even the air around Liam shimmered with an expanding quantum of possibilities.

No wonder he felt needs within himself awakening, Dorian decided. His close connection to Liam would naturally involve that kind of energy sharing.

“I feel the power again,” Synar said, looking at Dorian, his eyes fluctuating, pupils changing shapes as the familiar energy filled him once more.

Synar knew Dorian would understand that the demon was calling to him. Though he loathed the dark power he’d inherited from his father, Synar had also missed it in the time they had been apart. Never having wanted to wield such power, his last use of the demon to kill those that had almost killed his mate made it obvious that everyone was safer when Synar was away from his demon’s host.

“If anyone has harmed as much as one hair on her, I will see to their deaths before Malachi has a chance to seek his revenge,” Synar said viciously, forgetting his audience as he searched his intuition for answers to concerns that threaten to eclipse all other thoughts.

Dorian smiled, understanding that bald truth for what it really meant. It wasn’t the demon that Liam was worried about, but rather the demon’s host.

Gwen’s eyebrows shot up as she unbuckled her safety harness and stood. What the hell had happened to Synar’s voice while he meditated?