Enemy Within (29 page)

He gave it.

She tried to remove his jacket. With delicate kisses to each of her palms, he stopped her. She tried to take off her jacket. He pulled her hands behind her back.

“What is the First Point?” he whispered against her lips.

Her overheated brain worked in slow motion. He wanted her to recite the lesson points of the Art of the Blade? “What?”

“First.” He brushed his lips against hers. “Point.”

Gasping as he nibbled his way down her throat, she stuttered, “P-patience.”

He tucked her fingers into the waistband of her trousers at the small of her back. “Patience.” He tripped the seal on her jacket and, easing the fabric open, explored what little skin was exposed.

She strained against him, biting back a groan. Her body ached for his touch. “Stop coddling me,” she managed.

His mouth on hers cut her off. When he broke the kiss, he looked at her with so much fire in his eyes that her will melted. “That is the last thing I’m doing.” His hands eased the jacket from her shoulders before caressing a path to her breasts. He traced the outlines through the thin fabric of her undershirt.

She had to force her legs to go on holding her. “You are.”

“I’m not.” He dipped his head, his mouth taking over where his hands had been.

Breathing hard, barely able to choke out the words, she said, “You’re not what?” It had finally occurred to her that he was talking her in circles and enjoying doing so.

“Going to stop.”

Raw hunger burst through her body and shorted out the rest of her brain as he dropped to his knees. He tugged her undershirt out of her trousers.

Ari tensed. Three scars wrapped her torso, mementos from her stay in a Chekydran prison. She did not want to remember which of them had been self-inflicted and which hadn’t. They were the few physical reminders that surgery hadn’t been able to erase.

Seaghdh brushed his lips over the fine, white lines. Wrapping his arms around her hips, he rested his cheek on her abdomen, on the reminders of her past and hugged her hard against him. Her heart thundered so loudly she could barely hear him when he said, “You deserve to be coddled, Ari. To be treasured. Let me.”

She groaned and, ignoring his implied order to keep her hands locked behind her, threaded her fingers through his hair. “Hurry. Your dallying is killing me.”

Laughing, he surged to his feet, hooked a hand in the loose waistband of her pants, and drew her into his bedroom.

“What is the Sixth Point?” he said.

“Seaghdh,” she growled from between clenched teeth and reached for him.

He dodged her grasp, swung behind her and pulled the dueling jacket down her arms where it tangled, imprisoning her. He used the coat to pull her back against his chest. “Sixth Point,” he murmured, puffing breath into her ear.

Sensation sizzled across her skin, shaking her to the core. She caught in a sharp gulp of air and struggled for possession of her hands.

His chuckle sounded wicked and he closed his teeth softly on her earlobe.

Excitement, augmented by far too many hormones, thrilled through her body. “S-sixth Point. By the Gods, how do you expect me to think?”

“The blade master . . .” he began as he nuzzled the sensitive skin below her ear.

Choking on a moan, she said in a breathless rush, “The blade master conquers his opponent by first conquering himself . . . you wouldn’t.”

“Hwe vaugh, I already have.”

“Hwe vaugh.” Her brain picked that moment to translate his words. “My heart.” Ari’s breath stopped and her own heart clenched hard.

Seaghdh folded his arms around her, brushing a hand up under her shirt to caress one breast. The friction of his palm against over-sensitized skin dissolved every thought in her brain. She dropped her head back against his shoulder.

He murmured approval against her collarbone as he eased her trousers open and began exploring her body’s secrets.

She cried out.

He took his time, too damned much of it. Every fiber quivered, waiting for the next sensation. It was a little like torture where nerves coiled, taut, anticipating each new hurt. It was utterly unlike it, in that now, she luxuriated in the pleasure Seaghdh lavished on her body. She felt stretched tight, nerve endings rising against her skin, silently begging for more while she gasped at the exquisitely gentle way Seaghdh soothed and massaged and drove her to the brink of sanity.

He explored every inch, removing clothes as he went, finally freeing her to revel in her desperate desire to touch him.

She shook with the force of the want he’d built in her, but she took her time easing his jacket from his shoulders. Indulging her need to trace each line of his muscle with her lips, she tested his control, halting her caresses at the waistband of his shorts. Sixth Point indeed. Did he really believe he couldn’t be mastered just as she had been?

He groaned, swept off his shorts with trembling hands and urged her to her feet before she could do more than admire the rest of his magnificent body. When at long, achingly last, he pushed her onto the bed, he shifted against her. His eyes closed and he paused. Savoring? Or tormenting?

She thought her heart would burst. “Now,” she demanded in a strangled voice. “I need you now.”

“The blade master never forces a point,” he rasped, his breath trembling, and pressed home in one long, deliriously slow stroke.

She arched, imploring him to hold nothing back. His body heard and responded with abandon, until the white-hot fire he’d built between them went abruptly and shockingly supernova.

WHEN
her heart rate slowed, Ari choked out, “Match. Who won?”

Seaghdh cracked open one eye and laughed. Gathering her into his arms, he pulled her tight against him. “Draw.”

“Nothing for it then,” she mumbled as her eyes drifted shut. “Rematch.”

“You’re trying to kill me.”

She smiled, opening her eyes. “Didn’t I tell you? It’s all clear now, my programming.”

For a moment, he tensed. Then he pinched her backside.

She yelped.

He turned her around, tucking her back against his chest and wrapped his arms around her waist. “Rematch,” he breathed into her ear. “What is the Third Point?”

He drove into her, quick, fierce, hot.

She gasped. “E-endurance! Gods, don’t stop.”

He bit her at the junction of neck and shoulder, rumbling low in his throat as he moved. One hand played over her breasts. With the other at the joining of their bodies, he took her swiftly to the edge, then deliberately paused, waiting for her quivering muscles to unclench.

“Will you forfeit, Blade Master?” he panted, his voice raspy with the effort of denying them both.

Smoothing a hand over his tight backside, then his hip, she reached between them and cupped him in her palm.

He trembled, swore, and with a groan rocked hard into her over and over until she pleaded for release.

“Now,” he ground out. “Now.”

The ripple of power in his voice shot through her like lightning. She thought she screamed. He shouted and once again, the passion they’d ignited detonated.

They collapsed, boneless. She turned. He tucked her head against his shoulder and sighed, sounding pleased. If she’d been any more pleased, she’d have been dead. Her body still thrummed.

Seaghdh flipped the covers up over them. He smoothed hair out of her face.

Her eyes closed.

“Sleep, hwe vaugh,” he said to the top of her head.

Ari’s eyes snapped open and she tensed.

“What is it?”

She pulled out of his grasp and sat up, rubbing her hands hard against her face to wake herself. “Jettison that, Seaghdh,” she warned. “Don’t make it harder. You know I have to go back.”

“What happened?” he pressed. “You’re running away. What frightened you?”

She gaped at him as he watched half-formed thoughts plod across her face.

Sympathy darkened his expression. “You aren’t with the Chekydran. It is safe to feel again.”

A reflexive stab of panic shook her. She waited it out and forced herself to smile at him. “I halfway think you planned this brilliant and amazing seduction to get me to volunteer to destroy my own government.”

He blinked and sat up slowly, looking alternately smug and like a man who’d just taken a sucker punch. “Want to explain that?”

“I have to get into TFC military databases if we’re going to proceed. We need positive IDs on everyone involved with the Chekydran and proof of both the IDs and the alliance. I can’t bring the traitors down without it.”

“No,” he corrected. “Explain the brilliant and amazing seduction part.”

Scowling at him, Ari saw the uncertainty behind the carefully neutral mask he wore. Damn it. He was right. She was running away from feeling anything for him. Stricken, she crawled into his lap, took his face in her hands, and kissed him. She’d entrusted her emotional well-being to the man and look at her trampling all over his feelings. How many kinds of idiot could she be?

He folded her in his embrace. “You cannot save the galaxy tonight while you’re exhausted.”

“And hungry.”

He chuckled. “Sleep first or food?”

“Sleep. If I can stay here. With you?”

“Right where I want you,” he said.

“Will you do that voice thing? So I don’t have nightmares? Or flashbacks?”

He nodded slowly. “Not ready to kill me just yet?”

“Sex is specified as the weapon of choice.”

He chuckled. “Remind me to thank whoever programmed in that particular condition. Rest. Peaceful. Pleasant. Dreamless.”

His voice and the power it contained twined around her, drawing her into sleep as surely as Seaghdh shifted her into bed beside him. Still. It wasn’t his ability that made her sigh as a sense of safety enveloped her. All that required was his arm around her and Seaghdh, warm and solid at her back. Three Hells. What would he do if she said “hwe vaugh” to him?

WHEN
Ari woke, Seaghdh sat on the edge of the bed, already in a uniform so dark green it was nearly black, caressing her face with a touch that made her shiver. Baxt’k. She’d succumbed to the dangerous, remote Auhrnok Riorchjan.

“Duty calls,” he said.

She stretched and sat up, nodding. “The completion of my programmed mission to destroy you in bed? I’m game, but I really need breakfast first.”

The intimidating Queen’s Blade sitting beside her smiled, his eyes half lidded. “I do look forward to your next assassination attempt. Sadly, we have no time right now.”

His formal phrasing brought Ari fully awake and into “Captain, enemy ship approaching” mode. She stiffened her spine, swung her legs to the floor, and stood. “Report.”

“The
Balykkal
is on approach.”

She rocked back on her heels.

Seaghdh rose swiftly and grabbed her elbow to steady her.

“Do I have time for a shower?”

“Yes. They’re ten minutes from visual. You will speak to them?”

“I’d better. I need my uniform,” she said, wishing she had something more impressive than her combat gear.

“Yes.”

That’s when she noticed he’d already placed her olive-drab fatigues, clean and folded, on the foot of the bed. She showered and dressed quickly. When she strode into his office, Seaghdh rose from his desk and brought her a tray. She tried to take it.

He wouldn’t release it.

She glanced at him and finally saw the light dancing in his golden eyes, the only sign of the man she knew in the formidable officer before her. “There is a price to be paid for everything,” he said, his voice lazy and tinged with humor. Leaning across the tray, he claimed a lingering kiss that ramped her pulse.

Her stomach grumbled.

He released her and the tray but followed her to the couch. It was just as well. He’d given her far too much food. She ate the few bites she could stomach, grabbed the cup of tea, and started to rise.