Enemy Games Page 20

  The proximity alarm fired. Damen heard a sound like a fist landing on a panel. The alarm died.

  “Much closer! She was using the Lunar Agro Platform for cover.”

  Growling low in his throat, Damen set the crystal into place, grabbed a screwdriver from the tool set in the compartment to tighten it down, then yanked his handheld from his belt with one hand and put the screwdriver back with the other. It took interminable seconds to initialize his handheld and link into the engine interface.

  Damen routed the plasma flow through the crystal.

  The stone cleared and flared to gleaming life.

  The Kawl Fergus surged.

  In the cockpit, Jayleia whooped. “Ha! Cross everyone but mother two off the ‘on our tail’ list.”

  “Distance?”

  “Twenty-six thousand kilometers and closing,” she called. “Coming in on a trajectory intersecting ours.”

  “On my way!” he yelled.

  Something buzzed in the cockpit. Target warning. The mother ship was lining them up for a shot. From so far away?

  He barreled into the cockpit and threw himself into his chair.

  “Changing course to match,” he said. “Watch the distance.”

  The star field swung.

  “Run us off a few degrees,” Jayleia advised.

  He nodded. So the mother ship couldn’t drive them straight into a waiting trap. A few degrees off course translated to hundreds of kilometers over distance. It would give them time to react.

  “Too bad I can’t get a crystal like that integrated with sensors,” she quipped, removing her oxygen generator and dropping it into the equipment pouch on her chair. “Or weapons. Or the onboard computers. If that crystal could boost processing and data storage the way it boosts engines . . .”

  Scientists.

  “Jay. Distance?”

  She shook her head. The bells tied to her braids chimed. “We’ve put a thousand kilometers on them. That’s all.”

  He glanced at his handheld, then back at her. “V’kyrri recommended keeping particle flow through the crystal at a trickle. He had concerns about the structural integrity of the stone and the damage it would do to the Kawl Fergus if it blew in contact with the engine feed.”

  The proximity alert fired again.

  They spun to their respective panels. Two more mother ships.

  “Twelve Gods!” Jayleia yelled. She slammed a fist down on the button to silence the alarm. “How many ships do they have out here trying to murder one person? Unless . . .”

  He cast quick looks at her face, uneasiness boiling up within his gut.

  “This is it,” she said, her tone dead. “What if this was Eudal’s plan? Neutralize and discredit my dad. Then eradicate the Swovjiti warriors, the last remaining dedicated force within the confederation with the will and the unswerving loyalty to rise up and oppose the overthrow of the Tagreth Federated Council. The soldiers weren’t after me. They were sent to destroy the Temple.”

  “They were failing,” Damen said, closing a hand around her arm. “Your mother said they were being driven back. We pulled an entire squadron and three mother ships away from the planet.”

  “Increase the power to that crystal,” she instructed. “If we survive, make for the Dagger. The traitors believe I’m a threat worth killing for? Let’s find out why. Maybe Ari and Seaghdh can think of something I haven’t.”

  Damen released her and altered course again, diving out of the snare set for them.

  The ships opened fire.

  He bared his teeth in a silent snarl. Ah. Didn’t like that move? Desperation from their tormenters, at last? Good.

  The Kawl Fergus bounced as energy bolts sprayed past.

  “Increasing particle flow by five percent,” he said.

  The engine pitch changed.

  “Distance to mother two still twenty-seven thousand kilometers. No. Twenty-seven five.”

  Another barrage of slow-moving weapons fire rattled the ship.

  “Distance to the noose, twenty-nine thousand kilometers,” Jayleia said.

  “Another five percent?”

  “Being vaporized by a plasma burst would be better than ending up in Chekydran captivity,” she countered.

  Damen couldn’t smile at her dry tone. He’d seen firsthand the horrific damage the Chekydran did to the humanoids they captured. She was right. He nudged the particle flow.

  The interstellar drive howled. Consoles shook. The deck plates clattered. Damen’s teeth vibrated in sympathy with his ship. Adrenaline flooded his blood, shooting his heart rate to a painful gallop. Too fast. The Kawl Fergus couldn’t handle the stress.

  He stabbed at his handheld. Miss. Concentrating, he poised to try again.

  Jayleia caught his wrist in her hand.

  He glanced at her and squinted. It didn’t help. She seemed to be synced to a different vibration frequency than he was. That she held up her other hand in a command to wait a moment, he could make out.

  Most disconcerting to him was that she seemed not to be troubled by the energy trying to shake the Kawl Fergus apart.

  “Now!” she shouted, releasing him. The sound distorted as if her voice couldn’t find a place to fit into the cabin air.

  Damen tried to hit his handheld and failed.

  Jay turned, watched him for a split second, then latched on to his wrist to guide him.

  Hull stress chimes sounded as if from very far away.

  He shut his eyes.

  She pushed.

  He obeyed. His fingertips connected with the handheld screen. Already entering the power down commands, Damen opened his eyes.

  The Kawl Fergus dropped out of the odd asynchronous vibration. Metal creaked and popped. The engine quieted. The hull stress alarm cut off mid-chime.

  Jayleia, breathing as if she’d run a race, stared at him, elation in her wide, sparkling eyes. “Over two and a half times your engine’s top speed rating.”

  “What?” Damen whispered, staggered.

  A grin grew on her face. She nodded. “Forget about being followed or tracked, much less captured.”

  He pounced on his panel. “Changing course. Give me a long-range report. Where are we?”

  “Nothing on long range,” Jayleia replied. “We don’t seem to be near the commercial traffic lanes. No buoys or aids to navigation.”

  “We’d been running for the border zone when mother two tried to intercept,” he said, working the navigation console. He whistled. “We flat covered some space. I have a fix. Fifty-seven hours, give or take, we’ll be in Claugh space.”

  “With or without tapping the crystal again?” she asked.

  Damen shook his head and eyed her. “Without. I don’t want to find out at what point the Kawl Fergus will break apart. That distortion didn’t bother you?”

  “It didn’t seem to impact me the way it did you. Different species, different abilities,” she said with a shrug. “We’re still running faster than spec. Good. Even if we blunder into someone, we’d be gone before they could bring weapons to bear.”

  “Setting shields to standby,” Damen said. “Enabling long-range alerts and engaging autopilot. We’ve earned some downtime.”

  CHAPTER 27

  DOWNTIME? Jayleia closed her eyes and propped her elbows on her knees, hands hanging, letting her hair fall, bells tinkling, to shield her from Damen’s gaze. She had to resist the urge to grit her teeth.

  “Jayleia. What’s wrong?”

  “It’s all questions and no answers,” she grumbled. “I have two code phrases that sound exactly like something my father would hand me to decrypt. Tahem saying, ‘Don’t let the past dictate what I could become’ and my mother telling me to ‘Go someplace that knows how to deal with these monsters.’ Neither makes sense. I feel like I’m in the middle of an enormous puzzle with a pattern that keeps morphing and shifting under my feet. I can’t help my father. I don’t know what made me think I could.

  “We have a crystal jammed into the ma
tter injector on your engine, and granted, it saved our asses, but we don’t even know what it is!”

  “Jayleia,” Damen said, wrapping his hands around her wrists. “Look at me.”

  She met his hooded gaze.

  “How do you resolve roadblocks when you’re working research aboard the Sen Ekir?”

  “I train.”

  His eyes lit with interest. “Train?”

  She shrugged. “My aunt, Raj’s mother, sent me training holos. She insisted I wouldn’t be exiled forever.”

  A dead sexy smile touched his lips. “You require physical distraction to give your brain the time to fit puzzle pieces together?”

  “I suppo—” she began and froze.

  Twelve Gods.

  He was stalking her.

  Hot blood fluttered low in her abdomen. She broke eye contact. Not that it helped. She found herself staring at his luscious smile.

  He fingered one of the bells tied into her hair.

  Jay caught in a breath at the electric sensation and at the look of transfixed delight on his face.

  “You picked me,” he noted. The combination of teasing and deadly velvet in his voice shot a heady mix of hormones into her belly. “Why?”

  “You won. I can admit that you make me feel things I didn’t know were possible for humanoid physiology,” she breathed, knowing she was handing him a potent weapon. Her heart raced. She wanted to know sooner rather than later whether he intended to use it against her.

  He growled. In a blinding move that left her dizzy, he scooped her out of her chair into his lap.

  Blood thundering in her ears, she struggled against his hold only to realize that’s all it was. She wasn’t trapped.

  “You’re mine. We both win. Let me show you.” He stroked her hair.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. Heat rippled through her.

  Damen wrapped his arms around her, and tucked her head beneath his chin. Warmth radiated from his body, urging her to relax.

  “You aren’t as contact shy as Captain Idylle was after she’d been released by the Chekydran,” he noted, splaying his fingers over the skin bared at her waist by her dress. “But you mistrust what you feel as much as she ever did.”

  Heat suffused Jay at the pressure of his nails drawn tauntingly over her flank. She gasped.

  “We’ll work on that,” he promised. He hooked an arm under her knees and rose.

  “No!” she rasped, stiffening.

  He met her gaze with eyebrows raised as he carried her out of the cockpit and down the corridor to his cabin.

  “No?” he challenged.

  Jayleia thumped the heel of her hand to the center of his chest.

  He grunted and chuckled.

  “No! I don’t want to be a job, or a toy to be used and broken. Not again.”

  She caught in a sharp breath, trying to call back the words she’d never meant to say.

  “You are my heart,” he whispered at her ear, sending a shiver of longing through her, “my blood. I can’t break my own heart.”

  “Damen, you had my blood forced on you!” she gasped, struggling to free herself from his grasp. “In the worst possible way. If I take advantage of that . . .”

  The cabin door opened.

  “Don’t trouble yourself on that point,” he said. “I intend to take every advantage you’ll afford me. And maybe a few you won’t.”

  He tossed her on the bed.

  She barely had time to register her backside contacting the mattress.

  He pounced, pinning her with the weight of his hips against hers, his feet hooked over her shins. A self-satisfied smile on his face, desire smoldering in his eyes, he smoothed the hair from her face and caressed a line down the center of her chest.

  “Why did you give me your blood?” he murmured.

  He pressed a heated kiss against the pulse point in her neck. His lips twitched against her skin as her already too-fast pulse rate ramped.

  “To seal our truce,” she gasped.

  He lifted his head to look her in the eye.

  “You’re holding out on me. Why did you give me your blood?” He traced the base of one breast through the silky fabric of her dress.

  Her entire body tightened in response.

  “Y-you kept on about first blood,” she stuttered, barely able to breathe. “It seemed important to you. I wanted you to have something I thought you’d value. I didn’t want you to forget me.”

  “Ah,” he breathed, rewarding her by closing his hand on her breast and playing his thumb over the taut peak.

  She bit back a moan.

  “One more question,” he said, moving so that his mouth hovered above her breast. His warm breath seeped through the thin fabric.

  Suddenly, she wanted—needed—nothing more than his mouth on her.

  “With your skill, you could have taken me out any time and escaped. Why didn’t you?”

  She stroked his cheekbone to draw his gaze to hers, fear colliding with desire in her bloodstream.

  He looked at her, lines between his eyebrows. “Was I right? You enjoy being my prisoner?”

  “Back to neural cuffs again?” she asked, tracing the arch of his brows with her fingertips. “I never wanted to hurt you.”

  He trembled beneath her caress. “I’m tougher than I look.”

  “That’s why I can’t hurt you,” she replied, threading her fingers through his hair. “Not like that.”

  He smiled and lowered his head to her breast, teasing her through the silky dress.

  She couldn’t suppress the moan the attention wrung from her throat.

  “Let me show you what your first experience . . .” Damen began, running a hand along the line of her belt.

  “And last,” she interjected, needing him to understand.

  His idle exploration froze.

  “You’ve had no one for seven years?”

  Jay uttered the ghost of a laugh at the disbelief in his voice.

  “Plague left me in the company of a man who is like a father to me, my cousin, and Pietre,” she said.

  “And because Pietre prefers men, he’s celibate as well,” Damen surmised.

  “He’d change that for you,” she said.

  Damen raised his head and propped himself on one elbow, anticipation in the set of his smile. “What about you?”

  His question startled her into meeting his gaze. “What?”

  A wicked gleam in his eye, he bent to trail his lips along the scooped neck of her dress.

  She clenched a fist in his hair, trying to dissuade him, but with her muscles weakened by delight, she failed.

  “Will you change being celibate for me?” he murmured against her skin. He shifted his weight, until he rested between her legs, the evidence of his arousal scorching her.

  “Gods!” she gasped, arching into his kisses. “You don’t play fair!”

  His chuckle vibrated throughout her body and he returned to take her mouth in a ruthless assault on her senses.

  Potent, primitive chemicals flooded her, shooting hot blood straight to every taut, greedy nerve in her body.

  He pulled away, his breathing ragged, and murmured, “No. I don’t. I don’t fight fair, either. I’m desperate for you, but I won’t do this without your permission.”

  Her heart fluttered. He had her backed into a corner. He could so easily make her beg him to take her. Instead, he offered her a choice when no one and nothing else in her life had.

  Unfamiliar emotion swelled in her chest, twining through her skin and bone and blood. Damen had been used, and she gathered, abused. Still, he’d risen to her rescue, offering himself up for use yet again, rather than leaving her to the less than tender mercy of the Temple.

  She owed him a modicum of courage. She longed to experience the kind of love his touch and his smile seemed to promise.

  “You’re not accustomed to being protected,” she whispered against his lips. “I’m not used to . . .”

  “Being cherished,” he fini
shed, his hand at her breast again, tantalizing her with brushes of his fingers. “Loved. You can learn. Let me teach you.”

  “Yes,” she gasped, tightening her arms around him. “Please. Now.”

  “Begging so soon?” he teased, rocking his pelvis against hers. “I hadn’t planned for that until much later.”

  Anticipation and pleasure zinged through her. Daring to turn Damen’s technique against him, she kissed the pulse point in his throat, savoring the life beating against the tip of her tongue.

  The breath he drew sounded ragged.

  Smiling, she kissed her way up his jaw to nuzzle his ear and whisper, “I won’t be the only one begging.”

  Damen closed his teeth on her earlobe and half growled, half chuckled.

  Her heart, and anatomy significantly lower, clenched tight in response. She tripped the release on his uniform shirt and slid her palms over the supple muscles of his chest, easing the fabric from his shoulders.

  He unhooked her belt, rolled away from her, snaked an arm under the small of her back, and lifted her hips. He swept her skirt to the floor, planting a kiss in the center of her belly.

  She moaned.

  He released her, perching on the edge of the bed to rid himself of his shirt.

  She sat up. Faint red lines marred the pale skin of his back. Scooting close, she laid an exploratory finger above one of the aged scars.

  He flinched.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Not physically.” A whisper of tension touched his voice.

  Like the marks on his ankles, she gathered. Jayleia choked back the urge to ask how he’d come by them. But that part of his past seemed to trouble him and she could guess. She smoothed a palm over his back and instead pressed a kiss against the highest mark.

  The rigid set of his shoulders eased and he sighed when she moved to the next line and then the next. He tipped his chin to his chest, his eyes closed.

  Pleased by the uneven catch of his breath whenever her lips touched his skin, she kissed her way down each mark until the band of his trousers halted her.

  Uttering a sound of disappointment, she splayed her hands wide against the small of his back and followed the line of his waistband until her arms circled him.

  He shuddered.

  “Don’t stop,” he pleaded in a whisper.