by Roxie Ray
I moved my head forward and exhaled lightly, blowing on him, relishing the way he pulsed and trembled in response.
I'd never done any of this before. I'd never been with a man – any man. But I'd heard the more mature women in the village talk about satisfying their mates when they thought I was out of earshot, and I'd often thought about how I would use that information with Dhimurs if I ever got the chance.
Now that chance had finally arrived, and I intended to make the most of it.
I took him into my mouth, enjoying the way he felt between my lips and against my tongue. He let out a lustful sigh and put his hands on my head, stroking my hair lovingly. If my lack of experience showed in my technique, he gave no sign – he just moved his hips slowly, almost imperceptibly, as he gently thrust himself toward the back of my throat. He was quite large, and there was a brief second when I worried I might gag, unprepared… but once we settled into a steady rhythm and I reminded myself to breathe through my nose, I was comfortable, and all the more eager to please him. I couldn’t help but slip a hand under my clothes, pressing soft circles into my own warmth and heat.
“Oh, Judy,” he whispered. “Your mouth is so soft and sweet. Don't stop.”
I moaned, letting him appreciate the faint vibration against his cock. His pace quickened slightly, and I placed my free hand on his buttocks, pulling him even further into my mouth until I'd taken every inch of him.
I felt the base of Dhimurs' spine begin to spasm – and a moment later, I felt his climax in my mouth, like a series of cool, salty ocean waves cascading over my tongue. I held onto his pelvis tightly, swallowing every drop as he tugged at my hair tenderly. My hand sped up beneath my clothes, until I felt waves of pleasure shudder through my body, and my name escaped Dhimurs’ lips in a long, low, intense groan of ecstasy.
I shakily raised myself to my feet and began to undo the clasps of my own clothes, ready to make love to him at last. But he reached out and grabbed my wrists, stopping me. “No. We can go no further. Not now.”
“Why not?” Even after the release I’d experienced already, the core of my being was still aching, begging for further relief. The thought of stopping now was painful. If I couldn't have him completely, I thought I might wither and die, like a flower deprived of rain.
“It was a mistake for me to allow this to go as far as it has.” His voice was hoarse with desire and regret. “You have a duty to your parents, just as I have a duty to Valkred. We cannot neglect those duties in the name of personal gratification.”
I searched his eyes carefully. “But that's not the real reason, is it? Go on, tell me.”
He gritted his teeth, fighting with himself for a moment before finally answering. “If we continue down this path, I am… uncertain of whether I will be able to effectively control my urge to mate with you fully. My feelings toward you are too strong for me to overcome.”
“So yours are the only feelings that are important in this scenario?” I demanded. “Your duties, your urges? You get to take me as far as you want to, you get to stop when you've gotten what you needed, you get to make grand pronouncements about our obligations to our mission, and I'm not allowed to have any say in it at all? I'm just supposed to accept it until, what… the next time you decide to toy with me by going halfway because you find yourself aroused?”
“I do not intend to use you, Judy. This is just the way of things.”
“That sounds like the way of a coward to me,” I shot back.
“I am no coward!”
I kept my eyes locked on his, refusing to look away. “No? Then prove it. Stay here and finish what you've started, instead of cowering behind a lot of excuses and bravado.”
He took a deep breath, as though trying to calm himself. “You may call me whatever names you wish. I remain unmoved. We have a job to do. I’m not too much of a coward to admit when I’ve made an error. We must dedicate ourselves to our job here, and not to our own foolish whims.”
A foolish whim. Was that all I was to him, for all of his talk about mates?
No. I’d felt his passion just moments ago; he had to be lying to himself.
I wanted him to give in to his instincts utterly – to do whatever he wanted with me, to seal the bond of destiny that he believed existed between us. After all, hadn't I waited years to be in his arms, his bed? Hadn't I put off my own mating ceremony more than once, stubbornly convinced that somehow, this was meant to be?
Yes. All of that was true. But maybe it was all happening too quickly. And more than that, what he'd said about duty was right, even if it wasn't his primary reason, and even if it wasn’t what I wanted to hear.
Still, I wasn't sure I could navigate the complexities and emotions involved in a full mating while trying to save Ekaid and Lidea at the same time.
And if I wasn't sure, then I owed it to them – and to Dhimurs – to hold back until the mission was over. But I didn’t have to like it.
“I must return to my quarters,” Dhimurs said brusquely, pulling up his trousers and securing the latches on the crotch, “or Surge will begin to worry. Please try to rest. I will call upon you in the morning.”
“Wait,” I insisted. “Was this another test? To see if I was, what, tough enough to resist my feelings for you?”
Dhimurs bared his teeth. “I told you before, Judy: everything is a test. The sooner you understand that, the greater your chances of survival will be.”
“Did I fail?”
He stood for a long moment, silent – and then left, shutting the door a little too loudly behind him.
I flopped down on the bed again, closing my eyes. I was exhausted down to my bones… but still, my mind and heart were spinning in every direction, and I wondered whether I'd be able to get any sleep after all.
How could he toy with my emotions like this? I knew he felt the same way about me that I did about him. Miranda had even said as much. So how could he suddenly push me away so coldly, just to show me that I wasn't as hardened as he was? How could he turn our passion for each other into another lesson about how to be the perfect warrior?
What kind of monster could do something like that to someone who cared about him so much?
Well, if he wanted so badly for me to be battle-hardened and suspicious of everything like he was – if that was what it would take to finally prove my worth to him – then so be it.
After about an hour, I drifted off into dreams of Dhimurs reaching out to me, trying to touch me, to hold me… only to be suddenly snatched away by Torqa as she screeched and cackled, holding him in one claw-like hand and my parents in the other, squeezing them both until they ruptured into fountains of blood and I was left alone in all the cold emptiness of the universe.
13
Dhimurs
As a general during times of war, I'd trained myself to sleep through anything – explosions, laser blasts, troop transports taking off and landing, the howls and cries of clashing soldiers on nearby fields of battle. An effective warrior must be adequately rested, after all, just as an effective blade must be adequately sharpened. I've slept in tents, in trenches, and curled up in the corners of overfilled drop ships on their way to almost certain doom.
But that night, lying in the bunk beneath Surge's, I couldn't force myself to sleep no matter how hard I tried.
It wasn't just Surge's snoring, though it was damnably loud – I couldn't believe that someone who was such a stealthy spy and assassin while awake could possibly produce such a heinous noise while asleep.
No, it was Judy. What had happened between us… and, more specifically, what I hadn't allowed to happen.
We wanted each other, that much was obvious. I recognized on an instinctive level that we were destined to be mated – and she didn't seem resistant to that idea. And no, the timing was not ideal in terms of consummating such a relationship, given the importance of the mission at hand.
But “bad timing” hadn't stopped Akzun from wooing Carly, had it? Or Zark from romancing Mirand
a? Why should things be any different for me? Why should I feel like I had to push away the person I was fated to be with?
I sighed, frustrated.
Because it was different, that's why. And I damn well knew it.
I wasn't the leader of Valkred like Akzun. And I wasn't brother and personal advisor to the Blood Ruler like Zark. I couldn't afford to allow myself such fanciful indulgences as they had in the need of companionship.
I was a soldier. I'd been given my orders, and it was my solemn duty to carry them out to the very best of my ability, without silly distractions or romantic flights of fancy. At that moment, my ability to achieve my objectives may have been the only thing standing between Torqa and total galactic conquest.
Why had I gone along with what Judy had said – pretended that this was yet another cruel test of her mettle as a warrior?
The answer to that was easy: Because I'd been angry at myself for going to her chamber in the first place, and I'd lashed out at her as a result. I'd known exactly what I wanted to happen between us from the second I knocked on her door. I should have been stronger than that. I should have gone back to my own room and left her undisturbed.
Instead, I allowed myself a moment of weakness and gave in to my feelings for her… and in the process, managed to wound us both.
Better that I had pushed her away. Better that I had angered her, hardened her heart toward me, if that meant she would be more inclined to keep her full attention on the mission. There would be ample time for us to mend such things later.
If we survived.
“No more, Dhimurs,” I whispered to myself. “From now on, you keep your mind on your mission, period.”
Surge snorted loudly, coughed, rolled over, and began to snore again.
At last, I was able to grab a few hours of restless, fitful sleep before the sun rose on the Drekkir home world. I got out of my bunk, took down the curtain rod from the window, backed myself as far into a corner of the room as I could, and carefully prodded Surge.
I'd once made the mistake of trying to shake Surge in order to wake him up.
Once.
Sure enough, at the first touch of the rod, Surge's eyes flew open and his limbs automatically sprang into action, his last snore dying in his throat. He seized the rod and yanked it from my grasp, preparing to impale whoever had disturbed his slumber. When he saw that it was me, he nodded briskly, dropped the rod on the floor, and hopped down from his bunk.
“Thank you for rousing me,” he said.
“My pleasure,” I replied dryly. “Thank you for not killing me.”
He shrugged nonchalantly. “What's our plan for today?”
“Tell Thezis and Vahmi to go to the Wrath and make sure the repair crew are giving us our money's worth. If not, Thezis has my full permission to inflict whatever bodily harm on them he chooses, short of killing any of them… we'd probably end up being billed for their funerary expenses. Meanwhile, I want you to poke around and see if you can collect any useful information for us about Torqa or her people.”
Surge raised an eyebrow. “What makes you think I'll be able to find anything?”
“Perhaps you won't. But we're standing in the foremost trading post and economic hub of this sector, with plenty of off-world merchants and smugglers doing business all around us, so it's worth a try. They might have picked up some valuable information or rumors in their travels. Scan their minds and find out.”
“Fair enough. What about Respen?”
“Respen may do as he pleases,” I said, “as long as he does it far away from me. The last thing I need today is another look at his smug, glowing face. We'll make sure to collect him before we leave the planet, but until then, he's on his own.”
“And what will you be doing?” Surge asked.
He was clearly trying to keep his tone casual, but there was something cagier behind it – something that made me suspect he already knew what my answer would be. Which made sense, of course. We'd served together for so long, faced so many enemies together, saved each other's lives so many times over, that there was perhaps no one in the universe who knew me as well as he did.
“I'll be personally guarding Judy,” I said. “There's a good chance that Torqa's tracked us here, and that she might have agents operating on this planet. She won't be happy that Judy escaped her clutches, and she may try to rectify that.”
“True. Then again, I suspect Torqa is far more interested in taking you as a prize, since you foiled her plans on Macur. We have every reason to believe you're a more viable target. And speaking plainly, Dhimurs, perhaps it would be better for all concerned if you sequestered yourself here and Thezis or I guarded Judy instead. Overall, it might make things less… complicated.” He seemed to be choosing his words carefully.
“I can take care of myself,” I snapped. “And in accepting this mission, I already made her well-being my personal responsibility. It would be inappropriate for me to shirk that responsibility now. You have your orders, Surge. I have every confidence that you'll carry them out.”
Surge bowed, and then left to rally the others.
I was grateful to have him on this mission, but I was also vaguely irritated that he had enough insight into my private thoughts to accurately discern what was going on between me and Judy, especially since I knew he hadn’t even needed to use his Valkredian psychic abilities to probe for that information. How evident were our feelings for each other? Did my crew know I was wholly committed to the successful completion of this mission, or were they worried that my mind was on other things instead?
I shook my head impatiently, stepping out into the hallway. I couldn't afford to get tangled up in such apprehensions. Not with so much at stake.
I took a deep breath and knocked on Judy's door.
She opened it immediately, fully dressed. “Yes?” There was a cold edge to her voice, and a hardness in the way she looked at me that hadn't been there before.
After the events of the previous night, I supposed I shouldn't have been surprised. I should have been relieved that pushing her away so abruptly had worked – but the extent to which I'd genuinely hurt her still left me unsettled. What if, when all of this was over, she refused to forgive me, and we didn’t have a chance to be together after all?
“I'm glad to see that you're already up,” I said. “I was concerned that I might have awakened you.”
“I've been up for a long time, exercising,” Judy said. “I figure a real warrior can't afford to sleep in, right? A real warrior should rise with the sun, and spend the first hours of the day honing her skills to razor-sharp perfection. A real warrior should keep her mind sharp by meditating on the mission, contemplating everything that could possibly go wrong, and preparing detailed contingencies for every eventuality. Is that not so?”
“It is, yes.” I knew that she was spitting these things at me as punishment for what had happened between us – but still, if she truly had done all of them, I was extremely impressed. “A real warrior also channels their hostilities and frustrations into their efforts to achieve victory in the battle at hand. As it seems you have done.”
“I'm so glad you approve,” she sneered. “If I keep this up for a while, maybe I can be a mean, joyless, ice-blooded sadist like you, who does whatever it takes to win no matter who gets hurt in the process.”
“I sincerely hope so,” I countered. “Because if you do, then nothing will stand in the way of you rescuing your parents and defeating Torqa.”
Deep down, though, her words troubled me. Yes, I wanted her to be a formidable enough warrior to survive the trials ahead of us. Yes, I had told her that becoming one would take a tremendous amount of training and sacrifice, just as it had for me.
But she was still so young, so capable of finding happiness in life. I'd brought her to Macur years before to spare her from the harsh realities of the galaxy, and now it seemed I was rubbing them in her face to make her soul hard and calloused. Was that really what I wanted for her? Even if w
e prevailed, what would be left of the free and joyful spirit she'd once been?
I didn't know. But I didn't have time to contemplate such things.
“What do you have in mind for us today?” she asked. “More training?”
“Actually, since we're stuck here until the Wrath is repaired, I thought you and I might stretch our legs and explore the central market.”
“And how is that going to make me a better warrior?” she challenged.
“I did not have that in mind when suggesting it,” I admitted. “I only thought it might pass the time.”
“Or you are going to use this to present me with some new lesson, and you're lying to me now so I won't see it coming. Because everything's a test, right? Well, I'm not some stupid little girl, so I'm not falling for that again. Sure, I'll come with you… we may as well get this over with, and get to the part where you've arranged to have someone attack me or kidnap me or something.”
“If that is how you wish to approach this outing, so be it,” I said. Again, there was a part of me that admired her newly-suspicious nature, just as there was a part of me that mourned for the innocence she had left behind by embracing it – and my role in forcing her to do so.
We left the castle and strode into the bustling market, our boots crunching in the snow. From her tense posture and the movements of her eyes, I could tell that Judy was remaining tremendously vigilant – carefully inspecting everyone who came near us, looking for concealed weapons, sizing up their potential weaknesses.
Which was good. Except that for all her wariness, Judy still wasn't trained enough to know exactly what to look for.
I was… and what I saw concerned me greatly.
On the Mana home world, there was a sleek, elongated aquatic species called a shi'veena known for slipping in and out of the waves as it swam – one minute you'd catch a glimpse of its smooth, shiny back cresting just above the water, and the next, it was gone.
Torqa and I had seen many of them during the war, and at one point, the sight had inspired her to coin the phrase “shi'veena surveillance.” This, she explained, was when the agents assigned to track someone used the practice of deliberately allowing themselves to be seen by the target, and then vanishing into the crowd again. The purpose was to keep the subject off-guard, too busy looking for the familiar faces tracking him while potentially ignoring the ones who didn't allow themselves to be spotted.