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The response came back an instant later. No Xer detected.
He stared out at the darkness, his jaw clamped tight, his hands curled into fists. He shouldn’t be here. He should be on Xer with Freika, stalking General Jutka and waiting for his chance to put his ghosts to rest. The General’s bodyguards would probably execute him afterward, but he really didn’t care. He owed it to Liisa, to Lieutenant Ullock, to Thorp and Ive.
The team he’d failed to die with.
“Wait,” he whispered to the darkness. “I’ll get it done.”
But first he had to take care of Jane.
He glanced back at the bed. She lay curled in a defensive ball on top of the sheets. One of her feet twitched. He hoped she wasn’t having yet another nightmare.
Not that he could afford to care.
It was fine to spread her, to play hot games that taught her his strength and conditioned her to yield to him. The obedience he built in bed might pay off later when she followed some crucial order at some crucial moment. If she became obsessed with him, so much the better.
But he couldn’t afford to become obsessed in turn. She was a job, no different from the rescue of the admiral’s daughter, or that Vardonese scientist, or any of those he’d saved. Just another mission on the way to the only one that counted: looking into the eyes of General Gavoni Jutka and watching the bastard’s life drain away.
Baran had gotten all the others who’d tortured and killed his team, or at least all the ones whose names he’d been able to discover. He’d stalked them patiently, challenged them one by one.
All except the bastard who’d murdered Liisa. He’d never been able to discover that one’s name. But Jutka knew. He had to. And he’d give Baran that final name before he died.
One way or another.
But not tonight.
With a sigh Baran moved back to the bed and stood looking down at Jane. With his enhanced senses, he could plainly see the way her lashes fanned over her cheeks in the dark, her mouth relaxed in a full pout. He thought about kissing her again, tasting those velvet lips.
Keep your distance, warned a mental voice. Don’t get too close. Don’t let her get too close.
He moved around the bed, pulled free the sheet that was trapped under Jane’s sleeping form. Climbing in beside her, he covered them both and started to reach for her. He wanted to feel her delicate warmth against him.
He stopped the gesture hi midmotion. Better not.
Instead he rolled over on his side until he faced away from her, leaving a comfortable distance between them. His back felt cool. For a moment he imagined what she’d feel like spooning him from behind, all curves and silken warmth.
Then he shut down the thought and closed his eyes. Computer, enable sleep. Scanners to full. Alert me if you detect anything.
Engaged, the comp said. He felt the tension dram from his body as the comp flooded his brain with the slow, deep wave patterns of sleep.
He knew nothing else.
Jane snapped her eyes open with a choked whimper and stared wildly at the wall bathed in the golden glow of morning sunlight. For an instant she had a memory of bloody dreams. Then the memory fled, and she was left with nothing but an impression of terror and violence.
She was glad. Her current reality was bad enough as it was. Except for ...
Baran.
She turned over quickly, half hoping to discover he’d been nothing but a dream himself. Along with the concept of Jack the Ripper bouncing merrily through time killing people...
No. There he was, handsome and sound asleep, long hair tumbling around his tattooed face as he lay on his side facing her. His chest seemed to loom like a muscled wall, soft chest hair curling in a tempting cloud across its breadth. He was so damn gorgeous, she wanted to touch him just to see if he was real.
Which was no reason to sleep with the man mere hours after he’d broken into her house. Damn, that was the kind of thing romance heroines did, not real, living people who paid bills and ran a newspaper. She couldn’t believe she’d let him seduce her like that.
Then she looked at the soft line of his mouth, the fan of his long eyelashes over his cheeks, the truly outstanding width of his shoulders....
Okay, maybe she could believe it.
She sighed. And promptly grimaced at the nasty taste in her mouth. If Baran woke up and decided to give her one of those incredible kisses, he’d be appalled. Time to brush the teeth.
Among other things, she mentally added, noticing the pressure in her bladder.
Jane started to roll out of bed, then stopped. He’d told her he had to be with her at all times. But what was she supposed to do—wake him out of a sound sleep and say, Hey, wake up. I have to pee? She didn’t think so.
She’d make it quick and be back in bed before he—
A strong male hand snapped out to wrap around her wrist. She looked down to see Baran had opened one eye to look at her. “Where are you going?” his voice was sleep graveled. And astonishingly sexy. It just wasn’t fair.
“I didn’t mean to wake you....”
“You did anyway. Where are you going?”
“Bathroom break.”
He lifted his head from the pillow, yawned hugely, let her go, and rolled smoothly to his feet. “One more time, Jane—you don’t go anywhere without me.”
“For God’s sake, Baran, the Secret Service isn’t this paranoid!”
His gaze turned abstracted. She realized his computer was probably feeding him the meaning of the term—and probably the complete history of the Service, all the way back to the day it was created. Growling, she bent to snatch her sleep shirt off the floor, then jerked it down over her head. She looked around for her pants and found them on the other side of the room.
As she recovered them and put them on again, she looked around to see him watching her, mouth flattened with displeasure. “Unlike you, your President doesn’t have Jack the Ripper after him.”
“No, just every other nutball on the planet.” Janet turned and stomped toward the bathroom, resentfully aware that Baran dogged her heels. “I know what this is about, by the way. I lived for twenty-two years with a dominant jerk, and I know all the games. Daddy played them, each and every one. Tm the man, and you’ll do what I say. Or else!’ No wonder Mom made for the hills.” If she had. If her father hadn’t...
“What are you talking about?”
“My father, alpha male of the universe.” She plopped down on the toilet. “Turn your back, dammit.”
Baran obeyed. “What has he got to do with this?”
“He thought women were naturally inferior, too. An old-fashioned, Southern-fried, sexist...” Wife-abuser, but Baran didn’t need to know that part. “So you can imagine how thrilled he was when his only offspring turned out to be female.”
Baran turned back around to gape at her. “Naturally inferior? Women? I never said that.”
“Yeah? So what’s with the ‘You’re going to obey my every command’ crap? Turn your back, dammit.”
“That’s not about your being a woman! That’s about your being a civilian.”
Finished, she rose and stalked to the sink to wash her hands. “Same difference.”
“No. It’s not.” Baran angled his head down until he was nose to nose with her. His eyes were beginning to glow again. “I will fight Druas for you, Jane. That’s a given. But it’s not going to be easy, because from what Freika said, he’s at least my match in strength. He may even be stronger. And considering what we both know he’s capable of, that may not turn out well for me.”
Jane had to fight the impulse to step back from the red-hot threads of rage burning in his irises. Instead she grabbed a towel and started drying her hands. “Yeah, I’m aware of that. I really am. And I’m grateful. But that still doesn’t give you the right to push me around!”
“The point is, I’m willing to die for you.” He bared his teeth and gritted, “But I’m not willing to die for your stupidity!”
For
a moment she stared at him in shock. Then her rage exploded. “Fuck you, Baran.” Throwing the towel into his face, she stormed from the room.
Baran grabbed her wrist, jerking her to a stop just outside the door. She looked down at the hand that gripped her, then slowly raised her eyes to glare at him. In her mind’s eye she saw every time her father had ever grabbed her mother, every time he’d pushed, every time he’d slapped. “Let. Go.”
He glared. Jane peeled her lips away from her teeth as her fury burned hotter. She knew in that moment that if he lifted his free hand, she was going to hit him with everything she had, no matter how much bigger and stronger he was.
Slowly a faint alarm replaced the rage in his eyes, as if he realized just how close she was to the edge. Carefully he released his grip and stepped back.
That backward step was one her father had never taken.
Somehow it pricked Jane’s fury like a bubble. She slumped, deflating as the rage drained away, leaving only weariness behind. “I won’t be abused, Baran. Not even by a man who promises to protect me from Jack the Ripper.”
“It’s not my intention to abuse you.” His voice was just as low and tired as hers.
“Then you need to work on your delivery, because you’re getting awfully damn close.” She walked over to the bed and lowered herself to the mattress, the sudden exhaustion weighing at her.
Baran moved to sit down at her side, broad shoulders slumping. “I’m sorry.”
“Huh.” She snorted. “I’ve heard that before.”
He eyed her, frowning. “Not from me.”
“No. From my father. He was always sorry.” She laughed shortly. “Every single time he beat the hell out of my mother, he was sorry. Not that it ever stopped him.”
“Your father beat your mother?” She saw that she’d somehow shocked him.
She shrugged. “Until she ... left.”
He frowned. “And you thought I was about to hurt you?”
Jane lifted a brow at him. “Well, you were pretty pissed.”
“But I wouldn’t have hit you.” He tilted his chin, visibly offended. “I’m a Warlord “
She waited for him to elaborate, but he just looked indignant. “And? Unlike some people I could name, I don’t have a computer implant to tell me what that means.”
“No Warlord would use his strength against those he’s sworn to protect,” he explained, still visibly offended. “Particularly women. It’s ... dishonorable.”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t seem to have a problem with holding me down while you were—“
“That,” he informed her, “was sex.”
She stared at him. “I feel so much better now.” “Now you’re being deliberately obtuse.” The beaded braid swung against his cheek as he gestured sharply. “There’s a great deal of difference between playing erotic games and hurting someone under my protection. The only reason I’d ever use force against you is if you were trying to do something that would get you killed. Even then, I wouldn’t beat you. Tie you, possibly ...”
“Which sounds awfully damn patronizing,” she interrupted. “I’m an adult, Baran. I don’t need to be restrained for my own good.”
“In principle, I agree. But I’ve been in this kind of situation before, and I found out the hard way that principles and reality do not always coincide.” He sighed. “Which is basically why this argument began in the first place.” “Oh?” She lifted a brow at him. “I’ve been in this situation before. Or one like it.” “Ah.” Suddenly his earlier fury began to make sense. She turned to stare out the window at the bright morning sunlight. Outside, one of the neighbor’s kids zipped by on his bike. “I gather it didn’t end well.”
“No. No, it didn’t.” Baran braced his elbows on his knees and clasped both big hands between them. “When I was sixteen, the Xerans invaded Vardon, my home world.” She nodded. “I think you mentioned that.” “Yes.” He looked down at his broad, scarred palms. “They tried to wipe out the warrior class, the Warlords and Warfems, all of us who’d been genetically engineered to defend the planet. They killed many of us, but I was one of those who survived. We headed for the highlands and lived as guerillas, striking out of the mountains, killing and running.”
Jane looked at him, trying to imagine the life he must have led, all those centuries away. It was incomprehensible.
Just as incomprehensible as the fact that this wild, alien man had just given her the best sex she’d ever had hi her life. Damn, she thought. I really am in trouble.
And she wasn’t just thinking about Druas.
“It sounds as if your childhood was worse than mine,” Jane said, dragging her mind away from its hot memories of Baran hi bed. “And you grew up like that?”
“Yeah. It was ... difficult. There was never enough to eat, and we lived like, well, predators. And our prey was the Xerans.” His gaze turned grim. “We were so savage we eventually made the price too high for them. They put a puppet government in place and left. The puppet lasted about a week before one of us assassinated him.” He shook his head. “The Vardonese had a hell of a tune civilizing the Warlords again after it was over. Me in particular.”
“Oh?”
He shrugged. “The Femmats who run our world are pacifists. They had no frame of reference to understand what torture does to you.”
“Torture?” She felt her eyes widen. “You were tortured? When?”
Instead of answering, he said, “Back when I was sixteen, I was in a combat unit. I’d grown up with them. Lieutenant Ullock, and Thorp, who did demolitions, and Ive...” Baran smiled slightly at the memory. “Ive cheated at cards like nobody I’ve ever met, but he was so damn charming you had to forgive him for it. And Liisa. She was ... I...” He stopped and shrugged. “First love. You know how it is.”
“Yeah. I’ve got a pretty good idea.” Oh, this did not sound good.
“Central Command sent us on this mission to rescue a Femmat scientist the Xerans were holding in this compound out in the mountains. It wasn’t supposed to be all that tough a target. We’d done that kind of thing before. Should have been in and right back out. But it didn’t work out that way.”
Jane studied his profile. He’d drawn himself very straight, head up and shoulders back, staring sightlessly out the window. When he didn’t speak for a moment, she prompted softly, “What happened?”
“Liisa and I were supposed to go in and get the scientist out while the others created a distraction. Only when we popped the cell open, the Femmat wouldn’t come with us. Said we had to get her data crystal first. She said it held top-secret results from some kind of experiment, and we couldn’t leave it in the hands of the enemy. I told her that wasn’t the mission, that we were on a timetable and we had to get her out now, no detours.”
“But she didn’t go along with it.”
His mouth took on a hard, bitter twist. “No. No, she told me I didn’t understand, that I was just a child in the body of a human tank, good for nothing but killing people. She said I didn’t have the intelligence to grasp the importance of her work. And she said she wasn’t moving one foot until I got her crystal back for her.”
“Bitch.” She paused to consider the term. “No, that doesn’t do her justice. Stupid bitch.”
“If she’d been anybody else ...” He shrugged. “But she was a Femmat. You don’t even have the concept. They’re ... I suppose the closest term is aristocracy, the ruling class on Vardon. I’d been taught to obey Femmats. I’d been created by a Femmat geneticist, raised by Femmats, taught by Femmats in the Warlord Creche.” He shook his head, the colored gems in his braid swinging. “I didn’t know what to do. She wouldn’t move and I couldn’t manhandle her, because a Warlord doesn’t even touch a Femmat without her permission.” His lip curled in sudden anger. “One punch. One punch, and they’d all still be alive. But I couldn’t make myself do it.”
Jane swallowed. “What happened?”
He laughed shortly. “I went to get her crystal. Liisa was going
to try to get her out, but they ran into trouble. I wasn’t even all the way back down the hall when I heard the beamer blast. The Xeran guards had caught them. I turned around and went back, but it was too late. The next thing I knew, Xerans were coming out of the walls. Liisa and I fought them, but they overwhelmed us.”
His face was almost expressionless, his tone coolly professional, but there was something in his eyes, a shadow of loss and despair that made Jane’s heart clutch in pity. It was starkly painful to watch such a powerful man torture himself over his inability to save those he’d loved.
Particularly when she knew there was nothing she could do to comfort him.
“I used my computer to com the lieutenant, tell him how everything had gone to hell,” Baran said. “He in turn commed Central Command and reported what had happened. Then he and the others tried to rescue us. He should have left us to rot.”
“They were captured, too,” Jane guessed. “Yes. And the Xerans ...” His voice trailed off. “By the time Central Command sent in another team to get us out, the others were dead, and I was ... injured.” His eyes fixed on some ugly vision. Baran said softly, “What the Jump-killer did to Mary Kelly ... I’d seen something similar before. It’s not really all that far outside the norm of Xeran behavior. If you allow yourself to be taken, they think you deserve whatever you get.” “Jesus.”
What in God’s name had they done to him? Somehow she couldn’t bring herself to ask. As a reporter, Jane was no stranger to dealing with people who’d suffered profound emotional and physical trauma. Yet she found herself totally unable to think of anything to say in the face of such pain.
She took a deep breath and blew it out. “I’m sorry. God, that’s inadequate, but I’m sorry.”
He turned his head and looked at her, his eyes blasted with such desolation she instinctively put a hand on his shoulder. He flinched.
Then anger flooded his gaze. “Don’t make the mistake of pitying me.” His voice was low, dangerous. Faint red striations began to glow against his dark irises. “I don’t need your pity. I need your obedience.”
“Baran, I’m not like that woman scientist. I’m not an idiot.”