by Berinn Rae
Sienna’s shoulders slumped. “Things would not have gotten as out of hand if we didn’t use cups the size of beer steins.” she pointed at the man on the couch. “Or maybe if Jax wasn’t so damn generous with the beer.” She’d been lucky. She had pain killers so she slept straight through her hangover. The others weren’t so lucky.
Nalea gestured for the med-tec to join in. “Grab a seat, Risa. Tell me. Have you ever played Assassin’s Creed before?”
“I’ve never played any video game before,” the med-tec replied shyly.
“Ooh. Fresh meat.” Sienna tossed the controller to the petite med-tec. Risa fumbled, and Jax caught it right before it hit the floor. He handed it to her, and she blushed.
Sienna curved into Legian’s warm chest to watch the game in style.
Nalea started up a new game. “I’d be happy to show you.”
“First, beer me,” Jax said. And Risa scurried to grab a can.
Where she had tossed the cans to Legian and Nalea, she handed the can to Jax and sat down next to him. She could have sworn she let her fingers linger on his. She sat next to Jax as he went about showing her how to operate the controller. When Nalea started a game, he casually draped an arm around Risa to help her with the controls.
Sienna smiled. Jax the soldier had finally taken a break for Jax the man. She watched the trio play the game. To be more accurate, she watched Jax and Risa get their asses served to them by Nalea who rocked the RPG world. She was about to put the coup de grâce on the pair when Doc walked in and scanned the room, his eyes stopping when they came to Risa.
“There you are.”
Risa looked up toward the voice as Nalea killed the med-tec’s assassin. “Just taking a break, Fayel.” When she turned back to the screen, she stammered. “Wha — what happened?”
“You got squished. Rule One. Don’t touch the ground,” Nalea replied cockily.
“I don’t understand.”
Nalea smirked as she interlaced her fingers behind her head and leaned back. “You will, little grasspopper. Oh yes, you will understand.”
Risa jumped up with a smile. “This was fun. I’d love to do this again. Although I think I may need a bit more coaching.” Her words were clearly directed more at Jax than anyone else.
“Anytime,” the Ranger replied.
Handing the controller back to him, she walked around him, touching his shoulder as she passed him on the way out.
Sienna’s smile didn’t last. She wondered if she was the only one who noticed Doc brush his hand across Risa’s ass when she stepped through the door.
Chapter Twelve
One Month Later
“Do you yield?” Legian boomed.
“Never,” Sienna shoved out through clenched teeth while she knelt on her hands and knees, panting. The pain in her leg was agonizing. She had been stuck helpless in a bed for over a month, and her muscles had seriously atrophied. She’d always had some cellulite, but now she felt like a jellyfish. This session felt worse than her first one with Legian. She was weak and hurting big time. And the worst part? Legian knew it.
Her sparring partner held out a hand, his face tight. “Yield, Sienna. Please.”
She slapped his hand away.
Moving about as fast as a snail stuck in peanut butter, she pulled herself up, trying not to favor her bad leg. Not that it mattered. The bitch burned like acid with each movement. She grunted through the pain and somehow managed to get herself pulled to her feet. Legian gave her space while she came to her full height across from him on the training mats.
She could feel eyes boring in her, and she yanked around to glare at the pair on a mat two down from the mat where Legian and she sparred. Her look of death did the trick. She practiced it often around the base. Today, this pair picked up their stuff and walked out of the room, leaving Legian and her alone.
She knew what she looked like. She’d been getting her ass handed to her all morning by her tahren. She looked around the Olympic-sized training room as she took the time to catch her breath. Padded sparring rings covered the floor, each a different color. Weapons of various shapes and sizes filled racks lined against the dark walls. A muted sound always filled the air from the filtration system. Like white noise, only less obtrusive. More like a gentle sigh.
Today, they used no weapons. It was time to get back to the fundamentals. It was her first training session since the attack. And, it was pitiful. Worse than pitiful. Her leg couldn’t support her own weight, let alone any sharp moves. She wore a stiff brace and even with it she could barely stand. Without it, she was a cripple.
But she would do this. She had to do this. “The Draeken have painfully proven the fact that they know the location of this base.”
Legian’s lips tightened. “The base is secure. For now. At least from the Draeken. Their greatest strength is their anonymity on this planet. They won’t risk that with a frontal assault. The next time they try something, we won’t be unprepared,” he said.
“But we no longer have the numbers to take them on. And there’s still the elephant in the room.”
“Elephant?” Legian looked around, confused.
“It means there’s a big thing that no one wants to talk about,” she replied. “In this case, the elephant is the traitor on our hands. We know there’s one — or more than one — on this base. Just as we know Apolo’s inside guy has probably been compromised. We’ve been playing defense the whole game. And it’s fucked us. We’ve got to switch to offense if we want to win.”
She motioned her tahren to her. “Bring it on.” As long as the Draeken were a threat, she would train.
He raised an eyebrow and stared at her. When he realized she was serious, he gave a proud smile. Then he attacked. His arm shot out, and she dodged to the side. He kicked out a leg, which she jumped. She landed with a wince, but that wasn’t what pissed her off.
“You’re holding back,” she snarled when his blow rolled off her shoulder.
“You’re still injured,” he said, matter-of-factly.
“Doesn’t matter. I can’t afford not to be ready next time.”
He stepped back. “You sure?”
“Sure as your skin sparkles, Tinker Bell.”
He narrowed his eyes while he examined her for a moment. Then he shrugged and attacked. This time for real. In under a second she was flat on her back.
This time Sienna embraced the pain. Turning it into a war-scream, she twisted and grabbed Legian’s legs in a double-takedown maneuver. Except he didn’t go down. Just as she’d planned. She switched her pressure, pulling back rather than pushing. It knocked him off balance, and he fell on her.
She twisted on the ground in time to keep him from toppling onto her. But, he ducked his chin and rolled head-first to the side. He was on his feet and attacking before she was standing. Diving to the side, she narrowly missed his swing. He snapped around. She held her breath and leapt at him. He moved to the side like she expected, and she spun her good leg out the moment she hit the ground. She knocked him off balance and jumped on him.
With a full-out smile, she looked down to see a surprised Legian on his back.
“Do you yield?” Sienna asked in her best smart-ass tone as she straddled him.
He looked up with a wide grin, and her smile dropped.
Suddenly, she was the one with her back to the mat, staring up at the lights. “Dammit. You played me.”
“I was having too much fun seeing the look of success in your eyes. You actually thought you had me,” he replied, standing victor over her.
“Interesting training technique.”
She looked up to see Apolo saunter into the training room. Her fists clenched. Why did he always have to walk in at the worst possible moments? For the past month, every time he checked on her, she’d been flat on her back.
“It’s Sienna’s first training session. She’ll be back in prime condition in no time,” Legian tossed out as he turned to face their leader.
“B
ut the real question is will her leg be a weakness we can afford out there?” Apolo asked.
“She’ll recover,” Legian replied simply.
“We’ll see.” Apolo walked around Legian and bent down, leaning on one knee no more than a foot or so from her. She pulled herself to one elbow and looked him in the eye. She wasn’t one to buckle under intimidation, and she wanted to make damn sure he knew it.
“Tell me, Sienna. Will you be ready when the U.S. officials come to visit our base?”
Her eyes widened. “You approved contact?”
Apolo huffed. “I am not obtuse. We all want what’s best for your people.” He brushed hair from her face with a couple fingers. She fought to keep from cringing. He noticed and backed away with a frown. “Show me that your leg won’t be a detriment.”
Legian stepped forward. “She’s not ready.”
“She’s a human and the tahren of one of my trinity. As such, she will be at the forefront of sensitive negotiations. We may not have the luxury of waiting for her to be ready,” the Sephian leader snapped back.
Legian lowered his head and stepped out of the mat. Sienna eyed him, and he looked at her right back, tense, unmoving.
Apolo motioned her to him. “Any time you’re ready, human.” He didn’t even widen his stance. He assumed she was harmless.
She turned her pain into rage. She launched herself at him. He didn’t bother to move out of the way. Instead, he held his arms out and embraced her as she rammed into him. She dropped and swept out his legs. Apolo fell to the floor with a look of surprise, as if he didn’t expect her to take him down. She took advantage of his hesitation and clapped her hands on his sensitive ears.
All that did was piss him off. In the next second, she got slammed against the mat so hard she could have sworn a tooth got knocked loose. Apolo had a knee against her throat. She clawed at his leg. He watched her gasp for air then smiled and the weight was gone. She grabbed the hand in front of her, and Apolo pulled her to her feet. The brace clanked as her leg straightened, pulling her healing muscles too tight. She bit her lips to keep from crying out.
Apolo showed her no mercy because she was female. He held true to the Sephian belief that females were as strong — or stronger — than their male counterparts. A belief Sienna firmly supported, although right now she was feeling markedly less than anyone’s equal, let alone superior.
She turned to face him and panted shallow breaths while he scrutinized her. After a moment, he gave her a slight tilt of his head, like he approved. Of what, she had no idea. “Jax has the details. He is making the arrangements. Connect with him.” Apolo nodded at Legian who nodded back and walked out.
The moment he left she collapsed back to the floor and inhaled sharply. Her eyes burned from sweat. She yanked off her bandana, wiped off her face and tied it back around her wrist. With a quick tug, she tightened her ponytail, then fell to her back. She could feel Legian lie down next to her as she stared at the ceiling.
“Why did Apolo lead the Sephian force here?” she asked, knowing that the Sephians were a matriarchal society.
“Krysea asked him to lead us here. Apolo is our greatest warrior. I would follow him to my death.”
Which you nearly did, she thought to herself. “I hope you never have to,” she said instead. “I get why she asked him, but I mean, why did he accept?” Being apart from his tahren must have been a living hell each and every day. And then to have to work harder than a woman to earn the respect of the troops, well, it seemed like a no-win situation for him. Apolo was too much of a pragmatist to take on an assignment where the odds were stacked so high against him.
“He would never turn down an assignment Krysea gave him. Our Leader has always done what’s best for our people. He knows that and accepts it.”
“Yeah, but what about what’s best for her? For Apolo?”
Legian brought himself up on an elbow and ran his hand over her skin. “That’s not her way. Or his, for that matter.”
“Well, I don’t get it.”
“I agree. Especially now that I have found my tahren and discovered the depth of the bond.”
With that, he kissed her, at first hard and commanding, then becoming gentle and passionate. The heat of his body cloaked Sienna as he came over her, kissing her senseless, inhaling her moan.
He pulled himself back and rested on his knees. His fingers climbed up and into her shorts, and she lifted her arms over her head, enjoying the pleasure. Two fingers floated over her clit, and she rocked against him.
He pulled away and she pouted, until she saw that he had only done so to pull her shorts down, being extra careful with her leg in the brace. He brushed his fingers against her again. “Bente has quite the collection of magazines. Some of the women in these publications had more hair than this.”
She shrugged. “Wasn’t in the mood for carpeting anymore. Just kept an area rug by the entry way.”
He gave her a cockeyed look and pulled back enough to pull down his pants, freeing a very hard cock.
She giggled, and then gasped when he thrust into her with one shove. Legian gave her an up-to-no-good grin, and he began to pull out. But he didn’t get the chance because she grabbed his ass and lifted her thighs to pull him deeper into her. He needed no more encouragement as he took it from there, careful not to put any weight on her left leg. In another moment, when she inhaled his faint Sephian scent, she lost all rational thought. Legian had a knack at doing that to her.
Her pleasure was raw, intense as he surged into her over and over. Tension grew until she could no longer see, and she felt his muscles tighten. She took all of him and demanded more. The pressure, the friction, the passion. It brought with it a shared climax that consumed her. At that moment, they weren’t Sienna and Legian. They were one.
Tahren.
After a yell that could have (hopefully) been mistaken for an aggressive battle shout — not that she cared — they lay on the floor together in sweaty bliss. Once she caught her breath, she bit his shoulder.
“Hey,” he scolded without looking too bothered.
“Don’t you think we should put our pants back on? We’re kind of out in the open. And this is a public facility.”
“I’d worry more about what the com-tecs will do with the video. After watching our escapades, every Sephian on this base is going to be on a mission to find their own human.”
Her mouth dropped. “Shit. I forgot about the cameras.” She shoved at him, and he shrugged with a boyish grin. He leaned back on his heels. He grabbed her bandana and, with gentle hands, wiped her dry of his golden semen, slid her shorts into their rightful place, and then did the same with his.
He bent down and gave her a quick kiss. “Any videos of us will be quickly destroyed. I give you my word.”
“Well,” she replied sweetly. “I wouldn’t mind if we kept one video for a little in-room entertainment.”
“I like the way you think,” he murmured as he kissed her neck, and the heat in the room began to jack up again.
“No. Playtime is over. Get off, you big oaf. Time to get back to work.” She pushed him — or at least tried to push him — off her.
He rolled onto his side. “I happen to like where I was.”
“I like where you were, too. But I’ve got to get this body back into shape. And unless you can bang me back into shape, I have a lot of training to do.” Sienna straightened her clothes and pulled herself to her feet. Already the muscles in her bad leg were beginning to lock up. She had a sinking feeling tomorrow morning’s stretches were going to be pretty much the most God awful thing since the creation of a certain sing-songy purple dinosaur.
She bent her leg slowly until the muscles released.
“Your leg needs rest. Why don’t we stop for today?”
She spun to face him. “And if my leg never heals? What if I’m a cripple forever? What then, Legian?”
He jumped to his feet and walked over to her. “But you can’t rush it. Human healing t
akes time. Take it one step at a time.”
“But what if?”
Legian frowned like he didn’t understand.
“What if I never heal? What if I — ”
“Sienna. I would love it if you never stepped another foot in combat. My heart broke when I heard the base was attacked.” He grabbed her by the shoulders. “The thought of losing you was too much, my tahren. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
She reached up and cupped his cheek. “I understand, hon. I couldn’t handle losing you, either. But I’m your Achilles’ heel, and I always will be. Unless I learn how to fight with a bum leg, I’m a burden to both you and Apolo.”
“You are no one’s burden.” He nearly spat the words with vehemence.
“Apolo said it himself. The Draeken — and quite possibly the Americans — aren’t going to give me time to be ready. They’re not going to give any of us time to be ready. They’ll come at us sideways, when we least expect it. Whether we want it or not, we’re in this is war together.”
She kissed her lover softly on the lips. Then she took hold of each of his wrists and removed them from her shoulders. His arms hung loosely at his sides and she turned away. Uncaring of the pain in her leg, she hobbled over to the weapons rack and grabbed a long wooden stick and twirled it in her hand.
She’d seen the Draeken in action. They would never back down, never give up. There was only way to protect Earth from the Draeken. They would have to kill them all.
Chapter Thirteen
Sienna didn’t know what else to do as she stood there, leaning on her cane for support. So she took Alanis Morissette’s advice. She tucked one hand in her pocket. She figured it looked better than nervously chewing her nails.
She stood at Legian’s side, finding it impossible to stand still. Her adrenaline was too amped up. She’d been around plenty of military bigwigs in her day. And she’d been to some impressive events. But nothing compared to this. This one was huge. Like, bigger-than-the-Guinness-Book huge.
She glanced up at Legian to find him watching her with humor in his eyes.