“Emotional safety is paramount among my kind,” he said. “Slamming your shields up in my face tells me that you believe I’d willingly hurt you, that I can’t be trusted.”
Blowing out an unsteady breath, she sat back. “You do work for the enemy, Major.”
He flashed a grin at her. “We’re allied.”
“I lured you into a kiss, then knocked you unconscious.”
“Until the loss of consciousness, I enjoyed every sexy moment,” he replied.
She flushed an alluring shade of crimson, but he swore he saw her struggling to contain a smile.
His heart lifted and he shifted closer to wrap his hands around her bare arms. “I’ve gauged your defenses.”
“By weaponizing sex?” she said. “I am aware.”
“I’m a Claugh nib Dovvyth officer. I am trained to break past a rival agent’s conditioning by any means available.”
She frowned. “It isn’t all that’s available.”
“No, but it is the most fun.”
The glimmer he’d begun to think might be a breach in her shields winked out in her brown eyes.
He bit back a curse. Second mistake. Someone in her past had used sex to hurt her. Why wasn’t that in her file? A light went on in his brain. It wasn’t in her file because she was a spymaster’s daughter. Chances were good that the file he’d committed to memory wasn’t real. Time to go digging where TFC and IntCom didn’t want him.
“I appreciate your honesty,” she said, her tone dead.
“Do you?” He choked back a haze of rage aimed at an enemy he couldn’t see or fight. “Jayleia, the last time I saw shields as brittle and as overwhelmed by what they contained rather than by what they fended off, it was on a woman who’d survived three months of torture by the Chekydran.”
Her lip curled. “I’m nothing like Ari.”
“Aren’t you?”
“She survived something I couldn’t have. She’s brave and smart and tough and . . .”
“Twelve Gods, Jayleia,” he said. “You face deadly diseases every day. When I came to kidnap you, you were fighting off bloody, fanged, furry, prey animals. Your father is missing. Yet, you had the presence of mind while sick and feverish to formulate a brilliant escape. How can you pretend you aren’t your friend’s equal?”
“I’m not Ari,” she snapped.
It was intoxicating, experiencing the surge and pulse of her feelings struggling to break through her defenses.
“No, you aren’t Ari. As much as I like and admire Captain Idylle, it’s you I want.” The vehemence in his voice startled them both.
She stared at him. The disbelief hovering behind her eyes tore at him.
He leaned closer still, close enough to detect the upswing in her heart rate by the flutter of her pulse beneath her jaw. He wouldn’t kiss her. No matter how much desire ripped his gut, that move was hers. If he couldn’t coax her out from behind her defenses, he deserved to suffer.
“Yes, you knocked me cold after lighting me up with that kiss. First blood to you. I will have revenge in my own time,” he whispered, his gaze on her mouth.
She sucked in a ragged-sounding breath.
“I won’t hurt you,” he assured her, struggling against the heat and tightness in his lower body. “When I take second blood from you, we will both enjoy it. Eventually.”
“Three Hells,” she breathed. “I’m enjoying it now.”
Elation and want nearly paralyzed him. Vulnerability stood out in her wide, brown eyes, luring him. He whispered a curse.
Her gaze dropped to his lips.
No way would he be able to keep his promise. It didn’t matter anymore who made the next move. Did it? He needed to taste her one more time. And not be knocked unconscious before he’d had his fill.
The com panel chirped.
Damen closed his eyes, frustration lending claws to the pain in his head.
Jayleia cursed in a language he didn’t recognize. Her mother’s tongue?
The disappointment in her tone made him chuckle. Opening his eyes, Damen rose, crossed the cockpit, and tapped open the channel—incoming text-only message.
Jayleia savored the warm tide of desire washing her bloodstream. A species that valued emotional over physical safety. Twelve Gods. It was a promise worth switching sides for.
Maybe at this point, it didn’t matter. Her escape had failed. She had to find her father, regardless. Couldn’t she modify her plans and use Damen and the Claugh nib Dovvyth the same way they intended to use her? After all. They’d volunteered.
Sifting her options, she picked up her handheld, still connected to the Kawl Fergus’s systems.
“Come,” scrolled across the screen. “Bring your friend.”
Damen’s breath hissed between his teeth. She caught the tight set of his lips from her peripheral vision.
“I can’t compromise you,” Damen typed.
Hard to read tone into two lines of text, but she thought she sensed amusement in the reply.
“Not your call, hizzett. I’m waiting.”
Damen cut the line more violently than strictly necessary.
Jay put her handheld into place on her belt and forced her desire-shrouded brain into action as Damen glanced at her.
Evidence suggested Damen had a relationship with someone on station, a relationship close enough or contentious enough to include pet names. Damen’s nickname “hizzett” was a Tagrethian word for infant mammalian predators valued for their propensity to hunt vermin. Someone who’d fallen victim to the same impression she had of Damen as a long-toothed Azym, but who obviously didn’t feel at all threatened by the man?
The man in question pressed the heel of one hand against the center of his forehead. “I need a dose of painkiller.”
Guilt stirred in her chest.
“Don’t you dare say you’re sorry,” he warned.
Stung, she retorted, “Only that I failed to escape.”
He eyed her, approval in his gaze and a sly smile on his full lips. “Will it require another shot to my head to get you to kiss me again?”
She flushed, discomfited by the irrational desire to answer with a demonstration to the contrary. He needed medication. She needed to get far away from the disturbing pressure he exerted against her crumbling self-control.
“Medi-bay,” she choked out, then fled.
His chuckle trailed in her wake. He followed and leaned against the medi-bay door frame.
With his gaze upon her, Jayleia felt naked. Shoring up her defenses, she wondered how he’d managed to see through them. So few people bothered.
What did it mean that he’d invested the time and effort to get around her walls? He’d said he wanted her. When he looked at her, something in his eyes made her believe he saw her, Jayleia. Not the scientist. Not the warrior. He seemed to see past her protective masks, past her repeatedly broken heart, and genuinely desired her. How much longer could she resist that? A sore spot opened in her chest in answer.
Stop it, Jay. You’ve been down the path of believing someone wanted you. It got you exiled. Stick to business.
“We have some issues complicating our next move,” she essayed as she rummaged through cabinets. “First, the ship isn’t sterile. The clean team did a cursory mop up. Any one of them could be infected.”
“I doubt it,” Damen replied. “They may have cheated me out of a few Imperials, but the quest for easy credit comes second only to self-preservation on this station. What else?”
“I gave most of your medical and emergency stores to a woman named Vala.”
Damen straightened, frowning.
A packet of medication in hand, Jayleia stopped a double arms’ length away from him. Given the tingle in her nerves, even that was too close. She held up the medicine. “Here. It’s not liquid, but it’s all that’s left.”
“I don’t bite,” he grumbled, taking the medication and swallowing it dry. “Unless you beg.”
That surprised a smile from her.
<
br /> The lines of tension and discomfort in his forehead eased.
Had winning a smile from her done that? The medicine certainly hadn’t had time to work yet. Pleasure glided through her at the possibility.
“Why give my stores to Vala?” he asked, nothing more than curiosity in his tone.
“Her son, Bellin. At least she claimed he was her son,” she hedged.
“He is.”
Jayleia eyed him, suspicion rolling through her at his calm assurance. “They were bait to catch me?”
His admiring smile made her grit her teeth. “If you keep seeing through them, I’ll run through my repertoire of dirty tricks in no time.”
“Your dirty trick nearly killed that boy,” she bit out. “He’s allergic to ooze venom.”
“Most of us are,” he said. “This is my territory you’re playing in, Jayleia. The rules are complex and as alien to you as if they were written in Chekydran. Don’t judge Bellin, or me, by what you think you know. This is Silver City.”
And his species base wasn’t the same as hers. That implied different moral constructs, cultural mores that wouldn’t make sense to her primate-derived brain.
She cursed. She’d been making the mistake every rookie science student made, trying to fit the evidence to her preconceived hypothesis rather than following the data to its inevitable conclusion.
“Most people would have left him and escaped,” Damen said, studying her.
That he believed her capable of leaving the child to die cut to her core. Jay stalked past him, then stopped short.
“Your advice goes both ways,” she said, facing him.
He turned to study her, a shrewd light in his eyes.
“I am the product of a complex culture bound by rules alien to you.”
“I can’t judge your willingness to forgo escape in favor of saving Bellin’s life by the standards of my kind?” he finished for her.
“No.”
He frowned and his gray eyes darkened.
Transfixed by the gathering emotion in his expression, her heart skipped a beat when he cupped her face in his hand. “Can we forget rules and judging long enough for me to say thank you for saving my son?”
Shock stole the breath from her lungs. His son? And Vala was his mother. No wonder she’d seen jealousy in the woman’s eyes.
He smiled. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
Leaning close, he brushed his lips against hers.
Sparks flashed across every nerve ending.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
CHAPTER 13
DAMEN was right on one vital point: Jayleia didn’t understand Silver City or its people. Certainly, she didn’t comprehend the man so successfully dissecting her defenses.
“M-my pleasure,” she stammered, and then flushed. His kiss was her pleasure. Bellin and his mother notwithstanding.
He’d said he wanted her.
Did that mean he no longer wanted his son’s mother?
Confusion chilled her. She pulled out of Damen’s grasp.
He let her go, his keen gaze undoubtedly catching every thought, fear, and doubt plodding across her face.
Feeling raw and exposed, she retreated to the cabin. She cycled through the shower, letting the warm ultrasonic cleansers wash away feelings of defeat. While she wasn’t beaten yet, she also wasn’t up to regrouping. She hadn’t identified a fallback position other than capitulating to imprisonment and someone else’s plan for finding her father.
As the drying system activated, she combed and braided her hair for the first time since leaving Chemmoxin. She put back on her dark brown trousers and her tough, comfortable expedition shoes. The shirt, colorless and sleeveless for wear in the heat of the swamp, wasn’t warm enough on station.
Jay raided Damen’s closet. If he protested, she’d quote alien rules to him again. At least he wouldn’t likely kiss her for stealing his clothes. At the back, behind the uniforms, she found a soft, dark green button-down. It was too big, but she loved the feel of the fabric against her skin. His scent in the fabric didn’t hurt, either. She put on her sleeveless lab shirt, tucked it in, donned Damen’s shirt on top, and then slung her gear belt around her waist.
When she stepped out of the cabin, Damen had the engine covers pulled back. He’d descended into the space between the deck plates and the hull.
She’d thought the engines had been shut down. She’d been wrong.
Bright, yellow light illuminated Damen’s face as he worked on something out of her line of sight. He glanced up as she approached the edge of the open deck plates.
He sucked in an audible breath, hunger in the set of his lips, and his gaze smoldering as he eased away from the silent engine. He raked her with a look that sent reaction, hot and damp, fluttering down her belly.
She cleared her throat and ignored her body.
Focusing on the splotches of dried, flaking blood on the undersides of the deck plates, she said, “Careful, the . . .”
“I appreciate your concern for my welfare,” he murmured, his eyes half lidded.
As Jay once again fumbled for something to say, she glimpsed a hint of predator surfacing in the way Damen’s muscles tensed when he leaned her way. He reminded her of the adult version of a hizzett, minus the tail and whiskers, considering whether or not to pounce on a toy.
“My lucky shirt,” he said, eyeing her up and down. “I never dreamed I’d be lucky enough to see you in it.”
Blood rushed hot to her face.
He smiled and turned back to the light pulsing on the interstellar engine.
She took a deep breath.
“You were right,” Jayleia said.
His eyebrows climbed.
“We’re allies and we’re friends,” she said, doing her damnedest not to stumble over the last word. She did not want to discuss friendship when she spent most of her time in his company feeling like he was hunting her. “I don’t mean to insult you or your culture, Damen, it sounds very seductive, entrusting my emotional safety to someone, but that’s never gone well for me. I can’t . . .”
“Honesty, then,” he said.
She contemplated that. “Can you promise it in return?”
He looked startled.
“Manipulating me doesn’t result in honesty,” she said.
“Unless you’re enjoying it,” he countered, “then I get the real you.”
She stared at him. Patently not true. Was it? He couldn’t have found a way in. If he had, she’d lost. She’d be at his mercy. Entirely. Could she handle that?
Her heart whispered yes. He wanted her. She wanted him.
Her rational mind rolled uneasily. What if he was just doing a job? Using her to get to her father. She knew what that was like being used. Could she take that chance?
If she were the only one taking the risk, maybe. But she wasn’t. She’d be gambling her father’s life as well.
“No.”
He flashed that devastating grin her way. “Jayleia. Scientist. Swovjiti trainee. Your father’s fledgling spy. How do I work my way past the many facets to get to your heart?”
Her head spun. How many more faces could she carve out of her body and soul? Was there enough of her left over for him? Or for herself?
Something snapped inside, it felt like the ties binding her so carefully compartmentalized life.
“Your question presupposes I have a heart,” she replied, unable to press the rough edges out of the admission.
Shaking her head, Jayleia waved off the alarm in his expression. “There’s a time and place for the kind of psychology you’re suggesting. This isn’t it.”
“You asked for honesty,” she said. “I can offer this: I guarantee mercenaries are on station already. I’ll lay credits on agents being here as well. The mercs we know and understand. They’re out to collect paychecks. The agents will be harder. Some will be my father’s people, legitimately trying to contact him and get back in play.”
“The rest will belong to the
traitors who sent your father into hiding in the first place,” he finished, his expression tight. “We’ll have no way to tell them apart.”
“That sums it up,” she said. “We’re in a race for my father’s life.”
“I don’t think so,” he countered.
Surprise rocked her.
“Based on what Admiral Seaghdh and Captain Idylle have said about your father and how he operates,” he said, “he’s secure. He’d have made sure he could rise to fight another day.”
She shuffled Damen’s appraisal into her still-developing hypotheses and nodded. “Yes. That makes sense. But Dad’s no longer at IntCom’s helm, which leaves the traitors free to do . . . what?”
“I don’t know. That’s where you and I come in,” Damen said, looking pleased by her quick acceptance of his version of the situation.
“Then why are we still standing on this Gods-forsaken station?” she demanded.
“I’ve tracked indications of UMOPG involvement in the traitors’ network to this station. More important, I found a file on your father in the Silver City data store,” he said. “I couldn’t get in before counter intrusion fired.”
She nodded. “What?”
Movement at the edge of her vision yanked her attention to the engine well.
“Get out of there!” she yelped.
Damen dropped his tools, vaulted out of the engine compartment, and followed her horrified gaze.
Two bloodworms, pale, hungry, and looking for a meal, crawled across the hull straight for where she crouched on the deck plating.
“What the Three Hells?” he rasped.
“Damn it,” Jay muttered, racing for the medical bay. She grabbed a sample container and a lid before returning to the edge of the open compartment.
“Are you bitten?” she demanded.
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Strip,” she countered. “Bloodworms excrete a numbing agent. You wouldn’t necessarily feel them.”
He unsealed and kicked off his boots.
“You could hit the shower,” she said.
“And miss an opportunity to see you blush?” he retorted. He stood and dropped his trousers. “Everything?”
Enemy Games Page 10