Jin-Bennu

by Vivienne Savage

  “Tell him it’s too early for wedding outfit discussions, Isis.”

  “I shall deliver your response.” The pale blue-green light dimmed and went dormant for only what seemed like a few seconds before it flashed again, in time with the synthetic voice’s speech pattern. “Jin-Bennu says it is the hour for training and you have already given your word to be his student.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Shall I relay that?”

  “No!” Veryn threw back the bedcovers and stormed to the door, tearing down the robe hung beside it and swaddling herself in silk. She did not tend to sleep nude aboard any vessel but had found the Exemplar to be exceedingly secure and safe. Here, she did not need to be on constant guard.

  At her command, the door slid open to reveal Bennu in sparring gear, a wrap around his hips so low the indentation of his hips drew her gaze like the magnetic pull of a planet keeping its moons in orbit. From there, her attention slowly traveled upward, ascending the glorious trail leading to the navel, scanning over chiseled abs, and finally reaching a chest just above her face level.

  Bennu towered above her, a bare-chested giant in warrior’s garb holding two bladeless hilts. “I told you the sixth bell.”

  “I thought you meant evening.”

  He chuckled. “No. That would be the eighteenth hour.”

  Smug bastard.

  It occurred to Veryn that she could very well decline and shut the door in his face, and he could do nothing about it. She was no Lexar, nor officially a member of the Royal Navy; otherwise, he may have had justification for ordering her about.

  Curiosity bloomed and took the lead, however, prompting her to sigh. She stared up at him, past the massive chest and into a handsome face studying her with expectation.

  “Give me a moment to dress.” Then Veryn shut the door on him.

  It took longer to select her workout attire than it did to don the two-piece outfit. A sports bra in breathable black-and-burgundy mesh crisscrossed straps over her ribs and sent a triple set of straps over her shoulders to cross between both blades. Translucent black mesh panels revealed peeks of her hips and spiraled over each thigh.

  It was, all in all, a very sexy athletic two-piece that revealed much of her skin while simultaneously covering her. Veryn considered it a compromise between the skimpy loincloths preferred by Lexar women when grappling and exercising. They had no qualms about revealing as much of their bodies as possible.

  The moment she stepped into the corridor, Bennu’s gaze slid over her with unabashed interest, rousing an unexpected sense of triumph in her.

  Success.

  At what, though? At capturing the fleeting notice of an almost nine-foot-tall alien warrior who could crush her with psionic force if he caught her unaware and unprepared for his assault?

  Forget crushing me with psionic force. He could crush me with his hands and I’d never stand a chance.

  She wondered if her own psychic gifts could ever be as powerful as the awe-inspiring force of a Lexar who trained for decades to manipulate space and energy, or if he’d shatter her willpower with the brute force of a sledgehammer striking glass.

  “Are you going to humiliate me in the gymnasium?”

  “I wouldn’t do that. While there is no shame to an honorable defeat during a spar, we will practice in the officers’ sparring chamber.”

  Interesting.

  “Why there?”

  “Privacy,” Bennu replied over one muscular shoulder while striding toward the entrance to a prohibited area of the deck.

  Veryn cocked a brow and followed. The low, resonant tone of an alert chimed when Veryn approached, flashing red letters in Lexar. “We need privacy for a spar?”

  “I prefer to teach these techniques without an audience until I understand the measure of another warrior’s gift,” he explained. “If my fellow Lexar are present, you’ll be distracted.”

  “Oh.”

  Isis scanned Bennu’s biometrics, the sweep of pale turquoise light verifying his identity. At last, the red symbols above the door transitioned to a serene green hue, and the reinforced steel slid open to reveal a corridor decorated in Lexarian reliefs of their giant warriors engaged in battle against various unfamiliar foes. Veryn studied the grotesque faces of alien species she’d never seen or read about in history, and she imagined few humans were allowed to tread beyond that door.

  Who are they? she wanted to inquire.

  “Will you get in trouble for allowing me here?” she asked instead.

  “No.” He chuckled. “We won’t travel far, and you won’t be privileged to any classified information. Our destination is just ahead.”

  Bennu took her into a circular chamber surrounded by multiple rows of stadium seating in the imitation of a smaller indoor coliseum. She stared in awe at the racks of weapons waiting beside them at the entrance, stacked near an assortment of brown leather cuirasses and giant-sized scaled armor in gold and silver, many sporting ornamentations in vivid blue and red. Veryn saw similar during a viewing of an Ancient Egyptian historical movie.

  “None of those will fit me.”

  Bennu’s sudden laugh made her stomach flutter. She realized it wasn’t a sound she heard often.

  “What’s so funny?”

  He offered the smaller hilt. “You won’t need any armor today, Veryn. We’ll be using practical holophase hilts. The light particle technology is designed to mute psionic force. This means the strikes may sting somewhat, but they won’t inflict injuries or lasting damage upon you.”

  “Oh.” She turned the glossy, black hilt over a few times and smoothed her finger over the activation button. A smooth jet of light emerged and took form in the shape of a curved blade while Bennu fiddled with a console nearby. His own weapon appeared massive by comparison.

  “Why is mine so much smaller than yours?” The device appeared similar to the phase swords she trained with during the intense weeks of grueling academy time for the Royal Navy officers chosen for Her Majesty’s secret agent corps. When she touched it, energy bent around her fingers but resisted her crossing the light pattern completely. It stung, snapping her skin like a rubber band with rhythmic pulses that grew increasingly disconcerting.

  “Mine is intended for adult use. You hold one intended for a child.”

  “Ouch.”

  Bennu grinned. “A teenager among our people, I should say. You and Nia are exceptionally tall women for humans.”

  “We are, I suppose. Tallulah has many tall people.”

  “But you are not of Tallulah. You are Albionian.”

  It startled her that he knew that, though she supposed it wasn’t a difficult guess to make from her accent. There are at least a dozen other English-speaking British colonies with my accent. I’d be a fool to assume he didn’t look me up in the system.

  In fact, it wasn’t too much of a leap to assume Amun and Bennu, as well as their top officers, had scoured every inch of available data about the researchers rescued from Killandor 2 over a year ago.

  “We will begin with the khopesh,” he said. “There are no limitations. I will show restraint without using the full extent of my physical strength, but I have no objections to you using all tools to your advantage.”

  The reach on his weapon may as well have spanned a million miles. Veryn stared at him dubiously. “Is that the only self-limitation you’ll apply.”

  Bennu’s wicked smile provided the answer before he replied, “Yes.”

  “But it’s impossible for me to have a chance against you, when you’re—”

  “Larger?”

  “No,” Veryn said, aiming a sweet smile up at him in return. “Psionic is what I intended to say. I don’t have a chance against you if a reduction in physical strength is your only limitation. Even without psionics, your reach is enormous, you weigh too much to move, and your weapon is almost as long as my body. You could hold me back with a psionic barrier and never have to fight.”

  “Far from it. There are ways to defeat
even one such as me in battle. That is why we are here and why I’ve given you this particular training weapon. Here, you will learn to battle a psionic Lexar. Until the day you best me in battle or leave this ship, you are to be my student.”

  Bennu had no idea what possessed him to utter such a bold claim, but nothing else manifested in his thoughts as an excuse to see Veryn again and again.

  Waiting for her response subjected him to the longest thirty seconds of his life. Her calculating eyes studied him, her mouth pursed with indecision, and a fine wrinkle creased her brow. Bennu watched Veryn’s eyes light with intrigue, understanding dawning over pretty features and making green eyes more vibrant than ever. The tightening in his groin warned him to keep his surging lust for her under control.

  He should have doubled the duration of his morning meditation session. Two hours of preparation prior to meeting Veryn wasn’t enough to tamp down the desire she stirred every time she crossed his vision.

  "Until the day I beat you? Bennu, that may never happen!"

  "Your smile implies otherwise, Princess."

  "My smile says you're full of shit and I'm waiting for you to tell me the truth. You don't seriously think I'll have the time to overcome you in a spar. You've had years—decades?—to learn all of this. I have only two weeks before I'm expected to return to Albion.”

  Disappointment fell over him again with the force of a typhoon. Naturally, Amun and Bennu had been immediately informed of Veryn’s diplomatic status change in the UNE systems. And with that, had also come the arrangement for the woman to be ferried to Aaru to await pickup following the ceremony.

  Two weeks wasn’t enough time. “Weeks is all we need. You are clearly already trained in the way of battle. You merely must adapt to our ways.”

  One hand rested on her hip, and blue eyes rolled toward the high ceiling. “This is ridiculous. I’ll humor you.”

  The gorgeous woman hit all the right buttons for him, from her wit and courage to her dedication to her friends. When all went to shit on Killandor 2, she’d been first in line to battle the Zaecady. Veryn had the soul of a Lexar.

  Like Nia.

  No. Amun’s Nia was one of a kind. He’d been fortunate to find such a woman among the human stock, and it would be safer for both of them if he ceased searching for the perfect mate where he was least likely to find her.

  Especially when the woman most appealing to his senses happened to be next in line to rule all humankind.

  She’s too good for you.

  Jin-Aptut would disagree. No matter her pedigree or accomplishments, the sheer fact that Veryn’s blood was one hundred percent human disqualified her from joining their fierce, psionic bloodline. In his veins, he carried the blood of two renowned psychics.

  Already, Bennu heard his father’s condescending words. Human stock breeds only inferior children. If one must take pleasure in them, it is as a pet.

  Bennu knew these words in his heart, words imprinted through psychic prowess into his mind from an early age.

  Those foul comments had been undone by another masterful hand, both by compassionate words and psionic caresses that soothed the resentment sown by his father. Humans are our friends, little one, and we are to always love, respect, and protect them.

  Two Lexar could not be more dissimilar. His parents had not mated for love. The heated arguments and petty disagreements in their household made that clear from an early age. Mating for power and lineage guaranteed their three children developed awe-inspiring psionic talent, but they lived unhappy lives.

  The great Jin-Aptut had no less than four consorts at any time, each one paraded openly through the house. Bennu’s mother was more discreet. She maintained her own lover throughout the years in a separate flat opposite their home, spending more of her time there while he and his siblings attended combat and strategy lessons with tutors.

  All effort to remain a family died on the day Bennu left home to join the Nova Force. He'd been the last of three children to fly free from the nest, and of course, their singular reason for inhabiting the same home ended. Officially, they remained a couple in the eyes of the Lexar. Spiritually, emotionally, mentally, they had never truly been together.

  Every so often, a family get-together or event forced them together. His older sister's bonding ceremony had been an event worthy of the two putting aside their differences to occupy the same space. Then, the moment the celebration ended, his father gifted the new couple a vast quantity of money in a bid to outshine his bonded mate. For more than an hour, the two made witty retorts back and forth, mentally batting the ball of wealth over a figurative net. One offered money, the other a new home. One presented them with a grand cruise aboard a new luxury vessel with stops scheduled on a dozen worlds. The other offered property on a distant holiday planet. Back and forth, this carried on much to the embarrassment of the wedding party.

  His sister had been horrified.

  Bennu never wanted that for himself.

  When he mated, he wanted it to be for love to a woman who made his soul glow with delirious happiness, with the exultant, indescribable joy a man would kill to have and devote his life to keeping. He wanted...

  He wanted to experience the Mating Frenzy, as his mother had with her lover at first sight. As Amun had with Nia. He imagined any children blessed to them would have a home filled with joy and laughter, raised by two parents who loved each other deeply and without resentment.

  Despite those rifts, they still shaped Bennu into the man he had become. He adopted his mother's endless compassion for humans, and it was his father's outstanding sense of loyalty to their rulers that drove him into the Nova Force. To his father's displeasure, he had not inherited the retired alpha's sense of overwhelming superiority when it came to humanity.

  Bennu had seen their guile, wit, and intelligence.

  He saw the beauty in them, their creativity, and their determination.

  Funny how he saw all of those things in the woman standing before him with earnest green eyes peering into his soul and a half smile on her lips so beautiful he wondered what it would be like to have them under his mouth and parted by his tongue.

  Or surrounding one of his dicks.

  They twitched again, firming with unwanted desire that pooled and made him ridiculously angry, much like a young child denied a tasty cake.

  Bennu activated his weapon. On a true model, it might have sizzled and cut like a laser through any substance with its high velocity, high temperature condensed beam. On their training weapons, the light particle technology emulated physical mass.

  “How do I use it?”

  “Like so,” he replied, jabbing the weapon forward in a swift stroke and tearing it toward her. It caught Veryn by the leg, the curved blade hooking around the back of her thigh. With his pull, he tore her off balance, and she fell to the ground. When ten seconds of silence passed, the big alien feared she planned to rise and storm away in a fit of anger.

  Her khopesh snapped up and planted, with a force he did not expect, into his groin. Her strength, paired with a training weapon designed to leave a mark regardless of protective coverings, gave a firm reminder that humans were ingenious, opportunistic creatures.

  Agony exploded in his balls and lanced to the base of his spine.

  Before he could condemn or laud her for a job well done, Veryn spun off the ground to her feet in an impressive acrobatic move worthy of a professional gymnast. She swept again with the blade, making up for her loss of reach with speed his larger body lacked. He felt sluggish by comparison, reminded of attempting to catch a mosquito on Killandor 2 that had plagued his team within their tent one evening. Like that insect, she stung then flitted away.

  She played him.

  She knew precisely how to use the weapon.

  And nothing had ever aroused him more.

  The curved blades clashed together and locked.

  Expecting her to resist his strength, Bennu pushed forward. It should have thrown her off balance
to the floor, but she responded with the flexibility of a reed and released the weapon. Her body turned in a dazzling aerial, taking him by surprise when her controlled landing placed her in the ideal position to then spring between his legs. One moment, he had her at his mercy beneath him on the floor, and in the next, the small woman was behind him. The startling maneuver won her a precious second, taking him by surprise when her light weight landed on his back. She hopped on him like a wildcat.

  Bennu reached for her, but she scrambled up. “Fuck!” he barked out. Humans weren't supposed to be so spry, the contrast between them no different from an elephant and a mouse.

  Long legs wrapped around his neck, and she swung down, the weight of her body so slight it should have had little to no effect. Bennu was wrong. Because Veryn was moving with him, it pitched him off balance. The force of her drop caught him unawares and took him off his feet.

  As he was falling, she flipped away. Bennu was still raising from the ground when she reclaimed both fallen blades. The clattering to the floor had deactivated both. An agile snap of both wrists summoned both lights anew and psion-dispersing light jetted from the hilts. The current between them sizzled and lanced back and forth between points of contact, streams of blue light disrupting his mental view of her. Power filled the air with each spark released, not quite negating his psychic ability but muting it.

  Bennu gritted his teeth through the discomfort and reached for her with a hard shove. Admirable reflexes brought the pair of blades before her in an X, absorbing the shock of his psionic push. It nudged her. A slight—had he blinked, he would have missed it—adjustment of her arm repositioned the blades and negated the attack entirely.

  Interesting.

  Bennu applied more power beneath the crossed beams, noticing the woman guarded her face but left her legs unprotected. This time, she skidded backward and granted him a moment to recuperate. At last, he saw his opening, and he ran in to claim it. Their bodies collided as he found a way through her defenses at the cost of receiving a scorching mark to the arm. He took her down to the mat and trapped her, his larger body on her svelte frame. Bare skin touched his abs.