Page 80 of Command

Orion Halen twisted his head to look at Threxin, snarling mouth stained silver. He wiped his lips with the back of his arm, a violent gleam in his eye. “What in the goddamn fuck do you want?”

Threxin barely looked at him. His gaze remained fixed on the female cowering behind her part-uhyre mate. Heraddictivepart-uhyre mate. The man she should be physically craving if she went too long without tasting him.

Threxin lifted the sample he’d taken from the chill box to the light between his thumb and forefinger. The tube of blood belonging to the woman shaking before him glinted beneath the warm overhead lamps. Immediately the energy within the room shifted.

“I know what you are doing,” he said quietly.

Both humans tensed, Orion Halen opening his mouth to speak. Threxin cut him off.

“I will assist.”

CHAPTER 36

ALINA

It worked. Her test had worked. She’d saved Per Halen’s life.

When Threxin had escorted her back to her cabin in silence the night before, Alina wanted the floor panels to swallow her up and free her from her shame. She’d felt like a pathetic failure—an uhyre’s whore giving herself away to a monster for nothing. How stupid an idea it was, to try to soften up an uhyre for the benefit of her people.

So when, in her cabin, Threxin had informed her that Orion’s father would be kept alive after all, the shock that followed morphed very quickly to elation. So much so that she embarrassingly flung her arms around Threxin’s neck like some CRD schoolgirl hanging on a command deck officer. Even Threxin had been startled. He hovered his hands on either side of her before letting them fall to the curve of her waist as she rose up on her toes, pulling him down to press a firm kiss to his cheek.

“Thank you,” she sighed against him before withdrawing, suddenly self-conscious about her childish behavior.

Threxin’s hands took a while longer to release her waist as she stepped back, brushing her bangs to the side with a nervous flick.

“You are…” he had started, but then his brows drew together and his apertures tightened and he shook his head. “Go to sleep, Alina.”

She had looked up at him sheepishly through downturned lashes and nodded, relief and gratitude compelling compliance. When he’d left, she tried to sleep, she really did.

But a world of possibilities was suddenly open to her. She could get through to this alien commander. She couldhelppeople.

He showed up at her cabin again the next night, soon after she’d gotten home. He’d been waiting, ducking out of the nearest blood passage and practically shoving her into the room.

“Where have you been?” he demanded.

“I was walking!”

He looked agitated, but not angry. On edge, but not displeased. When his hand came up to hover at the side of her face, she turned her cheek to close the distance, tilting into the comforting heat.

It wasn’t like the warmth of human skin. This heat thrummed, as if generated by the vibration of alien otherness born from his very bones. It radiated something masculine but collared, a byproduct of a pent-up essence.

Alina opened her eyes, honing in on his mouth, and a muscle ticked in the back of his jaw. When he leaned forward and kissed her, something molten rushed to her abdomen, an expansive flutter peeling through her. The world widened as she softened to his lips, bringing a hand to cup the side of his muscled neck. She didn’t hesitate, knowing now from experience that if there was a risk of exorin he would stop her—even if she begged him not to.

Threxin clasped her waist and led her backward towardthe bed. He propped himself back on one arm and pulled her down with him, and Alina was suddenly self-conscious. Where did he want her? Where should she put her legs? What was this going to be?

Threxin seemed to sense her hesitation. He curled a hand beneath her butt and nudged her into his lap. Alina traced her palms along the apertures running at both sides of his neck, following them across the expanse of hard, smooth skin.

The sting of a fang nipping sharply at her lip was quickly replaced with the heat of his mouth as he sucked the puncture. She had only begun to return the favor, tugging at his bottom lip, when he groaned and pulled himself away, lifting his jaw up and just out of reach. Alina followed the underside of it to the point of his chin. His eyes were dark beneath his lowered lids as he watched her. His exposed throat shifted in a swallow and she knew it was his poison he was keeping her away from. Alina traced its movement down the cords of his neck.

They were playing with fire. How many shots would they get before a trace of it got in her mouth? How many chances before he ruined her life?

His hand was at her temple, sliding a lock of hair behind her ear as he watched her from beneath thick lashes, chin tilted out of reach. She chased his touch, every nerve in her skin pulling toward him as though magnetized.

Maybe that was what he was. A magnet for very bad decisions. Even with her sitting up in his lap, his torso towered over her, the arm on which he propped himself chiseled with the bulging muscle of his bicep. Heat pooled downward as she imagined what it would be like to be really taken by him. Really, properly fucked into oblivion by an alien giant—thisalien giant.

Threxin clamped his fangs over his bottom lip, eyes narrowing with a certain knowing as she thought these things. And then his hand was on her chest, splayed betweenher breasts, shoving her back into her bed. In a flash he was looming on top of her, kicking her knees apart with a massive thigh. Her ribcage protested under the pressure of his hand.

His mouth was too close, a black line seeping between his lips. He licked it away as his other hand raked roughly down her shirt, to her synthleather skirt. Alina gasped as the sharp tip of his finger traced a line upward in the tights along her inner thigh, the knifelike talon leaving a tingling trail of apprehension. The hem of her skirt moved up as he continued his way up her flesh. Barely audible snagging told her her tights were done for. This was confirmed by the loud, crackling rip and sharp pull of the fabric against her thigh as he dug in and yanked them to pieces.

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