Page 55 of Challenged

He sighs, then looks around the room. In a moment, the office is gone, replaced by a large, billowing tent. A central pole holds it up, and scattered on the floor is a pile of thick, soft furs. I squeak as Rardek scoops me up, setting me down on them. He takes a moment to fluff up the furs, arrange them better for my comfort, then takes a seat himself a short distance away.

“Of course I will welcome any younglings we have with great joy, but do not think for a moment that this is your only worthto me, my Angie,” he says, his voice heated, but not in an angry way.

In a way that makes my throat go dry.

“You are my linasha, my mate. We will spend the rest of our days together, and all our nights also. I would not want to do that with someone I did not admire, that I did not enjoy. That I did not value.”

He shifts, leaning closer, his voice going low. Urgent. “I do admire you, my Angie. I do enjoy you. And I most certainly do value you. I would consider it my greatest failing if I ever made you feel otherwise.”

I’m stunned by the force of his words - by the force of his need for me to understand. Heat boils in my chest. My pulse throbs, need pulsing through me in time with my heartbeat. My eyes are glued to his mouth. The curve of his soft, full lips.

“You still don’t know me,” I protest, my voice sounding weak, breathy to my ears.

He inclines his head, and like a piece of glass shattering, all the intensity and heat is gone in an instant, replaced once more by the devilish grin.

“It is true,” he says. “There are some terrible gaps in my knowledge of you. For instance, you have not told me your full name.”

I could get serious whiplash from this guy.

“My full name?”

“Well, I assume it is not just Angie?”

I shake my head in disbelief. “Uh, no. It’s Angelita. But no one has called me that since my last Screening.”

“Angelita.” He draws out every syllable, wrapping heat around each one. “It is pretty. Why do you not use it?”

“Too much of a mouthful. It’s a family name. My grandmothers. Her grandmothers before her, and so on. Means something in a long dead language. Little angel.”

I wonder if raskarrans have a concept of angels, whether whatever it is the dreamspace does to make us understand each other can translate. Then he grins again, his eyes sparking with mirth.

“It does not fit you so well, does it?”

Despite this being entirely true, I scowl - further proving his point. Rardek just laughs. Great big laughs. His whole body shakes with them. It makes it impossible to be annoyed with him, and I find myself laughing too.

“That’s always been my problem - bad at being good.”

He leans closer to me, touching a hand to my leg, thumb stroking over my ankle. Hardly an intimate touch, but I feel it in all sorts of intimate places.

“I do not see this as a problem,” he says.

I lean back a little, try to create some room to breathe before he steals all the oxygen from my lungs.

“You might if you knew more about me.”

His hand creeps higher up my leg, moving to cup the back of my knee. The fact that he stops there almost makes me groan.

“Tell me your worst,” he says, a challenge in his eyes.

I think of all the times I’ve lost my temper. The affairs that didn’t last because I was too difficult. The other petty revenges I got on people before Baxter.

“I failed my Screening.”

The words blurt out of me.

“You will have to do better than that to shock me.” He lowers his head, his face close to my leg. Close enough that if he moved just a little, he could press his lips to the inside of my thigh.

“It’s a test. All girls on white collar tiers are tested. For their suitability to be wives, mothers.”

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