Page 46 of Clan and Command

“Like what?”

“As if you care. Don’t make me feel like I matter.”

Kila cocked his head to one side. “Of course you matter. Why shouldn’t you?”

“Because I’m not like most Dramoks. I’m not what a Nobek wants.”

Kila sighed. “You’re getting maudlin. Take the damned stims, Piras. Two of them.”

Piras obeyed. “I’m only a novelty to you. Not someone you could really care about.”

Kila growled. He slammed his fist on a smooth stone countertop. The boom of it made Piras jump. “You of all people know Nobeks don’t speak of such things to other men. Have my actions not made things clear to you? Do you not see what is in front of you?”

A spike of energy helped shove some of the haze in Piras’s skull away. Lucidity was returning, but it didn’t help his mood. If anything, it made him more morose than ever. “I thought I had something real, something lasting with Lidon. Then he found out the truth about me, and I didn’t matter anymore. Despite all we’d been through together, how long we’d been lovers, I wasn’t enough for him.”

Kila glared at him. “I’ve known about you from the beginning though. We haven’t started on a foundation of lies. I know who you are and how you are, and I’m here. Look at me, Piras. I’m here.”

The Nobek’s words penetrated, finding a way through the clearing mists of drunkenness. How many times had Piras thrown Kila out? Pushed him away? And yet he kept coming back, kept refusing to be put off for long. He was here, dealing with Piras at his intoxicated worst. Not running away. Not giving up, as any man with good sense would have by now.

Hope flared in Piras’s being. Maybe Kila did care. Maybe Piras did count for something to the Nobek.

He looked up at the grim, ferocious, and compelling face glowering at him. “You’re here. I see you, Kila.”

The Nobek grabbed him by the back of the neck and snatched him close. Their bodies pressed against each other. “Do you? Do you really?”

Piras clenched the material of Kila’s uniform stretched over his chest. “I see you. I do.”

He pressed his lips to Kila’s. A moment later, the Nobek was kissing him hard, his mouth mashed against Piras’s hard enough to bruise, his tongue invading to plunder. He crushed the Dramok’s body to his. Piras melted against him, giving himself to Kila’s ownership.

He gasped when Kila picked him up and slung him over his shoulder as if Piras weighed no more than a child. The Nobek carried him through the home and into Piras’s sleeping room. He set Piras on the thick fur rug at the foot of his mat.

“Clothes off,” Kila ordered. “Then on your knees.”

Seeing the return of the Nobek’s wicked, sneering grin, Piras’s heart leapt. He wobbled only a little as he obeyed, but Kila’s hands shot out to catch him by the upper arms and keep him steady.

“You need to sober up a bit more,” the destroyer captain observed. “But that will work fine with my new plan.”

“Plan? What plan?” The evil look on Kila’s face made Piras shake even as his cocks gave an enthusiastic throb. He fumbled as he stripped.

“You’ll see soon enough. Ah, there’s that delicious body that belongs to me. On your knees, like I told you. Hands behind your back. Good boy. Now hold still.”

He went to a black object laying on Piras’s sleeping mat. The Dramok’s eyes widened to see it was the ‘bag of tricks’, as Kila referred to it. He rummaged through his sex toys and came up with a pair of hovercuffs, which Kila affixed to Piras’s wrists. “Hovercuffs, freeze in place.”

“When did you bring that bag in here? How long were you watching me get drunk before you announced yourself?” Piras spluttered.

“Did I tell you to speak?” Kila’s voice came out low and deadly.

Piras’s jaw snapped shut, but he glared.

Kila bared his teeth, showing fangs. “I don’t like the attitude. Let me fix that for you before I have to take it out on your ass.” He searched through his bag again and pulled out an elastic blindfold. He ignored Piras’s whimper of protest and put it on him. “There. Much better. And if you open your mouth for anything but the cocks you are given, I’ll shove a gag in your mouth too.”

He needn’t have warned Piras. The Dramok’s momentary pique was quelled by realizing he was at Kila’s mercy. Arousal beat a relentless tattoo in his brain:submit, submit, submit.He knelt and awaited the Nobek’s pleasure.

The growling voice sounded right in his ear. “You thought a lot about our mission at work, did you? About how it would affect your parents?“

The words shouldn’t have been seductive. Kila reminded Piras of everything that had gone wrong with the day. Yet the warmth of his breath in Piras’s ear sent chills down the Dramok’s spine. The gruff tone vibrated through his skull. Calloused hands rasped over his chest and back, leaving fiery trails that spread heat straight to his groin.

Kila kept talking. “You’ve been remembering what happened on Laro Station. Then you ran into the man who starred in those memories? Laro is where you met Lidon, isn’t it? I checked to see if that might be the case. I found out he put in for a transfer to your destroyer soon after both of your ships stopped there about twenty years ago.”

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