Page 11 of The Commander

Then he would leave her here to rot and allow the red hats to lap that scent up with their tongues before they disposed of her body.

CHAPTER 5 - BASTIAN

“What was so important, girl, that you had to break curfew?”

“Traps. I had to check my traps.” Under her ties, her chest rose and fell like she was running a race.

“You broke my law for traps?”

“Ever been hungry?” She licked cracked lips with her tongue.

The dirty prime that he was, he wanted to soothe those cracks and creases with his own tongue, then dip into the dark cave of her mouth, go inside, and share his moisture with her.

What the fuck?

The desire was astonishing. Unnatural. One reserved for a mate that he had already decided he did not want. She was prey. Tasty, yes. Blood and death, yes. Nothing else.

He’d read the reports on these humans from the exploratory teams and surveyors. Pathetic skin bags of unprotected soft tissue—no hunting skills at all. Most of their teeth were flat and bovine, combined with five mediocre senses. With technology advanced enough to blow themselves up, that is what they had done, until their civilization had entered the beginning stages of death.

They managed sky travel and touched on the barest beginnings of space—enough to dirty it up with their extragarbage—but nothing on this planet was equal to a Sarrian prime battler. Humans were not a threat.

She couldn’t kill him. But she could get him killed.

Control would love it if battlers like himself mated and reproduced with these humans. They’d get more warriors for their armies and have a way to control them.

She was just one small, curvy human, but perhaps he should stop talking now. Leave the room or kill her and let the red hats have her. He didn’t want a woman mucking up his plans or his life.

He had questions she hadn’t yet answered. If he left without them, could he still call himself a commander?

“Poor thing.” He added what he thought was a sympathetic coo.

She winced.

“You were hungry? What happened to your food supply?”

“What food supply?” Her question held enough sarcasm that it became an insult.

Brave Kitten. She had claws. He liked it.

He knew her preference was to die rather than be raped and eaten alive by the red hats. Or him. Was she trying to piss him off and get it over with?

Bastian stood up straight again to clear his head of her fantastic scent. It made him feel too many distracting things. But feelings were nothing. He’d been tortured in training games as a child. Every inch of his skin had been on fire at one point or another. He could withstand this.

She tracked his every move.

“I’ve been hungry.” He tapped his mouth.

She glanced away, disturbed.

“An empty belly was never worth my death. ‘Aim high.’ Isn’t that what they say?” Her eyes darted back to his, a confused pinch between them. Or was that worry? He couldn’t tell.

He might have misquoted.Well.At least he had her attention. “What traps? Where? Only a crazy woman would go out alone so close to dark when she should be tucked up in her bed, hiding from monsters. Are you stupid?”

She reacted beautifully to everything he said, lips tightening, eyelids fluttering and skin shifting colors and temperatures. He went over to the wall and stood beneath the high windows giving he an illusion of space. Like a prison, they were so high in this room that people of normal height couldn’t look out.

The outside darkness confirmed his point. The night was not safe for soft, squishy, curvy things like her. Any idiot could see that.

She took a breath, collecting herself, looking at the door. Not at him. “Food. Rabbit. Rat. Bird. Whatever I can catch. I meant to go early, but the pig’s men got in the way, and it’s not like there is just food waiting to be found around here. I looked!”

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