Page 17 of The Commander

Bastian didn’t stop. Her words gave him a clear, straightforward path. “I do have to do this. And I have so many more questions.” She moaned.

The girl was simply too entertaining. The best thing to happen to him in months.

He wanted more. Unaccustomed to denying himself—he really should have practiced that more—he took what he wanted. Every bit of cloth he cut away revealed more soft, pink human wonder. Layers of scent, possibility, desire, one on top of the other.

He followed the skin up her arm to her neck. She thrashed away. The poor girl must be panicking at his closeness. Too bad. One hand pinned her still while a driving,needingtook him over.

There were no females of his kind off his planet. That was the reason he’d left the minute he’d been released from his sire’s household.

He’d thought that wise reasoning, knowing how weak a female could make him. Had he met one, courted a Sarrian in her season, would she have smelled like this? Would his heart rate quicken, his glands swell, his cock grow painfully hardbehind his seam? Or was this a mere manufactured echo of that powerful, elemental attraction?

This was pretty fucking powerful.

“You are someone special, Kitten. You don’t know it, but you are much more than a simple humanoid female. I think you might be too special for the red hats.”

“They are animals! Those things look like dogs stretched out like rubber bands. No one survives what they do.” Her feet twitched as if she were trying to kick away the thought.

“How would a sweet young thing like you know that?” he asked into the shell of her ear.

“I saw them when I was a child. I saw them.” Her voice cracked on the honesty of the terrible memory. Bastian could guess. She’d seen red hats attack a human.

It would have marked her for life.

“And so, you are ready to take your chances with me?”

CHAPTER 6 - BASTIAN

Rolling her to her back, he showed her his name day blade again, waving it dramatically. “Big nasty thing, yes? Just like me. You don’t say it, but I see it in your eyes. Can’t stand to look at me, can you?”

She blinked at him as a shudder went through her body.

“You don’t think I’m handsome?”

“Handsome?”

“Are those rebels you played with better looking than me? Are they stronger? Faster? Do they have such fine teeth?” He grinned.

“The rebels? What are you talking about?”

“Human women always keep to the towns. I’ve never seen them wandering around alone.”

“Please. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I was trying to follow your law. But sometimes it’s impossible. Don’t you have any rules for that? Extenuating circumstances? Tell me what you want. I just want to go back to Springfield. Can’t you send Brenda and me back?”

“Springfield? That is miles from here. No one’s going back there. It’s much too late now.” He didn’t like the idea of her going anywhere but where he could see her.

“Are you going to kill me?”

“You might wish you were dead,” he told her.

But he didn’t think he wanted her dead anymore. It didn’t sound as good as all the other interesting things filling up his head now that her body lay helpless under his hands. He gradually pulled the loosened cloth around her left leg and watched the progress of the cloth’s removal play across her features in accompaniment to fearful little whimpers.

“I told you everything,” she insisted, trying to roll away from him.

“Have you told me everything? Why do you know how to make a snare? Did you have human weapons on you? A gun?” He stopped her wiggling but had to keep himself from tracing his fingertips over every inch of pale human flesh he revealed and sucking off the dew of her scent.

“You don’t allow humans to have guns. It’s one of the laws.”

“Would it help you to know that there is no human made gun that can kill me? I don’t allow them in my town because you humans use them to cause trouble. I know your history. Think of what Mister Danov would do if he had guns. Where did you learn to make snares?”

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