Page 7 of The Commander

The menial workers housed at Sarrian expense in the towns spent more time working to feed themselves than they did cultivating taxable resources.

Now his personal mental resources would be consumed for hours dealing with this new captive.

With her scent in their noses, the red hats slobbered with hunger for their chance at her. People on this planet put them in a frame of mind that stressed their minuscule grunt brains. This night duty detail appeared to have forgotten every protocol he’d ever tried to teach them.

Fucking worthless red hats.

The little female fell to her knees, broke their hold, rolled, and flipped herself into a stand. She took three steps.

Good show. Bastian barely withheld his applause at her efforts. Her face glowed with the strain. She had spots across her cheeks. Freckles? Vibrantly alive, her heat signature burned his eyes. The air carried the scent of her fear to him now that she was close.

The red hats recaptured her easily, calling to each other in throaty barking sounds of triumph. She yelled unintelligible slurs as they brought her down again.

Like any prime battler, he enjoyed the scent of prey. The male captives in Corrections had fed that enjoyment since they’d been brought in. But this one, this female, her fear tickled at something unusual and unexpected in his body, like a feather brushing across the back of his neck.

What was this? His secondary senses opened to take in the full, salty, warm musk of sweat beading on her skin and dripping down between her tits under her layers of clothes. He wanted to taste those beads, suck them up with his lower tongue.

He kept that response locked down. Now was not the time. He was of a higher order than the hairy assed red hats. A prime battler could control himself at work or at play. One did not slobber over local flora and fauna.

Her fear had interesting tones, however. He didn’t need to taste it on his receptors to read that information. Out of place and unique. An invitation to bite and see if she was the perfect combination of fuckable and edible.

What was this? Fuckable?

Commander Bastian did not fuck. Where had that notion come from?

He narrowed his eyes. Sniffed the air again, letting it roll over his senses. What was she?

Why was she different?

Different was interesting. But not good. Anomalies had a way of coming around to causing him trouble.

He hadn’t been exposed to many human females. They usually kept their distance from him on the occasions he visited the towns. Males he’d encountered smelled like dirt, rotting wheat, and shit. He assumed all humans went around stinking like that.

Not this human.Not her.

He should kill her now. Right now.

The red hats had managed to tear up the outermost layer of her clothing. A tight, inner, dark layer thwarted their efforts to get to her skin. She’d sourced a soft armor manufactured years ago by humans that stopped their bullets. So many layers. How could the shapely tender thing breathe?

Earth women appeared in a fascinating variety of shapes and sizes. Bastian appreciated their soft curves, a change from his own species’ sharp edges. The redhead had a slim, delicate neck and a clean, stubborn jawline. Easily hooked. Cut. Broken.

She escaped the grunts’ hold once more and hit the ground like a dead weight. One grunt picked her up, then tried to shoulder her. Shifting and wiggling like an eel, she slipped right out of their hands for the third time since he’d stood there watching, hitting the ground headfirst. Playing with their food, the grunts kept letting her escape.

The sound echoed. He smelled her blood. His secondary senses winked open before he could stop himself. Salty. Hot. Sweet. Velvet. He wanted to slide his tongue through that smell in a slow, careful examination of all its notes. All that was her.

With a small, practiced twitch of his neck and shoulders, he shook himself, forcing control. No. He would not. There would be no slide of his tongue down the tendon of her neck, between her breasts, exploring other creases. Absolutely not.

He couldn’t have a human honey trap driving his red hats to distraction. Where’d she come from? What was she doing here? He’d find out; then her alluring differences and his inconvenient attraction would die with her.

Her self-inflicted blow dazed her, eyes going wide and white, then fluttering shut. When they opened again, he saw disappointment and dread flatten her mouth and harden her expression. She hadn’t saved herself from her fate.

The girl wasn’t stupid, then. Maybe if she bothered to read the signs he posted, she would understand her situation. Better to die here under her own volition rather than at the hands of the duty.

If she was that smart, why had she broken the curfew? What would drive her out of one of the gated laborer communities and into the inevitable hands of red hats?

“Red! Where are the other four of you?” Bastian barked, getting the duty security’s attention. Duty teams went out in groups of eight or twelve. He didn’t see the others following.

The woman’s gaze shot to where Bastian stood. He could smell her spicy fear ratchet up, like someone turning up the heat on a gas burner. No doubt she’d never seen a prime battler before. Bastian stayed on the base and let the red hats deal with the humans since standing orders implied he shouldn’t kill them for their ignorance.

---