Page 70 of The Commander

He took up her vision, her world, until only his mouth remained, until everything was about him.

Tilting apart, their breaths ragged and pulses pounding, Cara met the unearthly consuming black of his eyes. His jaw worked, flexing the plains of his face as they both took in the exquisite pleasure of the moment—their searing kiss exposed all her swelling desires for Bastian.

A deep inhale swelled his chest. “Mate.”

He knew. What she was thinking, the way her wanton pussy flexed when those memories flashed, unbidden, through her head, as if she wanted a repeat performance.

“Later, you will let me do theFrench Kiss.Everywhere.” Tapping a hard forehead to hers, he set her down, away from him. “Behave.”

“I’ll wait right here.”

“By yourself,” he grumbled.

“Well, yes. Do you see any other choice?”

“On Sarria, my younger brothers, or my battler second, or my son would stay when I could not be with you,” he explained.

“Always? I’d never be alone?” She skipped over the mention of a son and got right to the point.

“You would be alone in our home and naked, waiting for me. My brothers would be outside,” he stated as if he couldn’t imagine why she’d question the idea.

Cara wasn’t some sex goddess to be lying around naked and waiting for him to use his big, alien cock on her. Or was she? Gawd, wouldn’t that be so much better than an eight hour, backbreaking, boring work detail?

With Bastian, her struggles in the human led settlements ended. She’d get some privacy. No communal toilets and showers. Only he would see her. That wasn’t so bad. Under his gaze, she completely forgot all the reasons why she didn’t want anyone to see her naked.

Plus, his apartment was quiet. No one yelling in the hall or crying in the bunk across from her. She would have neat and tidy housing with him—no lice and no rats—and escape the other choices of human dormitories or trying to make a home in some crumbling apartment within the borders of the town.

Squeezing her to him one more time, acting as if it was difficult to pull himself away, he left, setting a security lock behind him. She was locked in, but Cara had a suspicion that was more to keep others out than to cage her. Which was weird. It was all weird. But she was just going to have to deal.

With nothing to do, she searched the apartment. If she was going to live here, she needed to know what she had to work with. Earlier, when getting her clothing, Bastian had shown her drawers stuffed with random human things.

He’d shoved more than clothing out of the way after he moved in. Maybe there were books, or a vid set, or the holies of all holies, a music player. She’d lost all her treasures when she wouldn’t do what Danov wanted. The bastard confiscated the belongings she’d managed to carry over from the last town, leaving her and Brenda only what they had on them.

There was a very good chance that when they went to see Brenda, Danov and all his henchmen, even Andy, would die. There was something in how Bastian spoke to that computer voice, and his plans to deal with his own people, which warned her he would show no mercy. He seemed like the type that would just plow through Danov’s mismanagement like a bomb, with little care for the fallout.

Cara’s experience with bad people was that they stayed bad. Her father had warned her repeatedly. He’d made her read the histories and pore over the news articles, encouraging her to always find the truth. Some people made honest mistakes. Others made choices, and their mistake was thinking no one would notice or care. And still others made knowing choices, thinking they were above the consequences, like Danov and Andy, who preyed on those who were weak, desperate, and stupid.

Her father had told her to watch out for predators.

He’d never expected her to fall for one of the biggest, most dangerous predators on the planet—the kind that hunted other predators and wiped them off the face of the planet.

The kind with thick skin and pointed teeth, which had to wear specially sized clothing.

CHAPTER 23 - BASTIAN

When Bastian finished cleaning the house, fewer than ten red hats remained. He washed himself in their group showers, cleaning away the stink of his fun, before redressing.

Based on a lower Sarrian life form, all the duty grunts started out as intelligent beasts that were upgraded with brain circuitry. Bred by the thousands on board the main lab in space, Bastian had always treated them as disposable.

It was unfortunate that data inputs were unable to eliminate the goddesses’ own cell bred instincts. They wouldn’t be pissing around the humans if they had.

They served fine on this planet because the humans had suffered a large scale natural disaster plus several wars that had left them almost defenseless. Their depleted numbers, weak ammunition, and high velocity weapons were no match against the sheer numbers of red hats available.

He petitioned against the use of grunts in the military over thirty years ago after watching them carry out field maneuvers under the direction of a P.I. Messy, inefficient, and prone to misunderstanding orders. And worse. When he accessed the information on them, he found the records that they were prone to a blood frenzy—chasing after the blood they craved—when their data cards failed. Any comparison of the grunts and a battler required a huge stretch of the imagination. A triad of battlers outperformed a full squadron of red hats.

Control’s answer to the petition? Begin a losing war on an inhospitable, useless planet against an infestation of giant armored sand bugs, thereby killing off more than half of the battler military. Bastian had fought in that war. He’d been told the lie that the bugs were a swarm of destruction headed toward his planet. He’d been a fool to believe it even for a minute.

A high casualty rate created a need for new military fodder. So, the biddable, cheap grunts were sent in as reinforcements. There was nothing else to do, after all. The Sarrian won the war at an epic cost of battler life; thousands of Sarrian males died. Hundreds of thousands of red hats died, but they outlasted the bug population, and the war was counted as a success by the Sarrian Houses.

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