Prime Selection (15 page)

“I’m not afraid of him,” Aeron told her. “None of the men here are.” He paused and came to her side and whispered, “Why do you think he attacked Cas? It was clearly an accident.”

“Not sure,”
liar
, “he must not have seen the whole thing.” Nadia glanced at Cas who’d gotten up also. “Cas? Are you okay?”

“Yes, Commander Nadia. Did I hurt you?”

“I’m fine, Cas.” Ignoring Huw, she addressed the soldiers who’d surrounded them.

“In fact, I was stopping the fight to tell you men to cease holding back with us women.

The Antareans, the Erians, the mercenaries, and the Prime rebels won’t hold back. We women have to be able to go toe-to-toe with bigger males. We need to learn all the dirty tricks to take a bigger opponent down. That is why we’re here today—help us learn!

Understood?”

The men in the room shouted, “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” She turned to Huw who’d moved closer and stood in front of her. He snarled subvocally, but she could hear and feel it scratching over the psychic link with him. His dark gold gaze was focused on Aeron who’d remained close to her side.

Goddammit, she didn’t have the time or the patience for this chest-thumping shit.

Nadia nudged the science officer away. Thank God, Aeron took the hint. Huw’s raspy snarling subsided and his breathing slowed.

“As for you, Huw.” Nadia turned her muddled emotions on him; after all she was an emotional basket case because of his hot and cold treatment of her. “What in the hell were you thinking? You don’t attack one of my teammates. Cas didn’t hurt me. We were training. That’s what we’re supposed to do. We need to get you Prime males used to working and fighting alongside women. We aren’t fragile flowers here. We’re goddamned highly trained Alliance soldiers. Understood?”

“You were hurt.”
His concern was real, and it swept through her like the leading winds of a thunderstorm.

“Huw. I’m fine. The dizziness was due to the air being knocked out of me. My head is
fine.”

Huw looked her in the eye, nodded once, and then turned and walked away. His emotions, their link, locked down behind a frigid black wall.

Nadia’s breath hitched, but she refused to let the watery sob emerge. He’d walked away … again.

“Nadia, what’s going on?” Aeron whispered against her ear, his body as close as he could get without touching. “Are you in telepathic contact with Huw?”

She angled her head to look at Aeron. She read anger and jealousy mixed with envy in his voice and aura, saw those mixed emotions reflected in his glittering gold gaze.

“I’ve always been empathic.” It seemed Bram and the Jod brothers hadn’t spread the word about her telepathy, or if they had, Aeron hadn’t heard about it. He was genuinely shocked. “And now it seems with some Prime I’m telepathic—and that’s all I’ll say on the matter.”

Aeron’s nostrils flared. Before she realized what he was about to do, he spun her around, tucked his fingers into the waistband of her pants, and pulled it down far enough to view her lower abdomen. His sigh of relief was audible in the oh-so-quiet room.

Nadia blushed when she noticed all the Prime males with a view looked and promptly began to spread the word. Her hearing was also good enough to hear the gist of the comments. “Commander Nadia is still available. No mark.”

She punched Aeron’s gut with a stiff-armed jab and shoved him away from her.

“Don’t ever touch me that way again.” Her voice was low and ragged with her anger and shock. She felt feral.

She tugged her pants back into place. In a louder voice, she announced so all around could hear, “Terrans don’t mark. I’m not Prime. Also, it is never, I repeat, never appropriate to stick your hands down a woman’s pants in public. It is also not appropriate to do so in private without the woman’s consent. Is that understood?”

A chorus of “yes, sirs” came from the males present and “damn rights” from the females.

“Now that the side show’s over.” She swept the assembled soldiers with a stern glare. “Let’s get back to work. Pair up. And if I see any Prime male not giving his best effort when paired with a female, those men will be on tunnel maintenance for a standard month on their respective ships.”

Mel had instituted tunnel maintenance as a punishment since she’d crawled and walked through some dirty ones on the
Galanti
back when she’d first met Wulf. No Prime male worth the name wanted housekeeping duty.

Her soldiers went back to work and soon the fitness room rang with the shouts and thuds of fighting pairs.

Nadia approached the two Jod brothers with Aeron following her. “Aeron, you’re seriously pissing me off. I don’t need protection.”

“I think you do. Huw is still within earshot. He’s outside the training room, watching us.” Aeron placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her toward the side entry to the room.

Yep, there he was skulking in the shadows like some demented ghost in a gothic novel.

“Get his hands off you, Nadia. Now.”

So, now he lowered his shields. She ignored him for the moment.

“Aeron, I consider you a friend, but please don’t touch me again. It sets a bad example for the men.” Nadia stepped out from under Aeron’s hands and looked toward the sky. “God, what have I done to deserve this?”

“Dammit, Huw. You’ve caused enough disruption today. Go away. Find some other
female to glare at. Hey? I’ve got an idea—why don’t you go find your
gemate
?”

Huw’s answering snarl traveled across their mental connection and made her shudder. He was furious.
Fine.
Let him be. She was mad also. He’d all but ignored her for two days and then he went all primitive on her as she did her job, which happened to entail working with men. If he didn’t get his act together, she’d report him to his brother.

Let Wulf handle him.

When she looked again, he was gone.

“Okay, that was fun.” Nadia pinned the Jod brothers and Aeron with a narrowed glance. They’d surrounded her like the coastal mountains of Cejuru Prime hugged the capital city’s bay, isolating her from the rest of the room. “Let’s get back to training. I’m not holding back. You are not to, either. I’ll use every dirty fighting technique I’ve learned in my years in the military and from my pre-military days in some of the seedier neighborhoods on Mars Colony—and I expect the same from you. We can share the techniques and decide which ones our female soldiers can use to their best advantage.

Understood?”

Bre nodded, an impish grin twisting his lips. “Will you teach us the Volusian nerve hold you used on Commander Huw?”

Nadia grinned back. “Sure. Let’s do this.”

*

Huw slammed his way out of the training facility. Damn Nadia! She made him crazy. He was defending her and she turned it around so he looked like the bad guy. In front of the crew.

Adding insult to injury, she’d easily defeated him with one fragile, female hand.

And he was a sick man because he found that sexy.

Her touch. Her smell. Her beautifully muscled, long body. Her mental touch. All of those things had him stiffer than the titanium barrels on the ship’s laser cannon. But he couldn’t approach her—not until after the Lost Ones mission, and maybe not even then if he found his
gemate
.

Ansu bhau
. He needed sex. Now. Nadia was a temptress, created by the One to lead him off the honorable path he’d set for himself.

Requisitioning a surface vehicle, he drove to the house of the sex surrogate his family had always used to teach the younger Caradoc males about how to make love to a woman and later ease all of the Caradoc males’ sexual needs until they mated.

Susa would take away the gnawing pain in his balls and cock.

After parking in front of Susa’s villa, he ran up the steps. Her door panel indicated she was home and receiving clients. He entered his code and waited for her to let him in.

“Huw!” Susa greeted him at the doorway, wearing only a sheer floating garment.

Every line of her curvy, long body was visible. Her dusky rose nipples showed clearly as did her dark curls over her sex. “It’s been so long. With Wulf mated, I have one less of my favorite Caradoc men to take care of.”

She stood on her tiptoes and nibbled at his lower lip before kissing him fully. Her soft hands petted his chest, paying particular attention to his nipples.

He grimaced with discomfort when her hand brushed over a particularly sensitive part of his chest. He stopped her caresses by covering her hands with his and pulled away from the kiss. “Susa? Do you have time to give me a massage and ease my erection?”

“Always, darling Huw.” She pulled on his arm. “Come to my bedroom. I will get you a Valerian whiskey and then undress you.” She rubbed her cheek along the arm she held. “You do seem tense, warrior.”

“Yes.” He kissed the top of her head. “But you have always eased me well in the past. I expect no less of you now.”

“It is nice to be wanted, needed. Many of my peers are afraid that if our men can procreate with other hominid females in the galaxy that we will no longer be needed to care for their needs.”

Huw had never thought of that consequence before and was embarrassed that no one on the Elder Council had thought of how the merger into the Alliance and seeking compatible females from other planets would affect the women who had no
gemats
and had taken care of unmated Prime males’ needs for several centuries.

“You will always be needed.” Even to Huw his assurance sounded lame.

“Ah, Huw. None of us wish the men who find mates to be unfaithful to their chosen females. That would be immoral—such a bond, even though it is an emotional bonding and not a full mind-body-spiritual one, should be inviolate.”

She went to fix him a drink. “We are thinking to ask Premier Caradoc if the Alliance Astrobiology Research scientists would look into the possibility of us sex surrogates mating with non-Prime males. Maybe what stops us from mating with our own kind would not be a barrier to let’s say a Terran or Volusian male. What do you think?”

“I think that is an excellent idea.” Also one that would make the Pure Blood faction crazier than they already were. “I will mention it to my father myself.” He took the drink from Susa. “But tell your peers this needs to be kept secret for now. There are some…”

“Stop, Huw.” Susa unzipped his uniform top and placed biting kisses down his chest onto his abdomen. Kneeling, she opened his uniform pants and looked up at him as she grasped his rock-hard cock. “We know the rebels would target us and any male we approached or who approached us. We can wait until the rebels are subdued. We’ve waited this long.”

Susa licked the purpled head of his cock then took it into her mouth and suckled it before letting it out with a pop. “What first? Massage? Or me swallowing your seed?”

Huw wanted to say swallowing his seed, but her tongue and lips, which usually had him impatient to come in her mouth now made him cringe. Her touch was wrong, and he roared inside to realize that sex with Susa wouldn’t help his dire need, but only make his sexual tension worse.

“Massage. A long one. I’m so tired. Tense.” He would suffer through the emotional, almost physical, discomfort her touch brought him. He wouldn’t insult her by leaving prematurely after he’d sought her out.

Susa nodded and stood up. “Whatever you need, Huw. I will try to provide. Just tell me.” She stroked the side of his face with gentle fingers. “So many worries I see on your face. Let them go. Susa will soothe you.”

Huw closed his eyes and nodded—but it wasn’t Susa’s face he envisioned or her hands touching him—but Nadia’s.

The mental pathway between them was shut down for now—from both ends. Nadia was mad at him, and he was afraid she’d discover he’d left her and come to another woman. And why he felt as if he’d betrayed her, he would never know. Nadia was not Prime. She was not his
gemate
, chosen by the One. And why those facts made his head hurt, his heart ache, and his body cry out in need—he didn’t want to touch with a meter-long battle blade.

Later the same day, Premier Caradoc’s Meeting Room
Filing into the meeting room were the leaders of this part of the Milky Way Galaxy: Admiral Nelson, the Alliance military commander for the outer spiral of the Milky Way Galaxy; General Arnat of Prime Military Command; and two representatives from the Prime Elder Council responsible for military and civilian security. Joining these leaders were Drs. Lia Morgan and Kerr Lenke, Chief Medical Officers of the newly merged Gold Squadron.

The meeting had been called to address issues which had arisen from the merger of Wulf’s Prime squadron into Gold Squadron, the mission Gold would embark upon once joint training was completed, and the continued unrest caused by the Pure Blood faction and its hirelings.

Wulf had other things on his mind as he fondled Melina’s thigh under the table, far more enjoyable things for a newly bonded couple to do than decide the fate of this small sector of the universe.

“Wulf,” Melina whispered against his ear, “stop touching me, or I’ll retaliate in front of all these important people. And you’d be very embarrassed.”

He leaned over and kissed the hair above her ear. “No, I would be very proud—and all these important people would be very jealous. You’d be the one to blush.”

His precious
gemate
growled, a cute little female version of his own snarl. They were a perfect match. Thinking about perfect matches had him frowning. “
Lubha
, have you noticed that since Tarn Huw has gone out of his way to avoid Nadia? Kerr told me Huw even avoided looking at her during the blood tests I ordered. What’s wrong? It is clear to me there’s an attraction between the two of them.”