The Alpha Prime Commander (5 page)

Close to Cordan in height,
he towered over most people, and it was impossible to describe what the man
looked like, because he was forever shrouded in that ridiculous red cloak.  He
knew he had black eyes and skin so white that faint traces of blue veins could
be seen across the pasty hands, whenever he untucked them from his cloak, which
was rare. 

After a warning look, and
clearly some communication Cordan could not hear, the little man stepped
forward looking ready to piss himself in fear, but determined.  “Thank you for
waiting, most esteemed guest, but his eminence would like to inquire on the
reason for the unexpected visit. As you know he is a very busy man, today of
all days.”  Here the Tarelian paused. “He also wishes me to assure you he will
not be accepting any bids prior to the auction itself.”

They wanted to get right
down to it, and he was more than happy to oblige.  All ready his nose was
filling with the overwhelming stench of malicious deceit.  He chuffed and shook
his head, wishing he could rid himself of the cloying wreak so easily.  “As I
am also not a fan of wasted time, I will get right to the point.  I would like
to ask for a special dispensation for my Pletar to remain on station while the
auction is occurring.  I am aware that this goes against the agreements you
laid down in your invitation, but a Prime cannot be separated from his Pletar.”

He felt the interest in
the room sharpen and found those black eyes trained on him with an icy avarice
Cordan did not understand.  Nor did he like it, as every Prime instinct in his
body sat up and took notice.  Whatever the Tarelian saw he started talking
fast.  “His eminence was not aware that the lady staying with you was your
Pletar.  A fated wife is a rare thing to find, of course she may stay.  I will
inform Captain Ambar of this personally.”  Cordan did not even begin to relax
as the little man licked his bulbous lips.  “His only caveat is that your lady
wife attend the auction so that he may have the pleasure of making the
acquaintance of so rare, and no doubt, worthy a being as the lady in question.”

Lo ground his teeth but
nodded brusquely despite his reserve.  He would rather have Lena with him
anyway, but that didn’t mean he liked the sudden interest in his “rare” Pletar
from a man known to collect all things unique.  If The Collector had any
inkling of exactly what she was capable of, Lo would immediately and happily
rip the head from his shoulders.  Otherwise, his Lena would never be safe, and
that was unacceptable.

Lena looked at the man
who should have already learned he could not hold her if she wished to leave. 
His eyes dared her to try it anyway.  She smiled at him, flashing an elusive
dimple, and uncrossed her legs to jump down from the desk.  He used that speed
of his again and stood up, thereby standing between her spread legs and suddenly
pressing them chest to chest.  Lena sucked in a breath at the unexpected move. 
What she could do was a form of misting from place to place, at least that was
how she thought of it, but without invoking that alien part of her; she was
fast, but she was not as fast as Captain Jackson Ambar, and that was saying
something.

She studied him as he
studied her from a kiss away with brown eyes that smoldered with sexual heat. 
Her breath was coming hard against his lips, her nipples were hard pebbles
against their pressed leathers, and there was not a damn thing she could do
about it.  He wanted his answers?  He needed to get on with it before she did
something really stupid, like fall into that heat and burn them both to ash.

“Were you going to ask me
something?” she asked, moistening dry lips.  “Whatever you may think, you do
not want Cordan coming here.  Not with his blood up.  So ask your questions and
I will ask mine, and then I’ll leave.”

“To go back to him.” 
Lena saw the firming of his lips, and the way his jaw tensed as he ground his
teeth together.  His eyes icing over briefly before the fire burned hotter.

“Yes,” she answered
carefully, though it wasn’t really a question.  She tilted her head back to
give herself some space that she didn’t really want.  His eyes burned
everywhere they touched, and they touched everywhere.  She sucked in a calming
breath, and all she got for her troubles was the scent of leather and man, but
mostly heat.  She felt every cell in her body wake up and take notice, so she
could be excused for the breathy sound of need in her voice.  “Your questions?”

The silence was long and
drawn out, his eyes moving over her inch by inch, seemingly memorizing every
wisp of hair that escaped her braid, every eye lash that fluttered. Every flicker
of heat in her cheeks.

“Fuck it,” he finally
ground out. “I can’t think of a fucking thing.”  Then his lips were on hers, or
hers were on his, his hands clutching her close, her hands running over all the
hardness pressed against her.  Either way, she was suddenly crushed back under
heat and leather over that big desk, his com crashing to the floor, her legs
wrapping around his hips, holding him as tight as she could while his lips
searched out and devoured every taste of her he could find.  There was no
hesitation, no thinking things through; she was pulling off his armor, or he
was, and hers followed.  Eventually they rolled off the desk to the floor with
a painful crash they barely noticed. 

All Lena could feel was
him.   His big rough hands on her body, the taste of his blood where she marked
his newly naked chest.  The feel of pleasure pain when he did the same to the
under curve of her breast.  The sound of his snarl when he flipped her back
down beneath him and fell between her legs, both of them finally naked, pushing
her hands above her head to hold her in place, having to use the full weight of
his body to do it.

He entered her in one
thrust, bowing her back with the heavy feel of him both holding her down and
filling her.  And fill her he did, like a cup to the brim with heat and
friction, his hard hot length claiming every inch inside her while the heat in
his eyes branded the rest as his.  He stopped at that first full thrust and the
two of them breathed in that moment feeling everything.  Lena knew exactly how
profound and confusing this moment was for him.  How much he wanted to pound
into her until all she felt was him.  She knew he understood what she was
feeling too, because after a moment of heated connection, he did what they both
wanted and pounded into her until the pleasure poured over them both.

The rush of screaming orgasm,
combined with the strange snap of connection happening between them pushed open
a door between their minds that should not have been there.  Something else had
found it, too.  Something feral and wild, hungry . . . and very, very angry.

Lena snapped her eyes
open and met the brown ones above her.  She saw the pleasure shimmering there,
and the knowledge washing between them.  He felt it, too.  Something was
coming.

“Fuck!” Jackson growled.  Pulling
out of her while the pleasure still rolled was like ripping off healing skin,
but he did it, and then pulled both of them to their feet with that scary speed
he had.  They both turned still breathing hard and naked, pressed close
together when the doors blew off their hinges from the force of the feral Prime
that came snarling through the twisted opening. 

Lena met those blazing
gold cat eyes that no longer had a shred of humanity left in their depths and
watched as they slowly looked her over, and then turned to the man beside her
with savage intent.

Jackson’s loud
Fuck!
that
blazed across her thoughts did not begin to cover it.

***

Jackson was suddenly
regretting the orders to his crew.  He had seen the Alpha Prime Commander in a
rage before, or at least he thought he had, but nothing like this.  Very slowly
and carefully, Jackson edged Lena behind him more fully, despite the way she
fought to reverse the positioning.  That was a mistake, because the second he
had her out of the line of fire, the next thing he knew his body was flying
through the air with an enraged Prime attached to it.

He hit the wall with a painful
thud, and felt every inch of the extended claws slash into his shoulder
skewering him to the wall like the knives they resembled.  Jackson roared at
the pain, and cursed trying to block the other hand that was all set to serrate
his manhood, only Lena somehow was suddenly standing between them.  Instead of
claws, he felt the hot press of Lena’s ass.  Everything had stopped, like a
magic wand had been waved, and all he could hear was the breathing.  Jackson
looked down over Lena’s shoulder from where he was still suspended like a bug
on the wall and saw the claws stopped just below her belly with only the very tips
pressing beads of blood from her skin.  Cordan had her pinned against him. 
What truly scared the fuck out of him was that if Cordan had not halted the
thrust the second he touched soft female skin, it would have punctured her
belly and possibly ruptured her spleen, if not her intestines.  If Lena had not
somehow moved between them, Jackson would have been scooping his manhood off
the floor with a fucking spoon.  Either scenario was fucked.  Now, the motherfucking
cocksucking Prime bastard was not the only one pissed.

But it was Lena who
spoke, her words were so sharp with cold rage they stung the skin.

“You gave him to me.” 
She moved forward, each word clearly pronounced and cold as fucking ice.  “Let
him go.”  A deliberate step drew more blood from the claws imbedded in her skin
and the Prime hissed and retracted them – all of them, including the ones
suspending Jackson by his shoulder two feet off the ground.  Jackson cursed in
more than one language when they hurt as bad coming out as they did going in. 
Lena caught him under his other shoulder before he could sprawl ingloriously to
the ground.  She leaned him against the wall without taking her eyes off the
feral Prime, who was still looking at Jackson like he would rend him to pieces
at the slightest provocation.  Jackson snarled directly into that inhuman
face.  As soon as he could find his fucking sword, he would do a little rending
of his own.

Lena took a step away
from Jackson and towards the Prime.  This time Cordan did not back up.  He let
her come, and took it a step further by stepping into her and wrapping his
blood-coated arms around her, lifting her off the ground and fully against him.
He snarled back at Jackson over her shoulder, then while he challenged Jackson
with eyes like burning coals, he lowered his head and deliberately bit her
shoulder.  Lena hissed from the pain, and Jackson pushed himself off the wall
ready and willing to pull her to safety.

“Don’t, Jackson!”  He
stilled at Lena’s warning, hearing the long male growl that followed it.  The
gold eyes glittered a warning of their own at him from over her bloody
shoulder.  Lena wrapped her arms and long legs around the other man, and if
Jackson had not been gritting his teeth against the pain in his shoulder, that
would have done it.  Lena held naked against the Prime Commander, who was
wearing nothing but leather pants and boots, minutes after he finished fucking
her? Not his favorite moment.  But it was working.  The beast was receding, and
the man slowly returning to the eyes that watched Jackson so very closely.  A
warning in itself that Jackson heeded, even before Lena spoke again.

“Don’t move, Jackson.”

Yeah, I got it.  Let the
fucking crazy beast calm down.

Since the bleeding on his
shoulder had slowed, he apparently wasn’t going to bleed out, so it was a solid
plan he could back one hundred percent. It didn’t mean he didn’t want his
sword.  But standing around doing nothing seemed to be working, so that’s what
they did.

***

Cordan was not overly
happy with anyone at the moment, least of all himself.  All three of them were back
in the large star suite with less than four station hours before the auction,
and Lo Cordan found himself pacing like the caged beast he had resembled not
two station hours ago.  Lena was fully dressed, back in her leathers, though
she had not bothered to re-braid her hair, merely tying it back in a long
tail.  Jackson was sitting mindfully as far from her on the other side of the
couch as he could get, which Lo knew was for his benefit. 

With a newly patched
shoulder under his leathers, Jackson was armed with not one but two swords
sheathed at cross draws down his back, which the Prime Commander did not doubt
was also for his benefit.  Not to mention all the other steel that bristled on his
body from the hilt in his boot to the forearm sheathes.  The blaster at his
side was almost an afterthought.  Lena had taken one look at him after he had
been medically cleared and returned dressed for battle, and shot Cordan a look
that he read quite easily.

He snapped his teeth at
her and continued pacing.  He knew she did not like to go unarmed, but it was
hardly his fault their Roenh was allowed and she was not.  It was not as if he
wanted the male armed right now.  The way Jackson was watching him pace, he
could almost feel the sword point at his neck, or considering what he had
almost done, more sensitive places lower down.

No one was saying
anything, though there was much that needed to be aired.  They just watched him
pace and waited, as they had been waiting since he regained his sanity.  He
ground his teeth and continued pacing. While there was plenty of blame to go
around, he was not unaware of who was the most culpable for the current farce
they found themselves in.  He would have killed Jackson, one-third of his
triumvirate, after he had bonded with Lena – which would have probably killed
them all, and if he had not stopped when Lena stepped between them.  He
shuddered at the thought, the growl in his throat roaring out, as it had been
doing at intervals since his return of control.  Not to mention, but slightly
less important at the moment, he had almost started a war with the Alliance,
and if Jackson had wanted to pursue the matter of attacking an Alliance ship
and personnel, things would have gone that way.  That his control had slipped
so badly as to be nonexistent was the stuff of nightmares.

He finally stopped and
faced them; Lena was sitting cross-legged on the couch, with Jackson spread out
on the other side.  One of his arms was stretched across the back of the couch,
just a breath away from touching Lena’s hair.  Lo looked at that almost
connection and their careful distance.  “You are bonded,” he finally said, and
Lena met his gaze, her own as carefully neutral as his voice.

“That was not my intent
when I went to talk to Jackson,” she answered very carefully, her eyes on
Cordan’s. 

Probably searching for
the return of the feral
, Lo thought with self-disgust. 

“I’m not even sure how we
bonded, since as far as I know, neither of us was thinking enough at the time
to plan such a thing.”

“It would only have taken
sex and a blood exchange between you, since I had already started the process
when Jackson came here the first time.  The triumvirate was sealed when you
both came after the marking.”  He watched Lena’s eyes go hard and heard Jackson
curse.  He moved his eyes to the man with them, and smiled with a lot of teeth,
more a baring of fangs really.  “Now you want to kill me again, don’t you
Jackson?” 

“Again?  When did I stop
wanting that, you manipulative bastard?”  Jackson gave his own version of a
teeth baring and stood to sneer in Cordan’s face.  “You wanted us bonded for
whatever mystical bullshit reason, but you want to be the one calling all the
shots.  Tell me Cordan, all those years when we met and half the time we tried
to kill each other and half the time you tried to hire me, what was that
about?  Because if we were supposed to share Lena, and you knew it, what the
fuck was with the power plays?”

Cordan growled through
his bared teeth but didn’t answer.  But whatever he could say about his Roenh,
he was not stupid.