Alien General's Bride (Brion Brides 3)(10)

“Yes,” her mouth repeated if he wasn’t clear on that yet. She felt his lips curve in a smile against hers.

Oh well. The first one would have been difficult to take back, the second was pretty impossible to deny.

She squirmed under his touch, arching into his gropes. When she woke up that morning, Isolde wouldn’t have dared to look at Diego Grothan, but now her hands were twisting themselves into his hair, dragging her nails across his skin, tugging at his shirt. Grothan pulled back only to rip the obstructing shirt away and the next found Isolde holding on to him for dear life, her tongue tasting the sweat on his shoulders. When his hand pushed itself between her legs and slid over her clit, she bit down, whimpering.

For a moment she thought she’d hurt him before the absurdity of it came to her. It was followed closely by oh god, I just made Diego Grothan moan. It had sounded like a growl and vibrated through every fiber of her being. She wanted to hear it again. Many, many times. Only she could barely think, merely react and hope her body knew what it was doing.

She heard the familiar tear of cloth and realized he had ripped her pants in two with his bare hands. Isolde should have been mad at him for ruining his favorite item of clothing, but she was too turned on to complain. Besides, it gave the commander proper access to her and then he moved his fingers inside her and… Isolde bit him again. Screaming would have been the more embarrassing option. Her body sang a praise to him, as her own hands took a hold of his length, stroking it – hopefully – in time with his movements within her.

Oooh. That growl again. Coming deep, rolling over her skin like a wave of pleasure.

She shivered when his fingers brushed over the most sensitive part of her, burying her nails in his shoulders and arching to meet him. His lips touched hers, pulling moans from her mouth as they both inched closer and closer to the edge.

“Oh fuck, yes,” Isolde murmured.

Grothan loomed over her, strong and breath-taking and his eyes shone like they were crystals themselves.

“I intend to,” he said.

The device on the collar of Grothan’s discarded uniform chose that moment to start beeping. When the commander shut his eyes and his mouth drew into a line, Isolde became very concerned for someone’s life. The one making the call would be dearly wishing for a quick death, she was sure. She wondered if he would hit “ignore” and carry on like any other normal man just about to fuck their fated mate, but Grothan was not a normal man, so he got up, retrieved his jacket and grunted a very vicious, “Yes?”

He stood silently for a few seconds, and then barked something so fast and low Isolde couldn’t make out the words and turned to her, eyes now alight with fury.

“Isolde,” he said, “I need to go. It is very important that you do not leave this room before I return. Let no one in.”

Um… what? Isolde started to protest, but Grothan marched out of the room without looking back and the door slid shut after him, locking immediately.

Isolde sat down on her bed, flustered. She didn’t think it was even possible for a single day in her life to get weirder than it already was. What was there to say? She fell back on the sheets she dearly wanted to share with a certain alien and began:

Dear professor Nagasuke,

I hope you’re well and busy. I really should take a moment to find an opportunity to actually write to you. I’m living quite the life. Since I last wrote, I nearly had sex with an alien – don’t worry, no tentacles – and now I think there is some trouble brewing. Oh, and everyone who was supposed to go to Rhea is dead but me. So there’s that.

Your faithful student,

Isolde.

Only then, after carefully and dutifully overanalyzing everything that had happened to her, did sleep take her.





CHAPTER NINE

Diego



Diego marched through the corridors of his ship. He could count on a single hand the times he had been disturbed by a com link when he had given express instructions to be left alone until he returned. So either someone was making a very poor joke of the situation and would be dead very, very soon. Or it was a considerably less funny eventuality, this was no joke and it would be him that was dead.#p#分页标题#e#

His crystal squares shined so brightly they even hurt his eyes. His brothers and sisters cleared out of his way quietly, seeing he was in no mood to bother with any of them.

The transport compartment to the bridge wasn’t, luckily, very far. Diego preferred it this way. He would find out who was to die sooner rather than later.

The call to him came from Briolina. Senator Eren preferred to deal with the generals over a safe distance, Diego had often noted to his warriors’ amusement.

He wanted to be surprised, he really did. The true answer was that he was simply disappointed at how unsubtle the senator was. He listened patiently, as he had been taught. Stiff at attention, barely moving a muscle as the holographic image explained the situation with equal composure. They might as well have been discussing a routine shipment of cargo for all it looked like, but Diego Grothan’s life slowly came apart with every word the senator said.

Hands behind his back, feet set apart, the commander of the Triumphant calmly waited for the high senator to finish. Then he lifted his eyes, and said, “No.”

Senator Eren didn’t seem to understand. A Brion general refusing his orders was not something that happened in the world he lived in. He continued for several seconds before it caught up to his ears, and then his gaze turned cold.

“Commander Grothan,” he said. In Brionese, Diego’s name had taken on a shade of “unpredictable”. “I was not asking for your opinion on the matter. You are to terminate the last researcher bound for Rhea.”

“I will not,” Diego said.

Senator Eren did not get mad. It was not his way of doing things. Down in his very core, Diego hated men like him. A warrior would get mad, express his feelings of betrayal honestly and demand a reprimand. A senator, however, would show little to no emotion and would find subtle ways to hurt him, cunning ways. Coward’s ways. Eren knew as well as he did that were they face to face, he would not utter the same words he did now, protected by the distance between them. Calmly eyeing the senator’s unmarred neck, Diego waited.

“Not that I need to ask this, Commander,” Eren said – Diego’s rank now had the sound of “treachery” – “but explain to me why you choose to ignore a direct order?”

“The human woman in question is my gesha.”

That was a part of the reason, at least. Not an outright lie. He chose not to express that the suspicions he’d had for a time now were all proving to be true. Eren’s true motives started to become clear to him. And they would not go unpunished.

He would rather be seen as fiercely protective of his gesha. It was believable enough. He wouldn’t hurt Isolde either way.

The senator wasn’t the only one whose mouth dropped open. Diego had to admit to himself that he found it satisfying to see him break his usually stoic visage much more than he liked seeing his bridge staff stare at him in surprise.

“Your gesha? That is…”

“Considered impossible so far, yes.”

“Are you sure?”

Diego didn’t deem that worthy of a response.

Senator Eren pursed his lips, pretending to think this over. Diego knew he had decided on his course of action almost instantly and this was a mere show for – whose sake? He couldn’t say. For a moment, the senator disappeared from the broadcast platform, returning after a few seconds. An interference? Diego tensed up.

“It is… unfortunate,” the holographic image said. “But it does not change anything.”

“It does, actually,” he said. “I do not see how my refusal could be misunderstood.”

A hard stare met his. “Yes,” the senator said, his voice pure ice. “I do not see it either. Which is why I have already sent the order to someone who also does not misunderstand.”

Cold fear gripped Diego’s heart then. That two-faced snake had a communications channel open to someone else on his ship. His ship. He broke off in a run, abandoning the senator and his holo image, bellowing orders to Ensha and all other warriors near Isolde to maintain a defensive perimeter until he arrived. There were affirmative responses at once, making his heart soar – they listened to him over the scheming senator. It was rightful. He was their commander. He would make sure their loyalty did not go unrewarded.

The lift had never felt as slow as in the moments Diego had to stand still and simply wait. It was unbearable. He nearly ripped the doors off their frames when they finally stopped at the right floor and then he was sprinting down the corridor to find…#p#分页标题#e#

Blood. Blood on the floor in front of Isolde’s door. The warriors snapped to attention as he slowed his steps to hide the fear closing up his throat. Luckily, his presence was enough to make the nearest warrior report immediately, “We managed to stop him, Commander.”

Blood rushing in his ears, Diego stepped over the puddle into the room he had left less than half an hour ago. Isolde was sitting on her bed, a blanket around her shoulders and shaking like a leaf. Before her feet, Ensha’s thrice-stabbed body lay, pinned to the floor by the blades of the spears. It should not have surprised him, nor caught him off guard, but it still did. Diego had trusted him. Had trusted Ensha with his gesha. He wished they would have left the bastard alive for him to have the traitor beg for death from Isolde – it was a slight against him most of all and his to avenge – but he understood his warrior’s need to dispose of the assailant in the surest way. After all, he had the one who had given the order to deal with. His death would not be painless. Absentmindedly, he memorized the faces he had seen behind the door.