Alien General's Bride (Brion Brides 3)(39)

“Don’t die,” she whispered. “Don’t die, Diego. Not now.”

He froze.

“Yours,” Isolde said, her voice shaking so hard as to nearly make it impossible to hear. “Yours. I am yours.”

Diego pulled her head back and kissed Isolde so hard it had to have hurt her. It didn’t seem to matter, though, because she almost purred into the kiss, biting his lip in revenge. If he had been half-hard already, that hurt as his cock strained against his pants, begging to be slammed into Isolde’s soft, warm pussy.#p#分页标题#e#

He pushed his tongue deep into her mouth, reveling in the sweet taste, and even more so in the moan it ripped from her throat, audible even over the crowd that cheered for them. His mouth left Isolde’s lips swollen and red and his gesha herself breathless, gasping for air – a sight so tempting it took all his willpower to press another quick kiss on her lips and then turn to Crane.

There was no future, no Isolde, no anything if he couldn’t kill that monster of a man.

Walking to meet Crane, Diego felt like he really believed in fate for the first time. Of course he was a Brion and had trusted in the fates to know better all his life, but in that moment, he felt everything was always supposed to come together like that. He felt whole. Wasn’t yet, not before the binding, but now he was fighting for something he wanted more than he had ever wanted anything in his life. What might have been a distraction for others was only incentive to him.

He didn’t look back. Seeing Isolde breathless, her eyes clouded over with desire – now that would have been a distraction. Crane was not an enemy you could let out of your sight.

Despite Faren and Atren, in their own ways, already counting him dead, Diego Grothan would have bet on himself if he’d have considered that honorable.

Minutes later, Diego was circling his enemy warily, but he couldn’t keep out of his reach forever.

Crane’s fist, hard as rock, slammed into his gut, sending him sprawling backwards. Diego had a second to thank fate for Crane not having the sense to grab on to his shirt and yank him to the death grip of his huge hands. Small mercies. The brute didn’t seem to catch on to the fact the easiest way for him to kill Diego would have simply been catching him when he came close and strangling life from him second by agonizing second.

He had done that, Diego remembered, when he had still been sane. The sounds had been horrifying. Looking now into his monstrous opponent’s eyes, he was not the warrior Diego remembered. He had actually been a warrior then. Vicious, terrible, but not without reflection. The deranged look of bloodshot eyes that stared at Diego now, the snarl on his lips, frozen on Crane’s face… that was merely a monster.

It seemed Crane no longer comprehended what he was. His objective seemed to be beating Diego to death, which could have worked quite well for him as well, given that his punches were not something Diego wanted to receive more than once. Even a single one had not been fun and he’d taken a heavy beating already.

He wondered why he kept joking in his mind, when it was very clear Crane was a walking murder machine that didn’t even blink at any of the blows he’d landed. His flesh wasn’t strengthened, that much Diego could tell by the few punches he’d dashed in, only to jump clear of the monster the next. But even his real flesh, hardened by decades of battle and whatever they had done to him in the cage where they kept him, was hard as steel. The best he could have hoped for was that Crane would have bruises. In a few days.

There was an emptiness in Crane’s eyes that he dreaded the most. The monster didn’t stop to rest or wait for an opportune moment. He just kept coming at him, never giving him respite, denying him rest not because it was a strategy, but simply because Diego wasn’t dead yet.

The crowd had fallen silent. They were Brions too. They could see how little damage Diego’s hits did and how much Crane’s when Diego was too slow to dodge.

The last one nearly cost him his life when Crane jumped after him with a deafening crash, landing, knee-first where he’d just been.

Despite all that, Diego still considered himself to be in control. Only every sign that might tell him if his tactics were working seemed useless with Crane. How do you tell if someone is tiring, when they have no emotions, not even grunts of pain, no change of pace to be seen? That was why fighting madness was so dangerous. Crane could have been exhausted to death and might fall in a minute, or he could snake out one of those massive hands and crush Diego’s throat before he could even lay a hand on him.

There was no choice. He had to make a move before he got too tired, which meant he had to get close.

He was circling Crane, eyes watching every movement the other general – an insult to the title if there ever was one – made, his senses pushed to their limits in a way that sharpened everything to the point of almost seeming unreal. Diego waited. Crane just kept coming, changing direction every time he did.

With years of experience, Diego went for the opening in the brute’s defense the moment he saw it, not second-guessing himself for a moment.

His surprise was fast and unpleasant as Crane sidestepped him faster than he would have thought the big general could move. Protecting the leg Diego had been going for in order to pull the monster down and deal with him from there, Crane caught him instead at last. One hand holding him, the other twisting around Diego’s neck, pressing it against his chest, Crane went still.#p#分页标题#e#

The pressure felt like being crushed under an airlock’s triple-reinforced door. Clawing at the hands holding him, faced away from Crane, Diego saw the crowd frozen silent. Distantly he wondered if Crane really was mad and some of his fighter instincts had simply remained, or if it had been Eren’s ploy to make him underestimate the monster after all.

It didn’t matter. All that mattered was survival.

He had to be quick. Crane could have strangled him fast, but fate – the blessed, ever-giving fate – had kept some of the mad, sadistic need to feel someone suffer. That gave Diego seconds.

Instead of trying to pry the hand suffocating him away from an uncomfortable angle, Diego slowly forced the hand holding him flat against Crane and away from him. Strong Crane could be, but Diego Grothan was not made out of paper either. Both his hands pushing Crane’s right arm away from his body, his entire weight behind it, levering it from Crane’s own chest, Diego could do what he had planned to do from the beginning.

Of all the bodily modifications, he had always found reinforced bones to be the dumbest idea. It seemed to give such advantage to a warrior’s strength. He could feel it himself at that moment, Crane’s immense strength combined with steely bones, cutting his air off in its merciless, unrelenting press.

But it was also dangerous to carry that much hard material in your body. From the moment Crane announced his choice, it had been clear to Diego he wouldn’t be able to overpower the monstrous general physically. He had to use the only weapons available, weapons Crane had brought to the arena inside him.

His vision began to blur, but he didn’t need to see. All he needed was to get Crane’s right arm far enough… As his consciousness began to slip as well, Diego brought his legs up, nearly jumping into Crane’s lap and, holding the arm out straight, kicked at it with his legs with all the strength he had left.

Crane’s arm snapped with a nauseating creak. The reinforced bones were strong, but not unbreakable. That pain must have registered at last, because he made a sound like a grunt and the awful pressure around Diego’s throat relaxed for a second. That was all he needed to slam his elbow straight into Crane’s kidneys and slip away, stumbling, as Crane’s hold lifted.

Diego got away to a safe distance, trying to get oxygen flowing through his lungs once again. His head spun, but he was even now in very present danger. Crane still lived. The punch he’d received in the stomach wouldn’t delay him more than a moment and he’d shake off the pain in his arm like it was nothing. Diego gasped for air, everything still swimming before his eyes. That had nearly been the end of him.

Heavy footfall signaled the approach of his enemy. Crane’s expression hadn’t changed – the same perpetual snarl on his lips, the same madness in his eyes. His right arm was broken just above the wrist, the sharp edge of bone gleaming in the moonlight.

Diego had been foolhardy once. Now he had to do it again.

Reinforced bones were hard, that’s what they were. Getting hit by muscles boosted by them hadn’t been painless, as Diego’s body kept telling him. Yet it had to have been worth the sharp edge he saw now, a weapon within his reach. That was the curse of modifications. Bone wasn’t sharp enough to jam it through someone’s chest without a very fucking good angle, which Diego was not going to get with Crane, but industrial bone… All he had to do was make him stumble.

It took him three tries. Crane didn’t seem to comprehend the danger his own body had become to him. He only understood his left arm was now his stronger. Twice, he kicked Diego back with another set of punches that would hurt for a good while. On the third go, Diego managed to trip him at last. Everything from there happened as fast as he could possibly move.