Champion(2)

He watched the women move across the sand, swords spinning and crashing, shouting and laughing at each other. They were both working up a sweat, but he could tell this wasn’t a fight where there was supposed to be a winner.

Finally, they broke apart. Saff slung an arm around Harper’s shoulders, smiling. Then Harper spotted something across the arena and straightened. She waved to Saff and headed over toward a huge, tattooed gladiator who’d just arrived. Raiden Tiago, Champion of the Kor Magna Arena.

Blaine had been shocked to discover that many of the female human survivors had fallen in love with some of the alien gladiators who’d rescued them. He watched as Raiden—his body covered in intricate black tattoos—wrapped an arm around Harper and pulled her up on her toes to plant a solid kiss on her mouth.

Movement caught Blaine’s gaze, and he turned back to see Saff sauntering toward him.

Now he could make out the studded detailing on her leather vest, and better see the way her black leather fighting pants molded to her long legs. She walked like a panther on the prowl.

Blaine felt a rush of heat through his body. It made him stiffen. He hadn’t felt much except anger and despair for so long. For the last few months, all his angry emotions had been enhanced and intensified by the drugs the Srinar had pumped him full of before his fights.

To feel this fresh, warm desire for this magnificent woman took his breath away.

“Hey, Earth man. Think you can fight a real gladiator?” She glanced at the destroyed training dummy at his feet, a hint of challenge in her dark eyes.

“Any day,” he answered.

A faint smile appeared on her face. “Then let’s see what you’ve got.”

He lifted his sword, still getting used to the weight of the new weapon. Saff lifted her own.

Blaine attacked. As his blade met hers, he focused on the fight. She blocked his hit, spun away, and came right back in. She was good.

She fought every day in the arena, and no doubt trained for hours on end. Metal rang on metal, and he saw a few of the new House of Galen recruits stop to watch them. A small crowd gathered around.

“Come on, human,” Saff taunted, dancing backward. “You can do better than that.”

With a growl, he charged at her. But by the time he swung his sword, she was gone. She ducked down low, and he felt a slice across his fighting leathers on his thigh. Not enough to cut, but enough to leave a deep groove in the material.

Dammit. Gritting his teeth, he attacked again. Emotions flared up inside him, an aggressive anger he couldn’t control. Most days, he felt it hammering to get out of him. Before his abduction, he’d been a composed man, in control. If he’d been his usual self, he’d have less trouble fighting Saff.

She came in from the side, and slammed her sword against his. The blow vibrated up his arm and he lost his grip on the hilt. The blade fell in the sand.

The next thing he knew, she knocked into him, and they were rolling through the sand. They ended up with her on top of him, straddling his chest. She laughed, a jubilant sound that rocketed through his body.

“I win, Earth man.”

She pinned his arms down. He pushed against her but couldn’t move. Damn. She was stronger than she looked.

“Again,” he growled.

She looked down at him, studying his face intently. Could she see the ugly blackness that clawed inside him?

“Again,” he repeated, shoving the dark thoughts away.

She inclined her head. “Sure. I can beat you all day long.”


***

As Saff got to her feet and snatched her sword up off the sand, she felt the anger pumping off Blaine. It pummeled against her empathic abilities and she was glad she’d only inherited a very minor ability to sense emotion in others from her mother.

Ever since they’d rescued him, he’d been fighting this battle inside himself. She’d felt glimpses of his struggles with terrible withdrawals from the drugs the sand-sucking Srinar had used on him. Drugs to pump up his aggression. His first few days at the House of Galen had been spent in agony.

Saff fought back a punch of sympathy, along with the need to skewer any Thraxian or Srinar on her sword. The poor guy had been abducted, pumped full of drugs for months, and forced to fight to the death. He’d been deprived of everything good for a long time.

It was expected that he’d have a little trouble adjusting to his freedom. Especially when the transient wormhole back to his planet was long gone, and he and the other humans were stuck here. She knew Galen was still making Blaine take some therapy sessions with the healers, but it was going to take time.

When she turned around, he was already rushing at her, sword lifted.

Their weapons clashed, and she turned her focus back to the fight. He was human, but he was a big one. She’d gotten used to the women being smaller and not as strong. But Blaine definitely wasn’t small or weak, with his powerful body and muscles honed hard by the fight rings. As he wore only a simple strap of leather across his chest, it revealed that there wasn’t any fat left on his body anywhere, and also a spill of intriguing dark tattoos over one shoulder.