The Admiral and the Wildcat: Scifi Alien Romance (3 page)

“I’m well aware you’ll do anything…okay, almost anything to get the mission done. But facts are facts. I do not have time to rendezvous with the
Renegade
. I’m due in court within three hours and I need that time to get there, not piss about picking up a team. Your girl put my guys in medbay, so as far as I’m concerned, she replaces them until you can get the replacements for me.”

Oh, no. Kelis stilled, not liking where this was going. This was supposed to be an in and out job. Two days, one to set up, one to execute. Not an ongoing mission to Lady knew where.

Colonel Rhade’s voice rose enough that Kelis could hear it, even over the directional link, but Buchanan didn’t bat an eyelid, continuing to watch her. His gaze sent shivers over her skin and his voice was commanding. “I think you forget yourself, Colonel. You initiated an operation without my authorisation,
on
me, and have potentially jeopardised a sensitive case. I need a bodyguard, your girl is the only one available, so she’s it. Do I make myself clear?”

Kelis turned completely, arms folded over her chest and a mutinous expression on her face. Since she wasn’t an alliance fleet officer and couldn’t be ordered as such, this should be interesting.

There was no more shouting on the other end of the comm line. Instead, the silence spoke volumes. Then Buchanan nodded. “Excellent.” He unclipped his comm badge and held it out to Kelis. “Your boss wants to talk to you.”

“Really?” She held out her hand and he dropped the badge into it. “Colonel Rhade, this is Vann.”

“Excellent. I need to reassign you.” The colonel’s voice was as clipped and no-nonsense as the woman herself. Kelis opened her mouth to reply, but Rhade beat her to it. “I am aware that you were seconded for one assignment, but I also know that Wildcats enjoy a fair amount of autonomy in the field, especially Lead Warriors. If you would take on a second job, protecting the admiral, then I would owe you a favour.”

Aware that Buchanan was watching her carefully, Kelis blinked to hide her surprise. A favour from a woman like Rhade was nothing to be sniffed at. She might be fleet, but if even half the rumours were to be believed, she was nowhere near whiter than white. In fact, she was blacker than most intergalactic crime lords and infinitely more feared.

“Your word on it?” Although Kelis was a Vann, a family known for bold action, she was more astute than most warriors. She liked to get the terms of a contract nailed down before she committed.

“My word as a warrior.”

“Good enough for me,” Kelis nodded. She’d been given the low-down on Rhade by her father, so she knew the colonel was from a similar warrior-type culture to her own, and a warrior’s word was her bond. “I’ll keep him safe until you get a team to him. Vann out.”

Clicking the comm badge off, she handed it back to the man watching her.

“I’m in, handsome. Now, do you want to give me a rundown of how you like to do things?”

S
he dropped
his comm badge into his palm and looked at him with those damn mysterious blue-grey eyes. For a moment Gabe, a man who’d built his career on his eloquence, couldn’t think of a damn word to say.

She was…amazing.

Then his mouth operated without the intervention of his brain and blurted out what had been on his mind since he’d realised what species she was.

“I didn’t realise Saragosians let their women fight.”

“Let us? What century are you living in? There’s no letting us, just as there’s no stopping us. Some of the best warriors I know are women.” Amusement filled her eyes as she turned to stuff her discarded fleet uniform away into her pack. He wondered where she’d gotten it. Was there an ensign locked in a cupboard somewhere?

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She pulled a nasty looking pistol from another section of the pack, complete with holster and belt, and buckled it on. It looked mean and well-worn but not as well used as the vicious knife she strapped to her calf. “Got sisters that would’ve gutted you for that misogynistic statement…and the Regas Warlord is a woman. I suggest, should you ever meet her, you not repeat it. She’s third-gen and a veteran of the Centuries wars.”

The words washed over him. He knew the basic history of the Saragosian race. They’d been at war with a species, the Satagosians, from a neighbouring system for well over half a millennium. Born in trenches, they were bred for war and excelled at it. He had authorised the use of Wildcat mercenary units as shock troops himself, simply for the sheer brutality of the warriors. Once an objective had been softened up by Wildcats, fleet forces rarely met resistance. He’d never much thought about the warriors themselves, or indeed that they might contain women in their number. Or children. Did they still make their kids fight?

“Never met a Regas,” he admitted, intrigued by this woman. With swift, efficient movements, she lifted her pack and stuffed it in one of the higher lockers. “Met a couple of Vanns. You said that was your name, right?”

Folding her arms under an impressive rack he was trying his best to ignore, she nodded. “Lead Warrior Vann. Commander, Wildcat unit Alpha-Three-Seven-Four.”

She was not only a warrior, but commanded a unit as well? Gabe resisted the urge to whistle between his teeth as it suddenly clicked. Her ink was black, not red. He remembered being told that warriors with black ink were veterans. Which meant Lead Warrior Vann was a lot older than she looked. And a hell of a lot more dangerous.

“Suddenly I feel safer. The fleet has a starship captain called Saarday Vann.” He lifted an eyebrow at her. “A relative? Or is that like saying all humans called Smith are related?”

Her lips curved, then she chuckled, a soft little sound of amusement he suddenly wanted to hear a lot more of. “Nope, we are related. He’s my uncle.”

Her uncle? Crap, Gabe had been drinking with the man and had always been amazed that someone that young was a starship captain, never mind old enough to have a niece that looked…well, like Vann did. But they all looked a lot younger than they actually were.

“Nice guy. On the level.”

“Day? Yeah, he’s the danglies.” Genuine affection washed over her face, and out of nowhere jealousy hit Gabe broadside. Then he frowned.

“I’m sorry, the danglies?”

She crossed her eyes for a second. Deliberately. “Sorry, trench-talk. Means ‘the Hasang’s dangly bits’ as in, the best thing ever.”

“Oh, right. Yeah…humans have similar expressions.”

“Doesn’t surprise me.” She turned, dropped down into one of the side seats and looked at him in expectation. “Okay, handsome. How about we go through your schedule?”

Sensing he wasn’t going to get anything else out of her on a personal level, Gabe sat and started to talk.

I
t hadn’t taken long
for him to go through his schedule and preferred ways of working with Vann. She’d sat silently and attentively as he spoke, occasionally making notes—actual handwritten notes—in a small notepad she’d pulled from her pants pocket. He’d tried to get a look at what she was writing but it was all in the same loops and swirls that covered her arms. Saragosian script. Which he couldn’t read. Neither, apparently, could the computer, giving him a “language not present” error when he snapped a picture of her arm with his flex pad from across the cabin.

Sighing, he dropped it to his lap and studied her.

In the hours since they’d gotten underway for their rendezvous with the
Renegade,
she’d plotted their course with the pilot, studied a schematic of the ship they were headed to, spoken to someone on the comm link in a language he couldn’t understand even with the translator switched on, and exercised.

He shifted position, bringing his leg across his lap. Somehow, even in the confined space of the flyer, she’d managed to work her entire body in a routine that was a work of art. Gabe was used to working out. He’d been a marine before he’d switched career tracks and gone into law, so he was no stranger to the gym, but the bodyweight routine Vann had used would test even his endurance, never mind his balance. But to watch…all that satin skin and sleek muscle, the curves of her body as she twisted and turned… was a sensual pleasure he hadn’t anticipated.

Moving position again, he tried to ease the pressure on his rock-hard cock in the tight uniform pants. He needed to get laid, and soon. But not Vann… bedding a Saragosian would be like sleeping with a praying mantis. She was sexy but lethal. He couldn’t afford to get distracted with her, not when she was in Rhade’s pay.

But
fuck
did he want to…

“It looked clean enough,” he commented when she pulled her pistol from its holster and started to strip it. A small cleaning kit was set on the seat next to her, her hands moving with the kind of confidence that said she’d stripped the weapon many times. She looked up, still breaking the pistol down, and gave a little smile.

“Never let a weapon get dirty. You never know when it might save your life.” Her voice was quiet and melodic with a small burr in it that suggested fatigue. No evidence of that showed in her face or her eyes though. Perhaps her kind didn’t need as much sleep as humans?

“You’ve done that a lot.” He had no idea why he kept talking, but he did. The analytical part of his brain informed him that forging a connection with her was good. She was in charge of protecting him, after all. The little head readily agreed with that, but less because of her role as his bodyguard and more because it was wholly interested in keeping her around, preferably with fewer clothes on.

“Just a time or two.” She nodded and he couldn’t look away from her hands. They were delicate but strong at the same time, moving with assurance as she started to clean the pistol. He’d seen similar weapons on other Saragosians. They definitely weren’t fleet issue, nor a maker he knew.

“Went to the front line when I was nine. Saw action within a week.” Her words took him by surprise—personal information he hadn’t asked for, but wasn’t going to refuse to learn about her. She lifted a hand, clenching her fist. “Earned my first dot within two.”

The backs of her hands were covered with the same kinds of marks that crawled up her arms and onto her shoulders. There were two dots and a whole bunch of ornate looking swirls across her knuckles on both sides.

“A dot is like a rank marking?”

“Yup.” She started to put the weapon in her lap back together. “One dot outline, then two, then the swirls around them. After that, the dots are filled in one by one, to this…” She nodded toward her hands. “Double swirls and dots mean Lead Warrior. After Lead, if you’re lucky enough and live long enough, there’s an extra dot and swirl for Warlord. It’s the highest rank we have.”

Gabe nodded, sliding forward to the edge of his seat with interest. So she was highly ranked in her own culture. That made sense with the way she moved. “Warlord? You mentioned you were here on orders of your warlord, as a favour to Rhade. Does he know her?”

Vann snorted, finished putting the pistol back together, and slid it back into her thigh holster with a “snick.”

“She’s female. My father knows pretty much everyone female. He’s a total manwhore.”

B
uchanan was
…unsettling.

Kelis watched him out of the corner of her eye as she lay on her back across three seats opposite where he was working. Now that his anger had receded and that sharp focus was aimed at something other than her, she took her time assessing him. He was a lawyer, that much she knew from reading his file, but since her culture was war-based, the intricacies of what he did eluded her a little. Apparently he was in charge of fighting for, or against, someone, but with words and rules.

He’d make an amazing warrior… The thought popped up out of nowhere, but she had to admit that he would. Now that he’d taken off his uniform jacket, his undershirt had moulded itself to the hard muscles of his chest and shoulders. She found herself having trouble looking away from the strength of his hands as he rifled through documents to read them. His expression was intent, the almost feline-like eyes focused…

On her.

She jumped as she realised that somewhere in her musings, he’d stopped reading and started watching her back. His lips curled slightly.

“Let me guess, you were always front line troops, not infiltration?”

“Nope.” Cover blown, she sat up and rifled a hand through her blonde hair. “Wrong colouring for it. Vann women are distinctive.”

“You can say that again. Are you married?”

She blinked at the rough question, watching as he put his files aside. Damn, when he looked at her like that—so intent, so focused—she had trouble thinking straight. Had he slipped something in her drink earlier when she wasn’t looking?

Never one to back down from a challenge, she shot back instead of answering. “Are you?”

His lips compressed, as though the idea was unpalatable. “Used to be. Not anymore.”

Unbidden, relief washed over her. She knew about humans and their marriages. They did the whole married to one person at one time thing, not like the more sensible Saragosian way of multiple marriages. Although…if she had a man like this, she wouldn’t want to share him. Ever.

He stood, looming over her and suddenly the cabin, which had felt spacious, felt way too small. She glanced to the side. The door to the pilot’s cabin was shut. No one would disturb them.

“Worried about being alone with me?” He’d stood, so she did as well. Tension mounted in the room, arcing between them.

“No.” She wasn’t. He couldn’t hurt her, even if he’d been trained from birth as a warrior, and somehow, deep down, she knew he wouldn’t. He wasn’t that kind of man. She lifted her chin and met his eyes. “You worried about being alone with me? I am a trained killer after all.”

He didn’t answer, instead reaching out to wind a blonde curl around his forefinger. Holding it captive, he tugged her gently toward him. “Oh, I don’t think you’re here to kill me. I think you have other things on your mind.”

Other things? She frowned, but the thought was knocked from her mind when his mouth covered hers. Slow. Gentle. The merest brush of his lips against hers brought all her defences crashing down. He tantalised her senses and bypassed all her safeguards as he tilted his head and kissed her again.

That was incredible. A small moan echoed in the back of her throat and she moved closer, turning her head to deepen the kiss. All the men she’d known were brash and, while not rough, were not soft. Softness had been scoured out of them as a species centuries ago. Sex was not about softness. It was about the challenge and ensuring the next generation. Foreplay was…swift and always leading up to the main event.

This was…not.

He slid a large hand into the hair at the nape of her neck and tilted her head back. He sipped at her lips with butterfly-soft kisses that seemed to want nothing more than to explore. To taste. To savour.

Slowly he drew back and looked down at her. She sucked in a breath, shivering as she realised just how big he really was. Like the wit and intelligence had stopped her seeing the power in his frame. Brawn and brain all in one package didn’t happen often, but he was it.

“Sweet and soft,” he said, his voice rough.

His pupils were dilated, his blue eyes holding her captive as his thumb stroked her cheek gently. She bit her lip, trying to keep her reaction to him under control. She’d never felt such an ache for a man before. Ever. Not that she was inexperienced. She’d had her fair share of lovers, but none had made even half the impression this man did.

“You know if you do that…” he moved closer, easing her smaller body against the hard plains of his. “Then I have to do this…”

His lips covered hers, harder this time. A low rumble in the back of his throat, he swept his tongue over her full lower lip as his hand tightened in her hair. A demand for access. Without thinking, she opened for him. His tongue thrust past her lips, seeking and twining with hers. Heat hit her like a laser blast, seeking out and destroying all her defences.

A moan in the back of her throat, she moved closer. She pressed her curves, meagre as they were, against him. Her hands spread out over his broad chest, and a thrill shot through her at the solidity she felt there. Need thrilled through her veins, settling low between her legs and reminding her that it had been a long time since the last midsummer festival. Nearly a year…

The door to the pilot’s cabin slid open suddenly, making them jump apart as the pilot called through. “We’re about to enter the Jerinas Centauri system, sir. Ten minutes to touchdown.”