“She was at the Vanadisan embassy a cleg ago,” Captain Ishula updates me while I sit in the dim, empty antechamber outside the ceremonial pavilion where they’re sifting through the wreckage. This lets me multitask, watching the critical investigation while a string of staff wait in line to give me urgent empire updates. “We picked up your former employee, Daol. He still had the money from when he dropped her.”
I rise, my blades jumping in my wrists, and the waiting staff become alert as well. “Don’t call. We’ll just show up.”
“But she isn’t there any longer.”
“You’re certain?”
“Very certain. We’re guessing where she might have been dropped.”
I sit again. The staff let out a sigh. Some have been waiting over a cleg on their urgent news. I’ve gone beyond anxiety and into a new state of dread readiness.
Captain Ishula regards me blandly. “I hope you dedicate as much energy to the investigation into your brother’s attack.”
“Was there ever any doubt of who assassinated my father?”
“Officially or unofficially?”
“And is there going to be any doubt who attacked my brother?”
She half bows.
“I appreciate your dedication in finding ‘only a lesser.’” But since she brought up the investigation, I ask, “Have you interrogated Arcturin?”
“He’s retreated into his house and refuses to speak to anyone of a lower rank.”
Ah. He has a reputation for being obsessed with rank. Not unusual among nobles, especially where rank is another fashionable thing to wear, but convenient this time. “I’ll oust him.”
Takoba’s voice comes over my viewscreen. “We’ve found her.”
I leap, ignoring the cries of the waiting staff, and run for my private transport. “Good job. Where did the Vanadisans dump her?”
“The intersection by the fifth portal.”
I run faster. “By the green stone wall?”
“Orunfax reached her first. She got into one of your valet cars. He’s towing her back to his house.”
My stomach drops. “When did they go through the portal to the noble ring?”
“They’re doing so right now.”
I shout for Ishula and burst out into the main landing bay. The captain hurries to catch up to me with a contingent of blades. We break into teams, just like in training, and fill the strike vehicles. She and I climb into a maneuverable hover and zoom out of the palace.
Despite the size of Arris Central’s second ring, we have priority clearance. We can get anywhere in clicks. I count each one obsessively until House Orunfax is directly below us.
And in the street, right outside his gate, is my clearly branded ship.
Orunfax’s staff are carving into the hull with an arc welder.
Captain Ishula motions to her blades to get ready. “Perhaps you should let him take her inside.”
“Inside his house?” I flex my wrists and crack my neck. Finally doing something feels great. “Are you crazy?”
“She’s wanted in conjunction with the bombing.”
“I told you—”
“So we’d have jurisdiction. Three blades went missing at this house. I’ve always wanted to see the inside.”
I can’t risk Allie.
But for just one moment, Ishula looks down at the jagged entry with a hint of longing. A ghost of an emotion.
“I swear to you that we will return,” I vow. “We’ll defeat Orunfax within the law and expose every one of his crimes.”
Captain Ishula’s mouth twists to one side.
Then she reaches for the communicator. “Prepare to attack.”
The whole operation is over almost before it starts. Our ships block in Orunfax’s ship. Ishula’s blades land and advance on my car.
Orunfax’s house guards drop the arc welder and scramble inside the gate.
My lances jump in my wrists as I stride forward surrounded by my blades, faster and more practiced.
My ship’s bent door slides open with a screech.
Allie rushes out and into my arms. “You found me!”
I scoop her up.
Her breasts press against my chest. Her thigh curls around my waist. She smells like liquor, a subtle smoky burn, and her fingers scritch my scalp as her lush lips seek mine.
My tongue plumbs her sweet, spicy depths, drawing her essence into me, infusing me with relief.
I made it this time. Because I acted immediately and without compromise, I did it right.
And she undulates against me, hardening my jack. The first thing I will do when we return to the palace is truly anchor myself in her. She will never leave my arms again.
Ishula speaks in my implant. “He’s at the gate.”
Nerves jab me.
I pull back from Allie, ending our kiss but holding her against me with promise. “Orunfax.”
“Ranse.” He eyes us with cold disinterest. “You should have spent more time in the High Command. We would have broken you of that unhealthy obsession with lessers.”
“If you ever so much as speak to her again, I will not give you any warning. I will simply kill you.” I turn away.
“I told him that.” Allie snuggles into me.
“Good. He should have believed you.”
“Ranse.” Orunfax raises his voice to my retreating back. “If the leader of the High Command and the emperor don’t believe in each other’s friendship, working closely together is going to become very difficult.”
I spin back, keeping Allie suctioned tight to my side. “You should have thought of that a cleg ago.”
His brows draw together. “She’s only a lesser. Not worth ruining your chance to rule.”
“Again, that’s something you should have said to yourself.” Heart still thudding—this is like standing up to my father—I carry Allie away from Orunfax’s lair and into the safety of the hover car surrounded by my blades. We lift off.
I rest against my wall seat while the world tilts and Arris Central, my city-planet, moves beneath.
Ishula announces, “Military troops have blocked off the main entrance to the palace. They demand we stop so they can inspect our car for insurgents.”
“Our car?” I squeeze Allie. “Are you joking?”
“It’s clearly a tactic. Orunfax may try to broadcast the confrontation to make you look weak.”
“Then let’s not give him the satisfaction.”
The flight veers away from the main entrance, taking a longer and more secret side way in.
Allie nuzzles up against me. “That was so sexy.”
I laugh at her non sequitur, and all the tension drains out of me. She’s been through so much today, but instead she’s taking it even more in stride than I am.
The other blades in the car glance over and quickly away. Their pupils are large, nostrils flared, and they’re struggling to control themselves. I know why. “You smell more intensely of lusteal.”
“The Vanadisans sprayed me. I’ve been desperate for you ever since.” She tries to push her hand into my collar, fails, and cups my jaw, sliding her fingers up the back of my head, pressing her mouth to my cheek, my nose, my lips, then throws one leg over mine and straddles me.
Desperate for me?
A deep thrum of satisfaction purrs through my body. I hold a steadying arm around her waist as she plasters herself to me. “What are you doing?”
“Kissing you, tempting you, driving you crazy.” She teases her tongue over my ear, sucks the points into her mouth.
A jet of arousal engorges my jack with heat.
Interesting.
I didn’t even realize the black points were sensitive, but her wetness and the needy slide of her luscious breasts against my chest, her thighs squeezing mine, her clever fingers against my scalp, draw new sensations. She is always showing me things I didn’t know I would be interested in. Her race is more experienced with sex and more driven to unite bodies than we Arrisans are.
She rubs her cheeks against mine as if she’s trying to rub her scent over me, suctions her mouth to my lips, plunges her tongue into my mouth with intoxicating demand. This is kissing, and it feels hot and wet like my jack sliding into her socket.
My arm around her tightens.
She pumps into me, daring to tease her tongue over my inner fangs, her flavors spicier and rougher, but oh so addictive. Then she breaks free and cups my chin in her hands, using her thumbs to stroke from my nose across my cheeks.
The other blades are trying to ignore us, but I want her unselfconsciously and aggressively claiming me. Everyone else wants her, but she only wants me.
My whole life, I’ve wanted someone to fight beside, and all my life, I’ve been moved from one place to another, one group to another. The palace, the Arsenal. My own nightclub staff tried to kick me out. Supposedly, it was out of respect. At the Arsenal, it was because I was too important to risk going on assignments, and the palace…well, I have my theories.
But right now?
She reaches between us, stroking my skinsuit over the hard length of my jack, squeezing my thighs, feeling me everywhere. And she doesn’t care about who sees. She wants me with abandon, and I crave that. I crave that level of obsessiveness, of need. Because I try not to need anyone. She’s the first person I can need freely. I don’t have to modulate my own desires because hers are overpowering.
The hover car touches down by the secret entrance.
I stand.
Allie locks her legs around my torso, so I scoop her up and walk her out.
We enter the palace, nodding at the blade Ishula left securing the door, and approach the main halls. It’s well into the night shift now, almost the day shift already.
Palace advisers swarm us with urgencies.
“The nobles! Your conferences—the investigation—your brother’s unchanged health status—unrest in the far reaches—”
Heaviness settles on my shoulders. This is the weight of responsibility. I must set aside my personal desires and—
“Oh, no you don’t.” Allie drops off me and plants her fists on her hips. “Who’s invading the palace? Huh? No one? Then you had your time. Shifts already. It’s Ranse’s time now.”
They protest.
“She’s right,” I tell them, as Allie rewards me by curling around me aggressively. “I still have shrapnel in my hair.”
“You can’t let Orunfax make you look weak,” one says plaintively as the others shuffle back. “He’ll turn the nobles against you. You have to drive him out of the third ring.”
“Can I do that before I’ve heard from Zai?”
Silence.
“Then I’ll return in half a shift.” I carry Allie away, the familiar pathways unfolding until I land not in the emperor’s chambers, but in my own childhood rooms. The door slides open from my biologic signature and seals, locking behind us.
“Give it to me,” she begs, squeezing her thighs around my torso and hitching herself higher. “Your cock. I need you inside me right now.”
Her demands spark fire.
I rest her on my practice ledge and free my hard jack. She tears aside the singed Humana garments and lifts her hips. Her socket is wet and soft and inviting. I gently probe her slick entrance.
“Now.” She hooks my hips and drags me in.
Home.
This where I belong. Warm and embraced and wanted. So wanted.
She gyrates against me, furious. “Ranse.”
I give over to her and thrust, faster and harder, and she bucks and scratches and cries, dragging me deeper into her wild embrace. Her channel clenches me. I can’t hold back. She’s my most intimate and demanding addiction, and no matter how deep I sink, I will never reach bottom. There is only wet need and her slicing across my consciousness. She is sound and I am fury, a tightening coil of lust-fueled craziness, and then she scratches her nails down my back in long jagged streaks as if she’s trying to carve me open and get inside me the same way I am inside her. But she doesn’t need to do that because she’s already in. I might have my jack lodged within her, but her essence is already lodged deep within me. My balls tighten, and I unleash myself within her.
She moans and arches, then she collapses. The fuzziness leaves her, drained by our union, and her gaze sharpens on me.
I rest one shaking arm beside her head. Everything shakes, inside and out. The confusion and relief I felt upon opening my carved ship’s door and finding her completely normal can’t be overemphasized, and just now, it rushes through me again.
She’s safe. She’s alive. She’s mine.
Her lips draw into a feisty smile. She rubs a streak of sweat off my brow, then pops her wet fingers in her mouth. “You don’t taste salty.”
My leg muscles complain from this position, so I lift her. “Am I supposed to?”
“Yeah, if you were human.”
I carry her over to my bathing pod. No mist showers here. I tear off the rest of my skinsuit and force the Humana garments off her, using the scraps to wipe off the gray and brown creams to reveal my mark.
Yes. That’s better.
I enter the oily orange viscoplastic, sinking down slowly into the slightly warmer-than-body temperature goo. She ties up her hair in a strip of the dress and slips in beside me. Two bodies displace it over the lip, and it oozes down the sides hanging just off the floor. Cleaning cloths are fine for surface grit, but there’s nothing like this multipurpose substance to peel clean the crevices and pores. I dunk my hair, even though most Arrisans don’t. It takes forever to seep all the way in and then get it off again, but my hair is a different texture, and it releases without taking quite as long.
I grab the lip and heave myself out. The viscoplastic releases me slowly as it also sucks back into the tub below the lip once more.
She takes my hand and leans on me to pull herself out. One of her ropes falls free of the head cover and dunks into the viscoplastic. It works down her hair and strips off the bead. Her dark hair springs free, puffing.
“Your hair,” I murmur, and she catches the end in surprise. “It’s broken.”
“Oh, it’s only one. I can just…” She strokes the kinky fibers. “Wait. Did that ooze unlock my dreads? Completely? And it feels soft. It’s not even damaged. What in the world is it made of?”
“Engine grease.”
She snorts. “It’s a miracle. I locked my hair when I grew it out because it fros huge. Like its own hair planet. I didn’t want to pick it out or deal with maintenance, but…wow…” Her smile softens. “I’ll export it to Humana and make a billion in hair care products.”
“You already have much more money than Humana a hundred times over.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t feel real. Being rich on Humana is an old dream.” She lets go of the lock and yawns. “I’ll fix it later.”
She’s pleased, and that is good.
I bring her to my childhood resting pod. It’s smaller, but still fits the two of us. Sinking into its enclosure with the moldable sands is like sneaking into a private retreat, a hole where we can catch our breaths for a few clegs before the whirlwind takes us once more.
She lies beside me, tracing my abdomen and curling her clever fingers around my still-hard jack. “You aren’t done.”
“I can sense you aren’t either.” I roll her on top of me and massage her sweet thighs. “I wish you were somewhere else. Somewhere safe, where no one could find you.”
“Doesn’t exist.” She runs her palms across my chest and squeezes my pectorals. “Besides, I prefer to choose the pitch, not have it chosen for me.”
The fierce scent of the lusteal plucks at my nerve endings. “Then tell me. What battlefield must I choose to gain control over the noble houses? What terrifying persona must I assume to dominate them into submission?”
“You’re awe-inspiring enough. Just be yourself.”
“Be myself.” I rub my thumbs over the corded muscles attached to her kneecaps. “I’ve had too much experience with nobles to maintain the pure principles of Zai or Ishula. I’ve spent too long as a blade to live flagrantly like a noble. What does ‘being myself’ for a person like me mean?”
“You’re open, flexible, and honorable. When the nobles see how much better you are than Orunfax, you’ll draw them to your side. You’re a man of your word. Make it known that’s who you are.”
My chest lifts. As always, I’m glad that this version of me is who she sees in her fierce brown eyes. It makes me want to be that person more than any of the other options available to me. “It’s going to be hard to explain why I almost raided the house of the current head of the High Command.”
“No, it’s easy. He violated your boundary and so you’ll stop anyone who does that. They will respect you. Trust me.” She grins. “I’m a kingmaker.”
And I feel this electrifying sense of possibility.
I guess it’s because my father saw me as a threat. When I got too competent as a blade, my brother pushed me aside. Everyone said our estrangement was only natural. I could never make myself small enough to put him at ease.
But Allie says that I don’t have to be small, that I should be as large and as devastating as I’m capable of being… It feels like I’m allowed to give my all, air rushing around me, dodging the feather-soft whisks of the decapitating blade. Total focus, total concentration, pushing myself to the limit and then having someone say, “That’s why I will love you anyway. We will all love you because you’ve finally stepped up and given your best.” It feels like my soul is coming alive. And I know she can handle me because she has never shied away from meeting me where I am.
Her hands trail lower, her fingers curl around my jack, and she doesn’t give me a chance to do more than savor the sensation for an instant before she fits me to her entrance and we unite. She rides me, undulating against my girth, taking her pleasure while giving me so much more than I knew to desire.
I have lived many different lives already—palace brat, heir, blade, noble—and yet this is my favorite. Partner to someone who understands me, understands the world better even than I understand myself.
She leans down, her breasts scraping sensual lines across my chest, and takes my mouth again. Our tongues interlock like jack and socket, wet and hungry, and our bodies loop in an infinite wheel of fire, flaming from her soul to mine and back into hers, as we both become much more than who we are.
And when she drags that release from me, taking my essence within herself with her own pleasured convulsions, she slows and rubs a hand across her forehead. The lusteal spray must have finally worn off, centered by our union, giving her back herself again. She smiles down at me, and this disheveled, honest look is what I want from her for always.
She slides off and lies on her front, balancing on her elbows, beside me on the resting pod. “It’s funny.”
I roll to face her. “What is?”
“When I’m under the influence of the spray, the sex is good, but when I’m off it again, being with you feels much more intense.” She looks over at me. “Is it the same for you?”
“Every time with you is the most intense experience I’ve ever had in my life.”
Her smile returns, warm and fragile. She trusts me enough to show me these different versions of herself too. Then she lowers her forehead to the resting cushion and sighs. “I don’t always make the best decisions when I’m on lusteal.”
“Lots of people have wanted to break a data tablet across Orunfax’s face. You’re making dreams come true.”
She snorts. “Really?”
“Yes. I hope someone got it on video.”
I skim my hands down the curves of her body, and then I start at the little wrinkles of skin over her hard heel, up the slenderness of her ankle, over the curve of her calf, along the back of her knee and across the width of her thighs. How strong they were gripping my waist. When my own were tired, and she was tireless. I skim over the rounded curve of her buttocks, across the pink dampness within, and along the curve of her spine up her strong back to her shoulders and neck, all the way up to her crown.
“Allie.”
She rolls her face to the side, looking at me.
“I thought putting you away from me would keep you safe, but too many Arrisans only see you as a Humana lesser. I’m going to keep you closer to me instead.”
“How close?”
“For the next kortan?” I rotate onto my back and pull her up to straddle me. “Right on top of me.”
She laughs, warm and brilliant. “Maybe in private. But in public?”
“I want you everywhere. We break the rules, don’t we?” I try one of the labels I gave to Ishula earlier. “You should at least be my closest adviser.”
Her smile wavers like a mirage. “Adviser…”
“The first in Arrisan history. Is something wrong?”
She buries her face in my shoulder. “Nothing. This is crazy, but that’s us, right? We’re crazy? So, yeah. Um. It’s going to be fine. Sounds great.”
To me too.
Everything, in this exact moment, is perfectly all right.