“He promised me he would take me home, and I believe him. He’s the best hope we have for Earth and Sueva alike. You should try to trust him more, too.”

His hand wraps around mine and he squeezes it, warmth spilling up my arm from where our skin meets.

“See? We have no need of a Suevan escort.”

“And the other two? Piper and Billie? None of you have answered comms.”

“We’ve been slightly busy,” I tell her, annoyance flaring again. “Piper and Billie want to go home, too. They’re with Nydo’s brothers. We split up and we’re trying to gain support among the settlements.”

“We sent escorts after them, too.” Niki studies Nydo’s face. “Do you want me to call them off, as well?”

Nydo’s fingers rub a circle across my palm, and I shiver under his touch. “No. Comm them again, and ask what they want. If they want to work with the Suevans at the settlements, that can be their choice. There are not too many left, anyway. You know Roth and Suevan numbers have waned almost impossibly in the last decade.”

Niki nods. “I will comm them and I will pull off the detail assigned to you.”

I sigh because I wouldn’t mind seeing another human face right now. But I don’t want any of the other women to get hurt in our bid for power on Roth. I don’t envy Niki. I wouldn’t want to have to be in charge of all that. Good thing I’m only playing at being the queen.

I don’t think I could handle it.

“Thank you,” I tell her, and it’s sincere. “Thank you for looking out for us. I promise I would tell you if we weren’t okay.”

A faint smile tugs her lips up. “Good. I wish you both luck on your mission. If it works, we’re looking at an entirely different universe.”

“We don’t need luck,” Nydo tells her, all arrogance. I roll my eyes. “We will succeed, because we are in the right, and the gods of Roth will be on our side. I can feel it.”

“Good,” Niki says, and then nods again before the comm ends.

I let out a massive sigh, pressing my hands into my face. Nydo rubs my back, and when I glance at him from between my fingers, his eyebrows are raised.

“Why are you still anxious? Do you not feel better after speaking with her?”

“I’m glad that we’re on the same page,” I hedge. “I’m hungry.”

He gives me a look, like he’s not going to let this go, but hustles over to the machinery the Roth equip their vessels with to make food.

I rub my temples, trying to process, well, everything that’s happened in such a short span of time.

Trying to process how the hell I feel about Nydo.

It shouldn’t change anything, his explanation of the Roth, of how he was raised… but I can’t help but feel sorry for him. Empathy for him. Like maybe, if the world had been slightly different, he wouldn’t be so fucking impossible.

I bite my lip.

Then he wouldn’t be him, though.

It would be idiotic to care about him. As more than friends. Sure, I’m using him to scratch an itch, but I can’t have feelings for him. That would be… such a supremely bad idea.

“I made the one you like,” Nydo tells me, and sure enough, he has my favorite Roth meal ready to go, steaming in front of me. It’s basically a vegetable and meat pie, though it isn’t like any I’ve ever eaten on Earth. My heart squeezes slightly with affection.

“You remembered which one I liked?”

He grunts. “It’s nothing,” he says, but his lips curl up, just a little, and I can tell he’s pleased I’m pleased. It’s adorable, and I grin at him for a split second.

Fuck.

I don’t need to catch feelings for him.

I need to get back to Earth.

But as I surreptitiously watch him prepare his own food, serving me before himself, I know that I’m already screwed, because… I do like him.

Friends. Just friends.

Friends who have mind-blowing sex, yes, sure, but that’s it.

OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

OceanofPDF.com

NYDO

I can scent her over the smells of the food on the table between us. Her cheeks are bright pink, and her gaze is studious on her food as she eats.

But I feel it flick to me when I look away from her.

She’s trying to hide her arousal.

“Why are you ashamed of your body?” I finally ask, setting my drink down.

“What?” she sputters, her eyes wide. “I’m not.”

“You are acting shy about your needs again.” I fold my arms across my chest. “Why, when I can pleasure you so you sleep well all night? Why, when I already have?”

“Because it’s not normal to be so goddamn horny!”

I tilt my chin. “Horns? Do you grow horns? Is this a human thing I know nothing about?”

She scrubs a hand over her face, then lets out a hoarse laugh. “No. We don’t grow horns. It means I’m turned on.”

“Your cunt is wet with arousal,” I say approvingly. “If you have had enough to eat, I would not mind feasting on it again.”

She groans, and embarrassment is writ across her body, her face.

“Do you think it bothers me? That you are ready for my cock at all hours of the day?”

“No, but it bothers me. Don’t you think I’d like to have, I don’t know, a little more control over my body?”

I pull her hands away from her face, watching her adorably embarrassed expression, her pale cheeks turning redder and redder as I drink her in.

“I think I would like to have more control over your body,” I growl.

And it is true.

But I also want her heart, and her mind. Not to control. Not to own. But to claim for myself, in all my selfishness. I don’t want her to return to Earth. I don’t want her anywhere but in my bed and at my side.

I clench my jaw, the primal need to win her, to claim her as my mate in the way of the Roth gripping me tight, overwhelming me.

An idea occurs to me as she sighs, and a slow smile stretches over my face.

“What if you did give me control over your body?” I ask, my voice low. Enticing. Gently, I flip her hands over, tracing the delicate blue veining under her skin there. Her skin leaves warm imprints against the cool metal of the table. “What if that’s what you need to take the edge off? To stop trying to control everything? Just for a little while?”

I want to be what she needs. Everything she needs. Always.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

There’s no denying the way her scent fills the room, that addictive, tempting smell of desire, and her. Always her.

“I mean,” I say, my smile growing, “that you let me please you. You let me take control of your urges. You let it all go, and you place yourself in my capable hands.”

“But… the ship.” Her eyelashes flutter.

“Is on autopilot. Won’t need me for, oh—” I glance at the clock embedded in the wall “—another five hours at least.”

“Five… hours?” she squeaks, then clears her throat.

I keep stroking her wrists. Maybe she needs a little more convincing. I lean over the table, brushing my lips against the near-translucent skin.

“You liked when I held your hands down in bed and rutted you like a beast, did you not?”

She gulps, her green eyes wide. “I…”

“I know you did.”

Her eyes narrow in defiance, and I grow hard as a rock for her, this little human who thinks she can hide what she likes from me. Who thinks I will not sniff out every way she likes to be fucked.

“So what if I did?” she finally says, tossing her red hair.

It drives me crazy, and my hands flex over her wrists.

“Then you will like this even more.”

“And if I say stop?”

“Sometimes, my little flame, stop means keep going.”

She hisses, and I watch her carefully. “So I need, a, uh, what’s it called, a safe word?”

“If you were Roth,” I purr at her, “you would not need such a thing, because you would know that I would stop the instant I detected a change in your scent.”