The Morcai Battalion: Invictus

She was a little intimidated, but she didn’t let it show. She nodded. “I know. My instruments and my senses don’t coincide.” His eyes changed color yet again, to a burnished gold, almost glowing. She didn’t know what it meant.

His hand lessened its pressure on her hair and became oddly caressing. “Weakness is prey. It invites brutality. Do you understand that?”

Her lips parted. “The more a female yields control, the more a male exercises it.”

He nodded. His gaze dropped to her throat, softly vulnerable at the angle. “We are a passionate species,” he whispered, bending his head. His mouth opened and slid over her throat. She felt the faint edge of his teeth. Even they felt different than they looked, different than her instrument readings described them. The slow rasp of them against the vulnerable skin of her throat should have been frightening. It was only exciting. Her heart began to race.

His nostrils splayed as stronger pheromones rushed up into them. “Delicious,” he rasped. And suddenly his tongue slid over the soft flesh, abrasive and stimulating.

Her nails stabbed into his chest and she gasped audibly.

He laughed.

She was alive as she’d never been alive, on edge, shivering with sensation and curiosity. He lifted his head and looked into her eyes. His own narrowed. His chin lifted arrogantly. He looked at her as if she already belonged to him. She recalled that expression from earlier, non-physical encounters and realized that he had been possessive of her for a long time.

“We are a warrior culture,” he said in a deep, velvety tone. “We conquer. For generations, our women have been taught that submission to the violence is the only way to survive it.”

Her breath was coming in little spurts. “Is that why they’re so afraid of it?”

“Yes. They dread the onset of the mating ritual, because they fear the aggression of the male. They have been taught that it is not feminine to meet passion with passion.”

She was seeing things she’d been blind to. His calm demeanor was a front. He could control his actions, except when he was exposed to Madeline’s involuntary pheromones. What she was seeing now was the true male, the true creature, without the veneer of civilized conduct.

“That is essentially correct,” he said curtly. His hand contracted again on her hair and brought her face very close to his, so that she could almost taste his clean breath in her mouth. “I have forced a change in the protocols. The mating will take place in total darkness.”

Her senses were heightened, but the odd statement kindled her curiosity. “Doesn’t it usually?”

“No,” he said flatly. “It is an innovation.” He couldn’t bring himself to tell her why.

He stared down at her with mingled concern and hunger. Her taut features betrayed her fear, even as she tried to hide it from him in her mind. “You are already afraid of my eyes in the absence of light. Added to that, you will experience the violence that goes with the feline response to desire.” His voice rasped. “I cannot control it.”

“I know that. Your eyes startle me at night. But I’m not afraid of you. Not really.”

“You know that I will not hurt you deliberately.”

“Of course,” she said simply.

His hand contracted harshly. “But remember this,” he said in a harsh, alien voice. “If you bend your neck to my teeth, I will make you pay for it!”

Her neck. If she bent her neck to his teeth. She suddenly remembered something from her biology courses. The great male cats of the human planets mated from behind. Did the Cehn-Tahr as well?

His face lowered and his cheek rubbed hard against hers. At the same time, he lifted her and pushed her against the stone wall, pressing her there with the weight of his powerful body. She became aware of gigantic size and strength, despite her reengineered body. The familiar commander was suddenly someone else, something else.

“Submit,” he whispered roughly at her ear, and pressed harder against her.

His mouth opened on her throat, warm and feverish and exciting. She caught her breath and shivered at the sudden rush of sensation.

He growled. The sound she made, involuntarily, sent him over the edge….

“What are you doing?” Caneese demanded belligerently. “You are not allowed to touch her before the bonding ceremony!”

He was so far gone that he growled at Caneese.

She cuffed him hard enough that the sound echoed. She growled, too. Madeline, almost mindless with her own responses, barely registered that Dtimun obeyed the older woman at once. He let go of Madeline and moved back, grasping at control and dignity.

“It is all right,” Caneese told him gently. She touched his cheek lightly. “It is all right.”

Madeline was getting her breath back. She was flushed. “I’m sorry,” she told Caneese. “It was my fault. I only wanted to know what was going to happen.”

Caneese smiled at her. “There is no need to apologize. I understand.”

“The bonding ceremony is tomorrow anyway,” Madeline began.

“Yes, but the mating must be witnessed, that is the law,” the older woman said gently.

Madeline had heard that odd phrasing before, but never thought about it until now. Witnessed?

Dtimun had recovered. His head bowed slightly, in deference to Caneese’s position. “We were discussing certain…aspects…of the ceremony,” he said with a straight face. “Madeline was curious.”

Caneese’s eyes were wide and shocked. “And you were telling her?”

He moved forward, took Caneese’s face in his hands and, smiling, touched his forehead to hers. “I was not,” he lied. “She wanted reassurance. Our customs are disturbing to her. I was attempting to explain them when things got out of hand.”

“A little out of hand,” Madeline said blithely. The look she gave Dtimun, unseen by Caneese, was wicked enough to make his eyes flash green.

Caneese melted. She touched Dtimun’s cheek with her hand. “I had to interfere. But you must not tell her anything further. I do not want you to make her more frightened.”

“Not to worry,” Madeline quipped. “I’ve had all my shots, and I’m experienced in six martial arts.”

Dtimun burst out laughing. Caneese stared worriedly from one of them to the other.

“We will not embarrass you,” Dtimun assured her. He hesitated. Madeline’s reaction to him was extremely stimulating. “We will not deliberately embarrass you,” he corrected. “It might be…wise—” he considered his choice of words “—to double the mute screen in the mating chamber, however.”

Caneese now looked horrified.

Dtimun held up a hand. “She has been known to throw things at me when she lost her temper,” he said quickly, looking for an explanation that would not disturb Caneese.

“Wouldn’t it be easier just to remove the ceramics from the room, sir?” Madeline asked him cheekily.

“Sir?” Caneese echoed. “Madeline, you must refrain from addressing him so.”

“Sorry,” Madeline replied with a smile. “Habit.”

“You must consider that this is the lesser of two evils,” Dtimun agreed. “She has, at least, refrained from saluting me.”

“Oh, I rarely do that,” she said. “In fact, we have this new guy, the kelekom tech, Jefferson Colby, that the commander stole…excuse me, borrowed,” she added when Dtimun glared at her, “from Admiral Lawson. Colby saluted the C.O. so often that he was getting a crick in his neck. So we told him that we never salute the C.O. because it affects his ego. Right, sir?” she asked Dtimun with a grin.

He glared at her. “When we are at Benaski Port, if you refer to me as ‘sir’ in front of possible spies, even your pregnancy will not be enough to ward off suspicion that we are enemy agents.”