“I know,” she says. “That’s why I took you with me. I know you’d be able to sneak us out, and I trust you.”
It makes my chest ache to hear her say that.
I hope it isn’t a lie.
I keep under my cloak, glaring at anyone who looks at her in the crowded marketplace. There are all kinds of people here, from nearly every planet in the Alpha Worlds: Skoll, Merati, and even a few Mlok. Still, I’m unusual enough to get a few eyes on me, along with my human companion.
Fiona, for her part, is dressed in something I think she must have had specially made, perhaps of Skoll design. She’s dressed in a leather set of skin tight armor with a black Merati gown belted across her waist, bits of her thighs peeking out from between tightly bound laces. I imagine how, when we return, I might drag my claw over those laces and feel them pop, freeing her flesh…
“Have you ever been here before?” Fiona asks, interrupting me. Her hazel eyes glimmer with a sort of mischievous light; she knows what I was looking at.
I keep looking.
“Twelve Alamancian cycles ago,” I say, “I was here refueling between Alamancia and Wildervane, on my way to participate in the Wild Hunt.”
“Sounds exciting,” she says.
“Less exciting than you might expect,” I tell her. “The Hunt itself is only half of the game; the other half is eliminating the competition.”
Her brows raise. “So you kill the other competitors?”
I tilt my head at her in that human sign of affirmation. “We do. I did.”
“And what was that like?”
Sometimes, I still don’t truly understand her. She seems to possess a certain fascination with the taking of lives, and with the dark things my talons have done.
I think she’s intrigued by it.
She likes it.
“I didn’t take any pleasure in it, if that’s what you’re asking,” I say. “Not like I did when I was hunting you.”
Fiona stops in her tracks, her hazel eyes staring into mine as she turns to face me. She doesn’t pay any mind to the disgruntled pedestrians stepping around us, scoffing at how we block the path.
“You…liked that?” she asks.
“Of course I did.” I step closer to her, letting my talons slide over her bare forearms and up to where the armor fits her like a glove. Her breasts are covered, but I think about the feel of them in my hands.
I’ve pulled her into a dark alleyway to undress her before. The last time, I wrapped the laces of her bodice around her neck. I could smell her arousal on that day, even as the life drained out of her.
“And I don’t think I was the only one, was I?” I murmur.
Fiona inhales sharply, her little hands gripping my arms. Her palms heat my scales like the sun. “That night in the woods on that alien moon…I would be lying if I said it didn’t excite me,” she says. “When you had me shoved up against that cliff face…”
Is she trying to destroy me here and now? To make me do something indecent in front of all these people? I tilt her chin up toward me, my claw on her delicate jaw. “Perhaps when all this is over, we can go somewhere remote…have a wild hunt of our own,” I growl.
She shudders as I pull away, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.
“We should proceed,” I say. “Cressida’s contact will be waiting.”
“Of course,” she says, then she grabs me by the collar. “But Orion? When we go back to the Wrath, I want you in my quarters for the night.”
I chuckle in satisfaction as she turns on her heel once again, her long hair whipping around her head. I’ve been with many Mlok women, but none have ever been quite so stubborn and strong-willed as Fiona—and I didn’t realize how much I would revel in her orders.
I continue to follow her through the crowd, and soon we’re at the stairs to the embassy. Fiona climbs them without hesitation, and I follow in her footsteps, scanning the area for guards. There are two Skoll in Hyperborean garb at the door, and I glower at them as I pass to ensure they know that I will cut our way out of here if I must.
Even Skoll Warriors shrink under my stare.