Cyborg Fever. Grace Goodwin
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embedded in his flesh. The implants meant nothing to me except as badges of honor. He’d battled the Hive, fought hard, survived. Everyone on this planet had and I respected every single warrior here.
But this Atlan made my body go on red alert. I couldn’t see his legs, as they were covered by pants, but his back and chest were bare. Hot muscular perfection that I wanted to touch. And lick. And pet. And kiss.
My body hummed with a surprising need. My libido had gone into hibernation in recent times; as an instructor, there was no fraternizing with the cadets at the Coalition Academy, even if I was only a few years older than most of the new recruits. Abstaining hadn’t been a problem. And since the other instructors and administrators didn’t push any of my buttons, it made my no-men, no entanglements rule pretty easy to follow. But looking at the Atlan, I licked my lips. Rule or no rule, I wanted a piece of that.
“If that’s him normally, I wonder what he looks like in beast mode,” she added, leaning in and murmuring in my ear. She pointed at the way the Atlan paced, eyeing his foe from the edge of the fighting area, clenching his hands open and closed into fists. That only corded the muscles and tendons in his forearms. Holy shit. Him in beast mode? Bigger, bulkier, more dominant. Intense. Ruthless.
My pussy was yelling at me, yes, please! And the fighting hadn’t even begun yet. It was…elemental, this interest I had in him. Visceral. I didn’t know his name, his life story. He hadn’t even taken me to a dinner and a movie and yet I wanted him. Instant attraction. This was not like what I’d been told about the Everians and their Marked Mates. Nothing so intense that I couldn’t walk away and be able to function. But one Everian cadet had left mid-term because his mark had awakened, and he’d lost focus or interest in anything but tracking her down and claiming her.
What I wanted with this very large piece of man candy was a…one-night-stand kind of thing. Hot and hard. Fast and primal. I was so bad, but everything in me was screaming at me to strip naked and jump him. Name. No name? My pussy didn’t care. I wanted a man-made orgasm and my body had decided this Atlan Warlord was the one to give it to me.
His opponent, from the caramel coloring and sharper facial features, was a Prillon. He paced on the far side of the pit talking with a few others, most likely discussing strategy. He was smaller, but that only meant he was well over six feet. Two huge aliens were about to face off in the well-known pit. By the size of the crowd watching from the seats that formed a semi-circle around the fighting area, it was an off-duty pastime. The buzz, the hum that came from everyone was heady. Everyone we’d met on this planet was intense, their pasts with the Hive certainly setting the tone. The fighters had rage and pain to release and the fighting pits—even if they were just watching—was an outlet for that.
“You know what they say,” Melody began. “That the size of his hands is indicative of the size of his—”
I laughed as I put a hand over her mouth, stifling the rest of that sentence. She waggled her eyebrows. So much for my well-practiced intimidation face.
“Okay, enough!”
She and my pussy were telling me one thing—jump the giant—my brain, another.
She pursed her lips together, but I could tell she was dying to say more. Our friendship went far beyond instructor/cadet. We were both from Earth, the only two in this year’s academy. While she was from Germany and I was from Canada, we had so much in common. Especially being a galaxy away from home. She was almost finished with her training at the Coalition Academy and would move on to an official fighting assignment upon graduation. I was an instructor there; the youngest the Academy had ever had. Because of my age, I had more in common with the cadets than with the other teachers.
And Melody? She was a riot and I adored her. Except for right now. It wasn’t often she could poke fun at me—we didn’t have tons of downtime when I wasn’t her instructor and there were rank protocols to follow then—and she was enjoying herself. Immensely.
It was also rare that we weren’t on Zioria. Off-planet training missions occurred in the last few weeks of a term, and only with those about to graduate. It was our last chance to run full-scale battle simulations and try to prepare them for what was coming. There were a few other human instructors, most of them ex-military or CIA. Strategy. Weapons. We called the young, aggressive, naïve recruits zygotes. Babies. All of them. From every world. They had no idea what they were getting into.
We did. We knew what was out there. I’d been with the Intelligence Core for over three years now, the Coalition Academy teaching position my cover for sensitive operations. But I had a job to do with these recruits, and I took it seriously. The better we did our job training them, the fewer had to die.
That was why we were all on The Colony, doing mission simulations with this term’s graduates. But those were completed, and now we had a night for the group to relax. For me to relax.
Or fuck an Atlan.
“He is hot,” I offered, then bit my lip. When she rolled her eyes, I added, “Fine. He’s absolutely gorgeous if you like that dark, brooding giant type.” I sighed. “Which I do.” Oh, I so do.
“There are no rules against getting it on with a hot Atlan beast,” she replied.
“We’re here on The Colony for cave training,” I reminded her. My specialty was stealth training. Get in, get out, don’t get caught. As far as the warriors knew, if they were captured by the Hive, it was over. No one was coming for them. And ninety-nine percent of the time, that was true. But for the other one percent, there was the I.C.—the Intelligence Core. In teams of two or three, we went in and recovered high level targets.
It was dangerous, but important work. The Hive couldn’t be allowed to break open the mind of an I.C. team member. We knew too much. About everything.
Two fighters walked along our row and we stood to let them pass, both of them huge Prillon warriors. They looked at us like we were candy and sat not too far away, on my left.
Testosterone overload. Too many hot warriors. We were literally surrounded.
The Prillon duo stared, made sure I knew they were interested. But I only had eyes for one warrior at the moment. And he was magnificent. My entire body went into heat at the sight of him. God, that Atlan was fucking hot. I’d only run into an Atlan a couple of times. They kept to themselves at the Academy, their instructors huge Atlan warriors themselves just in case one of them lost control of his beast during training.
Their women didn’t go into beast mode and didn’t fight in the Coalition, which I refused to have an opinion on. I knew their males were big, protective, dominant—big.
The shiver that raced through my body had nothing to do with the Prillon warriors scooting closer, and everything to do with the play of shadows over the Atlan fighter’s abs. I wanted to lick him there, make my way down…
“Training’s been over for two hours,” Melody was talking. Why was she still talking?
She sat back down and prattled on, oblivious to the Prillon warriors and their obvious interest. “You’re the one who dismissed us all and told us to have some fun for our last night on the planet. Our transport back to the Academy isn’t scheduled until tomorrow. You have all night.” She leaned toward me, bumped her shoulder into mine.
More spectators filled the stands until it was practically overflowing. They all wore the uniform of their position and rank prior to arriving on The Colony. Every warrior was covered in light-weight battle armor, most camouflaged black and grey for deep space battle. Melody and I were the only ones in Academy uniforms, hers gray, mine black, indicating my role as instructor.
“I’m not looking for a mate.” Absolutely not. Men complicated everything. They were selfish. Controlling. Difficult. Assholes. At least the ones I’d tangled with on Earth. Because of that, I’d avoided the ones in space, even the alien hotties that had crossed my path working for the Academy and my side stint in the I.C. The warriors in the I.C. weren’t selfish, but they were definitely controlling, dominant and would be difficult