lust that tried to break through his façade.
He knew exactly what she was.
Earthling.
Fuck Lothar and this forbidden gift.
Nikol braced his booted feet and kept his features stern and unwelcome. He wasn’t sure what Lothar was up to, but there was no way sending this female here was a good thing. “Has Cecilee explained things to you?”
He trusted all of the tutanis to make his rules clear and without embellishment but Cecilee tended to be the spokesperson when the others were too hesitant to speak up.
The newcomer’s jaw clenched and her gaze narrowed. After years of unquestioned subservience, her visible display of defiance was...intriguing. He shut down the unwanted emotion immediately and made his voice deliberately cruel. “If you understand the rules explained to you, then you also know I will not tolerate disobedience.”
Rage flashed through her blue eyes. The others dropped to their knees in a provocative pose he’d grown to ignore and bowed their heads. Not the human from Earth. Desire and anger grew in equal measure within him. This could not be allowed. Nikol folded his arms across his chest to hide the clenching of his fingers.
“Kneel!” he ordered.
The Earth woman lasted all of five minutes beneath his penetrating stare before shifting her gaze to the side of him. Fear practically radiated from her pores, but she remained standing. Nikol wasn’t sure what the outcome of this first meeting would be and hoped she didn’t force him to act.
He’d done things to survive and would do more. Things this Earth woman couldn’t comprehend if the information he had on her people was correct. They were weak when confronted and easily broken.
The column of her throat moved when she swallowed and he detected the rapid beat of her pulse. Her fear ignited his excitement, and once more, Nikol found himself throttling back the urge to put her on her knees himself. He longed to watch the flare of those pretty eyes as he leaned down and took her mouth in a kiss that would have answered his questions about her taste.
Just when he thought she’d force his hand, she lowered her eyes demurely and went to the floor alongside the others. She sat back on her haunches with knees spread wide. It was awkward and showed her inexperience in making such a gesture of obeisance but accomplished the goal of having her where he wanted her.
The split in her green shellam slipped over her legs and revealed the apex of her thighs and the short red curls on her mound. She tried to pull the material over to cover herself, but the effort was in vain. The shellam was meant to reveal all and it did.
She was unshaven. Most of the females he bedded had removed the hair from their nether regions. Their whole bodies were smooth and their skin silky to the touch.
The Earth female with her riot of red curls on her head and between her legs would be full of textures. His nostrils flared as he imagined her scent when desire pooled in her center.
Ignoring temptation wasn’t easy, but Nikol managed it and signaled Cecilee. “Show her an empty room and see that her things are sent.”
There were over a dozen sleeping spaces in this suite and he and the others were only using five of them. Nikol thought of the disruption her presence would cause. Not just in his suite as a part of his kitse but in Lothar’s residence. The Majad had been very clear after Nikol’s apprehension by the Jutaks a few months ago. None of the Earth females taken in the sex slave trade were to be retained on Marenia.
It was too dangerous because, for some reason, the women from that planet had managed to garner the unofficial protection of the entire Enotian military, including their elite Jutak Units. Now Nikol would have to deal with the fall out from the problem Lothar had blithely thrown in his lap.
There was no way he could send her back to wherever she came from without drawing the Jutaks’ notice. The responsibility for her was on his unwilling head.
His lips pressed tight at the thought. He needed her nearby in order to watch her closely. Because it was a certainty that Lothar sent her to Nikol for a reason. He just needed to figure out what the reason was before the trap was sprung. Nikol added to his command. “In fact, put her in the alcove on the right.”
Amia, Stasia, and Tashire gasped, but Cecilee