In Enemy Territory - Shannon West Page 0,9

he deflated, sinking back down on the side of his desk. “No, gods damn him. He’s gorgeous. They do say most devils are beautiful. It makes them harder to resist.”

Larz grinned. “You always did like humans.”

“Yes, I have a weakness for them. For the way they look, anyway. As far as their personalities go, not so much.”

“Be careful,” Larz said, laughing. “Remember my omak, Blake, is human. And my brother-in-law, Ryan, too. I’m close to both of them.”

Kylon sighed. Of course, he remembered. The King’s Consort Blake was a celebrated beauty, and Mikos’s mate, Ryan, had been the subject of many of the soldiers’ fantasies when he arrived with Prince Mikos on Laltana, dressed out in the dark storm trooper uniform that hugged his body so lovingly and had left very little to the imagination. What there was about humans that appealed so much to Tygerians was a mystery that smarter men than he had tried to figure out for a long time. But whatever it was they had that made them so attractive, the royal consorts had plenty of it.

So did Rasc Centarlo.

Chapter Three

After Prince Larz left his office, Kylon couldn’t get Centarlo off his mind.

Rasc actually had a similar look to the Consort Ryan, especially once he’d shaved off that beard when he and Tibiel had made a run for it. Kylon thought he looked younger and was even better looking without it. He was about average height for humans, with a beautiful face, longish black hair, and a simply spectacular ass.

Once Prince Mikos and his storm troopers landed on Laltana, Centarlo and Prince Tibiel had slipped away on a Farlian trading ship and had hoped to make a clean getaway. Kylon heard that Tibiel planned on traveling to the nearby planet of Petray, within the Laltanan solar system, perhaps hoping to rally some kind of backing for a rebellion there—once the Tygerians had left the area, of course.

Centarlo, on the other hand, had apparently decided to disassociate himself from Tibiel completely and had booked passage on the Farlian ship to Leeria, perhaps thinking if he could make it there, he could hide out on that lawless planet until things cooled off. King Davos’s men had been waiting when they stopped off on Petray, however, and both he and Tibiel had been taken back to Laltana in chains.

Once Centarlo had been one of the richest men on the planet, and he still had an arrogance about him that belied his current status. It had been a mighty fall from grace for Centarlo, and once all was said and done, he’d be sent away to some prison to serve his sentence. Kylon had never heard, and didn’t care, where Rasc would be headed when he left the prisons on Laltana to serve out his sentence.

And that was an absolute lie, he admitted to himself, deflating further. Kylon didn’t want to know, because the truth was that he was terribly attracted to Rasc Centarlo and had been from the first moment he’d laid eyes on the man, despite how completely and utterly inappropriate that attraction was. He still sometimes lay awake at night, wondering—and even worrying about—how Centarlo would get along at the prison he was going to.

Not that there was anything he could do about it, no matter what the answer to that question might be. Kylon wished sometimes he could go back and change things so he’d never met Centarlo, let alone become attracted to him. He’d never meant for the attraction to happen, but it had sneaked up on him.

The Tygerian guards, some of whom were in his unit, hadn’t been able to affect the former Prince Tibiel’s handling much, as he was kept in solitary confinement and then sent to exile. Rasc Centarlo, however, had been a different story. Since he was temporarily housed in the prison dungeons below the castle, he was assigned various work details around the palace grounds to keep him busy. The Tygerian guards, well aware of Centarlo’s role in the kidnapping of their prince and the other young men onboard that hijacked ship, had made Centarlo’s life as miserable as they could while he awaited transport to his permanent prison. The Tygerians believed that imprisonment at hard labor meant just that and prisoners should never be “coddled.” Unfortunately that sometimes translated to bad treatment.

Rasc kept to himself most of the time, except for the Farlian inmate who shared his cell. Because of the hot weather, none of the prisoners, including Rasc,

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