Page 16 of Guardian’s Destiny (Space Guardian’s Mate #3)

SLOANE

Damn that alien had scared me. For a moment there, I was sure he would collapse, and his head would split open. The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced the Ohrurs had done some kind of brainwashing on him. Good thing I had been trained for that. I wasn't a specialist or anything like that by any means. I had taken several classes that dealt with this kind of issue because I had to free hostages before, and in the field, there had been no time to consult a psychiatrist to stop deranged hostages from blowing their brains out. Sometimes, it needed to be quick too, if we needed vital information.

Luckily for Vraax, we had a few days before he would have to be in top shape to abduct his minder and whoever was unlucky enough to be in the same vicinity. I wasn't about to play with Vraax's mind after we had the captives onboard. I had a rudimentary idea of how to fly this ship, but no clue when it came to programming a course at hyperspeed.

I entered the breakroom and picked some of the mush from the nutrition machine, shoveling it down my throat without analyzing what it tasted like while I waited for Vraax, going over my book of tricks on how to dive into his brain.

I had also snatched his comm, which was very similar to the one the Pandraxians had given me—the one I lost at the space station—a bit more advanced, but I figured most of it out. I wasn't a tech guru, but I knew enough to find my way around it and use apps to my advantage. I wasn't sure what the aliens called apps, but their interfaces made them easy to create. It was incredibly simple—all I had to do was say what I wanted, and within seconds—or should I say ticks as they called them here—the app I needed appeared. Adjusting to their use of ticks took some getting used to, especially since, in the Corps, we used the term for kilometers.

My mating marks were just beginning to burn when I heard Vraax's footsteps down the hall. I supposed these damn things had decided to add time apart to the distance thing. They were so annoying. I wished I could have just cut them out, but right then, they would come in handy, or at least I hoped they would.

"Hey," I called when Vraax entered, throwing him my deepest smile, instantly changing his expression to suspicion.

"Don't be a killjoy, sit. I even ordered you food and the juice you like." That seemed to make him even more suspicious. Carefully, he inspected the chair before he pulled it out.

"I did not saw off a leg or poison your food." I grinned at him. "Despite you deserving it after sneaking in bed with me."

"You noticed, eh?"

"Hard not to notice an almost seven-foot-tall alien in my bed," I scoffed, but kept my smile plastered on my face. His lips twitched and damn, he looked so freaking handsome. Those little dimples by his cheeks? Yeah they could easily make a girl's knees go weak.

"What are you up to?" He sat down, grabbing his spork and digging in.

"I figured we skip the physical training for a few hours and concentrate on mental training. We need to get to the bottom of your repressed memories." I declared without fanfare. That was the nice thing about Vraax. I didn't need to pussyfoot around his feelings .

"I'm listening." How he could stuff this food into his mouth so vigorously was beyond me, but kudos to his bravery.

"Alright, as soon as you're done eating, I'll give you some words, and you're going to…" I slid one of the cube screens I had pulled up over to him.

"Hey, is that my comm?"

"Sure is. Now focus." I showed him a simple pain scale from one to ten with alien smiley faces that somehow resembled him. Alright, they were silver… oops. "When I say certain words, I want you to note the level of pain. Here, one equals none, ten head exploding, got it? Good. You just have to select it like this, okay?"

"They don't look like me," he scoffed.

"Sorry, it was the best I could come up with on such short notice. Deal with it."

"I'd rather have your face on it." He complained.

"And I'd rather be flying through space with Henry Cavill, but we don't get what we want, do we?" That was a lie, because, sorry Henry, Vraax was even hotter than The Witcher —as hard as that might be to believe. "Are you ready?"

He nodded, his hand hovered playfully over the scale, moving right and left and left and right, daring me with his eyes. My first impulse was to take the dare and throw him off balance, but thankfully, my professionalism set in, and I reminded myself that this wasn't a game.

"Let's start something easy. Your name is Vraax."

He rolled his eyes and selected the zero.

"Nock?"

Zero again.

"Zaarek."

Zero.

I moved through the list of names I made from aboard the other ship, with the results all being zero, until, "Tharaax."

He hesitated. Three. Interesting.

"Ohrur."

"Just pain level, not anger, right?" He confirmed.

"Just pain." I nodded, imagining his heartbeat rising.

"Space Guardian."

Zero.

"Darlam."

His face twitched. Three.

"Mating marks."

Zero.

"Soulweb Glyphs."

Four.

We went on like this for a few minutes while I gradually moved down the list of words I had prepared. The longer we continued, the less often he chose the zero.

"Alright," I finished. "Let's take a break."

"That's it?"

"For now." I didn't want to push him too hard, too fast. I knew some of the trigger words for him now, and that would help. Besides, I could tell he was beginning to get bored, despite the jolts of headaches he must have received, according to his pain scale.

"Oh, one more," I pretended like I had forgotten.

"What?"

"Dreams."

For a moment, he stared at me as if I'd lost my mind, but then his face contorted, and he grabbed his head.

"Ten it is," I mumbled, about to select it.

"Nine," he groaned. Probably just to be contradictory, but I gave it to him.

"Come on, show me how that little robot of yours works." I tempted him, curious to see that machine in action.

"Are you afraid to lose to me again?" He challenged.

"Last I checked, it was a draw, and no. But I bet the machine is not going to take it easy on me, not like you."

"You noticed?"

We were walking down the hallway now, him a step behind me. I looked over my shoulder. "Since you're the only one with bruises, I think it was pretty obvious."

We entered the training room, where he moved straight to the robot.

"Don't even think about setting it on easy," I warned.

"Wouldn't dream about it," he winked at me and damn. I hated it when he did that. It was hard to admit, but his charms were getting to me, more than I liked to acknowledge.

"What do you want it to look like?" He asked.

"Pardon me?" I didn't fully get his meaning.

He moved through some settings on his comm, and the robot changed shapes in front of me. He turned into a large Pandraxian, some alien creature that had to come straight out of a nightmare, an Ohrur, and so on. It was quite amazing.

"Space Guardian, since that's who we're going to be fighting, right?" I was still staring at the ever-changing machine.

He turned it into a faceless Space Guardian. "You could just fight me," he grumbled.

"Like I said, I don't need any more pussyfooting from you." I took on a defensive stance.

"Pussy… what?" he threw his head back in laughter, it boomed through the room and took me off balance enough that I didn't realize he had activated the robot, and it was coming for me until I felt a very real hand on my arm. Instinct set in. Instinct and muscle memory. This was one of my most trained moves—a man trying to pull me by the arm.

I ducked under it, moved around, and forced its hand behind its back. It wasn't as easy as it had been with some other men I had sparred with or even actually fought with, and I applied more pressure until I heard a snap, and the robot went down.

"Damn, you dislocated its shoulder," Vraax sounded impressed.

"That doesn't mean it should go down," I scolded, having experienced men still fighting even with a dislocated shoulder.

"Fine," Vraax rolled his eyes, "instant healing. Are you happy now?"

Another pop announced that the robot had put its shoulder back in place, and he got up more speedily than I expected. I kicked it in the chin, and it kept coming.

"You get what you asked for." Vraax grinned and leaned back against the wall to watch me, and the robot have it out for about twenty minutes. I wasn't about to admit defeat. Never. But with that thing set to not feeling pain, it was giving me the workout of a lifetime. I had only encountered one man before who did that. He must have weighed two fifty plus pounds, had been almost six foot, and was so strung out on speed or whatever drugs he had taken that he didn't feel any pain, just like the robot. I had to finally choke him out before he went down, giving me a bruised rib and dislocating my jaw in the process. That seemed like a walk in the park now, compared to this machine, and I was loving every minute of it.

Finally, though, I was forced to order, "Enough."

I was out of breath, sweaty beyond belief, and in total love with the robot.

"That is some machine." I took the towel and water Vraax handed me and wiped my face and neck before I took a long drink.

"That was quite impressive." Vraax praised.

I'd never fished for compliments, but I couldn't help myself. "Oh yeah?"

He nodded, his hand reached forward, and I held my breath as he moved some hair that was plastered to my cheek behind my ear. "Yeah."

I couldn't help it, but a warm feeling rose in my chest. I liked his praise. I liked impressing him. Fuck, I was starting to like him . He was making it harder by the day to keep a clear head about our mission and not have the line blurred by deepening emotions. Shit, Tuck and I never had that problem, why was it so hard with Vraax?

I lowered my head so he couldn't read the emotions running through my mind and, shit! The bulge between his legs was a clear attestant to how much he must have liked my little performance. I grinned, liking the effect I had on him.

"Your turn." I looked up, meeting his eyes, and swallowed. Because I knew he knew. He had either sensed or seen where my gaze had wandered.

The swagger in his gait as he walked to the robot was telling how much he liked me watching him. The game we were playing was becoming more dangerous, not in a life-and-death kind of way, but in a heart-be-still kind of way—which in my world was close to life and death.

I took the same position he had before, leaning against a wall—although my legs would have been truly grateful if I would have sat them down—crossing my arms over my chest and watching Vraax activate the robot.

Now and then, I drank some more, really liking the way the water tasted here. Or vepo as the Pandraxians called it. Water enhanced with nutrients. It was fresh, filling, and went down my throat like velvet.

I had watched many men train, but as I watched Vraax my empathy for his hard cock earlier grew, because… my panties were getting soaked. I mean, yes, I had gotten turned on by watching men train, who wouldn't? Every single one had been in excellent physical shape, but nobody compared to Vraax. It wasn't just the play of his enormous muscles—of course he had taken his shirt off again—or the silvery skin; it was in the way he moved. Every single step seemed synchronized, and his speed was as amazing as his technique. While I watched him fight with the machine, I realized how much he had held back yesterday. If he had truly tried, he could have had me on my back within seconds. Hell, he could have killed me with one jab. I also realized that the robot was going a lot harder against him than it had against me. Astonishingly, I wasn't mad at Vraax for not having done what I told him to do. If the other Space Guardians fought like him, I seriously needed to up my training.

I became alert when Vraax went down and the robot jumped on his back, putting him into a chokehold. I was about to give him five seconds before I intervened, having no idea if this machine could be set to kill or not. I knew the ones on the Pandraxian ships couldn't, but this one was a bit more high-tech.

Ash told me that when she and Xandros first met, she thought he was fighting some alien species when she first saw one of the fighting bots. It had been funny listening to her describing how she jumped in, thinking she was about to save his life, while he was annoyed that she interrupted his sparring time. Knowing Xandros, I could only imagine his annoyance. They said the Emperor had a bad temper, but Xandros was right up there with him.

A grunt from Vraax had me push myself off the wall, but before I could interfere, Vraax moved up like he was doing a pushup with the bot on his back. More agile than should have been possible with all that weight bearing down on him, he got to his feet and slammed his back and the machine hard into the wall.

Nice move. I doubted I would be able to do a pushup with that thing attached to my back while choking me, but it was something I needed to learn. Vraax would just have to suck it up. I leaned back against the wall, fully intending to enjoy the rest of the show while realizing that crossing my arms was now a necessary evil because my nipples were all puckered. The problem was by crossing my arms, I was applying friction to the little suckers and they enjoyed that way too much.

I knew I was in deep trouble. The question of if I would have sex with Vraax had just turned into when.