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  “You’re trying to seduce me into seeing things your way,” he said, but it came out huskier than he intended.

  Her hand trailed down until it rested on his thickening cock. “I know, is it working?” He could feel her grin against his skin and knew that he was hopeless to hold out against her.

  But they weren’t done talking, and he hadn’t surrendered all of his faculties yet. “You can’t just put yourself in more danger every time someone asks.” The last word came out a gasp as she cupped her fingers around him and stroked him through his pants. He arched up into her touch and his hands gripped the sides of his chair to keep from reaching out to her. “You’re devious.”

  Sierra tipped her face up towards him and grinned. “You’re mine.”

  “Always, denya.” He captured her mouth and devoured her, inhaling her now familiar taste, the taste of home.

  When she pulled away they were both breathing hard and Raze was certain that his eyes had gone red. Sierra eyed him, her expression grave. “I’m not pulling out of the mission. But you have my word that I won’t take any unnecessary risks. And I expect the same from you. We’re going to meet this threat together, and we’re going to deal with it. And once things settle down, we can tell everyone about the new life we’re bringing into this world and watch the chaos as they try to deal with that. Got it?”

  They could argue for the next three days, Raze knew it. And the outcome would be the same. His denya was determined to do her part, and she had the training and experience to know her limits. He feared for her and the child she carried, but the only thing he could possibly do that might keep her from the field was explain the situation to her father, and he would not do that to her. So Raze let the argument go and surrendered to her kiss.

  And when Sierra engaged the privacy shields on the window, he surrendered to so much more.

  Chapter Six

  Peyton: They’re going to kill me. I’m not built for this!

  DF: What? You don’t seem like a quitter.

  Peyton: New project at work. I think I angered someone in a past life.

  DF: Past life?

  Peyton: Figure of speech. Not a thing where you’re from?

  DF: We have figures of speech.

  Peyton: :) I meant past lives as a concept.

  DF: Not among my people.

  Peyton: I’m being called away. I’ll try and message later, but this project may end up taking more than a week. So if I go silent, start praying for me.

  DF: Best of luck!

  Peyton looked down at the chat log and wondered if she should start up the conversation from a few hours ago again. She’d finally snuck away from the training that the Detyen team had inflicted on her, mostly from Kayde and Sierra. Dryce hadn’t shown up yet, but they’d told her that he had other duties that morning and he’d be there in the afternoon to take over. They needed to learn to work together before they set out.

  Wonderful.

  She was pretty sure if she sent an SOS to DF he would come rescue her, but she wasn’t cowardly enough to do so. Or brave enough. She still didn’t know his name, and she hadn’t asked him to send a picture. Neither of them had discussed meeting in several days and she was both pleased and disappointed by that. It was fun to have someone she could talk to without worrying that they’d judge her. But the more she talked to DF, the more she wanted to talk to him. He’d send her funny thoughts in the middle of the night or share stories of his homeland. She especially loved the anecdote he’d told her about his brother hiding all of his shoes in the snow on his first day of training which made him late and barefoot. He’d gotten his brother back by placing his warmest jackets in the deep freezer until they were solid.

  The tricks had seemed mean to her, but to him they’d just been a part of life.

  She stuffed her communicator back into her bag rather than send a message. She needed to keep away from DF until the mission was done. He sucked up too much of her focus and it was better to get used to not talking to him now than to be missing him a lot once they were out in the field.

  And when she was back she’d ask him if they could meet. Her hand was still holding her communicator and she pulled it back out. If she waited until the mission was done, she was going to chicken out. But now that she was thinking about it, she could do it and be done. Peyton took a deep breath and pulled up the chat log again.

  Peyton: This is for real my last message for a while. But when I get back, how about we get that drink?

  The sound of a message notification almost made her jump, as if she was hearing DF receive the message. But when she turned around after turning her comm off and stashing it in her bag for good, she saw that it was only Dryce reading his own communicator, a wolfish smile on his face. He looked up and that grin grew even more predatory.

  Peyton shivered and stood. She didn’t want to be on her knees around that man. Who knew what ideas would climb into her mind and take over.

  “What has you looking so happy?” Sierra asked, reminding Peyton that she and Dryce weren’t the only people in the room. Funny how that happened. Once she set eyes on the captivating Detyen it was like everyone else melted away.

  She needed to get a hold of herself.

  Dryce tapped out a response and glanced up at her before shifting his gaze to Sierra. He looked... bashful. That couldn’t be right. But he stuffed his own communicator into his bag and whatever she thought she’d seen was gone, replaced by the grin she already wanted to run from. “Just setting up a date,” Dryce said.

  Sierra and Kayde both looked at him with narrowed eyes, and for some reason Sierra glanced at Peyton for half a second, as if she had anything to do with this conversation.

  “Raze said—”

  He cut Sierra off. “We don’t have much time to get our training done.”

  Sierra bristled and even Kayde didn’t look pleased by that response. What did they expect? Dryce was clearly a dick who cared more about setting up a date with some random person than talking to his sister-in-law or the rest of the team. At least Peyton had turned her comm off after trying to set up her own date.

  That she and Dryce were doing the same thing before a mission was not something she wanted to think about.

  “We’ve covered some basic evasion techniques this morning,” Kayde reported. “But we decided to wait until this afternoon to do any grappling. Sierra and I both have to report to Sandon, but Toran should be here shortly. Why don’t you start working on something before then?”

  Dryce nodded, all traces of his earlier grin gone. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was a serious soldier treating this mission with as much care as it needed to be treated. Maybe she could believe that if she wasn’t sure that his mind was on whatever piece of ass he was meeting afterward. “We’ll start on breaking out of holds,” Dryce decided and they bid Kayde and Sierra farewell.

  That left Dryce and Peyton alone for the first time, and though Kayde and Sierra had left, the small training room they were in suddenly felt all the smaller. They’d chosen the room so the warriors wouldn’t gawk at her or wonder why a human was training with elite Detyen Warriors during such a critical time, but now Peyton wished they were out in the main room. She might not have liked Dryce, but her body hadn’t gotten that message, and she feared that when he touched her she was going to burn up from the inside.

  “Who’s the date?” she forced herself to ask. She didn’t for a second want to forget who Dryce truly was.

  And if she’d expected him to take offense to that or shut her down, she was surprised by the happy grin that nearly split his face in two. “Someone special.”

  “I’ve heard that you only do special for the night.” This kind of venom wasn’t like her, but normally her brain was firmly in control. If she couldn’t stop her body from wanting Dryce, she seemed determined to make sure he didn’t want her. It was like she was possessed, and she didn’t know how to stop. It might have been the stress of the mission weighing down on he
r, but a part of Peyton was horrified by how she was speaking. She prided herself on her control. And two minutes with Dryce and it all went out the window.

  Metaphorically. The room they were in had no windows, only dour cinder block walls.

  “You don’t think a man can change?” he asked, sounding truly curious, as if her acerbic response had been nothing but pleasant.

  Peyton forced herself to take a deep breath before she responded, and was glad that the not so nice smell of the gym and training room around them was strong enough to overpower whatever natural scent Dryce gave off. She would go crazy if he smelled as good as he looked. “Sure,” she conceded. “People can change if the reason’s good enough. But staying changed is usually harder than the big change in the first place.”

  Her father had been like that. Her mother had told them the story a hundred times about how he’d been a pilot who flew to the far flung reaches of the galaxy and he’d given it all up at the age of thirty to settle down with her and have children. Except once Ella was born he got itchy feet, and first those feet took him to another woman’s bed, and then back into space. When news came of his ship’s destruction, her mother had cried for days. In the end her father hadn’t been able to stay true to one woman or planet. Why should she expect it of anyone else?

  Dryce peered at her as if he could see all of those thoughts racing through her head. It was eerie and a little terrifying the way he seemed to be able to look through her. She wasn’t someone who needed to be seen; she did her job perfectly well ensconced in the bowels of her SDA lab, so falling under the attention of the biggest flirt in the entire Detyen Legion was something she wasn’t sure she knew how to handle.

  “Some changes are worth maintaining,” Dryce insisted. “And sometimes they happen because of growth. Maturity. Fa—” he cut himself off and Peyton wasn’t sure what he’d meant to say.

  “Does it matter what I think?” she asked. “We’re here to do a job, not become best friends.” If she drew that line now, maybe she’d find a way to maintain it. She wasn’t going to become his friend, and she really shouldn’t become his lover.

  “You’re the one who can save us all. Of course it matters what you think.”

  “Let’s just get this training over with. I need to check in with my team before dinner and I don’t want to keep them waiting.” She’d left her people to further study the detonator and map they’d discovered in hopes that with the three days of training she was being forced to endure they would find more information for the mission. Every day she was supposed to check in and see where they were, see if she had any other ideas to offer them. And she knew that she was going to be so exhausted by the end of the day that she wouldn’t be much help. But a promise was a promise.

  Dryce seemed ready to say something; instead he just nodded. “What sort of hand to hand combat training have you had?”

  That startled a laugh out of her. “I’m a doctor, not a warrior.” They shared a friendly smile and Peyton’s stomach flipped. God, Dryce was handsome, a handsome bordering on beautiful that made her afraid to get too close. How could someone built like him be real? And how could he be the one she’d been partnered with to save the world?

  This was all one messed up dream that she couldn’t make sense of, but finding a way to make unfamiliar pieces fit was Peyton’s job, and she was going to do that here just as well as she did it back in her lab.

  “So not much?” Dryce clarified.

  “Sierra and Kayde were the first people to teach me anything beyond how to make a proper fist.” She’d stared down some asshole college boys before and she was always willing to fight to protect her sister, but her skills had never needed to match her determination. Until now.

  “I’m sure your sister is happy you couldn’t do anything more than that,” Dryce said as he settled into some kind of stretch.

  “How did you know I have a sister?”

  FUCK. He couldn’t say that the conversation between them had been going well, but it had been going, and Dryce wanted to savor the minutes he had alone in Peyton’s company before they’d be thrown into danger. And now he had to go and mess things up with a few careless words.

  “I thought you said something about a sister?” He floundered, trying to recover the conversation. “Perhaps it was in your file.”

  “You’ve read my personnel file?” Peyton crossed her arms and her jaw was set; she looked to be about a minute away from punching him. At least she knew how to make a fist. He wouldn’t want her to hurt her hand any more than his skull was likely to damage it.

  “A short bio, so I had knowledge of your background. For the mission.” That was all true, and if Dryce dug into his mind, he was sure there was a mention of a sibling. He had to be careful if he didn’t want to give things up. He’d charmed her enough over their messages that she wanted to meet him in person. Now he just had to be agreeable enough on the mission so that when they met afterward she wouldn’t immediately go running off.

  It had seemed a lot more likely before they started to talk.

  Peyton’s ire subsided and she nodded. “Of course. They gave me information about your team as well. Shall we get to work?”

  It was torture. Payback for every wrong he’d ever done, every lie he’d ever told and all the sweets he’d stolen when he was a little kid. As Kayde had suggested, Dryce taught Peyton how to get out of a few simple holds, and those holds meant they had to get up close and personal. He could smell the shampoo she used in her hair and the floral scent of her skin. It was so soft against his calloused hands that he wanted to stroke and see what response he could elicit, but he forced himself to remain completely professional.

  She was his mate, but she didn’t know that yet, and it wasn’t yet the time to tell her.

  They’d gone over a simple wrist hold so many times that a faint bruise was starting to bloom on Peyton’s skin. It was to be expected, bruises happened in training all the time, especially when working on a specific move like they were. But seeing the faintly darkened skin turned Dryce’s stomach and he quickly shifted them to something else. He would never lay his hands on his denya in anger, would never do her harm, but if he didn’t teach her these things now, she would be going into a dangerous situation without the tools necessary to survive it. So Dryce tamped down on all of his sharp protective instincts and funneled them into teaching his mate what she would need to know.

  About an hour into their training Toran showed up.

  “Talk some sense into him,” Peyton said, crossing her arms, a funny look on her face.

  “What?” Dryce asked. They’d been working well together for an hour, so what kind of sense was she talking about?

  Toran looked between them and seemed to be trying to hide a smirk when he noticed Dryce step closer to Peyton. Dryce hadn’t even realized he was doing it, and when he tried to step back and give her space he couldn’t. Toran was a good friend, and a mated man. But Dryce didn’t like how closely he was standing to Peyton. Peyton was his, and while the urge to claim her roiled through him the thought of letting another man close to her drove the darkest savage instincts inside of him.

  “My mother could get out of his holds and she’s been dead for years.” Peyton crossed her arms and spoke to Toran as if Dryce were not in the room.

  That wasn’t true, he’d held her hard enough to bruise. “I’m teaching you the technique,” Dryce insisted. What was the point of holding her hard enough to hurt if she didn’t understand what she was doing?

  Peyton closed her eyes and took two deep breaths before turning towards him. “And I understand the technique,” she said with precise calm. “If I don’t do it for real, I’ll never learn it.”

  “You’re already bruised.” He pointed to her wrist. He wanted to stroke that delicate skin and kiss it until it was better, but she was already angry at him and she didn’t like him in the first place. He had never realized how torturous it could be to be around his denya.

  Peyton sh
rugged. “Yeah, I bruise easily. No big deal. Come on.” She flicked her fingers, motioning him towards her as if this were the beginning of the sparring match. One she could not win, and he refused to fight.

  Dryce looked over at Toran as if the older man could save him, but Toran’s eyes were lit with humor. He knew exactly the turmoil that was going on inside of Dryce, but for some reason he had no sympathy.

  “If you don’t want to do it, ask your friend.” Peyton was insistent, begging to be hurt, and Dryce didn’t trust Toran to touch his mate. He didn’t want anyone doing that besides himself.

  “No!” Both Toran and Peyton stared at him expectantly and Dryce knew they wouldn’t accept that simple denial. “We’re going to be partners,” he reasoned. “I’ll do it.”

  “Fine,” his Denya said piercingly, “then do it.”

  He hadn’t meant to go easy on her, despite whatever she thought. Dryce understood that they were going into dangerous territory, that they could meet deadly foes at any moment, and while he would lay his life down to prevent his mate from coming to any harm, he knew he had to give her the tools necessary to be able to save herself. He didn’t know how Raze did it. But Sierra had already been a warrior when they met. Peyton belonged in her lab, and in Dryce’s bed, not anywhere where blaster fire could burn her skin and cut her down.

  He got a hold around her shoulders and took barely a second to savor the contact between them. In other circumstances he could stand like this for hours, but his mate didn’t like him and they had a job to do. He was sure to grab tighter than he had earlier and when Peyton worked to get out of his embrace, he clutched even harder, making her struggle for it. But with the stamp on his foot and a twisted his arm she got out of the hold and he gave her a big smile of congratulations.