“These hands,” he murmured, still rubbing her fingers over his cheek, across his open mouth.
Was it her imagination, or had his horns stiffened and changed their angle—leaning toward her?
“These hands will learn to serve.”
Enraged, she tried to pull them away, but while his grip wasn’t harsh, his strength made it impossible. The next time he dragged her fingers across his mouth, he bit down—not hard—more sensually. Her eyes flew wide, heart stilled as she froze, staring up at him.
Shock danced over his features, as if he hadn’t meant to nip her. His blue-violet eyes locked on hers, and time stopped. The room spun. Desire throbbed between her legs as insistently as her bottom burned.
And then Seke released her. Suddenly. Violently. He tossed her hands down so hard they bounced in her lap, and he stood, lifting one leg over her head. He moved away from her, toward the door, where he stopped and folded his arms over his massive chest, turning back.
“Stand. Disrobe. I am losing patience.” His tone was much colder now—so unlike his usual courtesy, it wounded. And yet it made it easier to obey. This was a nameless, faceless master. Not her Seke. Just one of the hundreds of masters she’d had in her lifetime as a slave.
She clenched her teeth as she stood and pulled off her white robes, slid out of her tangled underpants, then stood facing him, hands neatly folded behind her back. She didn’t lower her eyes, though. They both knew her submission wasn’t genuine.
Something flickered behind his eyes. Pain or regret. He looked sickened, yet nothing in his expression had changed. Somehow, she read it, though. Perhaps it was the hint of instinct she had—that fraction of the psychic ability her youngest daughter possessed in spades.
His throat worked to swallow. He scrubbed a hand over his face then cleared his throat. “You will obey me.”
She lifted her chest. “Yes, master.”
Chapte
r Two
Yes, master.
He hadn’t expected to enjoy hearing those words on her lips quite so much. The throb in his thickened cock from seeing her naked did not come as a surprise, however. He’d known she would be a terrible temptation.
She was even more beautiful than he’d imagined. Though her body was still too thin from her enslavement at the agrifarm, her breasts bounced, ripe and lush, the peach-tipped nipples standing alert. Her arms and legs were lean, muscled, and her hips flared below the slender waist. Her skin—like many humans’—was peachy pink in tone. Delicate and fresh. Her scent clung to his clothing. He wanted to snatch her up and breathe it in again, to touch the softness of her flesh.
He had enjoyed spanking her—stars, he had enjoyed it. He wouldn’t like giving the serious punishment he owed her for the prince’s displeasure, but punishing her over his lap with the flat of his hand had been a delight. The way her muscular buttocks flattened and sprang back under his hand, the way her tender skin blushed pink, the sounds she’d made. Yes, he enjoyed chastising her that way.
But he couldn’t take her. No matter how tempting this lovely human was, he would master his urges. A master at arms had self-discipline, if nothing else.
And so her training had to begin. He stepped to his workstation and settled in a hoverseat. “Kneel at my feet, Leora.”
She hesitated just long enough to register her protest but came before he issued any threat. Her knees cracked as she sank to the floor by his feet. He resisted the urge to bury his fingers in her coppery waves, to stroke the slender column of her neck. The reality of her belonging to him had begun to settle in, and with it, crept a heady sense of power, excitement at the possibilities.
No. He had to steel himself against the temptation she presented. He served the prince and his memory of Becka, not his cock aching for her lush lips to close around it....
Wrenching his attention back to business, he flicked open the first hologram blinking on his wrist cuff.
Lundric, his chief of security, sprang out of the cuff, his head hovering in the room.
“Master Seke.” He inclined his head to show respect.
“Report, Lundric.”
“I’ve arrived. Supplies and crafts have been delivered.”
Zander had sent Lundric to the uninhabitable planet Shooku where the Ocretion death pod carrying Leora’s daughter Lily had crash-landed. After rescuing Lily and two hundred other humans from their death sentence, Lily and her Zandian mate, Rok, had somehow convinced Zander to take responsibility for all the humans, training them to be the army he needed badly to take back Zandia.
The past planet rotation had been a nightmare of coordination—setting up full cloaking of the death pod and sending out false reports of its destruction via a meteor to throw off the Ocretions.
“Is everything in order there?” He half expected to hear Rok and Lily had disappeared again. After all, Rok may have been a Zandian, but he wasn’t aligned with them. He’d been raised on Stornig and had been a smuggler and rogue pilot for most of his life after escaping Zandia’s invasion.
“Yes, master. Many of the humans still appear in shock, but Rok and his mate have things under control.”