Audience with the Warlord
The heat from his bare, violet chest radiated through the barrel of my plasma revolver and into my hands.
My finger curled around the trigger, a hair's breadth from the pressure point.
I stared into his amber eyes, searching for a flicker—for fear, for the instinctive panic every living creature shows when death comes knocking.
There was nothing.
Only that all-consuming calm. A warlord who accepted a loaded weapon pressed to his heart like it was nothing more than a warm breeze.
My analytical mind rattled through the variables.
If I pulled the trigger, the hot plasma would tear his chest open.
He would die. But the sound would alert the guards.
The surly General in the forecourt would tear me to pieces.
And Jules? Jules would rot in the black jungle because no one would be there to get her out.
A dead commander got me nothing. I needed his resources.
I eased off the trigger but didn't let the weapon drop a millimeter. I took half a step back to break the crushing physical proximity. The air between us cooled slightly, but the musky, heavy scent of dominance and ozone still clung to my nostrils.
“Listen,” I barked. My voice cut through the room, sharp and authoritative.
I fell into the rhythm that had kept me alive on my home world: give orders.
Show no weakness. Seize control. “I need full access to the main radio equipment in your command center.
My ship crashed. Sector four, northwestern coordinates from the crater's edge. There's a survivor in the jungle.”
He didn't move. He just stood there, arms hanging loose at his sides. His face was an expressionless, bored mask.
“You're going to mobilize three search teams immediately,” I continued, chin raised, tone condescending.
“Heavily armed. No recruits. I need men who know how to read tracks and won't panic at the first growl of a predator.
They'll track the signal from an encrypted beacon.
I'll enter the frequency into your system.”
My gaze slid down him for a fraction of a second. He wore no weapons. No visible armor that would stop a second shot if he tried anything. He was a primitive wall of muscle who thought his mere presence would be enough to intimidate me.
I ignored the queasy feeling in my stomach and wrapped arrogance around me like armor. “We're wasting time. If my partner dies, I'll burn this room to the ground. So move your ass to that console and give me the clearance codes.”
He didn't answer. His jaw clenched once.
But then I saw it.
His face showed pure boredom, but behind him, just above the polished obsidian floor, something moved.
His tail. Earlier it had lain lazily at the foot of the throne.
Now it hovered in the air. The thick, muscular strands beneath the fine scales tensed and relaxed in a hypnotic rhythm.
The tip, armored and slightly curved, didn't lash wildly.
It traced slow figure-eights through the air.
A predator calculating the perfect angle for the strike. His body was lying to me. He wasn't bored. He was fascinated.
“Did you understand me?” I snapped, louder this time. I clenched my teeth. “I'm not discussing this with you. You saw what I did to your outer security. Your systems are a joke. If you don't give me the codes willingly, I'll shut down your entire mining operation before you can blink.”
A rough rumble vibrated in his chest. A real laugh. It sounded like stones grinding in a mill.
“You bark awfully loud for a creature with one foot in the grave,” he rumbled.
“I'm not barking. I'm giving orders.” I raised the weapon back to eye level, aimed precisely between his horns. “And now—”
The strike didn't come from his shoulders. It came from my blind spot.
A violet flash cut through my field of vision. It happened so obscenely fast my brain didn't register the sequence of movement. No time to blink. No time to squeeze the trigger.
A dull impact on my right forearm. Heat. Boiling hot, dry heat, far above human body temperature, seared through the leather of my jacket.
His tail.
The muscular appendage had wrapped around my wrist like a steel whip. The grip was absolutely merciless. Not skin, not normal muscle. It felt like a hydraulic press had closed around my bones.
I let out a strangled gasp and tried to wrench the weapon free, but the tip of the tail bored into the soft inside of my wrist with surgical precision. Hard, armored tissue pressed directly on the radial nerve.
An electrifying pain shot up my arm and into my shoulder. My fingers opened against my will. The reflex was unstoppable. My nervous system capitulated to the raw, biological superiority of this alien.
The heavy plasma revolver slipped from my numb fingers. The metal clattered against the polished obsidian floor and skittered out of reach.
I stared at my hand. The violet tail encircled my wrist in two thick, scaly rings. The heat seared into my pores. Every micro-movement, every twitch of the muscle strands beneath the scales, transferred directly to my skin. This wasn't primitive restraint. This was absolute, dominant fixation.
A hard jerk rippled through the scaly coils.
I lost my balance. The pull was so strong I had to stumble forward to keep from falling to my knees. The distance between us shrank to zero.
My free left hand slapped reflexively against his hard, bare chest to catch myself. His skin was smooth, leathery, and scorching hot. Under my fingers, I felt the slow, powerful beating of his heart.
He hadn't moved a millimeter. His hands still hung completely relaxed at his sides. He had disarmed me, overwhelmed me, and physically bound me to him—all with nothing but his tail.
My breath came shallow and fast. The brutal reality of my physical inferiority hit me square in the face. My tactics, my arrogance, my hacking skills—in this moment, all of it was worthless against the sheer anatomical dominance of this warlord.
I jerked my head back. His face was only inches from mine. Those amber eyes glowed in the pale light of the holograms. The scent of ash and his alien heat wrapped around me completely.
The panic in my chest screamed at me to lash out, to kick, to claw back control. The memory of ice-cold shackles flashed through my mind.
No.
I clenched my teeth until my jaw cracked, forcing the rising fear down hard. If he thought I'd whimper or beg now, he'd picked the wrong woman. I yanked at my bound arm, planted my boots on the floor, and channeled every ounce of my rage.
His tail didn't budge. The grip only tightened, pressing heavy and hot against my pulse point.
Slowly, he finally raised one of his hands. The sharp black claws brushed across my cheek. A fleeting, almost casual touch that sent goosebumps racing down my neck. His thumb settled on my jaw and forced my head even further back.
“You storm my command center and make demands,” he whispered. His voice was dark, rough, scraping directly against my nerve endings. “But you forgot to introduce yourself.”
“My identity is irrelevant,” I hissed, though my breath came in shallow, uncontrollable gasps. “I'm the factor that cripples your networks if you don't cooperate.”
A dark, amused smile tugged at his lips. His fangs flashed white against the deep violet skin. The tail around my wrist contracted. A hard jerk pulled my arm relentlessly behind my back. My chest crashed even tighter against his rock-hard muscles. The air hissed out of my lungs.
“I don't want to hear abstract variables, human,” he growled against my lips. The thumb on my jaw pressed down, pinning my skull with absolute mercilessness. “I want the name of the female who just walked herself into my trap. Name.”
My pulse hammered against my throat. The pressure on my back and jaw left me no room for evasion. The strategic arrogance in my head capitulated for a heartbeat to the raw, physical presence of this demon.
“Jinx,” I forced out through clenched teeth.
The smile on his lips deepened. Those amber eyes lit up.
“Jinx,” he repeated.
The name rolled deep, heavy, and utterly possessive over his tongue. It didn't sound like confirmation of an introduction. It sounded like a brand.
“A fitting name for a loud little pest that thinks it can outsmart gravity.” The tail tip slid over my bound hand, rubbing slow and sensitive over the inside of my wrist—a stark contrast to the hard grip of his thumb on my face.
“You don't command anything here anymore, Jinx. You're part of my inventory now.”
I practically spat in his face. “I belong to no one. There's no chain—only math. If you let my friend die, I'll burn your servers to the ground before you roar your first command.”
His smile didn't fade—it became a dark, calculating mask. He leaned slightly forward.
“Search parties,” he whispered. His rough voice scraped like coarse sandpaper over my nerves. “Release codes. Commands. You marched into my fortress, sabotaged my door, and tricked my guard. For that, you get my respect. But you seem to have forgotten who holds the chain in this room.”
I practically spat in his face. “There's no chain. Only math. If you let my friend die, you lose your network. I'll burn your servers to the ground before you roar your first command.”
My attempt to wrench my arm free was pathetic. The muscle strands of the tail encircling my wrist didn't even twitch. Instead, the dynamic changed. The smooth, whip-like movement gave way to calculated, raw force.
The tail contracted. A hard, unstoppable jerk pulled my right arm down and twisted it behind my back.
I gasped as my body jerked forward involuntarily. My chest slammed hard against his bare abs. The force robbed me of breath. The heat of his violet skin burned through my shirt, searing and damp. I had to crane my head way back to avoid staring at his collarbone.
He hadn't even used his hands. They still rested at his sides. All that physical dominance came from this weapon of an appendage that now pressed me against him like a vise.