“I’m sure he can, my dear.” Torella patted her arm comfortingly. “But not tonight—you’re all worn out. Have a good night’s sleep and we’ll resume this in the morning.”
“All…all right.” Vicky felt too dazed to disagree. “I guess so. Um, where can we sleep?”
“I saw a sleeping pod that seemed built for two as we entered this domicile, here on the first floor,” Chain said. He looked at Torella. “Unless that one is reserved for Your Ladyship?”
“Oh, no.” She giggled. “My bed is built for three. Though I don’t think we’ll be getting much sleep tonight—not after the performance you two put on. It was most stirring!”
She cast a naughty look at her two students, who were waiting for her with their hands clasped behind their backs. Both were naked and both were hard, Vicky noted. Apparently they were as eager to serve Torella as Chain had been to serve her.
“Well…” Vicky began and then yawned widely before she could stop herself. “Oh forgive me—I’m so tired all of the sudden.”
Though of course, why wouldn’t she be, she thought? She been going since Valentine’s night. She’d met Chain at the bar, gotten attacked at her house, subsequently rescued, and then taken to the Mother Ship. From there she had accepted the mission to Priima Belle, where she and Chain had gone at once. Then she had been forced to give an impromptu lecture on Tex-Mex food and had been taken to Professor Torella’s house where she gave an even more impromptu sex show. During which Chain had given her the most intense orgasm of her entire life and then she’d cried herself out, giving in to emotion in a way she hadn’t done since she was a little girl.
All in all, it had been an extremely full night.
She yawned again.
“Come, my Lady—let’s get you to bed,” Chain remarked, kissing her tenderly on the forehead. “Things will be better in the morning.”
“Thank you, Chain.” With a sigh of contentment, she nestled against his broad chest and let his spicy scent fill her senses. She was barely aware of Torella and Lorn discussing their own sleeping arrangements—apparently the “sleeping stations” as the moveable beds were called, had to be found since the furniture was rearranged every night and nobody knew where anything was. Lornah complained bitterly about this but Torella just laughed her off, making a honking sound through her beaky nose.
But before Vicky could hear the end of this argument, her eyelids closed and she felt herself drifting off to sleep, still held in Chain’s muscular arms.
Chapter Thirty-one
Chain carried her tenderly through the large, disarranged domicile until he found the soft, pillowy silver mattress he’d seen on their way in. Torella and Lornah and their students had already retired to different parts of the huge house—arguing as they went—and the lights everywhere were beginning to dim.
Must be on a timer, Chain thought. They probably go off and on the same time every day and night.
Though he couldn’t imagine this house needed much artificial light during the daytime—not with the vast banks of windows that covered every wall.
He started to put Victoria down on the silver mattress and go do some more scouting, but she made a murmured protest in her sleep and clung to him. Chain felt his heart squeeze like a fist at her unconscious gesture.
“Beautiful Victoria,” he murmured, a tender smile curving the corners of his mouth.
Instead of putting her down and leaving her, he crawled into bed with her and pillowed her head on his chest. It was better that way than leaving her in the bed alone, he reasoned. She would feel safe and warm, even sleeping on an alien world, if he stayed beside her.
Victoria murmured again and turned towards him, cuddling against his side with a contented sigh like a sleepy kitten. Feeling like his heart might burst, Chain stroked a strand of dark and silver hair out of her eyes and looked at her sleeping face.
She was lovely in repose, so soft and trusting—so completely relaxed against him. They fit together as neatly as two pieces of a puzzle, he couldn’t help thinking. Like they had been made for each other.
Well, you’ll be fitting together a lot more closely if you go through with the “final exam” they have planned for you and Victoria tomorrow,” whispered a little voice in his head.
Chain reflected that it was true. Though he had never imagined that he, as a reviled M-Switch Kindred, could ever have a mate, by tomorrow he might be bonding his bride to him.
Of course, different branches of the Kindred bonded females to them in different ways. But for the M-Switch, all that was necessary was for the male to truly love and desire the woman he was making love with—to feel in his bones that she was his fated mate as he came deep inside her. That was enough to form the life-long soul bond which developed between a Kindred warrior and his female when they came together as one.
Which meant that if he made love with Victoria tomorrow to display the “technique” she had supposedly taught him, he would wind up bonding her to him for life.
But how will she feel about that? he wondered, looking down at her sleeping face. Will she want me for a mate? Will she want to spend her life as the bride of an M-Switch Kindred?
Would any woman want that? All his life, experience had taught him the answer to that question was a resounding no. And he had learned that lesson early—the lesson that he was different, wrong—not to be trusted, at least, not in the long run.
He had gone to a
