“Senator Franno.”
“Not so chummy.”
The feed flickered and faded at random. “Call me Franno, then. Everyone else does.”
“I heard you’re losing support.”
“Who told you that? Merona?”
Tor shrugged. “Why do you want peace?”
“The war helps no one but your government and a few of our politicians. It’ll bankrupt us in a matter of decades, and it does nothing to help our population crisis.”
Tor chewed on a nail. “Your son sucks, you know that, right?”
Franno laughed. “He’s not so bad. He just isn’t like us.”
“Us?”
Franno rolled his eyes. “We know how this really works.”
“That is?”
“Before the plague, it would have been yenna. But now… women.”
Tor thought about that. “That’s what this is about?”
Franno sucked in a long breath. “Argentus needs women. Vesta has lots of them.”
“Your soft-handed Argenti males couldn’t handle a Vestige woman.”
“Our warriors could.”
“I’ll never get the Primes to agree to it.”
Franno leaned closer in the holo, and the silvery feed brightened to blue-violet. “We could establish two or three courtship posts on Vesta to help secure the peace once the Alliance is subdued. Our men meet your women. A chance. That’s all.”
“Sounds like code for troops on Vestan ground.”
Franno nodded. “We could do the same in reverse. Set up a Vestigi base here on Argentus.”
“And what about Vestige who can’t find women of their own because we suddenly have an uneven ratio? Men without women tend to become ornery.”
“So we’ve discovered.” Franno lifted a shoulder. “You could always end the harems on Vesta.”
That gave Tor pause. The harems were a throw-back to an older time, and one he wasn’t sure they even needed anymore. The humani, like Jasto, had been increasingly fertile in the last century, and the felanas could, in theory, be serviced by a humani male as well as by a Prime. So why not an Argenti? “That may not go over well in the other countries.”
“I’m sure we can make something work.”
“What else?” It wouldn’t be an easy pitch. The harems were deeply rooted in Vestigi culture, in which Primes ruled, humani were free, and felanas were considered little more than breeding slaves.
“Bond with Merona’s daughter.”
“What?”
Franno’s eyes narrowed. “You heard me.”
A few days ago, Tor would have said nothing surprised him. But that did. “Klymeni?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Franno’s eyes hardened. “Her father represents the staunchest support for the war in the Argenti government. It will weaken his position if his own daughter is Bonded to the enemy. And it will help assure our politicians that you can be trusted, that your heart is in the right place.”
“She’d be my selissa?” He leaned forward. “You want an Argenti queen on the Tamminian throne?”
“We do.”
Tor folded his hands behind his back and played out a few scenarios. Taking Klym home, introducing her to his people, infuriating the Alliance, waking up beside her every morning, spreading her thighs and sliding deep inside, the murmur she made when he’d kissed her, her face when she’d kicked him, and the one she’d just made a few minutes ago that spoke to a loneliness so great it made his bones shiver.
The Alliance would want her. They already knew he had her, and they were probably already looking for her. She wouldn’t be safe alone on a peace planet. She wouldn’t be safe anywhere. If she went back to Argentus, her father would force her to accept Spiro.
He remembered her face when she’d said, I should have had a choice.
He’d felt the same about being regio.
Nothing is fair, and no one is free.
Selissa rites were ancient, as sacred as it got on Vesta. Not even the Alliance could touch her.
She’d be his selissa. She’d be safe. She’d be his.
“Done.”
13
Beans?
“SO, TOMORROW, you’ll drop me at Pax-Ahora?” Klym asked him, three days later. Tor leaned forward to get a look out the viewscreen and winced.
Gray sky, murky, sullen and relentless. A concrete lot spread from where his ship was parked to a ring of grim trees with wrinkled, grungy leaves.
He’d touched down on Frigorria, Jasto’s homeworld, a filthy, depressed mining planet. Everything was gray.
At least it wasn’t raining.
Judging by the puddles, though, it had recently.
He made a grunting sound that could pass for affirmation.
“Good. You’ll be free of me, then.” She made a huffing sound from her flight seat, where she was struggling with the harness.
In point of fact—they’d never be free of each other again—but gods knew what she’d do while on Frigorria if he told her that.
She pushed the central button on the five-point harness.
As she twisted, pushing harder on the button, her dress rode up a few more inches. Vaniiya. He didn’t even bother looking away.
Every single night on the trip to Frigorria, she’d slept in his bed. Warm and soft and smelling like fruit… some specific fruit that called to a memory, something he could never pin down, that flickered right on the edge of his consciousness and disappeared like a star in the sky if he looked right at it.
The fruity scent hung in the air around her, and lingered on the pillows of the bed, and in his clothes. Not overpowering. Subtle. And sometimes, when she rolled over in her sleep, she made a throaty little murmur that set his balls on fire.
Her preferred position was on her side, with that luscious ass shoved out at him like an offering, and far too frequently, he’d woken up to find himself wrapped around her, his dick riding the hot valley between her thighs, his hand wrapped around the full comfort of a warm tit.
Pulling himself away had taken every ounce of self-control he possessed.
He liked sleeping next to her. And now that he knew she was going to be his selissa, it was hard for his body to remember that she wasn’t yet.
“Tor.” She waved her arms. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
He pulled his eyes away from her tits.
“What is it? You’re looking at me funny.”
Shaking himself, he crossed to stand in front of her. “You have something on your face.”
She made a classic-Klym face of
