Alerio’s desk offered a stark contrast to that extravagantly sensual window. A curving shape in reflective black polycarbonate, the desk looked as if it belonged on a warstar’s bridge. Alerio could control every system on the Outpost from that desk. The chair behind it seemed to grow directly from the floor, thickly upholstered in some kind of gleaming black material. A pair of smaller, far less comfortable-looking chairs crouched before the desk as though waiting for any hapless Enforcers who’d earned the chief’s wrath.
Alerio ignored the desk, instead waving her toward the pair of couches. “Unlock that stiff spine and sit down, Enforcer,” he told her in a dry tone, dropping into one of them himself. “Permission to speak freely granted.”
She lifted a brow and sat down cautiously. “I wasn’t aware I asked for it.”
“Oh, you did. Just not out loud.” He raised a black brow. “Go on. Tell me exactly what you think before you explode from the sheer pressure of your disapproval.”
This, perversely, made her determined not to say one word. “It is not my place to tell my commanding officer my opinion of my assignments.” Damn, I sound like I have a stick up my ass.
“No,” he agreed, without cracking a smile. “But tell me anyway.”
There were any number of things she could say—if she were stupid enough. Which she wasn’t. Colonel Kavel had taught her the perils of taking a commander at his word.
Well, you fucked this one up, Dyami, Alerio thought in disgust as he watched Dona’s pointedly expressionless face. Now you’re going to have to fix it.
When she remained stubbornly silent, he sighed. “Fine, then I’ll start. As you’re aware, we are painfully shorthanded when it comes to protecting all the scheduled tour groups in numbers sufficient to fend off a Xeran assassination squad.”
He paused, but she only looked at him with polite interest. Containing his growing impatience, Alerio continued, “I don’t normally participate in fieldwork, of course, but the only way we can cover the schedule is with the addition of a new team. And since you no longer have a partner, this logically leaves the two of us working together. Unless you want me to break up an existing partnership . . .” Some of those Enforcers had been working together for years.
His sensors told him her temper promptly began to cool. That’s right, Dona. I didn’t pair us just to force you into something you don’t want.
“That’s not necessary,” she said.
“I didn’t think it was. But I’m aware you may find the situation uncomfortable, considering what happened the other night.”
Dona sighed. “If we avoid a repetition of that . . . incident, it won’t be a problem.”
“Making love to me was an ‘incident’ to you?” Yeah, that’s helpful, he snarled to himself. You sound like a spurned lover. Which was basically what he was. Wrestling his temper back under control, he made a negating gesture. “Forgive me. That was not appropriate.”
“There’s nothing to forgive. This is a trying situation.” Despite her gracious words, Dona’s frigid expression didn’t warm.
Which was a bit like tossing a flamer into a tank of thruster fuel. It was all Alerio could do to contain his fury as he bit out, “Thank you for your understanding.” Damned if I’ll touch you again. Even if you beg. Warlords do not crawl.
Not even a violet-eyed cop who made him ache to stroke and taste and kiss. A woman whose smile flashed as bright as her intelligence . . .
And whose courage was going to get her killed if he wasn’t damned careful.
“Is it true what I’ve heard about Vardonese Warlords?” Geneva Kamil’s lids dipped over the golden eyes her fans adored. “That you’re all very . . . aggressive lovers?”
Dona’s hands curled into fists in her kidskin gloves, though she kept her face expressionless. The closed carriage they rode in jolted over a bump hard enough to click her back teeth together. She damned near bit her tongue.
“Don’t believe everything you hear,” Alerio told the actress, flashing even white teeth in his best charm-the-asshole smile. “People are prone to exaggeration.”
Dona couldn’t help but notice that was not precisely a denial. She tried not to be intrigued.
“Pity.” Geneva’s gaze ran down his body with unblushing hunger. “I do like an aggressive man. Particularly one so very . . . large.”
To be fair, Dona couldn’t really blame the actress for her carnivorous interest. Alerio in Victorian evening wear was nothing short of mouthwatering. Of course, his facial tattoo would have been a problem, but Chogan had injected his skin with a drug that made the ink temporarily vanish.
He’d also removed the beaded Vardonese combat decorations from his long hair, which he’d then braided and bound flat to his skull. A dark wig in the short style worn by men of the period finished off the disguise.
“I did this all the time when I was a field agent,” he’d told her back at the Outpost, apparently in response to her fascinated gaze. “I could have had my comp project an imagizer disguise, of course, but if some temporal accidently touched my long hair . . .”
“We’d have a problem, because trids don’t fool the sense of touch.”
Which explained why they both wore the clothing of the period; a T-suit did not feel anything like nineteenth-century evening wear. As much as Dona secretly loved how Alerio looked in temporal armor, he made a luscious Victorian. The fit of his tight black trousers drew the eye to his long, impressively muscular legs, and his well-tailored jacket made his shoulders appear impossibly broad while simultaneously emphasizing his narrow waist. Yet he looked as comfortable as if he really were a Victorian aristocrat.
Far more at home than Dona in her gold ball gown, with its hoop skirt and layer upon layer of horsehair-padded petticoats. Adding insult to injury, the dress’s dainty cap sleeves revealed arms far too muscular for a woman of the period; most plantation debutantes never did anything more strenuous than embroidery.
Dona was a bit happier with her hair. She’d gathered it at her nape in an intricate arrangement of braided coils and a few deliberately disheveled curls. Best of all, it was secured by clusters of needle-thin quantum stilettos that would hopefully be mistaken for combs.
Armed or not, she had no idea how to fight in all this fabric. Not to mention the corset beneath the gown, with its tight lacing and the whalebone stays that made mere breathing an effort. She had no idea how the women of this time tolerated such torture devices. Or more to the point, why they tolerated them.
Goddess help me if I have to fight, she thought gloomily. All these skirts would probably wrap around her legs and dump her on her face the first time she attempted a kick. Seven hells, she wasn’t all that sure how to get her hoops through a doorway.
Geneva, by contrast, looked every inch the Victorian debutante as she perched demurely on the carriage’s red velvet squabs, surrounded by a cloud of sapphire blue silk. Her pale skin seemed to glow in the soft light of the oil lantern, while her hair blazed in every shade of red from warm copper to shimmering flame. Once they reached the ball, the imagizer in her pearl necklace would dull the metallic gleam of her irises to a more human amber. Not that the change would blunt her incredible beauty.