Without thinking, he licked his lips and reached one hand toward her.
She batted it away, grabbing for the food instead.
“Oh, no you don’t,” she said, laughter filling her voice. “I’m starving, and I need nourishment to keep up my strength. We can play later. Now, what’s this about your mother having a cook?”
“Well, my mother has a cook,” he said, confused.
“I heard that,” she replied around a mouthful of cake and syrup. She rolled her eyes at him in disgust and stabbed another forkful of food. She held it up in the air and gestured at him with it.
“I mean, why did she need a cook?”
“Well, because most of her time was spent running the estate,” Jerred said. “My father was away much of the time, so she was in charge of everything. It hardly seemed fair to ask her to cook, too.”
“You have an estate?” Giselle asked, her eyes popping.
“No, my parents do,” Jerred said, reaching out with one finger to wipe a droplet of syrup from her lip.
He raised it to his own, and thought with some smugness that not even the sugary sauce tasted as good as she had the night before.
“I have this ship,” he said. “Family lands only pass to sons who have life mates on Saurellia, and I don’t have one.”
“So it’s true, then?” she asked thoughtfully. “Josiah told me that you wouldn’t stay with me, that you couldn’t even if you wanted to.”
Her tone was lighthearted, but a serious look had come into her eyes. He sighed, trying to think of what to say. Honesty was best.
“Yes, that’s true,” he said slowly. “I wish you could be my life mate, Giselle, but that’s just not possible.
You’re not Saurellian.”
“You mean nobody on Saurellia has ever found a life mate outside his or her own race?” she asked softly.
“A few have,” he said slowly. “But even those women seem to have Saurellian DNA in them. It’s very rare even then, though.”
“Oh,” she said, falling silent. He felt uncomfortable watching her now, as if he were simply taking advantage of her. It was better not to talk about things like this, he thought in disgust. He didn’t want to ruin what time they did have together with maybes.
“I’m going to go and get cleaned up,” he said finally. “Just put the dishes and tray in the galley when you’re finished, and I’ll take care of it.”
“How long are we going to be traveling?” she asked as he stood to leave. “And where are we going from here?”
“We’ll be ready to make the jump out of normal space in a few hours,” he said. “From there we’ll go to Davidian, where the Saurellian military headquarters are located. I need to make my report.”
“What about me?” she asked softly.
“Don’t worry,” he replied, his heart clenching. “I’ll take care of you. I’m due for a long leave. From there we’ll go wherever you want and take a nice, long vacation together.”
“And after that? Are they going to send you out on another mission? Would I be able to go with you, or will that be it for us?”
He shook his head slowly, not wanting to think about it.
“Let’s deal with that question when the time comes.”
Chapter Twelve
Davidian Station was huge. Bigger than anything Giselle had seen before, and she’d done a fair amount of traveling in her life. It looked like a small moon orbiting the remote planet. In fact, it had once been a moon, according to Jerred. Hundreds of years of building and hollowing out its core had riddled it with tunnels and rooms; now it was little more than a shell for Saurellian military operations.
These were Jerred’s people, the men who dared challenge the might of the Empire.
It was a bit intimidating.
“We’ll be leaving this ship here,” Jerred said quietly as they docked in of many hangars. “They’ll need to go over it carefully for the information encrypted in the databanks, and to make sure Josiah didn’t leave any nasty little surprises on board. I’ll requisition another ship for my leave and we can take it wherever we want.”
She nodded, trying not to think about what would happen after that leave was over. It was pointless.
“How long will we be here?” she asked quietly.
“Hopefully not too long,” he said. “I’ll take three or four days to debrief and write up my reports. After that I’ll be free.”
“Will we be staying on the station?”
“Yes,” he replied with a smile. “This may surprise you, but I actually have an apartment here. It’s my home, at least as much as a home as I have. It may be a military station, but millions of people live here.
You’ll find that there are hundreds of things to do in your free time. You’ll want to be careful, though.
There aren’t many women, and those who are here are generally life mated. I’ll make sure you have an escort if you want to go out and I can’t be with you.”
“How dangerous is it?”
“Well, I don’t think any of them would deliberately hurt you,” he said slowly. “But Saurellian men tend to lose perspective sometimes when it comes to women. It’s better to be careful.”
When they left the ship an hour later she understood what he meant. All around here were tall, dark men with hungry eyes. Surprisingly, not all of them were Saurellians, and she cocked one brow at Jerred in question.
“Most of the maintenance functions are performed by off-worlders,” he explained.
“Why is that? Are Saurellians too good to do their own dirty work?” she asked jokingly.
He shook his head and grinned at her. “No, unmated Saurellian males tend to be unreliable in such positions,” he said softly. “Unless a Saurellian finds a mate, he tends to be a bit wild. Most of us won’t live past forty standard years. We need jobs where we can work off our aggression.”
“Like fighting?”
“Well, before the war most of us were mercenaries in the Empire,” Jerred said softly. “It was good work. And it gave us an edge when our people called us back to fight the war against the Empire.”
“So, did all of your people come back?” she asked softly.
His gaze grew distant for a moment, and then he shook his head. “No,” he said softly. “Quite a few didn’t come back.”
“Did they stay and work for the Empire?”