Page 13 of Trained as His Mate

“And you?” he asked after a few moments of silence passed between them.

“What about me?” Quaia said.

“Indeed. What about you. You asked. I answered. Care to return the favor?”

She hesitated, smiling into the fold of the lapel of the robe he’d given her. “I’m afraid it’s nowhere near as exciting as…”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” he said.

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. Normally she’d never entertain sharing anything as intimate as her past with a near total stranger. And yet she was entertaining just that with him. The way he looked at her, his easy manner, his daring, even-handed, utterly competent response to High Mother’s outburst. It all conspired to coax her open and offer a tiny part of herself to him.

But sharing meant exposing far softer parts of herself than he’d already seen. That wasn’t something she enjoyed or did easily to begin with. In the end, she thought, this was just a final step to be taken on the way to her freedom, and for him, this was just one more assignment.

The smile left her face and she looked at him with a serious expression again. “If it’s all the same to you,” she said quietly. “Is there something else we could do while we’re waiting? Just to move on with the… ceremony? Inspection? Whatever this is?”

He cocked his head to one side and gave her a funny look. He studied her features for a few moments. Relief swept through her when he stood up from his seat and rounded the table to stand next to her. “Of course,” he said, staring down.

CHAPTER 5

His response made her feel a pang of regret at brushing off his question. Her ambivalent feelings became twisted again.

So she started to talk, babbling. “I know we are to wait until the commission…”

He brushed off the rest of what she had to say with a wave. “Your High Mother seems to not fully understand the protocols of grievance.” His voice had changed. The warmth was gone, and he was back to business. “The final inspection and first penetration must now be observed by the commission’s party, yes. In the meantime, there are plenty of administrative details we can see to.”

Her heart sank. She wished she could take back what she’d said, and find the courage to answer his question. And honestly. Her shoulders sagged as she watched him pull out a tabscreen and run his finger down a list.

“Kindly stand,” he said.

Her skin prickled, on the back of her neck and along her shoulders, merely from his deep, commanding tone. His personality was suddenly different: less intimate, more clinical.

And… powerful. The contours of his voice—serious, authoritative, commanding—made her want to obey him immediately. She stood up from her chair and faced him.

“If you would doff the robe, please?” he said, staring at her. The mirth had faded from his eyes, but there was still a charged light shining in them.

Excitement? Anticipation? Quaia was desperate to know, but she couldn’t explain why.

A thrilling excitement was crackling through her, and it confounded her that it was for the same reason that had just caused her so much humiliation: she was going to be naked in front of him. Exposed and vulnerable, within his reach.

It was still deeply humiliating. But now, knowing him a little, it felt more intimate.

She placed her hands on the lapels of the robe and pulled them apart. She stared into his eyes, and guiltily delighted when they fell to her chest as she exposed her breasts. The way his gaze lingered even as he snapped his fingers to beckon the drone was thrilling.

He stepped back and the drone came buzzing up in front of her. The hum of its propulsion vibrated through her core with the promise of further examination, setting her lower region on fire with arousal.

Its eye flashed and a blue line appeared on her shoulders and scanned down her chest until it reached her belly. As the drone circled to record her back dimensions, Torian’s gaze still lingered on her. Deep parts of her heated beneath his gaze. The drone hummed, clicked a few times, then retreated to bob gently in the air a few armlengths from her head.

Torian lifted a hand and gave his chin a pensive rub. Finally, he looked into her eyes again. “The past Ripenings,” he said. “Did you attend them?”

She shook her head. “Middle-born are invited only to their own humiliations,” she replied.

“But they were quite… debauched? From what you heard?”

This was ordinarily a topic of conversation she could shrug off easily, dismissively even. As a pilot, she heard plenty of vulgarities, and they’d made their way into her own speech. In fact, she enjoyed how her vulgarity affected those around her, surprising them.

But in front of Torian, she felt less sure. “Some spanking and some…” she sought a better word than ‘fucking,’ although that really described the debauchery much better than any other word, “…intercourse. I think. That’s what I heard at least.”

He gave a few heavy nods and stared at her for too long again. “My instructions before coming here were simple. His Excellency is not a prude, but he finds the orgies unbecoming. I was told to measure your response to both pain and pleasure stimuli, as well as your dimensions,” he said, indicating toward her core with his hand. “Which we have already completed.”

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