And then he began to talk.

 • • •

GRIFFIN

“I can’t believe I’m here,” Griffin heard himself say to the magnificent, naked woman standing next to his hotel bed.

When Kekona cocked her head, a sheet of straight black hair slipped off her shoulder. She was frighteningly confident in her own skin. Extraordinarily sexy.

“In Utah at the Senatus?” she asked, all casual, like nothing mind-blowing had just happened between them. Like they hadn’t just fucked each other’s brains out. “Or in this room with me?”

“Technically, you are in my room with me.”

That could have been construed as a dismissal, but she didn’t bend to pick up her clothes. Made no move toward the door. For the first time in a very, very long while, Griffin had the urge to smile. Just an urge, though; it never quite poked through.

He crossed his arms behind his head. “Either,” he replied, marveling at his own truth. “Both.”

She smiled knowingly behind her obsidian eyes, those things that had flashed actual fire when she’d come. For the rest of his days, he’d never be able to get that image out of his memory. He didn’t think he’d ever want to.

In the back of his mind he registered that she’d spoken the word “Senatus,” that the organization of the elemental races was his true reason for being here, but the vision of Kekona standing there, looking like sex itself, erased pretty much all present thought.

Not an ounce of fat on her anywhere. Taut skin in an exotic caramel shade he guessed to be somewhere between Pacific Islander and Asian stretched over some seriously sick muscles. She was ridiculously strong. Phenomenally beautiful.

But the thing that got to him most was how nonchalant she was acting, how she’d so quickly and easily ducked out of his reaching hand. That touch had meant to tell her, however stupidly, that she’d cemented a permanent spot in his consciousness. It hadn’t meant to be claiming, but complimentary. She was looking down at him now like he’d waited on her in a restaurant. Didn’t she just have the same experience he had? Why wasn’t she completely out of her head like he was?

Oh. Right. Because it was clear that she’d had plenty of sex in her life, and he hadn’t slept with anyone in over two years. Because he’d been hung up on Gwen Carroway after the destruction of their arranged marriage when she’d fallen for someone else—a Primary, no less. Because he’d thought that Gwen was what he’d wanted and had taken his own sweet time getting over her, before realizing that falling for someone because you’d been told to by a bunch of scheming traitors wasn’t really falling for someone at all.

So he’d thrown himself into leading the Ofarians, rebuilding them, steering them into a new future. Work, work, work. Politics, politics, politics. No time for lovers. No desire for them, really. Until Kekona.

And what a shocker that had been.

Though he didn’t want her to leave—that realization making his body tense up all over again—he knew that eventually, soon, she would.

But she didn’t. Instead she came closer, causing his lungs to pick up pace. She sat on the edge of the bed and patted the rumpled bedspread. “Do you want to get a few things out of the way?”

He sat up, resisting the incessant urge to touch her. “Things. Like what?”

“Questions.”

Ah, business. “Ask away.”

She pursed her lips, a lovely, playful expression. “I meant do you have any for me after your first Senatus meeting, but I’ll bite.”

He had a ton of questions for her, none of which involved the Senatus.

“How’d you find us?” she asked.

He saw no reason not to tell her. “The Board, the old system of Ofarian leadership, had been gathering clues about other Secondary races on Earth. Scattered sightings or unproven occurrences, some cryptic references, that kind of thing. When I took over, I followed the breadcrumbs they’d been hiding.” He folded his arms across the tops of his knees, knowing that the Senatus had been well aware of the Ofarians’ existence for years—maybe even decades—but had deliberately avoided approaching his kind.

“I already told the Senatus all this,” he added. Which meant that Kekona may have been the chief’s second, but she wasn’t privy to all the information her superior was. Interesting.

She didn’t respond. “After the Board fell, how’d you get to be leader?”

“Ah”—he scrubbed at his cheek—“by default? I didn’t know I wanted the position when I was elected, but they voted me in anyway. I’m a bit, um, controversial.”

Genuine surprise widened her almond eyes. “You didn’t want to be leader? And your people voted you in anyway?”

Griffin exhaled, remembering how Gwen had refused the new leadership position and nominated him instead. It wasn’t information he worried about sharing with the Senatus. Kekona would relay these words back to them tomorrow, and Griffin thought it might make him seem more humble. “Yes,” he said. Kekona seemed sincerely confused at that, which sparked his curiosity. “How is your chief chosen?”

“The ali’i, or chief, isn’t chosen. You fight for it. With this”—she lifted a fist—“and this.” She drew a short, sharp inhale, and then expelled a small flame onto her knuckles where it danced without effect or apparent pain. With another inhale, she sucked the fire back into her body. Griffin’s turn to marvel.

Kekona leaned closer. “So do you want the leadership now?”

A difficult question. The Senatus hadn’t asked him this much, about his history. Maybe it was time they knew—time they understood where he’d come from to better comprehend what he was fighting for. It would give her something to report back, and in the end it could work to his advantage.

Strangely, too, he wanted to speak to Kekona’s earnest expression.

“Yes and no,” he answered truthfully. “I could do without the actual command, but what I want is more important.”

“Better integration with the Primaries.”

He nodded, not remotely shocked she’d been told what he’d presented to the Senatus just hours ago. “That’s right.” Shifting on the bed, he realized they were both still naked, and that while he sort of wanted to cover up, she didn’t even seem to notice.

“But . . . why?”

This was what he hadn’t told the Senatus, at least not this version, in this way. He thought that the story might sound more convincing to them coming from her, told to her by Griffin in a private setting, rather than him blathering on to three other Secondaries who wore obvious cloaks of doubt and fear.

“In old Ofarian society,” he began, carefully choosing his words, “you were born into very specific classes. The ruling class, the working class, the soldier class . . . you can guess what I was.”

The way her eyes flicked appreciatively across his arms and legs made him burn like when she’d been touching him. “I can guess,” she said.

“I never had any choice in what I was to become. I had no dreams except for what was given to me. No skills other than what I was prepped for, what I’d been made to tend or grow.”

“Chimerans are kind of similar,” she said, and by the remark she’d made about having to battle for the position of ali’i, it made sense.

“When I was a teenager,” he went on, “I was tested, and then trained to be the sole protector of someone who, at the time, was one of our greatest assets: Gwen Carroway, our old Chairman’s daughter. It was all I knew up until two years ago—her and her protection. I was eventually made head of Ofarian security.”

Kekona blinked and shook her head, long strings of black hair swinging around her shoulders to brush the curves of her breasts. “I don’t understand. That wasn’t your dream?”

She may not have understood him, but he understood Kekona. Because she’d had to fight to be Chimeran general, she’d nursed her own dream from probably a very young age. She’d seen what she wanted, battled for it, and won.