Chapter 16

Heat comes in Many Forms

Jenna was really warm in her bed. She was so hot, she was pulling her limbs out from under the blankets. Sweat was collecting at her collarbone, and the back of her neck, and seeping into her hair. Disoriented, she had no idea where the heat was coming from. Something was on her stomach. She placed her hand on something furry.

She didn’t understand. Charm wasn’t on Octavia Prime.

Jenna forced herself into consciousness and realized with a sudden lurch of fear that Moonbeam was on her stomach. It was awful. She had four legs on one side of Jenna and four legs on the other, trapping her in a cage made of furry legs.

She tapped her earpiece. “Conrad, call Ryatt. I need him.”

“I’m right here, Jenna,” Ryatt said, approaching from the foot of the bed and pulling Moonbeam off her.

Jenna was confused. “You’re not in bed with me?”

He petted Moonbeam’s head and back before kissing her and addressing Jenna. “You told me you didn’t want me to sleep with you.”

“What were you doing instead?”

“I was sleeping in a chair over there.”

“Why were you doing that?” she groaned.

He set Moonbeam in a bed prepared for her that was meant to look like an Octavian goblet chair, but it had no water in it. The furlee snuggled into the fur-lined folds.

Ryatt came back to the bed and crouched next to it, so he and Jenna’s faces were close together. “This is tough,” he said tightly, keeping a smile on his face. “I knew it would be, but still, I wasn’t quite prepared.”

“Look,” she said, sitting up in bed and turning on a lamp so she could deal with their sleeping arrangement. “I know I asked you to help me feel safe in my own home because I wasn’t feeling that way after the AAMC attack. But I feel like you’ve done that. Mission accomplished. I went to bed here tonight and I fell asleep quite quickly. I wasn’t even jumpy. Moonbeam got on me and I didn’t even notice. That’s got to be a good sign.”

Ryatt didn’t seem like he was listening to her. He grabbed the bedsheet under her blanket and pulled it over her chest.

Jenna looked down. She had been displaying a shocking amount of bare skin even though her nightgown was only a long black T-shirt.

She smothered a chuckle. “Look, Dude, if you’re going to have a hard time with this neckline, I promise you, most of my eveningwear is going to set you off.”

He stroked his chin. “Sorry. I know you’re dismissing me. I know it’s unusual to have your bodyguard sleep in the same room as you when there is no immediate threat. I know it’s even weirder for him to sleep alongside you in your bed. I know I’m supposed to go now, but I can’t leave the room.”

Jenna peered at him. She had no idea what he was saying. He couldn’t say anything unprofessional. She’d made sure of that before they left Spikay Two.

“Have you been talking to Ixy?” Jenna suddenly asked him. “Did she tell you about the new diplomat we’re inviting to be interviewed?”

“No,” he said, his focus getting sharper. “Who is it?”

“Fallcet Rewell. He’s a diplomat from Magna Prime.”

Ryatt’s expression fell. “I know who he is.”

“Oh… Well, he’s coming here for an interview before I start the AAMC interviews. He should be here the day after tomorrow.”

“Was that Favel’s doing?” Ryatt asked sharply.

“No. It was my doing.”

The blood ran out of his face. “Are you interviewing him to be your first husband or a diplomat?”

“A diplomat. From what I understand of the situation, he has already rejected a match with me,” Jenna laughed in the darkness.

“You’re laughing?” Ryatt inquired blankly.

“Yes. I’m laughing. It’s hilarious. Tripping over love. That’s my life. They ask Armen if he wants to marry me. He says yes. He cheats on me before he’s even met me. I ask Sardius to marry me. He says yes, but the whole thing is thrown off by a prison riot. Then he’s inexplicably in this system, but he won’t come and see me. I haven’t been able to contact him since I got back here. I think it’s safe to say that he’s called off our engagement. Favel and I get engaged, but he won’t marry me until I get another husband. You make out with me but immediately become off-limits. It’s different every time. I’m sure this will be similar. Something about Fallcet will be wrong. It won’t work out. I’m not betting on a romantic match. If we’re lucky, I’ll be compatible enough with him that his diplomatic appointment will be a success.”

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“The universal matching algorithm doesn’t just measure who is a perfect match for you. It also considers who is a perfect match for him,” Ryatt pointed out crossly.

“Really? That has never been mentioned to me before.” When it was put that way, it did seem more likely that there would be romantic sparks when Fallcet showed up, but Jenna had already seen a match that had been set up by the universal matching algorithm fall to crap, so her heart rate didn’t pick up. “More importantly, did Sardius send you here to seduce me because he’s never coming and he felt bad?” she asked, her voice a mixture of intrigue and disgust.

“What a ridiculous idea!” Ryatt blasted back. “Jenna, everyone wants to seduce you. EVERYONE! I know you only watch broadcasts prepared by Celestina because you have better things to do, but they can’t stop talking about you on TV. Everyone likes you! Everyone wants you! Everyone is curious about what you look like in a bathing suit, in a ball gown, and completely naked. They want to hear what you say and see how you smile. I’m not unusual for me to be curious about you. I’m part of the horde. And I understand if I’m overstepping my bounds just by standing here, but I have to stay because I can’t sleep tonight if you’re not in the room. If something happened to you because I was passed out elsewhere, I’d die. Just die. On the spot.”

“Then shut up and get into bed.” She rolled onto her side away from him and tugged a chunk of blankets over herself disregarding how hot she felt.

Ryatt got into bed next to her.

Under his breath, she thought she heard him say, “Thank goodness. I thought you’d never tell me to shut up again.”

When had she told him to shut up?

“Listen, this is not permanent,” she huffed. “I’m setting up another sleeping spot in here tomorrow because I want you nearby when the AAMC guys are here. I’m not saying I’ll marry you or something dumb like that, but I hired you to protect me and in lieu of my not having a husband right now, you’ll have to be my dummy husband and my bodyguard until Sardius gets here.”

“You’re still thinking about that old space goat?” Ryatt fumed. “Jenna, one look at him and you’ll wish you married me.”

Jenna rebuked him crossly. “I told you to be professional.”

“You just told me to get in bed with you. What’s professional about that?” he snapped back.

“Then go sleep in the chair, if you have to be in the same room as me!”

He shook his head angrily before turning his fury on her. “Jenna, you’re going to need to learn that our relationship isn’t one-sided the way you think it is. I don’t do everything for you because you’re paying me or because you’re giving me a job. I could get a job anywhere. You are the one who needs me, not the other way around.”

She glared at him.

“I want to be here, but you are a fool if you think that I want to be here for the money or for the title,” he pressed. “I want to be with you. And as far as I’m concerned, Sardius is not in competition with me for your attention. The only competition is the fake version of him you’ve made in your own head. If I told you all about him, you’d jump down my pants. And you should, without me telling you all that’s wrong with him.” Ryatt got out of bed and stormed across the room.

Jenna’s head was spinning. What was he saying? He couldn’t be saying what she thought he was saying. That was utterly impossible.

“I don’t even know what this fight is about,” Jenna yelled at him.

He paused at the door. “Then I’ll spell it out for you. I’m going to sleep in my designated bed and if something happens to you in the night, I’ll just die… on the other side of the mansion. Sleep well, Jenna.” He closed the door between them.

“You’re acting like a drama queen,” she yelled at the closed door.

Jenna could not let the fight end like that. She got out of bed, covered herself with a housecoat, and hurried after him.

She found him pacing like a maniac in the main sitting room. “What do you want from me?” she yelled with no care of who could hear her or what they might think.

“Nothing,” he said, withdrawing himself from her and moving with a heavy stride toward the servant’s wing.

“We’re fighting about nothing?” she pestered, following him.

He paused and hissed at her. “Fine. We’re not fighting about nothing. We’re fighting about Sardius and Fallcet. First thing, Sardius is never coming back. Yes, he asked me to deliver the earpiece. I’m not sure that he had any plans to speak to you through it except to tell you that he was okay and to give you my recommendation. I’m sorry if he didn’t explain that to you. It was probably too hard for him to say. Like ghosting you was his best option under the circumstances. I’m sorry. I realize that’s a tough pill to swallow, but I also had no clue you were so hung up on the idea of him. It’s so terrible to me because it’s a crappy idea. He can’t love you. I don’t believe he ever told you he loved you. Let the idea of him go. He's not here and he's never going to be.”

“And Fallcet? He hasn’t even come here yet.”

“Yes. He hasn’t come here yet, but he’s an asshole. And I don’t mean a little asshole. I mean a major asshole,” Ryatt emphasized. “Wasn’t Armen an asshole too? Do you know what Adamis men prize most of all?”

“What guy can be the biggest asshole?” Jenna supplied.

“Yeah. I’m super proud not to be very closely related to your subset,” he pushed away from her and made it all the way to his bedroom before she caught up with him.

Jenna had made up her mind before she got there and confronted him in his bedroom.

“I’m going to sign the document that will make Sardius my third husband,” she said when she got there.

He turned around to face her. “You are?”

“Yes. When it arrives, I’m going to clip my hair and drip my blood into the device that I’m told is a marriage certificate. If Sardius ever wants to take me up on it, he can come here and claim his rights. Which means,” she said, straightening like a lady. “You have a choice to make. You can choose to stay here and accept that I may not fall in love with you the way you want. Even though I can have eight husbands, I might not choose to make you one of them. So you can choose to remain here and chase your unrequited love for me, or you can leave. I’m not as helpless as you say and I’ve been working on recruiting new security personnel. As it stands, I’m not willing to fall apart for you just because you say you want me.”

Jenna expected her declaration to utterly wither Ryatt. She expected it to blow him apart. Instead, he met her stare with a look that was something like triumph and something like a thrill that rippled all the way through his body. He wasn’t cowed in the least.

“Have you decided?” she prompted, still angry as a snake.

He nodded, giving her a smile that transformed his whole self from attractive to devastating. “I’ll stay. I wouldn’t be able to stand it if I wasn’t here to give you a clear comparison between a proper man and an asshole.”

The challenge on his tongue, the look in his eyes like sparks, made Jenna even angrier. He was enjoying himself. She was telling him off and he was enjoying himself. Jenna couldn’t believe her eyes or her ears.

“Let’s hope that goes the way you want,” Jenna said crossly before she left his room.