Free Clair of Earth: Brintex Centurions Book One by Gail Faulkner Page B

private chambers Clair walked between them, be it for meals, meetings, or the endless job of mediating or military matters. Attentive to any need she might have, they appeared proud to stop whatever was occurring to see to her. She soon figured out it was a point of Brintex honor. Often her opinion was asked though she seldom gave it. Luckily, she was old enough to know declining to comment on matters she had no understanding of made her smarter. It also impressed upon whomever was in audience that she was superior to them in the eyes of the Brintex Rulers.
                  Trel and Helix were affectionate, even openly adoring but never sexual in public. They were fiercely protective and not at all shy about displaying their jealous possessiveness. Had she been an independent personality they would have driven her insane. But Clair had spent her Earth life married to an extremely important, absent man. Her first husband had been an astronaut, then a statesman. He had loved her deeply, but was never around much.
                  Not slow on the uptake, it had taken Clair a very short while to decipher all the attention. Yes, it was Brintex culture for mated pairs to spend most of their time together, but was that the reason she was never allowed out of her lovers’ views? She thought not. Even understanding the devastating epidemic that had swept through known civilizations and killed around eighty present of the females in every species didn’t explain it.
                  The tragedy of the epidemic had been twofold. It destroyed the established structure of every civilization it touched by reducing them to desperate survival measures. And it created a space culture of piracy and black market trade. The most valuable currency was a female. Woman were treasured or sold. There was no middle-class female.
                  From what she understood, a couple thousand years had passed since the “Endless Death” but still, the balance of natural-born females to males was surprisingly lopsided.
                  Idly watching Earth’s delegates, Clair’s thoughts strayed to her magnificent mates. Helix stood not far from her, his energy level would not allow him to sit for long periods of time. The tall, romantic warrior was a vision of power and perfection. His eyes could capture a woman with their lazy lids that did nothing to hide his ready humor and burning sensuality. If one was not induced to gasp over the perfection of his face, glancing down at the body moving with a predator’s fluid grace would. He was a panther in humanoid form. Sleek, dangerous and totally aware of everything around him.
                  If Helix was a panther, then Trel could only be called a lion. Larger, his body no less fluid but perhaps more threatening with his very size. Trel was the one who sat beside her this morning, his arm around her, his hand holding hers. Much like the big cat he brought to mind, he could remain motionless for hours, but it felt like he was stalking when he did that.
                  A lover of few words, Trel was the one most reluctant to lose physical contact with her. His quiet, intense attention was almost intimidating. He seemed to know what she wanted before she did. Not what she needed, those were met to excess in every conceivable way. Her wants, those extravagant little desires, were what Trel delighted in discovering. He had no concept of what it meant to spoil her. But perhaps it was not really being spoiled.
    The price of her lovers’ excessive desire to provide for her was their equally demanding need to have her with them every moment. Folk beset with the Y chromosome often refused to face their emotional issues. Clair, not being a foolish little girl, was more than aware of this. Both her lovers were compensating for something she had not surrendered to them. It was her job to find out what they needed, even if they were