Taken by Surprise

by Anna Argent

  Or anything else.

  Chapter Two

  Talan almost felt bad for playing dirty with the woman. He would have felt bad if she hadn’t asked for it by lying to him.

  It had taken a considerable dose of will not to snort at her in derision when she’d said she wasn’t Zoe. He knew who she was. She couldn’t hide behind the slender, fragile disguise this planet had cast over her. He knew better.

  The signs of her Imonite heritage were unmistakable, lurking all around her, all the way down to the way she arranged merchandise on her shelves. The only thing that kept him from calling her a liar to her face was knowing that it would have put another barrier between them. She was skittish enough without him making it worse, so he’d played along.

  There was no time for unnecessary hurdles. He needed her cooperation. Fast.

  He glanced out the window as he drank his coffee, peering into the Last Chance Repair Shop. She was nowhere in sight. The lights were still on, along with the OPEN sign. Her battered car was still parked along the side of the brick building. He’d melted the lock on the back door of her shop earlier today, fusing it shut, leaving her only one exit—one he had been watching carefully.

  No, she was still in there, a slave to her Builder curiosity. His trap had worked perfectly.

  If she’d been human, she would have fled within seconds, as soon as he was out of reach. He’s seen the flare of recognition in her eyes, proving she knew what he was.

  But she wasn’t human. And now he had proof to go along with his instincts.

  Only a Builder would have been so completely sucked in by the puzzle he’d given her. Only a Builder would linger in a dangerous situation when presented with the opportunity to run, simply because they wanted to play with a complex trinket.

  As each second slid by, he became less smugly satisfied with his success and more infuriated. Anyone could have distracted her as easily as he had. She probably wasn’t even monitoring her surroundings. The shop door was unlocked. Anyone could walk in. She had no way to run out the back door, thanks to him.

  It was a wonder she was still alive. If the Raide had found her first…

  Talan pulled out the other half of the item he’d given Zoe and shielded it from sight with his hands. Displayed in the depths of the screen was an image of her graceful fingers stroking over the monitoring device. Like a camera, the transmitter collected images and sent them across the street to where he sat, watching. The clarity wasn’t as good as human technology, but there was one way in which it was far superior.

  He could smell her.

  The scent of her skin rose up to him, both womanly and floral at the same time. He isolated the traces of soap on her fingers and had the device filter that out until all that was left was her.

  Primal urges rose up from the base of his brain, making his skin heat and his pulse speed. He’d expected to feel protective toward her—it was his job to see her safely delivered home—but he hadn’t anticipated the rest.

  This slow burn of hunger quivering along his bones, this need to curl himself around her and bare his teeth at the world in warning—those feelings had taken him by surprise and left him speechless for long seconds after seeing her.

  He wasn’t sure how to handle those feelings, so he simply shoved them aside, ignoring them.

  Zoe turned the device in her fingers, giving him a dizzying view of her workspace. He couldn’t see more than a blur of color and light before the motion stilled and he was gifted with an unobstructed view of her face.

  She studied the disk, bringing it close to her eyes. Talan swore he could feel the warm sweep of her breath pass by his cheek, dragging more of her logic-stealing scent to his nose. He breathed her in, craving the real thing over this artificial reproduction.

  A little frown line appeared between her brows, and the sudden urge to massage it away had his fingers curling around the receiver.

  Shadows lurked beneath her eyes—a sure sign she needed more sleep. There was something troubling in her gaze he couldn’t quite place. Her expressions had been easy to read so far, but there was something he was missing here. Something important. He needed all the information he could find, because if he didn’t convince her to trust him, it put her at far greater risk.

  The Raide would find her. It was merely a question of when.

  Talan wanted to rush in, scoop her up, haul her to the nearest window back home and shove her through. Instead, he resisted the urge and stayed in his seat, drinking coffee. He had to give her time to mire herself so deeply in her own curiosity that she had no choice but to turn to him for answers.

  This mission wasn’t as simple as his others. He didn’t just need the woman. He also needed the data sphere her father had stolen when he’d brought her here twenty years ago. Her father was dead, and the device was small enough to be hidden anywhere, which meant Talan needed her cooperation to find where it was. Assuming she even knew.

  He’d learned from experience that tearing someone from the life they’d spent two decades building to send them back to a war-torn planet was not the kind of thing that won him any favors. He needed that sphere before he did anything that would cause her to hide it from him. Or to run.

  Based on what he’d been told about her father, Talan was going to need every advantage he could find with the daughter.

  Zoe Last had grown roots on this world. She owned a business, a home. She had friends. Ripping her from all of that would make her see him as the enemy, when what he really needed was her trust. At least long enough to find the sphere and get her back home.

  Where he was taking her, there were no quaint, small town, main street shops like those here. The best she could hope for would be to be stationed in one of the towns not yet ravaged by war. Perhaps deep underground where the Raide wouldn’t find her and suck from her mind the knowledge they wanted. She’d work long, hard hours, along with the other Builders, striving to find some way to fend off the advancing armies before there was nothing left of their world to save.

  It would be a hard life—nothing like the quiet one she’d created here—and as soon as she realized he was the one responsible for fundamentally changing her world, she would hate him. Just like all the others did.

  Talan refused to let it bother him. He did his duty and obeyed orders. It was the only way the people of Loriah and House Imon would ever stand a chance against the Raide. As long as his people lived, he would pay whatever personal price was required.

  His entire family had been taken, their minds shredded for whatever small scraps of information they possessed. He’d been ordered to leave the front lines of battle and come here to Earth, while the few friends he had left risked their lives in combat, without him there to guard their backs. And since coming here, he’d been injured countless times, taken captive, tortured and nearly killed. What more could one woman, made frail by growing up on this lightweight planet, possibly do to him?

  He shoved to his feet, tossing a few bucks on the table to pay his bill. He didn’t like having Zoe out of his reach, not when he knew it was only a matter of time before she was found by their enemy.

  He tugged a knit cap over his tattooed head to cut down on the leery stares he received, and went out into the cold.

  Within seconds the wind sucked the warmth from his skin. His leather jacket was little match for the freezing temperatures. But the cold cleared his head enough for him to remember that his feelings about his mission didn’t matter. Only results mattered. Without results, hundreds of thousands of his people would be killed or enslaved by the Raide.

  That was something Talan refused to allow, even if it meant destroying the life of another innocent woman.

  It certainly wouldn’t be the first time he’d ripped someone away from the only home they’d ever known.

  Dusk grew and deepened. Antique replica streetlamps with scrolling, curvy lines began sparking to life as he hurried between the cars waiting for the stoplight to change. Red ribbons and fake gre
enery twined around the intricate poles—remnants from the recently passed holiday. Last night’s snow had been scraped away, but clumps of it still remained, lining the edges of sidewalks and streets.

  As he neared the door to Zoe’s shop, his pace sped.

  He entered her shop, but his target was nowhere in sight.

  Her store was cozy, the walls stocked with belts and filters for small motors, oddly-shaped light bulbs, tools, and cleaning supplies. On one wall was a huge mosaic mural depicting a mountain range pieced together from discarded bits of circuitry and hardware. The air smelled of solvent and flux, along with something sweet and citrusy, like oranges. Behind the counter where a cash register sat, there was a doorway hidden by a simple yellow curtain. Through a narrow opening where the curtain didn’t quite close, he saw Zoe sitting at a workbench, bent over the device he’d given her, with a soldering iron in hand.

  Talan went still, feeling his stomach clench in anticipation. She was pretty—too pretty for his comfort. He’d thought his mind had just been playing tricks on him earlier. He’d never really noticed whether or not the other men and women he’d found were attractive. It hadn’t mattered.

  It shouldn’t have mattered now. And yet he stood there, staring, drinking in the sight of her. Like a boy seeing his first naked woman, he couldn’t pull his eyes away. The curve of her cheek was too perfect. The slight swell of her breasts beneath her soft, clinging shirt made his fingers curl against the need to touch her. He could still remember the way her hand had felt in his, as it trembled with a slight chill he wanted to drive away. Her skin was soft and smooth. And the inside of her wrist had been even softer, pulsing with the too-rapid beat of her heart.

  If he cupped her breast in his hand, he wondered if he would be able to feel her heartbeat there too.

  Talan shoved the fantasy away with a silent snarl of contempt. She wasn’t going to want a warrior’s hands anywhere near her. He was stupid to even entertain the notion. And yet now that he’d imagined it, the image was part of him, hunkered in the back of his mind, mocking him. Taunting him.

  He needed this job to be done. Now. Before she wormed her way into his head any farther than she already had.

  Once again he considered simply tossing her over his shoulder and throwing her into his vehicle. The next window to Loriah was scheduled to open in less than two hours. He could shove her through and be one step closer to getting back to fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with his fellow Imonite warriors.

  If it hadn’t been for that damn sphere, that’s exactly what he would have done.

  A frown of concentration lined her forehead as she went about her work. Smoke from the soldering iron curled around her shiny, brown ponytail. With her hair pulled back, Talan had an unobstructed view of the side of her face. Smooth. Pale from lack of sun.

  He stared, trying to figure out what it was about her that tugged at him. There was something he was missing—some vital bit of knowledge that was right there. Like a flicker of motion seen from the corner of his eye, every time he tried to focus on it, it flitted away, out of sight.

  She lifted her hand, sliding a few stray strands of glossy hair back behind her ear. She had the long, delicate fingers of a true Builder. Every move was precise, as if it had been planned years in advance. Her hands never once faltered as she went about her work. Even the intricate job of trying to disassemble the device he’d given her seemed as effortless as breathing.

  Talan envied her skill, even as he admired it. He glanced down at his own hands—big, hard, blunt instruments shaped for battle. It was no wonder that he’d been deemed a destroyer rather than a creator.

  A years-old lump of shame sat in his gut, cold and useless. His path had been laid out before him at birth, his parents’ disappointment a distant memory. No good could come from dwelling on his station. At least hands like his would see hands like Zoe’s protected and left free to do as she was born to do. In that, at least, he found a small bit of solace.

  Talan pulled his knit cap from his shaved head, and shoved away all thoughts but getting his job done.

  He took a step forward and reached out to push the curtain aside, stopping midstride.

  There it was, that illusive, flickering something he’d been missing. Right there, plain as day, lingering around her dark eyes. It was so obvious, he wondered how he’d missed it before—a deep, innate sorrow clinging to her so close it was like a second skin.

  All those smiles she’d given her customers as he’d watched her today… they’d never reached her eyes. He could see it now in his mind, each smile imprinted clearly in his memory. They were as fake as Talan’s American accent, meant to fool others into believing a lie.

  His first reaction was that of a Builder: fix what was wrong. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t truly a Builder—that he’d never made the cut. Instincts that went as deep as his bones screamed at him to do something. It hardly even mattered what, so long as he didn’t stand here, useless and idle.

  He slipped silently behind the curtain, entering her private domain. At first glance, the place was a chaotic mess, filled with jumbles of wires, tools and gutted machinery. But as he stood there, still and silent, a sort of order began to speak to him, teasing him with his inability to grasp it fully.

  Before he had time to learn the secret, Zoe lifted her head. Her dark brown eyes widened with fear. Her pink lips parted slightly, letting out a stifled yelp. The soldering iron in her hand fell to the monitoring device he’d given her. The searing tip hit a plastic bottle of water nearby, melting it instantly. As water leaked out over her workbench, steam hissed up from the iron.

  She seemed frozen in place, unable to deal with the mess that was spreading across her workbench, threatening to ruin all the bits of circuitry strewn about. Talan grabbed up the bottle, and covered the leak with his thumb as he tossed it into a nearby trashcan. He then lifted the pieces of the device out of harm’s way and set them aside.

  Zoe shot to her feet, sending her rolling chair careening off behind her. Her nimble fingers splayed over her heart as if to hold it in place. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “You were busy,” he said as he reached over to set her soldering iron back in its curling wire stand.

  The action brought him close to her. Too close. He’d invaded her personal space, shoving his body within arm’s reach of hers.

  She was taller than most human women, the top of her head coming up to his mouth. She still had the slender bones of a human, due to the reduced gravity of this world. Had she been raised on Loriah, she would have been sturdier, with thicker bones and muscles. Instead, this world had shaped her differently, leaving her far too fragile for his peace of mind.

  Breaking her would have been easy, and if the Raide got their hands on her, they wouldn’t hesitate to do just that.

  A cold sweat formed along his scalp, reminding him of the scars he now bore. Even the huge, hulking Dregorgs had been broken by the Raide and forced to fight. Talan had only been held captive by the Raide for a single night, and he’d nearly died. Someone as delicately built as Zoe wouldn’t even last an hour.

  The thought had him inching closer to her, fighting the need to wrap himself around her so that anything that came for her had to go through him first. It was a foolish idea. He knew that. But his baser instincts kept coming out to play whenever he got near her, as if she had some sort of field around her that shorted out his brain.

  Maybe it was her scent. He could smell her shampoo, and beneath the floral fragrance, a lighter, intriguing scent he couldn’t get enough of. It bypassed all logic and slipped into the deepest parts of his mind, making protective, possessive feelings rear up and take over.

  Perhaps her father had found a way to protect his frail daughter by giving her a perfume that made men everywhere willing to sacrifice themselves to keep her safe. But if that was the case, then Talan had no idea why she wasn’t surrounded by men right now, tripping over themselves as they scurried to do her biddin
g.

  Suspicion narrowed her eyes. “You said you’d come back in an hour.” She took a step to the side, closer to a bench lined with sharp tools.

  Talan watched her mouth move, completely drawn in by the sight. He was close enough to feel the heat coming from her skin, adding another dimension that consumed his complete and total attention.

  She wasn’t just a target. She was a woman. One who was starting to put off the vibes of a cornered animal.

  He struggled to focus on her words as her fingers settled casually on the handle of a screw driver. She’d scolded him for something….

  As her supple fingers closed around the tool, he realized she intended to use it as a weapon.

  The idea that she would fight sent a wave of appalled shock rushing through him, pulling him out of this odd fog faster than being doused with ice.

  Builders didn’t fight. They didn’t destroy. They didn’t risk their lives for something so barbaric—something men like Talan were meant to do on their behalf.

  And then, on the heels of that indignation, he realized two things. First, she was intending to wield the weapon against him; second, she was doing so because he’d shifted even closer to her, drawn in by her scent until he was leaning down slightly to breathe in the air around her.

  Talan took a long step back, chiding himself for being an ass. He didn’t sniff women. Especially women who were clearly uneasy about being alone in a room with a stranger. Even he knew better than that.

  He cleared his throat as he ripped his gaze away from her mouth. If she was afraid of him, he’d already failed. Once that wall of fear went up between them, gaining her trust was going to take a lot more time and patience than he had.

  Talan lifted his hands slowly, palms out to show her he held no weapons. He didn’t need to be holding a weapon to inflict damage, but he was counting on that thought not occurring to her. “It has been an hour.”

  She went pale, and a fine trembling shook her slender body. “It has?”

  Talan was standing between her and both doorways. “It has.”