“Yet you went out on that girder anyway,” he accused, just shy of a full roar. “That’s sheer recklessness, Adria. I have a good mind to report this to your superior, and your brother.”
She bristled at his tone and his threat, and her calm evaporated. “No need. There were six warriors present when we brought Ray down. They’ve no doubt beaten you to it.”
He moved closer and bent low until they were nose to nose. “This cannot happen again. Am I clear?”
Who was he to order her about? Not her boss, or the head of her family, and certainly not her mate. Her hands curled into fists, and she replied between clenched teeth. “I don’t answer to you, Beck, so it’s really not your concern.”
“Wrong,” he bit back, as he caught her by the arms and hauled her up on her toes. “That was my job site, my crew, my injured man, so it is very much my concern.” His voice dropped a full decibel when he continued, just as angry as when he’d started. “And you can’t mean to imply, after what we shared this week, I don’t have the right to care about what happens to you.”
She clutched his shirt in her fists. “Kisses and hugs and friendship aside, I did what needed to be done. If I were a man, would you be this angry?”
“Hell yes!” Then, he released her, stood fully upright, and rubbed his face with his hands while muttering, “Christ, I don’t know. Maybe not.” After a moment, his narrowed gaze returned to her. “What I do know is you took twenty years off my life. Give me your word you’ll wait for rescue personnel if you’re ever in a similar situation.”
“I can’t stand by and watch as a man dies when it’s in my power to help.”
“You damn well can,” he replied, roaring again. “If you’d slipped, lost your balance, or the 30 mph sustained winds caught your skirt and used it like a sail—” He closed his eyes and muttered, “That damn skirt.” Then his eyes popped open and homed in on her. “You’d be the one lying on a stretcher, and you’d be dead now!”
“None of that happened, and he’s alive to see another day. We both are.”
He stared down at her, a muscle jumping in his jaw. “Are you saying you won’t give me your word?”
“I can promise to try, Beck. But I’m a healer. My patients come first.”
“That’s not enough for me. I care about you too much to see your innards splattered on the pavement.”
She winced at the graphic way he put it. “You can’t fault me for doing my job.”
“That’s just it. I can because your job is not scaling the framework of buildings and rescuing injured men.” His voice dropped to a dangerous growl with his next threat. “Maybe I’ll borrow from the Primarian playbook and turn you over my knee. If you had a mate, that’s what he would do to put a stop to this, isn’t it?”
Tears stung her eyes because, fool that she was, over the past week, she had started to think of him in those terms. She blinked them away and said in a constrained whisper, “I don’t have a mate, and never will. And I don’t need you to stand in for one, Beckett Kincaid. In fact, I don’t need you for anything.”
She wrenched free from his hold and, chin held high, walked out the door, barely able to see where she was going through the welling tears.
She’d done what had to be done, and the man would survive. Wasn’t that the important thing? As she stormed down the street toward home, she listened for the sound of his footsteps coming after her or his deep voice calling her name and asking her to stop. She didn’t hear either.
In that moment, the words she’d thrown at him in hurt and anger rang true.
A mate would have come after her, proving he cared, and that, no matter what, she was his forever. Maes eternium. That ages old sentiment, traditionally spoken at the first breaching, when a Primarian male claimed his mate, wasn’t meant for her, however, and neither was Beck.
As she stalked away, not looking back, and certainly not apologizing, she wiped a tear from her cheek. Deep down, Adria had to wonder, if she didn’t need him as she so vehemently professed, why her heart ached so much.
WATCHING HER STORM off in a swirl of black hair, her hands clenched at her sides, and brimming with indignation, Beck forced himself not to go after her. He was absolutely in the right to take her to task for her rash behavior. But for the grace of her Maker, one wrong turn and she wouldn’t have been here to argue with him anymore.
If his lecture kept her from doing something so reckless again and ending up dead, her anger at him was well worth it.
“I thought Primarian women were supposed to be docile and obedient.”
Beck looked up. Ray Briscoe, looking hale and hearty as always thanks to Adria, stood staring at the doorway through which she’d disappeared. When it closed and the latched clicked, the man’s eyes shifted his way.
“I think deferential is a better term,” he replied. “And that doesn’t mean they don’t have a voice or a temper.”
“You got that right. Her tongue is as sharp as my ex-wife’s, without the cussing,” he grunted. “Guess that explains all the spankings I hear tell of.”
Not willing to talk of spankings and Adria in the same sentence, especially with an employee, he shifted the focus to Ray. “What are you doing up? Aren’t you supposed to be in bed under observation?”
“That’s what Doc Juna wants, but I feel fine. It’s amazing. I felt like I’d been hit by a truck when they carried me, broke ribs, collapsed lung, bruises and all...” He held out his arms and looked down at himself. “Now, look at me. Only a few hours later, and I’m right as rain. Their technology has got ours beat by a long shot.”
“You need to do what the doctor tells you to, and you’re off for a week to rest and recover,” Beck ordered. “If you need more days, you’ve got those, too.”
“Tomorrow is Sunday; we’re off anyway. Any more time and I’ll be climbing the walls. Two days is plenty to collect myself after that high-wire act I unintentionally pulled.”
“What happened up there?”
At forty-two, Ray had twenty years of construction experience under his belt. Getting caught off-guard wasn’t like him.
He shook his head. “It was the darnedest thing. A wind gust out of nowhere took me right off my feet. If I hadn’t been rigged up...” He glanced at the door where they’d last seen Adria. “I’m grateful for what she did, and also glad you called her on it, boss. Slender thing like her unsecured in another gust.” He clapped his hands loudly. “They’d have been scraping her off the pavement for days. She’s too young to be taking such chances.”
Though he’d said pretty much the same thing to her, Beck flinched when Ray said it. And now he had sound effects to go with the bad visual. Wasn’t that fucking terrific!
ADRIA COULDN’T SETTLE after the way she’d left things with Beck.
When she went to bed, their argument kept repeating, and she began having second thoughts about what she’d done—especially what she’d said. Images of him hanging by a cable flashed in her head whenever she closed her eyes. He’d done what she had, taking a risk to save another, but he’d taken precautions. If he hadn’t, she’d very likely be as furious with him.
Near midnight, when sleep just wouldn’t come, she gave up. Throwing aside the covers, she didn’t bother with a robe, and in her borrowed cotton nightgown, the hem barely coming to her thighs since Lana was at least half a foot shorter, she padded on bare feet into the kitchen. She wasn’t hungry, far from it, though she thought she’d seen a bottle of wine in the fridge. Bent double while searching the bottom shelf, she started at a sudden sharp knock on the door. Raising up, she smacked her head—hard.
She clamped her hand over the sore spot, yet it and the wine were forgotten as she rushed to answer the repeated knocking, hoping upon hope it was who she thought it would be.
It took a moment to get the locking mechanism to release, then she yanked the door open. Upon seeing his glowering expression, her shoulders slumped in disappointment. Eight hours hadn’t been enough time for his an
ger to fade.
“Do you always open the door in the middle of the night while wearing next to nothing without asking who it is?”
“What do you want now, Beck?” she sighed. “It’s too late for another lecture—”
She squealed when he hooked his fingers in the neck of her nightgown and yanked her to him. “This is what I want,” he growled, right before he crushed her to his chest and his mouth descended to hungrily claim hers.
Wanting him just as much, Adria didn’t hesitate before entwining her arms around his neck and eagerly kissing him back.
She heard a loud thud but barely registered where it came from, too busy reveling in the feel of his big hard body pressed against her, one hand spearing into her hair, and the delicious taste of his tongue tangling with hers.
Suddenly, sinking into softness, she realized he’d moved them from the door—his booted heel slamming it apparently the source of the thud—to the couch. She felt surrounded by him as his weight pressed her into the cushions, and it was wonderful. Then his hand moved between them and he wrapped his fingers around her throat, not rough and choking, but gently despite the fervency of their kiss.
It took her a moment to realize his fingers rested over her pulse point at the same time his thumb lightly stroked her jaw.
“Twenty years,” he groaned against her lips. “I wasn’t lying, Adria. You scared the shit out of me.”
“I scared me, too, Beck,” she admitted.
His head came up, and she gazed into blue eyes gleaming with a mix of curiosity and passion, instead of the seething anger she’d seen throughout the day—thank goodness.
“The truth is I was petrified when the doors opened, and I could see clear down to the ground. Then I saw Ray’s blue lips and reacted—like it was instinctive. Although, if it happened again tomorrow, I don’t know if I’d have the nerve to get into the lift in the first place.”
He groaned, and, with his forehead resting against hers, said with a silken thread of warning in his voice, “It better not happen again tomorrow. My heart can’t take it.”
“Beck, what I said earlier—”
“We both said things we regret.”
She blinked up at him. “You did? What, for instance?”
“The part about being splattered on the pavement.”
“That was rather graphic.” A shudder passed through her. “Anything else? What about the spanking part?”
“Hm... I’m not a spanking kind of man. Although, if it happens again, whether tomorrow or the next day, or the one after that, you better believe I’ll put you over my knee.”
“Beck!”
Further protests were smothered by his lips when he swooped in for another kiss. It quickly made her giddy and her pulse accelerated until it pounded wildly, just like the first time his lips touched hers. It went on for a while. So long, in fact, that when he pulled away, she was a little swimmy-headed and gasping for air.
“You haven’t learned to breathe through your nose yet,” he observed.
“I guess I need more practice,” she returned, tugging his head as she raised hers, trying to get him to kiss her again.
“What do you regret, Adria?”
She blinked at this sudden shift in focus. “Excuse me?”
“I told you my regret. Now it’s your turn.”
It took her a moment, not to think of an answer, but to find the right words.
“When I said I didn’t need you. That was a lie, Beck. I’ve come to care about you, too.” She strained upward and, with her lips brushing his, whispered urgently, “And not just as a friend.”
His hand moved from her throat to her chest and lower until he claimed a breast. When his thumb swept over the nipple, she arched, seeking more.
“Are you sure about this? Once we go down this road, it changes what we are, and it’s hard to go back.”
“I’m sure. I’m tired of waiting and aching for you.” She shifted her legs farther apart, allowing his thigh to fall through and press more firmly against her needy center.
It wasn’t enough for Beck, who caught her behind the knee and pushed it higher, until she could hook her leg around his hip. The rough denim-covered bulge rubbed intimately over her sex—bare beneath her short nightgown—and sent a rush of wetness to her center.
His hand left her breast and moved slowly down her belly. Knowing where he planned to touch next, Adria held her breath as her belly quivered in anticipation.
A series of shrill beeps froze them both.
When it repeated only seconds later, Beck muttered an oath.
His hand, that had been so close to touching her there, left her and angled around to his rear pocket. After he slid out his communicator and glanced at the screen, he bit out an even more vehement expletive. “Fuck!”
“Trouble?”
“Yeah.” He dropped to his forehead to hers again. “I gotta go.”
“Of course,” she breathed, although it was the last thing in the universe she wanted.
He reared up on his knees, grabbed her hand, and when he stood, pulled her up alongside him. His hand cupped her cheek and, angling her face up to his, said in a voice rough with unquenched desire and frustration, “I hate to have to leave you like this.”
“Me, too, but I understand. Is this something I need to get dressed for? If there are injured, Juna will need my help.”
He shook his head. “It’s just a problem at one of the jobsites.”
“At this time of night?”
“My crews are working twenty-four seven. It’s the only way we will be close to ready when the first ship arrives. Walk me to the door?”
He didn’t have to ask; she had planned to.
With a quick kiss and her uttered plea of, “Be careful, Beck,” he left.
Adria crossed to her window, hoping for one more glimpse of him. When he appeared minutes later, she watched with foreboding until the lights of his hover car disappeared down the street.
“HATED TO CALL YOU OUT at this time of night, Beck, but it’s the strangest thing,” Joe Starnes, his phase 3 supervisor told him as he led him down a path through the dense forest surrounding the construction zone.
He had a machete, though it turned out he didn’t need it. The men coming through earlier had cleared the way of vines and thick branches, and dozens of heavy work boots had tamped down the overgrowth of vegetation on the forest floor. Up ahead, flickers of light visible amidst the dense trees told Beck they were close to the strangest thing he’d been called from Adria’s arms to see. It had better be worth it.
But Joe, who had worked for him for over ten years, wasn’t a man to overreact.
“Here we are,” he said as he entered a clearing, his voice hushed as though in awe. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
“I have.”
He and Joe both looked over at Hank Soames. In his early sixties, the veteran surveyor was the oldest man on Beck’s crews.
“What caused it?” Joe asked.
“Aliens,” was his matter-of-fact response.
Not so long ago, he’d have been called a kook for believing aliens existed let alone landed their spaceship on their world. But, since the point of first contact, just over a century ago, alien interactions had become commonplace. Hell, he’d held an alien female in his arms less than an hour ago, and it was hard to surprise him, anymore.
“Did a Primarian shuttle touch down here?” Beck inquired, since it was the obvious answer.
“Not those aliens,” Hank answered pointedly. “I studied up on this for years.”
“On what?” He and Joe asked as one.
“Crop circles. They were a phenomenon on Earth in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, before we made first contact.”
Beck looked around the clearing. At least fifty yards in diameter, the clearing looked to have been cut in the middle of the jungle with a precision tool. Still, he was skeptical.
“The Primarians’ ship runs constant surveillanc
e. They would have known if an alien craft entered Terra Nova airspace let alone landed.”
“How do you explain it, then, boss? We spotted the depression while surveying from the hill north of the site. We couldn’t see a path leading in, so whatever it was had to land from above.” Hank bent and picked up a vine. “These are flattened, not cut, and take a close look.” He held it up for Beck to see where it had been singed.
Whatever the cause, its origin wasn’t human. All Earth ships were being converted to transports—getting people out was priority one. Their alien hosts were in charge of security until sufficient military forces from home arrived and could take over. Even then, because the Primarians were more advanced and had superior firepower, they would be a presence for years to come. Beck hadn’t found them to be anything other than trustworthy in the time he’d been on the colony, and because their mates were human, it behooved them to keep the peace.
“Let me call the Intrepid’s captain and see what he knows about this.”
AN HOUR LATER, IN THE communications center at the shuttle port outside of town, Beck and Joe gathered with Tarus, and Remus, with Capt. Allon from the orbiting Primarian ship, and his superior, Fleet Cmdr. Rothke, joining them via video relay, to discuss the odd findings at phase 3.
“It wasn’t one of ours,” the captain advised. “And our scanners haven’t detected any unusual activity in the area.”
“It could’ve been some time ago. There was new vegetation growth among the thatch,” Beck informed them. “How far back did you check?”
“Since we’ve been monitoring the new colony. And we did a complete scan prior to the first humans’ arrival.”
“What are your suspicions, Captain?” the commander asked.
“Frankly, I’m stumped, sir. So, I’m sending down a science team.”
“What about running another scan? In case we have uninvited visitors,” Beck suggested.
“It’s under way as we speak, Mr. Kincaid. I checked before our call. It was 75 percent complete then, and nothing had been detected.”
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