Kidnapping His Rebel: A Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Zalaryn Conquerors Book 2)

by Viki Storm

  I feel like I’m drowning. I feel like I’m breathing for the first time.

  Everything else loses focus and I just want more of this. More of him. I want to surrender to his strong arms and cocky arrogance and just let go.

  His hands are on the zipper of my suit, and he pulls it down to my waist. Underneath, all I’m wearing is a tight fabric binding around my breasts, and he effortlessly finds the hooks. With a flick of his fingers, my breasts are bared to him.

  He breaks the kiss and holds me by the shoulders. It’s as if he’s inspecting me, but instead of the indignant feeling of being inspected like an animal at the market, I feel nothing but desire welling. Because he’s not appraising me, not judging me. He’s appreciating me. He’s making me feel like a beautiful woman, desirable and worthy. I forget completely who I really am—which is a glorified smuggler with a cut-up, scarred face.

  “When you stabbed that first Rulmek,” Bantokk says, “Holy Void, that was so fucking beautiful. You are so fucking beautiful. You are an amazing woman. There’s more to you than you want people to see. More inside here—” and he places his hand on my chest. The feeling is maddening; I just want his hands on my breasts. They are so conspicuously exposed, and my nipples have turned into two tight little tingling nubs.

  He takes both breasts in his hands and then kisses me again. I moan into his mouth and he responds by pushing his erection against me. Even through the layers of thick spacesuits, I can feel it, long and hard. It’s a little frightening but also intriguing. I wonder what it looks like. What it would be like if I put it in my mouth. If he slid it between my legs and…

  Footsteps. Loud. Lots of them.

  “Wait,” I gasp as I pull myself away. The close confines of the closet make it so I can’t pull too far away from him, and the heat between our two bodies lingers like an iron in the coals.

  “Be silent,” he whispers, so close in my ear that he barely speaks. All I feel is his lips grazing my ear lobe. His full, utterly kissable lips. How I want to feel them against mine again. Would he kiss me again if he knew what a coward I really am? All his talk about how I’m such a brave warrior—he doesn’t know the real me. The things I’ve done. What I had to do to escape the Rulmek. Would he look at me with admiration and desire then? Probably not.

  I tense, partially from the proximity of this man—this alien—and partially from the fear of the Rulmek right outside the closet.

  “They’ve got to be here somewhere,” one of the Rulmek says. Unfortunately, I never lost my ability to understand their language.

  “They probably ran away, back to their quarters,” another says. The footsteps are closer, getting louder with each step. But I’m too stunned to be concerned with how close they are. Because of the word he just used.

  “You fool, it’s the Zalaryn we were informed about, not escapees from the quarters. I want the bonus that the Captain offered to the one who catches him. But take him alive. Can’t sell him to the fighting pits if he’s dead.”

  The Zalaryn they were informed about? Informed by who? Could Bantokk have been right back on the stealthcraft when he accused one of my crew of sabotage?

  As bad as that is, it’s not even what stops the breath in my chest. ‘Back to their quarters,’ the Rulmek had said. That’s one translation anyway. The word he used for ‘quarters’ was herlmka. Which probably translates more accurately into ‘slave cages.’

  He thinks we’re escaped slaves—which means that the Rulmek are carrying a shipment of human slaves.

  The door handle shakes suddenly and I flinch, all sorts of images of my captivity—of my own time living inside a herlmka—come flooding back to me. But Bantokk is here. He holds me closer, wraps his arms around my shoulders, and I feel the trembling slow down and then stop.

  “They couldn’t get inside there, you fool,” one of them says. He rattles the door and a flood of renewed fear rushes into me, making my bowels feel loose, like I’m going to be sick. But Bantokk’s mechanism holds the door tight. “It’s locked from the outside. Those doors can’t lock from the inside.” Bantokk gives my arms a little reassuring squeeze. I guess he was right that the scaly bastards are capable of complex thought.

  The footsteps recede and I feel myself start to relax—or at least relax as much as possible, considering that I’m trapped in a storage closet in the engine room of a Rulmek warship. It’s only a matter of time before they notice our stealthcraft latched on. They’ll be on high alert now that they’ve seen the two Rulmek corpses. They don’t have much brotherly love for each other, but their own reptilian sense of self-preservation is strong, and they interpret a fallen comrade as a sign of danger.

  As they well should.

  Because now that I know they have slaves on board, I’m not just going to blow this ship up. That would be too kind.

  Bantokk puts his mouth close to my ear again, and I can’t help the shiver of goosebumps that pulses through every square inch of my body. “We need to get out right now,” he says. “Are you still up for rigging their fuel lines to blow?” He hooks the fabric binding back over my breasts and zips up my suit.

  “No,” I say. “They’re carrying slaves. We can’t blow up the ship.”

  I take a deep breath. I know now that I’m going to have to tell him, at least some of it. He’s going to want to know how I can understand the Rulmek tongue. And all that respect he had for my fighting skills, whatever moment of passion we just shared—all that will be gone. Erased. Replaced by the pity. Replaced by the new perception of me.

  Which might be for the best. This little moment of passion was born out of fear and tension and danger and relief of not getting caught. Nothing more than that. I must be losing it if I thought that it was something… more. Yeah right. Me and an alien—a Zalaryn on top of that. Me and anyone really. I’m not equipped for intimacy and happiness. That was beaten out of me by the Rulmek.

  “When they were walking by, I heard them talking. They thought we had escaped from the slaves’ quarters. They think we went back there to hide.”

  “Slaves quarters?” he asks, the implication dawning on his face. “They’re carrying slaves?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I can’t be sure how many, but I think it’s safe to assume a lot. The Rulmek are greedy.”

  “And you’re sure that’s what they said?” he asks. His brows are furrowed into something that might be worry—or might be suspicion. “How can you tell what they said? Do you have an implant? I had a language procedure performed, but I still can’t understand everything they said.”

  “Yes,” I say, the lie coming off my lips before I can even think about it. I’ve lied so much about my past, it’s so much more natural than telling the truth. Half the time, I’m not even sure what the truth is—I keep that locked away somewhere deep and dark where it’s hidden but always on the verge of bursting out.

  “Void spawn,” he says. “We can’t blow the ship now. Good thing we found out before you sabotaged the fuel lines.”

  “I guess so,” I say. But this doesn’t feel like a good thing. It feels like a burden. Because there’s no way I can let this go, no way I can let a shipful of human slaves pass by without saving them.

  Or, at least, die trying.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he says. “We need to regroup. This changes everything.”

  “You want to free them?” I ask. “I was under the impression that your orders were to keep that warship from landing on Lekyo Prime at all costs.”

  “Well, yeah,” he says. “But ‘at all costs’ doesn’t include exploding what could be hundreds of innocent humans.”

  At least we agree on one thing.

  But I can’t let that ship get to Lekyo Prime, either, not with my sister Bryn there.

  “We need a new plan,” I say.

  “I already have one,” he says.

  BANTOKK

  I land my stealthcraft into the docking bay of The Golden Plague, this time a welcome guest instead of a kidnapper i
n the night. Although, ‘welcome guest’ is probably not an accurate description. There are four Three-Star Rebels on board, and at least one of them is responsible for stealing my chip.

  Now I have to figure out who it is. And more importantly—why.

  If one of Lia’s crew is just a greedy opportunist who saw a chance to make a quick fistful of coin by helping the Rulmek… or if he’s in league in a more sinister capacity, actively helping the Rulmek by acting as some sort of spy. A moment of weakness, well, we all have those. But a spy? A lifestyle of betrayal and deceit?

  Neither option is good, but it will determine how badly I hurt him before I throw him out of the ship into the cold, motherless Void.

  The landing port slides shut, and we’re cleared to exit the stealthcraft. It will feel good to get out of this damned spacesuit. I’m hot as pure sunslight and not used to the bulky confines of this much clothing. A shower would be nice—specifically a cold one. I need something to erase the memory of having Lia in my arms when we were hiding in the storage closet. It felt so right having my arms around her; she fit so effortlessly and so snugly. And those lips, those breasts. Void, I’m getting hard again. I need to stop thinking about this. I can’t shed my space suit in front of the crew only to reveal a raging erection straining against my breeches.

  But damn, she was an artist with the knife. How she took down two Rulmek in a graceful confluence of speed and power. Who would have thought that this little human female would have such skill with a blade? Most humans are laughable fighters—even more ridiculously weak when forced into hand-to-hand combat. Most humans are adept enough to point a blaster in the right direction and pull the trigger but completely lack the instinct and skill for any close work. I don’t know why it arouses me so, but it does.

  A lot.

  Her fertile days are over, but she’s still driving me mad with desire. Maybe it wasn’t just being in the presence of a fertile female. Maybe it’s something more… something about Lia. My instinct is still screaming for me to claim her. The pull I feel toward her is stronger—more substantial—than just the base urge to mate.

  I’m starting to fear that this isn’t about the urge to mate. This is about the urge to take her as my mate.

  And there’s a difference. A big one. All lifeforms mate, exchanging genetic material to propagate the species. Even when it has everything to do with pleasure and nothing to do with actual reproduction. The urge is there in all lifeforms. We are programmed to want to fuck—it’s very simple. But what I’m feeling about Lia isn’t simple. I thought it was just that age-old urge to fuck that’s hard-wired into the brains of all living creatures. But it might be something more.

  She might be my mate.

  My bonded mate.

  But that’s not even something I can consider right now, not when my mission is still so uncertain. I push the thoughts away and try to focus on the crew of The Golden Plague—and the traitor in the ranks.

  “Did you guys finish the bastards off?” Sorren asks. That’s a flippant question to ask. It’s like he knew we didn’t. I stare him down, trying to detect any traces of subterfuge or anxiety. I can’t sense anything with the sensory pads on my head or tongue, but while humans lack skills on the battlefield, they generally have advance cognitive skills that allow them to lie convincingly. Thanks to the salicylate tablet I gave him, his nose is almost healed, but there are still dark bruises spreading like wings on either side of his cheeks.

  “Not quite,” Lia answers. I look to the other men, Pior, Fen and Kern. Fen doesn’t look like he could operate a can opener, let alone a computer system. Kern looks like the sort of male who would rather clonk you on the head than ask you to move out of his way; his porcine eyes dart around the docking bay as if he’s looking for a blunt object to hold. I don’t think either one of them would be sophisticated enough to hack the security system on my stealthcraft and get the data chip.

  Pior, on the other hand, has a look of thoughtful intelligence. The sort of male who would think a thing through before opening his mouth—a rare trait amongst all lifeforms, but humans in particular. He was eager to avoid fighting, eager to let me take care of the Rulmek. Was that because he was eager to get me on the Rulmek ship so he could sell me out? The Rulmeks would pay a few-hundred-coin finder’s fee for a Zalaryn raider they could sell to the fighting pits.

  Then again, if anyone hated me enough to do that, it would be Sorren, with his nose still swollen and bruised. But I know it could be any one of them. The Three-Star Rebels are all the same, no honor, no allegiances. Last time I ran afoul of these rebel bastards, I found that out firsthand, so I don’t know why I’m surprised that someone now has sold me out.

  I try to mask my feelings, the rage that’s trembling beneath the surface. One of these bastards not only stole my data chip but contacted the Rulmek about me, hoping to make a finder’s fee if I was captured. The Zalaryn that we were informed about, that’s what Lia said the Rulmek had said as they were searching for us.

  My normally suspicious nature would doubt the veracity of her statement, but I was able to pick up snatches of their conversation, and it matched what Lia reported to me.

  Lia’s giving them a heavily edited version of events. She doesn’t trust them anymore after hearing that the Rulmek were informed about me. It seems I misjudged her and her hatred for the Rulmek. I’m pretty sure I know how she knows so much about them, about their ship, and how she’s fluent in their language. And if I’m right, then there’s no way she’d ever collude with the Rulmek under any circumstance.

  We discussed how much we’d divulge and decided to tell the crew that we discovered that the Rulmek had a large cargo of human slaves, so we decided not to beam the re-routing coordinates, instead opting for a brief recon mission aboard the AXB-550.

  “What are we going to do, Captain?” Kern asks, his dim wits probably requiring constant guidance.

  “Get those slaves,” Lia says simply. That’s another thing I admire, her refusal to leave the slaves. Now that she knows there are captives on board, she’s physically unable to ignore it. She has honor—she’s not the immoral thief I first took her to be.

  The crew follows us into the ship, but Lia starts giving them orders, I think mostly to get them out of her way. They disperse, and we go into her quarters.

  I first notice that her bed is unmade, the blankets still rumpled from when I had her bound. That feeling of heat is back, surging through my body, making my cock swell uncomfortably. Well, not altogether uncomfortably. It’s a delightful, maddening ache that will make it all the more pleasurable when I am able to find release inside her. And that I will, I’m sure of it. I can sense her arousal around me, her desire to be mated by a strong male. I can also sense her fears surrounding the physical act, which is why I have restrained myself thus far. She is going to have to come to terms with her desire before I can mate her—and I’m willing to wait.

  “You can send a comm to Lekyo Prime,” she says, closing the door. “I have a communications panel in there.” She points to a small door, which I can only assume leads to an adjoining chart room.

  I start setting up when I hear her slip into the bathroom and start the shower. Void, knowing she’s only a few meters away from me, naked and slippery and wet… I can’t get the picture of her breasts out of my mind. They are two perfect little orbs, peaked with pretty pink nipples. How it would feel to swirl my tongue around one of them, to have her tense and arch her back and moan in pleasure.

  I shake my head trying to clear my dirty thoughts and set up for the comm. I key in the network address for Vano’s device on Lekyo Prime and wait. And wait. Just when I’m about to give up and send a video, I hear his voice, impatient, as if he’s been waiting for me to respond for quite a while.

  “Captain Vano,” I say, my voice probably too loud. “Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, for the love of the Void, what’s going on? Did you reroute the Rulmek ship?” The vid screen is pixelated and blurry bu
t soon comes into focus. Vano is sitting at his command post, a bank of screens and devices behind him.

  I fill him in on the recent events, hoping that he’s got a plan better than my own. The only thing I can think to do is dangerous, stupid and has a high likelihood of failure.

  “I can beam you another copy of the rerouting program directly to your ship,” Vano finally says. “But it’s imprudent that you use it, given the new intel you received about the human slaves.”

  “What should I do?” I ask. For a moment, I think the vid screen has frozen, but he’s just deep in thought.

  “I don’t know,” Vano replies after giving it consideration. “But the warship cannot reach Lekyo Prime. I’ll be in contact.”

  “Wait!” the voice is shrill and distorted through the comm, but I recognize it at once as Queen Bryn.

  “Yes, Queen?”

  “The rebels? What of them? What of Lia?”

  “Lia?” I ask. How did she know about Lia?

  “Yes, is she alright? Did you shoot down their ship?”

  “Void, no,” I say. Bryn had given me permission to do so, but I wasn’t about to do it unless given no other choices. “She’s taking a shower.”

  “She’s my sister!” Bryn says. “I beg of you, Bantokk, protect her with all of your might.”

  Lia is Bryn’s sister?

  Now everything makes sense. Bryn’s sister was taken, along with many others, ten or fifteen years ago when the Rulmek invaded Lekyo Prime. I had begun to suspect that Lia had been a Rulmek captive, but now I have confirmation. It explains her irrational hatred, her advanced knowledge of the Rulmek, her understanding of their language. It explains that long, twisted scar running down the side of her face. It explains her reluctance to give in to physical pleasure, her combat skills. Female captives are abused and exploited, so those who manage to escape often pour themselves into learning self-defense and fighting skills. Understandably, too, many of them also decide that they’ve had enough of males of any species and live out the rest of their lives without a mate.