by Reagan Woods
Silex shook his head to clear it of the building lust. His groin felt uncomfortably constricted inside his field uniform. It was always that way with her. She did something to him that made his brain take a hiatus while his glands took control. Sometimes, the lusty confusion seemed almost mutual. Almost.
He clenched his jaw against the rush of frustration. It was maddening. She was maddening.
And shamefully addictive. For a male who prided himself of his ability to leave anyone or anything, it was galling.
Francesca was secretive and sneaky. If he wasn’t determined to dig out the truth of what was going on at Camp Two – and how she was involved – he’d haul her back to Camp Three, back to Texas, forthwith and lock her in the brig.
It was tempting.
Yet, it would almost certainly blow his mission. Commander Skylan had charged him with investigating the Doranos running the other Earth camps. Since several of the Doranos charged with the care of the Earthers in Camp Two had broken ranks and kidnapped twenty Earth females, General Darvan himself wanted eyes on the operations at the remaining camps. That was where Silex came in. He had the skills to travel like a phantom, and Skylan had given him the tech to help him break into the camps.
As far as his brother Warriors were concerned, he’d died on his last field assignment, killed by a resistant Earther. Only a small group of Warriors knew that he had been assigned to go deep under cover into the other Earth camps to find out who might be colluding with the Doranos males who’d raided the Earther prisoners from the Texas camp.
As far as he was concerned, his mission legitimately tied to this escaped Earther. Now. After last night’s attempted assassination, he had to assume she was as much a target as he.
Something was very wrong at Camp Two. Neither Doranos nor Corians would deliberately attack a compatible female. Corians wouldn’t risk females because they hoped to mate them. Doranos – Neerum, Camp Two’s administrator especially - liked to fuck them. Either way, someone determined she would die alongside him instead of collecting the female before they moved on him. The whole situation baffled.
It occurred to him to ask her outright what the hell she was about. How had she known to shoot down the drone? Where had she acquired the weapon he wore even now on his belt? Why was Neerum so eager to kill her?
He could ask, probably would ask, but he had no doubt her answers would be fabricated.
Francesca had yet to tell him the truth about anything. The way she turned her lust off and on, he suspected even that wasn’t genuine. The thought of that ought to have wilted his raging cock stand, but it didn’t seem to matter. It was entirely possible nothing in her life was sincere. To his disgust, that didn’t stop him wanting her in the slightest.
For the last year and change, she’d played the role of confidante with the other Earth females. By all appearances, she’d fostered deep, loyal relationships with them. Her behavior had been consistent, and her maternal concern seemed genuine.
The fact remained, she’d left those young females without a backwards glance. She could have saved at least a few of them from the mutinous raiders.
Soon after meeting her, becoming intrigued by her, he’d discovered her willingness to trade her body for information. When he’d made certain he was her only source, she’d grown angry - probably the only real emotion she’d expressed since they’d met.
So, he must use his skills of deduction to sift through the evidence and find the answers he needed. His mission might depend on knowing what she knew. First order of business was to make certain she wouldn’t, couldn’t, sneak off without him.
Silex rolled to his feet and moved carefully toward the back of the cave. His helmet perched on a waist-high ledge of rock. Its light clearly illuminated the fast moving, ankle deep water – and the image of female perfection standing within.
His imagination hadn’t done her slight, rounded form justice. Golden skin slick with soap bubbles gleamed in the light. Water sluiced over her body as she twisted her ragged shirt above her head, using the meagre stream to rinse more soap from the gleaming blue-black lengths of her hair.
Speech deserted him. He’d meant to begin a subtle interrogation this very moment, but seeing her naked and vulnerable, the dark berries of her nipples taut in the cool air, gave him pause. Lust boiled in his belly, mixing with the frustration and rage that had been building up since he’d realized she’d escaped and wasn’t coming back.
Before he could formulate a thought, his body acted of its own accord. He toed off his loosely-laced boots and stripped out of his clothes. The water in the small stream was like ice as he crossed to where she washed, face going from dreamy-eyed bliss to alarm in the silence between one heart beat and the next.
Chapter 11
Standing in the brisk water as she massaged suds of carefully hoarded shampoo through her hair, Francesca puzzled over the unexpected bounty of water she’d found. This little stream wasn’t deep, but it put the stingy trickle she’d sought to shame. It had to be fed by rainwater and patchy snowmelt from somewhere above. Given the parched state of the surrounding landscape, it didn’t make sense there was enough precipitation to wet this little stream. Their elevation didn’t support the theory of continuous snow melt but…nothing else made sense.
The strip of lights built into Silex’s helmet was set at a low glow. In her mind, she pretended it was a toasty warm fire that threw jagged shadows against the rough walls. She longed to luxuriate in a warm bath as she had in her youth, but that was a pipe dream. Instead, she’d count herself lucky to get this frigid sponge bath.
The front room of the cave was somewhat walled off from this little crevasse. A rocky “bank” - more a ledge that stepped up sharply – butted up against the partition and led into the front of the cave. In this cramped fissure, was a narrow triangle of waterfall that fed the stream. There was a scattering of rocky outcroppings, and a few feet away, the small stream disappeared down a swirling drain-like hole.
She bent, used her newly laundered shirt to soak up more of the icy water. Wringing the water out to sluice the suds from her hair, she closed her eyes and tried to enjoy the sensation of being clean. The spreading numbness in her toes didn’t help her block out the frosty temp, but she was determined to enjoy the moment. Her scalp had been itchy and dirty for far too long.
“What-?” Francesca squeaked as smooth, warm skin over hard muscle slid into her personal space. Silex’s chiseled body bumped her several steps toward the back wall, his hands steady but unyielding as she struggled to maintain her balance while blinking the streaming water from her eyes.
“What the hell are you doing?” She sputtered as they came to a stop.
She hadn’t heard him approach. For all his bulk, he could move like a wraith when he chose. It didn’t help matters that this space, with its sloping ceiling and narrow walls, was a tight squeeze.
“I came to check your status.” The sexy rumble of his voice causing her skin to tighten and her pulse to skip. She leaned into the heat pumping off his bare skin, her eyelids feeling heavy again as his warmth surrounded her, beating back the cold.
His metallic eyes held a fire she hadn’t really seen before. It was the cold half-smirk on his face that dumped the metaphorical ice water over her head. She was doing it again, letting him wind her up with his masculine hormones. This never ended well.
Francesca did a mental eyeroll at herself. She took a miniscule step away and jerked her arm free then held out a hand to prevent his instinctive step closer. That sliver of space was a requirement for her mental wellbeing.
She needed to stay sharp and focused. Just because Silex gave her ovaries a slingshot ride into high orbit didn’t mean she had to ride along with them.
“A simple ‘Hey, Fran, how’s it going?’ would have sufficed,” she told him dryly, taking great care to look him in the eye. The last thing she needed was the image of him naked burned into her brain. He was hot enough with his uniform only slightly askew i
n her memories of their brief encounters.
They were going to have to work together for at least a little while – she couldn’t think her way around that. They didn’t need this kind of distraction.
After a tense beat, she continued, “Everything’s hunky dory here. So…if there’s nothing else, I’d like some privacy.” Her level tone and its note of bravado were tricks learned from her father. Woman in Control of Her Own Destiny was her character. Hopefully, he’d buy it and back the hell off.
“There’s plenty of room for two to bathe when one is as tiny as you,” he pointed out.
“I’m…what?” She couldn’t say why the knowledge that he was intent on bathing in the same space bore down on her like a freight train, momentarily throwing her off her mental game. Duh. Why else would he be standing back here in the chilly water?
Despite the distance between them, his scent rose around her in the small space, spicy and earthy and male. The heat from his skin reached for her though his body, a fascinating study in light and shadow she was compelled to glance at - repeatedly, didn’t move.
A panicked buzzing started in her ears and all the blood rushed to her toes. “I’m all finished up here, so I’ll just, uh, go dry off.”
She darted around him, splashing ungracefully out of the water.
“We need to talk, Francesca.” Her name rolled off his tongue like a verbal caress and she shivered hard, battling back the urge to throw herself into his arms and damn the consequences.
Her breath ragged, she kept her back to him as she shook the worst of the water from her limbs. He didn’t follow, so she gathered what remained of her dignity and pulled on the one set of dry clothes she’d carried in her pack.
Casually, she turned to face him, twisting her long hair to rid it of excess water. She found a dark shadow on the rough wall over his shoulder to focus on. “I think I’d like to wait until you’re clean and dressed if it’s all the same to you.”
“Still afraid of intimacy, Francesca?”
The soft taunt put her back up. “It’s not like I can stop the reaction to your pheromones,” she snapped. “And it’s not fucking fair for them to affect me like this.”
Stubble marred the shine of his bald head as he tilted it into the light, studying her through shadowed eyes. “Since when is biology fair?” He asked coolly. “If it were, the females and males on my planet would be in equal number. I wouldn’t be here panting after an alien female who rejects me at every turn.” Warming to his theme, his volume increased, his thick arms flexing as he gesticulated to make his point. “A female who will lie, sneak, thieve…a female who might even now be leading me into a trap. Nevermind. Go away.”
He turned to begin splashing the frigid water over his body in quick, angry motions. Her pervy inner teen got a breathtaking view of his perfect ass as his words sank in. He’d risked his life to save hers today – and he was correct; she’d leave him in a heartbeat if it meant she’d find GoGo faster. Maybe it was time to risk telling her secrets to an ally.
When Silex turned back to face her, a challenge gleaming in his alien eyes, Fran’s gaze snagged on the part of him she was so intent on resisting.
“I’ll wait up front for you to finish up.” The urge to go to him, to push him onto the hard rock and have her way with him was too strong to resist. And he was right. They needed to talk.
His low chuckled followed as she quickstepped up onto the bank and rushed back toward the front of the cave with its higher ceiling and more plentiful oxygen.
Chapter 12
Once she was far enough away from Silex and the stranglehold his pheromones had on her body, Fran let out a gusty sigh. No matter that she was out of her depth, she couldn’t let her hormones dictate who was or wasn’t her ally. She wasn’t that woman.
On auto pilot, she finger-combed her hair and plaited it to keep it out of her way. The sun had just about completely set, but she knew better than to use a light. That would be suicidal if they’d been tracked.
She had a goal and she needed to keep her focus. It had been much easier when she and Silex each had their own bunk to retreat to and duties that kept them from encountering one another too frequently, and easier still when they’d been separated in the desert and she thought he was hundreds of miles away.
The fact that she’d been so badly hurt only twenty-four hours before should have kicked these urges completely out of mind. She ran testing fingers over her brow, down her nose. Her head no longer pounded, and her face wasn’t tender.
Still, shouldn’t it have taken her longer to heal?
She almost wanted to believe the sense had been knocked right out of her where Silex was concerned. It would be convenient to blame the constant itch to be with him on a head injury. Instead, she suspected the alien healing wand had set her to rights faster than she’d anticipated.
Or she was dying, and her body was rallying for one last hurrah.
She kicked at a pebble on the cave floor. Things had been going so well. She prepared, escaped, made truly decent time across the desert. Everything was going according to plan. Then, BAM! It all went to shit.
She and GoGo could be safely out of the aliens’ grasp by now. Instead, she’d barely dodged an ugly death and was hiding out with the one sexy-bastard alien she absolutely loathed.
How had this happened?
How could she put things back on track?
Fran snagged the pack she’d leaned against the cave wall. Digging in, she came out with the respiration mask Silex had pushed on her in the seepage.
Silex joined her, his helmet light off, but the slow-rising moon filtering in enough light to see by. Fran refused to look at him directly. Instead, she used the old ‘look over his shoulder’ tactic.
He didn’t force the issue, instead, he turned a hard eye on the pack she held. “Leaving so soon?”
Deceptively relaxed, he sat, propping his back against the wall opposite from where she stood. His uniform was clean and black and molded to his strong body like a second skin highlighting the broad shoulders that tapered down to a lean waist. The way he sprawled across the floor drew her attention to his thick thighs, and her heart started to thump heavily in her chest.
Fucking pheromones. How could they work so quickly? It wasn’t even like this space was as confined as the back of the cave. At this rate, she’d be naked and begging him to just fuck her already in minutes. Damnit. She was going to have to wear the respirator twenty-four/seven.
Decision made, Fran placed the uncomfortable device over her nose and mouth and inhaled quickly before removing the mask to speak, “No. I need a way to deal with you without losing control.”
Though she suspected she looked like a crazy person, Fran replaced the respirator over her face while she waited for his reply. The little teeth were like jagged razors digging into her soft skin.
The stubble growing in where his brows used to be shot straight up. “You expect me to believe this ‘pheromone response’ is real?”
“Dude,” she gasped, ripping the respirator from her face as anger vibrated up her spine. “You’ve adopted way too many human mannerisms, but you use the air quotes correctly,” she conceded with a sarcastic double thumbs-up. “And for the record, I give zero fucks what you do or don’t believe. I know what I’m dealing with.”
Her piece said and said righteously, she slapped the virtual bear trap back on.
“You have such a pretty way with words,” he mocked, shifting forward to rest a forearm casually atop the knee he drew in. “I’m just not certain you’re capable of telling the truth.”
Fran gingerly removed the respirator. Pulling it off and putting it on was already making her face sore. Breathing shallowly through her mouth, she launched, “I know myself and this isn’t me. I’m not some teenager with rioting ovaries. I choose to have sex or not. I will not be controlled this way.” And to make sure she spoke truth, she covered the lower half of her face with the torturous contraption once more.
Silex nodded thoughtfully. “I can see where that might rankle.”
Silence was a wise choice, she told herself. No matter how much she ached to remove the respirator and verbally bitch-slap him, she needed to keep her cool.
They each held their peace – an unusual occurrence.
Slowly, her anger drained leaving her tired and less steady than she would have liked. She slid down to sit, the cold, rough wall at her back.
“I think we could both use a bit more rest,” he finally said, his eyes falling into shadow as the moon rose on swift wings. “I’m going to treat your head and my shoulder once more. Then, I’d suggest we hash out a plan of action in the morning.” He paused. “Nod, if you agree.”
Fran nodded grudgingly. A truce was a fine idea. Though it went against her principles to blatantly agree with Silex, she didn’t see a better solution.
He slipped the wand out of one of the many pockets on his pants and approached. Squatting down, he waived the pencil-like apparatus over her forehead and temples section by section.
“It would be good if you ate something and drank again before going back to sleep.”
The idea of removing the respirator made her squirm uncomfortably. He tilted her chin with a demanding finger until their eyes met. “I will go back into the bathing area and treat my shoulder. That way, you can take your time.” Strangely, there was no mockery in his tone.
She nodded again, and he cupped her cheek gently. “Eat. Drink. Think about trusting me with whatever is going through that cagey brain of yours and try to get some sleep.” With a suspiciously friendly pat on the shoulder, he stood and strode to the back of the cavern.
