Captured: The Xandari Chronicles (Book One) (Dark Sci-Fi Romance)

by Raven Dark

And it was also Falcor the Luck Dragon pink.

  “What the fuck, get away!” I swung my foot at it. The creature lifted its head. A scream died in my throat.

  Its mouth opened on a low growl, showing me thousands of pointed white teeth. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought it was grinning at me. Grinning like the Cheshire cat.

  I screamed bloody murder.

  The man at the console glanced over his shoulder. I heard him snort, and he shook his head. “Tarku!” His purple eyes danced with amusement.

  Purple eyes! They really were purple, a deep, dark violet hue. His thick, shoulder-length hair was even darker, so black it looked almost blue.

  Star charts and outer space. Pink dogs and purple-eyed men. I’d been kidnapped by aliens. I was cuffed and naked on a fucking spaceship with aliens from outer fucking space.

  The purple-eyed man turned back to his screens.

  “Hey, asshole!” I shouted, jerking at the cuffs on my wrists. “Let me the hell out of here!”

  Ignoring me completely, Purple Eyes just kept on typing on the console in front of him.

  The dog continued to sniff and lick at my feet. I kicked out, and it nipped playfully at my toes. The robotic voice still filled the room. It gave what sounded like some kind of announcement. I didn’t understand a word.

  I was hearing an alien language. My head swam with implications that seemed too big to fit in my head. Panic began to set in.

  “Did you hear me, you purple-eyed freak? Get these cuffs off!”

  Purple Eyes kept on typing.

  I was about to curse at him again, but the lights in the room flickered alarmingly, making me look up at the domed fixtures in the metallic ceiling.

  The computerized voice warbled, and its words came out slowly like a dying battery.

  Blackness surrounded me. The man—he was an alien, a fucking alien—growled words that sounded like curses. There was a thump, as if he’d kicked something.

  “Fan-fucking-tastic.” I’d been kidnapped by extraterrestrials on a broken-down ship? Were we flying through outer space in a ship that was about to kick the fucking bucket?

  “If we’re going to crash, don’t you think you should let me out of here?” I shouted, twisting in the cuffs.

  The lights flickered back on. The computer’s voice warbled before returning to its normal speed.

  Purple Eyes continued typing as if I wasn’t there. Finally, he ambled in my direction. The son of a bitch was taking his sweet-ass time.

  He stopped in front of the partition. “Vash.”

  A command, because the glass pane lifted with a mechanical whine and disappeared into the ceiling with a heavy thud.

  The second the glass lifted, I…felt him. The alien was gorgeous, but the way my skin hummed with his presence had to be more than attraction.

  With that inky black hair falling across his muscled shoulders, and those deep piercing eyes like twin alien moons, he looked human enough, yet the awareness of him that electrified my blood felt anything but human.

  I should have been thrashing to escape my restraints, but my brain was too busy trying to catch up with what was happening.

  An alien. An honest to fuck space man.

  The pink creature lifted its head. The alien snapped his fingers in the direction he’d come. “Tarku. Gosht.”

  I was only semi-aware of the creature snuffling as it left, curling its huge body up on the floor there. The alien’s presence made focusing on much else impossible.

  The alien shook his head at the creature with obvious irritation, then strode toward me. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

  He had to be at least six and a half feet tall. His eyes were too intense to look away from, his features savagely beautiful in a barbaric, Greek God sort of way. The lights in this area were brighter, and under them, I could clearly see flecks of iridescent blue in his hair.

  Stopping a few feet from me, his gaze raked over my body, making me painfully aware of my nakedness. His eyes fixated on the mounds of my breasts, on the junction between my thighs, his pupils dilating until the purple around them disappeared and his eyes looked almost black. Utterly shameless hunger—what I could only call possession—flashed in his gaze.

  Panic stabbed through me at that look. Restrained as I was, if he decided to do more than gawk at me, I wouldn’t have been able to stop him.

  I almost hoped he was keeping his distance because he was afraid of me. Yeah, I wish. He looked like he could have snapped me in half like a twig. Instead, he just stood there, staring at me.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you, Adonis? Get these cuffs off me.”

  Cocking his head, his seriously gorgeous lips moved slowly, mouthing my words. His dark brows winged down. I could see him fixating on the word fuck in wonderment.

  “Adon-is?” He stumbled over the unfamiliar word as if it felt odd on his tongue. Then he shook his head, as though dismissing something, and crossed the space between us.

  Making no move to free me at all, the alien took a small metal device out of a pocket on the belt around his waist, flipped it open, and passed in front of my body. It gave off a quiet, slow beep before he closed it and started checking my cuffs.

  Again, as if I wasn’t there.

  Had he just scanned me? How the fuck was this even happening?

  “Did you understand me, E.T.? Take these cuffs off!”

  He made a hushing sound and stroked my hair. “Nayna.”

  Horror slid through me. He’d petted me like an animal in a zoo he was there to feed.

  I jerked my head away. “Get your hands off me!” If my hands hadn’t been restrained, I’d have busted the alien fucker’s nose.

  His brow furrowed. He said something that sounded like a question.

  “I can’t understand a fucking word you’re saying.”

  His eyes went to the ceiling in apparent exasperation. He let out a string of words that might have been alien curses. Then he took something else from his belt, a long, thin metal rod. He passed it over my shoulder, a few inches from touching the skin. The instrument reminded me of one of those metal detecting wands in airports.

  The wand obviously didn’t do whatever he wanted, because he growled the same curse words. He returned the rod to his belt and jabbed a button on a band around his wrist.

  He asked the same question he’d asked a moment ago.

  “Nope, can’t understand a word, jackass.” At least that’s what I hoped he was asking.

  More curses. He jabbed at the wrist band again, cocked his head and said a few words, his brow raised.

  “Still not receiving, space man.”

  “Rosht.” That, too, sounded like a swearword. He dropped his shoulders and stalked across the room to an intercom on the wall. He stabbed at a button there, holding it down. “Raul?”

  There was a beeping sound from the com.

  Adonis stalked back toward me. Once more, he stopped a few feet away and crossed his bulging arms.

  “Are you going to let me go or what?” I snapped.

  “Hiet.” He shook his head, his eyes sparkling. Taking in every inch of my stripped body, he rocked slowly on his heels.

  Waiting for something.

  Fuck. I might not have understood a word he said, but the alien jerkoff sure as hell understood me. He wasn’t going to let me go, and what’s more, he was enjoying himself.

  “What the hell are you waiting for?”

  “Raul, nayna. Nist.”

  Maybe I was reading too much into words I had no way of understanding, and I had no idea what ‘raul’ meant, but his patronizing tone seemed to say something like chill out, woman.

  When whatever he’d been waiting for didn’t happen, he looked behind him, then turned those intense purple eyes on me.

  Damn, they were beautiful, just like the rest of him.

  He shrugged, sighed with feigned impatience, and spoke in his guttural language. Then he closed in on me, his movements slow and predatory. Ho
wever gorgeous he was, he suddenly reminded me of a stalking wolf. His eyes drank me in, burning with heat.

  As if I was all his to do with as he wished.

  My heart sped up, beating a tattoo against my ribs. I’d be lying to myself if I said the way he was looking at me didn’t turn me on just a bit. “Unless you’re going to get me out of these cuffs, just back the fuck off, Adonis.”

  Toe to toe with me, he towered over me, looming large, every inch of him rippling with frightening strength that had to be far beyond any bodybuilder on Earth.

  He ran his long fingers over my bare arms. The caress was feather-light, yet it made my skin tingle with heat wherever his fingers touched. I hated that I had to force myself past the warmth hammering through my blood.

  “Get. Your. Hands. Off. Me.”

  His chest expanded on a deep, rumbling breath. His nostrils flared, as though he smelled something on the air. Something that made his pupils expand again.

  Far from backing off, his fingers stroked something warm and metallic on my chest.

  The dolphin Shelly had given me.

  Oh, God. Shelly. I didn’t even want to think about her right now.

  Purple Eyes lifted the dolphin pendant up, inspecting it curiously.

  “What the hell are you doing?” My voice sounded pathetically high in my ears. I had a sudden irrational fear he was going to rip the necklace from my neck and I’d never see it again.

  Letting the dolphin drop, the alien’s fingers traced a heated path between my breasts. He stepped closer still, until his powerful frame was pressed against mine.

  I froze, the fight going out of me on a bolt of panic. Too afraid to move, I wanted to scream, but my voice died in my throat.

  He lowered his head to the side of my neck and inhaled deeply. Alien words fell from his lips, his low, bass voice transforming his harsh language into something richly exotic and incredibly hot.

  My God, was he smelling me?

  Shit, he could have been telling me he was going to kill me, and still every word he said made my nipples peak until they poked at his chest. Whatever he said, the tone brimmed with approval and dark, threatening promise.

  Shame and embarrassment at my reaction to him scalded me. I bucked against him, trying to twist away. His hands pressed on the cuffs on my wrists, his arms penning me in.

  “Nist, Nayna. Nist.” His tone suggested the words were an order. His warm breath fanned my face, his eyes drawing me in like dark vortexes, threatening to swallow me whole. His lips were so close I could feel the heat of them, inviting my mouth to mate with his.

  Jesus, he smelled like the most delicious spice, the kind that turned everything it touched into an aphrodisiac. The scent made my mouth water.

  “Tarku.”

  When the strong male voice spoke from behind him, the alien who had been feeling me up spun around and moved away from me, giving me a clear view of what stood behind him.

  Another alien was there, speaking to the dog-creature that had followed him. Wagging its tail, it barked happily until the alien man made a stop motion with his hand.

  The dog disappeared into another part of the room, out of sight.

  My jaw dropped when I finally got a good look at the newcomer. He was huge, a good head taller than Purple Eyes. I swallowed, my eyes going way, way up to his face.

  And meeting with a gaze that stole my breath. They shone like spheres of gold fire.

  Familiarity made me stiffen.

  In the club, I hadn’t been able to tell what color his eyes were, but they were the same intense, searing eyes I’d seen earlier.

  Mr. Blackwell’s fucking bodyguard. Only he wasn’t a bodyguard. He wasn’t wearing a suit now, dressed instead like Purple Eyes, in leathery black pants and the same high, military style boots. And no shirt to hide his ridiculously wide, muscled chest. Besides, I felt him, his presence thrumming through my blood, the same reaction I’d had to Purple Eyes.

  What in the holy fucking hell? What was he doing here? Alarm bells went off in my head like gongs.

  It was then that I noticed his face twisting with fury. He growled something harsh at Purple Eyes.

  While my brain desperately tried to get a grasp on what was happening here, Purple Eyes spoke a series of words in a tone grating with affronted shock.

  Whatever the words were, they ended in “…Atan Raul.”

  The giant from the club stalked across the room to him and promptly threw his massive fist in the other alien’s face.

  Purple Eyes slammed into a wall with a crash.

  “Fost, Raul. Rosht.” His eyes widened in surprise.

  “Hiet.” The giant growled the single word in the low, quiet tone of controlled rage.

  The other vaulted to his feet with the movement of a trained warrior and faced the giant, fists tight. Startled but unafraid. He spat a phrase that sounded like an angry question, then shook his head.

  Going toe to toe with the giant, he pointed at me, his tone furious. “Hast nayna rao.” He pointed at himself. “Rao.”

  They’re fighting over me. Two alien barbarians are fucking fighting over me like a piece of prime meat.

  If I had to guess, I’d have said the word rao meant “mine.” It screamed possession.

  I expected Purple Eyes to throw a punch right back at the big guy. Instead, he glanced at me, his lips turned up in a smirk. He winked at me.

  Then he clapped the giant on the shoulder.

  Purple Eyes stalked across the room but stopped at the intercom. He spoke a few words, gesturing to the wand on his belt. I had the sense he was giving the other a report of some sort.

  The giant glanced at me, brows scrunching with concern—for me, I hoped. Then he nodded to the other. He gave him what sounded like a command.

  Purple Eyes smirked over at me, then returned his nod. “Daz, Atan Raul.”

  I had the feeling the words were supposed to be respectful, but amusement laced his tone before he shook his head with a grin and disappeared in the same direction the dog-creature had gone.

  As soon as he was gone, leaving me alone with the golden-eyed alien, the giant stared down at his knuckles with what looked like shock at his own actions. Bruising colored the skin there.

  With the other alien gone, I let out a long breath, feeling as though the air had been sucked out of the room and was just now flooding back in.

  I didn’t know why, but the giant had saved me from whatever his crewmate would have done to me if he hadn’t showed up. And not to mention, my inexplicable reaction to him, one that left me wondering if I’d have been able to resist him if had done something more. I was too relieved to care why he’d intervened.

  I had no idea what he’d been doing at the club, or why I was here, but I owed this alien the benefit of the doubt for what he’d just done.

  Now maybe I’d be able to get the hell out of here and somehow make sense of this shitstorm that had become my life.

  3

  Unexpected Intentions

  “Thanks,” I said, closing my eyes in relief when I saw Purple Eyes walking through a door on the other side of the room.

  Under normal circumstances, it would have pissed me off that I’d needed rescuing, or that this monstrosity of an alien thought I needed it. But like it or not, I was trapped here with at least one alien that expected to be allowed to get handsy with me, and if not for this one, I would have been screwed.

  Literally.

  Desperately shutting out the fact that I wore not a stitch in from of him, I jiggled the cuffs. “It’s been a blast, but please get me out of here now.”

  I was babbling, I knew this. I tended to do that when I was scared out of my skull.

  The alien—he really was a giant—crossed the middle of the room. He moved much too slowly. He also put his hands behind his huge back.

  Watching me. Making no more effort to free me than the other one had done.

  Taking in every inch of my body with quiet appraisal.

 
; I put my head back, dread settling in the pit of my stomach. “You gotta be shitting me.”

  When I looked at him again, I noticed two things. One, his brows were scrunched in confusion. I could all but see him trying to work out what I’d said in his mind. He understood me—how, I had no idea—but he didn’t understand the expression.

  I mean, how does one ‘shit’ someone?

  If the situation hadn’t been so fucked up, I would have busted a gut laughing.

  And secondly, his eyes drank me in with the same openly lustful hunger as the other guy. The same, but it was quiet, carefully under control.

  Purple Eyes had an aura of wild darkness to him that, in any other situation, I would have found exciting. This giant was all command and seriousness. Discipline. I could see it in the way he’d asserted his authority over Purple Eyes and in the way he stood now, in a military stance. I could tell that punching his crewmate was way out of the norm for him.

  His more mature manner didn’t make me feel any less like a piece of meat hung there for his amusement, though.

  “Ookay,” I said slowly. “Exactly what the hell is going on here?”

  He said nothing, watching my every move. Watching my lips move as if they fascinated him. Watching the rise and fall of my breasts on increasingly heavy, panic-induced breaths. His gaze fixated on my nipples with a mix of wonderment and desire. His eyes dropped to my pussy, and his throat worked.

  With my arms restrained, I squirmed in some futile effort to hide what couldn’t be hidden from him. But he movement only seemed to draw attention to my breasts and pussy. His pupils blotted out the gold in his eyes.

  Understanding as to what was happening here—or some measure of it—was starting to sink in. He hadn’t come in to rescue me from his crewmate. He’d been reacting to some male territorial urge. There was nothing heroic about his actions. And since he’d been in the club with Blackwell, and since he was here now, he’d been every bit involved in my kidnapping as Sauders. Perhaps he’d even ordered it himself. But that’s where the understanding ended and the confusion began. Sauders, Shelly, even Blackwell; I couldn’t make sense of their involvement or why they would have done it. I only knew that they had.