by Pearl Foxx
“Fine,” Tane growled. He flung open the door and stomped down the hall.
At his office door, he took a quick steadying breath. He told himself he was controlling his temper so he didn’t kill her, but he wasn’t stupid. He felt the flutter in his stomach. The twitch of his cock. This motherfucking female was going to kill him.
He flung open his door harder than the hall’s door.
Kinyi looked up from where she sat behind his desk, reclining in his leather chair with her boots propped on top of a stack of papers. She had his vidscreen playing the news, the blue light flickering over her face. The scales she’d torn from her skin looked more healed today, less angry and raw. She wore tight leather pants, thigh-high suede boots, and a top that revealed a large swath of pale abs. She was nothing but trafficking bait in a get-up like that, especially in this neighborhood.
“That,” he growled, pointing to his vidscreen, “is password protected.”
“It’s cute that you think that.” She held up a half-eaten donut. “These are good. What do you call them?”
He stalked around the desk and snatched the gooey, glazed mess from her hand. “Not for you.” He crammed the rest of it into his mouth, causing her to smirk. He knocked her boots off his desk. “Get up. Get the hell up. Didn’t you hear me when I told you not to follow me anymore?”
She crossed her legs in a long, slow motion that had him gritting his teeth. “I didn’t have to follow you. I know where this place is all on my own.”
“Do you disobey all the males back home too?”
She threw back her head in a waterfall of blonde hair and laughed, the smooth column of her throat on full display. She was the most vexing female he had ever met, but a nagging urge to kiss the skin under her jaw consumed him. The strength of the urge completely threw him off guard.
“They don’t even bother trying to tell me what to do anymore,” she said when she’d finished laughing. She wiped beneath her kohl-rimmed eyes. “But thank you for that laugh. It’s been a while since something was that funny. Stupid, but funny.”
She backed down from nothing. No one. Either she was incredibly brave to have come to his office, or Kladuu was in that much trouble. He figured both. And dammit if her reckless, fearless nature wasn’t a complete turn on.
And he was really craving some of that bitter fruit today.
He told himself not to do it. That it was a bad idea. But the words were already rolling off his tongue. “Get up or I’m going to kiss you.”
Her lips quirked into a smirking challenge. “Oh, really?” She pretended to consider her options for a moment, her hand on her chin in thought, then said, “Guess you’ll have to kiss me, then.”
He surged forward and grabbed her hips. The leather of her pants was warm against his skin, heated by her body. He jerked her upright.
She laughed again. Her hands went to his neck. She twined herself against him as he slammed her hips against his. With their mouths crashing together, he spun her toward his desk. He dropped her on top and swept everything but his vidscreen off with one sweep of his arm. Kinyi hooked her legs around his waist and yanked him to her. Her mouth was greedy against his, matching his frenzied pace.
He drove his hands through her hair to crane her neck back and pull her closer to him. She hissed, and he froze. “What?”
“Careful with my face, caveman.” She pulled his mouth back to hers, but not before his eyes had gone to the angry, red wounds on the side of her face. They’d started to bruise as if her body was rejecting the lack of scales.
“That’s really fucked up,” he mumbled against her mouth. “You shouldn’t do that to yourself.”
She grabbed his chin and jerked his face to the side, exposing his neck to her teeth. He shuddered as she nibbled at his flesh. “Just shut up,” she commanded.
“Fine by me.”
He released one hand from her hair and ran it down her side to her exposed stomach. Her muscles twitched beneath his touch. He normally liked his women soft and curvy, but there was nothing soft about Kinyi. Her body was pure steel against his, matching him for everything he was worth. He couldn’t touch enough of her fast enough. He shoved her shirt up and palmed a bare breast, rolling her nipple between his fingers and pinching.
Her legs clamped crushingly tight around him. With a growl, she wrapped her hand around his throat and pulled him down on top of her. The desk groaned beneath their weight, and Tane had this horrible image of them crashing to the floor in a spray of shattering wood. But the image flashed away as Kinyi shoved her hand down the top of his pants and fisted her hand around his achingly hard cock.
Upon finding that her hand couldn’t wrap fully around his width, she froze. He leaned back enough to smirk down at her. Her lips parted as she ran her hand up his length to his tip. She ran a finger across his slit, collecting the bead of pre-cum. As he watched, she withdrew her hand from his pants and placed her finger and his cum in her mouth.
He forgot how to breathe for a second.
She sucked her finger one last time and released it from her mouth with a moist pop. “Tasty.”
“Fuck,” he hissed.
He shoved her shirt up the rest of the way and lowered his mouth to her pert breasts. She arched up against him and rolled her hips against his cock like she knew every way to ride him and then some.
His heart was beating out of his chest when the vidscreen’s blue light flashed, followed by a brief emergency signal. The local news anchor droned on about the space station, but Tane heard nothing but the ringing in his ears from Kinyi’s delicious skin as he tongued her nipples, sucking one and then the other.
“Wait.” She pushed him back and sat up on her elbows so she could watch the vidscreen on the desk beside her. “Hang on.”
“What?” He stared at her breasts, which were red and moist from his attention. It took him a second to pull his focus up to her face.
She wiped a hand across her mouth. “Are you not hearing this? Turn it up!”
“Computer, volume up,” he told the vidscreen once he’d pulled himself back to reality. The anchor’s voice filled the small office.
“—mass evacuation on the Zynthar International Space Station after an alien attack. Casualties are reportedly low thanks to the containment of the fire. Small explosions have been reported, along with air quality concerns. As we speak, evacuees are being transported into the Chicago area for processing and receiving.” The anchor pressed a hand to his ear. “And this just in! Commander Gideon is reportedly missing. Perhaps taken hostage by one of the alien invaders.”
“The station is attacked all the time,” Tane said. His eyes went from the vidscreen to Kinyi and back again. She jerked her shirt back down in place.
“No.” She shook her head, still listening to the anchor droning on about what could have happened to the humans’ commander. “This was us.”
“You? As in, the Draqons?”
“As in Maxsym, our unmated Swarm Master, went to the station to assassinate Gideon. Fucking hell.” She raked a hand through her hair. “Gideon isn’t missing. He’s on Kladuu. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I have to contact Zayd. He might need me back there.”
He blinked at her. His thoughts were nestled around his still-hard cock, and he was having a hard time catching up, especially with her lips swollen from their kisses and the scent of her arousal so thick in the air. “Why?” He cleared his throat. “Why would Zayd need you?”
She shook her head and jumped off the desk, forcing him back a few steps. After adjusting her pants, she looked up at him, her jaw clenching. “Because the war might have already started.”
Chapter Seven
Kinyi
Kinyi strode past Tane and out of his office. She hated that he might smell the fear spiking through her blood. War could have come to Kladuu, and she was here, on Earth, doing nothing. She’d reached the street before he caught up with her.
He grabbed her arm and jerked her to stop. “For fuck’s sake, sl
ow down. Where are you going?”
The evening made the street even darker than normal beneath the gleaming spires of the upper city. The streetlamps buzzed loudly and flickered with surges of impotent electricity. The puddle Kinyi stood in reeked of rotten meat.
“To my ship. I have to get a comm to Zayd. They might need me.”
Tane frowned. “You have a ship?”
Kinyi rolled her eyes. “What is it about men that when their cocks get hard they can’t think with their actual brains?” She waved a hand down at his still very hard—very impressively hard—cock. “Yes, I have a ship. How do you think I got here?”
He adjusted his pants, and his narrowed eyes promised violence. Around his violet irises were flecks of silver, like tiny bits of moonstone.
“Let me get this straight. You brought an alien ship to Earth? To Cyn City, no less. The city with the highest crime rate in all of the American Corporation?”
“I’m not stupid. I hid it.” She hadn’t actually thought that part through when Gerrit had loaned Zayd a Vilkan ship that could be preprogramed with the route to Earth. She had no clue how to fly the thing, but she hadn’t had to lift a finger until she landed on Earth and needed to open the hatch.
“Let’s hope you hid it well. For your sake.”
“It’s underwater,” Kinyi snapped. “No one will find it.”
Tane’s eyebrows shot up. For a second, she thought he was impressed with her cleverness, but then he smirked and her heart sank. “You do know the water recedes and rises, right? Depending on how much water the Deluge moves to generate electricity?”
Kinyi cursed under her breath. She whirled around and forced herself not to sprint down the street. The neon lights flickered across the puddles, which shone with oil-slick rainbows before she plowed through them, the heels of her boots spraying water around her.
Tane ran up beside her, still laughing.
“You can fuck off, now,” she muttered.
“Oh, no. I want to see this, and as we walk, you can explain to me how the humans’ commander got involved with Kladuu.”
“Gideon,” Kinyi growled, her skin prickling.
As they walked and Kinyi explained Commander Gideon’s role in the fight on Kladuu, the streets began to fill with people getting off work. Mostly cyborgs coming from the Deluge. Vendors started hawking their wares, their calls punctuating the dark like stars. High overhead, trams zipped by with a thunderous racket. Kinyi made a few more turns until they were on the outskirts of the city, beneath the shadow of the Deluge.
“And he’s on Kladuu?” Tane asked after she had finished explaining.
“Somewhere. Or Maxsym kidnapped him just like the reports said. That sounds like something that idiot would do.”
In the swamp zone, the grass grew high in brambles full of thorns and reptiles. The marsh leading to the base of the towering wall looked identical to when Kinyi had landed here weeks ago. The swamp had been appealing because it was far enough away from the city for the ship to not be stumbled across.
A sigh of relief escaped Kinyi when she saw the marsh was exactly as she’d left it. “See?” She turned to Tane. “It’s fine—”
A peal of laughter sounded from deeper in the marsh. She spun toward the sound and saw flashlight beams arc through the darkness before going out. Metal squealed in complaint.
Her metal. Her ship.
“Raiders,” Tane said. She heard the grin in his voice. “Should have known better.”
“Motherfuckers!” Kinyi shouted.
She raced across the marsh, her boots sinking deep into the thick, murky waters. Within seconds, she was soaked through and shivering, growling and spitting with every step.
“Leave my ship alone, assholes!” she yelled.
The laughter stopped. She stumbled onto a patch of dry land and leaped over a stack of old tires and oil barrels leaking sludge into the ground. One dead tree stuck out ahead like a skeletal hand. She’d parked her ship beneath it, in the water, but as she closed in, leaping from one dry patch of land to another, she saw it wasn’t completely submerged. Not even close.
Someone whispered near her ship. It was followed by a snicker.
She jumped onto the ship’s roof and rounded on the fuckers.
There were six of them, dressed in black, with masks made of piping hoses and old-style oxygen breathers. Some held flashlights like bats, but others had rusty knives. They lifted their faces and stared up at her, laughing behind their tubes.
“This ship is mine,” Kinyi growled.
“Finders keepers,” they sang in unison. They were young, likely not even adults.
But Kinyi would kill them anyway. And not an ounce of her would feel guilty for it.
She jumped down, knocking into two raiders and sending them bowling into a third. With a sweeping kick, she took out the one beside her. The others were on her before she’d recovered her footing, swatting with their flashlights and slicing at her with their old blades.
She threw one off her back and punched another in his soft belly. It should have broken his spine, but the kid barely grunted.
Fuck, she was pulling her punches. She couldn’t make herself truly hurt these little bastards. They were just kids.
One kicked her shin, and she smacked him. She caught the tiniest one in the group by the collar and lifted him off the ground. He kicked his feet in the air, yowling like a wildcat. The others froze.
“Now,” Kinyi said, huffing a bit. “Step back from my ship.”
“This ain’t your ship,” one of the ruffians called back. With the masks muffling their voices, it was impossible to tell which one had spoken.
“It is.”
“But it’s alien!”
Kinyi cocked an eyebrow at the lot. “And you don’t think I’m alien?”
“You’ve got two legs!”
“Yeah! You don’t even have a tail!”
They were even younger than she’d thought. Their voices turned high-pitched with excitement, revealing their youth.
She set the kid down and he scampered away.
“Listen,” she said. “I’ll let you go, but drop any parts you took.”
“We didn’t get any!”
“Not even a rusty nut!”
With a ripping growl, she leaped from the roof of her ship, splashing into the marsh as the street brats scattered. They dissolved into the shadows with peals of laughter, but they moved too fast for Kinyi to grab one by the collar. Her boots were instantly marred, her jacket soaking up even more water. She would have given anything to ring a neck or two.
“Looks like you hid it really well.”
She slowly turned toward the sound of Tane’s voice. He stood at the nose of her ship, body propped against the metal and arms crossed over his massive chest. His boots weren’t even wet.
“Where the hell were you?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Didn’t want to interrupt.”
Kinyi’s vision tilted with bright slashes of red. She could have throttled Tane too, but she took a deep breath instead. Slowly, she exhaled. Rage management. She was in control of how she reacted. It was a mantra she had to repeat because she was often in a position where she had to decide between ripping someone’s head off or taking the high road.
“It doesn’t matter now,” she said. She swiped a leech off her jacket. “I’m leaving this horrible planet. My people—our people—need me.”
“I don’t think you’re going anywhere.”
Kinyi’s body stiffened. “Is that a threat?”
Tane snorted. “Don’t think so highly of yourself. I meant that.” He lifted his chin, indicating something behind Kinyi.
She turned around.
The entire underside of her ship had been scavenged. The metal casing had been peeled back like a hard-boiled egg to reveal disconnected wires, missing plates, entire control panels just gone. Her ship was a skeleton forgotten in the desert. Those kids had carted off almost her entire ship before she even got
here.
“Those motherfuckers!” she shouted, her voice echoing off the Deluge.
Tane laughed.
Chapter Eight
Tane
Tane practically dragged Kinyi back to the Ball & Joint.
Her ship was completely wrecked. The raiders had barely left a husk behind. It would be left out in the marsh to rust or be picked apart even more or used as a shanty, but it most certainly wouldn’t be flying Kinyi home anytime soon.
It was a fact she couldn’t quite come to terms with.
“I could track their scents. After I kill them, I could take—”
“You’re not going to kill children,” he said for the millionth time, though he kept a firm grip on her elbow as he towed her along the darkened street, the vendors’ lights playing across the puddles.
“They’re little bastards. They deserve a good lashing.”
“They’re homeless and hungry.”
She growled, but he steered her through the front door of the Ball & Joint, the bell tinkling over their heads as they entered. The bar was already full of patrons nursing their drinks and talking over the music. On the stages, a few girls danced half-heartedly, saving their energy for the late-night crowd that was typically far more drunk and inclined to tip well.
Tane stopped beside an occupied barstool and gave the tenant a long look.
“Sorry, Tane,” the man muttered, jumping to his feet.
Tane pushed Kinyi onto the seat.
“What are you doing? I need to—”
“You need to sit right there and have a drink. You can’t do shit tonight.” He walked around the bar and ducked under the partition. He nodded at Hollywood, who’d apparently drawn the short straw tonight and had to work the bar. “Two whiskeys,” Tane told him.
“I don’t want a drink.” Kinyi’s eyes were locked on the television above the bar. Tane didn’t need to look to know it was more news coverage of the space station. He changed the channel. “Hey! I was watching that!”
