by Pearl Foxx
Tane bundled her against him. Her face was crushed against his chest, and his scent enveloped her. But to be touched while she was losing it, while her breath tried to pry apart her ribs and tear through her skin, was too much. She wanted to yell and fight and punch something, but when she struggled against Tane’s hold, he only held her tighter.
He pressed his mouth against the top of her head, his breath warm. “Easy,” he murmured.
The rumble of his voice in his chest sent a shudder through her body.
“Easy.”
“I have to go,” she whispered against his chest.
“We’ll get you back.”
“But my ship—”
“Is just one ship. We’ll figure it out.”
He sounded so sure. So certain. “How?”
“It’s just going to take time—”
She tried to jerk away from him, but his hold was unrelenting. “I don’t have time!”
He ran his hand along her jaw and up her cheek, his fingers brushing her scales before tangling in her hair. He lifted her face so she was forced to look up at him. With his hold on her head, she couldn’t have looked away even if she’d wanted to. But what she saw in his eyes—the certainty and power and resolve—made it so she could have stared up at him forever.
“You’re going home,” he vowed.
She exhaled a long and steady breath, the tension unclenching inside her and releasing on the wave of air. “Okay,” she whispered.
Carefully, so gently she thought she was dreaming, Tane lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her with the softest brush of his lips. She trembled against him, and his arms tightened around her. She wrapped her hands around his thick neck, feeling the corded muscles of his neck and shoulders. His skin was smooth and velvety—the only soft thing about him. Just beneath his skin, she felt the hard muscles of his body, the tension in him, the strength. It hummed through him like an electrical current.
She arched up into his kiss, pressing every part of her body against him that she could. He moved away from her mouth to tenderly kiss her scales and the underside of her jaw, then continued down to her neck. Her breathing turned shallow, and it felt like her heart was beating directly under where his mouth touched her skin. He pulled back and stared at her.
His eyes were solid black. There was a hint of sulfur in the air.
“What happened in that battle?” she murmured.
A ripple rode through his body, and she pressed herself against the vanity. She knew the dangers of being nearby when a Draqon shifted, but she had no clue how dangerous it would be to be near a Draqon who’d lost his mind in his second form.
He held his breath, his body shaking even more. He squeezed his eyes closed. His lips moved quickly, murmuring something she couldn’t catch.
With a deep breath, she placed her hand on his chest. His shirt felt thin with wear, and his heart raced beneath her palm. Staring at the place where she touched him, she took another deep breath. And another and another until her relaxation moved down her arm and into her hand. She imagined she could breathe peace into him through her touch, that she could calm him with her thoughts.
When she met his eyes again, the violet irises were back and he’d stopped shaking. His breathing had steadied. He put his hand on top of hers as if he thought she might pull away.
The thought hadn’t even crossed her mind.
For a brief second, she felt him. She felt his wonder. His awe. His complete relaxation that hadn’t come from his body, but hers. Then the connection went dark.
“Was that a … a connection?”
“I don’t know,” she said just as quietly, as if they were doing something wrong.
Someone knocked on the door, and they both jumped.
“What?” Tane barked.
She pulled her hand back.
“You two need to see this,” Chance called from the other side.
“Give us five.” Tane turned his eyes back to Kinyi’s and then to her face. Her scales.
Her heart twisted. “What?”
His shoulders rose with a deep inhale. “I’ll help you.”
She was already shaking her head. “No.”
“You don’t have to do it alone.”
“I’m going to cry, and I don’t want you to see me cry.” The words were off her tongue before she could stop them.
He smiled softly at her. “Too late.” He brushed his fingers across her cheeks where her dried tears had left salty trails.
She turned her face into his wide, callused palm and kissed the skin there. “Okay,” she murmured against his hand.
He cupped her cheek and lowered his face for another quick kiss. “Okay,” he said against her mouth.
It took them longer than five minutes, and Kinyi did cry. But Tane’s hands were steady, and when he cut her, she held on to him and rode out the pain. He tore each scale from her face with deft strength, unwavering even when she whimpered. They went through six packets of gauze before the bleeding stopped. By then, she was pale and shaking, and he had to use his body to prop her up against the vanity.
He wrapped the torn scales in the bloody gauze like they were precious gems. Then he flushed them down the toilet and watched as they disappeared. His eyes were sad when he looked back at her.
“It shouldn’t bother you so much,” she said breathlessly.
“Why’s that?” he asked, but he sounded like he already knew the answer.
“If you really didn’t care about Kladuu, you wouldn’t care about my scales.”
He looked away from her, but his eyes caught on her bandaged face. “You’re a beautiful woman. I hate to see that face scarred.”
“It’s more than that, and you know it. Otherwise, you wouldn’t feel it here.” She laid her hand over his heart.
He picked up her hand and twined his fingers through hers. He didn’t respond as he opened the bathroom door and led her out. Together, hand in hand, they walked out to the main room.
On the mounted vidscreens above the bar, the news played. It showed the local military base filled to the brim with soldiers driving massive convoy trucks to a sprawling battleship that could carry thousands of soldiers and ships far into space.
On the ticker tape beneath the images, the same story repeated over and over. “Readying for war on a secret planet.”
“Thought you two should see this,” Chance said. He polished glasses beneath the screens and didn’t look up from his work.
Tane’s hand gripped Kinyi’s tighter, but she hardly noticed.
She watched the battleship, all the ships being loaded onto it, and the soldiers marching through the huge doors. It was the size of a small town.
“Kinyi, did you hear me?”
She blinked and turned to Tane. “What?”
Instead of repeating himself, he narrowed his eyes at her. She turned back to the news and the battleship. The huge vessel was no doubt on a direct path to Kladuu with thousands of soldiers and ships.
War was going to her planet. But it hadn’t left yet.
“Oh, hell no,” Tane growled.
She turned back to him and smiled.
She’d found her ride.
Chapter Ten
Tane
Actual sunshine warmed the back of Tane’s neck, and he grew hot in the heavy leather coat he wore. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt direct sunlight. It hurt his eyes.
Up here, the air was cleaner, free of the low-hanging layer of smog that normally draped the lower city. In the upper city, the rich were even entitled to better oxygen.
The military base sat on the outskirts of the metropolis like a huge bastion perched atop the lower city’s rising waters and even faster rising refuse.
He thought it humorous to see such wealth sprawling out in front of him in the form of defense weaponry, space shuttles, high-flying drones, and countless soldiers. Yet none of it was for the people below, only those above. A base this size was more than equipped to handle the
scourge of the slums and keep people safe in their low-budget shanties, but Tane doubted the soldiers’ boots had ever touched the flood waters.
“This should be easy,” Kinyi said from beside him.
He snorted.
They sat at a table in a local coffee shop just across the skylanes from the base. The cafe was high enough to see the sweeping expanse of the defense deck, where all the ships and trucks spiraled around the shining centerpiece: the battleship.
“It looks bigger in person,” he commented. The massive ship took up most of the deck. With numerous lowered ramps and open hatches for supplies and weapons to be loaded, it looked like a huge metal spider with legs sprawled out beneath it and a hundred little baby soldiers scurrying around at its feet.
“Most things normally do.”
He cut his gaze back to Kinyi. “Does everything come back to sex with you?”
Her eyebrows spiked above those icy blue eyes. She’d pulled her hair over her shoulder to conceal the stark white bandages on her face. “It’s been a while since I’ve gotten laid.” She gave him a pointed look. “So yes, it does.”
Tane smiled into his cup of coffee as he took a long, slow sip. They didn’t have java like this down in the lower city. It sparked bright and bitter across his tongue, and he felt the caffeine brighten his insides.
“What’s your plan?” he asked Kinyi. “Take out a soldier, steal his badge and uniform, and waltz right in?”
She glanced around, making sure none of the patrons had overheard his comment. But the cafe was crowded with other looky-loos like themselves, and the chatter was loud. He could barely hear himself think, much less anyone else’s conversation. “Security will be too tight for that amateur shit. We need something better.”
“We?”
“You have to help me get in there.”
“And how will I get back out?”
“Look.” She leaned across the varnished table that smelled like actual disinfectant and citrus. It smelled clean. “You’re not going with me. I can accept that. But you can be a gentleman and help me get onto that base since you’re the reason I’m in this situation.”
“Maybe if you hadn’t come down here on a fool’s errand, you wouldn’t be stuck here.”
She spread her fingers wide across the table. The smile inching across her face was slow and dangerous. Maybe it was the caffeine, but hell, the expression turned him on, even though he knew she was vividly imagining murdering him.
“Call me a fool one more time,” she whispered, still smiling, “and I will slowly peel back your skin and expose your ribs so I can pry them open one at a time and turn you inside out while your heart still beats in the cold, unforgiving air. You’ll take your last breath as the Skax pick at your innards.”
He inclined his head. “Good use of imagery, but we don’t have Skax in these parts. We have buzzards. But to find them, you need to head out toward Chicago.”
“Fuck. You.”
He drank the last of his coffee. He wanted to reach for Kinyi’s and finish hers, but he knew better. He liked his hand. It was a good hand and he wanted to keep it. “Lucky for you, I’m in the mood for some G.I. Joe stealth action. So, give me the plan, Hawkeye.”
She stared at him for a long beat before sitting back on her side of the booth. “I don’t know what the hell you just said, but I don’t care. Here’s what we’re going to do.” She held up a finger as if he’d been about to interrupt her. He hadn’t. She was beautiful like this, with a bright flush across her cheeks and her eyes shimmering with adrenaline. If he listened close enough, he could hear the hum of excitement in her body. She lived for this.
“But if you even say my plan is crazy one time, I will drive you out to Chicago just for the buzzards. Got it?”
“This plan is crazy,” he hissed. “You’re crazy.”
“Buzzards,” Kinyi whisper-hissed back.
“I won’t have to worry about where you’ll kill me, because these assholes will beat you to the punch.”
“Oh, I’ll punch you.”
Tane rolled his eyes skyward, which was hard to do in a large wooden box halfway packed with space food. “That’s not what I meant.”
The convoy truck they were riding in hit a large bump, and their box banged into the other boxes packed around them hard enough to jar him into Kinyi. He bit his tongue and swore.
“You’re sitting on my hand.”
“Then count your blessings,” he hissed. He batted away a few packets of sealed nutrients and tried to find a more comfortable position.
Slivers of light worked their way through the slats of the box, which was barely big enough for his big body and Kinyi’s long-limbed frame. He hadn’t realized just how long her legs were until they were folded around his waist and he had to origami his big ass around her.
It had only taken a few calls to his contacts to find someone who knew someone in the military. From there, it had been easy to track down what was coming in on all those trucks. Apparently, it took a lot of space packets to feed an invading army charging off into the galaxy to save their hostage commander from the evil aliens.
Within a few hours, Tane had gotten them outside the food packing facility. The boxes were lightly guarded since all the soldiers in the metropolis were currently mobilizing toward the base, and it had been child’s play to open a box, remove and hide enough packets to make room and conceal their weight, and seal the lid back on from the inside. They’d been loaded onto a truck shortly after.
And he was miserable.
How the fuck was he going to get out of this? He should have sealed Kinyi inside, patted the box farewell, whispered good luck to her through the slats, and gotten the ever-loving fuck out of there. Now, he would have to sneak off the battleship, which would be far harder than the food packing facility.
But the thought of leaving her alone had nearly crippled him, and he’d climbed in beside her before she’d gotten into position.
Now all he could smell was her scent and his gut ached deep, deep inside him and his brain was filled with thoughts of her, alone, on a battleship, with all these idiot humans who couldn’t even drive around a pothole to save their lives.
Fuck.
They hit another bump, and he smashed his forehead against the rough-hewn wood.
He swore again.
“Cheer up.” Kinyi breathed easily in the box, with a knee folded up beside her ear and his weight heavy between her legs. “This is awesome.”
But even her obvious glee couldn’t keep the growl from his voice as he said, “I hate small spaces.”
“Maybe you should have told me you were claustrophobic before I nail-gunned us into a small box.”
He would have sighed heavily if he could expand his lungs that far. Being locked in a tight space with a Draqon female like Kinyi straddled the very, very fine line between pleasure and pain. A divine sort of torture and pure hell at the same time.
“Excuse me,” she said, her voice rising dangerously, “are you getting hard right now?”
“Shut up,” he growled, pinching his eyes closed. “Just shut up.”
The drive to the base was graciously short, and apparently sensing the fine line she straddled as well, Kinyi wisely kept her mouth shut the rest of the way. The truck braked beneath them, smashing the boxes together some more, and the engine turned off. A short wait later, the truck’s back door opened, and they heard the beeping of a large machine approaching to unload the boxes.
When it was time for their box, he and Kinyi braced themselves against the walls. Tane gritted his teeth as the box was picked up and whisked through the air. A bead of sweat rolled down the back of his neck. Kinyi’s breathing whooshed silently against the side of his face, her excitement fueling his sense of dread.
What the hell had he done? How would he get out of this now?
The machine beeped and bumped all across the smooth tarmac of the deck toward the battleship. Tane mentally tracked their progress based on their
reconnaissance from the coffee shop. It wasn’t a long ride, but it felt like it was taking ages, as if at any moment the machine would stop and a self-important soldier would stride over, demanding to investigate this box’s contents.
That would have been just Tane’s luck.
But they made it. The machine set their box down neatly and drove away, its beeping growing fainter as it moved farther away.
He met Kinyi’s eyes, but she held a finger to her mouth. He took a deep breath and instantly smelled the scent of sweat and human flesh, like slightly overcooked meat. He pointed to his nose. Kinyi nodded. She smelled the nearby soldiers as well.
They heard them a moment later, walking back and forth, carrying heavy loads from the sound of their loud boot steps. From the news this morning, Tane knew the battleship was preparing to leave tonight, so last-minute preparations were in full swing, even though they’d snuck into the box right at dusk.
How much time did he have to get out of here and sneak off the ship before it took off? His stomach tightened, and his body swelled in the tight space. His heart galloped at full speed and battered his sternum.
Kinyi’s hand pressed against his chest, her fingers sinking hard into his skin. A second later, warmth spread out from her palm and soaked into him, soothing him like a balm on burnt skin. He released the breath locked in his throat. Almost instantly, his panic dissolved, whisked away in his bloodstream for later.
He stared down at her, and she merely blinked cool blue eyes back at him. She dropped her hand. All too aware, he sensed every place their bodies touched. Her legs around his waist. Her warm core pressed against his crotch. Her hair against his forearm. Her ribs near his hand, her breast just inches from his touch. If he lowered his chest—
