“We have no other option,” I replied. “Duke took our ship back to Albaterra when he left, and those in our fleet that have not been destroyed by the war are too few to house the stranded A’li-uud. We need this ship.”
In truth, the humans had provided me with a very large and spacious vessel. A quick tour through it had revealed an entire dormitory of living quarters, a well-outfitted kitchen and dining hall, two separate docking bays, and a command center grand enough to hold a ball. There was also a small room of cells for prisoners, a recreation hall filled with activities I had never seen before, and entire wings devoted to the ship’s functions. Had it been made of something sturdier than the pathetic materials Earth offered, it would have actually been an impressive ship.
“They are trying to kill us,” Lokos muttered darkly. “They intend for this thing to implode the moment we try to break through Earth’s atmosphere.”
“Maybe,” I said. My tone was light and airy. “I cannot say I would blame them.”
Lokos turned his colorless eyes to me with an expression of poorly-hidden disdain. On my left, I could feel Roxanne’s eyes on me as well, and I turned to look at her. She seemed confused, and I realized we’d been speaking A’li-uud.
“I am sorry,” I apologized in English. “It is rude to exclude you from the conversation.”
“It’s fine,” she said dismissively. Her gaze kept flicking over my shoulder to the hangar, outside of which there was a group of a dozen men gathered. They’d been huddled and talking animatedly for nearly an hour while my warriors and I became familiar with the ship. So far, Roxanne had been the only human with whom I’d interacted with since being released from the prison.
“You are nervous?” I asked, probing her to reveal her thoughts.
Roxanne blinked, her mouth tightening, and shook her head. “I wouldn’t say I’m nervous. I just wish I knew what they were talking about,” she admitted.
“Why?”
“Because I feel like something’s off,” she said. Her mouth tightened further until it was a thin line, and her emerald eyes became rather jade in color as they darkened. “I can’t believe they agreed to this in the first place. They seemed so against it when I first told them your demands, but here you are with one of our ships preparing to go home without interception.”
“Yes,” I said thoughtfully. “It is much like when we allowed the humans to return to Earth.”
Our eyes locked suddenly, and I felt the ground tilt beneath my feet. After our first meeting, I’d been intrigued by the beautiful Ambassador, and I’d certainly lusted after her. After our second, though, what had been simple intrigue and sexual desire had become something much more potent. I craved her presence as much as I craved air or water. To be so near her was like electric volts shooting through my limbs, making my mind race and my fingers twitch. I no longer just wanted to know and understand her—I wanted her to know and understand me.
It was the most intense infatuation I’d ever experienced, and it was by far the most unnerving.
“Here they come,” she said suddenly, freezing in place.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw the group of men no longer in a thick mass. They strode toward us with stern faces and large steps, all staring directly at me. I stared back. Without the chains I’d been kept in for nearly two weeks, I was far from helpless and even further from intimidated. My glowing sword hung faithfully on my hip, swaying slightly with every movement I made, and I felt it bump my thigh reassuringly. Behind me, I could hear Lokos breathing in deep, jagged huffs.
As soon as they were near enough, the shortest of the men stepped forward. “Ms. Rigby tells us you call yourself Dane. My name is Armando Lowell, Associate Administrator for Strategy and Plans. I’m with NASA.”
He jammed a hand forward and held it outstretched to me. I stared blankly at it, and Roxanne hurriedly said, “Mr. Lowell, I don’t think the A’li-uud are familiar with our greeting customs.”
“Oh, right.” The portly man withdrew his hand and stuffed it into his pocket. “Well, good to meet you anyway.”
I inclined my head toward him without saying a word. I could feel Roxanne’s eyes darting between Lowell and me, but I didn’t look at her. An uncomfortable silence stretched between us as the jovial man fumbled for something more to say.
He didn’t have to. The man nearest him, a very broad-shouldered specimen with a harsh face and too much forehead, spoke instead. “General Rodney P. Morgan,” he introduced himself. His gaze slid to my left. “I’m on the Board, and I work closely with Roxanne.”
If I’d had my eyes closed, I would have thought it to be a standard introduction. As I was able to see the way his expression changed as soon as he looked at Roxanne, however, I realized he was posturing. His eyes glittered as they scanned her from head to toe, his hands flexed at his sides, and I detected the ripe smell of testosterone spilling from his pores.
I snarled.
The sound made Roxanne’s head swing toward me in surprise, and several of the men in clean-cut suits took a step back in fear. I heard Lokos draw up to my side, prepared to fight if necessary, but I ignored him. I ignored everyone but the General. My eyes were locked on him as though he were the only thing I could see, and he was staring back at me with haughty aggression. Then, as slowly as the sunrise, understanding dawned across his face, and the aggression was instantly replaced with a smug leer.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said in a rather sing-song tone, “but some of us will be joining you on your little journey.”
There was an odd thudding in my ears, and I realized it was the sound of my heart pumping violently. Lokos made an angry noise in his throat, but I lifted a hand to silence him. “I do not understand,” I said.
It was the first time I had spoken to these men, and all of them seemed stunned to hear me. A few had furrowed brows like they had trouble understanding my accent, and the portly Lowell seemed overjoyed by the communication, but the rest were simply in awe. General Morgan, however, was unfazed.
“Of course you don’t. Let me say it a different way.” Keeping his feet grounded, he bent toward me at the waist and, with dramatic movements of his mouth, said patronizingly, “We. Are. Coming. With. You.”
Even though we weren’t touching, I could feel Lokos shaking with anger beside me. Roxanne, however, radiated confusion.
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“Oh, not us,” Lowell interjected cheerfully, motioning around at the group behind him. “Just some of our best soldiers. General Morgan has volunteered as well. I’m sure you understand.”
“Roxanne did not tell me this,” I said angrily, twisting my neck to look at her.
She bristled. “I didn’t know!” she cried. She swung her eyes back to Morgan. “This was not part of the agreement!”
“You don’t really think we’re just going to let them go back without supervision so they can better prepare to attack us all over again, do you?” he asked her, his tone dripping with mock sweetness. I felt another snarl rise in my belly, but I tamped it down.
“I will not agree to those terms,” I said shortly. “I cannot trust you.”
“I don’t trust you either, but someone’s gotta step up and be a man,” Morgan snapped.
Lokos twitched, and I nudged him with my elbow to keep him in check. My mind raced as I realized I would have to make a fast decision or possibly lose my chance to return to Albaterra.
“I will agree under one condition,” I said, speaking loud enough for everyone in the vicinity to hear me clearly.
“And what’s that?” Morgan drawled.
I looked him dead in the eyes, straightening up and lifting my chin with regal arrogance. “Roxanne must come, too.”
12
Roxanne
If I could have predicted how my life was going to turn out, I would have guessed I’d graduate college, take a job at the UN, meet a nice guy with a respectable income and a collection of signed football m
emorabilia, and maybe have a baby or two. I’d live in the city for a few years before deciding to move to the New York suburbs in a pleasant two-story with a small yard and a one-car garage, and I’d probably get a collie because I’d had a childhood obsession with Lassie. My car would be a clean sedan, my friends would be secretly wishing they were still twenty, and my retirement fund would increase exponentially every year.
Instead, I’d ended up on a spaceship full of aliens and macho soldiers on my way to a strange planet in a completely different galaxy.
The bedroom I’d been assigned for the journey was less like a bedroom and more like a hospital room with its thin cot and blank walls, but at least I had it to myself. As the only woman aboard the entire ship, I was granted privacy the others were denied. Attached to my bedroom was my very own bathroom, which was so cramped that I couldn’t even fully extend my arms on either side, and I also had been given my own stash of toiletries, standard-issue NASA jumpsuits, and other necessities. I was not woken at all hours of the night as most of the A’li-uud and all of the soldiers were to change shifts or assist with something. Even my meals were plated better, and there was a standing offer to serve me in my room if I preferred to eat alone rather than in the company of the men. I knew the special treatment was a show of respect, but I felt more isolated than I’d ever felt before in my life.
It had been two weeks since we’d left Earth. All of the A’li-uud had been rounded up, most brought back to their original ships and the rest brought onboard ours. I hadn’t realized just how many aliens had come to Earth until they were all gathered at NASA’s airbase outside of Tucson for a mass blast-off. Twenty-one ships scattered the landscape, all varying in shape and size and all impressive in their own right, with thousands of blue-skinned extraterrestrials milling around them. A huge chunk of the military was in attendance, mainly for security’s purposes, but the expression of unrestrained awe on every human face I saw told me they were also present out of sheer curiosity. I couldn’t blame them. It was like looking at a scene from a science-fiction film. The dry desert air was filled with the clacking of aliens speaking A’li-uud. It was impossible to look anywhere without seeing a crowd of tall, shirtless creatures, most with flowing white hair and all with dramatic white eyes. Ships whirred and hissed and shot rays of turquoise light brighter than the pounding midday sun in every direction. It was the only time I’d ever wondered if I’d completely lost my mind and entered a world of hallucinations.
When Dane had demanded I join the other humans who’d be going to Albaterra, I was certain I’d heard wrong. When I realized I hadn’t, I was certain someone from the Board would have protested. When they didn’t, I was certain it was a joke they’d somehow planned.
I was wrong on all counts, and I wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
In the two weeks onboard the spacecraft since takeoff, I had realized I expected too much from life. Clearly, simplicity was a demand too great for life to meet, and it was my responsibility to adapt. So, I did. I stopped expecting General Morgan to behave respectfully toward me, I stopped expecting to be updated on the plan once we landed on Albaterra, and I stopped expecting to like freeze-dried chicken. Just like that, I had all the simplicity I needed.
Except for my infatuation with Dane. That grew more complicated by the day.
He’d become unpredictable. The first few days onboard, he’d been swept up in the demands of captaining a ship he was unfamiliar with and determining how much he could entrust to the soldiers. Most of the time, he was in the control room with a handful of A’li-uud and a human or two, and he tended to speak only to the warrior I’d since learned was named Lokos. It had been easy for me to overlook his behavior in light of the new and unexpected circumstances. As the days wore on, though, he seemed to throw himself deeper and deeper into his captaincy, and he almost completely ignored me.
General Morgan, on the other hand, had never been more attentive, and it was beginning to wear me down.
“I never thought I’d say this because these things always make my balls sweat,” he grunted on the second day into our journey, “but I’ve got a whole new appreciation for jumpsuits.”
I turned around at once and found his eyes lingering on my rear end. “Try stuffing a towel down there to soak up the sweat,” I suggested. “It might make you look like you actually have something to brag about.”
He left me alone for four days after that thanks to the loud chorus of laughs from the nearby soldiers, but, when we’d officially been in space for a week, he pulled me aside in the cafeteria.
“You know,” he murmured, that same leering look on his face I’d grown to hate. “I think you look a little tense. Seven days on a ship surrounded by men has to have wound you up. What do you say we do some stress relieving?”
“Sure. I vote for yoga, but you have to be the downward dog,” I retorted.
Now, smack on the two-week mark, he was back at it again. I was stretched across my cot with a Star Trek novel in my lap—hoping to somehow prepare myself for what was to come, I suppose—when the door to my bedroom swung open. I looked up in surprise at the sudden intrusion and, to my displeasure, I saw General Morgan standing on the threshold.
“You sure look comfy,” he commented, resting his forearm on the frame and tilting his head almost inquisitively.
“Excuse me, this is my room,” I snapped. “You could at least knock.”
“There are a lot of things I could do. Maybe you should lock the door if you don’t want people coming in. A gorgeous, curvy woman like you shouldn’t just let anyone into your bedroom.”
“I don’t,” I sneered.
He grinned to show he was joking, but he only succeeded in looking predatory. “Listen, Roxanne, I feel like we started off on the wrong foot all those months ago. I think we could actually be good friends if we’d just let bygones be bygones. What do you think?”
I closed the book with a snap and kicked my legs off the bed, placing my feet squarely on the ground. With a glare, I said, “First of all, like I’ve told you a hundred times, it’s Ms. Rigby. We work together, and things need to be professional. Which pretty much answers your question.”
“You don’t make the alien call you Ms. Rigby,” Morgan pointed out snottily, straightening up and crossing his arms over his wide, puffed-out chest.
“There’s a language barrier as it is. I’m not about to make communication even more difficult with proprieties. Besides, he asked me to call him Dane, and it would feel strange to call him that while he’s calling me Ms. Rigby.” It was true. I would have felt like a teacher or an elderly neighbor if that had been the arrangement.
“Yeah, whatever.” He rolled his eyes. “Soon you’ll thank me when we get to the freak planet, and I stop the alien from ripping off your head.”
I was suddenly struck with the memory of my head close to Dane’s, mere inches apart, near enough to smell his unique scent. My insides squirmed at the thought, and I squeezed my legs together involuntarily. If I told Morgan I’d nearly kissed the freak alien, his head would have imploded.
“I’d really like to be alone right now, General, if you don’t mind,” I said purposely. Even with Morgan standing so near me, I was unable to will the memory of Dane and me in the conference room from my mind, and a deep, knotted ache curled in my groin.
He snickered but dropped his arms and stepped backward. Before turning away to leave, though, he stopped. “I’m getting a little sick of this hard-to-get thing, just so you know.”
“Goodbye, General,” I barked.
He stalked down the hall, out of sight. I sprang to my feet to close my door, but, before I could, I heard footsteps approaching in the corridor. Thinking Morgan was coming back for another round, I stuck my head out to yell at him to go away.
Bright white eyes looked back at me.
13
Dane
“I’m getting a little sick of this hard-to-get thing, just so you know.”
The words floa
ted to my ears before I saw the source. When I rounded the corner, and I turned into the hallway, my gaze fell on the General standing outside Roxanne’s door. I froze in place.
“Goodbye, General,” I heard her snap from inside her room.
He lingered for only a split second longer, and then he strode away with his head cockily lifted in the air. I resumed walking again with the sear of disproportionate anger in my gut. Ever since Morgan had announced he worked with Roxanne and stared me down, I’d harbored a deep dislike for the human. The idea of him in Roxanne’s bedroom made the edges of my vision go black with jealousy that I tried to keep tucked away.
Suddenly, as I had practically drawn level with her door, Roxanne’s head popped out from the opening. I halted, surprised. Her eyes widened with equal surprise, and we both stared wordlessly at one another. In the two weeks, we’d been onboard the humans’ ship, it was the first time we’d made eye contact, and neither of us seemed to want to break it.
Finally, the silence reached an uncomfortable length, and I was forced to speak.
“Good evening,” I said quietly.
Her delicious mouth parted, and she breathed, “Hi.”
Hearing her voice address me after so many days was like the first breeze on my cheeks after years of imprisonment. It was refreshing, exhilarating, and so arousing that I very nearly had to drop my hands to cover my sudden enlargement. Luckily, she didn’t seem to notice. Her soulful orbs pressed into mine with questions she didn’t ask, her lips still parted with the whisper of an invitation she did not offer.
I wanted to be in her room.
“Have you eaten?” I asked, trying to dispel some of the tension. “I am on my way to the dining hall.”
“No, I haven’t,” she said.
“Would you care to join me?”
The curved apples of her cheeks seemed to glow as brilliantly as the blade of my sword, which was dangling from my hip as always, and she smiled. “Sure.”
Dane: A Scifi Alien Romance: Albaterra Mates Book 3 Page 6
