by Kit Tunstall
The man stared at her for long moment, still silent, and leaving her wondering if he could actually speak at all. She supposed with lips and eyes like that, he didn’t have to talk much to get the ladies’ attention, but she was more concerned about his intentions than how attractive he was at the moment. “Answer me. You know what, it doesn’t matter who you are, or what you’re doing here. Just get the heck out of my apartment before I call the police.”
The man lifted his hand, as though about to check his watch. At the last moment, Jory realized it was like no timepiece she had ever seen before. The cuff looked like a combination of plastic, metal, and some shiny skin—perhaps lizard, though she couldn’t think of any lizard that was naturally a blue-violet shade.
Another one of those strange apparatuses popped out of it, but this time it didn’t emit a red light. Instead, a sickly yellow cloud of gas erupted from his wristband, surrounding her in a millisecond. Before she even had the thought of holding her breath or trying to escape the miasma, it had entered into her lungs, nose, and mouth.
A giddy, lightheaded sensation, similar to the first wave of euphoria from nitrous oxide at the dentist, swept over Jory. She started to fall and let out a little cry of alarm.
Teetering on the broken heel, she grasped desperately for something to break her fall. To her surprise, it was the solidly muscled arms of the stranger who had just gassed her that enfolded her, keeping her from hitting the floor. Even as unconsciousness swept over her, she couldn’t help noticing how well-built the stranger was. It was a strange thought, to be admiring or appreciating anything about her attacker.
***
Zandar hefted the princess over his shoulder with no effort at all. She looked different from the photo he’d been given, but he liked this softer, rounder version of Chiondri. Most women on Gentarres and Karadis were built like athletes or warriors—either lean or muscled, but almost exclusively tall. He could see why the prince so admired this woman from the Royal House of Cardiff. If he had the opportunity to bed such a female, he wouldn’t hesitate.
Already exhausted from the urgent speed at which he had moved upon receiving this assignment, his thoughts were on the muddled side. Even the small nap he’d risked taking at the princess’s Earth dwelling hadn’t restored him completely. He had to nip such thoughts about the royal over his shoulder in the bud before his diminished state led him to do something disallowed by his contract. His mission was to return the princess to her affianced and collect his bounty, not seduce the next queen of his father’s home planet.
Even knowing he shouldn’t admire the princess couldn’t keep his pants from growing uncomfortably tight as he switched her to a more comfortable position so he could reach the transporter button on his wrist cuff. Still holding her, he stepped out onto the balcony and into his waiting pod. Cloaked by advanced technology, the vessel was invisible to NASA or other agencies that might be able to detect spacecraft orbiting Earth.
The tiny pod was just big enough for the two of them, and she had to sit on his lap. It was a damned shame, he thought with a grin, as her curves melted against him. Like the pod, the larger vessel had the same cloaking technology, and they docked with it and stepped aboard without any of Earth’s officials being any the wiser to the shuttle’s presence.
In his opinion, it was a heap of junk, but he’d been forced to accept it as part of the assignment to retrieve the princess. What the harbinger-class ship lacked in defense, it made up for in speed. He couldn’t deny it was faster than his own ship, but he was still not happy about having to use the royal vessel.
Once on the bridge of the small ship, designed to be manned by one person, he shifted his hold on Chiondri once more and strode down the hallway to the small room that passed for a medical bay. He didn’t expect there to be any long-term side effects from gassing her, but it was as good a place as any to dump her—and hopefully out of sight and out of mind.
He couldn’t allow himself to dwell on the tempting curves of the princess, or the sweetly rounded face whose skin was so soft when he gave in to the impulse to stroke a finger down her cheek. Framed by a long fall of chestnut-brown hair, it was a classically beautiful face.
Her lips were full and soft when he ran his thumb across them, and he contemplated bending to taste her. His pants grew tighter still, but he forced himself to resist the urge, not just because she was the future bride of the Royal Prince of Gentarres, but also because it was more than a little disturbing to admire her this way while she was out cold.
With a decisive nod, he turned away from the table where she lay to return to the bridge, trying to block out the memory of her vivid green eyes as he sat down behind the navigation console. It didn’t take long to disengage the autopilot and set them on a course for Gentarres. He would have the princess returned to her eager groom within days, thanks to the speed of the harbinger-class.
That meant three days of being around the temptation of the sweet princess, who seemed anything but sweet from the few moments already spent in her company when she was conscious. His mouth quirked as he recalled her outrage and her continuous questions he hadn’t bothered to answer.
It shouldn’t be a shock to her that her fiancé had sent a bounty hunter to collect the woman. Their marriage had been arranged since before either was born, and there wasn’t one thing either Chiondri or Kendrick could do to escape their union. Zandar still didn’t know why the princess had pulled a runner just days before the royal wedding, and he knew Kendrick was just as baffled as he was about the turn of events.
He briefly wondered why Kendrick hadn’t moved up the wedding just so he could indulge in the taste of his new bride. Her sweetly rounded ass would be a perfect fit for the size of his palms, and he could easily imagine holding her against the wall and sinking his cock into her slick heat.
Suppressing a groan, he reminded himself why that couldn’t happen and returned his attention to more mundane matters, like piloting the ship that barely needed any sentient assistance once the route was programmed. He waited for the princess to awaken, dreading the next confrontation with her, fully expecting her to demand he return her to Earth or some other backward planet so she could hide from the royal family of Gentarres.
She would probably plead, cajole, threaten, and offer money. She might even put forward her sweet curves to manipulate him into doing her bidding. His brow beaded with sweat at the thought, and he firmly told himself she didn’t have a chance in hell of convincing him to abandon his duty, no matter the incentive. He would just have to make that clear to her—and himself.
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About Aurelia
Aurelia Skye is the pen name bestselling author Kit Tunstall uses when writing science fiction romance. It’s simply a way to separate the myriad types of stories she writes so readers know what to expect with each “author.”
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