Alien Warrior's Captive Earthling: SciFi Alien Romance (6 page)

She looked apprehensive for a moment, against his fierceness, but then she took a deep breath, and glared back at him. A crack appeared in his mental armor, because he’d nearly smiled. Her black and red streaked hair was in lengthy disarray around her pale and beautiful face. The coloring made her lips look redder.

“You must explain everything you know about the shoes to me,” he said, as he pushed off the command chair to stand, while she stepped back. “Leave nothing out. And quickly, we’ve not much time.”

Her slender chin grew stubborn and it drew into her mouth, and he instantly sensed that about her. She was going to fight him on that. He tapped the communications panel and called up Nik’s code, and then he didn’t speak, but typed in his request.

“You cannot be killed for what you don’t know,” she said.

“The Commodore is going to try to kill me either way.”

He glanced up at her from typing. She looked startled, then worried.

“He will for just being close to the shoes—for even knowing about them at all. Oh, damn it,” she said.

She had swung away from him with her anguished last statement, and he finished his orders.

“Anna,” he said in a low, measured tone. “I will make him believe I actually have the shoes.” She had turned to look at him, while she bracketed her arms in front of her. He finally noticed that she wore one of his shirts. For odd reasons, he could not understand, that pleased him. “With your help,” he finished.

She shook her head. “If you do that he will never stop hunting you.”

“Possibly,” he acknowledged. “However, it will buy this ship filled with innocent people enough time to escape.”

Anna rubbed her arms and turned away from Zyn’s perfect logic. What he couldn’t know was that they’d conditioned her. But everyone on the ship would die if she couldn’t override it. Then she felt Zyn’s gloved hand on her nape, but she didn’t turn toward him. She’d been so aroused when he had sucked her blood; it was still edgy inside her.

The conditioning wouldn’t allow her to tell him, but—she whirled to face him.

“You
must
mesmerize me and command the information,” she blurted. She knew her expression had to be haunted and her gaze desperate.

Zyn looked as if he would argue as he gazed at her intently, and then understanding seemed to dawn on his expression. His hand still held her nape and he used it to pull her body against his.

His voice murmured against her ear. “They’ve conditioned you.” Her body quivered with the desire to answer, but the inability too. “That is why you cannot answer me even now.” She shuddered and she felt as if she might break. “Shush,” he hushed. “I don’t want to know about the shoes.”

Trapped air expelled from her chest, and she sagged against him. “Zyn.”

He used both hands to turn her face up to his, while he brushed her cheeks with his thumbs.

“You’re beautiful,” he muttered, and he sounded as if he couldn’t believe he had said it.

Anna’s gaze latched onto Zyn’s dark swirling eyes. The intensity in the blackness had seemed to draw her deeper. It was as if she were falling into the inky darkness. Zyn’s voice sounded like an enticing tenor vibration. The sound made Anna quicken again with arousal. The moment he spoke, she couldn’t remember a word, just that she wanted to do anything his voice said.

“Kiss me.”

***

Z
yn felt Anna’s gossamer lips as they touched his. He shouldn’t have done it ... but at the last second, the command had slipped past his lips.

Anna was so warm and her lips were full of life, and they kissed him without any of the normal inhibitions. He turned his lips against her mouth, as he tried to mimic her passionate response. And he felt the pounding of her blood inside him as it answered her passion.

For one second, he knew an uninhibited response as he pulled her against him, and he shaped her lips deep against his mouth. He pulled the leash inside him tight against his willpower, as tight as he could while he kissed her, and then he snapped it back and he slowed. But his hypnotized command kept Anna’s lips feverishly working against his slowing mouth, until he’d broken away.

“Stop,” he ordered harshly, and she fell languidly in his arms, as she breathed heavily. Her gaze was glassy, awaiting his next command.

His gloved hand brushed the fall of her hair and he realized the trust she’d put in him to willingly allow him to mesmerize her. Perhaps he’d violated that trust by taking the kiss against her will.

“Anna, are there more hidden compartments in the shoes?” He had to keep the questions simple. “Look at me.”

She sighed and looked deep into his eyes, as he held her. “Yes, Zyn.”

“Does the Duchess ever wear these shoes?” He needed his assumptions confirmed.

“No,” Anna answered, as she frowned at him.

“Does that bother you?” he asked gently.

She nodded slowly. “They’re really Commodore Soto’s. The Duchess never looks at them,” she whispered.

“Do you know what is in the shoes?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Tell me one thing,” he said, as he tried to simplify the questions for her mesmerized state.

“The Boneeater sends messages in them.”

Zyn was stunned, so much so it had staggered him for long moments. He’d considered Soto must be spying. Soto sat to the right side of the sovereign of Osoft. It wasn’t hard to understand that governments needed espionage to maintain their position.

He hadn’t cared what Soto was trying to hide, unless it hurt the rebel cause. However, he’d already assumed Soto’s secrets probably had nothing to do with the rebel cause, because Osoft was neutral on the subject of slavery. Cowardly so.

Why would the neutral Osoft be communicating with the scourge of the galaxy, Boneeater?

“Are you certain the messages are to Boneeater?” he asked sharply. “And not
from
Boneeater?”

Her delicate brows had furrowed as she’d gazed up at him blankly, and then she said, “I want to please you, to always please you.”

The question was too intricate. Zyn wanted to cuss, and he was disturbed by the emotion trying to escape him, which made him cringe as if his Keeper might punish him. It was a combination of the blood, Anna, and the dance of promising sex that were unraveling him.

Instantly, he clamped down on his control. He was a broken piece, and he needed to remember that, for his sake, but more for Anna’s sake. He could never hope to go where that kiss had led.

“You will remember none of this.” He had modulated his voice to cool and unemotional, once he’d made the fateful decision to break ties with Anna, before he’d taken more than a kiss from her.

“Yes, Zyn,” she replied obediently.

Then, because he had to, he added, “There is
no
future for us, Anna. I am too broken.”

“Yes, Zyn,” she responded obediently.

––––––––

A
nna sloshed hot coffee on her hand, and she winced at the burn, as she tried to right the mug and bring it to the table without any further spills. The ship’s social room was busy in the morning so she had timed her visits to the afternoon.

When she had the best chance of seeing Zyn. 

She winced at the thought, as she tried to redirect her thinking. She was
not
there for that, she silently assured herself. She certainly wasn’t going to throw herself at him, and he’d obviously lost interest in her, after he had saved them all from the threat of the Osoft warship.

Anna found an empty table by the port window and she sat down, carefully setting her mug on its surface. She liked to sit there and look out into space. It was mesmerizing. It had reminded her somehow of Zyn’s eyes, which was ridiculous because he had black eyes
.

A big sigh burst from her. She was pathetic, the way she mooned over a half-Viper. It was pitiful, especially now that she was free. She could go anywhere and do anything. It was amazing—and scary.

“I heard Soto has a million bullion rewards on his head, dead or alive.”

Anna sucked in a breath. The voice had come from behind her, and she leaned that way to listen.

“Already? That was quick. They say he blackmailed the Commodore into releasing us.”

Another voice responded, “I heard that he tricked Soto, not blackmailed.”

“Saved our ass, either way,” the first voice said. “Man, what could a guy do with that kind of bullion?”

Anna sat straighter in her chair. She wanted to shout at them, “How dare you!”

They had to be talking about Zyn, and Zyn was a hero. However he’d done it, he’d taken the information she’d given him and used it to hold the Osoft off long enough so the rebel’s ship could escape with its jump-drive.

She clearly remembered up to the point where she’d begged Zyn to mesmerize her. After that, everything had become blurry, and she was beginning to believe she’d imagined most of it.

Like the flirting part.

It was hard to believe the cool emotionless Viper, which was presented to her since, could have acted as if he’d wanted her and was planning on having hot sex with her.

Anna picked up her mug and sipped her coffee, as she felt forlorn with her feelings aching. Back then after he’d woken her from the trance ... that same day, Zyn had ordered her from his quarters into a small cubicle like the rest of the people on the ship had.

That had started the beginning of awful, which had just gotten worse when he’d proceeded to tell her, in an emotionless voice, that he’d thought she should have helped without him having to coerce her.

While sitting there staring out into space, shame flamed her cheeks, as it had then, because his implications were that he’d had to seduce her aid. But the things she remembered about it hadn’t added up to his version of the story, which he’d given her afterward.

Zyn was the least likely male to think of seducing a female. However, his renewed cold front toward her was hard to penetrate to discover the truth. A truth, she thought, that was halfway between him trying to keep her safe and him being troubled by their emotions when they were together.

Then there were the strange feelings she had about Zyn’s emotionless front, and the unsubstantiated thoughts she had that his cold veneer was trying to hide a crack inside him as if he was broken.

She shook her head. Where would such strange ideas come from? Surely she didn’t know him well enough to think anything like that about him. And why was it when she’d laid alone in bed at night sometimes she thought she could feel his lips on hers as if they’d kissed ... when they never had.

“They’re going to kill him for sure,” Axi announced, as she slid into the chair across from Anna. “They’ll have every bounty hunter and lowbred soldier of fortune trying to kill him. He just eluded two and killed the third on our last mission.”

Axi’s silver eyes looked like pearls in the offset lighting, as Anna had just managed to hold back her gasp of dismay. Axi was theatrical and shrewd, and Anna didn’t want Axi thinking she cared what happened to Zyn, so she controlled her reaction. She had pretended to Axi that she was relieved when Zyn had thrown her aside.

Anna turned her gaze and she scanned the room for him, while she tried not to look as if she was looking for him. He normally arrived with Axi, although he strictly stayed away from her.

“Just so long as you are alright,” Anna said, and she patted Axi’s hand. “I’m certain the hero of the Osoft standoff can take care of himself.”

The words felt like sticky tasteless lies on Anna’s tongue, but then her gaze had landed on Zyn across the chamber.

She wanted to crimp her eyes and sigh in relief as she drank him in. He was tall and wore a black body suit as usual, but the black licking his body showed muscular strength only hinted at. She’d seen his ripped and chiseled muscles, and had felt them hot and bare against her.

She nearly whined, then jerked her gaze back to Axi.

Axi looked over her shoulder at Zyn, then back at her.

“You only think you are fooling me about my Zyn. I know this look of yearning too well,” Axi said.

Anna started to open her mouth to protest, but Axi continued, “I see it so many times directed at me.” Axi’s hand lifted with a wave, and Anna couldn’t help the smile that turned up her lips, as she stifled a laugh, while Axi finished, “I feel sorry for the fools who desire me; I know it could be torture for them that I deny them.”

Still trying not to laugh at Axi’s large intact ego, Anna said, “I don’t understand why you won’t give at least one of them a chance.”

Axi slanted her beautiful face at her in speculation, but then she turned serious. “I live too dangerous and I think a perfect lover could be distracting.”

Anna glanced at Zyn, and then leaned forward. “You help so many out of slavery, Axi.”

Axi looked thoughtful. “My family was taken as prized sexual slaves, even the youngest. It was long ago, but I think I might find one of them someday.”

Anna’s heart thumped at the personal revelation, and she was about to offer what comfort she could, but a black shape slid into her peripheral vision.

“Vane,” Axi announced. “This new mission’s going to be a bad one, you think?”

Anna watched Vane slide into a seat to her right. He was a big man in a ballooned black spacesuit that always had her fighting a blush, because she remembered the first time she’d seen him, and he had seen her naked breasts.

Now he seemed interested in her, and normally she would have found an excuse to leave the minute he’d shown up, but hearing about a dangerous mission Zyn might be involved in was keeping her rooted to her seat.

Vane’s voice sounded deep, as if air flowed through his words from beneath the black helmet. “Odds aren’t good,” Vane said.

He turned the reflective glass, which had to be in front of his eyes, toward her, until she could see her face clearly stamped in the glass. His puffy gloved hand reached forward and covered her hand sitting next to her empty coffee mug. It surprised her so much she forgot to move her hand.

Then he curled her hand into his, and the texture of his glove felt slick, but his grip was strong. She couldn’t just tug her hand away and be rude. Maybe after having been subservient for so long, it had stolen her forcefulness?