If he caught her before she could escape, he would lock her back up. And knowing him… If he wasn’t going to forgive her now, he wasn’t going to forgive her later.
She may not be a spy, but she had come to kill him.
Someday, he was going to figure that out.
Alexa spun full-circle, twirling her wristcon over her wrist. There were so many ships on the tarmac that she didn’t know where to begin. She caught sight of a small passenger ship with a group of people hanging outside it.
She straightened her shoulders and made her way toward them.
Twenty-Five
Hysterian followedthe security officials working for the research group taking in the locusts. Tranqs had put the females asleep, but the male fought inside his crate, unaffected. The crates were loaded on the back of a truck and strapped down in place so they couldn’t fall off.
The male still tried.
The locusts had been dosed and locked up for months, being manipulated and stimulated by machines since they didn’t have the freedom to move. Hysterian felt for the creatures but was ready to be rid of them. Atrexia was far from the main spaceway channels, and days of light-speed away from the nearest port or colony. It was a perfect place to hide if he were a criminal, but it was also a crapshoot for the same reason.
Everywhere he looked, detritus filled his vision. The buildings were made of worn stone, their metal infrastructure rusted out. There were as many dead, broken ships lingering on the tarmac as there were working vessels. Scrapper and scavengers removed pieces from them to reuse or sell.
In the distance, he could see the locusts swarm Mount Etta. The mountain was the one other thing Atrexia was known for besides its unusual inhabitants.
A vehicle awaited them at the edge of the tarmac where the ships came to an end. A man walked over to greet him.
Hysterian barely heard what the man said as he unstrapped the crates. His mind was on Alexa.
His mind was always on her these days. It should’ve bothered him, but it didn’t, at least not anymore. He’d decided.
She was his woman. There was no one else for him. He didn’t want anyone else. He hadn’t, not since she’d walked into his life and onto his ship. He thought he’d wanted a woman made up of all the attributes a red-blooded male could ever want, but that was until Alexa tore his fantasies to shreds and replaced them with something else: her.
She wasn’t afraid of him or his skin. She touched him wanting him, not wanting what he could give her. He could see it in her eyes, in the way she reacted.
Her actions were sincere.
She may be lying about her reasons, her past, omitting information he wanted desperately to have, but when it came to their interactions… He knew she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
Hysterian was ready to peel back her layers and discover all the little secrets she kept buried inside. He wanted to sink inside her soul and curl up. He kept replaying the way she’d screamed his name when he’d brought her to climax.
He wasn’t a red-blooded male. He was a stone-cold Cyborg who had the power to change the color of his blood to suit his needs. He had control. He had Alexa in his bed.
Whatever she wasn’t telling him, he was going to find out eventually.
Hysterian could wait. He was fucking good at waiting. He’d waited his entire life for her; he could wait a little longer.
He had to wait anyway so he could finally touch her, feel her like he needed to feel her. The first thing he planned to do once he was cured was kiss her. His nostrils flared. He’d always fantasized taking a woman to bed, but kissing them? Never. Now it was all he wanted when it came to Alexa. He was going to kiss every inch of her body, coat her body in his saliva. There weren’t going to be any barriers between them ever again.
The man talking to Hysterian stopped and moved away. The security guards circled the first crate containing the female locusts and lifted it slowly. Too slowly.
Hysterian stepped between two of the men and picked up the crate in its entirety, deciding to speed things along. The guards backed off when they realized he didn’t need any help.
“Payment’s been sent,” the first man said. “Sad to find their DNA can’t be spliced in animals on Earth.” He shrugged. “Maybe Earth isn’t equipped for animals again after all.”
Hysterian loaded the last of the three female locusts on the man’s truck. All that was left was the male. The crate was still as he approached it.
“Glad we’re changing shifts soon,” the man continued. “You got here just in time.”
“In time?” Hysterian feigned interest as he circled the male’s crate.
“Yeah. The female locusts are about to enter their heat. They’ve been gathering around Mt. Etta for the past two weeks. People have been arriving from all over to see the event.”
