She wanted to slam her fist into his arrogant smirk, but instead she nodded and pursed her lips momentarily. “Captain Brooklyn, at your service. Now you know why we’re here, so you should be able to release my ship.”
The alien shook his head. “I am Major Ontarii, commander of the Zantharian defense fleet, and I’m afraid we’ve detected a threat aboard your ship, so releasing you isn’t a possibility.”
Heat rose in Brook’s chest and coated her insides. “What threat? We’re no match for you. Shit, you said so yourself.”
“You humans are not a threat,” the alien said, as he scanned the crew gathered behind her.
“Well, wehumansare the only ones aboard this ship, other than the robots, which we turned off. You must be mistaken about your supposed threat, or you’re looking for an excuse to invade the ship of an innocent species.”
“Innocent?” he said, cocking a dark eyebrow at her and taking another step forward so that she had to tilt her head back to meet his gaze. “That remains to be seen.”
Something about his tone of voice set off a strange shiver down her spine. She stifled the shake and let the odd feelings burn into anger. Anger was safe.
Frustration. Anger. Not lust. Just not lust. It wasn’t turning out to be what she’d expected her first contact between humans and an alien race would be like.Off to a bad start.This is going to look like shit on my record.
“Look,” she said, her tone now brooking resistance. “You either tell me what you think this threat is, or you get the hell off of my ship.”
He scowled down at her, his jaw locking as if she were the biggest pain in the ass ever. His skin, which had been a light green, had started to shift slightly. Yellow striations appeared across his skin’s surface, the change quite striking and unexpectedly beautiful.
“Human, I am not in the habit of explaining myself to my subordinates,” he snapped at her and looked down his nose at her.
He was angry, but it couldn’t match the fury boiling over inside of her at his statement. “Subordinate? That’s no way to refer to a member of species you’re meeting for the first time.”
He rolled his eyes, and she barely stopped herself from kicking him in the shin or kneeing him in the crotch. If he had a crotch to knee him in.
As captain, Brook had had to keep her cool in much more high stakes situations than her current conversation, but for some reason she was having problems keeping her temper in check with this particular elitist asshole.
“You aren’t the first human I’ve met,” he said. “I’ve studied your species, and believe me, my assessment of Zantharian superiority is well founded.”
That was it.
Brook closed the space between herself and the alien until her breasts pressed tightly to his hardened chest. She lifted on her toes, and even though he was still several inches taller than her, she was as close to being in his face as she was getting.
Purposefully making her voice firm with an appropriate dash of anger, she bore an angry stare at him and whispered low and dark, “You and your Zantharian superiority can go fuck yourself. Get the hell off my ship before I physically remove you from it.”
