He was breathing in a slow and steady rhythm, his boots nearly silent as he walked across the soft jungle dirt. Plants unfurled their thick leaves like fingers and stroked across his sleek black armor. I admired how his muscles were thick and heavy, packed to a solid frame that would have been terrifying if he weren’t holding me to his shoulder so very gently. It was the weight of his palm, which covered nearly all of my back with solid warmth. It was comforting, protective—the way he gripped me—and he’d angled me carefully so I wasn’t resting on my dislocated shoulder.
Shifting my attention to my shoulder was a bad idea, a very bad one. The adrenaline from the chaos, Jeltom’s shooting, and D’aron’s terrible killing intent was wearing off. With it came the pain, harsh, crippling. It was one of the worst things I’d ever felt. Tears sprang to my eyes, and a whimper slipped from my throat, one I tried to swallow. I might think that big hand felt protective, but I could not trust my empathic senses to read the truth of that.
What was it he’d said when he barged into the lab? “Are you Danitalin Hiraza? We’re here to rescue you?” I wasn’tsure if he’d used the wordrescueorretrievenow, and that made all the difference.Retrievecould be very bad, it could mean he was just next in line after D’aron to get hold of me for my ability to make this cure. Even if I was starting to doubt myself—doubt that I could do it—that didn’t matter as long astheybelieved it.
I fought back another whimper, and this time, I failed; the pain was excruciating. The Rummicaron jerked to a halt at the sound, freezing in place but not doing anything else for several seconds. Was he waiting for me to do it again? I bit my lip hard and swallowed the next wave of pain, but tears stung my eyes and began dripping along my cheeks. As I was upside down, they ran past my temples and into my hairline.
In the distance—very vaguely—I could still hear the sounds of guns and lasers, but it was so muted I knew he’d put a lot of distance between us and the fight. The only other sounds were those of his steady breathing and the jungle, as it held its breath and waited for calm to return.
The hand on my back shifted, and for a short moment, I was drawn away from the pain and focused only on the shift of those big fingers along my spine. He lowered me slowly, gliding my body along his wide chest within the circle of his arms. I was unsteady on my feet, and though I didn’t want to, the pain that jarred through my body into my shoulder made me whimper again.
His face was so foreign from mine, and I realized how much I relied on the things I felt to know what people were thinking. I could not read him; he was a gray face with a sharp jaw and too wide of a mouth. His eyes were small and dark, and his nose was wide and blunt. He was darker gray atthe top of his bare skull and paler at his throat, but that pale bit didn’t make him look soft.
I wasn’t prepared for the slightly rough texture of his thumb as he wiped it along the corner of my eye, straight into my hairline, as he followed the path of my tears. Something in his face shifted—grew harsher—but I couldn’t tell what that meant. Was it a frown? Was he upset? Or was he just confused? I had no clue.
“You cry?” he said. His voice was deep and heavy, rumbling through my chest and making me aware of how closely pressed together he’d kept us. Was that to hold me steady, protect me, or cage me? I should have paid more attention to the stroke of that thumb, but I’d gotten focused on his face as I wondered what he was thinking. The warmth of his palm, sliding down to cup my dislocated shoulder, was fast—too fast to fully register. Then a wrench came, sharp and sudden. I shouted, completely unprepared for the abrupt twist of my dislocated joint. It popped back into place with a sickening noise, and the pain went from sharp and immediate to dull and throbbing.
My scream petered out into a hiss, and I flicked my eyes from where they’d jerked to my shoulder back to his face. I felt something then—so light, so vague—that I thought it might be an echo of the things I’d been overloaded with the past few days. I couldn’t even decipher it enough to give the feeling a name.
“You’re a screamer, are you?” he said mildly, and a dangerous heat flared into my cheeks, catching me completely by surprise. I knew he wasn’t talking aboutthat, but somehow my mind flashed to orgasmsand silk sheets, and… him. Naked, gray, beastly large compared to me, and so blessedly quiet that I could feelme.
His gaze went from the wetness at my eyes to my cheeks, as if he sensed their sudden warmth, and then to my mouth. His head tilted slightly to the side, definitely inquisitive, I hoped. “But you don’t say much else, do you?” His hand slid from my abused shoulder back up the column of my throat, and this time his thumb lightly touched the cut on my busted lip. Oh, right, he hadn’t been thinking about kissing me; he was just looking at my other injury.
“I say what needs saying,” I told him. That made something that perhaps resembled a smile tilt the corner of his mouth up. Rummicaron didn’t smile, as a rule, so I wasn’t quite sure if I was seeing that right. He didn’t feel like amusement, but if there was something deep beneath the self-control, my senses were too burned out to pick it up right now.
“Fair enough,” he agreed. “You smell of blood. Let me clean that up.” He lowered his head, and for an insane moment, I truly believed he was going to lick my lip with his tongue. His mouth did open, and I saw the flicker of sharp teeth, but he was only bending down to get a pouch on his belt. He withdrew a small wound-cleansing pad from it and used it to dab at the cut on my lip. He made a hmming noise, deep in the back of his throat, that was so Aderian—and so alien at the same time—because it was deeper, lower. “I’ll take care of this bruising with my tissue regenerator later, but your scream might have called attention to our position. We should move.”
I was still untangling the information in that sentence when he swept me back into his arms. My feet left theground, but this time I was sideways—legs dangling over one arm, torso cradled by the other. He was already moving by the time I’d processed this new change. It was certainly much more comfortable, upright, and intimate. Against my heels, I could feel the brush of the massive laser cannon he had hanging from a strap on his back. Chin on his shoulder, I could also see the sharp fin rising from between his shoulder blades.
He didn’t talk much either, quietly walking through the jungle and setting us along a meandering, twisting path. I had a good sense of direction, and I’d been in this jungle countless times since we’d gotten here. He was circling back toward the compound, or perhaps to a site very near to it. “Where are you taking me?” I found myself asking. He had not been threatening so far, so I was going to have to trust that his actions spoke for him.
“To the shuttles, and hopefully off this damn world. Why would a bunch of scientists even come here? You’ve got no business sitting on a powder keg like Radin.” There was such grumpy disapproval in his tone that I was certain he had to be feeling it too, but still, nothing. I couldn’t recall if Rummicaron mimicked the sound of emotions in their dialogue or not.
I knew I shouldn’t answer with the truth. If he didn’t know it, it could put a brand-new target on my back. If he did know, he’d call me out on it, I hoped. “I go where they order me to go for the research,” I said. It was a blatant lie, and I knew I was terrible at lying, but he seemed to take my words at face value, nodding along.
“Orders are orders. I didn’t realize Aderian scientists had strict rules like that. It soundsmilitary,” he told me. Something in the tone of his voice made the skin on the back of my neck prickle with intuition—not fear, precisely, but awareness. I closed my eyes and listened, but my empathic senses were so overworked that it felt like static in my ears. Maybe it was just that this guy was ex-military, it was a popular profession for Rummicaron, and many became mercenaries after their service ended.
Ah, mercenaries. I had a sudden feeling that’s what he was. Whether he was here to rescue or steal me, it was the only way he and his crew could have gotten onto Radin. Aderia would not get through its red tape fast enough to send a rescue party already, but they might hire mercenaries if they were close enough and had a trustworthy reputation.
“What’s your name? Seems fair, since you know mine,” I asked. He stepped over a fallen tree then, and the high step made me sway against his chest, so my head landed on his shoulder. I stubbornly angled my head back and gave him what I hoped was a look that demanded answers.
“Jaxin,” he said, with that same curl of his mouth that made me wonder if he wasn’t smiling just a little—secretly, as if I wasn’t supposed to realize that he was. “But you don’t want my name, do you, little one? You want to know what I want with you…” He trailed off, letting the words hang in the air between us, almost as a threat, a little like he was building anticipation.
He did not answer his own question until I’d nodded. “I am a mercenary of the Varakartoom, the finest, most notorious crew in the Zeta Quadrant. Your government hired us to rescue you.” Rescue! He said it. My heart leaped with hope, but then crashed, because life had taught me that things were never that good and true. Then I rememberedseeing—and feeling—how Jeltom got shot. Jaxin’s timing could have been much better, sweeping in to rescue us. It had savedme, but it hadn’t saved Jeltom, who was probably the closest I’d ever gotten to having a real friend.
“What, no further questions?” he asked, and I shook my head mutely. What could I say to that? It wasn’t a surprise that the Aderian government had gone through a mercenary intermediary to provide aid. The only surprise was their swiftness, since Litarun hadn’t been executed until two days ago. That must have been when they stopped getting believable updates from our little research post. Aderia was not known for its swift response time in any matter. Two days couldn’t possibly be long enough for them to dispatch Jaxin and his crew.
He seemed to think I should be asking him lots of questions, so I asked what was bothering me about the timing. He grinned, his mouth growing wide and revealing all those sharp teeth; I couldn’t help it, I winced back. He did not even seem to notice my response. “Two days? Your outpost has been out of contact for nearly three weeks by now, sweetheart.”
I blinked at him in confusion, certain I’d heard wrong. That had to be a mistake, I’d uploaded my last report last week and gotten the usual response: verified message received. It had looked fine… and I was pretty sure I’d overheard Litarun and D’aron talking about word from Aderia, about Koratalin, my half-sister. How could we be out of contact for three weeks? Surely I hadn’t lost track of that much time after D’aron took us hostage. Though I could not deny that I was running on so little sleep thatmy brain felt sluggish and slow. Imighthave lost a bit of time here or there, but not that much, right? Not two whole weeks?
“You’re frowning awful hard, little one. Why is that?” Jaxin asked, with a tone that, to my ears, sounded friendly, warm, a bit concerned. I didn’t think he wasthatgood at faking emotion in conversation when he felt nothing of the sort, because he felt nothing at all. I sought to find the truth with my gift but met silence, and an ache in my brain that warned me not to try that again for a while. Burnout was so close, and so dangerous, that it could permanently stunt my gift.
A traitorous voice at the back of my mind, driven by sleep deprivation, wondered if that would be so bad… No gift might finally mean a normal relationship—and actual intimacy—with a male. My eyes went to Jaxin’s strange, alien face. His gray skin had a fascinating texture I wanted to study more closely, as if it weren’t skin but minuscule triangular scales overlapping one another. Before I could curb the impulse, I reached up and dragged my fingertips over his skin. It was slightly rough, but pleasantly slick at the same time.
“All right, that stopped you from frowning. I guess you can do it again.” I froze, eyes widening in shock. He was doing that not-smile again, the one that felt like it was a secret, and I wasn’t supposed to see his amusement. He was Rummicaron; he couldn’t feel amusement. At least he didn’t seem to mind that I’d touched him, uninvited. Then the enormity of what had just happened crashed into me: I’d touched him, and I hadn’t gotten blasted with his feelings.
“I believe I have complete empathic burnout,” I told him, to explain the frown, and perhaps the strange impulse totouch him. If I could touch him, was this my one chance to be intimate with a male before my gift recovered? I opened my mouth, ready to proposition him then and there, but snapped my teeth back together in a rush. No, that was the lack of sleep talking. I couldn’t just ask a stranger to have sex with me—especially not on the heels of Jeltom getting shot, the research facility getting demolished, and my safety still hanging in the balance.
