She didn’t know how long she stood in front of the door, repeating her mantra over and over in her head, but eventually, he came to let her out.
Cara looked at him steadily.He didn’t seem startled to see her just on the other side, but he made no move away from the threshold and neither did she.
“I don’t like being locked away,” she said calmly, evenly, not matching the swarm of emotion inside her chest that settled only slightly at the sight of him.“I’ve been in a cage for too long.Will this be another one?”
The alien regarded her for a long time.She studied his face, trying to read his strange expressions, but it wasn’t like she understood his body language in a way she would immediately recognize a human’s.
Cara saw the corner of his mouth twitch down, a slight furrowing of his prominent brow bone that made him appear almost angry.He raked a hand over his horn, something she’d seen him do before.Did it mean he was frustrated?Annoyed?Uncomfortable?She didn’t know.
Besides all this, his voice was the softest she’d ever heard it when he said, “There are dangerous areas on the vessel.I did not want you wandering, only to harm yourself.”
“No, you’re afraid I’ll find a way to escape.Or mess up something on your ship that would delay us.”
His expression flattened.“We do not trust each other, female.For good reason.”
“I’m an honest person,” she told him, deciding to lay it all out for him.“I don’t like bullshit.I like it when someone tells me straight up what’s going on.”He frowned at her words, as if trying to understand her meaning.But she knew he understood perfectly well.“I’ll be honest with you if you’re honest with me.”
“There are some things I cannot tell you.”
“Then be honest with me about the things you can,” she said.“I don’t like being locked away.I don’t…do well.I know you have no reason to trust me, but I promise that I will not sabotage your ship in any way.Why would I when I’m on board myself?”
“You will try to escape?” he asked, tilting his head to the side.His impossibly high cheekbones caught the light, casting a deep shadow in the hollows of his cheeks.
“Not off the ship, no.I already know I wouldn’t survive.Where would I go?” she shrugged her shoulders.Her gaze sharpened on him.“It doesn’t mean I won’t try to figure out where you’re taking me, even if you cannot tell me.It doesn’t mean I won’t watch you every time you fiddle with something on your control panel upstairs.And it doesn’t mean that I won’t try to convince you to take me home instead.”
They stared at each other from across the threshold.His gaze flickered over her, catching on her legs, where the shirt end hit her thigh, before returning to her eyes.Sizing her up, no doubt.Trying to read her, to decide if she was telling the truth.
The scar that ran down the side of his face pulled slightly as he turned to the screen on the door, tapping something in with his long fingers.
When he looked back at her, he said, “The fuel quarters are restricted—the two doors at the end of this hallway.”Cara’s heart leapt in her chest.“You may go wherever else you please.”
Cara swallowed, trying not to sound too relieved.“Thank you.”
He stepped back from the door, allowing her the chance to exit.“Do not make me regret it, female.”
She stepped out, close enough that she could feel his heat.Again, she suppressed a shiver of awareness at their proximity and then stepped past.
“My name is Cara, not ‘female,’” she said.She watched his gaze flicker, his eyes flashing in the light.Fascinating.“What’s your name?”
That expression grew darker.“Do not concern yourself with what I am called.I am no one”
Cara didn’t want to dwell on the disappointment that swamped her at his answer.Why did she want to know his name so much anyways?
“I can’t just keep referring to you as ‘the alien’ in my head, now can I?” she returned, lightening her tone.“How about Captor then, with a capital ‘C’?Would you like me to call you that?”
He grunted, the surly male.And then turned to walk down the hallway, in the opposite direction of the elevator.“Call me what you wish.”
“How about Scar?” she asked, following behind him.She planned to stick to him like white on rice.“That would be a pretty bad ass name, right?”
He cast her a sideways look when she struggled to keep up with his long strides.“You speak too much, female.”
“Can you blame me?I’ve had no one to talk to,” she murmured.Then she shut off her mind from going backthere.“How did you get it anyways?Your scar?”
Again, he took his sweet time answering.The hallway was longer than she’d expected, curving around, following the shape of the oval ship.
“It was a gift from my blood brother,” he finally said.
Surprise that he’d actually answered and about what he’d revealed rocked her.“Your brother?Why would he do—”
