She thought for a moment that he meant to drag her up for a kiss.
She felt amazingly let down when he didn’t.
Instead, he turned as his companion had, leapt up to grasp the top of the wall and went over it with another show of stunning muscle strength that just did something deeply disturbing to her--made her feelmorejittery even than his sudden appearance had.
It was purely beautiful to watch that display of strength, grace, and coordination.
And yet, she found it disconcerting to find herself drawn to him in any way.
Because, she realized, shewasdrawn to him and she couldn’t convince herself that it was purely scientific curiosity because he was an intelligent alien species.
That was just amazing.
Yet another unsettling experience in what was rapidly growing from a puddle into a lake.
* * * *
Belle jolted to a halt as she entered the commissary.
Connor was seated at a table eating and Marcy was seated directly across from him.
She yielded to the instant compulsion to retreat, finding herself outside again before her brain had even functioned at a conscious level.
When she’d gotten outside, though, and managed to fight down the panic attack threatening to take hold of her, anger rose to supplant it.
She was hungry, damn it!
She was going to starve to death trying to avoid … people she didn’t want to see! She was going to have to think of another way to steer clear of potential unpleasantness, she decided. Breathing slowly and deeply to calm herself, she’d just turned to head back in when Connor stepped out, glanced around, and headed directly toward her.
Doubt froze her to the spot.
Because she was convinced his appearance had nothing to do with her right up until he stopped in front of her and grasped her arm. Without a word, he turned and marched her back inside.
Asifshe meant to fight him about eating!
Then he walked her right up to the front of the line and stood watching until the server had made a plate for her. Taking it even as she reached for it, he walked her back to the table he’d been sitting at, planted the plate on the table and ‘helped’ her into a seat.
Lifting one arm to hide her face behind her hand--because every-fucking-body was glaring daggers at her because she’d broken in line--including the bitch across from her, Marcy--she took her fork and struggled to eat.
Every bite she took dropped into her stomach like she was swallowing rocks.
Maybe it was pure paranoia, but she felt like half the damned people in the place were talking about her.
Which really wasn’t that much of a stretch.
Connor had put a target on her back just by doing what he had and nobody was going to blamehimfor the fact that she got bumped to the head of the line.
That would be her … manipulating him into fucking over everybody else.
It really sucked to be in the middle of such a small community.
Of course, it was theonlycommunity she’d ever known, but everybody studied Earth history and she knew Earth had been overpopulated and there’d been mega-cities when they’d left. There had beenapartmentcomplexes that had a larger population than the Artemis and they weren’t cooped up together their entire lives so that everybody knew everybody and pretty much their entire life history.
She wondered if it was like that for the natives.
She frowned at that thought, though, realizing there hadn’t been anything found but ancient ruins, or at least old, when the surveys were done.
That was why nobody had been expecting living, breathing primitives to show up.
