Were they just … wanderers?
Chapter Eight
“Look … I apologize for the things I said yesterday,” Belle said after glancing at Connor a couple of times when he fell into step with her when she got up to leave. “I’m really sorry. I know you have no control over the way other people behave and I said some ugly things when I know it isn’t your fault. I don’t have any control over other people either, though, and you might as well have painted a damned target on my back parking me right in front of Marcy Maniac! As much as I appreciate you … trying to watch out for me, I guess, I’d really, really like it a lot better it if you just didn’t attract attention to me.
“If you’ll just leave me alone, I swear I’ll do my best to avoid her and not cause you any more problems.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. A muscle in his jaw flexed--as if he was grinding his teeth. But he didn’t say anything.
And he stayed right where he was--beside her as she left the tent.
And followed her--or rather led her--to her job assignment when they left the commissary.
Thankfully he abandoned her to her own devices after he’d made a ‘statement’ to Marcy. She felt Marcy’s laser gaze burning into the middle of back all day long.
She decided to skip supper--not because she had no appetite, but because she had a really bad feeling that Marcy would be laying in wait for her when she finished and headed back to her hab.
Connor waylaid her and walked her to the commissary.
She didn’t know whether to be unnerved, alarmed, or glad.
She was hungry and she really hadn’t been looking forward to skipping supper.
It didn’t actually get her off the hook, though. She still had to worry about Marcy jumping her before she could get back to the hab.
And then she didn’t have to because Connor walked her back to the hab.
She had to worry about one of the women that was sharing the hab with her putting a knife in her back while she was trying to sleep.
Graveyard humor.
She hoped.
She was pretty sure none of the women sharing the hab with her was psychotic enough to try to knock her off. Not as convinced as she would’ve liked to have been, but they did regular psyche evals, so ….
They werenothappy, though. And she wasn’t able to go to sleep until they finally wound down from bitching aboutsomepeople getting special attention. They must be fucking him to get that kind of special attention. They must think they had golden pussy or something like that.
She hadn’t even known any of them werethatsmitten with him.
Because Marcy had riveted her attention.
Maybe, she thought, just before she finally succumbed to exhaustion, there was a valid reason why Connor was so unapproachable?
It had never occurred to her before that it must be really difficult for a guy that had to beat women off--especially when they wanted to fork one now and then and couldn’t get away with being a total asshole. And the fork-ees were determined to attach themselves like sucker fish the minute he did yield to the need to clean his pipes.
She’d only ever seen the mating dance from the viewpoint of the hunted--female.
She would’ve felt a lot worse for him if he’d just quit throwing her out as a target for their venom.
But nooo! Clearly he’d decided to make her his pet project.
Wallowingon people publicly was frowned upon--not completely forbidden but discouraged by peer pressure--staring, heckling, snide comments and that sort of thing. But she got the distinct impression that he wanted to. Either that or he didn’t think she could walk without assistance, because he steered her around by one arm if he got close enough to coil one of his plate sized hands around her upper arm.
For days after the alien man had inspired him to kiss her very publicly and throw her to the wolf pack.
Of course, she couldn’t rule out the possibility that she would have found herself in the middle of the blender anyway even if it had just been the alien man--Ryne--who’d decided to display his intentions so publicly.
It might even have been uglier.
