Bitch!She thought, whipping around abruptly and heading toward the perimeter palisade with no clear idea of what she was doing or where she was going.
A gate was open--or at least a segment of the wall--when she’d followed the wall for a short distance and she saw some of the colonists were moving in and out carrying firewood and other forest debris they were apparently collecting from the forest that surrounded the colony. She didn’t think she actually grasped that thought. She simply followed those who were heading out, glancing back in the direction she’d just come from.
She caught a glimpse of the captain as she ducked out behind another colonist. He at leastseemedto be headed her way.
It gave her a ‘goose’ of an unnerved jolt, sent a couple of notes of panic through her that added impetus to her flight.
It wasn’t that she was afraid of the captain in any sense of the word.
She hadn’t done anything.
She couldn’t be in trouble.
Unless the bitch had said something to get her in trouble ….
She didn’t want to find out why he seemed to be following her, though.
She’d already ducked behind some of the taller, thicker growing alien plants before she began to get the uneasy prickling sensation of being watched.
She glanced behind her for a quick survey to reassure herself and then returned her attention to watching for the captain, peering between a couple of branches while she tried to convince herself she was behaving erratically and irrationally. He wasn’t after her … for any reason.
But he appeared at the opening.
A jolt went through her.
She should just head back and see if he really had come to look for her, she told herself--and why if he had.
She was being silly.
She was scaring herself for nothing.
She was still undecided and trying to get up the nerve to just see what it was about--if it was anything. And yet ….
She stepped back, away from the bush she’d hidden behind.
And turned slowly, still trying to convince herself she’d blown the entire thing all out of proportion.
Just because that crazy woman had made her feel threatened.
And she suspected the lunatic had thought of some tale to carry to him to get her in trouble.
When she’d just spent the past few weeks in the damn brig for nothing more than being caught up in the unrest the captain’s report had created.
She wasn’t certain what made her look up.
Maybe she heard something that seemed out of place?
Maybe she just felt as if she was being watched?
She did look up, though.
And it still took several moments for her brain to decipher what she was looking at perched on a thick limb perhaps fifteen to twenty feet from the ground … and maybe that far from where she was standing.
She thought it was partly that he seemed to blend surprisingly well with his surroundings, but probably mostly because she hadn’t expected to run up on a native of the alien world at all.
He was wearing nothing from the waist up, exposing a chest and torso that was beautifully sculpted with rippling muscles. The skin molded to his muscular frame was a very definite shade of blue. There didn’t appear to be a single hair exposed anywhere except the multi-colored hair on his head--which seemed mostly a deep purple mixed with black and even some hair that was brown to golden. It seemed to be braided along his scalp, but it was loose beneath that and trailed over his broad shoulders and down to his male breasts.
His face was …. Lean to a point of almost sharp, infinitely alien, and yet exotic in a strangely appealing way.
