Page 6 of Protected By the Alien Mercenary

She pushed against my chest with her free hand, a dazed expression on her face. “Oh no? Then why didn’t you want to sleep with me?” As if I’d personally insulted her by not letting the sex between us become transactional. But I understood what she meant; she didn’t know where she stood yet. This world was crazy and strange to her; it wasn’t safe.

“I do,” I declared fiercely, “Desperately.” I was not afraid to admit that, my tail curling against her hips to press her against mine. There was no mistaking the erection I sported from that kiss, and her eyes went huge as she felt it against her soft belly. “But not like that. I want it freely given, willing. You understand?”

She had no words in response, but I could almost taste the burst of arousal that hit her, her sweet scent growing stronger and tangy. I loved it. I wanted to throw her over my shoulder and pin her to the nearest wall. It was the sound of voices from behind me, loud and excited, that yanked me back to the danger we were in.

Tossing a glance over my shoulder, I spotted the males pushing through the crowd behind us. They hadn’t seen us, so I couldn’t be sure it was us they were after. Pulling her with me, I started weaving us through the crowd, my duffel and our new purchases clutched in one hand, her tiny fist in the other. When the door I was looking for came into view, I breathed a sigh of relief. “Almost there,” I said to her.

The access door led to the warren of narrow tunnels that serviced the station. Many of those doors had been hacked or broken so that those with access could get in. I’d paid good money years ago to gain access to one of these doors; it was an excellent way to get around unnoticed or to hide when you pissed off someone with more manpower than you.

Rikki looked a little worried as I used my stolen code to gain access. The door beeped with a dull green light and then it sprung open with a groan. There were plenty of people giving us stares on the street, but the door was partially hidden behind a dried meat vendor to my left. I pushed her through the door first, risking another glance into the street to see if we were followed.

A shot whined, laser fire whizzing through the air and striking the metal doorpost above my head. I cursed, counting at least five thugs closing in on our position. My pistol was in my hand on reflex, a shot squeezing off that hit the first male in the shoulder and sent him spinning into the crowd. Someone screamed, and the crowd panicked. People started running left and right to duck for cover.

I winged a second male, and then quickly turned to duck through the door after my human. As soon as I was through, the noise of the street died down, and the whine of another laser gun was the last I heard. Then it all disappeared when I shut the door behind us.

It was pitch black in here, so I flicked on the light on my com device. “Now, let me scan you again. I suspect there’s a tracker somewhere on you.” She gasped, her hand flying to her pale throat. I could taste a hint of fear in the air now. She was scared about what this would mean for her. But I had a hunch, and if I was right, it would be good news.

“Will you have to cut it out?” she asked, her voice going a little high and tight. An image flashed before my eyes of her pale skin, cut with a sharp knife, her red human blood dripping from the gash. I growled, the sound fierce and deep as it escaped me.

“No,” I said, “I think it’s in your clothing. I was very thorough last night.” I didn’t mean for that to sound like an innuendo, but when she blushed and chuckled… My mind spun back to kissing her again, my cock eagerly twitching in my pants. It didn’t help that I’d just fought, after-fight energy always made me want to fuck.

Her hand was soft and warm on my shoulder as I ran the handheld scanner from my duffel over the seams of her clothing, then ducked to scan her shoes. There we go, the sole of one of her boots. When I picked up her foot, her hands shot out, and she clasped my horns for balance. Sensation sparked through me, my unruly body going wild for that touch. I didn’t even have a lot of feeling in my damn horns. It was just the image of her using those as handlebars.

Chapter 7

Rikki

I was in serious trouble. As I stood balanced on one foot, my hands clasped around Thar’oc’s spiraling horns. I could feel the notches and the ridges on them, notches that were carved, ridges that were natural from the way they twirled. This guy was too nice, and he wasn’t nice at all to anyone else, as far as I could tell.

He’d snapped and growled at each vendor, and barely even noticed how they cowered away from him in fear. He killed and shot people without any kind of compunction, and he seemed to enjoy it too. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was a total jerk to a waitress, or that he’d scowl at a kid and scare them by accident. But… He was so sweet to me and so protective.

Now I had one hand, sticky from the small little sweetbun he’d handed me, curled around his horn and he seemed to like it if his expression was anything to go by. He was kneeling on a dirty metal floor inside a dank, narrow tunnel as he took off my boot and gently helped me into the new sneaker. He had abandoned his friends to rescue me because he wanted to do the right thing for me. All without demanding anything in return, but if he kept that up, he would get what he wanted; me willingly.

My second high-heeled boot was tossed, and I was standing on my own again in a pair of slightly too big sneakers. Now I was even smaller next to his huge body, barely reaching halfway up his chest. My eyes tracked his impressive pectorals and abs, outlined in the formfitting strange black armor he wore. Then I spotted something incongruent, a streak of something dark red over his biceps.

“Oh God, Thar’oc, did you get shot?” I gasped, glancing from the wound on his arm to the firmly shut metal door between us and the thoroughfare. He shrugged, dipping to sling his huge black duffel bag over one shoulder. With a palm against my back, he urged me to follow the passage, the stupid boots with the tracker abandoned.

“Just a graze,” he said casually. “Come on, I know the way.” For the next half hour, we trekked through near darkness. We zigzagged from tunnel to tunnel, some big and some small, but all of them smelly. No matter how often I brought it up, he wouldn’t stop to take care of that burn across his arm. The tough guy acted like he barely felt it, but I knew burns hurt. He had to be feeling that at least a little, right?

All he did was hand me food when I ran out or offer his canteen of fresh, clean water. He said we didn’t need to preserve anything, but I was still worried. Two days down here was a long time, and that’s how long he said we needed to hide. “Won’t your mercenary friends want to help out?” I asked at one point, but he laughed and shook his head. One of his horns clanged against a low-hanging pipe with a bang.

“Captain won’t get involved with this until it’s time to leave. He won’t want to burn bridges with a rich prick like that, in case the dude might want to hire the Varakartoom later.” That seemed really cold, but I supposed it made sense. His captain ran a business. He probably wouldn’t want to get involved in any kind of problem unless someone paid him to. They were mercenaries, after all. I guess I was just lucky to run into the one mercenary who wanted to rescue me free of charge.

Then I touched my chest, my heart stuttering as I contemplated that. Maybe not so free of charge, I really liked this guy. Could a girl fall that fast? That was crazy thinking to even contemplate. It was just hormones and brain chemistry being weird because of all the danger I was in and because he was the one nice thing in this entire situation.

“Almost there,” he said, his arm raised to shine the light from his weird wristwatch thing along the tunnel to a doorway to one side. It looked just like any other part of the pipe-filled tunnels we’d traveled through; dark metal stained with rust. Thar’oc had to shoulder it open with force, as it hung crooked in its frame and screeched mightily as he did so.

It was dark and gloomy beyond. A sound of water dripping reached my ears before he shone his light inside the space. It was a room with no other exit, just a bank of some kind of computery things against one wall. They were dark and looked old and covered with dust. There was nothing else inside, and nothing that could explain that obnoxious dripping noise.

My mercenary went in first, his hand hovering at his hip where one of his pistols was strapped to his upper thigh. He was more alert than I had seen him in some time, as though he expected some enemy to leap from the shadows at any moment. That did not make me feel confident that this was a suitable spot to camp out in.

For about thirty seconds, he scanned the room, his light shining along every surface, including the ceiling. Then his shoulders lowered and his tail went from rigid with a flicking tip to a soft, relaxed curl. “All good, come in. I’ll get us set up.” He gestured with a finger, crooking it into that typical come hither motion. I was kind of relieved to see that was a universal thing, unless I was about to discover that he was propositioning me with that finger.

My eyes tracked his movements as I shuffled inside. I had blisters on my feet at this point from the too-large shoes, but I wasn’t going to complain. I couldn’t help but stare at that bright red burn along his bare biceps. It was starting to seem stupid to me that he wore body armor that sleekly conformed everywhere but left his arms bare. I was fairly certain that his buddies in that dive bar had worn suits with long sleeves, so why wasn’t he?

Thar’oc pulled some kind of round little disk from his big bag and set that on the floor out in the hallway. “Ward, it will screech if anyone approaches that door that isn’t us.” Then he focused on the inside of the room, quickly pulling out some kind of roll that rapidly inflated to a soft mattress thing. As soon as he placed it on the floor, he was guiding me down on it and my heart leaped in my throat, sudden arousal spearing through me. This time, I was filled with anticipation in a good way.

The lines of bright blue along his body flared brighter. His tail curled itself around my nearest ankle and gripped firmly, and a smirk started to curl his mouth. I saw a hint of a sharp canine tooth at the corner that caught against his dark lips. My stomach swooped, then clenched tightly. “Yes,” he said, his voice sinfully low in that strange sub-harmonic way he spoke. Like there were two deep bass voices layered one over the other. “Soon, sweetheart. Soon.”