Page 8 of Tempted By the Alien Mercenary

“Okay,” she sighed, and I pushed because I always did like pushing people. That part might make me a bastard, and it was all mine. She stumbled back a step in my grip, and Val coiled around her, held her up until her back hit a wall that was at least somewhat clean. Val cradled her, but it was as much to restrain as to protect. Our eyes were locked together, hers wide and so very green they made no sense. Her breathing was on my face, warm and soft. Her scent wrapped around my head, clouding my thoughts until there was only her and the victory after the fight again, not the failure of my bond with Val. She was so much temptation wrapped into a small package.

“Kiss me then,” she dared, as if it were her choice, not mine. I growled—a warning not to push me—and then I did as she’d dared me to, anyway. My mouth on hers, our breath mixing, tongues tangling. She did not surrender; she did not go quietly at all, fighting me for every stroke and caress and taste. She was maddening. She was passion and fire and all kinds of rebellious, inciting me to force her to submit, daring me to try.

“I will,” I warned her, even if she could not possibly know where my thoughts had headed. “I will,” I vowed. Her teeth were blunt but sharp enough to send a dart of pain through my flesh when she nipped my lip in response. That bold female had bitten hard enough that, on a human, she might have drawn blood. It was a warning, to let me know that she was not going to go quietly, but I already knew that. I’d have her anyway, and on my terms.

When she raised her hands to curl them against my neck, it was more touch than I could handle. Ten points of contact where her fingertips touched, and a direct line of sensation ran down my spine. I jerked back, but I told myself that wasn’t a retreat—this was a tactic to leave her on edge, wanting more. I’d make her beg for it before I kissed her again.

Turning my back to her was the only way I could keep my damned distance, but that was not something I was willing to admit, not to myself, and certainly not out loud. The sight of her kiss-bruised mouth was forever engraved on my brain: pink cheeks, red and wet mouth, and the tangle of her silky hair partially in her face. Even the way her chest rose and fell rapidly was enticing, as if she were offering her breasts to me with each deep inhale.

“We need to get out of here before that thing comes back,” I barked to the wall. The blood splatter was black like ink and had sprayed this wall in a sinuous arc. Each drying drop gleamed like oil, with a rainbow of colors that reminded me of the path markers inside the Varakartoom. I heard her move behind me, shuffling as she straightened her clothing. I ignored my aching cock, as that sound reminded me of the sexy way she’d looked. I was the sineater, couldn’t blame myself for being ravenous for one particular sin: lust.

“Right, what was that thing? I thought I saw a face… Oh, Sin, I think I might know who it is!” She had already shortened Sineater to Sin, how human of her. I wanted to twist to her, to mock her for that custom, anything to create distance after we’d tangled so closely. Then her horror washed over me, and Val rose, sliding back into her Gracka form and eagerly feeding on the feeling. Her horror was so intense that I did turn to look, and felt a spark of sympathy somewhere in the hollow, empty space behind my ribs.

She stared at me with huge eyes, and though her hair was still tangled from my fingers, there was no trace of true passion. The horror was accompanied by a hint of fear and a delicious dose of guilt. Val was always particularly satisfied with that last one, but she did not seem to enjoy feeding on Frederique’s guilt the way she did on that of others. It felt as though Val were the one feeling guilty for doing so, for needing it to be strong.

“I think that was Davidson. My navigator. But how? What happened?” she said, as the silence stretched and I hadn’t asked her to explain anything. I shrugged, because I knew as much as she did. Whatever dark things lived in the ocean of this planet had never been studied, never been seen by anyone able to tell about it afterward. It was interesting to consider that it was another kind of symbiont, and that it had claimed the person from the one empty stasis pod, apparently.

“Do you think… Do you think Davidson is still in there? Or has he been completely corrupted?” she asked, finally stepping away from the wall and once again boldly moving to stand right next to me. Why? Why did she have to get this damned close every time? She had no respect for personal space, and I expected my personal space to be at least ten feet at all times. A nice little bubble of distance the Varakartoom’s crew knew to respect, but not her, damn it.

“No,” I snapped, frustrated because now her sweet, floral scent was swirling into my nose, teasing me, tempting me. “He’s been like that for almost as long as this ship has been down here. Didn’t you see the dust that had collected in his pod?” Her expression shuttered, but her horror was fading, numbing, spiraling out of her, as Val gobbled it up. It was never clear to me if it helped the people Val fed from or just made it harder for them to deal with their feelings. It certainly hadn’t made me any less of a pessimistic bastard. She seemed steady, though, calm, ready to go toe to toe with me again. That was the biggest temptation of all. It would be so simple to clasp the back of her neck and hold her in place so I could lay claim to her soft, pink mouth again.

“Oooh, that’s not good,” she said. “Where are we? Talacan territory? Don’t tell me we crashed on Talac itself. Wouldn’t they have found us if we had?” She peered around me, down the hall, then sidled up to the splatter on the wall to study it closely. She was not stupid enough to reach out and touch it, but her hands twitched as if she wanted to. Given the data I’d read about her on the ship’s computer, she probably wanted to take samples to study under a microscope.

“Oh no,” I drawled, taking her elbow and guiding her away from the wall. “You made it out of the Alpha Quadrant, barely. And then you crashed on the most dangerous planet in existence. Now, where are the life pods? You’ll need one to get off this leaky bucket.” She blinked at me, her steps stumbling and slow as I dragged her away from her fascination with the creature’s blood. I could not explain why exactly, but it made me extremely uneasy to let her get close to it.

She halted, digging in her heels and tilting her head to lookup at the ceiling, as if she could see straight through the metal hull. “We’re underwater?” she demanded, leaping to the correct conclusion with startling intuition. I nodded, seeing no point in lying, and she bit her lip, frowning as if that made a huge difference to her. Then she sighed and lifted a graceful hand to point in the other direction. “The closest ones are that way.”