Page 10 of Seduced By the Alien Mercenary

“Now, you go get some sleep somewhere safe,” he said to me. “And preferably dream sweet dreams of me.” Ah, fuck, he threw me for a loop again with that comment. That was definitely flirty, and I couldn’t handle it. It had to be his default setting; there was no way he was attracted to tiny, damaged me.

I opened my mouth to protest, deflect, anything to get him to stop saying things to me that spun my world upside down. Dream of him? I knew I was, but he shouldn’t want that, because all he cared about was what I could do to help him escape. In return, he helped me. It was as simple as that.

“Do you have access to communications?” he asked before I could get a word in. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, and now I had whiplash from the rapid shift in topic. I nodded slowly because I could get anywhere on the ship, and that included finding an abandoned comm station somewhere. I’d secretly observed enough of the crew to know the basics of how it worked, even if the computer was in a language I couldn’t read.

“If you can get a message out to my ship, they’ll come for us. Can you memorize this hail sign? It’s all you’ll need to know, you don’t even need to speak to anyone. Just let it ring, and they’ll know.” I nodded along, relieved it wouldn’t require actually talking to anyone. Then he rattled off the symbols I was supposed to tap, and my hope was dashed. If I couldn’t read, I sure as hell wouldn’t know how to recognize these letters and numbers on the screen.

“Ah…no, don’t worry your pretty head about it,” Flack said, abruptly aborting the sequence. His body shifted on the cot, hands twitching like he wanted to reach for me. I stepped back instinctively, nearly out of the cell. “You can’t read the screens. I shouldn’t have asked.” No, I couldn’t read the screen, but, damn it, I wasn’t completely useless. I wanted to do this, wanted to take action, take control of my fate.

Darting out of the cell, I ignored him when he called out, warning me I’d left his door open. I rummaged through the crates in the cell I’d hidden in, and moments later came up triumphant with a lost alien marker of some sort—something someone had used to write on the crates. I held it up when I got back to him, along with a strip of the packaging that had previously held the regenerator. “Can you write it down?”

His eyes gleamed and he nodded. “Clever, clever. Yeah, we can do this.” Except, when I eyed his tied-up hands, my whole body shook with what I needed to do. Get really, really close. I shuffled toward him, hands shaking, and then braced my knee on the hard cot next to him so I could press the marker into his hand. “A little closer,” he murmured when I held the packaging in front of that same hand. Awkwardly balanced, I did, but he was so bloody tall I needed my other knee on the cot too. Then I nearly lost my balance and reached quickly for his shoulder with a free hand to steady myself.

Heat seared my skin and shot up my arm. We both shook, and then he moaned, as if that simple, innocent touch had actually caused him pleasure. “Oh no, that’s not some weird, alien erogenous zone on your body, is it?” I asked, jerking back my hand like I’d been burned and rubbing my palm against my dress—not because it felt dirty, but because I’d liked the feel of his silky skin a little too much.

His chuckle was hoarse, a little too seductive, but the mirth was real. “No, no weird alien erogenous zone. Mine are pretty much where you’d expect them. You’re just so damn pretty I can’t help myself.” I wanted to call him a liar again, but I blushed instead. Then, just to test myself, I placed my hand back on his shoulder while watching his face. I really shouldn’t like how pleased that made him look.

This time it wasn’t like getting struck by lightning, but it still felt good to touch him. He opened his mouth, probably to say something else flirty, and I hurriedly told him to get to work. He smirked, but he did, writing down symbols and checking them to make sure he’d done them right, when he could barely see what he was doing. Eventually, I had the hailing code he wanted me to try, and I was confident enough that I could type in the right symbols.

“It’s not a priority, Irena,” Flack said as I began to retreat, pulling the tattered remains of my dignity back around me and firmly telling the eager hormones rushing through my body to get a grip. “Your safety comes first, so do this only if you think there is no risk. Do you understand?” Gah, why did his commandeering tone sound just as hot, just as seductive as when he actually said flirty things? I nodded, because I knew that’s what he was after, and then finally—finally—I could retreat, locking his cell door, gathering every bit of evidence I’d been here, and then slipping away through a narrow hatch in the wall. I was pretty sure I couldn’t risk getting caught on camera leaving at such an odd time. Better they not see me leave at all.