Page 29 of Tortured

A bubbling noise leaves the alien’s wobbly throat.

“I don’t care what you thought. She’s mine.” The alien immediately slides his slim tentacles off of her and slips back.

I move forward and my hand finds her bare back. I feel her shiver. I leans forward and whisper in her ear, “Are you alright?”

She nods but naturally she doesn’t speak. Her body is tense against my hand. From the terror of not knowing where she was to the torment of holding her so close to me it’s almost too much for me. I feel light-headed with relief.

I turn my eyes on the slimy alien attempting to slither away from us. Anger flares and I want to rip him to Carmadine dust for daring to touch her.

“Where do you think you’re going, granthing piece of vreck.” I move closer to him and before he can guess my intentions, I take a knife out of my belt and cut off one of the alien’s tentacles. His shriek echoes through the deserted hall and Lacey cover her ears and drops to her knees, shrinking back.

His slimy body shakes as I tower over him, my lips curling back, my teeth slamming into a biting grunt, my gaze deadly as it rakes over the trembling, tentacled alien.

“You’re lucky that you’re still breathing. If you had managed to finish what you were attempting to do to her, you wouldn’t be,” I growl. “Now get the vreck out of my sight before I change my mind!”

The creature slithers away quickly but I turn my back on him and study my little female. My fingers come up and wrap around her delicate cheekbones, the skin soft and cool to the touch. The pearlescent trail of slime on her delicate skin makes me want to go back and get that thing and break him in half. He touched my mate. I should have killed him. I turn to go find him again but she grabs hold of me and hangs on tight.

“Are you alright, kora?”

She nods but her breath still comes out in soft, harsh puffs. Tremors still shake her body and she leans against the wall.

“Come, kora. I will take you back to our ship.” It’s the only place I can think of that will not have people watching us. Our room most likely even has vid in it. Security is tight on these things.

I pick her up and she trembles so hard that I’m almost afraid that I’m going to drop her. That she’ll shake herself right out of my arms.

I carry her down the hall and she stirs in my arms, tugging at me. I shake my head.

She frowns but then I see a guard coming along the corridor and he looks like he’s looking for something and I have a feeling that something is me.

I don’t regret taking a bit of that Rasnick. He deserved it. But the management takes a dim view of their patrons being pulled apart piece by piece.

I duck down a hallway and watch him go by and then dart another direction, knowing exactly how to get the hell out of here but keeping my eyes open for another guard.

And we almost make it. Until the last corridor. Obviously they knew I would go to my own ship and get the granth out of here.

The guard looks up and spots me and immediately pulls out a phaser and fires at us. I drop Lacey lightly to her feet and duck behind a wall, pulling my own phaser.

“Mate, can you walk? We are going to have to make a run for it.”

She nods her head and settles right against my back, her hand in my free hand.

“Now!” I holler and fire on the guard, hitting him as he fires back at me and I dodge it. I jerk Lacey into a wall and grunt when I cover her, my body jerking as the phaser hits my shoulder.

“Vreck! Let’s go, kora!” We duck out of the corner again and race to the bay doors. I slam them open with my foot and we run to my ship. I open the doors and push her onboard as more guards come at us. I kneel, making myself a smaller target and fire again and again at them, taking out several of their men until they duck behind other ships and wait me out.

But I’m not waiting. I turn and hit the plank, hitting the button to pull it up behind me and then race to the command deck. “Let’s go, mate! I think we’ve been exposed.”

She buckles in and we both slam back in the seat as I hit the engines and immediately throttle up. The ship jerks forward and I see the doors ahead closing.

“Hang on, kora!” She holds tight to the arms of the seat and groans like an animal.

We hit the doors and slam through just as they close, clipping one of them and spinning out into open space. Buttons flash and the granthing alarms are going off everywhere and I growl under my breath pushing and pulling and struggling to get the granthing ship under control.

It takes several clicks and a lot of sweat but I finally get it under control and grunt, setting the hyper-jump to get as far away from that ship as I can.

As soon as we reach another galaxy, I set the auto and stand up, stalking up to Lacey and kneeling beside her. I unbuckle her and pull her into my arms and she leans into me.

18

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