Page 9 of Star Mates

Pikon reached down, hit a button, and the screen suddenly divided into another section. Another human much to Emmarie’s relief. And he had the type of face that could have walked right off a movie screen, a pirate hunting for buried treasure swashbuckling his way through uncharted seas. His midnight hair hung a tad too long. Dimples appeared when his mouth moved. Little lines fanned from the corner of his dark eyes, as if he laughed a lot, or had too much responsibility weighing him down. The breath hitched in her chest, as if her heart suddenly forgot to beat.

“I’m Captain Pell Raiden,” the man introduced himself in a low gravely tone. His gaze flickered over to Logan before immediately coming back to rest on her. “We need to get you off that ship. Right now, we’re in an asteroid field and you’ve taken a hit.”

The ship rocked again as if giving testament to his words.

“How?” Logan asked. “Do you guys beam us up?”

He got two equally blank stares. “I don’t know what that means,” Captain Raiden said. “Through the engineering section is an escape hatch. We can see the door on our end. We’ll connect to it and get you out that way.”

“There should be a triangle button on the console,” Pikon said. “If you hit it, it turns on the speaker system ship wide. We can talk you through it.”

Emmarie saw it and hit it. There was a shrill beep.

“Good,” Captain Raiden acknowledged, and his voice echoed all around them. “Do you know where engineering is?”

“Yeah,” Logan said, “we found it.”

“There’s an escape hatch there. Hurry.”

Logan took hold of her upper arm. They spun back to the door they had entered. Pikon was giving instructions over the intercom as they made their way back through the ship, to the engine room. They didn’t look at the first dead alien as they were instructed to weave their way through the myriad devices and consoles set up.

“I see it,” Logan shouted. “There’s a security pad near the door!”

“That ship you’re on is fried,” Pikon told them over the intercom. “There’s a manual release next to the console. Just pop it out and start wheeling it counterclockwise. And make it fast!”

The ship shuddered once and then two more times in rapid succession. Logan and Emmarie came to a skidding stop at the hatch, his hand already reaching out to use the hand crank. It was tight and he had to use two hands to get it started.

“Get the damn door open!” Captain Raiden shouted.

And then it popped open, and Logan practically threw Emmarie out of the rocking ship. She landed in the arms of Pell Raiden, flush against his body, and Logan squeezed in behind her. The door swished close as everything lurched again.

“Hold on!” they heard Pikon shout from the intercom.

They tried to grab the sides of the corridor as the ship took off, throwing them widely off their feet. Emmarie found herself curled tightly in the captain’s arms, with his thighs cradling her hips and pressed against her intimately. Her hands came to rest on his chest and the hard coils of muscles rippled. Behind her, Logan lay heavy across her backside, one hand bracing against her spine to not crush her and the other against the wall they had fallen against.

She gazed up at Pell Raiden and their eyes locked, and for a brief second, the world faded away. Awareness sparked and her body came instantly alive. Never in her life had she ever felt such an immediate attraction to someone, something soul deep and pulsing with life, and it shocked her to her core.

Captain Raiden looked at her lips and instantly they went dry. She licked them and something carnal flared in the dark depths of his eyes. But before she could analyze it further, the ship righted itself and the captain maneuvered them until he could thrust Emmarie away from him. He hit the intercom button on the side of the wall.

“That wasn’t an asteroid, Pike!”

“Kexians!” came the grim answer.

The ship rocked again and Emmarie smacked into the bulkhead before she could catch herself. Pain exploded through her knee as it connected. She gasped but the sound was hidden as Raiden exploded with a curse.

“Fuck!”

“What’s going on?” Logan demanded, helping Emmarie to stand and keeping a steady arm around her. “What are the Kexians?”

“The last people I wanted to run into right now,” Raiden muttered. In fact, he didn’t even spare them another glance as he stalked away, leading them from the lower deck of the ship, up a ladder and onto another sizeable walkway. The ship was sparse, looking like a building under construction, with only two branches leaving the main corridor they were on. Emmarie noticed that neither Logan nor Raiden had to duck, and they were roughly the same height, a good six inches over her five four stature.

The ship lurched again, sending them tipping. Luckily, the rails on the walkway provided a great crutch. The path came to a dead end with a rollaway door. Raiden pointed to a ladder off to the left.

“Down there are safety seats. Strap yourselves in until we get out of this mess. I’ll be back.”

As if hearing and understanding what he said, the ship rolled sharply to the left. They stumbled down the ladder and found the safety harnesses on the seats and quickly strapped themselves in.

“I feel like we’re on a god-damn airplane about to go down,” Logan muttered.

Emmarie’s heart jumped into her throat. “Don’t say that.”

Logan’s lips twisted. “Sorry. But what the hell, you know? What the hell did we stumble into?”

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