Page 45 of Shielded Heart

Arcanthus turned his head toward her, and she met his gaze. He moved his right hand to her face and cupped her cheek. “We need to fight our way out, Samantha. Same as before—stay right behind me.”

She closed her eyes, pressed her cheek into his palm, and nodded. The determination and resolve that hardened her features at that moment pierced Arcanthus to his core; he was nearly overcome with pride, and the fires of arousal sparked deep inside him. Hecravedher. He’d been patient, but this little terran was testing his restraint, and his bestial side was rampaging in the back of his mind with want for her.

He desired Samantha more than ever before.

Thrusting his thoughts aside, he forced himself back to the situation at hand. Heavy footsteps sounded from partway up the stairwell; at least two of the three members of the elevator crew were descending. According to Drakkal, more enemies were attempting to enter the building—were they still outside, or had they succeeded? He had to assume his foes were in communication with each other, that they knew where he was.

Overthinking this again.

Arcanthus clenched his jaw, returned his hand to the foregrip of his auto-blaster, and strode toward the door. He turned the blaster upward as they passed into the open space, but the elevator crew chose not to peek down. He used his tail to guide Sam against the wall beside the door before pressing the button to open it.

The door slid open silently. Arc leaned through the opening slightly, checking the corridor to the left of the doorway—clear—before swinging to check the other direction.

A huge, orange fist sped toward his face.

Arcanthus instinctively tipped his chin down. The fist struck his horns with a dull, meatythwap. The immense force behind the blow blasted through his neck and along his spine, clacking his teeth together, but he planted his feet and stood firm; tretin blood granted Arc’s people naturally tough bones, but he’d reinforced his skeletal and muscular systems with cybernetics years ago to account for the strain caused by the enhanced strength of his prosthetic limbs.

He looked up to see a hulking, orange-skinned onigox standing before him.

Arcanthus swung his auto-blaster around. The onigox caught the weapon with the hands of his lower arms before Arc could take aim. Growling, Arcanthus poured more strength into the struggle. Despite his size and prowess, the onigox couldn’t overpower the sedhi; the barrel of the blaster, trembling with the combatants’ exertion, crept toward the orange brute.

At least until the onigox swung his upper arms simultaneously, catching Arc’s head between his massive fists.

The sound of the blows was thunderous in Arcanthus’s ears, and white flashed across his vision. He staggered backward. The onigox capitalized upon Arcanthus’s brief disorientation by tearing the auto-blaster away and tossing it to the floor.

“Alk!”

Samantha’s voice broke through the ringing in Arcanthus’s ears. He shook his head sharply and glanced at her; plasma bolts rained from the stairs above, hitting the floor around her feet. She screamed.

Growling, Arcanthus spun, pulling Samantha out of the stairwell with his tail and sidestepping to draw her fully into the hallway. She stumbled from the sudden movement. Before Arc could right her, the onigox attacked again. Arcanthus released Samantha and raised his arms to defend himself from the onigox’s rapid, powerful blows, deflecting and dodging as many as he could. Those that connected did so on his arms, which could absorb such punishment indefinitely.

“My boss told me to take you apart one piece at a time,” the onigox said as he advanced. “Then I’ll let Straek take your terranji’tas. Maybe we’ll sample her before we sell her.”

A crimson haze fell over Arcanthus’s vision, fueled by a furious, intensifying heat within him. He leaned backward sharply and braced himself on his tail to dodge one of the onigox’s punches. The onigox overextended his arm; for an instant, his middle was exposed.

Arcanthus kicked the onigox in the gut, pushing forward with both his tail and his other leg. The onigox grunted and doubled over, forced back by Arcanthus’s momentum.

Planting his leading foot on the floor, Arcanthus swung his right first in a quick cross before the onigox could recover. His metal knuckles crunched bone and knocked the onigox’s head to the side when they connected with the orange alien’s cheek. Arc followed through with the punch, twisting his torso and hips. His tail whipped forward and coiled around his opponent’s ankle.

Movement flickered in the edge of his vision—movement inside the stairwell.

“Alk, watch out!” Samantha called.

He dove aside as two members of the illustrious elevator crew opened fire on him from the stairwell; his tail tugged the onigox’s leg forward, destroying the orange alien’s balance and sending the brute to the floor. The sound of the elevator crew’s blasters was amplified by the stairwell’s acoustics, making the high, piercing shots almost deafening.

Arcanthus rolled onto his side, flicking his gaze toward Samantha. She’d fallen, but now sat with her back against the hallway wall across from the stairwell entry.

Pushing himself up on an elbow, Arcanthus reached back for his spare auto-blaster.

Samantha, still clutching her weapon with white knuckles, turned the barrel toward the stairwell. The fear never left her wide eyes as she pulled the trigger and screamed. Her voice was broken, pained, angry,fierce, conveying all her fears and frustrations without a single word.

Blue-white plasma bolts sprayed from her blaster in a wide cone, their spread increased by the trembling in her arms. There was no counting how many shots she fired; she just held down the trigger.

Arcanthus spun on his back, planted his feet on the wall, and shoved himself over to her. The two members of the elevator crew who’d descended were smoking corpses on the floor of the stairwell. Sam didn’t seem to notice.

Sitting up beside Samantha, Arc placed his hands over hers to steady the weapon and ease her finger off the trigger. Her wide-eyed stare remained on the open door for a few seconds before she turned her head toward him. Countless emotions swirled in her warm brown eyes, punctuated but made no more identifiable by her sharp, panting breaths.

A few meters down the hall, the onigox climbed to his feet and growled. “Stand up and face me, sedhi. I’m going to pummel you into a paste.”

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