Page 46 of Fighting Gravity
He stepped forward, towering over me and invading my little stall with his inhuman mass.
“You should care. My tolerance has been thinning.”
“Thinning? Do you think you had any to begin with?”
His mouth stretched into a slanted grin, flashing one of his fanged teeth.
“If you knew the control I’ve been exercising since I brought you from your shuttle, you would not question how tolerant I am. It would have been so easy to shred you to bits the moment you refused to give me any useful information.” He inched closer, making me have to crane my neck to look at him. “So soft,” he whispered, lifting his hand beside my face to flash his retractable claws. “I could gut you with just my hand.”
I slid my foot back in an attempt to put space between us and felt my leg give. I was already chiding myself before I even stumbled because I knew I was going to be falling on my ass in front of the one creature in the galaxy I didn’t want to show weakness in front of.
But Rhone… Norman…Normwrapped his arm around me and pulled me flush with his hard body. I gasped at the pressure of his hand over one of my healing puncture wounds, but he didn’t let up. He held on tight, looking down the nearly flat ridge of his nose at me. In fact, he prodded my wound with his fingertips until I whimpered uncontrollably at the pain.
“Soft,” he whispered.
He was so vile.
“Yeah,” I said, biting back the ache. “Soft. Guess you had to work pretty hard to save my life.”
Norm’s eyes narrowed, his grip wavering. I took the chance to nudge myself away from him and found myself pinned against the wall. Still covering my breasts, I glared up at my green tormentor and pursed my lips.
“Why’d you save me anyways?” I asked.
“Why’d you save me?”
“Did I? You told me you were immune to that thing’s venom.”
“You didn’t know that when you attacked it.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, well. I’m not the brightest crayon in the box.”
“How’d you get your collar off?”
“Broke it with a butterknife.”
“And after I tortured you for answers you claim you never had, you still thought me better company than Ket. It is strange.”
“I wasn’t staying with Ket,” I said through my teeth. “Besides, I saw you protecting the woman with the child. Maybe I wanted to help.”
For the first time, Norm’s eyes softened, the hard edges of his gaze relaxing like I’d finally said the right thing.
“Ket-ram had judged her for a crime committed by her spouse. And he gave her a sentence only gek have the right to give her. It was insulting for him to do so.”
“So, what? He wanted you to kill them?” He nodded once and my skin crawled at the thought. “But you refused. Why? To piss him off?”
“Because it is my responsibility as urok to abide by higher laws.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means I outrank most and I saw a female and her child in a situation they should not have been in. So I took responsibility for them.”
“Are they here? On the ship?” Another nod. “What do you plan to do with them?”
“Yes, they’re here. Her name is Lin’na and her son is Tohr. They will be dropped at the next gek-controlled port to await a more objective judgment.”
“What exactly did her spouse do?”
“Most likely he was a deserter, but that’s not your concern. Why the questions?”
