Page 8 of Venomous Lust
Hope he had to rip to pieces before it could do damage.
“No.”
The simple word had the intended effect. Hazel withdrew her hand and she stepped back. Something dark and feral inside him snarled to life, whispering in the back of his mind that he wanted that hand on his body. That he wanted to put his own hands on her body. Khal shook it off, more resolved than ever to get rid of her before she could do damage to his mission.
Or to him.
“I’m sending you back where you came from. If you want to get to Earth then you’ll have to put in for a transfer, with Jonah. He’s your official representative.”
“But I did! My sister is on Earth, she’s one of the humans who were repatriated there when our ownership became illegal.” Hazel spoke rapidly, her tone full of despair. She stepped closer again, ignoring the vicious snarl coming from his mouth. Her body was dangerously close to his, her pheromones like a poison in the air.
That feral beast inside his skin scratched the surface, trying to break free. His seed stem pulsed with blood and lust, and he knew. Khal knew there was danger in this human female, more danger than anything he could face beyond the Frontier.
“I have been trying to get back to her for months! She’s pregnant and she’s all alone out there—”
“Not my problem,” Khal cut her off, walking to the cleansing stall and closing the door behind him. As soon as he found himself alone, his stare went to his seed stem. It stood to attention, painfully so.
A growl left his mouth as he turned to the wall, bracing his hands against the cold surface.
Just what I needed. Another complication.
Another complication, and one hell of a temptation.
Chapter 3
Hazel
He stared at her with a face that seemed carved out of stone over bones of steel. Markings covered the dark Prussian blue of his cheeks and jaw, all the way up to his high forehead and over the shiny surface of his bald skull. High cheekbones, a beaky nose marred with three ridges, and deep brows combined to produce features sharp enough to cut her soul just watching them. The deep Prussian blue of his eyes gleamed against the whites surrounded by skin of the same tone.
Beautiful was not a word made for him.
August, maybe. Majestic and terrible like a king of old. Like in the stories Sally used to read, hidden in their bed at night, her eyes full of wonder. Her head full of dreams.
The thought of her twin sister, of the loss that had carved a hole in her life and a chasm in her heart for the past three years poured ice down Hazel’s throat and cleared the awed, almost religious trance that had frozen her in place.
Hazel reached into that dark hollow inside her heart for that reckless defiance she used like a weapon. The recklessness that had saved her from slavery, but hadn’t saved Sally from being ripped from her grasp.
“Is that your plan? Keep me in here until you can offload me to some other big blue chunk of ice? I don’t think so.”
She flipped her ash-blonde hair off her brow and lifted her chin. She knew just what she was doing. It wasn’t the first time she was this insolent, this provocative.
Impossible. A disgrace. A female no one would want to embarrass themselves with.
The words came from memories of the horror of her past as the face of her potential buyer superimposed over Commander Khal’s in her mind. The Cattelan Duke who had bought her had been keen to buy an obedient, submissive little human female. Hazel had been everything he had wished for. Short, small-boned and blonde. Curvy. The ultimate human female to satisfy his every sexual whim.
Only he hadn’t counted on his new plaything to bite and scratch. To spit and growl like a feral cat.
Knut had made Hazel pay for her rebellion. She had begged and cried, crawling on the floor, but by then, Sally had been sold, lost to the immensity of space, gone to a rich buyer whose identity was shrouded in secrecy.
Lost.
Hazel had grieved for her sister. She had wrapped herself in an attitude so abrasive, she had lost the few friends she had. Then the Eoks had come, freeing the humans from Aveyn, giving them that freedom they had talked about without really knowing what it was.
But Hazel hadn’t cared—until the day she received a communication that her sister wasn’t lost anymore. Sally was on Earth; her powerful buyer had freed her when the political pressure had been too much to continue keeping humans as slaves.
I’m going to keep my promise, Sally. I’m not going to let them win.
“Yes, it is my plan. Now, you will stay silent while I work.”
