Page 13 of Chased By the Alien Mercenary
Solear
When I had first met Evie, I thought she was a strange, confusing female—one who had come to take my brother from me, to usurp my place inside his heart. I’d learned since then that the heart only grew; Aramon had space inside his chest for me and for her. Now I was learning that perhaps it was simply human nature to be confusing and strange.
No, human females, it was their domain to befuddle the male mind. I had no issues understanding Thatcher; after all, the human ex-soldier was almost as feral as I was. I understood him better than most males aboard the Varakartoom. So it was a female thing that made them confusing. Sadly, I only knew Ysa, our Ulinial engineer, outside of humans, and only in passing. That was not enough to know if this behavior crossed species or was unique to females of all kinds. I’d have to ask Aramon, but he was sleeping with his mate, sleeping in, lazy and safe. I did not want to disturb him.
Lyra called me lovely, and that made my chest feel too large inside my armor. It made me feel confused, because nobody had ever called me lovely. As far as I knew, no one—not even Evie—had ever said that to Aramon either. She took my picture as though she meant to cherish the way I looked forever. When she’d lamented the lack of a camera last night, this was not what I had expected her to do with it.
We made good progress downhill, and she was patient as I carried her. Though she occasionally wanted me to pause so she could take a picture of a view—sometimes a flower or even a rock—I didn’t understand what she was doing until I stopped by the edge of the ravine to let her do her thing. She came back to me, her face shiny with excitement as she thumbed through the images on the tiny comm screen to show me what she’d made.The way she’d captured light falling onto colorful striations of rock… thatwasbeautiful. She was making art.
Taking the comm from her, I raised it to her face and snapped a picture. Then I growled with disappointment when it didn’t come out nearly as beautiful as she looked. There was a glare of light; her features had gotten washed out, and an odd shadow fell over the left side of her face—possibly my thumb on the edge of the lens. When she saw it, she smiled, chuckling with delight. “Ah, come, we need to turn for a selfie, so we don’t have the light glaring into the lens. Like this, big guy.”
She hooked her arm through mine and shuffled us around, then raised the comm and tilted it slightly left, then right, before settling on an angle. At the last moment, she poked my side, catching me completely by surprise. I growled, twisting to look at her, and that’s when she snapped her picture. Confused, I yanked the comm from her fingers to look and was startled to see the two of us together on the screen. Her radiant smile, the teasing light in her eyes captured to perfection. My own face was angled toward her, surprised but also… happy?
The brush of her fingers against the edge of my jaw made me jerk my eyes from the tiny display to look at her. “I thought that would make you laugh, but I guess you’re not ticklish.” Ticklish? Blazing stars, fucking ticklish? Aramon would laugh until he choked if he heard that, and, oddly enough, I wanted to share that with him anyway. My female wanted to tickle me. My female—my mate—did the opposite of what everyone else around me did. She came right at me, invaded my personal space without a hint of fear. I snarled and growled, and all she did was burrow closer. Ticklish?
It did tickle something inside of me, not the touch, the word. It caught me completely by surprise when a laugh burbled up from deep inside my belly, booming across the ravine and echoing against the mountainside. A real, belly-shaking laugh. It filled me with a light feeling, easing tense muscles throughout my body until it wasn’t Lyra who was at risk of floating from my grasp, I felt like I was the one about to drift up to the stars.
And then a memory crashed through my mind—one I had not recalled for so long that I didn’t even know I had it, buried deep beneath the trauma of Jalima’s devastation to my hometown and my family. Aramon and I at the table, our dad across from us, trying to make us eat our greens by pulling funny faces. A tactic that had never worked before, but he always tried it anyway, and it always made us laugh until we were rolling under the table in fits of hilarity. My father smiling with twinkling eyes, my brother happy, me happy. Happy. Ah, fuck, that’s what I was feeling when I felt like floating. That was happiness?
Lyra was right there, waiting for me when I surfaced from the moment in the past. She smiled. “Feel better?” When I nodded, she tucked the communicator away and became serious. “Then let’s get to business, shall we? I see the mansion. Are we stealing one of their ships? I know there’s some kind of surface vehicle they took to the landing patch. Pretty sure the ship itself is heavily guarded, though. Probably not our best bet.”
The switch of context was abrupt, but I didn’t know I needed that until she deftly did it. As if she understood the intensity of what I’d just been feeling and knew I needed a moment to regroup. Feelings were hard, but happiness was not nearly as difficult as rage; I felt buoyed, energized rather than exhausted.
Chapter 12
Lyra
Crouched behind a pile of rocks, Solear and I watched the mansion in the valley below. We had a bird’s-eye view of the comings and goings of Krektar guards, though some appeared to be of different species. I snapped pictures of them with the comm device, but I couldn’t understand the symbols on the small screen well enough to use it for anything else. It would’ve been nice to call the alien cops on this place—or to call Solear’s friends, if I hadn’t misunderstood that part—and ask for him. He’d been quite adamant in his dreams that help would not be coming, though, and so far today, he’d only confirmed that.
I really wanted to talk with him, to understand his plan better. Why had he come to that mansion in the first place, and was it Goldie—the frilly but buff bastard—who was in charge, or someone else? And as I watched guards patrol and lights flicker in windows as people moved behind them, I wondered why we were even back here. “The landing strip is that way. Shouldn’t we try to go there if we need a ship?”
I appraised the way he crouched behind the rocks next to me, his thighs bulging, his clawed fingers digging into the stones in front of him. Every part of him seemed as tense as a bowstring. He was like a predator focused on his prey, eyes zeroed in on the figures moving around the walls and gardens down below. I remembered that my neighbor, when I was a little girl, had a pet cat. It would meow quietly and wriggle its butt when it attempted to stalk a bird or mouse. That was Solear right now.My eyes dropped to his ass, but unfortunately he wasn’t quite wriggling yet.
What was in that house that he wanted so badly? Clearly, it mattered a great deal, and it was a little frustrating that he couldn’t explain it. “If you can growl yes, why not more words?” I asked him. My arms crossed over my chest, holding on to my heat, which the crisp, cool mountain air kept whisking away. He did not look away from the mansion below—didn’t even move—but something in his posture made me feel like he had refocused his attention on me anyway.
The heat that brushed my head was a dead giveaway. I could no longer blame it on dehydration and hunger; Solear kept me well fed and constantly offered bottled water, as if he feared it could happen again. No, that was a response to something he did, I was certain. A side effect of his telepathy, perhaps? Part of why it wouldn’t work between us the way he wanted? Scrunching up my face, I focused my mind on him, on hearing him, feeling him. It didn’t help. In fact, the warmth began to fade, and now I only felt colder—and lonelier, somehow.
Solear slowly tilted his head toward me, then, his eyes swirling red deep inside the darkness of his eye sockets. The bone-white of his skullish facial markings caught the sunlight and gleamed. My heart rate sped up inside my chest, racing with something very close to fear, but also dangerously near arousal. There was nothing quite like looking into the gaze of a predator and feeling hunted, caught, trapped, and not wanting to escape at the same time. He wasn’t focused on the mansion below now. No, all that power—that coiled, viperous energy beneath his skin—was directed at me. And then he opened his mouth and growled, “Lyra.”
Ah, fuck. Why did that make my belly clench with heat, a stab of arousal, swift and fierce? The scant cover the stupid thong offered was instantly soaked, again. Next time I requested things, I needed to remember to list clean panties. Not that it felt right to send him on errands that were no doubt extremely dangerous. The only source for anything was that building down below, after all, and they were on high alert. “Lyra,” he said. My name. And it was clearly an effort to say that much, but he’d made that effort, and used it to saythat. Me. Like I mattered, a lot.
Pressing my hand to the rapid pounding inside my chest, I nodded. “Okay, okay, Lyra. You can say that too. Good. Come here, I think you deserve a kiss for that.” The smug, satisfied tilt at the corner of his mouth told me he’d just gotten exactly what he wanted, but I wasn’t complaining, because so had I.
The press of his mouth was softer, tentative at first, as if he were giving me the chance to show him I wanted him this time. His bottom lip was soft and lush, and I nibbled on it, then licked past it to tangle my tongue with his. That was too much for my impatient, feral alien. He grabbed the back of my neck, his thumb pressing against my throat, and then he plundered, creating slick pleasure with each bold brush of his tongue, holding me pinned in place so I could only let him take.
When he lifted his head long minutes later, I was a wobbly, delirious mess, ready to melt into a puddle at his feet. He held me upright with that firm grip at my neck, but his other hand had curled around my hip and clenched possessively there. “Lyra,” he growled again—smugly, this time. Perhaps it was my imagination, but it sounded like it was coming a little easier tohim this time. Maybe he was out of practice talking; maybe I could teach him, one word at a time.
“I just wish you could tell me what’s going on, Solear. I wish I knew what your plan is, so I could help.” His eyes lost their smug heat, and his brow lowered into a frown. He shook his head, but I didn’t know what he meant by that. No, I can’t talk? No, I don’t want to explain? No, you can’t help? So many options. I huffed in frustration, and though still tingling with heat after that kiss, the frustration and the cold mountain were still winning out. This wasn’t the cozy cave with the heating stones, but a windswept mountain flank on the edge of enemy territory, after all. I shouldn’t forget that.
It was clear he wanted me to keep looking at him, and the heat that pressed at my skull came back—intense, warmer than ever—but whatever he tried, it didn’t work. His hands slid to cup my shoulders and hold me up, right in front of him, his gaze peering into mine. “Not working,” I told him. “I’m not telepathic like you, sorry.” It felt a little like I was the one failing him in this, but damn it, humans just didn’t do that sort of thing. I couldn’t suddenly develop a skill I didn’t have, could I? Let alone one as ethereal and bizarre as telepathy.
With a little huff and a shove, he gave up. I rocked on my knees from the push, though I knew he’d hardly used any force. If he had, I’d be lying ten feet over, having gone ass over teakettle. I understood his frustration, but when he got a little rougher, manhandling me and yanking on my wrist, I’d had enough. “Hey, stop that! I’m not some doll you can toss about. Careful.” I would have added, “Tell me what you want,” but that was the whole issue, wasn’t it?
He tapped the comm currently strapped to my wrist with a claw, and, getting the message, I undid the cuff and handed it over. I didn’t know what a comm was going to do—it couldn’t read minds either—but he had a plan, so I waited. He might be all growl and rough edges, but I already knew he was no dummy. He fiddled with the controls, and then a call began connecting, beeping once before it was answered. “Hey there, Lyra,” a male voice said cheerfully, and Solear snarled, bending close to the comm so the person on the other side probably saw nothing but razor-sharp teeth for a moment.
“Hi?” I said carefully, neutrally, as I shifted on my knees. The grass was damp, and it was beginning to seep through the many layers I’d put on; at least along my knees. This guy knew my name and had been expecting this call, answering so fast. How was that possible? I didn’t trust it, and Solear’s growl of warning told me I needed to be careful.
“Is my brother being his usual, noncommunicative self?” the voice continued. Then there was a rough exhale, followed by an ‘oomph’ noise. The guy amended, “I mean, since Solear doesn’t say much, why don’t I explain what you want to know?” I got the feeling he’d been elbowed in the ribs by someone, which meant he wasn’t alone on the call. Still suspicious, it took me a moment to catch on to the ‘brother’ part of the caller’s first statement. Maybe that was also because this guy sounded so talkative and cheerful that it took a moment to figure it out.
