Page 28 of Protected By the Convicts
Hannah bounded down the steps and ran into a solid wall of muscle. “It’s just Ky’Li,” Sersie said as he steadied her. His lips found her ear. “And I told you to stay inside.”
Hannah leaned her head against Sersie’s back. “I thought. . . never mind. I guess I’m just on edge.”
Ky’Li palmed the security lock and entered. He held the door for Vaughn, who didn’t move. Ky’Li shot Hannah a look, as if to ask her why Vaughn refused to enter.
“Vaughn!” Sersie said, in all his indeterminable cheerfulness. “It’s about time you’re back. Come on in.”
“I don’t think now’s a good time, Sersie.”
Ky’Li leaned forward, grabbed Vaughn by his shirt and shoved him inside the perimeter before shutting the gate. “The alarm was about to go off.”
Vaughn glared at him.
Hannah nodded a silent thank you to Ky’Li, who nodded back, his face as serious as ever. Then his eyes returned to Vaughn. Ky’Li was concerned about the doctor. Hannah glanced at Sersie. Both men were.
Without a word, Vaughn disappeared into his bedroom, the smaller one with the bunk beds. Hannah shoved her hands to her side before anyone noticed how she was twisting her fingers. She needed to keep moving, to do something. Vaughn was miserable, and she didn’t know how to help him.
When Sersie approached her, Hannah slid from his reach and headed for the kitchen. “I’m going to make some tea.”
Hannah moved about the kitchen, tidying up, seeking ways to keep her hands busy and her mind off of Vaughn. As she reached for the pot of boiling water, Ky’Li’s hand laid atop hers. “Go to him, sha-vi.”
Her heart thumped harder, both from the need to go to Vaughn and because Ky’Li was actively pushing her toward Vaughn, as if he no longer saw the man as a threat to their relationship.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
Ky’Li’s brow furrowed. “Do I want you to sleep with him? No.”
The way he said that last part was like someone slamming a door shut on her heart, not that sleeping with Vaughn was what she had in mind at this moment. She hoped her relationship with Vaughn would deepen in time. She really liked him and he’d looked so alone. . . alone in a house full of people. It wasn’t right.
“But this is not about me right now, is it, sha’vi?”
Ky’Li was a damn puzzle at times, not at all easy to read like the others, especially with that stoic expression of his.
“I. . . we. . . need to help Vaughn, Ky. Somehow.”
“I know,” he said before he kissed her. A thirst-quenching kiss that she could easily lose herself in. . . had in fact, on several nights when she’d had a nerve-racking day at work when Max had been staring at her. The man still scared her to death, but something kept him at bay. She suspected that something was Ky. Her soldier would readily kill Max if he discovered he was the man who’d attacked her. Hannah suspected Ky’Li had been spending some of his free time intimidating port workers, spreading the message that she was not to be touched.
Ky’Li’s tongue swept through her mouth as his body pressed against hers. She could feel his cock, hard and ready. Then he released her lips, kissed her forehead, and said, “Do what you need to do, sha’vi. What feels right. I will not hold it against you.”
She tilted her head, amazed and confused by her soldier, who placed two hands on her shoulders and turned her to face the direction of Vaughn’s bedroom.
Had he really just given his blessing for her to sleep with Vaughn?
Hannah resisted the urge to glance over her shoulder, fearing that if she did, she’d run back to Ky’Li to thank him for being the man she needed, for caring about another man he’d once considered the opposition, and then she’d have trouble pulling away from him when Vaughn desperately needed someone on his side.
With a light knock on the door, Hannah entered. Her handsome doctor lay on the bottom bunk, his arms folded beneath his head as he stared up at the empty ceiling.
“I can’t do it,” Vaughn said.
“Can’t do what?” She closed the door and leaned against it.
“Send more miners to their deaths.”
“What do you mean more?”
“Eight died when Mine 33 collapsed. I should have been faster, smarter—”
“You didn’t cause the explosion. That’s still under investigation.”
