Page 51 of The Interstellar Rake's Irresistible Kiss
Since shewasn’t struggling anymore, it lifted its smothering fist.
She kept her glare going strong. “I’ve been abducted—twice!—drugged and shot, and I know you’re going to eject me into the black hole, but you think threatening to hurt me will make me be good?”
The mantid thunked her down on her feet out in the hallway. “Many kinds of hurt,” it crackled. “Dumb pink crawler.”
Trixie scowled at it. Pinkcrawler? That sounded worse than mishkeet.
Since she was back on her feet… She ran.
The mantid jumped over her and lashed out with one blunted foot, striking the side of her head. She reeled into the wall, her shoulder and then her skull banging hard. Unable to catch herself, she sagged to the floor.
The armored alien pulled her upright and shoved a blaster muzzle into her ribs. “Be good.”
The warning, in a hollow sepulcher voice, made her shiver. Okay, well, the possibility of getting stunned again was more incentivizing than vague threats.
She subsided, letting her shoulders sag.
And she counted every step as they marched her through theGrandy.
From her brief time aboard after the rescue, she’d memorized some of the hallways, but she hadn’t been down this way before. Thoughher head was bowed, she watched every turn.
And so she noticed the smear of darkest crimson on the armored alien’s boot.
Blood. Alien blood.
She might’ve stumbled, but the armored alien yanked her along. Had this vile mechanical monster stomped through Nor’s blood?
The streak of crimson glistened, as though fresh, and her own heart seemed to bleed along with it, every drop a reminder of howmuch life she’d missed because she’d lacked the courage to look up and evenwishupon a star.
She sidelonged another fulminating glare at the armored alien. That pistol he’d shot her with had been small enough that maybe she could steal it from him and hide it in one of her pockets…
Dang, he must’ve traded that little peashooter for the larger weapon now hanging alongside his thigh. No wayhe’d not notice if she tried to pickpocket that. Swaggering brute, probably trying to intimidate her…
And she had to admit, it might’ve worked if she hadn’t gotten used to Nor’s towering bulk.
For all her determined bravado, as they approached the portal, she quailed, and if not for the armored alien’s grip on her upper arm, she would’ve tried to run again. She’d been in this room once on herearlier stay in the Grandy and it almost made her sick to her stomach. When the door shushed open, she averted her gaze from the navigation array.
The three-dimensional, holographic, scale reproduction of space that the ship used for navigation was zoomed in close to their present location. As if she needed a better view of the black hole.
When Rayna had shown her and Lishelle the reproductionof the Azthronos solar system, she’d been as giddy as a kid showing off, zooming in and out to the different planets, spinning the whole galaxy like a toy. Trixie had wanted to hurl. It wasn’t just the spinning sensation in her stomach. Seeing just how small and pointless she was hadn’t helped her mental state at the time. It was helping even less now to get an intimate view of the black hole inall its false-color glory. Mesmerized by the slow churn of spiraling energy being sucked into the singularity, it took her a moment to realize the room was already occupied.
A hulking, wide-shouldered man dressed in a strange mix of the familiar spaceship combat fatigues and a midthigh Thorkon day robe was silhouetted against the swirls of color. With his hands clasped loosely at his back andhis stance wide, he looked as though he commanded the black hole.
“Blackworm,” she murmured.
He didn’t turn at first, giving her another moment to study his menacing form. God, he was bigger than any of the Thorkon males she’d seen so far, and that was saying something. Unlike most of the other Thorkon men, his black hair was shorn close to his head. Maybe from his time in prison? How she wishedhe was still there. Now he had galaxies spinning beneath him. And her too.
Slowly, he pivoted to face her. “That is the name I was given,” he acknowledged. “But that isn’t who I am, any more than you are a Black Hole Bride.”
For a heartbeat, she was taken aback. Really? He was the only one who wasn’t going to use that larfing name?
She stiffened. She wasn’t going to fall for any sort of Stockholmsyndrome bullshit. “Then I’ll call you criminal, kidnapper, and crazy.”
When he inclined his head, the scintillating lights of the star map glinted on the ragged ends of his dark hair. “Cruel it seems to you, no doubt, and perhaps it will be hard for you to comprehend.”
“Why?” she challenged. “Because I’m an ignorant closed-worlder?”
“Because you have never loved as I have.”
