Page 44 of Decadence

She couldn’t bring herself to face poor Emmett and Cleo, who were standing off to one side, looking completely shellshocked.

She didn’t care that they were surrounded by a team of heavily armed Kordolian warriors that may or may not be hostile.

In that moment, there was only her and Ikriss.

He might be badly injured, but his eyes were ablaze, consuming her with devastating intensity.

As if she already belonged to him.

What the hell?

Suddenly, she felt warm all over. Arousal flickered between her legs, and instantly, she became annoyed with herself, because that was the last thing she should be feeling when Ikriss was lying there on her kitchen floor with half his chest ripped apart.

Because he’d been protecting her.

He mouthed something to her in a strange alien language, his lips shaping the words into pointed arrows.

An electric ripple coursed down her spine.

You’re mine, he seemed to be saying.

Sienna’s breath caught. She opened her mouth to say something—she didn’t quite know what—but then Ikriss abruptly looked away, breaking the insane spell he’d just cast over her.

Am I going crazy?

Ikriss snapped a series of harsh commands to his soldiers in that strange, lyrical tongue of his and then closed his eyes.

His breathing slowed.

The tension flowed out of his body.

The warrior who had patched his chest said something in rapid-fire Kordolian, his voice tinged with alarm.

One of the Kordolians reached her side and loomed over her, scrutinizing her through an impenetrable black visor. “Ah, shit,” he said in Universal. “Looks like the Commander’s taken a liking to you, human. You’re going to have to come with us.”

“Where?” she blurted, her voice a cracked whisper.

“Where else? Back to our station,” the warrior said impassively. “We’re pretty good at keeping the savages out, but this one,” he glanced at the fallen assassin, “well, he’s one of us, unfortunately. It’s the only reason he was able to break through.” He uttered a soft, vicious curse in Kordolian. “Hey, we tried to play nice, but this is gonna blow it all apart.”

Sienna stared at the Kordolians in shock, taking in their cold black visages and swift, silent movements. They closed ranks around Ikriss, who was now completely unconscious.

Carefully, reverently, they lifted up his injured body and whisked him away through the back entrance. Another warrior grabbed the half-masked assailant—who was now unconscious and firmly restrained, his wrists and ankles bound by weird seamless black cuffs—and dragged him away unceremoniously by the legs, leaving a vicious trail of black blood smeared across the polished concrete floor.

Bile rose in Sienna’s throat. From outside, strange mechanical sounds reached her ears. She caught a flash of eerie blue light reflected against the brick walls. Now there were other sounds too; sirens in the distance, humans shouting, boots on hard pavement, drones whizzing past.

Around half a dozen invaders remained in her kitchen. Two of them were scanning the area with strange curved handheld devices—all black, of course. They exchanged words in Kordolian, echoing commands and orders.

Ikriss’s orders.

Her head spun.

She didn’t understand any of it.

Sienna turned and met wide brown eyes—Cleo’s.

“You really weren’t joking when you said you were abducted by aliens, were you?” her friend said dryly.

Sienna managed a weak laugh. They were here now… right in the middle of her city, and everything was in tatters. It was just so ludicrous. She felt as if she were in some wild, crazy dream, and she hadn’t yet decided if it were a nightmare or a brilliant fantasy. “Why the hell would I joke about something like that?”

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