Chapter 7

Rikki

I was in serious trouble. As I stood balanced on one foot, my hands clasped around Thar’oc’s spiraling horns. I could feel the notches and the ridges on them, notches that were carved, ridges that were natural from the way they twirled. This guy was too nice, and he wasn’t nice at all to anyone else, as far as I could tell.

He’d snapped and growled at each vendor, and barely even noticed how they cowered away from him in fear. He killed and shot people without any kind of compunction, and he seemed to enjoy it too. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was a total jerk to a waitress, or that he’d scowl at a kid and scare them by accident. But… He was so sweet to me and so protective.

Now I had one hand, sticky from the small little sweetbun he’d handed me, curled around his horn and he seemed to like it if his expression was anything to go by. He was kneeling on a dirty metal floor inside a dank, narrow tunnel as he took off my boot and gently helped me into the new sneaker. He had abandoned his friends to rescue me because he wanted to do the right thing for me. All without demanding anything in return, but if he kept that up, he would get what he wanted; me willingly.

My second high-heeled boot was tossed, and I was standing on my own again in a pair of slightly too big sneakers. Now I was even smaller next to his huge body, barely reaching halfway up his chest. My eyes tracked his impressive pectorals and abs, outlined in the formfitting strange black armor he wore. Then I spotted something incongruent, a streak of something dark red over his biceps.

“Oh God, Thar’oc, did you get shot?” I gasped, glancing from the wound on his arm to the firmly shut metal door between us and the thoroughfare. He shrugged, dipping to sling his huge black duffel bag over one shoulder. With a palm against my back, he urged me to follow the passage, the stupid boots with the tracker abandoned.

“Just a graze,” he said casually. “Come on, I know the way.” For the next half hour, we trekked through near darkness. We zigzagged from tunnel to tunnel, some big and some small, but all of them smelly. No matter how often I brought it up, he wouldn’t stop to take care of that burn across his arm. The tough guy acted like he barely felt it, but I knew burns hurt. He had to be feeling that at least a little, right?

All he did was hand me food when I ran out or offer his canteen of fresh, clean water. He said we didn’t need to preserve anything, but I was still worried. Two days down here was a long time, and that’s how long he said we needed to hide. “Won’t your mercenary friends want to help out?” I asked at one point, but he laughed and shook his head. One of his horns clanged against a low-hanging pipe with a bang.

“Captain won’t get involved with this until it’s time to leave. He won’t want to burn bridges with a rich prick like that, in case the dude might want to hire the Varakartoom later.” That seemed really cold, but I supposed it made sense. His captain ran a business. He probably wouldn’t want to get involved in any kind of problem unless someone paid him to. They were mercenaries, after all. I guess I was just lucky to run into the one mercenary who wanted to rescue me free of charge.

Then I touched my chest, my heart stuttering as I contemplated that. Maybe not so free of charge, I really liked this guy. Could a girl fall that fast? That was crazy thinking to even contemplate. It was just hormones and brain chemistry being weird because of all the danger I was in and because he was the one nice thing in this entire situation.

“Almost there,” he said, his arm raised to shine the light from his weird wristwatch thing along the tunnel to a doorway to one side. It looked just like any other part of the pipe-filled tunnels we’d traveled through; dark metal stained with rust. Thar’oc had to shoulder it open with force, as it hung crooked in its frame and screeched mightily as he did so.

It was dark and gloomy beyond. A sound of water dripping reached my ears before he shone his light inside the space. It was a room with no other exit, just a bank of some kind of computery things against one wall. They were dark and looked old and covered with dust. There was nothing else inside, and nothing that could explain that obnoxious dripping noise.

My mercenary went in first, his hand hovering at his hip where one of his pistols was strapped to his upper thigh. He was more alert than I had seen him in some time, as though he expected some enemy to leap from the shadows at any moment. That did not make me feel confident that this was a suitable spot to camp out in.

For about thirty seconds, he scanned the room, his light shining along every surface, including the ceiling. Then his shoulders lowered and his tail went from rigid with a flicking tip to a soft, relaxed curl. “All good, come in. I’ll get us set up.” He gestured with a finger, crooking it into that typical come hither motion. I was kind of relieved to see that was a universal thing, unless I was about to discover that he was propositioning me with that finger.

My eyes tracked his movements as I shuffled inside. I had blisters on my feet at this point from the too-large shoes, but I wasn’t going to complain. I couldn’t help but stare at that bright red burn along his bare biceps. It was starting to seem stupid to me that he wore body armor that sleekly conformed everywhere but left his arms bare. I was fairly certain that his buddies in that dive bar had worn suits with long sleeves, so why wasn’t he?

Thar’oc pulled some kind of round little disk from his big bag and set that on the floor out in the hallway. “Ward, it will screech if anyone approaches that door that isn’t us.” Then he focused on the inside of the room, quickly pulling out some kind of roll that rapidly inflated to a soft mattress thing. As soon as he placed it on the floor, he was guiding me down on it and my heart leaped in my throat, sudden arousal spearing through me. This time, I was filled with anticipation in a good way.

The lines of bright blue along his body flared brighter. His tail curled itself around my nearest ankle and gripped firmly, and a smirk started to curl his mouth. I saw a hint of a sharp canine tooth at the corner that caught against his dark lips. My stomach swooped, then clenched tightly. “Yes,” he said, his voice sinfully low in that strange sub-harmonic way he spoke. Like there were two deep bass voices layered one over the other. “Soon, sweetheart. Soon.”

I didn’t have to ask him what was going to happen soon because he knew how excited my body had gotten from just the idea of being on a soft surface with him. He could taste that victory, that promise of my body, willing and wet for him. He wasn’t wrong. I’d gone from worriedly dreading that he’d claim me to dying to find out what it would be like when he did.

He leaned on his fist next to my hip, his body hovering over mine. I was waiting for him to kiss me, but he was just staring at my face, taking me in. I tilted my chin toward him, trying to tell him that he should close that final distance, but he pulled back instead.

Reaching for his bag to pull out more supplies, he grunted with annoyance when his tail stayed firmly clasped around my ankle. He wanted to move away, but that just made him yank my leg up into the air. I laughed, far too enamored because his tail kept wanting to cling to me. With a sardonic tilt to his lips, he said, “You know, Kertinal don’t really believe in fated mates, but meeting you is making me wonder…”

This time it was my heart that swooped in my chest. Was he saying what I thought he was saying? Of course he was! He felt the same incredible attraction that I was feeling. If the way his tail behaved was any indication, he might just be right. Except that the existence of fated mates was this fantastical notion that nobody on Earth really believed in.

When I said as much, he laughed, “Plenty of species in the Zeta Quadrant consider it very real. The Kertinal are just too practical for it.” He’d set up a lantern on the ground at this point and some kind of portable heater thing that was quickly making the cool temperatures in here rise to something far more comfortable. There were more gadgets and things in his bag that made no sense to me at all, but there was a comfy sleeping bag that was added to the mattress I was perched on.

Then I spotted something that looked like a first aid kit to me. The upper part of the case was transparent and even though what was in it didn’t look quite the same, I recognized a roll of bandages. “Let me look at your arm now, please.”