Protected

  But even though we were being as polite as possible around each other, Leah still seemed to be too close to me about ninety percent of the time.

  If I sat down on one of the comfort couches I had in my small lounge area, she sat right beside me so our legs brushed. When I stood at the counter of the food-prep area to make a meal, she was right beside me, so close I could smell the warm, sweet scent of her hair and feel her arm brush mine. Everywhere I went, there she was. It was enough to drive a male crazy.

  The weird thing was, though, that I didn’t think she realized what she was doing. It was almost like she was drawn to me unconsciously—like there was some kind of weird magnetic field between us, pulling us closer whether we wanted to be or not.

  It affected me too. More than once I caught myself right before I put an arm around her and once I almost kissed her good night without even thinking about it. I couldn’t understand what was going on or why I had such a hard time keeping my hands off her but I wished like hell I could figure it out so I could stop it.

  Leah wasn’t in my league not nearly. Besides being gorgeous, she was a Pure One and a La-ti-zal. But that wasn’t the only reason she needed to stay away from me. I was a hybrid—a half-breed. I couldn’t bond with a female and it wasn’t fair to lead her on and pretend I could. Of course, my friend Sarden was also a half-breed and he’d managed to bond Zoe to him. How he did that, I didn’t know but I couldn’t assume I would be as lucky as he was.

  But even if Leah had been in my league and I had been sure I could form a bond with her, I still wouldn’t have pursued her. Because if I did, at some point, she would have to learn about my past. And if she found out what I had done—if she knew the kind of male I really was—I knew she’d run as fast and as far in the other direction as she could.

  I wasn’t up for that.

  I didn’t want to see the look of horror and disgust on her lovely face when she found out the reason I was locked up for ten years in triple max lockdown. Far better to keep my distance and hope Leah did the same.

  Only she wasn’t exactly keeping her distance right now.

  I was sitting in the control seat and she was leaning over in such a way that her soft breasts brushed my arm through the thin white nothing of a blouse she was wearing. I felt their soft, yielding weight like a brand on my flesh, making me want to turn to her and grab her—an urge I strongly resisted. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the long, silky curtain of her hair fell across my skin too, tickling and teasing me in a way that was hard to ignore. Damn hard.

  “So this is the place? This is Sincon Delta?” she asked again and I realized I’d been too distracted by her nearness to give her an answer.

  “Yeah.” I heard the low growl in my voice and tried to smooth it out. “Uh…this is it.”

  “Oh. It’s really big.” She shifted and I felt her breasts move against my arm, the tight little nipples poking through her thin blouse. Inside my flight trousers, my shaft snarled.

  Sincon Delta wasn’t the only thing that was big at the moment.

  Stop it, I told myself. Just fucking stop now.

  But I couldn’t.

  Once again, I didn’t think Leah was aware of how her closeness was affecting me. After all, it was no fault of hers she was so fucking gorgeous or that the damn Commercians had given her such a tiny, revealing outfit to wear which barely covered her lush curves.

  She probably had no idea of what she was doing to me and it wasn’t my place to say anything about it. It wasn’t her fault for being desirable—it was mine for desiring her. I knew all that and yet somehow I couldn’t stop.

  Ever since the kiss we’d shared I was hyper aware of her. Every time she brushed a strand of that long, gorgeous hair out of her big brown eyes, every time she moved and I could see the shadows of her full breasts shift inside her thin blouse, the little pink nipples looking achingly hard, every time I caught a tendril of her warm, delicious feminine scent, I wanted her.

  I needed to stop that shit.

  “Yeah, it’s big,” I answered, trying to keep my voice even. “But this is just the planet—the actual tech district we want is a station that’s orbiting it. In fact, none of the inhabitants live on the surface.” I gestured to the vast orange and white curve of the planet beneath us.

  “Oh? Why not?” Leah wanted to know.

  “It’s a gas giant. Like some of the ones in your own solar system,” I told her. “There’s nothing to live on. But the planet has rings full of precious metals—good for mining. And where there’s precious metals, there’s tech. You need gold and platinum to make malleable, incorruptible alloys for nanobots, robo-dendrytes, immersion circuits—you know, that kind of stuff.”

  “Right. That kind of stuff.” Leah laughed, a soft, musical, feminine sound I swore I could feel all the way down to my balls. Gods, even her laugh was gorgeous! I really wished I hadn’t kissed her—it seemed to have started a chain reaction somehow. All I wanted to do was take her in my arms and kiss her again. What in the Frozen Hells of Anor was wrong with me?

  “So what are we going to do?” she said. “I mean, when we get to the station.”

  “You’re not going,” I said, frowning. “Safer if you stay in the ship.”

  “What?” She stood up straight and put her hands on her hips. The gesture pulled the white blouse tight across her full breasts and I had to work damn hard to keep my eyes on her face.

  “You heard me,” I growled. “The tech district isn’t as bad as say, the cloning district on Gallana, but it’s still more danger than I want to put you in.”

  “I’m going to be going into danger with you when we get to the all-girls’ planet,” she pointed out.

  “You mean Gemina?” I tried not to laugh. “Yeah, so?”

  “So you might as well let me go with you to the Sincon space station too. We’re partners, right?” She raised one slim eyebrow at me. “Didn’t you tell me we’d split the reward fifty-fifty?”

  “Well, yeah, but—”

  “Then we should split the risks fifty-fifty too,” she said, frowning. “If I’m really your partner, I want you to treat me like an equal.”

  Well, she had me there. Or maybe I was just trying so hard not to stare at her chest it was making me stupid.

  “Fine,” I growled. “But if you come with me, you do as I say. You’ve never been off your little planet before—you don’t know how rough and violent it can get out here in some of the darker parts of the galaxy.”

  “I know about violence,” she said quietly and I wanted to kick myself for being an idiot. Of course she knew about violence—living with that evil, brutal bastard of a mate of hers.

  “I’m sorry,” I muttered, looking back at the viewscreen.

  “It’s okay. I’m sorry too.” She sighed. “I shouldn’t have brought it up—I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

  “It’s not that.” I ran a hand over my hair. “It just makes me fuckin’ crazy to think of him hitting you.” I gave her a sidelong glance. “How often did he rough you up, darlin’?”

  She bit her lush lower lip.

  “Only…only twice before…before you stopped him,” she said in a small voice. “Neither time was as bad as this last, uh, attack though. The first two times, he cried afterwards and said he was sorry.”

  “Uh-huh. Probably brought you flowers and presents too,” I said grimly. “And promised it would never happen again, right?”

  She gave me a surprised look.

  “Well…yes. How did you know?”

  “There’s a pattern for that kind of male,” I said shortly. “I’ve seen it before.”

  “Oh, right. During your job as a Protector, right?”

  That wasn’t what I’d meant but I wasn’t about to dive into my bloody past right then and there.

  “Uh, sure,” I said, nodding. “That’s right.”

  “What I don’t understand is why I stayed with him. That first time
he did it, I should have gone. But he acted so sorry and I thought…I thought…”

  “Hey…” I heard the broken sound in her voice and looked over to see that she had drawn in on herself, her arms crossed over her chest as she stared down at her shoes.

  “I don’t know why I stayed,” she said again.

  “You didn’t want to believe the worst about a male you cared about. A male you loved.” The word seemed to stick in my throat but I got it out anyway. “Hey, c’mon, darlin’…”

  I reached out a hand to her and she took it. I felt the tingle as we touched but didn’t let go.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I told her, as gently as I could. “It was his. Any male who could have a female as special and gorgeous as you and want to hurt her, well—he’s just no fuckin’ good.”

  She looked up at me and I saw her eyes were bright with unshed tears.

  “What if…” She cleared her throat. “What if he had a…a reason to hit me?”

  “What?” I frowned at her. “What are you talking about? There’s no reason good enough to hurt a female. No excuse for that kind of thing—it’s the lowest thing any male could do.”

  “He… I don’t know if you heard what he was shouting before he started hitting me.”

  “Some of it,” I said, frowning. “Mostly I was just focused on getting him off you. Why? What did he say?”

  “He… No, never mind.” She shook her head and drew her hand out of mine. Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders and swiped at her eyes. Then she sniffed and gave me a smile I thought looked more than a little forced. “So tell me the plan. What are we going to do once we reach Sincon?”

  “Well, first we have to dock with the station,” I said but her words were replaying over and over in my head.

  What reason had her bastard of a mate given for hitting her? I’d heard him accusing her of cheating on him, which still wasn’t a good enough reason. As far as I was concerned, no reason was good enough to hurt a female. But if it wasn’t that—if Leah hadn’t been cheating, (and I was pretty damn sure she hadn’t been) then what was she talking about?

  I looked at her, trying to think what he’d said, but it wouldn’t come to me. Something about…did you react to him like you didn’t for me? Had that been it?

  I couldn’t quite remember. I hadn’t been completely in berserker mode when I went after her mate or he would be dead and torn to pieces on the fucking floor. But I had been distracted enough that I wasn’t exactly listening to every single piece of crap reason he was spouting for beating her.

  In the viewscreen, the vast silver shadow of the Sincon Delta station came into view. We would have to table this discussion and come back to it later. Right now it was time to see if I could buy an extremely illegal device from a male who had an even worse reputation than I did. And I would have to do it while keeping Leah close and protected at all times because I had given in and said she could come with me. I sighed.

  This should be fuckin’ fun.

  Leah

  The Sincon Delta station was amazing. It was made up of levels with the first one being the surface of the station itself and continued down into subterranean passages. It was covered by a huge atmosphere dome that was nearly invisible so it was like looking up into a night sky blazing with stars when I lifted my eyes.

  As Grav had told me, the rings around the planet were filled with precious metals. They were so close and so common it was cheaper to build with them than to import iron or steel or other, more traditional building materials. As a result, the streets and buildings were made of platinum, silver, and gold.

  It seemed odd to walk down a silver street and see the dull, rich gleam of gold on almost every building we passed—to see scruffy looking men spit on platinum sidewalks as though they were common concrete. I felt like I was living in the story about King Midas and the golden touch that I’d loved so much as a little girl. But to Grav, the richness of the station was clearly old news.

  He kept my hand firmly in his and the first thing we did after disembarking from the ship was to find a clothing shop. I tried to protest that he shouldn’t buy me anything because I couldn’t pay him back, but the big alien wouldn’t listen. He bought me several new outfits as well as a long, flowing green cape that had a deep cowl-type hood which covered my head and left my face in shadows when I put it on.

  I even got a little make-up kit that had several bright pigments swirled in tiny tubes and jars all tucked into a silver and gold case. I wanted it more for a souvenir than because I wear a lot of make-up. It would certainly be something to remember my interstellar adventures by. I tucked it into the bag with the clothes, which the attendant promised would be delivered to our ship. But Grav wanted me to wear the cloak right away.

  “Is this really necessary?” I asked, fastening the cape under my chin and pulling the hood over my face to hide my features. I felt like someone in a spy movie or maybe a character out of Assassin’s Creed.

  “Very fuckin’ necessary,” he assured me. I had never heard anyone who could use the “F” word and make it sound so normal and conversational before I met Grav. It made me smile.

  “But…why?” I asked. “Is it because the outfit the blue wormy guys gave me is kind of, uh, revealing?”

  I had gotten used to wearing the naughty schoolgirl outfit around Grav, although I was very aware of how his eyes followed me sometimes. With any other male that would have made me incredibly uncomfortable. I never liked feeling like I was showing my body off—not because I was so modest but because I felt like I was advertising something I couldn’t provide. When you see someone wearing something sexy, you at least expect that they could enjoy having sex sometimes. With me, that had never been true.

  Sorry—I know all that isn’t very feminist. But it’s just how I felt. As I said, being unable to enjoy anything sexual had made me feel broken inside for so long. But now, ever since I had kissed Grav, I felt like that part of me was, if not exactly fixed, at least closer to being in working order. So I didn’t mind it when I felt his eyes on me in the skimpy plaid skirt and thin, white blouse.

  In fact, if I was being completely honest—I liked it.

  Not that I would admit that fact to myself. I kept it buried deep inside and refused to think about how it gave me a naughty thrill when I saw him looking at me with that hungry expression in his strange white-on-black eyes.

  But now he was wanting to cover me up with the long cloak and hood he’d bought me. Maybe he didn’t like looking at me after all? Had I somehow misinterpreted the fire in his eyes when they raked over my body?

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” I asked humbly. “My outfit shows too much and you don’t like it.”

  “That’s part of it,” he acknowledged roughly, after paying the bill with something the size and shape of a guitar pick. Was it a kind of credit card?

  “So…you want me to cover up? I bother you, dressed like this?” I asked, nodding down at myself.

  “Darlin’, no.” He looked uncomfortable. “I mean, you do bother me but in a good way. But that’s not why I’m gettin’ you new clothes. Or not the only reason, anyway.”

  “What then?” I asked, honestly curious.

  Grav finished his transaction and turned his whole attention on me. Taking my shoulders in his big hands, he leaned in to look me in the eyes.

  “Leah, you’re a Pure One and a La-ti-zal and it shows. Your pale skin and those big brown eyes—it’s clear you’re somethin’ special. I just don’t need every male in the whole damn station going after you while I’m trying to make a deal, okay?”

  “What?” I pulled away from his grip, frowning. “Are you saying I’m a burden on you, just by being here? You think I’m too stupid to look after myself and stay out of trouble while you make the deal?”

  “No!” He sighed in frustration as he ushered me out the door. “That’s not what I meant at all. It’s just…you’re too damn pretty for your own
good. And look around—how many females do you see in this station?”

  We were out on the street again and I looked around, prepared to humor him. I looked up and down the rich silver and gold streets but after a moment, I had to shrug in confusion.

  “Honestly, I can’t tell,” I admitted.

  I saw a lot of people who didn’t look that different from people back on Earth, except for hair and skin color and some minor variations like Grav’s horns or the color or shape of their eyes. But there were also plenty of “people” who didn’t look like people at all. Creatures with tentacles instead of legs or compound eyes or skin like an alligator’s…It was impossible to tell if they were male or female or some indeterminate sex known only to them.

  “That’s because Sincon’s on the edge of the galaxy,” Grav told me. “The Ancient Ones mostly seeded planets near the center. Your world, Earth, is an exception. But take it from me—about ninety percent of the visitors here are male. That’s why the shop we just left is the only female clothing shop on the whole station.”

  “So…only one percent of the, uh, people here are female?” I asked, looking around.

  Grav nodded. “And of that one percent, none of them is anywhere near as rare and perfect and beautiful as you.”

  “I’m just a daycare worker,” I protested. “Or well, now I’m actually an educational aid. But still—I’m nothing special. Not where I come from.”

  “Darlin’, you’d be special anywhere,” he said firmly, taking my hand and squeezing my fingers. “And don’t let anybody tell you different. But especially here, we need to be careful.”

  “Because women, er, females are scarce?” I asked.

  “And because you’re so fuckin’ beautiful. Not to mention the further you get from Earth, the more your latent La-ti-zal powers are gonna come into play.”

  “I, uh, really don’t know about that,” I said, shaking my head as he led me through the gleaming streets. “I don’t feel any different at all.”

  “Don’t you?” He turned the full force of those strangely beautiful eyes on me and I found myself blushing.