CHAPTER FIVE | Fiona
Dalk loomed over me, glaring downwards as I unhooked the fastener on my seat and stood up. I hadn’t realized how damn close he was. When I popped up out of my seat my tits crashed right into his abs.
He didn’t even have the decency to move or look awkward about it, either. Just stood there staring down at me, his sight stars pulled in so tight that they were like shiny metal bullets about to shoot into my brain.
“Are you going to move anytime soon?” I huffed, feeling a tingling heat expanding slowly outward from where we touched. He made a sound that could only be described as a growly alien harrumph and then he finally stepped back, just enough for me to squeeze sideways past him.
Dalk followed immediately behind, a looming, angry Sea Sand shadow at my back. We were the last ones left on the shuttle. As we approached the open exit, I could see the translucent turquoise stone of the ground outside Gahn Thaleo’s mountain that looked so much like ice over a crystal-clear lake. I was about to hop on out of the shuttle when Dalk forced himself out first, landing with agile ease on the shining ice-like stone before he turned and grasped my elbow. I looked at his hand on my arm, then at his face in confusion.
“It’s not that far down to the ground,” I told him. I’d jumped out of this shuttle countless times by now.
“You have little legs,” he growled. “It is farther for you than for me.”
“But it still isn’t far.”
“Are you two nearly done over there?” Valeria asked. She had her sunglasses on, but I could tell by the set of her mouth that she probably had her eyes narrowed behind the dark lenses. Valeria was tall, at least six feet in her own right, but her massive mate Grim absolutely towered behind her, a glittering statue of ruby scales that dwarfed even the two other Sea Sand men flanking him.
“Yes. We are,” I snapped at the same moment that Dalk snarled, “No.”
“Why are you being so pissy?” I huffed, trying to tug my elbow from his grip. He gave me a startled, affronted sort of look and then gaped down at himself before narrowing the scope of his sight stars at me accusingly.
“I did not piss!”
“No, not that kind of piss!” I gave an especially hard tug, and Dalk actually let go this time. He didn’t move, though. Just stood there staring at me like a great big wall of very pissed-off alien male. “It means angry. Or, like, irritated.”
“I am often irritated,” he grumbled, watching me as I prepared to hop out of the shuttle. “Have you never noticed?”
I gave a bark of laughter, because who the hell hadn’t noticed that?
“Well, this is why I suggested you take a break and go home for a bit! I just thought it might do some good for the state of your mental health.”
The affronted look was back.
“I am just as healthy – no – I am even healthier than any other male of my age and anyone who has said otherwise has put a lie upon my name that he must answer for. Who was it?” He turned and aimed a spear at Oxriel’s innocent expression. “Was it you?”
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
I took this opportunity of distraction to finally hop down out of the shuttle. Only, as merciless fucking fate would have it, I had to hit the one little slippery patch of stone as I landed. My foot slid to the side, and my hands were too full of cards to latch onto the side of the shuttle for balance.
I was about to go down. Hard.
Dalk hadn’t even been looking at me. He’d been focused on poor Oxriel, staring at the other male like he was about to drive a spear right through his sweet, smiley face. And yet, when I started to slide, it was like he fucking sensed it. The speed with which he snapped his body around towards mine was goddamn inhuman, which I guessed made sense considering the fact that he absolutely wasn’t human. But it was still surprising. A shock to the system to experience the way that much brutal strength and power bring itself into motion so fucking fast. Someone as brawny and bulky as Dalk should have been slow, but he wasn’t. He moved like a lick of dark lightning in the bright air, his fingers seizing on the arm he’d released not one minute before.
“This,” he hissed, sight stars practically vibrating down at me, giving my arm a slight squeeze as he steadied me, “is why I do not leave the Deep Sky.”
I squinted at him in the scalding sunshine, my heart hammering from the adrenaline of the tumble I’d so narrowly avoided. It definitely wasn’t beating that fast because of how close he was to me. Or because of how warm and powerful his hand felt on my arm. Or how, goddamnit, that grumpy scowl of his actually looked so fucking good etched into the harsh, masculine lines of his face.
I expected Dalk to let go of me when the sound of Deep Sky men – Gahn Thaleo and some of his warriors – approached. And he did, but not without a long, silently brooding moment of hesitation. And not without stepping in front of me as the other men came across the bright, pale stone towards us.
“Hey!” I said, swatting at his back with one of the paper cards, being careful to avoid all the blades strapped to him. “I can’t see!”
“You do not need to see,” he grunted.
“Oh, I suppose I’m just supposed to pass out these cards with my bloody eyes closed, then? Just toss them in the air, maybe, and let the wind carry them where it will?”
“That would work.”
“Oh, you are impossible.”
He tilted his head back to look at me over his shoulder.
“And you are going to get a hide-burn,” he muttered. “You don’t have your cloak on properly. And where are your eye-shells?”
He was right, and that was even more annoying. Before I could shift all the cards I held into one hand, he’d already grabbed at my hood and yanked it up over my head, casting my face in blissfully cooling shadow.
Well, I could at least put my own sunglasses on.
But I couldn’t remember which jacket pocket I’d put them in, and as I shoved my hand fruitlessly into the empty one, Dalk was already swiping them from the other side.
He held them almost daintily in his claws, like he was worried he was going to mangle the tough plastic just by touching them. Which, to be fair, he was probably strong enough to do.
“Thank you,” I said, holding out my empty hand for them. He looked at my outstretched hand.
And completely ignored it.
He tossed his spear down to the stone so that he’d have both hands free, and then unfolded the dark sunglasses.
“I can put them on myself,” I said, surprised he still hadn’t handed them over.
“I want to make sure it is done correctly,” Dalk huffed back.
“Correctly?! You’ve probably never even held a pair of sunglasses before this moment!” I said, instinctively flinching backwards when he came at my face with them. “You’re going to poke me in the fucking eye!”
“I will not,” he said, his voice dark and quiet with focus as his gaze fused itself to my face. “I have a hunter’s aim. I can hit a dakrival in a killing place from hundreds of paces away.”
“I’m not a dakrival!”
“No. Nor are you hundreds of paces away. Be still, Fiona.”
And fuck me sideways, I actually went ahead and did it.
I’ve never been the type to listen to, well, anybody. My Nan absolutely forbade me from getting a tattoo, and that was the first thing I did after I turned eighteen. I went into environmental engineering because I wanted to rebel against systems that seemed designed to destroy us and I ran into my fair share of trouble with the Guardaí during environmental protests in Dublin.
But when Dalk muttered those two little words, Be still, and then tacked my name on the end like a threat, it was like my body obeyed him before my brain could even catch up. My breath caught in my throat, my muscles tightening involuntarily as Dalk slid the arms of the glasses slowly over the tops of my ears and along my temples.
Had my ears always been this sensitive? And not even just my ears. My whole body felt oddly prickly and warm, and I was sure it wasn’t solely from the alien sun beating down. Dalk had his fingers very carefully and intentionally bent so that his claws were angled down, curling around the arms of the glasses, their dangerously sharp tips never coming into contact with my skin. But the smooth surface of their top-curves brushed against my cheekbones as he fixed the sunglasses in place, and I just about combusted on the spot from the tiny stimulation of that touch.
He released the arms of the glasses, and then, giving me an unsatisfied look, he nudged the centre part of the sunglasses higher up on my nose before finally stepping back.
“There.” He said it calmly, decisively.
Like he’d fixed something.
I was tempted, and not just a little bit, to rip them off my face and put them back on myself. But it was sunny. And they were already helping. And that just seemed one petty step too far.
Still thought about it, though. Especially after his “This is why I stay in the Deep Sky” remark. I didn’t want him thinking I was such a helpless idiot that he had to hang around just to make sure I didn’t get sunburned or kidnapped by some desperately horny Deep Sky bloke.
But I guess he really was worried about that latter thing. Because when he swept his spear back up into his claws and turned around to face Gahn Thaleo and the other men approaching, he stepped in front of me and blocked my view again. Or blocked me from view. I stared at the rippling muscled barrier of his back, lined with blade after blade, and tried to decide whether to step around him...
Or if I’d just have to give up and turn these cards into paper airplanes to shoot over his shoulder. With his reflexes he could probably slice them right out of the air if he wanted to, before they’d spent even half a second in flight.
I decided on neither of those things. For the moment, I just subtly leaned around Dalk’s bulk and watched.