Chapter 3
“What the actual fuck?!”
She screeched it as he just upped and carried her out of her own apartment, one arm locked around the backs of her thighs, like she was a bag of shopping he’d grabbed on the way out.
The blood was still dripping off his chin from where she’d broken his nose, and he was just…
walking. Carrying her over his shoulder like it was just Tuesday.
How many women did he kidnap on a regular basis?
He was so tall that he had to duck to get through the door.
“No! You can’t do this! This is kidnapping!”
He grumbled something under his breath; the sound vibrating through her stomach against his broad shoulder.
The leather of his uniform was cold and wet against her palms where she shoved at his back.
Got nowhere. Shit, the guy was built like a sodding truck.
She knew the Lathar were bigger than humans, but there was bigger and there was bigger.
And Emily had married his brother?
Doors on the corridor cracked open as they passed. She could see them from upside down… a thin strip of yellow light, a face, gone again as soon as they registered what they were looking at.
“Help me!” She gasped. “I’m being abducted by aliens!!”
Well, alien. Singular.
But no one ventured outside their doors to help. Fucking cowards. She’d known they wouldn’t. These were people who’d heard Mrs. Tranter’s place get stripped to the carpet tacks, and not one of them had raised the alarm.
He turned toward the stairwell, and she could see up the corridor. Mrs. Pedlow was standing in her open doorway, a thin dressing gown wrapped around her sparse frame, squinting at them as if she was trying to work out if this was a dream.
“Go back inside,” Amelia waved frantically. She’d wanted help, but Mrs. Pedlow wasn’t it. The old woman was so frail that a stiff breeze would probably make her fall over and break a hip.
“No, wait!” She pushed up on Thyaar’s shoulder as he shoved open the door to the stairwell. The hinges shrieked. “Mrs. Pedlow! Lock my place up, would you?”
She didn’t get Mrs. Pedlow’s answer as her captor started down the stairs…
the door thumping shut behind them. The stairwell swallowed them…
strip lighting, peeling walls, the damp smell of a building that had been losing the battle against damp and mold for the last thirty years.
His boots hit each step as if he were trying to drive them through the floor.
She had to grab a fistful of his jacket just to stay level.
Cold, wet leather. And under it, all heat and muscle that didn't give an inch.
Not now, she told herself. She had bigger problems than how warm the asshole was.
She hoped the old lady had heard her. The other occupants of the building wouldn’t think twice about helping her when she was being kidnapped, but they’d think nothing of helping themselves to her belongings.
“Wait! Shit!” she grabbed harder at his jacket as he hit his stride down the stairs. “Barnaby! Barnaby’s medication! He’s diabetic!”
“The systems on the ship can handle minor medical issues.”
What the—? “This isn’t a ‘minor’ medical issue! Without his medication, he’ll die!” She slapped his back. “Do you understand, asshole? Die. Gone. Not a cat anymore. Do you want to take Emily a dead cat?”
Thyaar ignored her as they reached the front door. She opened her mouth to argue some more, but then the rain hit her and stole her breath.
It came down in sheets. Both vertically and horizontally, which for weather was frankly gifted.
In the space of a breath, her thin PJs were completely soaked through, the cotton cold and clinging.
The air she struggled to pull in tasted of wet concrete and whatever objectionable slime her alien appeared to have on his clothing.
She sucked in a breath, and it was like inhaling a rotting, wet flannel.
Barnaby yowled, a long, furious sound, and tried to burrow closer against Thyaar, squirming to get under her legs as well for extra cover.
He hated the rain. Always had. The first time he’d wandered out onto the fire escape and gotten caught in drizzle, he’d looked through the glass at her with such personal betrayal on his face she’d laughed until she cried.
But he wasn’t on a fire escape this time. He was being carried through the streets of his city in the rain by an alien, and he was making sure everyone within yowling distance knew about it.
“Where are you taking us?” She yelled it over the noise of the rain hammering on the fire escapes above them.
She twisted, trying to see the street and see if there was anyone around.
There wasn’t. No one was out in this, and even if they had been, this was a rough neighborhood.
People were more likely to look the other way than get involved. She’d learned that young.
“My ship.”
“Your ship? The airport’s all the way across the city!”
She was already shivering, the wet PJs doing nothing. Surely he wasn’t planning on walking that far. It would take all night, and she’d end up hypothermic before they got even halfway there.
He didn’t answer. He turned a corner and cut across towards the old Dempsey building lot.
She recognized it even upside down in the dark.
The building had burned down when she was a kid.
Stood here as a shell for years before they knocked it down, and then there had been nothing, because you couldn’t get construction vehicles through the gap the surrounding blocks left.
She’d played here when she was a kid, told herself she was exploring, really just killing time before she had to go home.
“We’re here,” he announced.
“What do you mean, we’re—” she twisted on his shoulder. “What the—”
The ship sat in the middle of the lot like it owned the place.
Dark, low, and sleek, it was longer than it looked at first glance.
The rain hit the hull and ran off cleanly…
no pooling, no streaking, as if the surface itself were repelling it.
Water off a duck’s back, she thought and nearly giggled.
No way had she just compared some deadly alien ship to a duck.
But… now she looked at it, the back did look a little duck-like.
He walked toward it, and the back section split open. A seam appeared from nowhere, a ramp lowering, slow and even, to settle onto the cracked concrete. She twisted this way and that on his shoulder as he walked up it, trying to take all of it in at once.
The warmth hit her before anything else… not stuffy, not the particular fug of a room with too many people and not enough ventilation, just warm. The cargo area was small and tidy, all dark paneling and low amber lighting, equipment locked into housings.
It was nicer than any place she’d rented.
“It’s huge.”
“No,” he countered, setting her on her feet. “You’re the one who’s tiny.”
She came up to about the middle of his chest. She had to crane her neck to glare at him properly, which somewhat undercut the glare. Up close he was all shoulders, and her stupid heart kicked up a beat. If she’d met him in a bar, looking like that, she’d have climbed him like a damn tree.
But she hadn’t met him in a bar, he’d kidnapped her. Which meant she had to get the hell out of here.
The ramp was closing behind her. She looked at it, looked at the gap that was narrowing. Could she make it? She looked back at him and realized he was still holding Barnaby, one eyebrow raised as if she could read his mind.
Barnaby was purring.
Draped over Thyaar’s arm like a scarf, his eyes were half-closed as he purred like a broken engine.
Traitor.
“Come on,” Thyaar ordered. His gaze dropped from her face, moved down, and then he looked away quickly. “We’ll get you something more… appropriate.”
She looked down.
Well, shit.
Her pajamas, pale blue cotton, which had been perfectly decent when they were dry, were not dry. They were so not dry it wasn’t even funny. Soaked through, they were plastered to her skin. They were also completely and utterly transparent.
She crossed her arms over her chest.
“Right,” she said. “Yeah. Good idea. Lead the way.”
The ship was nothing like she'd expected.
Amelia had expected something military. All gray metal and hard edges and warriors moving through corridors with weapons on their hips, because that was what the news feeds showed you when they talked about the Lathar…
troop transports that looked like flying prisons with all the warmth of an abattoir. What she had not expected was carpet.
She stopped in the corridor entrance and looked down at her feet. The carpet was deep charcoal, dense enough that her bare feet sank into it, which meant that it was as expensive as hell. And here she was, standing on it, dripping water from every inch of herself.
Thyaar didn't stop.
He was already halfway down the corridor ahead of her, leaving a trail of enormous boot prints on the charcoal pile. Boot prints that were, and she was noting this purely for informational purposes, the largest boot prints she'd ever seen in her life. Which meant that proportionally his feet were—
No. She cut that thought off and turned her attention to the walls.
Yeah, better. Much better.
The paneling was some kind of dark wood, deep reddish-brown, with a grain that moved like flame patterns when the light hit it, like fire frozen mid-flicker.
The overhead lights were low, recessed, and warm…
the whole corridor had a softness that said this ship had been designed by someone with money and taste. Lots of both.
It looked like the Nova Star, the hotel from XXX…
her absolute favorite trashy holo-soap, the one her coworker Dani had got her hooked on three years ago, and she'd never recovered.
She'd looked it up once. The Nova Star used in the series was a proper hotel.
It cost four thousand credits a night and, she hoped, did not have a murder in the penthouse every other week.
"Are you coming?"