Chapter 6 #2
Staring into my eyes again, he reached out, like he was daring me to flinch away, to step back and show him my fear.
His hand was coated in silver, like the rest of him, and he pressed it against my thigh, then slid it across to the other side, leaving tingles in its wake.
It was a charged moment, and the caress sent my pulse soaring.
Was he flirting? Was he trying to intimidate me?
What was this? I could not make any sense of it.
As strange and sudden as that moment was, just as abruptly it was over.
He spun on his heels, and this time, he said not a word as he stalked away.
Faced with the sudden possibility of being left alone, I jogged after him.
The hold was dark and vast, stacked with crates that cast shadows, twists and turns like a maze capable of hiding anything.
Knowing I was not alone on this ship was actually worse, well, not worse, exactly.
I was pretty relieved I’d found one stranger that though rude, had not harmed me.
But that other thing? I was very certain it would harm me if it had the chance, and I didn’t plan to give it one.
“Wait up,” I called out, my eyes locked on the silver of his broad back.
Was it my imagination, or was it oddly streaked here?
Like… well, like there were wounds beneath it that the silver had covered, healed wounds.
Didn’t a Son of Ragnar’s fabled symbiotic relationship with a morphing alien creature allow them to heal at astonishing rates?
I cursed internally and wondered if I’d loaded the scientific journals—with what little information there was on his kind—onto my personal tablet or not.
Did it still work, and would I have a chance to grab it at some point?
My silver companion had long legs, and he did not adjust his pacing for me.
In fact, it appeared he was purposefully stalking away so as to create distance.
That was another mystery, one I puzzled over as I followed him.
Not scared, and currently not overwhelmed by any heavy feelings, I had plenty of space to think.
Why had he come here, onto my ship, if not to find us?
What was his purpose aboard the Lancing Light?
He was the most unlikely rescuer I’d ever come across.
I doubted he even knew how to say a kind thing.
So I didn’t pull any punches either; that wasn’t what I was known for anyway.
“Hey, why are you running off like a coward now? Huh? You woke me, you’re responsible now.
” I had to be crazy to mock him that way, to taunt a deviant version of a Son of Ragnar without knowing anything about him.
Not even his name. He’d given me nothing at all, just toyed with me like I was a mouse and he was the cat.
The laughter my words pulled from him was anything but amused; it was a cold, cruel crackle of sound that echoed against the dark, metal ship walls.
“No, I’m not,” he drawled, his head tilting just enough to glance over his shoulder my way.
I saw fang, and I saw the hint of his dark silver eye beneath his pale brow.
All derision and mockery, all cold anger and fury.
I had definitely pissed him off with that remark, and the last thing I needed to do was anger the one person out here who could help me.
My diplomatic parents would roll over in their graves if they knew how I was handling this situation; anything but tactful.
Like the devil had hold of my tongue, I couldn’t stop the next taunt from slipping from my lips.
Everything about this stranger made me want to…
get under his skin, in the worst way—maybe even the best way too.
“Yes, you are,” I said to him, and it was incredible how close I came to sticking out my tongue at him.
That was childish; all of this was stupid and dangerous.
But I was a woman with nothing to lose, wasn’t I?
Mission over, slept through like Sleeping Beauty, or rather, the sleeping nerd, in my case.
All my friends and family were dead and long gone.
The UAR was probably solidly in control of everything, and all of Earth had gone to hell in a handbasket.
I never saw him move. There was a rush of air that preceded him.
That was it. He leaped across the hallway, right at me, and I found myself slammed into the wall.
He was pressed against me, all solid muscle and heat against my much softer, smaller body.
For a guy furiously slamming a lady into a wall, he was oddly careful about it.
That didn’t mean my heart rate stayed anywhere near steady, or that fear didn’t surge through my flesh.
It was instinct to want to squirm away, to fawn over this guy so he wouldn’t hurt me.
His voice was like a knife as it cut through the dark, his silver eyes gleaming in his face, shadowed by his brow.
Up close, I could see faint markings lying beneath his gray skin, the hints of mating marks that were dormant until he found his grouping, his people.
Talac always mated several males to one female; their population numbers were oddly skewed toward a heavy male presence.
None of that was relevant as he threatened me.
“Leave me alone, human! You want nothing to do with a monster like me. Go back to your pod and sleep another thousand years.” So he knew how long I’d been in stasis, and how crazy it was to wake up to this.
He called himself a monster, and the truth was, I could see it: the rage and darkness in his eyes as he pierced me with a glare that withered me to my soul.
I was shaking in his grip, trembling from terror as acute and terrible as what I’d felt on the bridge.
Not only did he hold me pinned to the wall, but the silver creature that hugged him like armor had slid from his flesh and onto mine.
It cradled the back of my head and my shoulders, and where it touched, any lingering aches and pains faded, and fatigue vanished.
Despite the fear that filled me, I could also sense that he was not harming me, and perhaps even…
healing me. Could Sons of Ragnar do that?
So I licked my lips, watched how his eyes tracked the movement, and said no.
“No?” he hissed, his body pressing further into me, hands braced on either side of my head, his forehead almost pressed to mine.
His scent surrounded me, his anger washed over me like a blanket, and yet my fear was sliding through me, out of me, and…
into him? “You’re scared, yet you rebel.
Are you stupid?” he demanded, mocking. He knew exactly what he evoked in me, and he seemed to relish the thought. He really was a bastard.
“No,” I said again. “I’ve got a perfectly developed sense of survival.
” Daring to oppose him felt like making a bold move in a chess match.
Would this make him back off or press closer?
Would he kiss me? His eyes flicked to my mouth again, as if he were actually contemplating the very odd notion bouncing around my brain.
Sense of survival? Clearly, I hadn’t woken up with that part of my psyche intact.
I made a mockery of my own words by acting the way I was.
The moment drew out, seeming to last forever rather than just a few short seconds.
Then he lifted his head, and something flicked over his face that I could not decipher.
An emotion, a hint of respect; maybe it was confusion.
It probably wasn’t respect, nothing so flattering.
He likely still thought I was an idiot, and he wasn’t entirely wrong.
I couldn’t explain why I was acting the way I was, either. Trauma, shock, grief—take your pick.
Then he laughed, and for the first time, there was a hint of warmth in his voice.
Maybe I had actually managed to amuse him this time.
I’d take it, the result was...fruitful. He lifted away from me, cold air replacing the warmth of his body.
His symbiont also dripped from my flesh, pooling on the ground before taking on the shape of a Gracka—a hound-like creature native to the icy, cold Talacan homeworld.
It had very sharply pointed ears and a narrow snout, a bit like a German Shepherd.
Only the Gracka was sleeker and more heavily muscled, much like its companion.
I discovered I was not scared again. Numb?
I didn’t think so either. It was something he did.
He was walking away again, his laughter fading, petering out and reclaimed by the dark ship.
But he halted at the corner leading toward the bridge.
“Well, are you coming?” he called out, soft, low-pitched, as if this was a one-time offer he was not going to repeat for anyone.
I pushed away from the wall and jogged after him, far less unsteady and sluggish.
Any hint of stasis sickness seemed a memory, and I was certain his symbiont was the reason.
It had healed me somehow. It wasn’t until I’d reached the corner and ducked after his silver form and the sleek hound at his side that I realized one astonishing truth: not all of his strange, alien companion had left my body.
No, some of it clung in thin strands around my neck, and more circled my wrists.
Like strange, skin-heated jewelry, or perhaps these were more like shackles. ..