Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Cold air flowed around my exposed skin, causing goosebumps to rise across my body. Attempting to wrap my hands around myself for warmth alerted me to the fact that I couldn’t move my arms.
“What the fuck,” I mumbled before tilting my head.
“What the fuck?” I repeated, louder and more insistent.
Glowing rings at my wrists held my arms in place above my head.
Flush against my skin, their smoothness amplified the chill in the air.
Yanking did nothing. Looking down, I saw that similar glowing rings at my bare ankles held my legs spread.
Not uncomfortably so, though enough that the cold air found every inch of skin my minidress didn’t cover.
Worse, my stomach churned in response to my inability to close my legs and reduce my intimate exposure.
I was trapped, every inch of exposed skin shivering.
“What the fuck!” I yelled so loud that I swore it scratched my vocal cords.
“As entertaining as your caterwauling is,” a droll voice said from the side, “that last one hurt my ears. Knock it off.”
My head turned to the left toward the deep voice. “Gym Bro,” I exclaimed when I recognized the tall, dark, and muscled man in his black mesh shirt and black jeans.
“Excuse me?” he asked, his eyebrows knitting in confusion, though he didn’t otherwise move, given that he was similarly trussed up along the wall.
I didn’t bother explaining my nickname for him.
“Where are we? What’s happened?” It hit me then that I had either sobered immediately upon realizing someone had restrained me with a strange man, or I’d been here for hours.
Probably the former, since I didn’t have to pee. “How long have I been here?”
“We are on the enforcer’s ship. We have been kidnapped. It has only been about fifteen minutes,” he answered my questions.
“Fifteen minutes.” I frowned at the news. “Wait,” I said as his first answer slammed home. “What enforcer? What ship? Who kidnapped us?” My voice rose in volume and incredulity with each question.
“I am Cair Anas,” a voice from my right side stated.
My head now turned in that direction. A door whooshed closed behind the other tall, muscled man I’d seen in the parking lot.
“This is my ship.” The man had removed his hat and sunglasses since I’d last seen him.
“Now I understand why you wore sunglasses,” I said, shocked by the muted yellow of his irises.
The man—Cair Anas—stepped closer to me. “Who are you?”
“I’m Emily Nichols,” I answered by reflex, fascinated by his shimmering hair above pearly skin. “What do you do to make it iridescent like that?” I blurted out my question.
Cair sighed, the deep sound vibrating through me. “I do not do anything.”
“You don’t like your hair’s reflectiveness,” I continued, dimly aware that my focus on his appearance was in part to ignore the skyrocketing panic at being restrained on an enforcer’s ship. Whatever an enforcer was.
Cair’s full lips thinned into a line of displeasure. “Emily Nichols,” he said my name.
I shivered in response. This time, not from the cold.
What was it about his melodic voice that had an erotic effect on me?
“Your hair is beautiful,” I said, and he quirked an eyebrow.
“Why do you wear a hat? If you don’t like it, you can dye it?
” I questioned why he couldn’t solve his imagined problem.
“It does not keep the color, Ms. Fix It,” he snapped at me, eyes widening. “You realize that you have been seized, right?”
“I babble when I’m nervous,” I admitted. “Why have I been … seized?” My breath became ragged, even without using the word kidnapped. I gulped several times in a futile attempt to oxygenate my brain. My vision darkened to pinpoints.
“Emily Nichols,” Cair repeated, stepping so close I could reach out and touch him.
Well, I could if I wasn’t shackled. My blood became icicles when my instinct to lean away from him, from the implied danger, also failed because of the shackles keeping me immobile.
“Why were you defending my runner?”
His runner? Was there an athlete there that I missed? “Who?” I asked, before being distracted by the heat emanating from the man before me. And his scent, a curious mix like fresh rain with pine.
Cair pointed at the other restrained man. “Xelthar Zarnoth. My Brakian runner.”
“Your what? Who?” It was as if Cair was speaking Latin. The words meant nothing. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Cair sighed again. “I was afraid of that.”
“Listen. This has all been a big mistake,” I said, the fingers of my hands above the glowing rings spreading outward.
“When do we reach land? You can just let me off at whatever port we’re closest to.
I won’t report this to the police if you just let me go,” I promised.
And I meant it. This would all soon be a bad dream.
Laughter from my left drew my attention.
I glared at Xelthar. “Why is that funny?”
“She thinks she is on a boat,” the man said to Cair, instead of answering me.
Confusion surfaced. “Boat. Ship. Whatever you call it.”
“You are not on a boat,” Cair said. “You are on a spaceship.”
Now I laughed. “Did Andrea set this up?” It had to be a joke. Right?
“Who is Andrea?” Cair asked in a sharp tone.
The laughter dried up. “My friend. She did this as a practical joke to cheer me up.” I heard the desperation in my voice.
“I do not know an Andrea.” Cair tilted his head. “You are here because you interfered with my runner apprehension.”
“Wait. I didn’t mean to—”
“I needed to get off the planet before anyone else saw us.” Cair gestured at the sterile room behind him. “You are in the ship’s brig. I will interrogate you to determine if you are uninvolved as you claim.”
“Brig? Interrogate? Spaceship?” This had to be stress, not aliens.
Cair continued as if I had not interrupted. “If I believe you are uninvolved, then I will wipe your memory and return you to Earth.”
I blinked at the cold, metallic walls, the low hum of unseen machinery making my head throb as Cair’s words sank in. Memory wipe? Return to Earth? My brain raced. “Return—wait. If?”
“If I do not believe you, then I will bring you to Vadhea along with Xelthar Zarnoth.”
“Who is Vadhea?” I asked, just as Xelthar muttered, “Fuck me. Vadhea.” Interestingly, in English. I wondered why.
One of Cair’s yellow eyes shifted to stare at Xelthar, while the other remained fixed on me.
“What the fuck?” I yelped. “What’s wrong with your eye?”
“Nothing is wrong with my eye,” Cair answered.
Xelthar laughed again, concern regarding whoever Vadhea was at least briefly forgotten.
“What … how … I don’t understand,” I spluttered, peering at his face, trying to comprehend how his eyes could move in separate directions like that. It seemed too purposeful to be a so-called lazy eye.
“I have monocular vision,” he explained.
“Oh.” While I wasn’t certain what monocular meant, I understood it in this context.
“The interrogation will be quick and painless.”
That statement brought me back to my immediate situation, and I lost interest in Cair’s unusual eyes.
“Yes, yes,” I frantically agreed, my head nodding up and down like a bobblehead.
“I have nothing to hide. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.
Then you can, uh, return me to Earth.” My tongue tripped over the final sentence.
Part of my brain didn’t believe I was on an actual alien spaceship.
But the glowing rings holding me against a metal wall begged to differ.
Regardless, I wanted to be safe back home in my apartment.
“Excellent,” Cair responded with a curt nod. He crouched down in front of me.
Fuck. What was about to happen? “What are you doing?” I asked with trepidation.
A slight whirring sound reached my ears. Cair placed what resembled an electronic box cutter against the bottom of my dress and pulled it upward.
“Hey,” I spluttered when the fabric split apart. “What are you doing? Stop!”
Ignoring my entreaty, Cair dragged the implement higher.
I watched in dismay as he slowly, neatly, cut my dress open in front. Before I could object, he also cut the straps holding the two sides dangling in place. The dress fell off my body, leaving me restrained spread-eagle in my lacy black bra and thong.
“As I stated,” Cair began dispassionately, “this will be quick and painless if you are honest in answering my questions.”
“You could have asked me your questions while I was clothed,” I squeaked out.
“You know nothing about Elkathan interrogation techniques,” Xelthar commented.
“Elkathan?” I repeated, unsure I’d heard him correctly.
Cair sighed for the third time since I’d woken up in his brig. “This is why I did not want this assignment.” He glared at Xelthar. “You are too minor a runner. And you are wanted for too minor an infraction.”
“Then let me go,” Xelthar suggested.
“Not when Vadhea hired me to bring you in,” Cair reminded the other prisoner before stalking over to him. “But that does not mean I have to continue listening to you.”
“That is because you do not want me to tell the human female about your sexual interrogation techniques.”
“Wait, what?” I asked. My chest tightened, a strange pull tugging at my senses.
“Their species has a history of forced mating and—”
Whatever else Xelthar planned to tell me was cut off as a glowing ring wrapped around his head, positioned between his lips, silencing him. He offered a slight shrug, despite the restraints, when I met his eyes in horror.
Cair walked the few feet back to stand before me, but my gaze stayed glued on the glowing band around Xelthar’s face, that strange sensation in the air spiking.
Until pressure on my right breast caused my head to whip forward.
I stared into Cair’s mesmerizing yellow eyes.
“What are you doing?” I whispered as a bolt of desire shot through me from his strong fingers kneading the flesh barely contained within my bra.
My stomach clenched with alarm plus something else I didn’t want to name, and I cursed the universe for the peculiar timing of my body’s betrayal.
“What did he mean by sexual interrogation techniques?” I left unasked my question about forced mating, which sounded uncomfortably close to—
“I will let you orgasm if you tell me what I want to know.”
Every muscle in my body clenched at once. “What the fuck?”