3. Chapter 3 #2
He says each word like one would whisper a prayer, and my body goes all funny, the proximity cloying. “You just compared me to a corpse.”
“And your coloring has darkened. That indicates pleasure in your species, yes?”
I scramble up, scurrying away from him, thankful he decides to let me go.
“I-I’m supposed to be a breeder. I just needed the dowry—”
“More are coming,” he interrupts, his head tilted toward the hall. Those jarring milky white eyes on me.
“Go then!” I whisper yell.
“I will not leave you. If you wish to stay, we stay.”
“Jesus,” I curse under my breath.
“Sor’en,” he corrects, making a frustrated growl slip through my throat. “If you are interested in being a breeder, I will breed you. I have more than enough credits—”
My cheeks heat further. “How do I know you won’t kill me?!”
“Perhaps we are not what we’ve been made out to be,” he offers simply as whatever he noticed earlier finally reaches my much smaller field of awareness. Another shit thing about being a human.
My brain is racing so fast I feel faint as I huff, turning and stalking away from him.
Of course, he follows. “If there is family, you may contact them.”
“I have no family!”
I gasp when he appears in front of me as if out of thin air. “If it is your fear of me that halts you, perhaps it's best we get this out of the way then.”
My mind blanks as his hands gently grip my face, his bare, oil-slick hands.
A scream builds in my throat before he leans down, his forehead meeting mine, his opaque eyes commanding hazel ones.
The hard seam of his mouth, a mere whisper away.
I wait for the hysteria, well, more hysteria than I’m already experiencing.
I wait for the pain… for death. For the unease that usually fills me, the anxiety that drives needles into my chest when people poke and prod.
Nothing comes save for a soft tingling, a warm and fuzzy sensation on my skin. Like a hug that reaches all over.
“I will not harm you, my mate. Say yes.”
Say yes.
I take precious seconds to weigh my options. I need the dowry to get to Lunareth. That’s a thousand times harder now that I've aged out of the care system, in the Alliance’s eyes, aged out of needing food, water, or a home.
He can provide all those things, surely. For now.
And I don’t have to breed.
Right?
“Will you force yourself on me?”
He rears back, looking more than a little offended. “Of course not.”
“I want a place to live. Food and water, credits. I want to be safe.”
Until I leave you.
“Anything, I will give you anything,” he pleads, his smooth calmness parting for a moment of aching desperation.
Oh, fucking hell.
“I want the credits wired to a deep-space account, a waystation. I want them there waiting for me. No funny business.”
His deep-set, hairless brow furrows, but he nods.
“Double my dowry.”
“I’ll triple it.”
“One hundred thousand credits. Send it now.”
He jerks out some high-tech kind of holo pager, scanning his thumb over it before he logs my genetic marker, the only way one can retrieve credits in a waystation.
The whole thing takes only a second. It takes only a second for him to flash the confirmation in my face, leaving me wondering if I’ve just taken everything he had.
The guilt is short-lived; hoarding that amount of credits is his own problem, not mine.
The smile that breaks over his face makes my heart flutter. For a moment, halting the battering anxiety, he’s… beautiful in a morbid, scary kind of way. I shudder as he removes his hands from my cheeks, leaving a warm and fuzzy sheen behind.
That was easy enough.
I kick out hard, my shoe connecting with his toned gut seconds before I bolt.
His grunt is a vague memory as I slip just a few strides down the hall, slamming my palm into the emergency assistance button placed a little too high for me to reach without jumping.
The sound of the AI's intercom speakers blares overhead as flashing lights take over the corridor. I don’t dare look back at the loud thuds that sound from behind me.
Whoever was coming must’ve reached Sor’en by now.
Works for me. My ankles vibrate from the force of my pounding footsteps as I run the opposite way down the hall.
“This is the Port Authority, state your emergency and species.”
“Human! There is an illegal class D species—”
My heart shudders to a stop, a breathless scream ripping from my throat as Sor’en appears in front of me.
His chest heaving, eyes wild, there’s something different about his body.
Odd, larger, altered in a way I can’t place.
I fill my lungs to scream again, apologize, plead for mercy, but he slams his mouth into mine instead.
He doesn’t force me to kiss him back; it’s an unhurried, adoring touch, one that lingers just on the edge of being as desperate and hungry as the tone in his voice.
It’s my first.
I have my first kiss in the dirty maintenance hall of the inner rim of Vortara Space Station by a feared class D species who decided just a few moments ago I was his mate.
I melt against him, and when my eyes open again, they’re heavier just as a group of footsteps finds us.
I want to feel fear, to summon that panic that overwhelmed me seconds ago.
I find myself, oddly… calm. I stumble a bit as Sor’en leaves me, suddenly blinking from my view.
My movements are sluggish as I turn to find him.
Oddly, somewhere way back in my brain, I realize he’s done something to me.
My eyes only hit their mark as he blurs into the middle of a group of four, highly armed port police of varying species.
I want to scream, to run back into the wires and pipes, but my body is too heavy.
He glances behind him at me. As if he can’t help it, a morbid, regal prince among gargoyles, meeting my eyes, ignoring the huge males who are only just starting to react to his sudden presence.
My eyelids grow heavier.
The first two that meet his gentle touch hit the ground only a domtic later.
The others bark a command I barely recognize before a loaded blaster is pointed at his chest.
It goes off with a deafening percussion in the small space, but I’m suddenly too tired to care, my eyes only widening slightly on the fiery hole in the wall where Sor’en once was.
I see him before they do, and I register it before too, as if my mind, innately, primally can find him in that blur of night.
They don’t even know he’s touched them; it’s a simple touch laid on the exposed skin of their necks. Instantly, that’s all it takes.
My body wobbles, giving just as theirs do. A strong pair of arms catches me just before I hit the ground, pale white hair tickling my face as I’m hauled against his chest. Sleep finally takes me despite the blaring sirens.