TAUREX
The operator nodded frantically.
“Where is Orlov?”
The male swallowed hard.
“Back office. End of the hall. He’s waiting for the stripper.”
The words sent another wave of Rage surging through Taurex, but he forced it down.
“Is anyone else in this apartment besides Orlov, the younglings and the males I have already encountered?”
The operator hesitated.
Taurex pressed the blaster harder into his skin.
“Tell the truth or you die.”
“No,” the human said quickly. “No, that’s it. Just us.”
“Good.”
Taurex looked once more at the monitors and saw the feed from Terra’s bungalow—saw the empty driveway and Lucy moving restlessly across the porch with a communication device pressed to her ear. The sight made his jaw tighten.
Orlov had not merely kidnapped Terra’s younglings—he had been studying the entire family, watching their movements, learning their routines and waiting for the precise moment when he could take what he wanted.
There was something deeply diseased about such behavior, and Taurex had no doubt that if the Goddess had not intervened, Terra would have fallen into the trap.
He lowered the blaster slightly and struck the surveillance operator sharply behind the ear with the heavy butt of the weapon. The human male slumped forward over the controls without another sound.
Taurex checked his pulse—alive, though unconscious—and decided that was sufficient.
The male had aided Orlov and deserved punishment, but there was no need to kill him when he no longer represented an immediate threat.
Besides, Taurex wanted someone alive who could explain to the human authorities exactly what Orlov had done once Terra’s younglings were safe.
He stepped back into the hallway and moved toward the room at the end, careful to keep his movements silent despite his enormous size. The door was half-open, just as the operator had said, and warm light spilled into the corridor.
Taurex could hear movement inside—the faint clink of glass against glass, the rustle of cloth and the slow, irritated exhalation of a human male who apparently believed he was still completely in control of the situation.
Taurex paused outside the door and listened.
A communication device chimed inside.
“Still nothing?” a man muttered. There was another pause, then he spoke again. “Come on, Bunny. Don’t make me wait.”
Taurex’s fingers tightened around the blaster.
Bunny—that was what Terra said Orlov called her. So the man in the room had to be him.
He pushed the door open, leading with his blaster.
Viktor Orlov sat behind a broad black desk positioned in front of floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over downtown Tampa.
He was exactly as Terra had described him—late middle age, expensive dark suit, slicked-back black hair broken by the distinctive white streak running along one side and pale gray eyes that seemed cold even before he lifted them toward Taurex.
A glass of clear liquid sat beside one hand and Terra’s photograph lay on the desk in front of him, enlarged from one of the surveillance images.
For the briefest moment, surprise crossed Orlov’s face. Then it vanished.
“Well,” he said slowly. “The bull.”
Taurex entered the room and closed the door behind him.
Orlov’s eyes moved toward the blaster in his hand.
“You’re a long way from your penthouse, Bull,” he said tauntingly.
“Not very far at all, as it happens,” Taurex rumbled. “You chose your hiding place poorly.”
Orlov leaned back in his chair. The human should have been frightened, but arrogance apparently outweighed survival instinct.
“I wondered whether you’d figure it out eventually.”
Taurex’s gaze sharpened.
“You knew where I lived.”
“Of course I knew.” Orlov gestured vaguely toward the wall, apparently referring to the surveillance room beyond it. “I know almost everything that happens in this building.”
“You have been watching my domicile.”
“Watching her,” Orlov corrected. “You just happened to be there.”
That distinction made Taurex’s Rage burn hotter. He felt a crimson curtain of pure fury dropping over his vision, turning everything a bloody red.
Orlov, oblivious to the danger he was in, reached for his glass and took a leisurely swallow as though there was not a nearly eight-foot-tall armed Monstrum standing in front of him.
“You made things inconvenient, I’ll give you that. I thought she’d keep dancing long enough for me to bring her around eventually, but then you played the rich alien benefactor and gave her a cushy little office job.” His thin mouth curved. “Very noble, Bull.”
Taurex said nothing. He was struggling to keep himself from throwing down the blaster and ripping this fucker apart with his bare hands. Just the thought that he’d been watching Terra and her family and plotting how to get to them made him so angry he could barely restrain himself.
“I watched you together, you know,” Orlov continued. “Every day she came up to your place. The lunches. The hand-holding. The way you stared at her ass every time she turned around.” He gave Taurex a knowing look. “You wanted her just as badly as I do.”
“Yes,” Taurex said simply, still holding himself back.
Orlov smiled as though Taurex had just confirmed some shared understanding between them.
“The difference is that you were too weak to take what you wanted.” He clenched his fist as though snatching and squeezing something vulnerable and fragile. “She was right there with you—you could have taken her at any time, Bull. Why didn’t you?”
Taurex’s expression did not change but the Rage inside him grew.
“Terra is not something to be taken,” he growled.
Orlov laughed mockingly.
“Oh, spare me the noble alien bullshit. You think because you bought her a few nice clothes and let her play accountant she suddenly became some respectable lady?” His pale eyes hardened.
“She’s a stripper. A whore. She takes off her clothes for money and rubs herself all over men.
Women like that know exactly what they’re offering. ”
Somewhere inside Taurex, a switch flipped. He went suddenly from red hot Rage to cold, remorseless calculation. Orlov was going to die here today. The only question was when.
“She offered a dance,” he said, speaking of Terra. His voice had dropped until it was deeper than a growl. “Nothing more. Whatever you believed you were entitled to beyond that existed only in your own diseased mind.”
Orlov sneered at him.
“You sound just like her. Always drawing lines. Always setting rules. No touching here, no touching there, don’t call me this, don’t do that.” His fingers tightened around the glass. “She’s been teasing me for months.”
“She told you no.”
Orlov shrugged.
“Women say no all the time. That doesn’t mean you should believe them. We all know that ‘no’ really means ‘yes.’ They only put you off for a while to tease you. But all of them are for sale.”
Taurex’s golden eyes narrowed.
“Terra is not for sale,” he said.
Something in his tone finally made Orlov’s smile falter, but only for a second.
“You don’t know her like I do,” the human male said. “She likes the attention. She likes knowing men want her. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been up on that stage every night, shaking her ass.”
“She climbed onto that stage because she needed currency to provide for her mother and her younglings,” Taurex growled.
“She did something difficult and unpleasant and distasteful to her because the male who had promised to care for their family refused to meet his obligations. There is no shame in that.”
Orlov gave him a disbelieving look.
“Jesus, you really fell for her, didn’t you, big guy? Well, sorry to burst your bubble but whores like that are a dime a dozen. They don’t fall in love—they just pretend, to get more money out of you.”
Taurex did not answer. The cold inside him was spreading.
Orlov leaned forward.
“But you actually loved her, didn’t you? That’s almost funny.” His eyes narrowed. “Because she isn’t yours.”
The words struck the old wound, but Taurex didn’t flinch.
“No,” he said. “She is not mine.”
Orlov looked surprised.
“What?”
“You are correct about one thing. Terra is not mine,” Taurex repeated.
For the first time since Taurex entered the room, genuine confusion appeared on the human’s face.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” he demanded.
Taurex stepped closer to the desk.
“She belongs to herself. She chooses who touches her,” Taurex continued. “She chooses who she loves. She chooses where she goes, what work she does and what happens to her body. Neither you nor I have the right to make those decisions for her.”
For a moment, the only sound in the room was the faint hum of the building’s ventilation system.
Then Orlov’s face twisted with sudden comprehension.
“Oh.” A slow, ugly smile spread across his mouth. “I get it—she rejected you.”
Taurex felt the pain of that truth but accepted it.
“Yes,” he said simply. “She did.”
Orlov laughed—a sharp, mocking sound.
“After everything you did for her—all the money you spent on her—the stupid bitch turned you down too!”
Taurex’s grip on the blaster tightened, but his voice remained controlled.
“Be careful what you say next.”
Orlov ignored the warning.
“So that’s why you disappeared. I wondered where you went. I had my people watching your place, but you vanished for weeks. Off licking your wounds, were you?” He shook his head, still amused. “All that money, all those muscles and horns, and the whore still wouldn’t have you.”
“I have told you not to call Terra that.”
“I’ll call her what the fuck I want,” Orlov snarled. His gaze sharpened. “So she turned you down and yet here you are.” He leaned back again. “Why?”
Taurex looked toward the hallway where the faint sound of Lisa crying could still be heard.
Orlov followed his gaze, and his smile returned.
“Ah.” He nodded knowingly. “The brats.”
Taurex’s eyes snapped back to him.
“Do not call them that.”
“Why not? They’re not yours.” Orlov laughed again. “You don’t even claim the woman, but you’re willing to come charging in here over her kids?”
“She may never choose to be my mate,” Taurex said quietly. “She may never speak to me again. It changes nothing.”
Orlov frowned in apparent confusion.
“So you came to get them knowing she doesn’t want you? I don’t get it.”
Taurex stepped closer and glared down at him.
“I will protect Terra and her family with my life because I love her. My love does not depend upon what she gives me in return.”
The human male stared at him as though Taurex had begun speaking an incomprehensible language. Then he scoffed.
“That’s pathetic.”
“No,” Taurex said. “What is pathetic is believing that desire gives you ownership of another living being.”
Orlov’s expression hardened.
“You think you’re better than me? Charging in here like a white knight?”
“I think almost any male is better than you,” Taurex said.
The insult finally cracked Orlov’s composure.
“Fuck you, Bull. She’s not yours and she never will be!”
His hand moved suddenly toward the side of his desk but not quickly enough.
Taurex raised the blaster, causing him to freeze in place.
“Do not.”
Orlov stopped. His pale eyes flicked toward the place he stored his weapon and his fingers twitched.
Taurex could hear the increase in his heartbeat and knew the human male was gearing himself up to do something. It was time to end this before things got messy.
“You kidnapped two younglings to force their mother to submit to you,” he said to Orlov. “You frightened them. Bound their hands. Used them as bait because you knew Terra would walk willingly into danger if it meant protecting them.”
Orlov’s mouth twisted angrily.
“It would’ve worked.”
“Yes,” Taurex said. “It probably would have.”
A flicker of satisfaction crossed the human’s face.
“That’s because she knows she belongs to me.”
Taurex’s nostrils flared.
“No. She would have come because she loves her children. You were counting on her courage and devotion, not her desire for you.”
Orlov’s face darkened.
“Fuck you! She’s mine.”
“No,” Taurex said, and this time his voice filled the room like thunder. “She belongs to herself.”
Orlov shoved back from the desk, anger making him reckless.
“She’s nothing but a used-up stripper with two goddamned brats and a fat ass, and she ought to be grateful anybody still wants her!”
Taurex looked at him for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was almost gentle.
“Now you have sealed your fate.”
Orlov froze.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Taurex came around the desk and Orlov backed away.
Taurex watched the human’s arrogance finally begin to crack as he realized there was nowhere left to go. The windows stretched behind him, the desk blocked one side and Taurex blocked the other.
“Though in truth,” Taurex continued, “your fate was sealed the moment you laid hands on her younglings.”
The blaster rose and Orlov’s eyes widened. For the first time, fear completely erased the smug confidence from his face.
“Wait!” he said quickly.
Taurex put the muzzle against the center of his forehead.
“No, wait!” Orlov exclaimed, holding up both hands in a pleading gesture. “We can work something out—I know we can!”
“There is nothing to work out,” Taurex told him.
“Money.” Orlov’s words came faster now. “You want money? I can give you money. Millions. Ten million. Twenty. Whatever you want.”
“I am already rich. If you really have been watching me, you know that,” Taurex told him.
“Then tell me what you want!” The human’s voice cracked. “Anything. I have contacts. Property. Businesses. Women. Whatever the hell you want, I can get it.”
For one painful instant, Terra’s face flashed through Taurex’s mind. She was all he wanted and yet she was beyond him. She was, as he had told Orlov, her own person and she didn’t want him any more than she wanted Orlov.
He thought of her longingly. Terra laughing in his office…Terra holding his hand in the Market…Terra curled up in his arms.
Terra backing away from him in terror.
The thought broke the spell, and he looked into Viktor Orlov’s frightened gray eyes.
“No one can give me what I truly want.”
Orlov opened his mouth, but Taurex had no intention of listening to any more of the human male’s stupid, cruel, boastful words or his insults about Terra.
He squeezed the trigger.
Zzzzp.
The sound was quiet, but the effect was profound. A steaming hole appeared between Viktor Orlov’s eyebrows, and he dropped to the floor with a surprised look on his face.
Taurex stood over him for a moment, watching until he was certain the human male would never threaten Terra or her family again. There was no satisfaction in the death—no pleasure in watching the life leave the human’s eyes and no desire to linger over the body.
Orlov had ceased to matter the instant he could no longer harm anyone. The ones who mattered now were Cody and Lisa.
Taurex turned and left the room to get them.