Chapter 4
FOUR
Amelia
The only way Amelia could imagine a world looking like this was if it had been created with CGI.
But here she was, standing in a forest that didn’t look real.
Only it was. She could touch the trees and other plants.
Their brilliant leaves were satiny as she brushed against them.
The sky was blue, but a deeper, more saturated shade that swirled with green and purple.
Sounds of creatures rustled in the foliage, hidden from view, but definitely making their presence known with unusual-sounding calls.
The air was thick and humid. She was instantly boiling hot in her flight suit and lock suit.
Amelia watched in disbelief as Taron strode away into the brush and disappeared. There was a lightness in his step, as if everything was just dandy.
He thought he believed her?
Anger crashed into the fear she was still reeling from and made tears spring to her eyes. They just crashed on a planet God-knows-where with no obvious way to get off it, and now he believed her?
Now, when it was too late to bring her home and they were stranded together. Her hands curled into fists and she strode through the brush after him.
It was like traipsing through a rain forest. She worked her way through the dense growth, growing more furious with each step. She came to a dead stop at the sight of Taron. Her breathing halted, too, as the view he inadvertently offered was something out of a hot, steamy dream.
He stood in a small clearing, on the edge of what looked like a deep gulley.
He’d abandoned his lock suit on the ground.
His shirt was off, too. He’d rolled it and slung it around his neck, revealing a wide, muscled back that tapered to a narrow waist. Skin markings, like all Virilians seemed to have, made patterns on his arms and shoulders.
His pants were down, but not off. It looked like the only thing keeping them on was his tail, which extended through the opening in the back. She could see the delicious globes of his tight butt. If there was such a thing as a perfect male ass, Taron Bando possessed it.
It just wasn’t right. He was too much of an asshole to be in ownership of such a gorgeous body.
His dark head was tilted back and his hands were clearly holding his cock.
She stood there, transfixed at the sight of all that tawny male skin, when she heard the unmistakable splashing sound of liquid hitting rock. A drawn out “aaaah” came from him.
He was peeing. She hesitated to interrupt him. Her bladder reminded her she needed to do the same, but hers had to wait.
“Can you give me one moment’s peace?” he asked without turning around.
“I am.” She folded her arms.
“Is privacy too much to ask?” He glanced around then, one dark brow raised. “Or are you enjoying the view?”
“Are you enjoying the view?” she snapped, altogether too miserably hot to not be irritable.
“Because if you’d believed me when I told you who I was, we wouldn’t be stuck on planet No Idea.
We’d be on Earth and people could be searching for Kimberly Humphries, the woman who was chosen as a Virilian match. ”
Taron pulled up his pants and fastened them. He turned slowly, leisurely, and walked to her as though he were on a stroll.
Amelia held her ground as he approached, eyes narrowed. The shirt stayed looped around his neck, where he held each end in a hand. He stopped when he loomed above her, close. This close, she could see the clear emerald flecks in his eyes.
“Amelia, the number one regret of my life right now is not bringing you back to Earth when you asked me to.” His voice was soft, silky.
His gaze moved over her face like a caress, in direct opposition to the content of his words.
“You know, I could have left you on the transport to die.” He leaned down, bringing his face very close to hers.
She was blinking way too much. His presence was…
overwhelming. “I don’t have to look after you now,” he went on.
“I could leave you here to fend for yourself.”
She hadn’t thought of that. “Y-you would do that?”
A smile curved his sensual lips. “If you don’t stop fucking yelling at me, I might,” he said in that velvety voice. “Try being nice to me for a change, and I’ll think about helping you.”
“Nice?” She poked a finger in his chest. “You’ve been unpleasant the entire time I’ve known you.”
“Unpleasant?” He looked shocked. “I saved your life. That crash pod was meant for one occupant—me.”
“How very magnanimous of you.” She smiled thinly, even as her nipples hardened and her senses tuned acutely to him. Did he have to smell so good? “You made a true sacrifice by not leaving a kidnapped woman to her fiery death. You are a veritable paragon, sir.”
His eyes narrowed to glittering evergreen slits and they stood there, locked in a stare that crackled and vibrated with electricity. Tempers, frustration, and something that felt suspiciously like lust charged the air between them. She wasn’t imagining that last part.
His fiery gaze dipped to her mouth, before his teeth bared, and he stepped back.
“I want to strangle you as much as I want to—” He cut off and ran both hands over his face.
She could fill in the missing word. It was the same one she would use.
“Ah, I don’t need this,” he moaned, turning away from her.
“I’m stuck on a planet that has too much life on it to not be dangerous.
My ship is destroyed and everyone I have ever known will soon think I’m dead…
” He fell silent with a conflicted, startled look flickering over his features.
“Wow. Think about yourself much?”
“Better than thinking about you,” he retorted.
“Don’t bother.” She straightened her spine, aware that her pride was rearing up and preparing to wreak some havoc, but unable to stop it. “I can take care of myself.” Not here, you can’t! a voice in her head screamed, even as she turned and stalked away from him.
What was she doing? Her heart pounded. He really could just leave her there—no food, water, shelter, or protection.
This was the dumbest thing she could do.
She should butter him up, offer anything for safety, but she’d basically told him to go fuck himself and walked away.
In the back of her head, her father’s words echoed, drowning out everything else: Wards don’t take shit.
She still remembered the day a bigger girl on the playground had pushed her, leaving her with a scraped knee and torn pants.
He’d been furious when she’d told him, teary and dejected.
“Wards don’t take shit,” he’d hollered at her eight-year-old self.
“Tomorrow, you go in there and push her twice as hard. She’ll never do it again. ”
She’d been aghast by the order. “But I’ll get in trouble. They’ll send me to the principal’s office.”
“Good,” he’d snapped at her. “I’ll be waiting for the school’s call. That’s how I’ll know you did it. No kid of mine gets pushed around, you understand? I don’t care if you’re a girl.”
Her two older brothers had stood by, watching with twin looks of disgust. Amelia remembered her mother standing silently off to the side, hands folded in front of her.
She cast Amelia a pitying look but never interfered when her husband spoke.
A petite, soft-spoken woman with perpetually slumped shoulders, Sandy Ward had always been the diminutive, obedient wife, right up to her very quiet death of cancer five years ago.
Amelia knew she could never be meek like her mother, but she didn’t relate to the bombastic tirades of her father, either.
Nevertheless, here she was, acting like a hot-tempered fool.
Her feet kept putting one in front of the other and carrying her farther into this weird jungle.
Her bladder was singing to her, so as soon as she found a clear enough spot, she pulled off her lock suit, then unfastened the one-piece flight suit.
She pulled it down. Bared to the waist, Amelia sighed as air hit her overheated skin.
It wasn’t much relief, but it was better than two layers of thick clothing.
She leaned back against a thick tree and pulled her suit down to her knees.
She sank down and relieved herself, closing her eyes.
Geez, she hadn’t realized how badly she had to go.
A scraping, rustling sounded from somewhere. She could hear it, but her deafness in one ear made it impossible to tell where the sound was coming from. She looked frantically around, but saw nothing in the thick vegetation.
The sound stopped. Amelia shivered as goose bumps broke out on her arms. It wasn’t her imagination.
Something was moving around. She finished her business and quickly tugged her suit up.
She got it over her hips, but before she could put her arms through the sleeves, the scraping noise returned—louder.
This time, she caught a slight movement in the tree above her.
Her gaze flew upwards in time to see that one branch up there wasn’t part of the tree at all.
It was a creature with a long, snakelike body as big around as her thigh.
Its coloring matched the brightly hued tree.
It was like an anaconda, but instead of slithering on its belly, it moved on many sets of thin, claw-tipped legs.
She let out a scream and scrambled away, but the creature was quick.
It slipped down the tree headfirst, so fast, all Amelia could do was stumble into a thicket.
A row of bulging black eyes crowned its smooth head.
A large jaw hinged open, revealing a full set of serrated teeth.