Chapter 5
FIVE
Taron
He watched her walk from the small clearing, where the pod had flattened everything in its path on impact.
She stepped out of view and he ripped his gaze from the spot where she had been.
The flight suit hugged her ass just right.
When she walked, the material went taut and hugged those lovely curves.
Stars, she made him hard. Even before he’d seen her naked from the waist up, he’d been having a hard time keeping his cock in line.
He’d never gotten an erection from one of the human females he’d transported before.
Then again, she wasn’t a Virilian’s match. She was free. Available.
He shook himself from the thought and went to the crash pod. The bottom third of it was sunk in the dirt, but it had ended up lying flat and mostly undamaged. He was impressed. If he could give the makers of it a good review, he would.
Climbing inside, he pulled out a panel from under the padding, where he’d long ago stowed a few emergency items. He thought of them as a survival kit.
One was a small transmission sensor. He picked up the handheld device and turned it on.
It was a simple instrument that detected communication transmissions and where they were coming from.
It was the simplest way to locate a settlement or base.
To his relief, the device detected a signal coming from not too far away.
He mentally calculated the distance and winced.
It would be a long walk. A long, hard walk.
He squinted in the direction of the signal.
Once word got out that his ship was destroyed, he would be declared dead.
Taron Bando, and all the scandal and mistakes associated with that name, would be gone.
He could start over. He couldn’t ever go home, but he could give himself a new name, new identity, new life.
If he left Amelia here, he could make good time. It would be a cold move, but taking Amelia with him would slow him down.
His stomach churned at leaving her here.
There was no guarantee she would survive the trek through this vegetation, anyway.
She seemed to attract trouble. He cursed and rubbed his face.
It was a shameful justification, to abandon someone because they were inconvenient.
She really was a hindrance. A very attractive, distracting, and yes, aggravating hindrance that his cock wanted to get to know better.
His brain was not so sure. Either way, he would be a bastard if he deserted her in this forest. Maybe he was a bastard.
Stars, he’d made mistakes in his youth, but the possibility of a fresh start dangled out there like a ripe, juicy piece of sicca fruit.
But could he live with himself?
Taron got to work, building a border around the crash pod.
The nearest star’s light was fading. Who knew what would come out to hunt once darkness fell?
Whatever happened in the morning, neither of them were going anywhere overnight.
He heard metal scraping over wood somewhere nearby.
So far, she’d managed to keep herself alive without his help. Maybe there was hope for her.
He gathered up some wood. Lower limbs that had been blocked from the star’s light were dead and dry and cracked off easily. A scowl deepened on his brow as he worked. He yanked a dry, yellow branch from a tree and threw it on the pile with a snarl.
If he were a survivor, like his brother, he wouldn’t care what happened to Amelia.
Taron barely remembered it, but Jarran had been kidnapped as a child.
It took his father, with the help of the Tagja City king at the time to negotiate for the return of Taron’s brother.
Jarran hadn’t been the same. The sweet, fun-loving brother Taron recalled had become colder, harder, and mean.
Jarran had refused to talk about what he endured during the cycles of his abduction, and left to join the Sifters as soon as he reached maturity.
Taron idolized his brother so much, he would have followed Jarran anywhere…and he did. Taron foolishly let Jarran talk him into joining the Sifters, thinking it would be an adventure, some mischief. He never imagined it would become the mistake of a lifetime.
If Jarran were here instead of himself, Taron’s brother would abandon Amelia in a heartbeat. But Jarran was dead and Taron had his own mind about things. He did care.
Sort of. Amelia was a pain in the ass.
Taron started a fire, thanks to another piece of his crash pod survival kit.
And thanks to Amelia’s mishap, they had food.
He had found a long strip of thin metal and was skewering chunks of silvery-white meat on it when he heard a clanking sound, followed by a curse, and shortly after, a very sweaty Amelia staggered into the clearing.
She’d tucked twisted metal sheets under her arms and she dragged one more with her boot.
She dropped them with a “phew!” and a triumphant look.
He took one look at her and vowed never to look at her again.
Heat and exertion had made her sweat enough for her flight suit to plaster itself to her very lovely body.
Full breasts sat high and firm with defined nipples.
He already knew what they looked like, but seeing her body like this—covered, but yet revealed—was even more enticing.
He took a deep breath and kept his gaze on the meat.
“Where do you want them?” she asked.
He eyed the charred scraps that had once been his ship and sighed. “Anywhere. I’ll set them up when I’m done here.”
She hunkered down on the ground near the capsule. “I’m dying in this suit.”
“Sorry you didn’t keep the dress?”
“No way.” She made some noises with her mouth. “Do we have any water?”
“I’m afraid not. The meat is all there is for now.”
“Maybe tomorrow we’ll find a stream.”
His gut clenched. “Maybe.” Or maybe I’ll be gone.
She yawned. “Can I help?”
He looked at her then. Her face was streaked with dirt and sweat. She was clearly exhausted, but there she was, offering to help. “No,” he said quietly. “Just relax. You’ve done enough.”
Taron set the meat over the fire, bracing the skewer with pieces of metal Amelia brought, which he drove into the ground and braced upright.
It was a crude spit, but the meat would cook and they would eat.
The star had dipped below the horizon, throwing the jungle into shadows.
“I think this is safe to eat, by the way.” It was a random thing to say, but he knew she would bring it up at some point.
“Really? Why?”
“In my experience, the blood and flesh of toxic creatures irritates the skin.” He held up his hands. “No problems.”
She raised one brow. “Do you have a lot of experience with the blood of toxic creatures?”
“Some,” he murmured. “I had a job for a while as…sort of an exterminator.” That was the best word the chip in his head could come up with for what he did.
“You killed these things?”
“Not these, exactly,” he said. “But the team I was on fought against many creatures.” He shrugged. “You learn to gauge how something attacks and whether they have poisons or toxins.”
“That sounds like a hard job.” Lit by firelight and the purple-green sky of twilight, her eyes were liquid and luminous.
He swallowed, trying to ignore the tightening in his pants. “It was.”
“Were you good at it?” she asked.
“I survived.” That was all he could say about his previous life.
“Did you enjoy it?”
Why did she have to ask so many questions? Who cared if he liked it? He got paid, he didn’t die or lose any body parts. He hadn’t carried on a conversation this long in…ever. “No. Do you like your job?”
“I did.” She nodded. “I couldn’t go into the military, so being a privately hired guard was the next best thing.”
“Why couldn’t you enter the military?”
She tapped her right ear. “I can’t hear in this ear. You can’t serve in the military with a hearing impairment.”
“You seem to hear just fine.” He felt like a fool saying it and wished he could snatch it back.
She just chuckled. “I can hear, but not so well in crowded spaces with lots of noise. Also, I can’t tell where a sound is coming from if I can’t see it.”
Comprehension clicked. “That’s why you didn’t know where this creature was attacking you from.”
She nodded. “Not ideal when you want to be a soldier.”
“Why did you want to be a soldier?” he asked as the smell of cooking meat filled the air and the sound of sizzling fat made his mouth water.
She shrugged. “My brothers are both military men. My dad always wanted to be a Marine, but he had bad asthma. My one brother is in the Navy. The other went to West Point and is an Army officer. He is the golden son. We found out in grade school that I couldn’t hear out of one ear, and that ended my father’s hopes of having all three of his children serve their country. ”
“You have to serve your country to have worth?”
She shrugged. “No, but being a hero is a big deal for him. It’s ironic, because the way he raised us was the opposite of how heroes treat people. You know, he even named me after Amelia Earhart, the first woman aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.”
“Is that a big deal?” He knew nothing of this female, or of Earth oceans.
“Yes.” She poked the fire with a stick. “And he lets me know at every holiday dinner how disappointing I am.” She looked up with an unexpected grin. “So, I try to miss as many holiday dinners as possible.”
Taron’s father would have been thrilled if just one of his sons had not become a criminal. “You seem very resilient.” He made a face. “Why do most of your curse words have to do with defecation?”
She laughed. It was a full, rich sound that made his breath quicken. Stars, did everything about this female have to turn him on? He added more wood to the fire, even though the night hadn’t cooled the air enough to make it comfortable, just to give him something to do.