“Deal,” he finally said, offering Ejan his hand. The two shook hands on it and Grissom once again looked me up and down.
“Well, if Talor ever wants to share, I’d pay good money for a night with her,” Grissom murmured, and I recoiled against Ejan, who took my hand in his.
“Mya isn’t for sale,” Ejan countered and I glared back at his brother, who simply chuckled.
“Have it your way then. Until next time, brother,” Grissom replied.
“It was good to see you, Grissom. Do me a favor and don’t add any more scars to that terrifying collection,” Ejan replied.
“No promises,” Grissom laughed.
Ejan led me by the hand out of the room, leaving his expensive cargo and his brother behind. I was grateful to leave.
We walked back through the pub and I couldn’t stop myself from looking around. A human girl was serving a rather ugly blue alien some beer and another green bumpy male tripped her, causing her to spill the drink all over the blue one.
He raised his hand and backhanded the woman so hard she flew backward, slamming into the wall behind her and she crumpled to the floor. The beer-soaked blue alien moved toward her again, muttering a string of curses before one of his four legs lifted up off the floor and he kicked her.
I didn’t think, I just acted. Ejan hadn’t expected me to leave his side, his grip soft, but I pulled away in a flash and wove through the crowd until I was behind the blue alien. I dropped down to a crouch and swung my leg around, sweeping all four of his legs out from underneath him. I could hear Ejan screaming behind me, but I put him out of my mind as I focused on my target.
The crowd roared around me.
“Look! A human!”
“Fucking bitch kicked Bluey.”
“Whore deserves a knife to the throat.”
“Bet she’s got a pretty cunt under those clothes.”
I shivered away my disgust, pummeling the blue alien square between his four eyes. He did
n’t even try to defend himself. He never saw it coming and slumped to the floor. I rushed over to the woman he’d beaten and pressed my fingers to her throat.
She was alive.
“Fucking idiot,” Ejan roared as he rushed to my side. He grabbed my arm and pulled me away from her. The woman’s eyes blinked once and then twice before she groaned, pushing herself upward from a seated position.
“Are you insane?” he asked, shaking me in the process.
“He was going to kill her,” I countered, narrowing my eyes in his direction.
The crowd roared around us, calling for me to be put in my place, to be punished and others called for my death for raising my hand to a superior race. Someone close to me whipped out a gun from his belt and pressed it against the side of my skull.
Ejan’s eyes opened wide with fear and he suddenly pulled me against him, my back to his chest so that I was facing the inhabitants of the pub, a motley crew of angry aliens that were screaming for someone to teach me a lesson. He curled around me in a protective stance, gripping the hair at the base of my scalp and wrenching my head backward while I yelped in pain.
With his other hand, he gripped my shirt and tore it down the front.
The crowd went wild. He shifted, slowly but surely toward the exit, all the while toying with my bra, revealing my breasts and pinching at my nipples.
“Fucking start screaming, you idiot. Make it look like you’re terrified,” he whispered in my ear.
I obeyed. I was scared, not of him, but at the eyes that were calling for retribution, at the weapons pointing directly at my face and I screamed.
I screamed bloody murder as he forcefully guided me out of the pub. Apparently, the two of us put on enough of a show that the rest of the crowd yelled out with glee at seeing someone manhandle me. At seeing someone teach me a lesson.
Once we made it outside, I quieted down, but he didn’t release the hold he had on my hair. Instead, he pulled me around the corner, until we were on the backside of the pub.
He twirled me around and pushed my back up against the wall, staring into my eyes, seething with fury and if I looked close enough, a sense of fear.