Confused, I stared at him. “You seem fine to me. Do you have a disease or something? What were you contaminated with? Radiation?”
“Hive technology.” He lifted his hand and pointed to the left side of his face, the silver of his eye. “I have more, covering my back and leg.”
Ander tensed as Nial spoke, watching me intently, as if my reaction mattered a great deal. I glanced to him for a brief moment. I hadn’t seen Ander like this before without his face buried in my pussy. That was the only other time I’d seen him so serious, so intent. For a woman, that kind of focus, there, was a good thing. My pussy clenched at the thought of his skills.
I noticed the scar on the right side of his face. It was thick, running from the top of his forehead, down the outside of his eye socket, and farther down his cheek to his neck. I traced the path with my gaze, imagining a blade of some kind sl
icing through his flesh and decided I would have to kiss the entire length later, trace the scar with my tongue.
Nial’s voice drew my attention from Ander and I turned to face him as he explained. “The Hive is our enemy, as it is Earth’s. If a warrior, from any planet, is captured, they are modified into a Hive fighter. I was partially modified before being rescued. Nonetheless, to the Prillon Prime, my father, I am enough Hive to be contaminated.”
His fingers squeezed my flesh, then relaxed.
“I am considered ruined on my world, an outcast, not worthy of a bride.” He looked away from me, staring past me, and I frowned at his shame as he continued, “This is the reason my father refused your transport, Jessica. I carry Hive technology that can never be removed.”
“So?” I lifted my hand to his cheek, to touch the silvery hued skin with my fingers. The softness of the oddly colored flesh was a shock, as was its warmth. But it was part of him, simple as that. “What does that have to do with anything?”
His stillness was unnatural and his gaze returned to my face. Beside us, the stranger I did not know had stopped moving as well, as if I’d shocked them all into silence. Confused, I turned to Ander and found his gaze smoldering, raw lust burning through his eyes to devour me. I shivered, unable to stop the flood of heat that made my core ache with emptiness as I met his gaze. I vividly remembered that same look as he’d sucked on my clit and made me scream. I shook my head, trying to clear the mixture of need and confusion I was feeling.
“You’re all crazy. I don’t think I want to go to Prillon, not if this is how you treat your vets.” I thought of all my friends in the service who’d lost limbs, been burned by explosives, shot, hurt. They were good men and women, soldiers who had served with honor and deserved to be treated with care and respect when they returned home. I couldn’t imagine sending a wounded veteran to what amounted to a prison colony, an outcast denied a mate and a family simply because a wound had altered their appearance. “What is wrong with you people? You should be ashamed if that’s the way you treat your vets.”
“What is a vet?” The strange man asked the question and I tore my gaze from Ander’s to answer him.
“Who are you?” I wanted to know, since I was sitting half naked in the same room with him, and he seemed to think he had a right to be here.
“I am Doctor Halsen.”
I inspected him then, noticed the same golden coloring and sharp angles of his face as Nial and Ander. His eyes were the color of bourbon on ice and his uniform was a strange green armor that looked more like forest camouflage than medical scrubs. He was also huge, close to seven feet tall. But whatever. As Dorothy would say, I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
“Vets is short for veterans. Soldiers who served and were then discharged.”
He shook his head, confusion evident on his face. I sighed. I’d try again, in alien speak.
“Warriors who fought on the front lines. Some of them are wounded and sent home with honor. We call them veterans, and I’m one of them.” I tugged on the blanket covering me as the doctor looked at me with confusion in his eyes.
“How is this possible? Females do not fight in war,” he replied.
“Where I’m from, women fight. They work. They serve in the military and law enforcement. They don’t sit on the sidelines and wait for a man to save them.” I stared him down, pissed off by the way they treated their soldiers in general, and their misogynistic attitude in particular. All the macho testosterone in the room was making me see red. None of these aliens had earned my loyalty or my trust… well, none but Nial when he’d saved me from that Hive scout. Okay, perhaps Ander, too, when he got rid of the same scout.
The doctor took a step closer and I leaned back into Nial’s arms, exceedingly aware of the fact that I was naked beneath the blanket.
“Fascinating. And you, you fought in a battle?” the doctor asked, but it was Ander who stepped forward, eager to hear my answer.
I nodded once. “Yes. Many times.”
Nial’s arms tightened around me, but I ignored him as I held the doctor’s gaze, his disbelief evident in his raised brows and thin lips, even before he spoke. “I don’t believe you.”
I shoved at Nial and slid from his lap. If this alien jerk really was a doctor, nothing I was about to show him should shock.
I stood proudly, the red blanket around my shoulders like a royal robe. I reached up and pulled my long hair forward over my shoulder so it wouldn’t get in the way of what I was about to do. “I didn’t get these scars baking cookies.”
Without breaking eye contact, I dropped the blanket to the floor at my feet and spun around so he would see the ugly, ragged edged shrapnel scars that ran from my shoulder to my waist, across my buttock and onto my thigh. Ander stepped closer, his shoulders tense, but Nial held up his hand to prevent Ander’s interference. Nial’s gaze locked with mine as I glared at him with open defiance, daring him to stop me taking the pompous doctor down a notch.
I knew Nial could see the front of me, my breasts and pussy, but I didn’t care. I should have questioned why I transported and arrived naked while Ander and Nial were clothed in identical shirts and pants. I’d ask later, but for now, I had something to prove.
Exposing my body was not to tease and lure the doctor. I heard him move and I spoke to the man without breaking eye contact with Nial. “Do not touch me.”
Silence, then his voice, which held a previously absent note of awe and respect. “And so, it is true. You were wounded and sent home? You are one of the outcasts? The ones you call vet?”