Then, she was gone. Like a puff of smoke. Breccon relaxed his body, staring up at the ceiling that was, until her arrival, the only thing of interest in his entire world.I’m not a queen, she said.
“You are to me.”
* * *
Once outside of the Hangar, Katharine found herself hustled into a hastily constructed medical tent. Lieutenant Miller stood guard outside, shouting at her through the opaque plastic walls as she struggled under the heat of a decontamination shower. The water burned her skin.Good,maybe it will wash away the way he made me feel.She tingled with phantom sensations, the desire to run back into the hangar, rip him out of his chains, throw him down to the dirt and make love to him until they were dirty in every conceivable way. Thoughts ricocheted like bullets around her mind. In a single moment, she relished and hated the intensity of her emotions. She dismissed them.They’re just a product of sex. Sex makes you daffy sometimes. She embraced them.He’s handsome and good and noble and he gave you the gift of his language.She longed to return to his side, to liberate him from his bonds and run away with him into the stars. In the next breath, she wanted to run from this base and forget the soft manner in which his eyes tugged at the defensive layers she wrapped around herself.
She wanted him. And she knew the impossibility of it. It divided her in two.
“Did you make contact?” Lieutenant Miller called over the oppressive roar of the shower.
“Yes.”
A scrub brush covered in soap scraped Katharine’s skin, marring her with angry pink and red lines.
“It talked to you?”
“Yes,” she hesitated, swallowed. “I need more time with him.”
“What’s he want?”
“A scientist.”
Katharine didn’t say anymore. She was required to tell them what they needed to know, sure, but she didn’t need to confess the certainty growing in her heart. The kindling of determination was sparking. An idea planted itself in her mind. If she betrayed Breccon’s desperation for a scientist, she would be back at Walker tomorrow, replaced with some testosterone junkie in a lab coat. If she kept it a secret...Shecould be the scientist. And as much as she wanted to believe her interest in him was purely professional, she knew it wasn’t true.
The decontamination shower stopped its harsh pummeling of her body. No one had thought to leave her a towel, so she was forced to climb into a soft jumpsuit, oversized and clearly meant for a man, with her skin still wet. Her body was its own rainstorm, appropriate given the showers of thought and fear and excitement raging inside her ribcage.
Stepping out of the tent, she found herself face-to-face with Lieutenant Miller. He towered a full head above her. The lip of his helmet cast a shadow over the top half of his face. All the same, she could sense the white-heat of his eyes on the clingy, wet fabric of the jumpsuit sticking to her breasts. Had he ogled her like this before? Or did she only notice it because his gaze’s touch scalded her, where Breccon’s caressed her?
“Is he dangerous?”he asked, his hand at his sidearm, at the ready.
“No.” It hadn’t even occurred to Katharine. Breccon, dangerous? He was... Strong. Generous. Brave, for taking this journey to save his people. And he knew exactly how to move his hips so she would explode in fireworks of orgasm. He was a monster of a being, massive in every way and truly a warrior through and through. But was he dangerous? “Not at all.”