The Healer (The Order of Intergalactic Peace #1) - Kelly Lucille Page 0,36

you to send a message now and again. You know where.”

She would have nodded but she was still being ‘handled’. “I will father.”

“You heal that hunter I sent back to you?”

She rolled her eyes at the boast behind those words. “I did.”

“He was good. Be a shame to have hurt him permanent.”

“He was good,” Serenity agreed. “Though he cheated when he hunted me.”

“How’s that?”

Serenity gave him a disgruntled look. “He brought a shield along to help.”

Her father laughed. Right before he ended the call. Leaving her alone with Mal Ryn pressed to her back with a hand still wrapped around her throat.

She let the silence reign for as long as she could stand it, and then reached up to pull at his wrist. “Let me go.”

She hated how weak her whisper sounded to her own ears and cleared her captured throat to try again. “Lord Ryn,” she started only to have him quietly interrupt her.

“You called me Mal before,” he reminded her almost gently, and she felt him tip his head down and run his nose up the side of her head, scenting her hair. Then his hand tightened around her neck and he growled. “He was smelling your hair.”

Serenity shifted uneasily at his swift mood changes and her reaction to them. But his words simply confused her. “Who?”

“Your medical assistant was smelling your hair when I brought Jas in.” He nipped at her ear and her damn nipples beaded, as if preparing for their own special treatment.

“He’s a bit of a flirt,” she said doing her best to sound normal, and ignore everything that he was doing to her. “It’s harmless.”

“And Jas?” he asked, pulling her back by her neck so that she was stretched with her head on his chest. “Is he harmless?”

She snorted at the idea of any hunter being harmless, let alone that one. “No, but he would never go where he wasn’t invited.” She shook herself a little and tried to straighten away from the lips that were now pressed against the side of her temple.

His hand tightened, keeping her where he wanted her. It was becoming their theme, she thought with an inner grouse.

“You could take lessons,” she muttered, trying unsuccessfully to move away from him.

His free arm wrapped around her waist holding her still. His power flared around her wrapping her up and calling for hers to come out and play. The one around her neck trailed slowly up to her chin and gripped it, turning her head so that her lips were presented to him like a gift.

“Mal,” she warned, thoroughly confused by the man and his hot and cold reactions.

He smiled against her lips.

“There it is,” he muttered before his lips claimed hers, hot and wet and so thoroughly that by the time he pulled back it was a struggle to remember all the reasons she was not doing this.

His eyes searched her face, for what she did not know, but she sucked in a breath and tried to form the words needed to stop what was happening. And the will to say them.

Mal Ryn seemed to see her conflict and what he saw made him growl low in his throat and come back for what she knew was going to be an angry press of lips.

A chime sounded, making his head swivel and his eyes lock with an eerie angry light on the closed entrance. When the chime came a second time he finally released her and stomped to the door. Slamming his palm against the com plate and forcing it open.

Serenity had to grab a hold of the wall as relief flowed through her. Mostly it was relief, she assured herself.

The portal swooshed open and Jas bowed his head respectfully. He didn’t look further into the room than his angry High Commander. “My apologies my lord but we have had reports of explosions on Cronos, and communications are down.”

Mal Ryn swore viciously and Jas was forced to move fast out of his way or be plowed down. The hunter moved fast.

“The fleet?” Mal barked out.

“Are being recalled. And preparations are underway for the jump to light speed. We await only your orders.”

Serenity stayed very still as they forgot she existed and left. She tried to remember everything she had ever heard about the Orders largest military outpost. A fortified space station that orbited a gas giant right at the hub of the three main trade routes. It was a military instillation, but military families resided there, with thousands of