Stolen and Seduced - Christine Pope Page 0,153

he settled his large hand over her mouth cutting off the sound.

Her eyes widened in surprise. She hadn’t expected his touch to be so gentle, not the way he was built and not if he’d kidnapped her. It didn’t feel like weakness but like he was carefully controlling himself, so he wouldn’t hurt her. She wasn’t sure what to think of that. He wasn’t pressing down enough to truly stop her from making noise, so she opened her mouth to scream again but he shook his head in warning.

“No. Stop. Screaming. Now,” he said, enunciating every word. His voice was barely above a growl, and it sent a shiver through her.

She shut up quickly, not just because he’d ordered it, but because she was getting a close look now at his alien eyes. The way he pinned her down with them made her feel like prey. She understood now why rabbits froze when they were chased. She’d never seen anything like them, and they had to be alien because nothing else made sense. The sight of them had triggered the return of fragmented memories.

She’d hoped recalling what had happened would help with the confusion, but it didn’t. If anything, it made it worse because what she was remembering was unsettling, and she had to push the thoughts away for the moment to avoid the panic that was threatening to overwhelm her.

“Where am I?” she asked, but with his hand covering her mouth it just came out garbled.

He hesitated, narrowing his eyes in suspicion, which oddly helped them look less inhuman. “Don’t start screaming again,” he warned.

She noticed that there was something strangely pleasant about his voice as she nodded. He slowly took his hand away, ready to slap it back in place if he had to, but she was done screaming for now. It hadn’t helped anyway.

“I said, where am I?” She tried to sound calm; cooperative, though her mind was working overtime to find a way out of this.

“We’re on my ship.” It was a simple and entirely unhelpful answer.

“A … boat?” she asked. It didn’t feel like they were on the water. There was no sensation of moving that she could detect. It did explain the metal walls and bolted furniture, but the confused look on his face told her she’d gotten it wrong.

It took him a second to answer and when he did the words sounded uncertain, as if he wasn’t quite sure about them. “No. It’s an interplanetary ship. A spaceship; my spaceship. We’re just outside your solar system right now.”

And just like that the world dropped out from under her feet, literally. Her mouth opened and closed several times, but she had no words for what she was thinking or feeling. The memories in her head, they were the last things she remembered from Earth—and she was no longer on Earth. It took her several long minutes to work her way through that and during that time she kept forgetting to breathe, and only the dizziness would remind her.

More minutes passed before she could finally draw in a shuddering breath of air and pull herself together, but inside she was adding the bits of memory she had from before with this new information and the result was … not good. Very not good.

When she hadn’t screamed, he’d relaxed, settling back to give her a little space. She used that now to lunge for the edge of the bed with her eyes on the door, but the second her feet hit the deck, he was snatching her up into his arms again. He spun her around and dropped her back on the bed in one smooth motion.

She landed partly on her injured arm, and the yelp of pain caught his attention immediately. The annoyed look on his face changed to something she couldn’t read. It was his eyes that made it hard. She searched for emotion in them and found nothing but herself reflected in the glossy black, but there was tenderness in his touch as he reached out and carefully probed her arm.

She hissed in a breath, and he frowned. “You’re hurt.” He actually sounded concerned which confused her.

“It must have happened when you kidnapped me,” she said. She made no attempt to hide the accusation in her tone, but to her surprise, he just tilted his head.

“Kid. Nap?” He said it like it was two separate words and then after a pause he shook his head. “No, I’m not the one who took you.”