realizing watching science fiction and living it were two different things entirely. “Nevermind.” Stealth sounded good to me. “How do we get over there without getting killed? Or worse… captured?”
His mouth opened in surprise at my questions but continued to look down at me, and his gaze lingered on my still wet lips. “We run.”
“What if someone tries to stop us?” I looked around his shoulder again. Leaned farther out to get a better look at the rest of the landing bay. There were probably half a dozen aliens of various sorts standing between us and his ship. None of them had red arm bands, but that didn’t mean much as far as I was concerned.
“We shoot them.”
Shoot them. God.
All I’d wanted to do was settle in with a nice mate. Nothing more. Shooting people was a main reason I’d left Earth. I was right back where I started from except now, I was in a place I didn’t know, with customs and rules that were over my head. This was worse than home.
No, Boston wasn’t home any longer. I could never go back. I wanted to cry. This was just too much for one fucking day. I was used to dealing with a lot of shit at one time, but I was approaching overload. I licked my lips again. “I don’t have a gun.”
He grinned and tapped his thigh, which I had to admit looked mighty sexy with a holster strapped to it and a weapon that might just save us. “I get the ion pistol. Time for you to use that titan stick, gara.”
“It’s Zara,” I corrected. “Zara with a Z.”
His answer was the way the corner of his mouth tipped up before giving me a quick kiss on the lips. I didn’t have the heart to protest. “Ready?”
I took a deep breath and checked in with myself. Was I ready? No. Not really. My heart was pounding, my palms were sweaty, my nipples were still hard from his kiss, and despite every ounce of good sense, I was putting my life in the hands of a complete stranger that I’d known all of ten or fifteen minutes. Oh, and I might have to fight my way out of here with a cattle prod while he killed alien bad guys.
But if he got killed, I was done for. I had no clue how to fly, and I’d be stuck in this crappy place until I was caught. It would only be a matter of time. “Yes. I’m ready.”
I sooo wasn’t ready.
He nodded, pushed me gently away from him, so he could pull the space gun from the holster. Yeah, still sexy.
Before we moved, I had to know. I gripped his arm. “Who are you, Isaak? What are you doing here in this place if you hate it so much? Are you a space pirate or what?”
He pressed a finger to my lips. “Later, gara. First, we escape. Then we talk.”
I pursed my lips, not thrilled with the answer, and I realized I was stalling. “Fine.” Noise was building behind me, and I had a sneaking suspicion the Cerberus guys were getting closer.
His eyes narrowed as he said, “We go in three. Three. Two. Go!”
He darted from our pseudo hiding space pulling me behind him with one hand as he fired his space blaster with the other.
“Stop them!” The booming order turned more heads our way, and Isaak released his hold to shoot at two more red armband guys who were running toward his ship from the opposite direction, trying to cut us off.
“Hurry!”
Isaak didn’t need to shout. I was sprinting as fast as I could. The floor was diamond hard and grooved, the sharp little peaks cutting painfully into my bare feet.
A large, fur-covered creature lunged for me from the side, and I swung the titan stick hard, right into his face. He screeched like a wounded cat and fell a few steps back. He was on his feet again in seconds, closing in. But slow. Too slow to catch us.
“Move! Move! Move!”
I bolted toward Isaak’s voice, waving the stick around in the way he told me not to minutes ago. He was nearly to the ramp that would take us up inside his ship when another alien, this one easily seven feet tall and dark blue, stepped out from behind another spaceship to block our path. It wasn’t the Ulza female… but a relative? Definitely the same species of… blue.