Royal Recruit - Susan Grant Page 0,9
are you? Because whoever you were in that cockpit, I didn’t recognize him.”
“It’s not someone you’d know unless you flew on my wing. Maybe it’s why we have the call signs, to differentiate who we are inside the cockpit from who we are outside of it. An alter ego. But when I leave the unit, he stays behind. Ol’ Prince is not exactly family friendly.”
“He’s a jerk.”
“But he’s perfect for dealing with uppity Coalition bitches.” Jared shifted his focus to the closed hatch. He couldn’t believe the argument had actually turned him on. “What a woman, huh? Totally not my type, but…wow.” He thought of her hair whipping around her shoulders, pictured her naked, that long hair stuck to her damp skin, letting tantalizing peeks of her breasts and stomach show through. Her skin would be damp from having sex with him, not from pumping iron. Or maybe they’d do it after they worked out…and before…and…
“Jared.”
Evie’s voice jolted him out of a fantasy of the alien woman bent over a table, her lush breasts in his hands as he thrust into her. By now he had such a hard-on that he hunched over, grateful he was wearing thick sweats. What the hell was wrong with him? He wasn’t in high school anymore. “Say again?” he said with a trace of hoarseness in his voice.
Evie’s dark eyes sparkled. “Chemistry. I said it was amazing that you can feel it across light years of space.”
“Chemistry?” He choked out a laugh. “I have a few ideas on what to call it, but it’s not that.”
“Denial.”
“Sanity.”
“Jared, you’re so unromantic.”
“She’s the enemy.”
“So? Woo her over to the dark side. Use the force.”
He pulled out his cell phone to call Cavin and brief him on what they’d discovered. “Force or no force, Miss Sunbeam lives in a galaxy far, far away. And after our little conversation today, I’m doubly determined to keep it that way.”
Keira was still shaking as she addressed the leaders she’d summoned from their ridiculous emergency meeting. This is the emergency! “The prince of Earth insulted me. Challenged me. Me—the queen!”
She’d bathed and changed into an exquisite bright-yellow ceremonial gown. It constricted her ribs to the point where she couldn’t inhale fully, which contributed to her swimming head. But it helped constrain her temper, as well. “He’s a frontiersman, a barbarian, and yet he broke every level of security we have, forcing his image onto my personal view screen.” Searing it into her mind.
“We are looking into how such a breach could have happened,” the new minister of intelligence, Ismae Vemekk, said.
Keira glared at the unfamiliar woman with contempt. What were they doing, alternating boy-girl-boy-girl as they replaced intelligence ministers? Spicing it up for variety? Usually the cronies stayed on in their posts for life.
Light-headed, she gripped her rustling skirts in shaking hands. The fabric blotted her sweaty palms, effectively hiding the roiling fear she tried so hard to suppress and hide. You are strong. A warrior. “I want an explanation, and I want it now, or I’ll have every last one of you fools executed. How could you let this happen? He taunted me. Your monarch. Your goddess. I’m humiliated and disgusted. I’m…I’m furious!”
“We have put Sakka on a full lockdown,” Vemekk soothed.
“And yet this Terran can invade my privacy and taunt me at his convenience? What if he sends his fleet next?”
“Earth cannot invade the heart of the Coalition,” Zaafran said.
“How do we know this? If they do align with the Drakken…” She couldn’t finish the thought. “Where was my protection when that signal came in? I was alone. Alone!”
Alone…
A memory ripped through her mind in dark, violent snatches. The smell of her mother’s skin. The sound of her fear-filled voice. They were on a ship and something had happened to it. Her mother stuffed Keira in a dark pipe barely large enough to fit her. Stay here, Keira. Do not move. Do you understand me? No matter what you hear, do not come out.
And, oh, what Keira had heard. Awful things. Unforgettable things.
Shivering, Keira realized she’d brought her flattened hand to her chest to quell her thumping heart. Ashamed, she made a fist. “If I cannot be safe in my own home, then where can I be safe?” She detected a slight thickening in her voice and cleared her throat. They mustn’t see her fear, they mustn’t. She picked up a wineglass Taye had filled with snowbell liqueur, knowing that it calmed her. In one gulp, she emptied it.
Carefully, the