Alien Overnight (19 page)

“Shauss, please don’t!” she gasped as he tripped her with a sweep of his foot.

“What’s the matter, Jasmine?” he returned harshly, shoving her facedown on the floor. “Don’t you want me?”

“No!”

He knelt beside the writhing secretary and pinned her hands in the small of her back. “That’s funny—I heard you did.”

100

Alien Overnight

The blonde was sobbing now and care for Monica’s feelings, if not for hers, led Kellen to lean down and whisper, “Be calm, little one. He will not complete his assault.”

She didn’t look up, but her shudders seemed to ease.

Shauss held the woman down with one hand while he deliberately drew out the unzipping of his uniform and tortured her with the ominous rasp of it. In a surge of frenzied strength, she yanked one hand free and tried to reach underneath the hem of her blouse.

“What are you up to now?” Shauss growled, recapturing her hand and rolling her to her side.

“Don’t do this, Shauss, please don’t!” she begged, eyes glancing off the fiercely erect penis he’d exposed. His spur was rearing, as well, and Kellen began to wonder if the man would be able to call a halt before he did her real damage.

“What were you trying to do?” Shauss ground out, shoving her blouse up to expose the small electronic device affixed to her rib cage. He and Kellen both leaned closer, then looked at each other with no small amount of horror. Shauss ripped the device from her, peeling away a layer of her skin in the process, and held it in front of her face.

At the sight of it, her expression said she’d lost all hope.

“Why would you do this thing for Pret?” the minister demanded, crouching beside her head. “Do you have any idea of the kind of pain this death would cause you?”

“D-death?” He’d thought her pale before, but she was suddenly whiter than her blouse. “He said it would tr-transport me out of h-here,” she fumbled, her teeth clattering in the sudden quiet.

“Miss King, this device is a feyo shell,” Kellen said menacingly. “It will incinerate you and anyone you’re touching from the inside out.”

“Jasmine?” The blonde looked more horrified now than when Kellen had ordered the attack. “You
helped
him?”

“How did he convince you?” Shauss asked angrily. “Promises of money? Power?

Technology?”

“Nothing!” Jasmine cried, cringing away from the sight of his still-vivid arousal, her thighs drawn up and pressed tightly together. “He came to me and said that Monica didn’t want to be with you, that she was miserable and had begged him to get her out of here, and I thought it was true because I heard her yelling at you in your office that day before she disappeared! Please, Commander, I swear to God, I was only trying to help her!”

“Where has he taken her?”

“I don’t know,” she sobbed.

Shauss immediately shoved her back to her stomach and threw himself atop her, forcing her thighs apart with his knees as her screams escalated once more.

“Tell me where he took my mate or I and every soldier on this ship will fuck your ass into useless, bloody shreds!” he roared.

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Robin L. Rotham

“I don’t know!” she screamed back at him. “All I know is they’re underground somewhere!”

Kellen slammed his fist into the table, making the blonde jump. A flare track was undetectable under the planet’s surface.

Then he looked at Cecine.

“Ketrok hasn’t removed her biomet.”

*

“You will submit,” Pret ordered, breathing roughly with the effort to subdue her.

“
You
will wish you were dead before Kellen is through with you,” she hissed, adrenaline whipping her into a frenzy of motion beneath him. She managed to turn her hands back against his restraining grip and gouge deep into his wrists with her nails, and his yowl of rage was all the reward she needed. “And after he and Shauss have carved every inch of your flesh into a screaming mass of exposed nerve endings, I’m going to get my digital camera out and take your picture—”

“Silence!”

“—and post it on alienassholes.com—”

Pret tore the neckline of her suit open and pulled it down, baring her breasts as he confined her arms in the bunched fabric. She felt the pinch of his nails as he reached between her legs and gave a forceful tug, ripping the smooth fabric away and baring her to the chill and his insidious fingers.

“—under the caption, ‘Touch Monica Teague, just once, and this could be you!’”

He reached for his zipper and jerked it downward.

“What do you think, Ambassador?” she continued to taunt, determined not to give in to the fear storming her. “Do you think that will discourage anyone else from attempting to take me from them?”

“It would me,” came Shauss’ half-amused growl from the darkness.

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Alien Overnight

Pret stiffened over Monica, then scuttled off her when Kellen snarled, “Those words will serve even more effectively as his epitaph.”

“Kellen!”

Monica’s glad cry seized his soul even as Kellen seized the back of Pret’s suit, trying to drag him to his feet. The slippery diplomat tore his arms free of the fabric and dived across the rough-hewn floor, leaving the suit and his boots behind and rolling to his feet in a surprising display of agility.

Though keeping his attention focused on the crouching Pret required sparing her only a glance, Monica’s exposed breasts and the torn crotch of her wrapsuit made the animal caged within him howl with rage. He was dimly aware of Shauss helping her pull the garment back over her shoulders and climb to her feet, but he had eyes only for the man who was about to die.

“Injure me at your own peril,” Pret told him self-importantly, the tremor in his voice belying his confident manner. “I have done nothing illegal, and to harm me is to incur the wrath of the Council.”

“Assaulting a Garathani female is not illegal?” Kellen demanded, stunned by the man’s gall.

“As she is yet unclaimed by a second, Dr. Teague is subject to mating by any male who has the courage to take her.”

“Courage, my ass! Try cowardice, you miserable cocksucker!” Monica’s

exclamation made Kellen grin, but it was her muttered “Could somebody please hand him a pair of boxers before I puke? Jesus, haven’t you guys ever heard of underwear?”

that dissolved the destructive ball of energy in his belly, fizzed it outward into his organs, his limbs, his skin, his brain, until he felt consumed by the sheer joy of her.

“Taking an unclaimed female may not be illegal, but attempting to murder a Terran is.” Kellen found Pret’s nervous twitch quite gratifying.

“I have attempted no such thing.”

“Murder?” Monica squeaked. “Who?”

“Jasmine King,” Shauss replied. “He used her to elicit information about you and then tried to eliminate her, and us alongside her, with a feyo shell.”

“Ouch! Jasmine was trying to get information for
him
?” Monica shuddered. “No wonder the little bitch was so snoopy at lunch.”

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“Don’t be too angry with her,” Kellen cautioned. “She’d heard us arguing and Pret had her convinced that you hated being with us and had asked him for assistance in escaping.”

“And she’s paid the price for her gullibility.”

The finality in Shauss’ voice made her look at him, her heart suddenly thumping.

“What price?”

“One very similar to the price you almost paid for our negligence.”

“The price I almost paid,” she repeated blankly. Oh jeez, he couldn’t mean…

Kellen clarified, “In order to secure her cooperation, I ordered him to rape Miss King. If I hadn’t, we might not have found you in time.”

Horror prickled under her skin. “Shauss, you didn’t!”

“No, I didn’t,” he agreed with a grim look. “But I would have. Believe me, there’s nothing I wouldn’t have done to get you back.
Nothing
,” he spat in Pret’s direction. “If her actions had lost you to me, she would have taken your place in my bed and suffered the rest of her days for it.”

Pret chose that moment to try darting past Kellen, but the larger, stronger commander had him facedown on the ground and pressed under his heel in an instant, yipping in pain. Barely noticing the disruption, Monica stared back and forth between her two mates, her heart thudding thickly in her ears. Did she even know them?

“Kellen?” Nerves made her lick her lips.

“He would have had my blessing.” The steel in his voice told her he meant business.

“A Garathani female is worth that much, then?” she asked, depressed by the idea.

They only wanted her because she was a rare commodity, like diamonds. No, wait—

those weren’t really rare, just tightly controlled. Hen’s teeth—now
those
were rare.

And of course they would do anything to retain possession of the prize they’d staked their claim on, up to and including the rape of an innocent woman.
Rape
! How could she possibly love—

“The only daughter of the minister is worth any price!” Pret declared.

Oh shit.
Oh no
. She
so
did not love either of these barbaric—

Her eyes widened as the shock of Pret’s words finally registered over the shock of her own realization. “The only daughter of…”

“Minister Cecine is your father.” Kellen watched her face.

Her father. Cecine was her father. Hell, she wasn’t just rare—she was one of a kind.

No wonder they were all so desperate to have her.

She turned her face to the wall, feeling the burn of humiliation creeping into her cheeks. And here she’d been thinking she might actually feel… Shit, all she had to do was
think
the L-word and people lined up to knock her on her ass.
Love
. Yeah, right.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

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Alien Overnight

Dismayed by the tremor in her voice, she glanced at Kellen, only to find his eyes narrowed on her in the wavering blue light. Um, he was looking a little more pissed than he should have, considering he’d just ground his enemy under his heel. Literally.

“Empran, activate neural restraints.” She sucked in a breath, then released it in a rush when Kellen finished. “Subject Ambassador Pret.”

Pret relaxed at once, looking very much like a snakeskin rug on the bare stone, and Monica couldn’t help the smile that twisted her lips.

“Nice to see somebody else getting a taste of that, for a change.”

Kellen lift his foot off the rug and assumed an aggressive stance. Looking at her with fire in his eyes, he pointed to the floor in front of him.

Shit
.

“Monica, come here. Now.”

Her eyes skittered around, looking anywhere but at him as she stalked over and stood before him, her posture defiant despite the tattered state of her suit.

Sliding two fingers under her chin, Kellen tugged her face up until she met his gaze.

And whatever he’d intended to say to her was momentarily lost in the shining depths of her eyes, swept away by the single tear that hovered on her lashes and then dropped to the stone floor. He heard its splat, felt its weight like a mace slammed hard into his chest.

“I don’t think I care for the direction your thoughts are taking,” he said roughly.

“You don’t have a clue about my thoughts.”

That, unfortunately, was quite true. But he knew self-doubt when he saw it.

“Your worth to me, Monica Teague, has nothing to do with your father.”

She closed her eyes, sending another tear cascading downward. Leaning forward, she pressed her forehead against his breastbone and swallowed audibly, but Kellen wasn’t about to let her get away with that. He urged her face up again, determined to make her look at him, but her eyes remained closed and the tears kept sliding down her cheeks, one after the other. He chased them with his lips and tongue, refusing to waste one more on the stone below.

“I’m sorry,” she gulped. “It’s just reaction—”

“Hush,” he whispered, sucking at the corner of her mouth. “You’ve been very brave,
sziscala
, but you don’t have to be strong every moment of every day. That’s what your mates are for.”

Her sob was more than Kellen could take. Drawing her into his arms, he kissed her unresponsive mouth as she wept, drinking in her gasping cries until she grew quiet and leaned into his embrace.

“If you imagine I only want you because you’re Cecine’s daughter, then it’s you who has no clue about my thoughts,” he told her, brushing her hair back from her eyes.

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Robin L. Rotham

They opened slowly, large, brilliant and filled with a pain he couldn’t fathom. “I can’t even begin to tell you all the reasons why I want you. But I do want you, Monica.
You
.

Never doubt that.”

“You want me,” she repeated. The doubt still shadowing her tear-washed eyes made him tense with frustration. And just the slightest whisper of anxiety.

“I want you!” came a weak cry from the floor behind him. “I would treasure you—”

Kellen silenced Pret with a backward kick, but the moment was lost.

“Oh, you just had to talk about this stuff in front of him, didn’t you?” Monica fussed, stepping out of his reach. She dashed the remaining wetness from her cheeks with her fingers and swiped the sleeve of her suit under her nose. “Fucking diplomats,”

she muttered. “They’ll say anything to save their own asses.”

“Nothing he could possibly say would save his ass,” Kellen scowled.

“What are you going to do?”

He and Shauss drew their daggers simultaneously.

“Jesus!” Monica squeaked, jumping back. “What are you, the vigilante twins? Put those things away before you hurt someone.”

“That is the point,” Kellen drawled. “No pun intended.”

“Forget it!”

“But what about your caption on alienassholes.com?” Shauss’ smirk earned him an elbow in the ribs.

“I just said that to scare him. I didn’t really intend for you to carve him up—unless he actually…” Her throat worked visibly. “Believe me, guys, there’s nothing I’d like better than to watch this bastard writhe in agony, but I’m a doctor, for Christ’s sake! I can’t just stand here and let you torture him. This is a matter for the authorities now.”