Hearts of Ishira (Hearts of Ishira Saga) (6 page)

She finally understood that the injection would somehow allow them to communicate. He seemed like he wanted to help her, and since she wasn’t running or fighting, he wasn’t making any move to subdue or overpower her. She nodded. The men seemed intent on preventing any further damage to the women. She offered him a tight smile and, when he mimicked the motion on himself, she brushed her hair away from a spot just behind her ear.

He stepped close to her, murmuring to her in that low, deep, soothing tone that Jax had used. His big hand brushed over the skin she’d just bared, probably to move wayward strands of hair, mud, or debris. Bev couldn’t hold back a shiver of reaction at his touch. It was light and warm, soft and gentle, and it sent a little shock of unexpected excitement through her. She barely had time to register the marvelous feelings before he held the back of her neck with one hand and quickly popped the syringe to her flesh. She couldn’t hold back a startled squeak as the sting of the injection registered. He quickly stepped back with his hands up in that non-threatening position, watching her warily. She rubbed at the injection site then nodded at him as the sting faded. His relief was evident in the relaxation of his facial muscles and the twinkle of interest that came into his eyes.

His gaze lingered on her face for a long moment before he grinned at her, his gaze boldly raking over her naked form with open appreciation. Stunning her to her toes, he whirled the cloak from his shoulders, twirled it about hers and closed it in the front for her. Her breathing turned ragged as the backs of his hands brushed against her full breasts, the tips of which were already peaked from cold. Now they tightened almost painfully in reaction to his fleeting touch. His eyes heated at her reaction and she stared at him, mouth slightly open as desire thundered through her body. Good heavens, she’d never reacted to a man this way before! He held her gaze while his turned knowing, triumphant as only a male who knows he has a woman’s undivided attention could look. Normally, that expression would have pissed Bev off to no end, but with this man, this alien being with broad, muscular shoulders and eyes that suggested he’d devour her if she let him, she was left breathless and wanting.

Startling another squeak out of her, he leaned down to press a sweet, soft kiss against her lips before winking at her. She stared at him as he went to Chelsea for the same procedure. He tossed Jax a syringe for Kim, then moved on to the other girls.

Stunned, Bev simply watched his graceful, sure movements as he worked.

She noticed that he didn’t kiss any of the other girls after injecting them.

That little fact probably shouldn’t have warmed her heart or her body.

But it did. Oh, how it did.

CHAPTER THREE

Hunter stared at the small, curvy woman at his feet for a moment before carefully gathering her into his arms and taking her back to the little grassy area and her stretcher. As he gathered her into his arms, he could swear that she had sent reassurance and apologies to her women. Not that any of them seemed to notice. The ones that had their wits about them were helping to calm or tend the injured. Those who didn’t were still trying to fight with his men and escape. That brunette with the attitude was awake once more and her shrill voice and venomous slurs against alien rapists was making his head hurt.

Other than her, though, he found that his heart was starting to beat with excitement at the sudden presence of the women. He’d never seen their like, but they weren’t unattractive. They looked surprisingly like his own race, but lacked the markings and the fur that his people possessed. The colors of their skin ranged from milky pale all the way to a medium brown that was perfectly set off by startling ice-blue eyes. Redheads, blonds, black-haired, brown… all familiar to him. The similarities were comforting though the differences might be greater than he knew. And the girls were so tiny in comparison to his kind. Even the tallest of these girls didn’t come to the shoulders of his shortest warrior.

He wondered where they were from, what kind of world they had abandoned for space travel. He knew of no race quite like this one in any of the populated areas of the known galaxy. His brow furrowed in thought. Not in the neighboring galaxies either, for that matter. His scholar’s mind wanted to dig through the star charts in the cockpit, but his Commander’s brain put a halt to that. He needed every man, including himself, here in the clearing, helping with the women. With the storm about to wash the road out, he had to get them on the move. His questions would have to wait until he had them all safely back at the compound and could get some answers. He’d send a team back once the rain had passed, to retrieve any and all data from the ship’s systems. Something about the fear and confusion his sweet armful had shown made him think that the women might not know much more than he did. Frustration dogged his steps until he reached the stretcher she had rolled off of. This time, he’d make sure she was secured into the thing before he sat back.

The clearing was starting to look more organized, thankfully. Trey was going about his injections, the women who could were helping their friends, and Jax was trying to communicate with a young lady who seemed to know a bit about trauma medicine. Hunter watched them for a moment as the girl bent over a patient, her hands sure and steady with the laser. Jax, on the other hand, was watched the girl. Hunter stifled a grin as he sensed that Jax was taken with the girl, and that she was shyly intrigued as well. Hunter was gratified to see that Bev had, indeed, accept Trey’s touch and the injection of the translator. He also sensed her curiosity of his lieutenant. Her hungry thoughts of how handsome the young warrior was and her surprised happiness that she was the only one who got a kiss from his warrior made Hunter hopeful for their future as an integrated society.

Hunter almost chuckled at some of the womens’ reactions to his big, strong warriors. Not even on his planet an hour, and some of the girls were already trying to figure out how to capture the attention of his best men. And his men were thinking the same thing. After nearly a decade of nothing but males for company, his guys were ready to socialize. Hunter sent out a stern, silent impulse to guide the men back to their duties, that the wooing could wait.

The rescue wasn’t going perfectly, though. The warriors that weren’t busy trying to corral and calm the terrified women were trying to get the neuro-translators in place, but it took some effort to inject the traumatized young ladies. One warrior had to hold a squirming girl while the other injected the tiny neuro-trans behind their ear. And that damned shrill female screeched, her fury renewed every time she saw the tiny bit of blood left behind from the injections. He couldn’t understand her words, but the hatred she was giving off was troubling. Her fear was far out of proportion to events. Even the other women were curious as to why she was so sure that the warriors were trying to hurt them, when all evidence to the contrary suggested otherwise, the resisting girls excluded. If they’d just hold still, the men wouldn’t have to touch them at all.

Hunter hated the necessity of man-handling the creatures, but he couldn’t think of any other way to make it happen than to just do it. The two groups needed to be able to communicate, but with only two instant translators which were back at the colony, the neuro-trans would have to do. The tiny chips would take several hours, at least, to assimilate both languages and sync them. The full benefits of the neuro-trans wouldn’t take effect for another day or so, longer if the species didn’t interact enough. But the instant translator would go to the women’s leader, or their Reader, if they were two different people. It inserted a probe straight into the language center of a being’s brain, giving it a much quicker working time. But it was not a permanent solution, its use intended to branch the time it took for the neuro-trans to become operational. The neuro-translators were a long-term solution.

As he watched, Trey’s little blond hurried over to the group and spoke to them. For a moment, he held out hope that she had managed to persuade them to work with his men, but when the girls started crying and trying to get away once more, Hunter sighed. The tall, skinny shrill one flung acidic words after the blond, but Trey stepped up, offering his arm to the small blond, his countenance showing nothing but concern. Pride struck Hunter in the chest, bringing out a smile. Trey had not only effectively shown his protection of the woman, but had also negated whatever vile things the shrill one was screeching.

Hunter didn’t have to see any more to know that his men had the situation under control. They would tend to the girls whether the females liked it or not. But he really needed their Reader to wake up so that he could get them all safely back to the compound. He lowered his gaze back down to ‘his’ woman, leaning forward to carefully brushing her dark hair from behind her ear so that he could inject her, as well, when one of his men tossed him a kit.

“Jace!” he called out, signaling his brother back to his side when he saw that Jace seemed to be done with immediate trauma victims. The medic Jace was talking to nodded then bent over the woman they’d been treating, clean bandages in his hands. Jace strode through the milling soldiers toward his brother but kept getting stopped by one team or another. Hunter couldn’t fault him for doing his job, even if it was frustrating at the moment.

As he waited, Hunter tried very hard not to notice the sweet curve of this woman’s body. He’d already covered her with a fresh blanket, protecting her from the rain as much as he could, but he’d seen enough as he tried to calm her down. Even dirty, muddy, bloody, scraped, bruised, and broken, she was a beauty. Her body was curvy, with enough meat on her bones to make him think that perhaps cool nights might not have to be quite so cold the next winter. She seemed healthy and mature, unlike many of her companions. The girls appeared to be barely out of adolescence and far too thin for his comfort. They would have to find out what their people considered a healthy weight, then make sure each of them reached it. Some of them appeared to be downright starved.

Not his lady, though. She was rounded in the best of places, her breasts heavy and more than a handful, just as he liked them. A moan tore through his observations and he chastised himself roundly for even noticing her body in her vulnerable state. Such was not the behavior worthy of a Thorsani warrior, much less the Commander of the entire group. He was more controlled than that. But gods help him, he was also a man who’d been long denied. It was only biologically sound that his body would notice a female’s of seemingly compatible form. Clearing his throat, he reined in his wayward libido and fought for control.

“Hunter, wake up, man!” Jace reached them, dropping beside the woman and bringing up his hand-held scanner. Their top medical officer and Hunter’s second-in-command, Jace was also Hunter’s younger brother, and the last surviving member of their ‘team’. Running a scanner over the woman’s body, Jace scowled up at the commander and spoke as though rank wasn’t an issue at this moment. Which it wasn’t. It rarely was between the two men. “What the hell were you thinking, moving her before I verified that she could be moved?”

“She was trying to get away,” Hunter growled back. “She seemed to have forgotten that we were communicating right before our group got here. She could move, so I knew she didn’t have any major damage to her spine, and she’d backed herself up to a creeper-bug’s nest. I had to get her away from the tree before they swarmed.”

Jace shuddered at what a creeper attack might have added to her injuries and wordlessly acknowledged his brother’s wisdom. His eyes rapidly scanned the screen, his fingers flying over the surface to bring up other information at a pace that made Hunter’s head spin. The Commander was a medic as well, but no one was as good as his brother. Battalion ships across the fleet had fought to have him join them for their tours in the war. Jace had been offered all kinds of things, legal and illegal, to get him on board, but he was part of their family team and hadn’t entertained any of the other Commanders. He would be on Hunter’s ship or he would stay on the planet to help the wounded there. Now, though, he set his scanner aside and looked up at Hunter.

“I want temporary bracing on her neck, just in case she has an injury we don’t know about. Her leg is to be braced for traveling. She has a concussion, which could explain the momentary memory loss. Of course, trauma could be doing that, as well.” He scrubbed a hand over his face wearily. “There may be other injuries, so be careful when you’re treating her, but those are the big ones. I don’t think she’ll need the stretcher, though, and I need it for one of the others. Your Reader can ride with one of the warriors, like most of the other women will.”

He handed Hunter two inflatable braces from his pack then quickly depressed the button on the stretcher that deflated and retracted everything into one neat tube. Clapping his brother on the back, Jace rose and moved back to the main group.

“I’m going to finish with the others. Keep her as calm as possible.”

Hunter worked on the little Reader, wondering how she had managed to be with the group. She was older than the others by a good ten, maybe even fifteen years. He had felt her frustration with the brunette who’d been so very bent on fighting his men, felt her capitulation just a bit ago, when she realized that her group was outnumbered. His Commander’s mind had to admire her pragmatism and how quickly her brain switched from trying to flee to figuring out what to do next. He smiled to himself, thinking that she was likely to be a handful when she was healthy and conscious.