by Mel Teshco
“This attraction between us is getting dangerous,” he growled.
“I know,” she said weakly, forcing herself to think of his enemies closing in before she dragged her attention away from him. Her too shaky hand twisted the key, the jeep firing into life. “No males of my own species distract me like you do.”
“No females of my species distract me like you do, either,” he conceded.
She blew out a steadying breath, though her pulse thudded like a drum in her ears as her awareness moved up another notch. She pulled the jeep back out onto the highway. “I should probably be worried about our mutual fascination.”
“But you’re not,” he finished, resting a hand on her thigh. Warmth soaked through her denim and deep into her flesh, a reassuring touch. “I won’t let anything happen to you, not as long as I live.”
She flashed him a frown. “Don’t you dare go dying on me.” She couldn’t handle anymore loss, especially not this strong, vital man who seemed invincible in every way.
His hand tightened momentarily, before he released her. “I don’t intend leaving you alone.”
She felt the loss of his touch like a damn physical ache. She sent him a wobbly smile, before adding, “Please don’t go making promises you can’t keep.”
“I don’t.”
Her smile wobbled a little bit more, but there was nothing she could do to rein in her emotions. “That’s good to hear.”
He didn’t answer, he didn’t need to. And as the miles flew past she sank into her own thoughts as surely as he sank into his.
The mid-afternoon sun bit into the jeep’s metal and hot air rushed through the vents, drying sweat to her skin. But she didn’t dwell on the fact she hadn’t fixed the jeep’s air conditioning. She had better things to think about. Like this fascination with Asher, a man who was not even of her own species.
Asher pointed to a road sign. “There’s a rest stop ahead. Let’s take a break for a few minutes.”
She sighed. “Great idea.”
She pulled off the road and decelerated beside an expanse of brittle lawn on the left. On the right stunted trees shielded the worst of the highway and its thin trickle of traffic. Half a dozen aged wooden tables with bench seats sat beneath the shade of gum trees, a couple of overflowing bins fronting a small bricked restroom.
A bearded man in a navy singlet and shorts, and his long-haired partner in a floral dress and bare feet were seated at one table eating their lunch, while a lone, bald-headed man drank a can of beer at another table.
Asher smiled and grabbed his bag of snacks. “This looks as good a place as any for an impromptu picnic.”
Marissa hid her own smile as she sat at one of the empty tables and watched him set up their snacks and drinks. The half-load of bread she’d packed she’d throw out for the local birdlife. She rested her hands on the table’s wooden slats. “You know, this is about the most romantic thing I’ve done with anyone in a very long time.”
He looked up. “No wining and dining, as you Earth people say?”
She shook her head. “No, Luke—my fiancé—wasn’t big on that stuff. He was better at guiding me away from my father’s dictatorship.”
Asher sat opposite her and leaned over, clasping her hands and smoothing a finger over her engagement ring. “On my planet, family is everything.”
She exhaled softly, trying not to think about her father and the hell he’d caused between her and Luke. “Tell me about your family.”
His eyes clouded over. “My mother and father are dead. As the eldest son I took over leadership.”
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, hating that her question had brought up so much remembered pain for him. “Was it the Tantonics?”
He nodded. “Yes. They slayed my mother in front of us all before they took my father away, captured him to be tortured and degraded, before stripping his energy.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “I can only hope he is already dead and not still kept alive for them to inflict more pain and degradation on him.”
She turned her hands over and interlinked her fingers through hers. “I can’t even begin to imagine what you’ve gone through, but I’m so sorry that you did.”
His eyes darkened with fierce heat even before she leaned forward. He bent and his mouth captured hers, their breaths mingling while they shared heat and pain and everything in between. Hell, she’d swear even their heartbeats were in synch.
Then someone nearby coughed and Asher’s lips gentled before he eased away, his eyes hooded and his expression impenetrable.
She blinked up at him while she fought for some kind of composure. “We ah, we probably shouldn’t be making the public so aware of us.”
He nodded, though there was still a look of intensity about him. “Low key would be the smartest option,” he agreed. He exhaled slowly, as though he too grappled for self-control, before he nodded toward the cans of coke. “This stuff apparently helps keep people awake.”
Despite the passion still moving through her veins, a giggle slipped free. “You have learned much about our bad habits.” She cracked open a can and handed it to him. “But you’ll discover the flavor is good, even if the contents are no longer cold.”
He took a sip and wrinkled his nose. “It tastes of toxin.”
Another laugh burst free before she took a sip of her own can and said, “You’re probably right. But you’re also right in that it will help us stay awake and alert.”
They were halfway through their drinks and ham and cheese sandwiches when a convoy of camouflage-painted vehicles drove past. Adrenaline pumped through her veins when she looked at Asher and hissed, “Army!”
It didn’t take much brain power to know who they were looking for. She pressed a hand to her mouth, and added softly, “They must know we left together in the jeep.” Her throat constricted. “If we hadn’t pulled into this rest stop, you would have been captured.”
Asher took her hand and leaned forward to murmur, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of this.” At her nod, he added, “Give me your keys.”
She handed them to him, intuitively trusting in him.
As the last army vehicle rumbled past, he stood and ambled over to the couple who were still eating their lunch. He nodded at them and they immediately packed up their half-eaten meal and headed to their car.
Next he approached the bald, beer-drinking man who looked up, then wordlessly stood, took a set of keys from the back pocket of his shorts and exchanged them with the jeep keys.
“Shit,” she said under her breath, before she returned to her jeep and grabbed what she needed from it.
The bald man grabbed a few of his own things before he climbed into her jeep, and then drove it away without hesitation.
Marissa didn’t even try and stop the hysteria bubbling up her throat.
“What’s so funny?” Asher asked.
“You. Me.” She swept her hands out. “This!”
He smiled. “Yeah. It’s a lot to take in.”
She pressed her hands to her cheeks. “Well it has certainly made up for the drudgery of my life this last year.”
He frowned. “Your life was that bad?”
Her laughter died and she blew out a slow breath, hating that it was the truth even as she was no longer afraid to acknowledge it. “Yeah, it pretty much sucked.”
His eyes glinted. “Then I’m glad we found one another.”
Chapter Seven
Asher wanted nothing more than to prolong the moment and stare into her beautiful pale green eyes, which reminded him of the glorious crested ocean waves he’d seen in a documentary. Except they’d lingered here for too long already and his urge to protect her was far stronger than his urge to gawp.
He loaded their few belongings into their ‘new’ dinged and battered looking car, before he held up the keys and said, “Allow me.”
At her knitted brow, he added, “I’ve been watching and learning.”
“You’re sure?”
He nodde
d. “We drive on our planet too.” He wouldn’t tell her they were a far different vehicle, which ran on air pulses. When her frown deepened, he added, “You can take over before we get to the city, I promise.”
She climbed into the passenger seat and wrinkled her nose at the harsh chemical scent. “Stale beer, cigarette smoke and marijuana,” she informed him with a sigh.
He leant forward and inserted the keys. Giving a twist, he broke into a smile at hearing the engine sputter into life. “I can put up with bad odor if you can.”
She nodded and returned his smile with a high-wattage one of her own. “Yeah, I guess that’s the least of our problems right now.”
His belly did a slow somersault as he drank in her inner beauty that shone through. He wasn’t sure whether to curse or praise his dragon senses that’d led him straight to this dragon breeder. But then guilt for what she might mean to him, to his entire race, pierced through all other emotion. “Yeah, least of our problems,” he said harshly.
After grating through the first three gear changes, he managed fourth without too much trouble and soon got the hang of driving the small, blue-colored sedan. He drew in a steadying breath. He wouldn’t focus on how Marissa might feel about him in the future, he’d focus on the here and the now.
He’d be thankful that he’d escaped relatively unscathed. He glanced at Marissa, even more weight lifting from his conscience at seeing her visibly relax beside him. Except the closer he drove to the city, the tenser she became once again. He looked back at her. “Is your father really that bad?”
She exhaled audibly. “He thinks no one is good enough for his little girl.”
“That doesn’t seem like a bad thing.”
She fiddled with the grates of the barely working air conditioner and he realized she was uncomfortable by the heat trapped inside the car. She gave up, wound her window down, and then turned to face him with the wind whipping long strands of her hair free. “Yeah, except I’m no longer his little girl. I grew up fast.”
Asher hid a frown, sensing something amiss, something she’d hidden deep. “What happened?”
She stared out the windshield, her unstuck red hair stark against her pale face. “That man back at the service station that paid for our petrol—is the one and same man my father expected me to marry. He was dad’s business associate. A man fifteen years my senior who wielded a lot of power and influence.”
His knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. Arranged marriages weren’t uncommon on his own planet, but he’d never once condoned them and in fact had spoken against them, much to his traditionalist people’s horror. “I’m glad you stood up to him.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Except he didn’t fail to miss a small note of remorse in her voice, as though things still hadn’t gone how she’d imagined they would.
She cleared her throat. “What about you? You mentioned a sister. Do you have any other siblings?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I have a younger brother, Kadin. I haven’t seen him for three Earth years though, not since he was banished from Riddich.”
“Where did he go?”
He pushed a hand over his face. “He chose Earth, Australia.” He looked her way. “It’s why my sister and I preprogrammed our craft to come here. If he’s alive, we’ll find him. As long as the Tantonics don’t find him—or us—first.”
She stared at him, looking horrified yet intrigued. “Why was he banished?”
“When war looked imminent between us and the Tantonics, my father captured a Tantonic patrol that was exploring our planet. He put all twenty of the Tantonics in the palace dungeon to learn what he could from them. Except at that stage the Tantonics didn’t wear amulets so we had no way to communicate with them. In the end they were abandoned in the dungeon.”
“I’d hate to say I feel sorry for them, but I kind of do.”
He watched the road ahead, even as his thoughts turned inward. “Yeah, well, Kadin couldn’t have agreed with you more. He was appalled by the treatment of Tantonics about as much as he was fascinated by them. He regularly visited them; he even befriended one of them.”
She arched a brow. “Wow. That wouldn’t have gone down well.”
“No. The king—our father—was furious. He ordered Kadin to never visit the dungeon again. He also ordered the Tantonic to be dragged out of his cell and given a hundred lashes of the molten-whip.”
Her face paled. “That sounds ... barbaric.”
“Whatever else one could have said about the king, he put his people before anyone else. But Kadin being Kadin, he not only defied our father to visit the injured Tantonic, he dressed his wounds and even brought him food and water from the palace.”
“I’m almost too scared to ask what happened.”
Asher managed a tight smile. “My father was left with no choice but to execute that one Tantonic in front of Kadin, before he then ordered his son to be banished for disloyalty.”
She put a hand to her mouth, her eyes widening. “What did you do?”
He laughed, for a moment stripping bare the sick feeling of guilt and despair he kept buried deep inside. “In our world, a king’s word is law. Defying it is dishonor and either death or banishment. At least my brother still lives.”
Her face had paled. “Your planet really does seem barbarous.”
He shook his head. “It probably seems that way. But in comparison to your Earth with its wars and atrocities, our people are peaceful and loving.”
“You’re probably right.” He felt her eyes on him. “But not all humans are bad. Many of us are good, honorable people.”
“Like you?”
She nodded. “Yes, like me.”
They fell into thoughtful silence for some minutes, before Marissa turned to him once again and asked, “So how long will the suggestions you planted in those people last?”
Though it’d been a relief to share some of his painful past, it was also a relief to change the subject to a more neutral topic. “It all differs, but it mostly depends on how weak-minded the individual is.”
She stifled a laugh with a hand. “What the hell is that beer-swilling man going to think when he realizes he’s driving someone else’s car? Or worse, when the army pulls him over thinking you’re with him?”
He grinned. “Hopefully he’ll try to evade capture and draw them even farther away from—“
A flash of light and a boom ricocheted the sedan, cutting off all conversation and flipping the car into the air before arcing it end-over-end. The seatbelt snapped tight across his torso, squeezing all breath from his lungs even before all four tires hit the road with a lurching bang.
Tantonics.
Smoke poured from the bonnet and Asher twisted toward Marissa. She was chalk-white, her eyes wide and scared. Worse was the smear of blood on her brow where she’d hit her head.
“Are you hurt?” he choked out, ignoring the fear clutching at his heart to instead go through basic procedures. He couldn’t allow himself to think about the Tantonics capturing this woman and hurting her a whole hell of a lot worse than a head wound. He wouldn’t allow that to happen!
“I’m okay.” She blinked and coughed. “It’s the Tantonics, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “Yes. We’ve got to get you out of here.”
She put a hand on his when he went to unclip her seatbelt. “You’re not leaving me now. We’re in this together.”
He paused, but there was no time to argue. Every second was a precious commodity. Instead he nodded and said, “We’ll both get the hell out of here.”
Her seatbelt snapped undone, and he unclipped his even as fire burst into life under the bonnet. Flames licked through the dash when five Tantonics walked toward his side of the car with their weird swaggering gait, like Earth crocodiles learning to walk upright. The amulets on their throat glowed brightly as it decoded their hisses and grunts into stilted English.
“Don’t move or we will destroy you both.”
Fuck.
> He could scarcely believe the Tantonics were enduring the daylight heat let alone showing themselves so readily when humans could drive past at any second. They must really want him bad, and probably Marissa now too. His lip curled. Who was he kidding? The cold-blooded Tantonics would eliminate any and all witnesses.
His body temperature exploded as anger consumed him, the inner, savage roar of his dragon filling his ears. He turned back to Marissa. She was shoving on the door handle, whimpering when it didn’t budge. The door had clearly jammed shut from the impact.
His dragon itched to be freed even as his mind clicked over with a dozen different scenarios.
He settled on one.
He locked his door, stripped off his clothes and pushed his seat back as far it would go. Leaning over, he clasped Marissa’s hand. “Do you trust me?” he asked thickly, his voice already changing as he pushed into a shift.
She nodded without hesitation, her eyes wide and overly bright.
“Then get behind me and hang on,” he commanded roughly, his throat rippling and pain tearing through his spine as he focused on his wings first.
She scrambled behind him and crouched low, her arms wrapping around him as his wings burst free and immediately encased her, shielding her from the intense fire and heat.
He gritted his teeth as he pushed through his shift faster than he’d dared before. But as his sinews stretched and popped, bones breaking and reforming, agony exploded through him. At the first convulsion he gripped the steering wheel so he wouldn’t crush her. But at the second convulsion, he lost all hold of consciousness.
He woke to intense heat and smoke, neither of which bothered him. For a nanosecond, adrenaline flooded through him knowing Marissa too was in the inferno. But he perceived almost immediately she was fine.
His sensitive ears made out her heartbeat that was a little fast but steady, her cool hands pressed against his back. And though his dragon body was crammed inside the metal wreck, Marissa was safely encapsulated in his wings.
A pity the Tantonics waited just yards away to try and capture them the moment the flames died down. If there was one thing the ice-loving Tantonics hated, it was heat.