by Roxie Ray
“You see what I am dealing with?” Coplan gestured toward me in exasperation. “I do not want to probe you, vringna! But if you are to remain on this ship—”
“I’m not getting a pregnancy test either,” I said, a little more quietly this time. Suddenly, it was hard to meet anyone’s eyes, even Nion’s. Instead, I stared down at my hands folded on my lap. The bottom halves of my thighs were bare beneath the hem of Nion’s shirt, but at least it was long enough to give me a little dignity back.
Dignity that wasn’t exactly easy to maintain, with all this talk of pregnancy tests and all the dancing around everyone was doing about the fact that I’d been violated. Used.
Raped.
I had to let myself use the word, even if no one else wanted to say it. If I couldn’t say it, then I’d never be able to face it. It would just haunt me forever otherwise. I was already a little worried that it would either way.
Taking the pregnancy test would only make that feeling worse. I didn’t have to be a medical professional to know that the results of that test could only go one of two ways.
Either the test would come out negative, meaning the nights I’d spent being forced—raped—by Var-arak could finally be left behind me…
Or it would come out positive.
And I didn’t want to find out what would happen to me—internally or externally—if that turned out to be the case.
“You have been away from the fighting pits for too long, Coplan,” Nion said diplomatically. I was grateful to him for breaking the silence. He placed a hand on Coplan’s shoulder and patted it reassuringly. “Since you’ve taken up your healer’s coat, it seems you have forgotten the look of a losing battle when you see one.”
“This is not a battle,” Coplan spat back at him. His blue eyebrows were knitted together so closely that for a second I was worried they’d be stuck permanently that way. It’d be unfortunate for him if they were—he was pretty handsome when he wasn’t scowling and trying to force me into taking tests I didn’t want. “This is medicine! It is not up for debate.”
“Look,” I told him tiredly. “If that’s your angle now, that’s fine. But like I said, I was a doctor too back on Earth—a human doctor,” I emphasized. “So I think we can agree that as a woman, and as a doctor of the human body, I probably know a little something about how my own reproductive system works, right?”
Coplan blinked, then nodded slowly. “I suppose that assessment may have some truth in it, yes.”
“Good.” I hopped down off the exam table and tugged the shirt Nion had given me a little further down over my thighs. “Then you should know that it’s too soon to tell if a human woman is pregnant or not. My hormone levels won’t reflect a pregnancy one way or another for at least another week, and at this phase, even if conception has occurred, a fertilized egg wouldn’t look any different from an unfertilized one. Unless your fancy medical technology is capable of blurring the lines between science and magic. Given the fact that Nion has stitches that you’re allowing him to tear open over and over again, I seriously doubt that’s the case.”
Coplan wheeled to face Nion, frowning in his direction instead now. “Your wounds from the assault on the palace are opening back up? Blood, Nion! I put those in myself! Why didn’t you—”
Coplan reached for the blood-crusted gash on Nion’s side, but Nion caught Coplan’s wrist and twisted it away.
“Not for all the moons in the sky, Coplan,” Nion warned him. He looked back to me accusingly. It was a look that said, How dare you turn this madman on me just to save yourself? Which, at least, was more amusing than having to bite Coplan’s hand just to get him away from me again. “I think we are done here, Ahl-iss. Are you ready to take your leave?”
“That is not her decision to make,” Coplan insisted. He wrenched his wrist from Nion’s grasp and placed himself between us and the door. “I cannot, in good conscience, let either of you leave the medical bay until you have been properly—”
“Of course not.” Nion smirked as he grabbed my hand and tugged me toward the door. That smirk turned into a grin as he drew himself up to his full height and stared Coplan down. “Which is why you won’t be letting us do anything.”
“What—” Coplan started, but then his words turned into a yelp as Nion stamped down hard on his toes. “Ugh—!”
Nion shouldered Coplan out of the way and slammed through the door, dragging me along with him as fast as my legs would carry me. Together, we raced out of the exam room, then out of the medical bay entirely. Nion didn’t stop running until we were well down the hall. Then, he took a sharp turn and pulled me against him.
For a moment, we panted against each other. I was definitely more out of breath than Nion was. Actually, he didn’t seem to be out of breath at all.
In fact, when I looked up at his face, his lips were twisted like he was trying to conceal a laugh.
“Thank you,” I said through a quiet laugh of my own. It was the second time he’d made me laugh that night, which seemed almost insane. After all the nights I’d spent disassociating through Var-arak’s visits, I’d started to believe I’d never laugh again. And yet, every time I was near Nion, he seemed to find a way to draw one out of me anyway. It left me grateful for him in a way that I wouldn’t soon forget. “You’re kind of an expert in saving me at this point, huh?”
Nion raised an eyebrow, then glanced down at the space between our bodies. Which was pretty much no space at all.
“It is a pleasure, as always, Ahl-iss,” he said formally as he placed his hands on my shoulders. Gently, he shifted me back a step. “It is a warrior’s duty to keep all defenseless females safe.”
I frowned as I settled my heels a step away from him. I didn’t mind if he wanted to maintain his personal space, but this didn’t seem like the same Nion who’d had me on his lap in the shuttle away from the Rutharian ship with his cock pressing up between my ass cheeks.
I’d only been in the examination room for a few minutes, hadn’t I? But in that time, something had obviously changed.
“I’m not defenseless,” I told him. “And it’s Alyse. Not Ahl-iss.”
If he was going to be weird with me now, the least he could do was say my name right.
“Ahl-lizz…” Nion frowned as he tried to force the word into the right shape.
“Less, um…space between the sounds,” I suggested. “It’s almost one syllable. Alyse.”
“Ahlizz…A-lizz…” His frown deepened, which for some reason only made me smile again. I liked his frown a lot better than I’d liked Coplan’s, at least. Nion was still handsome to me, no matter how deeply he furrowed his brow. “Alyse?”
“Perfect.” I rewarded him with a beaming smile, even if this one seemed a little more forced than the last. “Now, um…what do we do now?”
Nion raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “What would please you?”
For you to stop being such a weirdo and pushing me away, for one, I almost told him. But that seemed…unnecessarily mean. Instead, I went with my second greatest desire.
“A shower, I guess.” I hugged myself and rubbed my arms through the sleeves of the shirt he’d put on me. “And maybe some clothes that aren’t, you know, yours. I don’t know if you have any others, but you probably can’t go around the ship shirtless for much longer, right?”
“Does my nakedness cause you discomfort, Alyse?” Nion looked concerned, but he didn’t move to cover up his torso. If anything, I was pretty sure his chest had just puffed up a little bit.
I stared at his muscles for a moment, wondering how to answer. Even compared to the pretty-boys that Felicia had always insisted hanging out with on Earth, rich gold-class men who didn’t have anything to do with their time other than work out and flaunt their muscles, Nion was…unreasonably muscular. Felicia would have called him jacked, in fact. He had a tattoo over his heart—or, I supposed, where his heart would be if he was a human—three lines that almost looked like claw marks. Thin, pale scars ran all over his torso, som
e twisted and gnarled, some faded so much that they were almost invisible.
He had the body of a soldier, yes. But did it make me uncomfortable?
“No,” I told him. Actually, I could probably stare at a chest like that all day. But I wasn’t about to tell him that. “I’m just worried that you’re going to get…um, cold.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “You are the one who gets cold, Alyse. My blood runs hot as any Lunarian warrior’s. But if you wish for a shower…” He glanced down the hall, then cocked his head for me to follow him. “Let us find you your room. You can wash yourself there, and there will be fresh clothes laid out on your bed for you when you are done.”
“You’re not going to wash me?” The words leapt from my mouth so fast that by the time I realized what a stupid question that was.
Crap.
“Do you wish for me to wash you?” Nion paused for a moment, then picked up his steps like normal. Which was…gallant of him, I supposed.
And if he’s offering, the annoying little voice in the back of my head supplied.
“No. I mean, no thank you. Of course not. It’s just… Ugh. Sorry.” I closed my eyes and let out a breath. “On the Rutharian ship, I didn’t get to wash myself. A woman—or, I think she was a woman—an alien female, I mean—she washed me. I just didn’t think…”
Ahead of me, I saw Nion’s shoulders flex and stiffen.
“I think perhaps it would be best for you to wash yourself. If you are able,” he said. There was a little growl in his voice, like I’d annoyed him or something.
Okay. Maybe I was the one being weird.
“Right. Yeah, of course.” I trailed on behind him, feeling kind of like a puppy who’d just been kicked.
Of course he didn’t want to bathe me. And I didn’t want him to bathe me, either. Obviously. That was, well, insane. I didn’t know exactly why he was being so cold to me all of a sudden, but suggesting that he help me shower like he was some kind of servant and I was some kind of princess probably had something to do with it.
I was starting to think that the time I’d spent locked in that awful little room on Var-arak’s ship had changed me in more ways than I’d expected. First, I’d been jealous when I’d seen all of the other women Nion and his fellow soldiers had rescued from the Rutharian ship. Then, I’d bitten Nion’s healer friend when he tried to give me a pregnancy test. Now, I was acting like I expected to be bathed and oiled up in exactly the way I’d hated. What was wrong with me?
Nion must have thought that I was such a spoiled brat. How could he take me seriously, after the way I’d acted? I’d spent my whole life trying to live down my gold-class status. I’d gone to med school while Felicia and my other friends had partied and blown their families’ fortunes. I’d elected to work at a gray-class hospital, just so I could actually help people instead of abusing the privilege of my wealth.
And in that instant, I felt like I’d thrown all of that away. Just like that.
“Nion, I’m sorry if I—”
Nion turned to face me so abruptly, I almost ran right into him.
“Alyse,” he said, obviously straining to make sure he got my name right. “I understand you have been through a great ordeal. I sympathize with you. Anything you need to feel more at ease, I will do my best to accommodate. But you must be more careful here with what you ask of the males you come upon. I am understanding. I am able to control myself. But others…” His voice trailed off as he tore his gaze from mine. He stared at the floor for a moment, and the purple of his irises turned a dark, deep gray. “Others may not. And I will not always be here to save you from them. I am not your servant. I am not your slave. I am trying to be your friend. But you make that increasingly difficult every time you do not pay attention to the words that come out of those lovely lips.”
I blinked. Crap. Fuck. Shit. Everything that I’d been worried about, Nion had just all but confirmed. And now, here I was, on the verge of tears all over again. I’d cried more in the last week than I had since my parents died.
Since they’d been murdered. By the man that, once again in defense of me, Nion had killed.
I bit the tears back and swallowed them down. More tears right now would make it that much harder for Nion to take me seriously—and I desperately, desperately wanted him to think of me as something more than a victim. Something more than a sobbing, delicate thing that he was constantly having to rescue, eternally having to save.
He didn’t want to be my rescuer. He said he wanted to be my friend. And given my current circumstances, I needed a friend now more than I ever had in my life.
“Thank you, Nion.” I choked out. “I’m sorry. I’ll…I’ll be more careful in the future. Of course. I’m sorry I misspoke.”
“You do not need to apologize for anything, Alyse. Not to me.” He nodded at me, then turned again. “Come. This way. Your room will only be a little further…”
I followed him again, but now I was even more confused than ever.
He’d just snapped at me like I’d been incredibly rude to him. Earlier, he’d pushed me away.
But as he’d turned just now, just for a moment…
I already suspected that Lunarian eyes changed color based on emotion. Purple normally. Red for anger.
But when he’d turned away from me, his eyes hadn’t been angry.
No. They’d been that deep, gorgeous, lovely blue.
What that meant, just yet, I wasn’t sure.
But I had a hunch. A big, hard, thick one.
And that only complicated what he’d just told me that much more.
8
Nion
I found the room that had been set aside for Alyse and left her as quickly as I could. Had I lingered even for a moment longer, I feared that I would have only snapped at her further—or worse, changed my mind about assisting her in her shower.
You’re not going to wash me? she had asked, the very picture of innocence. As though she had come to expect me to strip her of the shirt I had given her. To take her beneath the rushing water of the shower, lather soap across her skin and clean away the memories of her time with the Rutharians beneath my hands, without my cock rising up in want of her body in a way I knew I could never have, would have been impossible.
Was she teasing me, I wondered? Did it bring her pleasure to make me ache for her, to play with me only to deny me for her own enjoyment?
That seemed unlikely, though. She may have bitten Coplan, but she had done so in self-defense. She did not strike me as a cruel creature. No, she seemed far too kind for such games.
She said she had been washed in such a manner on the Rutharian ship. Perhaps it had been much the same on Earth as well. Her accent was different from the way that Sawyer and Bria spoke. Her words were slightly more elegant, and she had ordered Coplan as though she was accustomed to getting her way. Even across the reaches of space and culture, it was not hard to recognize a member of the upper class when one was as accustomed to dealing with their privileges as I was. Being attended to, pampered and given every pleasure she desired, was likely just something she had come to expect.
It was merely naivety, then. It must have been.
But that only made her that much more dangerous for me.
I wanted to attend to her. I wanted to shower her with gold and jewels, servants and work-slaves—all that her sweet little heart could ever long for.
And I knew, in my own heart, that I could not. That I could never.
On Lunaria, she would find a mate who could keep her in the same luxury that Bria and Sawyer now enjoyed. Or perhaps she would return to Earth instead. Go back to the life she had been stolen from there. At least then I would not have to catch glimpses of her on some other male’s arm in the marketplace, see her dancing and laughing with the high lords at military balls while I lurked on the fringe of the crowd and wished for a life and birthright that would never be mine.
I stormed through the ship with my lips curled in disdain. I did not en
joy this fresh wave of self-pity I was now reveling in. Nor did I relish the way that even after I had left her, Alyse lingered on my mind.
My boots took me to the training room. A relief. I took up a training staff and turned to one of the combat targets. My blows landed on it hard and fast, though I was not sure at first who I was imagining fighting.
For so long, I had only fantasized about cutting down the Rutharian who had killed my brother. But now, when I imagined a face on the target, I saw that of the Rutharian king instead. Sometimes, between blows, I found myself envisioning the Lunarian who might someday call Alyse his bride.
Sometimes, I merely imagined that the target was myself.
“Nion?” Leonix’s voice called out from behind me. She extended her staff and tapped my shoulder with it until I turned to face her. “I am surprised to find you here. I thought that perhaps killing a king would have been enough fodder for your aggression for one day.”
“I would kill a dozen more kings tonight if I had the chance to,” I swore.
Leonix smirked. “That would not be very practical. You have sown plenty of turmoil in the galaxy tonight just by killing one, I think.”
I raised my staff to meet hers and we exchanged blows, but my heart was not in it. I could not beat Leonix with my staff as ruthlessly as I had beaten on the training target, and in my distracted state, she landed far more hits on my body than I could return.
“My apologies, Lieutenant.” I dropped my staff to the floor and placed my hands on my knees. My side ached, especially where my stitches still pulled at my wound, and now I had bruises on my body from Leonix’s staff as well. “I fear I am far from a worthy opponent for you right now.”
“Oh, you are worthy, Nion.” Leonix landed a final, gentle tap at the top of my head. “It is just as I suspected, though.”
I glanced up at her. “If this is about my injury, I can assure you—”
“No. It is not about that.” Leonix cocked her head toward the door behind us, tilting it in the direction of Alyse’s room. “It is about her. Alyse. The pretty blonde one you rescued. You are entirely moonstruck by her, Nion. I have seen it enough times now, it is obvious.”