And the person he had to guard?
Greener than a Krezlian.
A shiver ran along his spine at the sudden thought of his lizard-like makers, and he immediately locked up the thought to the back of his mind. He’d long ago learned that thinking of the past was no way to move forward. And if he wanted the job in Agaria, dwelling on the past was definitely not the thing to do.
But with how timid the tiny Earth female had seemed, Xarq was sure that she'd never been on an important mission that had required a bodyguard in the past. Hell, had she ever even traveled to space before?
He scoffed at the door before him, rolling his eyes.
This was just his luck. Instead of having some time off before joining the troops in Agaria, he’d be babysitting a newcomer female from Earth until they arrived at their destination. No all-you-can-eat buffets, no beers, not a moment of relaxation before jumping into his new job, but a boring day stalking after a newcomer...
And as if that wasn't all, the female also smelled so... strange. It wasn't a smell he recognized and he’d had to go closer to her to make sure it wasn't just her perfume. But no. It was a part of her natural scent – a sweet, sugary fragrance that floated in the air around her. Like a crea fruit mixed with the strange Earth spice they called cinnamon.
He could still smell the oddly pleasant fragrance in his nose, and for some reason, it made him feel strange inside. His whole body tingled in a way he’d never felt before and his skin felt overly sensitized. It wasn't a feeling he'd ever had before, and that only made him feel more uneasy about the job.
His cock had become achingly hard when he’d inhaled her sweet fragrance, and he’d never wanted a female more than he did at that moment, inside the tiny cabin with the little Earth female. It had taken all of his control not to grab her by her smooth brown hair and have his way with her – and that was dangerous.
He’d been trained on control and especially now, he wasn’t going to make a slip that could potentially endanger everything. He’d finally passed all the tests and had been officially admitted to the military – he could not screw this up.
The Earth female was dangerous.
It would do him good to stay away from her – or as far as he possibly could as her bodyguard. Being in the same room with that female messed with his head, and he had hardly been able to wait to get out of the tiny cabin to breathe some fresh air and clear his mind.
He'd guarded humans before too, that wasn't it. But there was something to the scent of this woman that he just couldn't place. And the strangest thing of it all was that he wanted more. Once he'd caught a whiff of her, he now wanted more of whatever it was.
Xarq groaned, trying to shake his head clear of the female. She might even be a spy or something, trying to use some strange biological weapon against him. She wouldn’t be the first one trying to use his kind for their own benefit. He grunted at the thought. He'd have to be careful around her.
After all, she and her intoxicating scent might ruin everything he’d worked so hard for – trying to become a real citizen in the Alliance, one who worked a respectable job in the military, and not just some result of a fucked-up experiment that everyone looked down on.
Fuck. He'd just have to do this job properly and then join the military unit in Agaria. That was all. Although it pissed him off to get another bodyguarding job, this would be it, his last bodyguarding duty for a long time, and the thought of that lifted his spirits at least a bit.
Military was better. It was tough, but he liked tough. It beat bodyguarding 100-0, although he knew some people far preferred that to the military. Easier or something. But easy was boring. He didn't want easy.
Hearing a rustle on the other side of the cabin door, he was surprised when it opened. His eyebrows shot up as he watched the petite human female walk out of the door, wearing a different black suit than she had previously. It hugged her wide hips and breasts tight, and suddenly, the strange feeling inside him was back.
His gut tightened as her sweet scent filled the corridor around him, and he could feel his cock harden. Dammit. He had never felt like this around a female before. Like she made his insides burn in a way he couldn’t understand.
She walked up to him, her bright green eyes wide as she looked at him. The sight of her big, innocent eyes made his mouth salivate unnaturally.
A pinch of red decorated her cheeks and she had tied her dark brown hair atop her head in a bun – something that he didn’t quite understand but during his years as a bodyguard, had learned to be typical for Earth females – and it wasn’t his job to question his clients in the first place.
He had to admit, the female had thrown him off guard. First of all, looking so… luscious as she did, and second of all, because she had already come out of her cabin although her meeting was still a standard Earth hour away. He hadn’t expected her yet.
“Umm… I’m sorry.” She looked up at him with a strangely pitiful expression on her face. “I’m not used to having a bodyguard so I just…” She bit her lip, and the sight of that made the strange sensation inside his body intensify. Blood pumped to his nether region and he shifted on his feet, feeling uncomfortable. What was it about this woman that got to him?
He didn’t like the unknown. And she was a big fucking unknown.
She seemed to take a deep breath before continuing, all the while avoiding his gaze. Was she afraid? He was used to people being afraid of him. It didn’t matter what species they were, he was an abomination to them all. Mixed breed monsters. That’s what most people thought of his kind, and they either feared him, looked down on him in contempt – or both.
Finally, the female seemed to come to some kind of a resolution, and she looked up at him with determination, surprising him once more. She didn’t look afraid anymore. He could tell that she was only feigning bravery, but still, maybe she wasn’t as green as he’d thought after all.
“Your name,” she said, this time with more strength. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
Xarq’s lip twitched at her brave act, and he couldn’t help being amused. Maybe this job could be interesting after all. He didn’t like the unknown, but so far this female had only surprised him pleasantly.
“Xarq,” he said, knowing that his full name – Xarkhwithniaq – was almost unpronounceable for the human tongue. The Va’ii woman had hardly been better, but at least she had spoken the whole thing out loud. Not that it was his real name anyway. The Krezlians had hardly named their little experiments – but it was what he had started calling himself after being freed.
“Alyssa.” The female stuck her hand out to him – another strange human gesture he didn’t quite understand, but he knew they did when greeting equals – and that’s what amused him even more.
Did she think of him as an equal? He wasn’t one. No one ever thought of him as one. Maybe she was the greenest of green after all and just really didn’t know protocol? Did she even realize what he was?
Staring at her hand, he wasn’t sure what to do. He was a bodyguard, he was supposed to just walk behind whatever person he was guarding at the time, silently following them and definitely not ‘shaking palms’ with them or whatever it was that the humans called their strange custom.
But a strange feeling inside him told him that he didn’t want to disappoint her. She was offering her hand and she seemed sincere about it. And for some reason, he didn’t want to let her down.
After a moment, he decided to extend his hand to hers.
As soon as his palm made contact with her soft skin, an electric jolt traveled throughout his whole body, starting from the point they were joined, all the way to his groin. Unable to help himself, Xarq groaned. An odd sensation of pleasure took hold of his body, and he heard the female yelp.
Xarq let go of the female’s hand quickly, glaring down at her. What the hell was that? Was she really some kind of a spy trying to do tricks on him?
No. As he looked at the female before him, he saw t
hat the human seemed just as frazzled and confused as he was. Her cheeks were flushed red and she looked up at him with wide eyes.
The way she was looking at him… Her flushed cheeks and her innocent eyes wide made him feel odd. Didn’t humans’ faces redden when they were embarrassed…? Or aroused...
His cock twitched in his suit at the thought and he almost groaned again. He’d have to go to the pleasure rooms of the ship once they arrived, to relieve some pressure before his military duties began.
But interesting… This female might be green but not nearly as boring as he had initially thought.
Although what the hell had that… reaction been? He frowned, looking at the palm of his right hand. Nothing wrong with it.
He’d have to get down to the bottom of the problem to make sure it never happened again. It might not even have been her. Maybe there was something wrong with his senses. He did know that many of his kind hadn’t survived even their first days in the lab after being created… Because they were unnatural. Not supposed to exist.
“I… I was thinking of looking around the ship a bit before going to the conference room,” the female said, interrupting his thoughts. Her words were quick, and she seemed flustered, the pink color on her cheeks darkening as she spoke.
Look around the ship? Xarq lifted his arm up, glancing at the monitor in his armband. 10:32 AM Standard Earth Time. She still had over half an hour before the meeting.
“I… I haven’t really been on a Va’ii ship before…” She refused to meet his eyes now, tugging at her suit self-consciously. “And I just thought I could maybe see what there is. Or…”
She did look at him now, her bright green eyes wide. “Or perhaps you could show me around?”
Xarq groaned and immediately shifted his gaze away from the female. He should’ve known this. The Earth female was too green for her own good. She had never been on a Va’ii ship before? And she wanted to look around like some tourist?
Fuck… She probably didn’t even know where the conference rooms were. There was no longer any doubt in Xarq’s mind that this was her first mission of any importance.
And asking him to ‘show her around’…? He was a bodyguard, not a damn personal assistant! He would follow her wherever she went, but ‘showing around’ and being a tour guide was most definitely not on his job description.
Had he almost thought that being assigned to this inexperienced female could be interesting? Yeah, well... He had been wrong. Inexperienced bodies were the worst. They were frustrating, certainly not interesting.
But still, as he looked at the female’s wide green eyes that were full of hope, something moved inside him. For some reason – for some damned strange reason – he found himself unable to say no to her.
He didn’t understand why, but that odd feeling inside him wanted nothing more than to do what she asked and to please her.
Fuck…
“Follow me,” he finally said after a moment, nodding toward the end of the corridor and giving in to whatever the damned feeling was.
CHAPTER 3
ALYSSA
Alyssa walked into the viewing platform, excitement building up inside her. She immediately noticed the room wasn’t quite as spacious as the public viewing platform they had visited moments earlier, but there was another even starker difference between the two.
This one was almost empty of people.
The upstairs viewing platform had been packed full, and when Alyssa had complained to Xarq that she wouldn’t even be able to see anything from there, he had taken her here, a few floors down.
“This is the best place to watch the Fold Drive activate?” Alyssa asked, walking toward the wide windows of the platform that opened up to a scenery of stars.
Xarq hunched a shoulder, leaning against the wall by the entrance. “It’s as good as they come, unless you’re Va’ii or work for the Alliance.”
Alyssa could feel a smile tugging at her lips. She looked around the platform, completely in awe.
Although the platform wasn’t that large, it was quiet. And while she could feel the vibrations of the ship’s engine below her feet, the view itself was perfect. Stars beyond stars expanded before her in the purple and blue hues of space, and the vision was breathtaking.
She would’ve never been able to discover this place on her own – not that she would’ve even gotten in without Xarq.
The platform was a part of an emergency exit – one that only security personnel had access to when the ship wasn’t under attack. In fact, the room was almost like a private viewing area. The few other people in the room stood on the other side of it, and it felt like she was completely alone here. Just her and the stars.
It was perfect.
“Thank you so much for taking me here,” she said, turning to Xarq. “You have no idea how much this means to me.”
Tears started to form in her eyes all of a sudden as she realized she was finally achieving her dreams. First, this whole mission. Now, seeing the activation of the Fold Drive. And soon, traveling to a whole other planet…
It was the culmination of everything she had been working for, and this moment was the highlight of her trip so far.
All Va’ii spaceships were equipped with special technology that folded the space around them and allowed the ships to travel through the universe in mere minutes. And although Alyssa had been in space many times, she had never traveled on a Fold Drive spaceship before.
Human-made spaceships operated with Speed Drives that supported faster-than-light travel but lacked the space-folding technologies that were exclusive to the Va’ii. And although generally humans traded technology with other alien species, the Va’ii Fold Drives were something they hadn’t gotten ahold of yet.
The Va’ii followed what they called the Third Order, which meant that they did not share high-end technology or other advances before a culture was ready to use them peacefully – and with all the raging wars on Earth, humans just weren’t ready.
For the same reason, it had initially required humans to build their first faster-than-light spaceship – as weak as it had been at the time – before the Va’ii and the Ghelians had even made contact with us.
Sure, they had known about humans and the little blue planet for the longest time, but according to the Va’ii – who often acted as some sort of supervisors in the universe – every species had to follow their natural course of development without any outside interference.
So, they had never interfered.
Some said that the Va’ii were stuck-up because of this, thinking too highly of themselves as if they made up the rules of the universe. But Alyssa preferred to think of them as enlightened. They always had a reason for everything they did, even if other species might not understand it.
And thankfully, now that the people from Earth were finally ‘in’ the Interstellar Alliance, the Va’ii sometimes provided their Fold Drive spaceships to them – usually for peace missions such as this one, and Alyssa had really looked forward to seeing the Fold Drive in action. Watching the space fold around you and arriving in a place galaxies away in just a few seconds was just something else – or so she had heard.
Now… She would finally get to experience it for herself too.
Xarq looked at her quietly, staring into her eyes with his black ones. Ever since they had left her cabin, he had assiduously avoided looking directly at her, but whether it was her words or something else, he now finally looked at her straight into her eyes.
He wore an odd expression on his face that she couldn’t quite decipher, and she tried to push back the tears in her eyes. Maybe he was bothered by them. Because although he seemed completely stoic and uncaring, Alyssa could tell he wouldn’t have taken her here if he didn’t care at least a little.
“Really, I mean it. Thank you,” Alyssa said again, wiping away the remainder of her tears. “This is my first mission in space and seeing the Fold Drive activate had always been a part of my dream. So thank you for taking me
here to see it.”
Xarq didn’t say anything. He only kept staring at her with that odd expression of his, as if he was trying to figure her out, but finally, he nodded.
Alyssa had already realized he wasn’t much of a talker. They hadn’t talked much as they had walked around the ship – although it wasn’t for the lack of trying. She had attempted to strike up conversation with him many times, but the man had mostly just grunted back, saying that it wasn’t his duty to talk but to protect.
Yeah, okay, sure. Alyssa rolled her eyes. She was probably the most atypical person to guard, and maybe she was even breaking protocol a bit by talking to him in the first place, but she just had no idea how to act around a bodyguard. Not talking seemed… unnatural when he was in her presence anyway.
Besides, especially now, she couldn’t not talk to him. She was so excited this was happening and she was incredibly thankful to him for taking her here, and she wanted to let him know that.
Obviously, showing her around the ship wasn’t exactly a part of his job, but he had still been patient with her and helped her – much more than she might’ve expected when she’d seen him for the first time. Although at first Alyssa had thought him to be scary and had even been more afraid of him than the pirates, slowly, that feeling was starting to fade.
There was no doubt the man was lethal. But there was also something about him – something about the way he looked at her – that made her insides heat up.
In fact, ever since she had met him, she had felt a strange warmth in her body – like electric sparks traveling through her veins. The feeling had started when they had shaken hands and had since then spread all the way from the top of her head to her toes.
The handshake had definitely been weird – like a jolt of electricity going through her. She hadn’t known what to think of it – still didn’t know – so she had just tried to push the experience to the back of her mind. But she couldn’t help the blush that rose to her cheeks at the memory of his rough hand against her smaller one. And those sparks of warmth that–
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