by Tamsin Ley
From somewhere near the door, a gruff voice said, “She probably works for Syndicorp.”
Blue eyes flashing with cold fire, Qaiyaan asked, “Are you working for the ‘corp?”
Her ire rose. They may not have gotten off on the best foot, but she thought they’d had a pretty good conversation back in his room. And a good kiss. She didn’t just kiss anyone like that. She clenched her fists at her sides. “You think I want these things in my head? I’m a slave to Syndicorp. You said so yourself.”
“She’s a spy.” Noatak’s shaggy head appeared over Qaiyaan’s shoulder. “What’d they pay you to infiltrate our ship? ‘Cause I can tell you now, it’s not worth it.”
“Pay me?” Her voice rose an octave. “They tried to kill me!”
Mek elbowed the men aside, pointing at the door. “Out, all of you. I said don’t get her stirred up.”
“Hey, what’d I do?” the younger man complained.
The gruff man continued to glare at her without moving. “We need answers. What if she infected the ship with those bots from her head?”
Qaiyaan closed his eyes, his chest rising in a large breath. He pointed to the door. "Noatak, if you're worried, go run some diagnostics." He opened his lids and stared at the younger man. "Tovik, isn't there something you ought to be tinkering with in the engine room?"
Grumbling, both men disappeared.
“You too, Captain,” Mek said.
The urge to reach out and grab Qaiyaan's hand overwhelmed her. For whatever reason, she wanted to keep him near. Did Denaidans have a special power over women or something? She wished she knew more. Relief washed over her when his hand gripped hers, and she wondered if he felt the same need to touch her. He must since he'd reached out, right?
“I’m not leaving.” Qaiyaan opened his eyes to meet Lisa’s gaze. “I need you to tell me everything you can about these nanites. The truth. Were you attempting to infect my ship?”
She fought to control her trembling lips. “The only reason I was trying to hack your ship was to contact my brother.”
“So you were trying to hack it?” He seemed to grow several inches taller and drew back.
Lisa tightened her grip, refusing to let go. She yanked the towering captain toward her and sat up so she could glare at him more easily. “I’m carrying very secret, very expensive Syndicorp tech in my head, and my ship was just destroyed by pirates. Can you blame me for wanting to figure some shit out before blabbing the whole truth to you?”
Qaiyaan’s lips thinned. “Your ship was destroyed by Syndicorp. Every second you’re on board my ship puts my crew in danger. Are there any other details you might want to tell me before we have troopers breathing down our necks?”
She sank back against the pillows. “I didn’t ask to be brought ab—”
Mek interrupted their battle of wills by pressing a scanner to her temple. Pain arced outward from the point of contact, sending her flopping back against the pillow. She released Qaiyaan’s hand, pressing both palms against her forehead and squeezing her eyes shut.
“What did you do to her?” Qaiyaan bent so close she could feel his breath on her skin. The sensation cooled her pain.
She opened her eyes to see Mek holding up the scanner in submission. “Her nanites aren’t something I can read without equipment. She’s going to need to withstand a little pain until I have more information.”
After a moment, Qaiyaan straightened, making room for the doctor to continue his exam.
Mek lowered the scanner and squinted at Lisa as if trying to read her mind. "What were you doing when you lost consciousness?"
“Kissing your captain,” Lisa groused, glaring at Qaiyaan.
Qaiyaan’s copper skin flushed an adorable blue-green. Lisa wished he’d come close and kiss her again. The big man stared into her eyes as if he was thinking exactly the same thing. She licked her lips in anticipation. All she should be thinking about was getting well and finding her brother, and the topmost thing on her mind was making out? What was wrong with her?
The doctor cleared his throat. "I see. Well." He focused his attention on his captain as if his words weren't for Lisa at all. "I feel it's my responsibility to warn you that having sexual intercourse with captain Qaiyaan—with any Denaidan—will kill you."
Qaiyaan made a choking noise. “I wouldn’t! I didn’t.”
Kill me? Lisa frowned, examining Qaiyaan’s broad shoulders and copper skin. The thrill of his massive erection prodding her hip and the pliable yet demanding way his lips had covered hers still coursed through her blood. She couldn’t remember wanting a man that badly before, let alone an alien. “I don’t understand.”
"It has to do with ionic frequencies and brain waves. In the moment of climax, he would basically short-circuit your synapses." Mek's face was grim.
Lisa blinked, trying to understand. Sex with Qaiyaan would literally blow her mind? Damn. She wasn’t sure if the tingling in her core was fear or curiosity. Probably both.
Mek returned to reading his scanner. “Qaiyaan, did you by chance test her resonance?”
Qaiyaan’s answer was husky. “I thought I had it under control.”
Mek shifted to access his computer on the nearby counter. “Lisa, you said you were in cryo to keep your nanites stable. Did any of the Syndicorp doctors happen to mention why?”
The headache his earlier scan had caused was rising again, and she could barely focus. Looking at Qaiyaan seemed to be the only thing grounding her. She wished he’d take her hand again. “Something about sensitivity to energy fluctuations during engine burn.”
Mek twisted to look pointedly at his captain. “She’s sensitive to ionic pulses.”
“I get that. Believe me.” Qaiyaan’s brows were knit, but she no longer thought it was due to anger. He seemed… concerned? And he was fighting the urge to touch her again, she knew it. He pressed his palms against his rock-hard abs.
"But she survived." Mek raised his brows as if there was far more to his words than he was saying.
Qaiyaan’s eyes widened. He looked at Lisa again as if seeing her for the first time. “How?”
“I need to do more tests.”
“Wait a second,” Lisa raised a hand, not sure her throbbing head was letting her follow this conversation. “Survived what? We didn’t have sex.”
Qaiyaan wedged his body between her and the doctor. “I won’t touch her again. Just keep that scanner away from her. It obviously hurts her.”
“I need more data if I’m going to keep this from happening again. Her nanites are extremely unstable right now, but I don’t believe they’re the problem. I have a hunch it’s something deeper, perhaps like an empathic migraine.” Mek shifted to one side so he could see her around his captain’s body. “Lisa, I believe I may be able to regulate your synapses. Do I have your permission to try?”
Syndicorp had said her nanites weren’t stable, but even they hadn’t known just how unbalanced she was; Doug had secretly reprogramed them a couple of times to get things under control. Even his expert hacking could only go so far. Her mind just didn’t play well with the Syndicorp technology. The thought of Mek’s scanner touching her again made her want to cry. But the doctor spoke with such confidence, she wanted to believe him. Wanted to trust him. What if the problem wasn’t with her nanites, but with her mind? Could Syndicorp have missed that possibility? She stretched and put a hand on Qaiyaan’s hip, finding solace in the contact. “I want to try.”
He turned back to look at her. “Are you sure?”
Biting her bottom lip, she nodded. She wasn’t sure of anything, especially this strange connection to an alien captain. Needing Doug was awful enough. Attaching herself to Qaiyaan wasn’t an option. Yet she required his help to find her brother. Whether Mek’s tests fixed her or not, she needed time to think. “You should go.”
Qaiyaan frowned and backed away. A moment later, he pivoted and left the room. Lisa took a deep breath and made a point of focusing on the doctor.
/> Mek watched him go, then lifted the diode from where she’d flung it aside and showed it to her. “I’m going to reattach this. Try to endure it as long as you can.”
Lisa braced herself, just like she had during countless tests in the Syndicorp lab. “All right.”
As the electric pain dug into her temple, she stared at the open doorway. She wasn’t the kind of woman who needed a man in her life.
Chapter Seven
Qaiyaan paced the galley, eight steps one way, turn, eight steps back. Tovik perched on the edge of the counter watching him. Noatak sat at the table, arms crossed. His scowl had become a permanent fixture. “Are you sure it’s the bond you’re feeling?”
“I’m not sure of anything,” Qaiyaan said. “All I know is something happened when I tested her resonance and now I can’t seem to get her out of my head.” The desire to be near Lisa, touch her even, threatened to block out all rational thinking. Even with her only down the hall in the med bay, he felt too far away. The disconcerting feeling inside him made him jittery, almost ill. He felt as if he’d been thrown into zero-G without his ionic shell. If this was the mate bond, he wasn’t sure he wanted anything to do with it.
“But you didn’t have sex with her?” Tovik asked bluntly. “Maybe you came a little bit in your pants.”
Leveling a gaze at his young engineer, Qaiyaan ground out. “I think I’d remember if I had.”
Noatak chuckled, rocking his chair onto its back legs.
Tovik flushed, looking at his knees while he drummed his fingertips on the counter either side of where he sat. “Okay. Have you tried to communicate through the bond?”
Qaiyaan shook his head. Some Denaidan couples were so well matched in frequency, they could speak to each other over long distances without the aid of a comm system. But he hadn’t even thought of attempting to communicate. Testing Lisa’s resonance instead of fucking her silly had been the most rational thing he’d been capable of.
Noatak let his chair legs thump back to the floor. “Initiating an empathic connection is the highest level of bonding, Tovik. Even most Denaidan couples could never achieve that.”
“But she survived his ionic test.” Tovik frowned. “I bet it’s her nanites.”
Noatak placed his palms flat on the table and leaned forward. “Are you saying she might be hacking into his brain?”
Qaiyaan stopped pacing.
The young man swung his gaze from the ceiling to Qaiyaan’s face. “Not hacking. But the nanites could be acting as an interface for your ionic resonance. Remember when we passed too close to that dark nebula, and I had to adjust the burn frequency on the engines because it was creating a sine wave that caused headaches? Her nanites are sensitive the same way. Sensitive to us.”
“You mean sensitive to Qaiyaan," Noatak added. "I don't feel anything from her except trouble."
Tovik waggled his fingers like he did when he came up with an idea about upgrading the engine. “You know what this might mean? We might be able to create mates!”
Qaiyaan rolled his eyes. Surely such a thing wasn’t possible? It sure as hell didn’t sound ethical. “Spoken like a true engineer, Tovik.”
Noatak remained rigid, his nostrils flared. “I don’t like it. A bunch of micro machines in someone’s head? It’s unnatural.”
Tovik scowled at Noatak. “At least you guys were old enough to experience a woman before the Termination. I’m going to be a virgin my whole life. Can we at least consider the idea?”
Qaiyaan balled his fists, every muscle in his body stiff. Considering the idea meant feeling hope, and that wasn’t something he was comfortable with. All hope had been crushed with the destruction of his planet. Crushed by Syndicorp. “Even if she’s capable of completing a mating, we can’t trust her nanites. They’re Syndicorp tech.”
Noatak added, “She’s probably a spy. Plus she’s wanted by the Whylon cartel. Let’s drop her on Bolisare, trade in these supplies, and burn out of there as fast as we can.”
"If she bonds with Qaiyaan, we can trust her. Ellam Cua created the bond so we could always be sure of our mate's integrity." Tovik nodded sagely. At twenty-two, he was the youngest of the Denaidan survivors, both on the Hardship and within the entire pirate fleet. The poor young man had almost no memories of his ancestral home, and only called upon their god when it suited him to do so.
“Ellam Cua isn’t her god,” Noatak inserted. “Let it go.”
“But the captain said that’s what this feels like.”
“I have no idea what I’m feeling.” Qaiyaan nearly growled in frustration. He glared at the door, imagining Mek alone with her in the med bay. Testing her. Touching her. Jealousy made his blood boil. Yet uncertainty turned him cold.
“She’s not Denaidan.” Noatak slapped his hand on the table with a bang. “We have no idea what might happen if he tries. What if the bond only works one way? What if Qaiyaan becomes her slave?”
If the room had been tense before, the air fairly crackled now. Qaiyaan thought back to that derelict ship. He’d originally thought it could be a trap. What if Lisa was a spy of sorts? Poisonous bait, offering the one bit of hope the Denaidan pirates couldn’t refuse? She didn’t even have to know about it. Probably didn’t. It would be just like Syndicorp to come up with that kind of plan. And they were reportedly growing weary of Denaidan pirates nibbling at the edges of their galaxy.
Tovik’s excited energy had settled, and his hands lay limp against his thighs. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Of course you hadn’t,” Noatak said. “Listen. I’m all for finding mates and whatever, but this girl came out of nowhere. We can’t trust her or her Syndicorp nanites. We need to get rid of her ASAP.”
Qaiyaan stared at the table’s scarred surface. Noatak made sense. Sending Lisa on her way was probably the right thing to do. The smart thing. But the idea of parting from her caused an ache inside him. “Syndicorp blew up her ship. We should at least try to find out why.”
Noatak started to argue, but Qaiyaan didn’t hear him. His skin had begun to tingle and his chest burned. She’s coming. Sure enough, Lisa’s small form appeared around the door jamb. She remained frustratingly just out of range of his touch, her brown eyes slightly narrowed.
Mek appeared in the hall behind her and gestured for her to enter the room.
Still watching Qaiyaan suspiciously, she moved to the table, careful to avoid touching anyone, and sat.
Qaiyaan raised a brow at Mek in question. “What’s going on?”
“I gave her some recovery stim.”
“You did what?” Qaiyaan balled his fists. The stim helped a Denaidan recover more quickly after strenuous ionic exertion, but it was also highly addictive. Noatak had relapsed several times since his recovery, and Mek kept their supply under lock and key.
Lisa crossed her arms and took a shuddery breath. “I told him to.”
“Why?”
Mek made some adjustments on his handheld’s sensor. “I gave her the stimulant to temporarily alter her brain waves. I want to gather her responses to environmental input. Noatak, touch her hand.”
Noatak did a double take and stepped back, while Qaiyaan stiffened, entire body tense with… jealousy? “Why does he need to touch her?”
“I’ll touch her,” Tovik held out a hand. But he kept a wary gaze on Qaiyaan.
Twisting in her chair to face him, Lisa stretched out her arm and brushed her fingertips against Tovik’s. Qaiyaan’s pulse thundered in his ears. He kept his focus off Lisa and instead bored his gaze into the doctor, who still looked down at his handheld.
“Huh,” was all Mek said, then looked expectantly at Noatak.
Noatak crossed his arms tightly over his chest, his face hard. “For all I know, she’s contagious and now you’re all infected. I’m not touching her.”
“If we’re infected, you are too. You already touched her when we caught her in the corridor,” Tovik offered helpfully.
“Fine.” Noatak dropped his arms to h
is sides. After a brief hesitation, he stretched one index finger toward Lisa, allowing her to press her fingertip against his in a strange sort of greeting. The first mate’s lip curled and he pulled his hand away. “Satisfied?”
“Why are we doing this?” Qaiyaan grumbled, hating watching his crew manhandle her.
Lisa straightened her shoulders and met his gaze with an intensity that made him wonder if she possessed ionic powers of her own. “I refuse to let these things ruin my life. If I’m going to join your crew, I need to get them under control.”
Join my crew? That was the last thing Qaiyaan expected to hear. A woman on board his ship? Permanently? Anaq, he wasn’t used to being around women, let alone one as determined as Lisa. How could he keep his urges throttled if she was parading herself in front of him every day? “I, uh…”
Noatak moved shoulder-to-shoulder with him, creating a wall. “We don’t need the likes of you getting in the way of our operations. Now go back to the med bay before we throw you in the brig.”
“You have a brig?” Lisa’s eyes widened.
Qaiyaan glared at his first mate. “No. We don’t.”
Mek waved his scanner at Qaiyaan. “Your turn to touch her.”
A small thrill raced up Qaiyaan's spine, and through the air, he felt Lisa's matching shiver. Were they so in tune with so little effort? He didn't know how that could be, but it was a far better sensation than the vertigo he'd been experiencing in her presence earlier. Holding out his hand palm up, he allowed her to settle her small fingers over his in the lightest of touches. The thrill coiled into a knot deep in his belly. To his delight, a flush rose into her face.
Tapping a few filters on his screen, Mek looked up, his clean-shaven face alight with discovery. “Her brain waves show a remarkable similarity to Denaidan empath response markers. If I can get my hands on some supplies on Bolisare, I believe I can stabilize her synapses.”
Qaiyaan exhaled, long and slow. He’d been more worried about her than he’d admitted, even to himself. “That’s great news.”
“And just how are we supposed to pay for these supplies?” Noatak was glaring at Lisa. “Our payload’s barely going to bring in enough to get us to the next spaceport.”