by Zoe York
He never counted on the cost of that choice, though.
“This stew is surprisingly good.”
Lexa’s smooth voice sucked him out of his dark memories.
He watched her take another spoonful of the rich, dark stew. “You probably don’t want to know what’s in it.”
Her spoon hesitated, hovering above the bowl. Then with a determined move, she brought it to her mouth and swallowed.
Damon smiled. Damn, she had guts. She might eat the cheap stew with manners that no one could mistake for anything other than central systems finishing school, but she wasn’t afraid to jump in.
“Don’t tell me,” she grumbled, wiping her mouth with the threadbare napkin. “I don’t want you to ruin it. I’m hungry.”
He lifted his drink to her.
“I hate that we’re just stuck here.” She sighed, shifting in her seat. “I was really hoping we could have gotten underway today.”
“Don’t be so impatient, Princess. You’ll have your chance to get hot and dusty tomorrow.”
She rolled her eyes. “Do we need to have another talk about that stupid nickname?”
“How about you tell me more about this egg?”
Her eyes lit up and made an already attractive face damn near irresistible. “I know you’re just distracting me, but since it’s a topic I love, I’ll let you.” She leaned forward. “The egg was made by a Terran jeweler, Fabergé. His eggs were famous and highly valuable, most resting in Earth’s museums. The myth says that this egg, known here as the Goddess Egg, was for an emperor to give to his empress. It was made of gold and encrusted with rubies.”
“Terran rubies? Valuable.”
“Priceless,” she said. “The colonists brought it here and over the centuries, a religion grew up around it. A religion that worshipped the goddess of life, birth and fertility, and was led by a group of priestesses. They cherished the jeweled egg and built a fantastic temple to keep it in.”
As she spoke, she glowed, with a look in her eyes that was impossible to glance away from. She loved what she was talking about and Damon felt invigorated by her enthusiasm. When was the last time he’d been truly passionate about anything?
He leaned back in his chair. “Apart from what it’s worth, why is finding this egg so important?”
“History is important, Damon. We learn so much from the past, and one day in the future, people will read about us coming here and finding this lost Terran artifact.”
“So it’s not about money?”
She snorted. “Believe me, my salary is good, but it isn’t worth risking my life on a planet like this. And even if Marius sold the egg, I wouldn’t get anything.” She waved a dismissive hand in the air. “It’s not about money. It’s…about being a part of something special.”
That, he could understand. He’d joined the Galactic Security Services with the misguided belief he’d be a part of something special, something better than what he’d known. Instead, the GSS had trained him to kill and sent him to wade through the muck and darkest shadows of the galaxy until he was so worn down, so damn weary, he’d had to leave just to give himself a chance at surviving.
“You think finding a lost Terran egg is something special?”
She tossed her head back, the light catching strands of her dark hair. He’d thought it simply black, but in the candlelight, some strands turned deep red.
“This will be my…legacy. I’ll be protecting an important piece of history, be the discoverer of something valuable to our past.”
God, he loved needling her. She was so quick to light up, it made him wonder how else she’d light up, especially under his hands.
Oh no, he did not need that kind of trouble. He crossed his arms over his chest and pushed his thoughts back to this quest. “And will I get to be a part of this legacy?”
Another toss of her head. “No. You’re just the muscle. Unwanted muscle, I might add.”
“I know, I know. You didn’t need me to come along. You can look after yourself. Well, Mr. Darend didn’t agree.”
Her mouth moved into a pout. Silence fell between them as they finished their meal. Damon had always found silences with others uneasy. There was always a tension that made people want to fill the void.
But strangely enough, with Lexa, the silence was…easy.
She set her spoon down and looked up. “So, were you really a spy?”
He leaned his elbows on the table. “What do you think?” He was a master at deflecting questions about himself and the work he’d done.
Her gaze ran over him in a way that made him want to shift in his seat. Weird. He’d suffered hostile interrogations chained to chairs for hours, and had been threatened with everything from airlocks to torture, and they’d never made him uncomfortable.
“You have a certain…charm. A way about you that makes people talk. But it’s a cover.”
He raised a brow.
“I’ve seen the changes you’ve implemented at the museum to beef up security. You know what you’re doing. Of course, you’d have to have good credentials for the Darend Museum to hire you.”
A sensible, reasonable assessment. He felt…disappointed. She’d seen exactly what he showed the galaxy.
She smiled. “But…you move like a predator. You can fight, can take down someone far bigger than yourself. You watch everybody and everything like you’re assessing their threat potential. You sit with your back to the wall so no one can sneak up on you. You always carry a weapon and I think you are probably very, very intelligent.”
His smile disappeared. “Not just a pretty face, are you?”
“Nope.” She toyed with her drink. “So yes, I think you were a spy. Why you left a no doubt challenging, important job…that I haven’t worked out yet.”
He took another sip of his ale.
“Well?” she prompted.
He shrugged.
“You aren’t going to tell me, are you?”
He slowly took another drink.
She let out a gusty sigh. “You could tell me but then you’d have to kill me, right?”
He laughed. “I just don’t want to bore you with the truth.” He didn’t want to see the horror in her beautiful brown eyes if he told her about the things he’d seen, the things he’d done. “How about we talk about you? How come an heiress to one of the largest fortunes in the central systems is out in the Exodus quadrant playing astro-archeologist?”
Fire flashed in her eyes. “I am not playing at anything.” She banged her glass down on the table hard enough to rattle their dishes. “I am an astro-archeologist. A damned good one.”
He’d touched a nerve. He held his hands up in surrender.
She pulled in a long breath and played with the end of her ponytail. “Just because my father has money doesn’t stop me from working, or having a career, or doing something that matters.”
“Agreed. I just figured you’d be doing that something at Carter Interstellar Enterprises.”
She snorted. “Hardly. I have five brothers. Despite the fact that none of them have ever shown any interest in being a galactic magnate, my father has never once considered me for the position.”
“Why not? I thought he would have groomed you for something like that.”
A bitter laugh. “I don’t have a penis. He’s old-fashioned like that. I was groomed in looking pretty and I was allowed to ‘play’ at studying.” She fiddled with her napkin, unhappiness on her face. “It was expected that I would marry well and be a nice little trophy to seal a business alliance. Preferably with one of the other families with whom my father does business.”
For some reason, the thought of Lexa marrying some polished scion of a magnate family made Damon want to hurt someone. “That’s…archaic.”
“And not just any family, of course.” She was gathering steam now, the heat in her eyes becoming an inferno. “It had to be the son of one of the four wealthiest families in the Franchise quadrant. It didn’t matter if I liked them, and it
didn’t matter that they are all either obsessed with work or have half a dozen mistresses scattered throughout the central systems.”
If Baron Carter couldn’t see the intelligence and enthusiasm in his daughter, it was his loss. “Your father is an idiot.”
Lexa blinked, the fire draining out of her. She laughed and pushed her hair back over her shoulder. “God, I’ve never heard anyone call my father an idiot.”
Damon sipped his drink. “I’d happily tell him to his face for you.”
“I’d like to see that.” Another laugh, this one longer.
She had a really nice laugh, open and honest. He hadn’t heard a laugh like that much during his deep-cover assignments, where most people were the scum of the galaxy or other spies, all lying and pretending for their own agendas.
Lexa finally sank back in her chair and glanced around. The bar had emptied out while they were finishing their meal. “I guess we’d better get to bed.”
Damon was strangely reluctant for the evening to end. “I guess.” He followed her up the stairs and down the hall. “Well, Princess, except for a violent sandstorm, you managed to stay out of trouble for an evening.”
She shot him a glare. “You can hardly blame me for the sandstorm and I am not a trouble magnet.” She pushed open her door. “Goodnight, Mr. Malik.”
Quick as a flash, Damon pressed a hand to the door to stop her from closing it between them. Large brown eyes watched him warily, and for a second, he really wasn’t sure why he was doing this.
“Just wanted to say, if your father can’t see what you have to offer, he doesn’t deserve you.”
Her mouth dropped open and, without waiting for a response, Damon turned and headed down the hall.
— FOUR —
Lexa thumped her pillow and turned over in her bunk. The bed was so uncomfortable, and the rustic charm of it had worn off a long time ago. She rolled again and the sheets tangled around her legs. She sighed and flopped onto her back.
She stared at the shadowed ceiling. She’d been tossing and turning for a couple of hours now.
Thinking of him.
Why the hell was she thinking of Damon Malik?
Thinking of the way the candlelight had highlighted the sharp dips of his face. The way he laughed, almost as though he was surprised by the sound. The way he sounded as he’d told her that her father didn’t deserve her.
She thumped her flat pillow again. The man was a former intergalactic spy. He could probably tell her she was purple with green hair like a Pegasian and make her believe it.
A whisper of noise broke through her thoughts. She paused, trying to catch the sound again. Had she left her Sync on?
She watched a shaft of moonlight dancing across the ceiling. Well, at least that meant the storm had passed.
But…wait a second. She hadn’t opened the heavy storm shutters on the window. Her heart thumped against her ribs.
A dark shadow raced across the room.
With a gasp, Lexa leapt from her bed. A second shadow darted across the room, and, a heartbeat later, a third one jumped out at her.
Her attacker’s weight hit her in the stomach, and pain exploded as the air rushed out of her. Lexa landed on her butt and the dark shadow leaned over her.
“Where’s the map?” A rasping voice.
Her pulse spiked. How could they know about the map?
“Screw you.” She kicked out with her feet and caught the man in his chest. He flew backward.
Lexa jumped up and grabbed the small, three-legged stool by the small table. She hefted it. It was made of cheap plas and didn’t have much weight to it, but it was better than nothing.
Four shadows converged on her. With her heart hammering an overloud beat in her ears, she noted her assailants weren’t very tall—maybe four feet high—but she’d seen they were fast. They wore rough robes, with hoods covering their faces.
“The map, woman.” The closest man held out a hand. It was covered in dark fur. “That’s all we need and then we go.” He spoke with a strange, sing-song lilt.
“I don’t have a map.” She swung the stool up over her shoulder.
“Then why you fight?”
They swarmed her.
Lexa yelped and swung the stool. She smacked the lead attacker in the head, the stool shattering into tiny pieces, and he fell. The next leapt at her, his arms and legs clinging to her upper body like a Drask suckerbeast. She staggered. The third she managed to kick. He did a graceful flip and landed back on his feet. They were agile as well as fast. She couldn’t see the fourth.
She slammed into the wall, trying to dislodge the being clinging to her.
“The map, the map. Where is it?”
“Don’t…have a map.” She managed to get out as the attacker slid his hands around her neck. She hammered at him with both her fists. “And I wouldn’t tell you even if I did.”
Small but strong hands clamped around her throat. She struggled to dislodge the thing, but damn, he was strong.
Her lungs started to burn.
She watched the three others ransack her room, upending her bag, scattering her clothes. One paged through her Sync before stuffing it in a hidden pocket of his ratty robe. Dammit. At least they’d never break her military-grade encryption.
Lexa fought to drag in air. Spots were dancing in front of her eyes. She kept trying to grab the man gripping her but he wouldn’t budge.
God, she was going to die here in this simple room in a backwater village on Zerzura. She could almost hear her father’s voice telling her “I told you so.”
No, dammit. She spun, aiming for the wall again. But her coordination was gone and she was feeling dangerously lightheaded. She tried to scream but only a squeak made it out of her constricted throat.
She shoved again, with the last of her strength, and managed to make him move an inch. His hands loosened for the barest second and she pulled in a tiny, precious bit of air. Then she screamed.
He grabbed the strap of her sleep tank and she felt it snap. Then those cruel fingers were once again digging into her flesh, cutting off her scream.
Together, they spun again in an ungainly dance. Huge black spots blotted her vision. She saw the small creatures tossing her clothes all over the room. One was now pawing through her small collection of handwritten notes, studying each one, searching for her map.
Lexa fell heavily to her knees. She couldn’t stay upright anymore, and unconsciousness beckoned like a well-known friend promising good things. She blinked slowly.
Then the door burst open, letting in a glare of light from the hallway.
Feeling as though she were dreaming, she saw Damon’s silhouette and the green laser fire of his pistols.
One of intruders grabbed his chest and flopped to the floor. The other two spun and cartwheeled like space-circus performers.
Damon, moving with lethal calm, advanced on the closest attacker. A swift kick, and the smaller man scuttled backward, squawking something to his friends in a language Lexa didn’t recognize.
Damon lifted the pistol and aimed just above Lexa’s head. He didn’t issue a threat, just stood there, radiating a dark intensity. She felt the fingers on her neck tighten, then release.
There was suddenly a wild scramble as her attackers bolted through the room, running on all four limbs. They snatched up their friend and were out the window before she could blink.
Lexa fought to stay upright on her knees and pull in as much air as she could.
Had she just dreamed all of that?
“Princess?” Damon knelt in front of her, his hands molding over her shoulders. “You okay?”
She blinked. Those damn black spots didn’t want to go away. “I think I might faint now.”
***
Damon hadn’t felt fear like this in a really long time. When he’d seen that creature choking Lexa…
Damon wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close to his chest. A second later, her arms wrapped around him and held on�
�tight.
She didn’t faint, but she leaned against him, her fingers tangled in his T-shirt.
He stroked her hair. “Knew you were too tough to faint.”
She gave a little laugh that turned into a sob, which she muffled against his shirt. “I thought I was going to die. I couldn’t breathe.”
He kept stroking her. When had he, Damon Malik—known as one of the most deadly covert agents in the galaxy—ever offered comfort to someone? He was usually the one doing things people needed comforting against. Lexa was an appealing, warm weight against him, all feminine softness leaning into him like…like she needed him.
“Come on.” He helped her up and over to the bed. The sheets were in disarray and twisted.
She sat. “Water?”
He strode over to the tiny bathroom and filled a glass. When he sat beside her, she snapped on the tiny lamp attached to the wall beside the bed.
And then he saw her neck.
God, the red welts were an ugly stain on her smooth skin. It would bruise.
She gratefully accepted the glass and drank, wincing a little.
“I have a medscope,” Damon said. “Let me grab it.”
He saw a flare of fear in her eyes. She didn’t want to be alone. He stepped back, about to tell her to come with him.
Then she pushed her shoulders back. “Okay. I’ll wait here.”
Stubborn, brave and proud. Damned if he didn’t like her more for all of those.
He made the journey to his room quick. He was back in a second and settling beside her on the bed.
“Ah, shit, Princess.” He stroked a gentle finger over the largest welt. “That bastard really did a number on your poor neck.”
“It’ll be fine,” she croaked.
He lifted the slim metal tube of the medscope. “After this, it will be.” He switched it on and a pale-blue light shone out. He held it over her neck and waited as the machine healed her wound. The devices were great for any small-to-medium wounds, but anything worse required a visit to a medbooth or a doctor.
As the injury disappeared, the lines of pain around her mouth loosened. “Thank you.”
He snapped the medscope off and, unable to help himself, stroked her neck with his fingertips once more. She shivered, her gaze dropping to the floor.