Blue watched the woman backhand a patron without stopping or looking when he dared to pat her on the butt.
“Shikita, it is so good to see you. It has been too long since you have come to see me,” she said in a sultry seductive voice. She framed his face in her hands and gave Jayden a long slow kiss. “You will visit me after shift yes?” Blue snorted, drawing the woman’s attention. “Who is this, Shikita? You have brought a woman with you. Does that mean you won’t need me this trip?”
Both Blue and the woman looked at him, waiting on his answer. “Ah, um,” Jayden cleared his throat and started again. “Blue this is Sutcliffe. She, ah, works here as a dancer.”
“Dancing is not all I do Shikita,” she paused and gave him a slow suggestive smile before continuing. “I help Zee run the place. Without me I do not know how she would manage to do all that she does.” She ran a sharp fingernail down his nose.
Blue almost snorted again. Any idiot could see that they had been lovers in the past. The woman was too familiar with him. Touching him freely despite his discreet attempts to discourage her. Blue couldn’t fault his taste. The woman was beautiful. She knew Jayden wasn’t a virgin when they got together. He was too good at sex not to have had a lot of practice at it.
She just didn’t know how she felt at coming face to face, well really face to boobs, with one of his previous lovers. She wasn’t jealous, more amused at watching Jayden’s reaction. He kept glancing at her like he expected her to throw a fit or something. When she didn’t say anything, he continued with the introductions.
“Sutcliffe this is Blue.”
Jayden honestly had no clue what else to say. He could not say she was his lover or his bonded. He could not say she was Idris’s sister. That was still under wraps. This was very awkward. One look at Blue and he knew, she knew just what his past relationship with Sutcliffe had been. He fought the urge to squirm under her gaze like a small boy caught in a bit of mischief. Until he caught the amusement coming from her. He made sure she felt his exasperation before asking Sutcliffe, “Have you seen Krakin?”
“No, not for a few days. I am sure he left the station.”
“Is Zee here?”
She looked around before replying, “No, not now. She will be later. What is going on Jayden?” she asked him in a sharp tone of voice that was no longer playful.
“Nothing. I need to talk to her when she comes in. Will you send her over?”
Sutcliffe studied him with shrewd eyes before she nodded, “My set starts in half a turn, if I see her before then I will let her know you are here.”
She turned her attention to Blue, “It is very nice to meet you. I would love to spend sometime talking with you later if you do not mind.” Her expression was guarded. She was braced for Blue to reject her invitation.
“I think I would enjoy that. Perhaps after your set you can join us?” Blue replied. The beautiful woman's face lit up. Blue felt her surprise and gratitude. She didn’t think this woman had a lot of female friends.
“Yes. That will work very nicely since any other plans I had are no longer on the table.” Sutcliffe gave a low throaty laugh with a side long glance at Jayden.
A shout from the bar drew her attention, “I must go now Shikita. I will see you later.” She gave Jayden a light kiss then grinned at Blue, “For old time sake you understand?”
“Yes I do,” Blue smiled back at her.
Jayden looked confused. “I do not understand,” he shook his head. He had no idea what the two women were talking about and it showed. “What is there to understand?” he asked again.
Blue patted his arm, “That’s okay. You don’t need to understand.”
“I am going to like you,” Sutcliffe said as she turned and glided away, still smiling.
“I think I am going to like her too,” Blue told Jayden.
“You can’t like her,” he said.
“Why not? Just because you had sex with her doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.” He led her over to an empty table in the corner.
“That is not what I meant. But it would not be right for you to be friends with her.”
“I repeat why not?” Blue narrowed her eyes at him.
“Because she is a stripper and probably a hooker. You are a princess whether you like it or not. It would not be right.”
“That’s bull and you know it. She was good enough for you to have sex with but not good enough to associate with. You can go soak your head.” Blue was so angry she went still as a statue. She unlocked her ridged muscles and stood up. In a deliberate move she swiped a glass from the next table and dumped it over Jayden’s head, soaking it for him.
In a cold, furious whisper she leaned close and told him, “I have news for you big guy. No one and I mean no one, is going to tell me who I can and can’t like. Just because she is a stripper doesn’t mean she is stupid or that she doesn’t deserve your respect. Have you ever had a conversation with her?”
Jayden opened his mouth to speak but shut it when Blue continued without pausing, “I mean a real conversation not a prelude to sex.” He said nothing and she gave a sharp nod. “I didn’t think so. She was happy, really happy to see you and when she saw me with you it hurt her. You were not just another roll in the sack to her. She cares about you.” She gave him a scathing look then turned and walked away.
Jayden rose to follow calling out, “Where are you going?” When she ignored him, he spoke telepathically, “Blue come back here. You can not go wandering around on your own.”
She turned to glare at him through cold icy blue eyes that glowed slightly, “Who do you think you are? You need to get it through your thick head that you don’t get to tell me what to do. Not now, not ever. How many times am I going to have to repeat that before it gets through your thick head?”
“I did not mean it the way it sounded. I just meant that the station is not the safest place to be wandering around at this time of turn.”
“Jayden if I don’t get some space from you right now, I will hurt you. I am going to leave. I will be back in an hour. I survived on my own before you and I assure you I will be just fine.” She spoke calmly and in short sentences in that same cold voice. “Leave me alone before I do something we will both regret.” She slammed a door shut in her mind, closing him out as much as she could.
Jayden watched her stride from the bar and get lost in the crowd of aliens. He was not sure exactly how things had gotten out of hand so fast. He had not meant what he said to be an insult to her or to Sutcliffe.
Her life was about to change drastically and there were some things a princess just did not do. Hanging out with a stripper was just one of them. It did not have a thing to do with his past relationship with Sutcliffe or how nice she was. And that was all just bull, he thought with a sigh.
Blue was who she was. She was not going to change to fit anyone’s idea of a princess. Not for him and not for a planet full of people who did not even know she was alive. He loved her just the way she was and would not change a thing about her.
That thought hit him with an invisible hard punch to the stomach. He loved her. He had known for some time that he wanted to keep her. But now he had gone and fallen for her so completely that he could not imagine his life without her. She was stubborn, tough, standoffish, and her smile could cut a man off at the knees.
She was also caring, loyal, compassionate and had a slightly bent sense of humor. He now knew she also had a hell of a temper. It was not the fiery, throwing things kind of temper that burned itself out quickly. No, this was cold and sharp as a finely honed blade ready to slice a person to pieces before they even knew it was coming. Jayden sat back down to wait for either Blue to come back or Zee to show up so he could ask about Krakin.
Blue walked around the station until she calmed down. It seemed it did not matter whether a man was human or alien. They were all idiots at one time or another. Men had sex all the time without caring for their partners. For that matter she knew women did also. I
t was just distasteful to her. The way he had dismissed Sutcliffe as a stripper and maybe hooker made her so angry.
She did have an advantage in being able to read her. The woman was a little bit in love with him and he was clueless. To him she was just a body he had enjoyed for a brief time. She knew Jayden didn’t mean to sound so condescending. It had just come out that way. He wasn’t an elitist, concerned with appearance the way most men in his position would be. But if he thought she would let him get away with being a jerk he could think again.
Her steps slowed as a humming sound penetrated her anger. She looked around and saw she was in a dimly lit, deserted section of the station. The humming was coming from a small, dingy, cluttered shop hidden in the corner. She entered the dreary shop and walked to the back through a doorway to a pile of junk in the corner. She dug through and found a hunk of rock about the size of a baseball.
It wasn’t a chrystal just a flat grey rock with lines of silver running through it. It was warm to her touch though and humming. She sat back on her heels and listened to the pleasant sound. For once she was so caught up in something that she didn’t hear the man approach her until he spoke, startling her.
“What are you doing?” he asked in a harsh voice. Blue turned her head and found herself looking into his eyes even kneeling as she was.
He was short, maybe three and a half feet tall. His face was old and had so many wrinkles she could barely make out his features. Blue fought the insane urge to giggle at the picture of Yoda that popped into her mind, even though the only thing they had in common was the height and wrinkles. She could not prevent the smile that came to her lips.
“Hello. I am sorry if I am intruding but I couldn’t resist coming in when I saw your shop and heard the music from this,” she held up the chunk of rock. “What is it you do here?” she asked. As soon as Blue spoke the man’s face softened at the musical sound.
“I fix things,” he told her in a much softer tone. He cocked his head and twitched his ears. “You are from Shillidon,” he stated with assurance.
“That’s debatable at the moment,” she answered with a wry smile.
He grinned showing even white teeth. Blue saw a hint of the handsome man he had been in his youth. She knew, thanks to Dro, that some races lived longer than others and wondered how old he was.
“I am two hundred and eighty two years old,” he said.
“Are you reading my mind?”
“No. It is the first thing anyone wonders when they meet me,” he said and started laughing. “That’s not too old for some race’s but for mine it is ancient.”
Blue was thoroughly enchanted with this old man. The emotions coming from him were gentled by time. He was at the end of his relatively short life compared to some and he accepted it with grace. He wanted to spend the time he had left tinkering with his gadgets and being left alone.
When Blue left the shop thirty minutes later she had the humming rock with her. The old man had insisted she take it with her as a gift. He had also gained her promise to come back before she left the station. She made her way back to the bar and Jayden.
She may have over reacted just a bit. He was still wrong but maybe she shouldn’t have dumped whatever was in that glass over his head. The look on his face had been priceless though. Her steps slowed as she tried to figure out why she had reacted the way she did. She did not even know Sutcliffe.
There was the fact that when she and Riley were living on the streets a hooker had made sure that they had food every day, until she had gotten beaten up one too many times and died from her injuries. She had been young, not much older than they had been. Hers was the same story as hundreds of others. A runaway who got caught up in drugs and booze. She was always trying to get them to go home before it was too late. She never understood that there was no home for them to go to.
So maybe the memory of that plus the fact that she and Jayden had been together almost constantly for two weeks had her nerves a little frayed. She was a solitary person and she missed walking on her beach with the sound of the waves crashing on the rocks. But the truth was the closer they got to Shillidon the more unsettled she became.
Jayden’s remark about what was expected of a princess had just driven home how much she wasn’t a princess and didn’t want to be. Oh, she wasn’t stupid enough to believe that there wouldn’t be celebrations and a big deal made of her return from the grave. All of those people would be looking to get something from her. She could and would handle that.
She didn’t know if she could handle having a mother and father. What would they want from her? How would they expect her to act? Those thoughts and more had gone through her mind time after time and she still had no answers and would not until she reached her home world.
Home world, such a complicated concept for her. Would she feel a connection to the place she had spent her early years or would it be just another world she didn’t fit into?
In the midst of her musings she saw a tall dark haired man duck furtively into a darkened shop. Something about the way he moved grabbed her attention. She stopped and flattened herself against the wall. She crept closer until she was just to the side of the door. She heard murmurs but could not make out the words spoken by the two men inside.
This would be so easy if she could just go to her astral form. Then she could be in the room with them and they wouldn’t even know it, but she didn’t dare leave her body unattended here without protection.
Time to switch tactics she thought as she backed up. She put a vacant smile on her face and a sway in her steps. Pretending to be drunk, she hoped aliens reacted the same way as humans did when they had too much to drink. She stumbled her way into the shop. Feigning surprise she opened her eyes wide. “Whoops,” she giggled. “I didn’t see you,” she said right before she plowed into them.
Riley was so much better at this kind of stuff than she was. “I think I am lost,” Blue said adding another giggle as she leaned into the tall guy. He pushed her away with a look of distaste.
“Go away. We are closed,” he said. The emotions coming from him didn’t help her at all. He was feeling disgust and sense of urgency to leave. The brief glimpse of his thoughts she had gotten were the same. He wanted to get away from his companion. The disgust he felt was for the other man not her.
She tried an indignant look, “Well excuse me. You don’t have to be so rude.” She turned to the other guy who had not said a word since she stumbled in.
She kept the shock off her face by sheer force of will. He looked enough like Idris to be his brother. The only differences she could see was the color of his hair and his eyes were a watered down version of Idris’s bright blue color. This guy looked soft where Idris wasn’t. She recognized the type. Pampered and privileged, he probably had never done a day’s work in his life. Soft was not an adjective anyone would ever apply to her brother. The resemblance was so close though that there was no way this man wasn’t related to him, them, whatever.
Unlike the man next to him he was feeling a malicious glee mixed with satisfaction. It rolled off him in nauseating waves. He took a good look at her and lust filled his eyes and thoughts. It never entered his tiny little mind that she wouldn’t go to bed with him.
Blue fought the urge to show him just how wrong he was with a knee to the groin hard enough to put his balls in his throat. That was still the most effective way she knew to put most men down fast. Especially one like him.
He gave her what she was sure he thought was a charming, sexy smile before saying, “Let me help you find your destination.” He took her hand in his and told the other man, “I want that little matter taken care of within the next twenty turns. It is time I took my rightful place.”
“It will be done. You had better make sure that you can hold up your end of the bargain,” the dark man replied menacingly.
“You will have them as soon as the job is done,” the Idris look alike said before turning back to Blue.
They must think
that she was stupid. Either that or she was really good at playing the drunk, clueless girl.
“Now what did you say you were looking for,” he asked her.
Blue let him lead her from the shop and down the corridor. She made sure to stumble every few steps to keep up the pretense and to keep him touching her.
His thoughts gave her no clues about what he was up to. They were all about getting her back to his ship for some wild sex. He was hyped up on adrenaline from the deal he had concluded. She was the perfect woman to help him work it off, or so he thought. She wished he would think about the stupid deal instead of the things he wanted to do to her.
When they had gone far enough from the shop Blue stopped abruptly. Slapping her free hand to her forehead she exclaimed, “I was looking for Pasha Daeco. He is expecting me to deliver a message.” She took the gamble that he would know the name and reputation of the man and not want to get on his bad side for detaining her.
“Of course, his office is on the next level up. I shall escort you,” he said eagerly.
Blue plastered a worried look on her face, “I don’t know. He might get a bit upset if he sees you.” She giggled again for effect. She really wished she could beat him up on principle, he was so sleazy. In a sultry whisper she said, “How about I meet you after I deliver the message to Pasha?” At least she hoped it sounded sultry. She had never actually tried to sound sultry before so she wasn’t sure she pulled it off. She named a restaurant she passed earlier that they could meet at.
He was irritated at the lost opportunity to meet Pasha and at the thought of having to buy her dinner before he got her back to his ship. He countered with, “Why don’t you meet me at docking bay sixteen and we can have a nice dinner on my ship.”
Blue pretended to think about it for a minute,“Sure, I’ll see you in few.” She turned and staggered off in the direction of the lifts.
Halfway there she turned to see him stride off in the opposite direction with a jaunty spring in his steps. He was feeling very satisfied with himself. The thought that when she didn’t meet him as planned would wipe a little of that satisfaction from him was satisfying for her. She dropped the drunken act and bypassing the lifts went to join Jayden. She was feeling like she needed a shower to wash the slime off.
Chrystal Bones (Finding Home Book 1) Page 20