Cutie Pi (Holidays of Love Book 3)

by Ellen Mint

  “Cease the false pretenses, Yaxha. I require a chit to access the Tank’s research. One that mysteriously vanished from my person in the blink of an eye.”

  “There are thousands of people on this ship. Any one of them could have stolen it,” Nolan said back.

  Shiban chuckled. “I’m afraid he really does think nothing of you, Dr. Martinez. Cease the lies or I kill her now, then take the chit from your dead body.”

  No. No, no, no. With that chit, Nolan was the only person in the galaxy who could take that research from the Think Tank. Research worth the alien equivalent of billions of billions. I was some silly girl from a backwater planet who struggled to talk to people. He already lied to me, used me.

  I’m nothing to him.

  Mama. Ava. Diego. Damn it, I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye. Tell you I was… They’d look so hard to find me, but there’d be no chance of closure. Even if anyone here cared enough to return my body, there wouldn’t be anything left. I didn’t mean to do this to you.

  Please forgive me.

  “Here,” Nolan said. I tried to strain through my tears sublimating into steam from the rising heat. He held his hand out and the Kirkan reached for it with a tentacle. Suddenly, Nolan slammed his hand shut. “Bring her up.”

  “Very well,” Shiban said and, to my gawping relief, I began to rise. My shirt ripped to stringy tatters against the rocks. No sexy sci-fi tears either. Blood and shredded skin appeared below the gashes, but I didn’t care because I was rising.

  “That’s far enough,” Shiban declared, dangling me right before I could reach a hand to the bottom of the barrier. “I’ve honored my bargain.”

  He must have some trick planned, some way to both keep the chit and save me. I tried to stare up into his eyes, but all I could see were shadows. Nolan picked up the small square in his fingers and, spinning in place, he hurled it down the corridor. “You can fetch it once you give me the rope.”

  “This?” the Kirkan said, laughing. Time slowed to a crawl as I watched its oily fingers open, releasing the rope to the horrors of gravity.

  “No!” I screamed, digging everything I had into the rock. But no one could fight against the universal force, my body bouncing against the cliff as I fell to my boiling doom.

  Heat raced up my skin, the flesh instantly burning red like a bad sunburn. I tipped my head back, prepared to scream to death when my shoulder snapped and my descent stopped.

  Holy…

  I gazed up into the gritting and sweating face of Nolan. Both hands wrapped around the rope, he began to haul me up one palm grip at a time. The whole time he kept shouting something. It wasn’t until I was nearly to the banister, that I heard him promising, “I’ve got you, Trini. I swear.”

  Fingers glanced against mine, but I could barely feel it. All the blood was long drained from my snared wrist. It wasn’t until he reached for my shoulder, that I screamed in pain. “Sorry,” Nolan gasped, “I’m so…”

  “Just get me up,” I cried, gritting my teeth to keep from shrieking. My burned toes hooked onto the bottom of the banister and Nolan reached around the small of my back.

  Together, I shoved my body up and over the safety of the railing. Nolan enveloped me in his arms, both of us walking farther from the edge until we stood in the center. “God, I thought. I was so certain…” I bawled, burying my face in his chest.

  His cheek nuzzled against the top of my head. Agony seared through the whole of my body as blood filled my wrist and my skin’s burn prickled against the cooler air. But those meant nothing to the biggest shock of my life. He threw away his greatest jackpot, billons of billons, for me. For the first time in my life, I was in happy pain.

  “Let’s get you back to the ship,” Nolan whispered.

  I nodded dumbly and wrapped my arms around him, not caring what he was because he already told me. He was a man who kept his word no matter the cost.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “HERE WE GO again.”

  My words were meant to be a light distraction while Nolan drew his healing wand across my knee. I paused in rubbing a gel over my shoulders to fix the crisped skin and watched his movements slow. He didn’t look up, the silence bending space around us.

  I cost him…everything. He had to hate me for running off, ruining his cunning plan, losing him a year’s worth of work. His life in ashes because he picked me up for a ride around the universe.

  The whirring from the magical metal cylinder paused and Nolan rose. “How does that feel?” he asked while inspecting the head of the device. I inched my knee out, bending it experimentally. No sharp pain bit back.

  “Good,” I answered, wishing there was anything else to say. Any words to sweep away this itchy tension clawing between us. Any phrase to explain how I regretted my actions but was tender from his subterfuge. And yet, I couldn’t stop looking at him with a swell of gratitude in my heart.

  Nolan nodded once—and was about to step back—when the eyes that swept everywhere but me landed on my shoulder. His thumb glanced forward, caught a glob of the gel I forgot about, and began to serpentine it further down my chest. I held my breath, watching on pins and needles to see what would happen next. When it was about to dip into my cleavage, Nolan suddenly shook his head as if he snapped out of a trance.

  He rose back, taking his hand away when I spotted the palm. “What happened to you?” I exclaimed, grabbing his hand. A long red welt was gouged straight down the palm.

  At that moment, all I knew was the warmth of his hand safely held in mine. The endless fields of his eyes gazing down at me. And my heart beating drum solos in my ears.

  Nolan dipped his chin, his wounded paw slithering from my grip. He stared at it in wonder. “Must have been from the rope. I’ll just…” Twisting the device to his uninjured hand, he waved it over his palm, but a slow frown appeared. “Probably needs more juice,” he didn’t explain while shoving the device back in a drawer.

  With that finished, he turned away from me and walked out of the kitchen slash med-lab. I sat on the table where he’d placed me before knitting together my ripped up body. It’d been through a lot these past few days. Strangulation, puncture wounds, orgasmic euphoria, serene snuggling, and near dislocation of my shoulder.

  I picked up another glob of the healing goo and rubbed it under my bra. While my skin cooled my brain burned. He’s an alien. He could have twelve arms, no head, and five butts! The chances of you having any attraction to another species are nil, Trini. It’s simple biology.

  Or was it?

  Slipping to my feet, I turned to follow Nolan. I felt unwanted and out-of-place walking down the small hallway. Not even two hours ago, I’d sprinted back and forth, thinking nothing of asking the captain a question. Now it was as if I was walking to the principal’s office to confess to a crime.

  He sat at the console instead of his usual gentle lean. His feet dangled off the tall stool unable to reach the floor while he prodded at the controls.

  “What happens now?” I asked, my arms curling around myself.

  His shoulders hunched together and slowly Nolan turned back to me. “I return you home.”

  Of course. It was fun while it lasted. When I wasn’t fearing for my life. But it all had to end. He had his life traveling amongst the stars, camouflaging his real identity, stealing research from under other scientists’ noses and selling it. I had things to get back to as well.

  The massive mess I left behind—a destroyed lab, a possibly dead Dr. Andersonn, and my own disappearance—bounced through my brain. An urge to run from it all crawled through me. Pick a random destination on the globe and flee. Change my name, pretend none of this ever happened. Start a life as a street vendor selling kebobs.

  No. I wanted to see my brother and sister again. To at least tell them what happened, even if no one else on earth could know. I needed Ava to tell me what I did wrong, Diego to threaten to pound that tentacle creature to dust. To know that as hard as I’d tried, there was no chance of success
because I never get it right.

  “Nolan, I’m…” I began, my breath catching. “I’m sor—”

  Suddenly, his body pitched backward off the stool. I ran for him, my arms flailing out to catch the falling man. As he outclassed me, I merely provided a nice landing mat, but at least it kept him from slamming his head. Together we tumbled to the floor, Nolan moaning in agony. Sweat beaded across his forehead and the arms I held felt clammy and cold.

  In pain, he twisted his hand around and I gasped. Every vein from his palm up to his forearm glowed a bright, pulsing red. “Nolan, what’s happening? What is this?”

  The navigation screen twitched and all of space faded to reveal an ink-black face and blood-red eyes. “Yaxha. How are your hands feeling?”

  “No,” Nolan sputtered.

  “You must have realized by now what I coated the rope in. It’s your fault. Your people’s reach forever exceeding their grasp. Remove yourself from the equation, Yaxha. Or let the virus take effect. Either will work.”

  I glared at the frozen image of the Kirkan gloating about her latest cruel trick. But my vitriol could only last a moment as I rebounded to concern and pity at the man sliding out of my arms. Nolan tried to crawl across the floor on his single hand and knees, but he could barely move. “What is it? What’s she talking about?”

  “Fucking Kirkan slartblast!” he cursed. Nolan began to fold his hand into a fist, but it’d swelled so much he couldn’t even bend the fingers.

  “Please, tell me what’s happening,” I gasped, terrified he was dying right before my eyes and I couldn’t do a thing to help.

  “A virus, a mutation, it’s…lysing my cells. Chewing them up one by one until the damage reaches my heart. A coward’s weapon.”

  Nolan continued to try crawling along the floor and I followed his gaze. He must need the medical device. “I’ll get your healing wand,” I said, about to run for the kitchen.

  “No, it won’t work,” he said, freezing me in my uncertain steps.

  It won’t work? “Then how do I…how can we fix you?”

  “Fix?” he said, his head raising. Red spots burst over his cheeks, growing in veracity as he coughed. “There is no fixing.”

  No. That couldn’t be right. There had to be an answer. Despite his dour proclamation, I bent down and helped Nolan rise to his feet. I placed his bad arm over my shoulder and hooked both my hands to his waist.

  Together, we moved off the bridge and into the hallway. There must be something in the kitchen that would work. Another futuristic cylinder to wave over his body and save him. “Please tell me you’re not dying. You can’t die because…because you saved my life. It’s not fair!”

  Nolan’s dangling head swerved, and he watched the stupid tears tumbling from my eyes. I wanted to wipe them away, but my hands were full of him. “I know how to save myself, but…Ah!”

  “Tell me now.”

  “You’re not going to like it,” he said solemnly.

  “What? Do I have to…to fight off giant-toothed alien beasts in a pit? Milk some ten-foot-long rat creature on a moon? Tell me!”

  He snickered even as his face paled to death and shadows circled his eyes. “I have to change back to my original body.”

  “Oh.” That didn’t sound bad at all. Why wouldn’t I…? The headless creature with five butts from my nightmares rolled through my head. What if his real form was so different he couldn’t even talk to me anymore?

  That didn’t matter. Only his survival did. “How do we do it?”

  “There.” Nolan jerked his chin not to the kitchen but the bedroom.

  I struggled to turn both of us, my zealous ego getting the better of me. With every half-step, his body slipped further from my grip. His skin boiled as it tried to fight off the virus with a fever that’d kill him dead in minutes.

  Please don’t die. I can’t…I can’t lose you.

  “What is it?” I shouted, trying to find any hint of a DNA-scrambler in his room. Why didn’t this place come with labels on everything?

  “The closet,” he said. I watched him try to raise his arm, but it couldn’t even lift off his crumbling thigh. God, no. “It’s actually a…”

  “We don’t have time for that,” I said, limping both of us to what I’d tried to change in earlier.

  Ha, it’d have literally changed every molecule of DNA in my body.

  Fuck. That drained the blood from my face. Nolan was going to come out of that a completely different person. Not just a person, but being. Species. And here I’d…

  Never mind.

  The door opened at our presence, but—as I moved to help Nolan inside the one-man tube—he lashed his hands out and grabbed the sides of it. “Trini, don’t.”

  “This will save your life. You have to.”

  “You don’t understand. If I change back…” He paused and, as he swung his limp head to me, tears tumbled from his eyes. “I can never become human again.”

  “What?”

  “I spent too long in this form. At first, I didn’t think it’d matter as my time infiltrating wore on. Why would I have any interest in some minor rock third from the sun?”

  He’d never be human?

  “What if you became a different person? Another human?” I said, pitching solutions to a problem I could hardly comprehend. It might take some getting used to a new face or different body, but it would still be Nolan.

  “You’re too much alike. It’d…it’d set off a chain of cancers through the body if I tried. Maybe it’s better for me to go out with this face, instead of…”

  “Don’t you fucking think that!” I snarled, growing angrier by the second. Using that emotional boost of rage, I shoved him into the tube and stared eye to eye at the sinking man being eaten alive inside out. “You need to live. You have to live. What I want doesn’t matter.”

  “That’s not true,” he said, throwing a wrench in my steps. “It was never true.”

  “Nolan…” I brushed my hand through his hair, uncertain if I’d ever touch it again. “I want you to live, no matter the cost.”

  He nodded that human head about to be replaced with God knew what and leaned back. The door to the chamber slammed closed and I leaped to the side. “Do I have to press anything?” I shouted.

  “No,” his still human voice called from inside, but it sounded weak and brittle. “It’s automatic. Trini…”

  “I’m here,” I said, placing my hand over the cool metal quickly warming.

  “I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time, that—”

  Whirring cut through his words and sharp lights burst from inside the chamber. “What?” I called, my heart bouncing in my throat. “What did you want to say?”

  No voice answered me.

  What if he didn’t make it in time? What if all of his fears of me not approving of his real form caused him to stall for too long? What if I killed him?

  I’d find that Kirkan and kill her myself.

  My fists balled up into an impotent rage, nails slicing my skin. I kept focused on the closet putting on a laser light show, my heart repeating a single mantra. Please be okay. Please be alive. Please be…

  A ding broke from the panel and the mechanical whirring stopped. What was going to come out of there? Would it still be Nolan? Would he even remember me?

  Could he care about a bipedal mammal?

  Could I care about him?

  Slowly, the door started to retract, about to reveal the dreaded Yaxha the entire universe despised. With my heart in my throat, I waited for the truth.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  WHAT WOULD HE be?

  Nervously, I clenched my fingers together not in prayer but as if I held a grenade in my palms. It felt like if I let them go for a second, it’d explode.

  Smoke tumbled across the floor, wicking out of the dark chamber with a now fully opened door. I gritted my teeth, prepared to face whatever came out. Five heads. His face on his back. What if he was nothing but a long worm without feet or
hands?

  Why wasn’t he walking out?

  Oh shit. “Nolan,” I called, panic gripping my throat. It was too late. He died.

  No. Damn it! I can’t let him…

  “Turn around,” a voice rumbled from deep inside the metal chamber. It wasn’t the same baritone gravel of before. Now pitched to a tenor, there was a softness and surprising vulnerability I never heard once from the human that ran into danger without a second’s pause. “Please.”

  “Why?” I asked. Duh, Trini. He’s probably naked in there.

  Well, not like I haven’t…

  No, I haven’t seen. God, I hadn’t even considered what he’d have in his bathing suit area now.

  Flexing my fingers tighter into the back of my hand, I did as asked and spun around. “Okay,” I called out, “I did.”

  I tried to listen over the pounding of my heart and near whistle spurting from my lips. A sexual relationship with an alien. That’s… Who’s to say he’d even be interested in me? His human body was attracted to me, sure, but that could have been due to hormones. Now that they were all gone, or changed to new cosmic molecular compounds, he may feel nothing for me.

  My swelling heart fizzled into a hollow shell. All the fear that I wouldn’t find him hot transformed into a new one. How could I handle him having no interest in me?

  “Did you finish?” I shouted, my leg bouncing as it wanted me to flip around to learn the truth now.

  “What?” this softer, strange but familiar voice asked.

  “You know, putting pants on or whatever it is you need in your new…old form.” I sounded like such an idiot.

  “Trini, I’m... The clothes I wore before retained their shape enough to stretch.”

  “Then why did you want me to turn around?”

  I heard the first sign of movement. Large movement sweeping across the floor. The hair on the back of my neck rose as it sensed a presence directly behind me. “Because,” Nolan whispered, the voice dropping from above my head, “I don’t want you to look at me.”