“You already broke my nose,” he said. “I think we’re even at this point.”
He started to walk and, just as he suspected, she started to scream.
Sighing, he just carried on.
Today had not turned out as he’d expected. He was going back with the cat, as per the mission objective, but also with a female who’d broken his nose. He sighed again.
The Emperor was going to find this funny as all draanth; he just knew it.
3
“What the actual fuck?!”
She screeched it as he just upped and carried her out of her own apartment, one arm locked around the backs of her thighs, like she was a bag of shopping he’d grabbed on the way out. The blood was still dripping off his chin from where she’d broken his nose, and he was just… walking. Carrying her over his shoulder like it was just Tuesday. How many women did he kidnap on a regular basis?
He was so tall that he had to duck to get through the door.
“No! You can’t do this! This is kidnapping!”
He grumbled something under his breath; the sound vibrating through her stomach against his broad shoulder. The leather of his uniform was cold and wet against her palms where she shoved at his back. Got nowhere. Shit, the guy was built like a sodding truck. She knew the Lathar were bigger than humans, but there was bigger and there was bigger.
And Emily had married his brother?
Doors on the corridor cracked open as they passed. She could see them from upside down… a thin strip of yellow light, a face, gone again as soon as they registered what they were looking at.
“Help me!” She gasped. “I’m being abducted by aliens!!”
Well, alien. Singular.
But no one ventured outside their doors to help. Fucking cowards. She’d known they wouldn’t. These were people who’d heard Mrs. Tranter’s place get stripped to the carpet tacks, and not one of them had raised the alarm.
He turned toward the stairwell, and she could see up the corridor. Mrs. Pedlow was standing in her open doorway, a thin dressing gown wrapped around her sparse frame, squinting at them as if she was trying to work out if this was a dream.
“Go back inside,” Amelia waved frantically. She’d wanted help, but Mrs. Pedlow wasn’t it. The old woman was so frail that a stiff breeze would probably make her fall over and break a hip.
“No, wait!” She pushed up on Thyaar’s shoulder as he shoved open the door to the stairwell. The hinges shrieked. “Mrs. Pedlow! Lock my place up, would you?”
She didn’t get Mrs. Pedlow’s answer as her captor started down the stairs… the door thumping shut behind them. The stairwell swallowed them… strip lighting, peeling walls, the damp smell of a building that had been losing the battle against damp and mold for the last thirty years. His boots hit each step as if he were trying to drive them through the floor. She had to grab a fistful of his jacket just to stay level. Cold, wet leather. And under it, all heat and muscle that didn't give an inch. Not now, she told herself. She had bigger problems than how warm the asshole was.
She hoped the old lady had heard her. The other occupants of the building wouldn’t think twice about helping her when she was being kidnapped, but they’d think nothing of helping themselves to her belongings.
“Wait! Shit!” she grabbed harder at his jacket as he hit his stride down the stairs. “Barnaby! Barnaby’s medication! He’s diabetic!”
“The systems on the ship can handle minor medical issues.”
What the—? “This isn’t a ‘minor’ medical issue! Without his medication, he’ll die!” She slapped his back. “Do you understand, asshole? Die. Gone. Not a cat anymore. Do you want to take Emily a dead cat?”
Thyaar ignored her as they reached the front door. She opened her mouth to argue some more, but then the rain hit her and stole her breath.
It came down in sheets. Both vertically and horizontally, which for weather was frankly gifted. In the space of a breath, her thin PJs were completely soaked through, the cotton cold and clinging. The air she struggled to pull in tasted of wet concrete and whatever objectionable slime her alien appeared to have on his clothing. She sucked in a breath, and it was like inhaling a rotting, wet flannel.
Barnaby yowled, a long, furious sound, and tried to burrow closer against Thyaar, squirming to get under her legs as well for extra cover. He hated the rain. Always had. The first time he’d wandered out onto the fire escape and gotten caught in drizzle, he’d looked through the glass at her with such personal betrayal on his face she’d laughed until she cried.
But he wasn’t on a fire escape this time. He was being carried through the streets of his city in the rain by an alien, and he was making sure everyone within yowling distance knew about it.
“Where are you taking us?” She yelled it over the noise of the rain hammering on the fire escapes above them. She twisted, trying to see the street and see if there was anyone around. There wasn’t. No one was out in this, and even if they had been, this was a rough neighborhood. People were more likely to look the other way than get involved. She’d learned that young.
“My ship.”
