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Once she had thought that she’d be able to date and marry and raise a family—but those dreams seemed very far away now. They had been torn away from her back in high school, the night of her junior prom. They—
But no. It didn’t do any good to dig up past wounds. Melli had mostly gotten over what had happened to her—mentally anyway. But physically was a different story altogether—it was like her body just couldn’t let go of the trauma.
I’ll keep it friendly and casual with him, she promised herself, stealing another look at the big Kindred with his neatly clipped dark blonde hair and pale blue eyes. And I won’t hang all over him—no matter how much I might want to.
She balled her hands into tight fists at her sides, making the promise fiercely. She was, by nature, a touchy person who liked a lot of physical contact—or she had been before…
Melli pushed the thought away and looked out the window of the shuttle at the blue-green curve of the Earth getting bigger and bigger. Soon they would be home. Thank goodness that the Kindred medical technology meant her broken leg was already mostly healed. Commander Sylvan—who was also a doctor—had said she would need to be a little careful with it for a while, but on the whole, he thought she would recover completely and not have any long-term problems from the break.
I’m lucky, Melli told herself. My leg is going to be okay and I have a big, strong bodyguard to keep me safe until the danger blows over.
I can’t believe how unlucky I am, Jodi thought, as she punched savagely at her cell phone. They weren’t within contact distance yet, but she had a message all ready to send to her fiancé, James, the minute they hit the Earth’s atmosphere and her cell carrier kicked in.
First we get attacked by aliens, then Melli breaks her leg so we have to go up to the Mother Ship and then I get saddled with that Wookie in the front seat. That Vorn.
She glared at the Kindred warrior in question, who happened to be piloting the shuttle taking them back to Earth. It was hard to put her finger on why he got on her nerves so badly but he certainly did.
Maybe it was because he was everything her fiancé James wasn’t, Jodi speculated. Vorn was huge and muscular—seven feet tall if he was an inch—while James was barely taller than her own 5’7 and frankly, kind of slim. Of course, he made up for it with his acerbic wit and fierce intelligence, but there was no denying there were times Jodi wished she could wear heels instead of flats when they went out.
Also, it would be nice if he could help her with things like opening tight jar lids or fixing things around the house when they broke. But James disdained such traditionally masculine duties, preferring to live the “life of the mind” as he
called it, and concentrate on loftier concepts than who was going to fix the car if it broke down or open the lid on a jar of pickles.
Of course, “the life of the mind” was all well and good. Jodie was in grad school herself and appreciated academia and the mindset that went with it. But on a practical level, it could be kind of a pain sometimes, especially when she ended up doing what she had been raised to think of as “man stuff.”
After all, pickle jars didn’t open themselves.
But she digressed. There were other ways the big Kindred contrasted with her fiancé that also irritated her, she thought.
For instance, James was nearly hairless—as sleek as one of those naked cats breeders sold to people who wanted a cat but were allergic to them. He barely even had any pubic hair, which Jodi had found odd until she got used to it. He was also prematurely balding up top—his scalp showing clearly through his thin, light brown hair.
Vorn, on the other hand, had long, thick, wild black hair that was streaked with gold. His eyes were golden, too above his dark, neatly trimmed beard, giving him an almost savage, feral appearance that couldn’t have contrasted more strongly with her fiancé’s neat, buttoned-down, clean-shaven academic look.
Of course, Jodi had no idea what Vorn looked like naked—she strictly forbid her mind to go there and speculate—but she was betting he wasn’t in the hairless cat category. He probably had a lot of chest hair to go with all that hair on his head—which she normally liked. But somehow on the big Kindred, it was just annoying.
Where are we going to put him? she wondered to herself. She and James shared an apartment near the USF campus—but only nominally. Half the time her fiancé slept at the big mansion on Bayshore Drive—the ritzy part of Tampa—that his father had given him when he earned his first doctorate. He was working on his second at the moment, in astrophysics and once he got a few drinks in him, he never let anybody forget it.
