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And shit, it was gone. Well, notgonegone. It was being pointed at his face by the crazy bitch in front of him. He stared at the scraped-up black surface of her helmet, which obscured her face. She was panting now, no doubt gasping for air, but there was no way she was taking her hands off that gun. Stag cocked his head, shoulders relaxing. A moment later, he unclasped his helmet, dragging it off his head and letting it dangle in his hand. He enjoyed the way her crouched body went rigid as his relaxed.
“Go on then,” he said with a twinge of amusement.
There was a click as she pulled the trigger, and he had to admit he was expecting her to at least hesitatea little.
“Fuck!” She wheezed out a muffled growl from beneath her helmet as the butt of the pistol flashed red. It was griplocked, of course—would only fire if the little gene sampler embedded in the grip recognized his blood.
She shoved the gun into her belt—he’d have to get that later—and straightened, ripping her helmet off.
This was nothing like what he was hoping for. He stood frozen in place as she tilted her head up and sucked for breath, hoarse wheezing sounds matching the tempo of her chest rising and falling as she panted. Sweat-soaked blonde hair was stuck to her forehead and temples. Wild red-rimmed eyes glared at him, pupils dilated, making her look like a black-eyed, possessed thing. Stag had been counting on this moment to break this weird goddamn fantasy he’d developed about this pilot in their months of sparring. She was meant to beugly. Maybe bald. Super dry-looking. He knew that one was a long shot—she was guarding a water station, for god’s sake—but a man could dream.
This revelation should have ensured that his judgement would never be compromised in her presence again. But fuck it, it just made itworse. He was gaping for too long because the next thing he knew, she was barreling straight at him, a flash of silver and black in her hand.
She clearly had no idea how to fight, but she was damn well enthusiastic about it. He grunted as she slashed the knife in all directions and then did something completely preposterous.
“Did you just fuckingheadbuttme?” he barked as her head rammed into his chest, hard, and her arm continued making stabbing motions. He grabbed her wrist easily, twisting until she had no choice but to let go of the knife. With a smooth motion, he confiscated it from her hand, dodging just before her knee was able to make contact with his groin. He snatched her other wrist with the same hand and forced them up over her head, then jutted his free palm into her chest to keep her from advancing with her kicks.
“Let go of my tit, you fucking Gnat!” she hissed, and that was when Stag realized he was grabbing something a little too full and fleshy.
“Shit.” He yanked his hand away. “Wait, what did you just call me?”
“What?” She blinked up at him, trying fruitlessly to wrangle her wrists out of his grasp over her head.
“I said,” Stag growled, leaning in close with a cold glare, “what did you call me?”
“You heard me, Gnat! That’s what we all call you. You’re like a… What do they call them… Crap…”
Crap? Who says crap?
“A fly,” he finished for her, mouth twisting into a scowl.
“Yeah. A fly buzzing around the station for who knows what reason,” she gave him another half-hearted kick, but there wasn’t much left in her.
Stag stared at her for a few seconds—long enough to notice the apprehension escalate in her eyes as they pinged between his own. Was she wondering what he was going to do to her for insulting him like this? Calling him a gnat?
The little bitch did deserve some sort of payback for putting him through this shit. There he was, saving her life,twice, and she tried to fucking shoot him. And then she called him afly.She really had some goddamn nerve.
Well, let her pay for her behavior. Let him teach her a lesson.
When Stag reached for her with his free hand again and clamped it to her waist, the first thing on her face was confusion. There was something else too, underneath that. Something he thought he recognized because he was pretty sure she was seeing the same thing in his eyes. But they were both professionals. They shut that part out real quick.
He didn’twanther, of course. It was just strategy. Mastering the enemy. Stag’s hand was back at her tit, the same one he grabbed before, squeezing. She jerked her wrists over her head, but there was no fight in it—nothing but a show.
CHAPTER3
TEZ
She knew what this was. An attempt to scare her. For what? Did he want to torment her a little before killing her? Why didn’t he just let her run out of oxygen out there?
His hair was sweaty like hers, maybe even more so from the exertion of lugging her back to his ship. She knew she should look around while he was busy with trying to scare her, use the opportunity to glance at the controls against which he was leaning and get some idea of what kind of craft this was. But she couldn’t—her eyes were pinned to his, scanning like a radar between the golden irises and his straight, clenched mouth. A muscle twitched in the back of his jaw, underneath the stubble, as he debased her with one hand and snared her wrists over her head with the other.
The sad thing was that it wasn’t even working. Not how he meant it to, anyway. Sure, she was scared. But she was more scared of the way her stomach clenched than of the threat of… whatever. It was a strange coping mechanism, her body responding to the attacker’s touch with confused anticipation rather than terror or revulsion. Tez didn’t let it show, of course. Her cheeks were already flushed from the ordeal she’d just been through, and her breathing came in small pants because she was still trying to take in oxygen after nearly suffocating out there. The only thing that might give her away was the heat creeping up her thighs.
But when he moved his hand up to her jaw, she felt herself tilting forward before she realized what she was doing, and as soon as that realization came, jerking herself back. At the same time, his palm on her chest flattened into a shove that sent her stumbling. The hold on her wrists released, Tez’s spine banged hard against the opposite wall of the small space. He glared at her, hands clenched at his sides, like she’d done something wrong. Maybe he was a pervert expecting to get off on frightening her. Too bad for him.
“So now what?” she snapped, hoping the change of subject would snap them into something more traditionally adversarial. “You kill me?”
The man before her crowded the cockpit. They usually looked for someone shorter and more compact for a fighter pilot, easier to fit into the small space of a fighter. When he began stripping his flight suit, Tez was jealous. The Raptor was already getting uncomfortably hot. Nights on Arvex could get into three hundred kelvins and up, which was extremely toasty. And being cooped up in a metal hunk for that duration? Well…
