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“What just happened?”
He let go of her face, and Miya found herself missing the contact. “Your ship exploded. The mercenaries’ was probably destroyed as well. We’re in the clear.”
His calm answer was like a balm to her wrecked nerves. The steady wall against her back and his firm body against her front helped ease her panic too.
Some hotshot pilot Miya was, losing her cool like that. In her defense, she had never lost her passengers before getting so close to dying herself, all the while knowing what was to come.
Sure, entering hyperspace was like ringing on the Grim Reaper’s doorbell, but if you knew what you were doing, you could run off before they opened the door. Or, even better, take precautions to make sure they wouldn’t be home when you rang. Whereas everything that had happened over the past 30 minutes or so had been entirely out of her control, leaving her powerless in the face of death. And death delivered not by the space she loved but by mercenaries? No wonder she had lost it.
Miya still couldn’t believe they had made it out alive when everyone else, the bad guys included, had perished. Today might actually turn out to be her lucky day–
The pod began shaking anew, as if under tremendous strain.
Miya had just had to jinx it. She sighed, resting her forehead on the jumpsuit-clad chest in front of her. She might as well, before she got nauseous again. “What now?”
“We’re about to arrive, I believe.”
“Already?”
The shaking was because they had entered a planet’s atmosphere? Huh, their ship must have been closer to Xera than she had thought. Or that explosion had given them a pretty good boost.
Instead of a reply, she got his long fingers in her hair and his nose poking the top of her head.
“What are you doing?” It would be the fly on top of the crap that was her day, if her rescuer turned out to be a psycho.
“Your hair is so soft.”
Yup, definitely a psycho. Or… “Are you high on the tranquilizer Solais gave you?”
“What he gave me had no effect on me.”
“Oh, okay... Hey, did you just sniff me?”
“I’m taking your scent in from the source. Otherwise, it’s diluted by the chemicals your kind bathe yourselves in.”
“And why must you do that?” Miya asked as calmly as possible under the circumstances.
The circumstances being she was at the mercy of an assassin. He might have saved her from the deadly mercenaries as promised, but that didn’t mean she was safe with him.
“Memorizing your pure scent ensures I can always find you.”
“Find me?”
“In case we get separated, or you try to ditch me.” He traced a curl between two of his fingers, as if testing the texture. “You stand little chance of succeeding, but I never take unnecessary risks. Particularly when you’ve proven quite creative, Earthling.”
“Me?Creative?”
“One does not simply escape from the mercenaries you encountered. And choosing to free me took guts.”
“Um… Thanks. Speaking of mercenaries… Why were they after you? Something to do with why freeing you is ballsy and why you expect me to try to run away from you?” Smooth must be Miya’s middle name… not.
“You have nothing to fear from me, Earthling.” Said while he was bringing her curl to his nose for an audible sniff. “The ones that are yet to come after me, however…”
She gaped. “There’s more?”
“Always,” he stated as calmly as ever. “But it will be some time before the next wave comes. First they need to learn of the other team’s failure. By then, you will have flown both of us away from this planet, Earthling.”
Oh, was that so? “If you want this Earthling – whose name is Miya, by the way – to fly you anywhere, you will keep your hands to yourself. No unpermitted touching of the pilot. Hair included.”
