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Chapter 1: Sam
I slammed my fists on the shuttle’s metal door. “Let me out, Pip! This isn’t funny!” I yelled, my voice echoing loudly in the confined space.
Of all the challenges I’d anticipated running into while fixing a sentient alien shuttle, being locked inside because Pip didn’t want me to disconnect his power source hadn’t been one of them. When yelling didn’t work, I tried bargaining.
“Come on, Pip. Be logical. You want me to finish up, don’t you? There’s a big world out there to explore. Don’t you want to get out there instead of languishing in my shop forever? If we get this done, you can fly all you want.”
Pip didn’t reply. In addition to locking me in, he was also giving methe silent treatment. Yup, the silent treatment. He’d learned about it on the internet. The frustrating shuttle apparently believed that I was his Xarc’n warrior Kan’n’s future mate, and therefore in a relationship with him by proxy, and he’d decided that it was the appropriate thing to do.
Amazing! Not.
The trouble started when Pip found out I needed to disconnect his power source in order to finish his repairs and get him skyworthy. As it stood, I had done everything I could safely do without electrocuting myself.
I dug my phone out of my pocket, thinking if I couldn’t open the door from in here, maybe someone could help me from the outside. But when I tried to send a message, all I got was an error, followed by a pop-up from Pip which was simply an emoji sticking its tongue out at me.
Great, he was in my phone now too? How the fuck did that happen?
“Argh!” Frustration had me seeing red as I pounded on the door again.
Of all the shuttles in all the galaxies I had the misfortune to work on, it had to be the one with the emotional intelligence of an eight-year-old.
Suddenly, the door slid open, and I found myself pounding on a massive, very naked, purple chest. I snatched my hand away, but it still burned at the touch. Kan’n’s powerful frame towered over me, and from the scowl on his face he wasn’t one bit pleased.
Kan’n was the grumpy owner of the shuttle. He didn’t want me working on his ship in the first place but had no choice, since the hunters here considered me one half of their Tech Wizard team. Kan’n’s way of reconciling this was to make it his job to get in my way and slow down my progress as much as possible.
“What are you doing, female?” The low growl of his voice didn’t hide his displeasure at seeing me.
Well, at least I’d been upgraded from “human” to “female”. That was a good thing. Right?
The surly Xarc’n warrior clearly didn’t trust humans, and I couldn’t really blame him, not after a group of nomads had captured him and his shuttle, then sent him to the settlement at Albuquerque. They’d locked him up in the basement there as a prisoner and starved him for months.
But that had nothing to do with me! I was just trying to help fix his shuttle. Yet by the look on his face, you’d think I’d been the one who’d single-handedly imprisoned him.
He loomed over me, his large ram-like horns blocking out the light and his massively muscled body obstructing my only exit. He was using his size to intimidate me, and it almost worked, until I reminded myself that we were inmyshop, onmybase, surrounded bymypeople. If he thought he could frighten me with a bit of posturing, he was in for a surprise.
I stood a little taller. “Iwastrying to get out ofyourshuttle so I could remove the power source and continue my work, butit wouldn’t let me out.”
“Do it another time,” he grumped. “I need my shuttle. Out.”
“Fine. Whatever.” I stood with my hands on my hips and waited for him to move so I could leave.
I needed a coffee break anyway. That was one thing I was supremely grateful for. We, or rather, Franklin, our main base—this camp was only an offshoot—had a trade deal set up with a survivor group in South America for a portion of their beans from this year’s coffee harvest. A good thing too, since we were on the last of the instant stuff, and most of it was long expired anyway.
Kan’n didn’t budge.
“Excuse me. If you want me to leave, you have to let me out.”
He pointed at the tiny gap he’d left between him and the edge of the door.
“Are you fucking kidding me?!”
“You are not a kid. You are fully grown.” The asshole still didn’t budge. He just stood there in nothing but his leather loincloth, which was a common state of dress, or undress, for Xarc’n hunters.
I gritted my teeth, made myself a flat as possible and squeezed through the tiny space, trying my damnedest not to touch him. I failed. Facing away from him, I ended up rubbing my ass all over the front of his thighs, pulling at the bottom edge of his garment.
Please don’t purr. Please don’t purr.
The last thing I needed was for Pip to be right and to find out that I was this grumpy warrior’s mate. Purring chest rumbles didn’t automatically mean I was his mate, of course. It just meant that we were compatible. But I couldn’t imagine even being compatible with someone so rude and ungrateful. I pitied the woman who ended up as his mate.
