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Ripping the door from Amber’s hand, I yanked it open and hauled Ryan into the foyer. I tossed his writhing form onto the floor and put a booted foot to his throat. “This is the fool who left you? Who hurt your heart?”
“Fucking psycho freak! Who the fuck paints their skin purple?” Ryan rolled around beneath my boot, grasping his shattered wrist with his other hand, whining and crying like a weakling. I noticed that he dropped a large blade when I threw him. He reached for the knife, but it had fallen well away from him, beyond the stretch of his arm.
“It is not paint,psychofreak.” I spat in his face, and Ryan flinched as my blue-tinged saliva hit him.
“Q’on!” Amber grabbed my arm. “If you hurt him, the feds will lock you up for sure!”
I squatted down, my weight pressing into his throat. “These feds of yours will have to find me first. They’ll have to find what’s left ofhim. If I put thisyif’sbody in my ship, they will never find it.”
Ryan tried to pry my boot off of him. I let up the pressure a bit, and the fool kept talking. “You talk a big game when you got the jump on a guy. Try talking smack when I’m not hurt, asswipe.”
I looked into his bloodshot eyes and grinned. “Don’t worry. Your wrist will not hurt anymore when you are dead.”
“Q’on, stop it!” Amber’s cry fell on near-deaf ears, as thep’nal bin kurknew neither reason nor mercy.
“If you hadn’t gotten the jump on me, you’d be toast. Weak-ass punk little bitch.” Her ex coughed and wheezed under my bootheel. “I bet that dirty whore has you pussy whipped. Is that it? She’s letting you ride that nasty cunt, and you think she’s something special now. Well, she’s not. She’s nothing but a filthy slut.” He tried to push me off with his good hand.
The nanites had seen those words in Amber’s books. They had taught me the meaning of those words, and I knew enough to know that Ryan was not intending them as flirtatious. He meant them to harm, to cut as deep as the knife he brought to the door.
A cruel smile twisted my lips. “You think I am weak enough to fall slave to a woman’s sex?” I eased off Ryan’s throat and stepped back, keeping myself between him and Amber. “Fine. Test your theory. I will allow you one strike against me. One. Anything beyond that, I will answer without hesitation.”
Ryan rose to his feet, gasping for air. “You fucking broke my wrist, asshat. That’s not exactly a fair fight, even if you don’t fight back with the first punch.”
I shrugged and waved a hand in dismissal. “You have another.”
His pink human face turned bright red, a vibrant color I associated more with the radiant hues of Xalan than the dull, muted Earth tones. I didn’t know humans could achieve such coloring.
I stood patiently while Ryan wavered on his feet. Cradling his broken right wrist to his chest, he reared back with his left and swung with all his might, his beefy fist colliding with my jaw.
I didn’t budge.
Ryan scowled and reared back again, readying for another strike.
But I had only allowed himoneunanswered blow. I caught his hand before it could hit me and twisted, delighting in the sound of muscle and tendon ripping. Amber shrieked, and Ryan screamed and fell to his knees.
Right where he belonged.
“It would appear thatyouare the weak one, human.” I clenched my fist around his until the bones snapped in my grip. He screamed again, then began to sob.
Pathetic.
“Truly sad,” I said, releasing his hand and walking around him in a slow, easy circle. To the untrained eye, it may seem that I’d let my guard down, but I was ready should he strike out again. I may have taken out both his upper limbs, but he still had two working appendages. “You could not satisfy Amber during your mating to her, and now your hands are ruined. I very much doubt you could satisfy her now without them.”
He flinched when I took a step closer. Coward.
Without taking my eyes off him, I asked Amber to get my belt from my Xalan trousers. I had restraints in one of the many pockets and pouches on it, so even though the pants had been ruined when I’d ripped them off in my haste to mate with her, I hadn’t discarded them.
She gave me the pants with a shaking hand. She seemed traumatized by this whole event, which I noticed even through the red haze of thep’nal bin kur. I would have to comfort her later, when Ryan was no longer a threat. For the time being, though, I busied myself with binding her ex’s legs and useless arms together, leaving him immobile.
Amber relaxed against the wall, her chest heaving. Her color was almost back to its normal deliciously dark yet creamy color when a voice from outside drew all the color from her skin.
“Ryan? Ryan, dude, hurry up and get back in the car! We’ve gotta get the fuck out of here.”
Amber froze. “That’s Evan. His buddy. Shit, he came here with someone else …”
She didn’t need to explain the danger of this new complication to me. Ryan arriving alone meant less to cover up; Ryan arriving with a “buddy” meant a potential witness. I gritted my teeth and tried to think of a solution. This Evan was not likely to leave without Ryan. I had seen “buddy cop” films while perusing Amber’s entertainment device, and buddies are apparently similar to Xalanmii-faalpartners: insufferably inseparable.
I had amii-faalon Xalan. Our partnership dissolved when he took the side of the leaders over my own.
