“Prepare for liftoff,” she heard one of the lizard men shout.
There was the sound of the ship’s engines thundering to life and Dragon sat her on a cold metal seat and strapped a harness across her bare chest and lap.
“Don’t move,” he warned her as he strapped in beside her. The black-light made his teeth look extremely white in his dark face. “G-forces will give you a wicked headache if you do anything but sit still during liftoff in a Saurian ship.”
Bobbi paid him no attention. All she knew was that this was her last chance to get away before the alien ship took off. Fumbling with the harness, she somehow managed to unbuckle it. Scrambling out of her seat, she raced for the door.
All around her, the lizard men were all strapped in to the metal chairs that lined the walls of the ship but none of them tried to stop her. They all held still, leaning back against the metal walls, only following her with their slitted yellow eyes. Even Zerlix didn’t try to get to her, though she could see his clawed hands clenching on his knees, as though he longed to make a grab for her.
She reached the metal door and searched frantically for a release lever. She spotted one but it was far above her head. Not for the first time, Bobbi damned her short stature.
Have to get to it somehow, she told herself frantically. Have to get out of here before they lift off!
She crouched low and jumped up, reaching as high as she could. Her fingertips just brushed the lever but she couldn’t…quite…grab it.
As she was preparing to try again, the ship gave a sudden roar and lurched into the sky like a drunken albatross. All of a sudden, it felt as though a massive hand was pushing down on the top of Bobbi’s skull.
She gasped and crumpled to the floor as the pressure increased. It was like being at one of those rides at the State Fair that used centrifugal force to whirl you around and press you against the wall—only in this case she was being flattened onto the cold, dirty metal floor instead.
The pressure got worse and worse until she was struggling to breathe. The giant hand was pressing down on her entire body now, crushing her, smashing her like a bug. She was going to die! She couldn’t get any air into her lungs. They had flattened out like paper bags and were refusing to inflate. She was dying! She—
Suddenly she was floating. Her entire body lifted off the dirty metal floor and she began drifting upwards. Screaming, she reached for something to hold onto but there was nothing.
Bobbi kept flailing as she floated upwards. What was going on here? Where was the artificial gravity? This kind of thing was never an issue when she rode on Kindred ships—a trip in one of them was as smooth as riding in a luxury sedan or sailing across a calm lake. Was she going to whack her head on the ceiling? Was she—
Suddenly a big hand grabbed her by the wrist—a hand attached to an arm covered in colorful, shifting tattoos. It was Dragon, she saw. He had unfastened his own harness and was holding onto it with one hand. With the other, he was reeling her in.
With a yank on the harness, he settled back into the metal seat he’d left. He managed to buckle the lap part of the harness one-handed and then pulled Bobbi down and buckled her in as well.
“Enough of that,” he growled at her. “It’s too late to get away now—we’ve left Avria Pentaura’s orbit and we’re on the way to Saurous.”
“But…but I…You can’t just take me like this!” Bobbi exclaimed, shaking her head. It turned out to be a bad move. Her temples were beginning to throb and the sudden head-movement only made the growing headache worse. “Ohhh…” she moaned, clutching her head in her hands. “Oh, my head!”
“Told you not to move,” Dragon remarked. But there was no satisfaction in his deep voice—he just sounded matter-of-fact. “Try to sit still for the rest of the trip,” he told her. “When we touch down, I’ll get you something for the pain. Think we have some in the med kit.”
Clutching her throbbing temples, Bobbi pulled up her legs and rested her forehead on her knees, refusing to look at him. She just couldn’t believe that her life had changed so drastically so suddenly. She ought to be back on Avria Pentaura with Therena right now, preparing their vegetarian feast to celebrate the laying of the special egg. Instead, she had been kidnapped and was even now being dragged to Saurous—the very place she had promised Commander Sylvan she would never go.
Oh God, how had her life gotten so completely screwed up so quickly?
6
It was the little female’s own fault that he’d been forced to Claim her and take her with him, Dragon thought, watching her from the corner of his eye. She’d brought herself to Zerlix’s attention and then insulted him.
Not that his bastard of a Big Brother didn’t deserve to be insulted, but Zerlix never let an insult slide. He really would have taken the little mammalian female home and fucked her and eaten her, just as he had threatened. If Dragon had talked him into leaving her alone, Zerlix might have done it. But then he would have gone back to Avria Pentaura the first chance he got, found the female, and tortured her or raped her or both.
The only way I could keep her safe was to Claim her and bring her where I could keep an eye on her all the time, Dragon thought. Otherwise, she would have been dead inside a solar week.
Dead and most likely digesting inside Zerlix’s scaly belly. He hadn’t been kidding when he said he liked the taste of mammalian flesh. Dragon had several scars from before he’d gotten old enough to fight his Big Brother off, where Zerlix had taken a bite out of him for the hell of it. He really was a bastard.
And now I have a female to care for and protect, Dragon thought, frowning as he looked over at the shivering little mammalian. She had wrapped herself up in a ball with her face to her knees. He couldn’t see her eyes—which were an unusual deep blue, he’d noticed earlier—because her long, silky strands of hair were in the way.
He had never seen hair that color, Dragon thought. But then, he’d almost never seen hair at all. The Saurians were hairless and the few times he’d seen other mammalian traders on Saurous, they were mostly males with short-clipped hair in dark colors like his own. But this female had long, wavy strands of flame-colored hair that seemed to go everywhere.
Why didn’t she control it, he wondered? He kept his own hair slicked back with the same shellac that his Saurian family used to oil their scales—it kept the stuff out of his face when he was fighting. He bound the bottom of it into a kind of club at the back of his neck and cut it off with a knife occasionally, when it got too long. In fact, it was almost time to cut it now, he thought. It was down to his shoulders when he unfastened it.
But the little mammalian female’s hair was even longer than his. Long and thick and wavy and shiny and silky…Dragon had the urge to reach out and touch it—to see if it was a soft as it looked. But he restrained himself. Clearly, the female didn’t want his hands on her—for which he could hardly blame her. It wasn’t like she was a Pleasure Girl who could be Claimed and taken home for the right price with no questions asked. In fact, if what she’d said to Zerlix was correct, it sounded like she was some kind of scientist.
She talked about other Kindred too—from some place called “The Mother Ship,” Dragon thought. But I thought all the Kindred were gone from the universe.