Raines, Elizabeth - Marooned [Wicked Missions 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

Wicked Missions 2

ELIZABETH RAINES

Copyright © 2011

Chapter 1

“I hate space travel,” Matt Newton grumbled as he strapped on his safety harness. “I’ve yet to have a flight that didn’t have some kind of problem.” With each pitch of the
Mirhala
, his stomach lurched until he worried that the small amount of food he’d managed to choke down for lunch was going to come right back up.

“It’s just an asteroid field,” Betinsa Nungio replied, not sparing him a glance over her shoulder as she piloted her ship through the barrage of enormous rocks that seemed intent upon pounding the ship to smithereens. Her ponytail of thick, ebony curls bobbed with each sway of the ship. “Did you get the prisoner buckled in?”

“Yeah. He’s strapped in good and tight.” With a look to the rear of the spacecraft, Matt checked again on the terrorist he, his Earth Bureau of Investigation partner Betinsa, and Ambassador Drake Keller were escorting back to the Rhotan System. While he would have preferred to put the guy on trial back on Earth, the recent and still-fragile treaty between Earth’s United Continents and the new Fraiqua government required any full-blooded Fraiquan to be handed over to their home planet for judgment. Since Matt and Betinsa were E.B.I. agents, they’d been asked to guard the prisoner on the trip and accompany the ambassador. He figured they’d also been invited since the investigation he conducted with Betinsa led to the guy’s capture, so they would be there in case there were any questions about how everything went down.

A loud bang sounded to the left of the ship and it jumped hard to the right.
“Kazom,”
Betinsa whispered as she gave the control a tug and the ship shifted sharp to the left again.

Matt dug his fingers into the handle on his seat and swallowed hard. He’d been learning Fraiqui from his partner, and he’d heard Betinsa use
that
word enough to know things weren’t good. “Fuck, Tinsa? Why
fuck?
”

She didn’t answer, clearly concentrating on what looked to Matt like an impossible number of asteroids flying at them.

Drake turned around to smile at him, and all Matt could do was shake his head at the ambassador’s aplomb. He co-piloted the ship as if he’d been at Betinsa’s side for years. “Hang on there, buddy. This little lady is a helluva pilot. She’ll pull us through.”

Typical ambassador. Always trying to calm people down
. “You don’t have to praise her to me. She’s my partner. I know how wonderful she is.”

Well, hell.
His frayed nerves weren’t helping him guard his feelings, and fear had obviously shorted out the buffer between his brain and his mouth. Sure, he nurtured a growing attraction to his blue-skinned partner, but he’d always figured it was best to keep things strictly business. Not that he was able to keep her out of his fantasies.

When they’d set the trap to capture the group of Fraiquans who’d plotted a terrorist attack on Earth—including the one they were now escorting to his homeworld—Betinsa used her species’ unique shape-shifting abilities to effect one of the captures. Matt had discovered that she could change her own appearance, but it required her to strip out of any clothing because she couldn’t bend the rules of the universe enough to cause inanimate objects to shift. Betinsa had been so uninhibited, she’d yanked her clothes off without a moment’s hesitation before jumping to a spaceship’s wing and transforming her body into a piece of equipment. But not before he’d gotten a good, long look at every sensuous inch of her.

From the moment he’d seen her naked, Matt was lost. While he’d always thought women had the most beautiful bodies, he’d discovered that Fraiquan females excited him even more. Or maybe it was just Betinsa…

Her skin was the most delectable shade of sky blue. Smooth. Elegant. Ethereal. Her breasts were firm and high and tipped with ruby nipples. He longed to nestle them in the palms of his hands, somehow knowing they would fit perfectly. Her waist was as narrow as any he’d seen, but her hips flared beautifully to a taut ass he had an overwhelming urge to kiss. A triangle of ebony curls crowned her mound, and he wondered if the sweet folds he’d find hidden beneath would be pink or the same sensuous blue of her skin.

“Kazom!”
This time she shouted the curse right before a loud bang forced the ship to drop so fast it made Matt dizzy. Muttering a string of words in her own language, Betinsa worked the controls. “Hold on!” she finally screamed.

The next strike hit the side of the ship, tearing a hole in the wall next to the prisoner. Just as the vacuum of space tried to suck everything—including the Fraiquan—out of the ship, a quick flash of blue light rose, creating a force field. With a huge sigh of relief, Matt called, “Good job, Tinsa.”

“Don’t thank me,” she replied, not sparing him a look. “Thank Drake.”

The ambassador shrugged. “Just a few buttons on the com. Didn’t figure the Fraiquans would want us to lose the guy before we got him back home.”

“Ever the diplomat,” Matt quipped before sucking in a breath as the ship shifted yet again.

“The job is my life. Figured a couple of E.B.I. agents would understand that.”

“Oh, I do.” When the ship pitched, Matt groaned.

“You okay, partner?” Betinsa asked.

She clearly had enough on her mind to thread the ship through the dense asteroid field. She sure as hell didn’t need to be worrying about him or his stupid motion sickness. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. Just fly.”

The next hit made him rethink his answer. This time the ship was thrown to the left and started a spin that seemed to increase in speed with each rotation. “Tinsa?”

“I can’t…seem to…” The rest of her words were Fraiqui, and Matt wasn’t even attempting to translate. He was more occupied with trying to figure out if anyone in the whole universe would even give a damn if he died when the
Mirhala
crashed or if he was reduced to nothing but ash as they burned up in whatever atmosphere they were going to enter in a free fall. Had bile not been blocking his throat, he would have asked what planet was going to be his final resting place.

Betinsa frantically worked at the controls as Drake did the same. Fighting against the centrifugal force, Matt tried to look back at their prisoner. The guy was softly muttering to himself, probably a prayer to whatever god his species worshipped. Matt figured a prayer was wasted on himself. With all the shit he’d done in his life, both on the job and off, forgiveness most likely wasn’t coming his way.

The spin slowed and the ship bucked as it seemed to jump over some sort of celestial speed bumps. Straining to see if he could figure out where they were going to crash—or maybe even…land—he realized he didn’t recognize the fast-approaching sphere. Mixtures of green made him hope they’d find an oxygen atmosphere to breathe.
Fuck
. Now he was thinking they might survive. Not at the speed they were hurtling down.

“Brace for impact,” Drake shouted back, hands still moving furiously over his com.

The
Mirhala
hit moments later. Matt felt like some rag doll being tossed from one overenthusiastic child to another. His arms flopped around helplessly as his head fell from side to side, forward and back like a newborn infant. The ship skimmed over the tops of dense trees, pitching up and down until it slammed into the side of what appeared to be a rather impressive forest before Matt’s world went black.

* * * *

Golanna! Alive! Golanna!

The words—a mixture of Fraiqui and English—kept echoing in Betinsa’s mind as the world slowly came back into focus. She blinked against the light from the dual suns, her trembling hand rising to shield her from the painful brightness that now shone freely through what used to be the front of her ship. “Matt… Drake…”

A groan beside her made her heart leap into a faster rhythm. Her neck was stiff as she turned to her right to see if her copilot was making the pitiful sound. “Drake?”

“Yeah…” Another deep groan. “You okay, Betinsa?”

“I’m…
golanna
…” How else could she respond? She was too busy worrying about her passengers to take inventory of her own injuries. She was alive. That was all that mattered right now.

He actually chuckled. “I kinda figured you were alive. Hard to reply to me otherwise.” The click of his harness was followed by the creaking of the copilot’s chair. His shape blocked the bright suns. A hand gently touched her cheek. “You look like hell,” he said in her tongue.

Betinsa hadn’t realized he spoke any Fraiqui. She couldn’t believe she replied with her own chuckle. Drake’s long brown hair had escaped its leather band, tumbling in a riot around his shoulders. His brown eyes showed compassion that reached her heart. A cut marred his handsome cheek, the red blood oozing in a small trickle. She reached out to wipe it away, only then realizing her left arm would not obey her commands. “You are a bit ragged yourself, ambassador.” Working up the nerve to look at her swelling left arm, she frowned. “I fear I’ve been injured.”

“Let me see,” he said in English. Warm fingertips followed her arm from wrist to elbow. She gritted her teeth, anticipating great pain. To Betinsa’s relief, it never came. She felt nothing but a dull ache she could mentally block. “I don’t think anything’s broken.”

Tears brimmed her eyes when she finally found the courage to ask after her partner. “Matt?” She glanced to Drake as he worked to unbuckle her harness.

Drake looked past her for a moment before again trying to free her from the pilot’s seat. “
Golanna
. He’s breathing and moving like he’s about to wake up.”

The threatened tears spilled over her lashes as she whispered a quick prayer of thanksgiving. The wreck had been her fault, her arrogance causing her to misjudge her ability to fly through the asteroid field. Had she cost Matt his life… Or Drake his…

A gentle hand wiped away her tears. “We’re okay, Betinsa. You got us down safely.”

She sniffled and nodded, embarrassed to have allowed anyone to see her weakness. Weeping in front of others wasn’t proper for a warrior. Her mother would feel shame at knowing Betinsa had let another see her tears. Straightening her spine and raising her chin, she said, “I can see that. Now I must see to my prisoner.”

The speed of the change in Betinsa’s demeanor took Drake’s breath away. The fear she’d shown for him and Matt Newton had been the first crack he’d seen in that stoic shell. From the moment he’d met the woman, she’d been the model of her culture—the Fraiquan warrior woman. Hard. Calm. Serious. Drake had begun to believe that any softness had been trained right out of her, never to be seen again. But when he’d told her that her partner had survived the crash, she’d given him a glimpse of feminine vulnerability, and despite the scary circumstances, he’d felt a magnetic draw to her. A need to reach out and comfort her.

He’d studied the Fraiquan culture in-depth for this mission, even learned a little of their language. Their world had been nearly destroyed in the Rhotan System civil wars, the worst of the damage inflicted by the neighboring Dracorians. Now they struggled to rebuild, keeping meticulous track of any Fraiquan who left their planet and constantly watching for another Dracorian attack.

The society was matriarchal, the women being the breadwinners and protectors of the family. Men were the intellectuals, and although as strong as human males, they seemed content to let their women take the physical lead. Betinsa had seemed the embodiment of a Fraiquan female, and she’d fascinated Drake from the moment they’d met. He loved her forcefulness and her stubborn nature, and yet seeing the softness hiding behind that tough exterior had touched his heart somehow. And his body. He felt himself physically responding to her sweet scent and soft skin.

Shaking his aching head at his ridiculous romantic thoughts, he chalked them up to surviving a near-death experience. His desire to make love to Betinsa had to be a reaction to still being alive. If there was more hiding there, now was certainly not the time to be exploring it.

He helped her get to her trembling legs, and she immediately pushed his hands away from her waist. “See to the prisoner,” she snapped. Her sturdy façade was firmly back in place.

Drake moved to the back of the wreckage and realized their prisoner had been thrown from the craft. He moved pieces of debris aside and stepped through the largest hole in the hull, breathing in the air and sighing in relief that they’d landed in an atmosphere that obviously contained enough oxygen to survive.

The man had been thrown almost ten meters. His body lay on the ground at an odd angle against a tree that told Drake he need not hurry to his side. By the time he reached him, Matt was awake and helping Betinsa out of the wreckage. Drake knelt down to press his fingers to the prisoner’s neck. As he’d expected, no rhythm of a heartbeat was found.