What To Read After FSOG: The Gemstone Collection Part Two (73 page)

Dallas’ leg was down to a throbbing pain, the blood no longer flowing from the gash laid open by the dagger. Still, he limped as he followed his partner and worked to assess the situation.

Thaegan stood a foot from Lilly as if she exuded some malevolent aura. Dallas reached out to reassure his partner. The Ka’al’s muscles trembled beneath his palm. He’d never known the big alien to get rattled over a simple hit and split. He wondered again what exactly she’d done to the Ka’al.

“Dude, I don’t think she’s going anywhere,” said Dallas. He looked down at the still form of the woman who’d rocked his world not two hours earlier and guilt sliced his gut. He wasn’t sure how it had all come to her being unconscious, but here it was.

“I don’t really give a shit what you’re thinking right now, Sawyer.” Thaegan shook the rope in his face. “You
will
take this from me and you
will
tie her hands. Not some sweet little granny knot she can undo when she wakes up. But some fucking double bowline square hitch shit you learned in Boy Scouts kinda knot.” He shoved the rope at Dallas’ chest. “I don’t want her touching me again. It’s too much. I can’t handle it.” The words growled low and menacing. Thaegan paced in a quick circle, his trembling hand running down his long braid. Dallas had never seen him this hyped on adrenaline before.

Dallas knelt beside Lilly. The woman’s face was angelic in its softness. He hadn’t liked what had happened to Thaegan, but using the laser on her seemed overkill. Worse still as she lay so motionless on the uneven bricks of the alley. He gently rolled her on her stomach, bringing her hands behind her back and tied the rope.

“Don’t you feel it?” Thaegan stood over him, nervous energy sluicing off him in waves.

“Guilty?” Dallas touched Lilly’s shoulder where the laser beam had singed her coat. “I sure as hell do.”

“Guilt? Are you shitting me? That woman’s as dangerous as any fully armed fugitive we’ve chased across this galaxy. She’ll suck the life out of any male and they’ll thank her as she’s doing it.” With the edgy moves of a boxer getting ready to enter the ring, Thaegan bounced on the balls of his feet, his hands shaking at his sides.

Lilly stirred.

“Do it now. Before she gets her hands on either of us,” Thaegan said. “Put her palms together and wrap the rope so she can’t lay them on anyone.”

Dallas did as Thaegan instructed, though it seemed a little obsessive. He straightened, staring at the crazed look in his partner’s eye. “What the hell did she do to you?”

“Let’s get her in the van. I desperately need to get back to the apartment. Thanks to her I’m horny as hell, and if I’ve got my facts straight—and I’m pretty sure I do—nothing but a good fuck is going to bring me down from this.”

Dallas rolled Lilly over. Gently, he scooped her up and pushed to his feet. She snuggled into his neck as if she were sleeping. She felt right in his arms. Shit, at the moment she seemed about as dangerous as a lost kitten, and he felt the hard punch of guilt to his gut. He had no idea how the situation had come to this.

Thaegan reached into the van and came out holding a hood. All this equipment was for a criminal who had killed government officials and a president, not a human female who smelled like a Texas summer rain. Dallas wanted to wave him off, but if Lilly came to, it wouldn’t do for her to know where they’d taken her. No doubt Bastower would want a formal interrogation and QAL protocol said that had to be done in an undisclosed location. He nodded and Thaegan brought the dark material down over her head, careful not to touch her.

The Ka’al stepped away quickly as if her body were toxic sludge from the crystal mines.

Dallas laid her carefully on the carpeted floor of the van. Rolling Lilly to her side so she wasn’t lying on her bound hands, he smoothed the leather skirt down her thigh, covering the luscious curve of her ass. He couldn’t keep his hand from traveling the full length of her silken thigh. Jesus, what was his problem? He was mooning over Lilly like a lovesick teenager with his first crush.

He moved back and caught Thaegan eyeing her with unmitigated lust in his eyes. Stepping around the Ka’al and closing the doors, Dallas blocked Lilly from his partner’s hungry gaze.

They settled themselves in the front of the van. Dallas sent a coded message back to headquarters, informing Bastower they had the woman who had very likely screwed up their mission beyond repair and were now taking her in for questioning. He could only imagine how his boss would react to
that
news. No way was it some karmic blunder that she’d randomly chosen Grebetz as her client out of a tavern full of aliens. The lethal way she’d used the dagger didn’t bode well either. Dallas pondered the connection between Grebetz and the woman and the strange effect she had on his partner.

When the coded radio transmission was confirmed, Dallas called up the city map on the computer, programmed the coordinates of the QAL safe house and sat back as the van lifted and began to move.

“The Seraphelium really doesn’t affect you, does she?” Thaegan motioned his head to the back of the van where Lilly lay motionless. “I mean, you just touched her and you feel
nothing
?”

Dallas shook his head, trying to clear away the confusion. “You’re losing me on this one, dude. I screwed some whore in the alley who not only blew our indestructible plans to smithereens, but tried to gut me with a dagger. And now she’s unconscious in the back of a van that was supposed to be for a murderer because I had to shoot her with my laser before she got away. On top of that she’s hogtied and blindfolded because of some weird sissy-assed fit you had in the alley. So, the only thing I’m feeling right now is
pissed
. I have no idea what she did to you, but in light of everything that’s happened, I’m not sure what cerebellums have to do with
anything
that’s gone down tonight.” The volume of Dallas’ rant ratcheted higher with every word until his voice echoed painfully off the walls of the van.

Thaegan inhaled deeply and closed his eyes as if centering himself. “Not cerebellums, though I suspect there’s something involved there. Ser-a-fee-lee-um.” He pronounced the word slowly. “An ancient race.” He turned and stared out the side window at the high buildings of the inner city giving way to smaller neighborhoods. It would be only minutes before they reached the ranch in the desert. Hopefully enough time for Thaegan to pull himself together.

Thaegan’s voice was soft as he continued. “It’s a myth. A story told by horny males in the locker rooms of Beta Mrenn. No one believes they really exist.” He paused and turned back to Dallas. “But it has to be.”

Dallas just stared at him, thinking the mishap in the alley had rocketed his partner into a black hole of crazy space. “What the hell are you talking about, Thaegan?”

“Here’s the short version.” He turned back to Dallas, the green hue of the control board accenting the deep ridges along Thaegan’s forehead and nose. “There’s a story about a race of women, the Seraphelium who can control a male’s libido with just a touch.” Thaegan’s hands stirred the air as he searched for words. “Affect his hormones. Make a guy horny as hell. Make you want them so badly that you don’t have any choice but to sleep with them. When buddies would give you a hard time about sleeping with someone…less than desirable…we’d say she was a Seraphelium…we had no choice.” He laughed at the absurdity of how he sounded and shrugged. “No one believed they existed. Everyone knew it was a flimsy excuse.” He shot a look over his shoulder at Lilly’s still form. “But now I’m not so sure.”

“And how does this fairy tale involve Lilly exactly?” Dallas asked evenly.

“I felt the surge of sexual energy in the tavern when I first grabbed her, but I thought it was caused by the fight.” He looked away. “You know that adrenaline-induced hard-on.”

Dallas nodded. Yeah, dangerous situations tended to do that. He was never sure if it was the adrenaline or the close calls on one’s life, but whichever, a good round of sex with a willing partner usually stilled the trembling muscles and pounding heart faster than any shot of gall’s blood ever could.

“But this was different,” Thaegan continued. “While I was holding her down, I could feel it slam into me in waves.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I know it sounds crazy, but what I really wanted to do right there in the tavern was rip her clothes off and screw her brains out. Right in the middle of all that chaos, it’s all I could think about.”

“Thaegan, you’re not—”

“Let me finish.” He held up a hand. “I was focused on getting us all out of there and didn’t think much about it
until
I was running through the alley. The feeling was overpowering. I became acutely aware of her hands, hot on my back, but it felt as if she had them wrapped around my dick. With each step, the urge to throw her on the ground and fuck her was overwhelming. And it kept growing until every cell in my body burned with the need. Then…I don’t know…it just sort of swamped me. Everything washed over and completely inundated me. I must have blacked out.” He looked over at Dallas. “My cock feels as if it’s going to explode if I don’t get some relief soon.”

“So, you’re saying when I did the vertical mamba in the alley with Miss Serph-a-whatever back there, she
made
me do it?”

“Actually, I’m not saying that at all.”

“Then what the hell are you saying, Thaegan?”

Thaegan looked down at Dallas’ thigh. “How’s the leg?”

Dallas had no idea why his partner changed the subject, but he pulled open the slit in his jeans, offering Thaegan a view of the flesh. The skin was a raw welt, but it had completely closed and the pain had subsided to nothing more than an annoyance. The dried blood on his thigh and jeans were the only evidence of the mortal wound Lilly had inflicted. “It’s fine. But I don’t know how that…” Then he understood. Dallas looked up at his partner. Thaegan’s mouth quirked in a knowing smile, one eyebrow arched as if to say
I’m not crazy
.

“Amazing stuff that synthetic blood,” said Dallas.

“That’s exactly what I’m thinking.”

The foggy edges of unconsciousness receded, but darkness still enveloped her. Panic ripped through Lilly and she fought to keep it at bay. A quick assessment found her lying on her side, hands bound behind her back, her shoulder smarting with the familiar burn of a laser. A soft cloth had been thrown over her head. Her mouth wasn’t gagged but making any sound when her captors believed she was unconscious would not be wise.

From the low hum surrounding her, Lilly surmised she was in a vehicle. Perhaps the van from the alley. The sounds of a heated discussion drifted from the front of the vehicle and she strained to hear them. It took a couple of minutes for her brain to make sense of their words.

“How’s the leg?” She recognized the deep baritone of the Ka’al. She’d pushed him to his limits in the alley and overloaded his sexual circuits enough for the big alien to black out. She was blaming him for losing the Znedu and the bounty that came with him. Lilly hoped the guy had a painful hard-on the size of the Sears tower.

“It’s fine,” said Dallas.

Relief flooded through her. Lilly had only meant to threaten Dallas into letting her go, but when she’d lunged at the man, the Ba’alkin dagger had honed in on an artery of its own accord and sliced his leg wide open. No wonder the knives weren’t street legal. She’d been sickened to see his life’s blood spilling on the tavern floor.

Though their encounter had been brief, Dallas’ talented hands had been both gentle and masterful and had played her body like a maestro coaxing sweet music from the instruments at his command. Her body had definitely bowed to his whim. She could use some of that now. The gentle vibration of the vehicle made her acutely aware of the energy ricocheting along her nerves, adding to her agitation. But she needed to keep it on edge. There was no telling what these men intended. Lilly may need to use her gift again. Having the current powered up meant less of her energy reserves would be used in defense, leaving more for an escape.

The van stopped and the engine was cut, making it easier for her to hear.

“So do you at least believe it’s possible?” the Ka’al asked.

What was possible? What had she missed?

“Until proven otherwise, I’ll go with your hypothesis. But that doesn’t answer the question of what we…” Dallas’s voice drifted off as they left the van, both doors shutting with a soft click.

Relax,
she instructed her body. She might as well play this unconscious card until she got some information from them.

The door at her feet opened. “…until we have
Hij’Rozhod
.
Then
if she has nothing to do with it, we can let her go,” the large alien said.

“The hood is overkill, Thaegan. She’s unconscious, for chrissake. I’m not making her wear it.”

So the Ka’al went by the name of Thaegan. Good to know.

“Now that we’re here, I don’t give a shit about the hood. But keep her hands bound.”

Gently, her head was lifted and the cloth maneuvered away from her face. Though it hadn’t restricted her breathing, Lilly couldn’t help but pull in a lungful of cool desert air. She covered it with a soft moan as if she were just roused from a deep sleep. Neither male moved, but when her body remained still, strong hands scooped under her knees and around her shoulders. The clean smell of Dallas drifted over her senses. The strong muscles of his arms and chest cradled her body as he lifted her with ease and pulled Lilly close. Her body reacted immediately, desire and energy humming over her synapses. It took all her self-control to remain lax and not snuggle into the warmth of his neck.

Stairs creaked. Lilly chanced a peek at her surroundings. Rough-hewn boards were illuminated in the yellow wash of light from a single window. A rocking chair sat idle. She wondered if they’d brought her to the mining community in the desert. Even Garalon Five with all its updated building materials had residents who’d gone back to the land. She’d never been this far from the city’s center but had talked with enough locals and studied enough maps to know her way around the surrounding terrain. A bounty hunter had to know all the places a fugitive could run.