“Thanks, Maisie,” I replied, and nodded to the scar-faced hulk as I passed by. I pulled my hood tight, readjusted my disguise, and headed out the door. But as I moved along the street, a seven-foot, emerald-eyed form danced through my mind…
3
Zyair
Despite the importance of our mission here, the little female pretending to be a Drolgok preyed on my mind as my brother and I stalked along the street.
“Why did you tag her?” Xandros asked in our own language.
I did not answer him. Because the truth was, I did not know why I had tagged her.
“She belongs to the Taziers.” Xandros tended to use English whenever he annoyingly stated the obvious. “She be a beautiful female. She had some”—he hesitated, searching for the right human word—“tasty curves.”
He had grasped some of the local emphasizers well, but his descriptors could use work. “You could not see her curves,” I protested. “Tasty implies something you eat.”
He grinned. “Good.”
I rubbed my face. “Try gorgeous. Or luscious.”
“Lus… cious.” He drawled the word. “I saw enough.” He made a cupping motion with his hand. “When she tripped—it wasverynice.”
My brother loved females of all shapes and sizes. Or rather, heloved intercourse with them. I understood the physical desire—female companionship was in scant supply among my people. It was such an issue that clan leaders brought in alien females just to service the needs of their warriors.
Fornicating simply to satisfy the physical—no matter how overwhelming it may be—had never appealed to me. I was looking for more—and I was unlikely to ever find thatmore.
So, if my muscles in one arm were slightly more developed than the other, there was good reason for it. But for just a moment, as I met the soul-piercing and bewilderingly defiant eyes of that human female, I had been consumed by a fierce longing. It had scorched through me and robbed me of breath. I wanted to grab her, and?—
Reason reasserted itself.No.Touching her would have been worse than tagging her. There was no way we could follow up on the tag and hunt her down. Fucq was violent and not someone to mess with. We would be lucky to achieve our main goal and get out of here without him or his clan figuring out our true objective.
When she had bolted, a sudden, intense, and irrational desire to claim her overtook me—firing the tracker had been almost instinctive. That heart-shaped face, the vivid-blue eye color, the determined tilt to her chin, and the thick black pinned-up hair … I had longed, suddenly, to see it cascading around her shoulders.
Xandros was right. That delicious curve revealed when she tripped…
Her scent, all over that scarf. My hand slipped inside my cloak to tuck the bit of bright cloth deeper into the pocket. Even thinking about it caused my heart to accelerate.
Enough.We had a mission to complete, and this was not helping. What we were doing was risky enough without a distraction, beautiful as she may be.
“Carrot?”
I very nearly tripped over the absurd Vrep. He must be desperate indeed, to pander fruit to Drakes. His eyestalks twitched as his tentacle waved the item in question.
“Now we know where she got the banana,” Xandros stated as his eyes tracked the rather bruised yellow item that most definitely was not a carrot. He dug into his pocket, and tossed the little alien a coin, before accepting the fruit.
We sidestepped around the Vrep, and Xandros smacked contentedly as we resumed our trek. Another block, and we ducked into another alley.
Skulking around in back alleys was hardly an occupation for warriors. Xandros cast me a questioning look, but I did not enlighten him as to my thoughts. He knew, as well as I, that it had been some time since the majority of our people had marched to any honorable code.
Most across the universe would call us oppressors. They were right. At one time, we had been uncontested throughout the realms. Now, only our fierce ability to fight and our long lifespans were keeping us near the top of the cosmic hierarchy.
Not that many of the worlds we had conquered would cry about our fall from power—and Earth was only the latest in a long line of such. With any luck, they would fare better than most…
If our plans worked out, they were certainly more important than the others. Vital, really, if my kind was to survive.
The shadows began to merge as night approached. This meeting was scheduled for earlier than I liked—full darkness would have been preferable. With our size, we could not blend with the local Drolgoks and humans. The best we could hope for was to be mistaken for visiting non-clan Drakes.
We were supposed to be appearing to shop, but unlike Xandros, I was not that good at pretending to enjoy myself.
My brother leaned close. “So far, so okay,” muttered Xandros, tossing the banana peel into a debris-laden corner. “Although I would have liked to claim that female.”
