Silver's Captive (3 page)

“What took you so long on that human station? You were only supposed to be checking it out. It should have only taken you a few hours.”

Tor’Arr stared back at his Second in Command, debating how much to tell him. A few of the crew had seen him carry Tarnee on-board off the shuttle, but they had obviously kept their mouths shut. They’d all had women on the ship from time to time when they’d stopped at a station, but none of them had ever found one they’d considered keeping.

“I found something I wanted, and I had to wait before I could take it.”

Kesh stared at him, disbelief on his face. “You were late because of a woman?”

“Do you have a problem with that?” His hands balled into tight fists.

“Yes I have a problem with that. You put us all in danger because of a woman. We can’t return to that station when she decides she wants to go home, when the excitement wears off and she decides she’s had enough.”

“She’s not going back. I took her off that station and I intend to keep her.”

Shock crossed his second’s face, “You kidnapped her?”

Additional noises of shock could be heard from around the bridge, some of his men muttering curses under their breaths.

“I suppose you could say that—yes,” he replied.

“You
suppose?
” Kesh threw one of his arms out, almost hitting the console he was standing beside, and demanded, “Are you crazy?”

Tor’Arr bristled. He would take a lot of ribbing from his crew. He kept an easy relationship with his men, not a traditional captain-crew relationship, but more easy going and friendly. He wanted his men comfortable approaching him with ideas and suggestions. He wanted his men to feel like the ship was their home, not just a job. What he wouldn’t take was an outright questioning of his authority.

“No, I’m not crazy. I had plenty of time to think about the repercussions of what I was doing before I did it. I decided the risks were worth it. I even asked her to come with me first, but I wasn’t leaving without her.”

Kesh stared back at him, the coal black of his eyes giving nothing away. They
never
gave anything away. That was what made him such a good Second in Command. He could have run the ship all by himself if he’d wanted to, but the men were as loyal to Kesh as they were to Tor’Arr. He wondered if this was what was finally going to come between them.

“She’s my soul partner, the woman I’ve been searching for,” he told Kesh quietly.

A slight flaring of Kesh’s eyes was the only indication that he’d surprised him.

“I don’t get a good feeling about this,” Kesh told him. “Too many things could go wrong. What happens when she finds out what we are? What happens when we have to stop for supplies? Are you going to lock her in your quarters every time we stop? Are you going to lock her in every time we take a ship? You’re going to have her in the back of your mind every time we’re in a battle, wondering if she’s okay. Your loyalties will be divided.”

“My loyalties will not be divided,” he growled, “This ship will always come first.”

“If you think that, then you are deceiving yourself,” Kesh replied.

Chapter Four

The door slid open and my captor walked through. My heart was still pounding from the hits the ship had taken. I thought we were going to be blown out of space. I’d sat alone in this room and been scared out of my mind. I would have given anything for this man, my captor, to walk back into the room and tell me everything was going to be okay. I’d never been on a ship before that was being fired upon. I hadn’t been prepared for the fear that swamped me.

I stood up slowly from the couch, the last place I’d sat after pacing nervously around the room. Our gazes locked, and I felt that strange connection again. That strange sense of peace stole over me and my heart started to calm.

“Are you all right, Tarnee?”

His deep voice and strange accent shivered through me. I liked hearing my name fall from his lips. “Yes, I’m all right,” I replied.

“I’m sorry if you were scared by the fight. Some trouble followed us.”

What did they do that had people following them who were prepared to fire on their ship? Would those people just give up now that we’d managed to get away, or would they be back at some point in the future—a future I was now tied to whether I wanted to be or not?

“Will you take me home?” I asked because I had to. It was too important to me just to let it go. I’d spent every waking hour since my parents disappeared working towards the day when I could search for them, and I was so close to my goal.

This man might make me feel things I’d never felt for another man, and we might have some strange kind of connection, but I’d never forget my parents. I’d never forget that they were out there somewhere.

Frustration crossed his face as I looked at him.

“I can’t do that, Tarnee. Now, even more than before. We’re already leaving your galaxy.”

A crushing sense of disappointment almost overwhelmed me. I turned away from him to look out the window behind me, lost in what I felt, my gaze lost in the endless expanse of space.

I heard movement behind me, the soft rustle of fabric as he moved, along with footsteps on the plush carpet.

“Is it so terrible that you can’t go home? Is staying here with me such a hardship, Tarnee?”

His voice was close, so close. I looked over my shoulder to find him standing right behind me, between the two chairs that sat opposite the built-in couch.

“You don’t understand,” I replied.

“Then help me understand. Tell me why it’s so important to you that you go home. Tell me why you won’t even give us a chance.”

My eyes widened at what he was suggesting. He was talking about a relationship. He was a complete stranger. He’d kidnapped me from my home and everything I knew, and he expected me to just put that aside and start a relationship with him? He was outright crazy.

“My parents went missing when I was ten, and I’ve been working towards getting on the exploration teams so I can resume the search for them. Nobody believes that my parents could still be alive, but I know they are. I’d feel it if they were dead!” I said, turning to look at him.

He stepped towards me, closer, almost into my space. I felt the warmth of his body, a gentle caress of heat against my skin.

“How long have they been missing?”

I looked up into his eyes, certain what his reaction would be.

“Almost eleven years,” I replied.

He had no reaction to my statement, which confused me. I’d expected surprise or outright shock, but he didn’t even so much as blink. He reached out and brushed the loose strands of my hair back from my face, his fingers trailing across my cheek.

“That’s a long time to be missing, Tarnee.”

His light touch was a shock to my system. The warmth of his fingers against my face sent tingles spreading down my neck. I stared up at him, mesmerised by the swirling silver of his eyes, the shifting colours, the metallic sheen. What was he doing to me? I felt cast adrift in a stormy sky. One minute, I felt completely at ease in his presence, the next, my heart was pounding in my chest, and all because of a simple touch.

“What are you doing to me?” I asked quietly, repeating my earlier question, my breath rushing out of me, a soft exhalation of sound.

“Do you feel that, Tarnee?” He slipped his warm hand into my hair, pulling me closer.

I felt the heat of his palm like a brand against my skin.

“It’s the connection we have, the universe’s way of telling us we are meant to be together.”

He pulled me close, leaned down, and pressed his lips to mine. A soft gentle kiss turned insistent as his lips moved over mine. The swipe of his tongue against the seam of my lips drew a small noise of shock from me before I opened for him.

I was too shocked to stop it once he started kissing me, and then too caught up in what he made me feel to want to stop it. Sparks raced through my body, lighting me up, turning my insides molten as he stroked his tongue into my mouth.

His arms closed around me, pulling me up against the hard heat of his body as he teased me with the soft slide of his tongue against mine and the heady taste of him. Everything slipped away as he kissed me. Nothing mattered except the feelings racing through me.

Time stood still until he started to pull away. My eyelids fluttered open and I looked back into his heated silver eyes.

“You cannot deny what we have, Tarnee. I won’t let you hide from this.”

Shocked at the anger in his tone, and shocked at my own response to his kiss, I pushed against his chest, wanting space between us so I could think. I couldn’t think with his heat beating into me, with the scent of him in my nose and the taste of him on my lips. I felt confused by my reaction to him.

He dropped his arms from around me, but stayed standing close.

I needed to process my reaction to his kiss, but with him standing so close, that was impossible. I needed quiet and solitude to examine what he’d made me feel. I didn’t have a lot of experience, and no man had ever affected me so strongly. No man had ever made me forget myself with a simple kiss.

“You must be hungry. You can tell me about your parents while we eat and why you think they’re still alive.”

I looked into his silver eyes to see the anger had slipped away and only curiosity remained. “Do you really care? I’m your prisoner, so I can’t go anywhere. You don’t have to pretend to be interested just to keep me happy.”

“No, I don’t. But I
want
to know about you, Tarnee, I want us to get to know each other, and this is obviously something that’s important to you, so I want to hear about it.”

I was hungry. I didn’t know how much time had passed since he’d taken me from the station, or even when the next chance would be to have a meal.

“All right, I’ll share a meal with you.”

“Good,” he said before he reached for my hand and led me towards the door.

His hand felt warm in mine as tingles spread up my arm from the innocent touch, which confused me further. I didn’t understand my reactions to this man. I didn’t understand what he made me feel.

He led me through the doors, which swished open with a soft hiss of sound, and down a brightly lit, wide-carpeted corridor to a lift. This part of the ship wasn’t as opulent as his quarters. The carpet was a more serviceable type, the wall’s plain panels painted a soft grey that matched the metal doors and trims.

As we waited for the lift, he rubbed his thumb across the back of my hand. Such a small movement, a caress that left me feeling uneasy because of how much it made me feel.

I wanted to pull my hand from his, to break the small connection we had, but I didn’t want him to know how badly he affected me. I didn’t want him to know that he unsettled me simply by being near me. The strange sense of calm I felt around him only compounded my confusion.

The trip to the communal dining area of the ship was a short one. We rode down on the lift three floors and walked down a short corridor before entering a huge space through double doors that slid back with the same quiet hiss that the doors to his quarters had made.

It was surprising how big the dining area was, and it gave an indication of how big the ship was. It was far bigger than I expected from the size of the quarters I’d been in. I wondered how many crew the ship had, to have a dining room this size.

I noticed long tables laid out in rows, almost military-like in their precision, the chairs all pushed in neatly. I thought it said a lot about the crew that the dining area was so neat. A long counter separated it from the kitchen that was visible on the other side. A lone person moved about the kitchen, the quiet clatter of pans and dishes audible through the opening.

My captor—I realised I didn’t know his name, but he knew mine—pulled me gently towards that long counter and the smells coming from the kitchen. Smells I couldn’t identify. Whatever they were cooking, it smelled delicious. The empty ache in my stomach told me it was long past time when I should have eaten.

My captor pulled me to a stop in front of the counter and said something to the person in the kitchen in that language my interpreter chip couldn’t identify, a guttural language filled with harsh sounds that accentuated the deep notes of his voice.

The person in the kitchen walked over, and I found myself staring for the first time in a very long time. It could only be a woman, the delicate features of her face exotic and alien. A high-ridged forehead with delicately slanted brows sat over eyes of a striking grass green. The irises were large, seeming to dominate her face. A small pointed nose complimented the upturned corners of her mouth. Her lips were a delicate shade of purple against skin so white the only thing I could think of that would be whiter was snow, and that was something I’d never seen.

She didn’t take her eyes off the man standing next to me. She didn’t even glance at me out of curiosity. Her full attention was on my captor.

The guttural sounds of the language they spoke sounded strange coming from her delicate face, the forceful way she spoke, the words clipped and almost swallowed lending a strange cadence to the language that wasn’t there when my captor spoke. She moved away and started ladling something into bowls from a large pot on one of the stoves.

I turned to the man beside me and said quietly, “I don’t know what to call you.”

He looked down at me, the silver of his eyes swirling like space dust caught in the wake of a ship.

“I am Tor’Arr, but you need only call me Arr.”

I didn’t think I could make his name sound the way he pronounced it, but then my name sounded different when he said it. When he said my name, he pronounced the
R
with a soft burr of sound, a soft rolling of the letter that turned my name into something exotic and musical.

“Is Tor your title?” I asked, curious about him and his people.

“Yes, it is a sign of respect to use it among my people, but it is also a formal way of addressing someone. I do not want us to be formal with each other, Tarnee, so I do not want you to use it.”