It was only when she tried to escape his solicitous hands that he could rasp, “Talia, stop being stubborn, not about this. Are you injured?”
“No.” He firmed his hold on her shoulder, on her head, detaining her with support and solicitude, demanding a confession. She groaned, relented. “It’s those punches. Guess I was too distracted to focus on anything my body was feeling till now. But suddenly it…cramps with every breath. You know, like being cripplingly sore the morning after too many sit-ups.” Something feral rolled out of his gut. Her eyes shot wider. Then she gave a huff that segued into a moan as her eyes slid down his body to his abdomen then back to his eyes. “What am I saying? It’s sit-ups that are probably sore after a stint with your six-pack.”
She was distracting him. Even thinking she owed him nothing but hostility, even if she wasn’t acknowledging the sincerity of his outrage on her behalf, she was still trying to defuse it.
Before he kissed her, compelled her to carry out her earlier threat, he said, “Talia, I’m going to take off those layers of clothes…”
“Oh, no, you’re not!” she squeaked.
“Then you do it. But I will have them off. Then you’re going to lie down against me. You’re going to stretch those muscles, or they’re only going to get worse. I’ll massage them with anti-inflammatory ointment.”
She remained stiff in his hands for a moment longer before she capitulated, nodded and unzipped her coat.
He followed those capable hands as they undid the layers of clothes beneath it. And when he realized she wore a corset under her man’s undershirt, he felt blood desert his head, his heart seeming to pump it only to his loins. He’d been in enough trouble when he’d believed her figure was as uneventful as a boy’s. She’d been subduing a very…eventful one.
When she’d moved things around to expose only her midriff, she looked at him awkwardly. She tensed again when he began to turn her, and he whispered in her ear, “Let me take care of you. Don’t resist me.”
A breath shuddered out of her as she let him manipulate her body onto his lap. “Resistance is futile, huh?”
He smiled down at her as he opened the ointment tube. “Oh, yes. You’re in no shape for it right now. Resist me all you like when you’re no longer in pain.”
She murmured something, a cross between grudging consent and whimpering pain/pleasure as he carefully began to examine her, then spread the ointment he’d warmed first between him palms over her aching flesh. His own flesh ached, too, all over.
Then, as she relaxed into his touch, arched up into his soothing hands, he saw the outline where the impact had bruised her paleness.
All blood was back, shooting into his head.
He heard the viciousness in his voice as he growled, “Just thinking they had their hands on you at all, let alone in violence, makes me contemplate murder.”
She fidgeted at his intensity, her eyes scanning him from her upside-down position. “You mean you don’t do that on auto?”
He gave her a chiding glance. “Murder isn’t even in the same solar system as manipulation or framing innocents for fraud. Don’t you think you’re taking your enmity too far?”
She sighed as she relaxed again under his cosseting hands. “I don’t know. Maybe you think killing someone a suitable punishment for abusing their power, as an ultimate example for others. As for taking my enmity too far, let me throw one of your brothers in jail for five years, ruin his future and destroy his psyche, and then we’ll discuss the exaggeration of my beliefs and reactions.”
He stopped his massaging movements when she started to quiver. She could be getting cold or tender…or aroused. He was all of that. And though all he wanted was to rip off his clothes and hers and remedy all the causes of their distress, he knew that must remain a fantasy for now.
With what stood between them, maybe forever.
He kept his hands pressed lightly into her flesh for a few more defusing moments, his gaze tangling with her turbulent one.
Then he removed his hands, helped her up. She declined his help straightening her clothes. Then, with her eyes still wrestling with his, she nestled into the farthest part of the cockpit from him, against her door.
He’d thought he could postpone this until she was less raw, until he’d decided how to go on from here. But her withdrawal snapped something inside him. He had to settle this score. Now.
He pressed closer, showing her he wouldn’t take her categorizing him as the villain and shunning him. “Let’s get one thing clear, Talia. I was not a party to what happened to your brother. So I have no more to say on this matter. And nothing to apologize for.” Satisfaction surged as he saw that sense of fairness of hers flickering in her gaze, admitting his point. “So, until I’m in a position to learn more, and do something about it, I won’t let you bring it up again. The subject of your brother is closed for now.”
He held her eyes until she gave him a resentful if conceding huff.
He gave her an approving nod, as if sealing their treaty.
Then he said, “Now, to the only subject we should concern ourselves with for the duration. Our survival.”
Five
“What do you mean our survival?”
Harres frowned at Talia’s glower. His was of confusion. Hers seemed to be equal measures that and a revival of anger.
“What kind of a question is that? We’re in the middle of nowhere, as you pointed out. The most hostile nowhere on the planet.”
“Yeah, sure. So?”
He shook his head, as if it would shake her words into making sense. “You were worried about getting out of this alive. I thought you understood the danger we’re in.”
“I thought I was in danger. The only danger I thought I was in was human-induced.”
His exasperation rose to match hers. “You mean me- induced.”
She shrugged, unfazed by his displeasure. “Yeah, you-induced. I was thinking you’d use my being out here with you as the only way of rejoining humanity, as…persuasion to get me to spill. And that once you were certain I wouldn’t give you anything, you wouldn’t be too gung ho about my well-being, maybe even my survival.”
Blood bounded in his arteries until he felt each hammer against the confines of his body.
He forcibly exhaled frustration before he burst with it. “I thought we got this ridiculous—and let me add, most dishonoring, injuring and aggravating—misconception out of the way.”