Remaining silent would frustrate her, but Raze couldn’t stop himself from answering. “Detyen.” He should have kept it hidden in case she escaped and reported back, but he found himself wanting to talk to her, and he hadn’t wanted anything in so long that he couldn’t deny this one simple thing.
She blew at an errant strand of hair, ruby red in the moonlight, as her eyes narrowed. Her eyes flicked down to his hip, where his blaster remained holstered. The distance between them wasn’t long, both of them standing just out of reach of one another, but it might as well have been a deep chasm.
“Why aren’t you shooting me?”
“I don’t—” he couldn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t know how to finish the sentence. In the last ten minutes, he’d been more alive than he’d been in two years and his control was shot. If Toran or Kayde saw him, they’d order him put down in a second, and he’d deserve it. He wasn’t thinking clearly, wasn’t operating at acceptable capacity. He wanted to… he wanted and for a soulless Detyen, there could be nothing worse.
That narrowed gaze of hers relaxed a fraction and she took a step back, her knife still out, but the hold not quite as threatening as it had been only a moment ago.
They stared at one another, neither sure of what action to take. No, Raze knew what he should do, what he must do. Anything that would give him the information he needed about his men so that he could retrieve them and complete the mission, find the data they’d been assigned to retrieve and return home to his bleak existence, where nothing awaited him except years more of gray emptiness until he came to his natural end by his own hand or that of his fellow soldiers.
And that should bring up no reaction in him except acceptance. He’d chosen the path when he let his soul be ripped apart in the name of the survival of his people.
But in this endless moment between him and this strange woman, he wished that he’d taken another path, one he’d never realized was there in the first place.
The woman broke him out of his daze. “You’re not a pirate, are you?”
Before he could answer, he caught a hint of movement and light out of the corner of his eye. He moved without thought, launching himself at the woman and tackling her to the ground, his hand clasping her wrist and keeping the knife away from anything important. For a moment, their hands met, skin to skin, and agony ripped through his body and he held it close with a silent scream.
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About Kate Rudolph
KATE RUDOLPH IS A DERBY girl who lives in Indiana. She loves writing about kick butt heroines and the steamy heroes who love them. She’s been devouring romance novels since she was too young to be reading them and had to hide her books so no one would take them away. She couldn’t imagine a better job in this world than writing romances and sharing them with her fellow readers.
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The Mate Bundle
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Rogue Alien’s Escape
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Endless
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Bear in Mind
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Find more by Kate Rudolph at www.katerudolph.net