3013: Targeted (9 page)

T’karra’s eyes widened. “What in the nine moons of Rivos is a buttercup?”

“Uh…it’s a flower. You didn’t seem to like decadence, so I was trying out another nickname for you.”

“I’ll make you a deal. You two can call me whatever nicknames you like, if I get to pick out one for you.”

“Deal,” Hawke agreed before Brandt could stop him. There was a wicked gleam in T’karra’s eyes that didn’t bode well for either of them.

“Then you two are my
tiktas
.”

“Do I even want to know what that means? The translation implant doesn’t seem to know that word.” Brandt tapped the spot behind his ear where his implant was located. Not that tapping the damned thing ever helped.

“It was a flower on my home world. Its blooms were beautiful…and very delicate. I think the closest thing you have on Earth would be called a pansy.” With that, she gave them both a wicked smirk and waltzed out the door of her room. “I’m suddenly starving, I’m going to go see what you two have stashed in the food console.”

“She’s not serious, is she?” Hawke asked as she vanished out of sight.

“Oh, I think she is. Congratulations, hotshot. Thanks to you, the woman of our dreams just started calling us fucking pansies. You are dead to me, my friend. Dead and buried.”

“Quit bitching. We got her here, and she didn’t kill you for that ridiculous nickname. Starshine? This is why you never get laid, even with me as your wingman. I’m heading downstairs to see what our girl has found to eat. You coming?”

Brandt shook his head. “Not just yet. I’m going to wash up first, I’ll see you in a few.”

Once he was alone, Brandt looked around the bedroom they’d given to T’karra and tried to imagine what it would be like to have her here with them every day, laughing and loving and fighting with them for the rest of their lives. Until they’d come here and met her, Brandt had never really imagined what life would be like with a chosen. Raised on the border of the badlands, his mother had died not long after his first birthday, and Brandt had been brought up by his uncle, who was a lifelong bachelor. Hawke was always hunting for female company, but Brandt rarely felt compelled to do the same. Not until T’karra had waltzed into their lives.

The more he’d gotten to know her, the more he admired her courage and her intelligence. She was the first female he’d ever met he could see a future with, a future that included both him and Hawke. Now, they just had to find a way to keep her alive, save her sanctuary, and convince her that maybe, despite all their differences, the three of them could build a life together.

If she didn’t kill Hawke first.

***

CHAPTER EIGHT

By the time they’d eaten, T’karra knew she couldn’t stay awake any longer. She said good night to the commanders and went to bed. Her new room was bigger than her usual one, and as tired as she was, she spent some time pacing the length of it, staring out the window at the stars as she tried to quiet her thoughts. Her brother was out there, somewhere, and she missed him. The truth was, she could have called her fathers and told them what was going on, but that would have left Verak on the station, and she wanted him out of harm’s way. If it all went badly, she’d be the one to take the brunt of things. She was the eldest. It was her job to protect her younger siblings.

Not that she had any intention of letting things go that far. She still intended to find out what the hell was going on, and stop it.

The problem was, they were no closer to finding any answers than they had been at the beginning of this rotten day. Their sole surviving suspect had managed to convey a few bits of information to Hawke, mostly by typing it out with painstaking slowness with his off hand, but there wasn’t much to tell. They’d been hired, paid, and given their instructions all via their wrist-units, and had no idea who they were working for, or why. The silver knives had simply appeared outside their door, along with the image of a Krytos male. When he’d been showing pictures of the Black Hole’s staff, the suspect had immediately pointed out images of Danor and Verak as the two they’d been told to kill. After that revelation, Danor’s security detail had been doubled. He was now the most heavily guarded being on the whole damned station…besides her.

Finally, fatigue won out over worry, and T’karra went to bed. Her fathers had taught her that a well-rested mind worked better than a tired one. She could only hope that tomorrow would bring her the answers she sought, not only about the attacks, but what she was going to do about her
tiktas,
Brandt and Hawke
.
The nickname she’d given them made her smile as she drifted off to sleep. Those two were nothing like the delicate blossom of her home world, but she would never admit that to them.

* * * *

Hawke lay in bed and tried not to think about the fact that T’karra was sleeping just down the hall. Every time he closed his eyes, visions of her lying in bed filled his mind. Her naked and wrapped in just a sheet, her long legs bared to his gaze. Maybe she slept in a shirt, or better yet, a nightgown that draped over her lean curves and gave a tantalizing glimpse of what lay beneath. Against all logic, he could swear he could smell a trace of her perfume in the air, a subtle blend of spicy notes that had his cock hard and aching. He’d never wanted a woman the way he wanted her. He craved everything about her, from the warmth of her rare smiles to the husky sound of her voice as she conversed on everything from the best liquors in the cosmos to the latest station scuttlebutt.

Even when he finally drifted off to sleep, she haunted him, but as the hours passed the dreams darkened into nightmares. Hawke found himself frozen in place over and over, unable to move or cry out a warning as he watched T’karra die a hundred different ways. No matter how hard he tried, he could never reach her side until after it was too late to save her. When he finally tore himself out of the dreams, his heart was pounding and his skin was slick with sweat.

“Fuck!” he snarled and slammed a fist into the bed beside him. Too agitated to go back to sleep, he got out of bed and turned on the lights with a wave of his hand. A quick glance at the timepiece on his desk told him that there was no point in trying to go back to sleep anyway, the others would be awake in an hour or so. He dressed quickly, only bothering to pull on a pair of workout shorts before heading downstairs to the gym before the others woke up.

He stepped out into the hall and stopped to stare at T’karra’s bedroom door. Part of him wanted to check on her, to see for himself she was safe and unharmed. He took a single step toward her door, his hand lifting to knock, but then he tightened his fingers into a fist and turned away. She wouldn’t thank him for waking her up just because he’d had a bad dream. More likely, she’d add it to the already long list of reasons why she was angry at him, and the last thing he wanted her to feel toward him was anger. He wanted her to smile at him the way she did before she’d known who he was. Before he’d lied to her.

And if wishes were rockets, then beggars would fly.

He descended the stairs in silence, ignoring the voice in the back of his mind that was still insisting he go back and knock on her door.

* * * *

T’karra came awake with a strange sense she wasn’t alone in her room, but when she looked around, there was no one there. She turned on the lights, blinking as images danced in her sensitive vision, but nothing in her room had been disturbed. She was about to turn the light off and go back to sleep when she heard something out in the hall, the faintest of footfalls, bare feet on hard tile. Someone was walking down the hall, away from her room.

Having grown up in the sanctuary she now lead, T’karra was used to the constant hum and noise that came with living close to other people, so why had this noise woken her up? It took a moment for her to figure out the reason, but as the footfalls faded away to silence, she understood. It was too quiet. Unsettlingly so. When she’d gone to bed, Brandt and Hawke had still been awake, watching vids and talking in the main room. Now they were asleep, the whole place was silent. Well...one of them was still asleep. The other one was awake and walking the halls, without his shoes.

Curiosity won out over the need for further sleep, and she rose from her bed intent on finding out which one of the men had been outside her door. Less than a minute later, she was clad in a black tank-top and drawstring pants, making her way silently down the stairs to the main floor. Hawke’s scent lingered in the hallway, a tantalizing blend of citrus cleanser and male musk that was unmistakable. He’d been here, and very recently, but now the hall was dark and empty, so she continued down the next flight of stairs to the area the guys had told her was the gym. She should have known she’d find Hawke down here. It hadn’t taken long for word of his nightly marathons to reach her. He’d been seen running the halls of the station almost every night since he’d taken command. Since he would not be likely to leave her alone, of course he’d come down here to blow off some steam.

The lights were on, but at first, she couldn’t see anyone. Then T’karra saw the familiar glow of an active holo-room, and she knew where he was, and what he was doing. Even then, she wasn’t prepared for what she saw when she keyed the door open and found herself standing at the edge of a forest glade. The floor beneath her feet felt like soft grass, and a warm breeze carried the scent of soil and green living things. It would have been quite idyllic if the sun wasn’t shining down on the scene of raw combat happening in the center of the clearing. A shirtless Hawke was engaged in a brutal fight with a holographic opponent that looked like a Krytos crossed with a nightmare. The creature had too-long claws, a mouthful of sharp, twisted teeth, and scars that crisscrossed its body from the top of its bare skull to the end of its limbs. The thing was hideous, and whoever had programmed this simulation had known what they were doing, because it fought with impressive skill, adapting as the fight progressed.

Not that there was any chance Hawke was going to lose.

He fought like a true warrior, merciless and bold. He was only armed with a quarterstaff, an archaic weapon, but one he was clearly familiar with. He battled as if the black and silver rod was an extension of his body, moving with a lethal grace that made her libido hum in approval. Her first impressions of him had been right, after all, he
was
a warrior, and one a female could be proud to claim. She’d known he was well-built, as were most elites, but now she was looking at his bare torso, T’karra revised her assessment. The man wasn’t merely well-built, he was damned near perfect.

He had broad shoulders heavy with muscle, a torso that tapered down to a trim waist and a washboard stomach marked by a treasure trail of dark hair that vanished beneath the waistband of his shorts. The white of the bandage that covered his knife wound stood out against the golden skin of his forearm, and she felt a pang as she remembered how he’d been hurt. Helping her patrons and her family. There wasn’t any way to deny it any longer, she wanted him. Her body didn’t care about deceit, honor, or the secrets he’d kept. And even while her mind was listing off his failings, she found herself walking out of the shadows and into the sunshine.

A flicker of movement caught Hawke’s eye, and he spun around to face whatever new threat the program had sent his way, only to discover that the new arrival wasn’t a hologram…she was something a whole lot more dangerous. “T’karra? What the fuck are you doing here?”

She tapped her ear. “Someone walked past my door and woke me up. Krytos hearing, remember? Did you think I wouldn’t hear you out there?”

“How’d you know it was me?”

“I caught your scent in the hall.”

“Is your sense of smell that strong, or are you telling me I need a shower?”

She gifted him with a faint smile. “I have been in your company for days now, your scent is familiar to me as your voice. I followed you down here because I thought perhaps you’d like to spar with something that actually knows how to fight. She glanced over to the still-frozen form of his opponent. I wasn’t aware you there were such advanced fighting programs available.”

Hawke jerked his thumb back at the hologram. “The big guy was a gift from an old instructor at the academy. He said he didn’t want to see all his years training me go to waste because I was getting soft sitting behind a desk all day.”

She raked her gaze over his body with unapologetic appreciation, and his cock twitched in response to the heat simmering in her dark eyes. “You don’t look soft to me.”

No fucking kidding. He’d been anything but soft from the first moment they’d met. All it took was the sound of her voice or a whiff of her perfume, and he was hard enough to drill through hull plating. “I still train every day. If I don’t, I get twitchy.”

Twitchy? Yeah, there’s a sexy image to invoke. Way to go, Summers.

She nodded toward the staff he held, her gaze full of curiosity. “Is that what you usually train with? What is it, exactly? It’s certainly not standard Alliance-issue weaponry.”

He held it out to her, still not sure why she was down here, watching him spar. “It’s a titanium quarterstaff, more or less, and no, it’s not standard issue. You may not have noticed, but I’m not really big on doing things the standard way.”

She took the staff from his hand and hefted it carefully, testing its weight before giving it an experimental swing that made it clear she had trained with something similar before. “Oh, I’ve noticed. You have to do everything the
hard
way.”

Fuck
. There was no way watching T’karra casually handle his favorite weapon should turn him on, but it did, a hell of a lot, and the innuendos she was tossing around weren’t helping, either. She was so different from any other female he’d ever met. Female elites were tough, yes, but he’d never met one as fierce and sensual as T’karra. Maybe it was because human women still had to prove themselves equal to the men, whereas the Krytos had no such issues. Everyone who could fight, did. Male or female, young and old. They fought to protect themselves, their homes, and those who could not defend themselves.

He grinned at her as he took up a defensive stance a few feet away from her, then crooked his fingers, beckoning her to come at him. “You’re right about that. There’s no fun to be had in doing things the easy way, and no challenge, either. Computer, delete holographic opponent…I’ve found someone more interesting to fight, and a lot less ugly.”

“Only
less
ugly?” T’karra snapped as she dropped into a fighting crouch. She jabbed at him with the staff, forcing him to deflect the incoming blow.

“Much less ugly?” he amended, swatting away her next few experimental jabs. “You know you’ve been wanting to hit me for days now, so what are you waiting for?”

“Human’s may not play with their food, but Krytos have been known to from time to time.”

“Food, huh? Baby, if you want to take a bite out of me, I’m right here. I’ve already told you. If you want my blood, all you had to do was ask.” Hawke knew he was taking a calculated risk, but if it finally cleared the air between them, he was willing to accept a bit of pain to make that happen. He dropped his guard and threw his arms out, inviting her to take a swing.

T’karra snarled and came at him hard. All the rage, grief, and frustration she’d kept pent up inside surged through her, triggering her transformation to battle form, and she welcomed it like an old friend. This was what she needed, and even as she went on the attack, a small part of her knew Hawke had done this for her. In appreciation of the gesture, she made a mental note not to hurt him…much.

Fangs and claws lengthened, her senses grew more heightened, and raw adrenaline saturated her blood. Her claws made it hard to grip the shaft properly, though, and after two botched strikes she tossed the staff aside. In this form, she didn’t need a weapon, she
was
one.