Alien Fighter's Baby (Captured Science Fiction Romance) (3 page)

“Wisetech, drop out the Zach tactical survival vehicle!” he ordered.

“Whoa! But boss—” Wisetech exclaimed.

“Now,” Bran snapped.

Then he released Starling and realized too late that he might have been hurting her. “That is a class one order, Wisetech!”

Starling nearly crumpled to the deck before he caught her, then he held her up against his chest and her head fell limply onto his vest.

“And Wisetech, bring me a med-pack and a medi-log, then meet me in the rear bay. Tell Lee that she’s in charge of the wig-out.”

“If you are sure, commander?”

“I’m sure,” Bran snapped.

Bran carried Starling, because she was half-conscious and cold. Too cold, he thought, as he laid her in the rear of the Zach vehicle after he’d carried her through the ship. He’d only stopped at Cookie’s bunk to grab some boots that might fit a petite woman.

When he reached the Zach, Bran grabbed a thermo-cover and a retiring bag to wrap Starling in, before he lifted her and walked to the front of the tactical survival vehicle. There, he settled Starling upright, to sit in the second seat.

“Starling?” Bran shook her a bit, and she seemed to catch enough tension in her neck to hold herself straight. “Come on, beautiful, you have to help me here.”

“Are you going to leave me?” she asked, but it was mumbled.

It struck him how vulnerable she was, as he harshly muttered, “No.” Then he began to strap her in with efficient, but sharp motions. “Now stay upright and hold on to this rail,” he ordered.

He picked up her small hands and put them on the horizontal side rail, as she whispered, “Yes, Bran.”

There were tears in her tumultuous green eyes.

Bran turned away with irritated grimness over the situation and over his apparently new and unreliable emotions. He felt the gates lowering the Zach to the outside ground level, and he grabbed a tack-rifle, then saw that Wisetech was hurrying toward him. Wisetech carried a medi-log and the med-pack.

Before Wisetech could sound off an adverse word about Bran leaving his command the way he was, he beat him to the punch with a strict order.

“Drop your chest aero-com panel, old man.” Bran grabbed the medical gear and tossed it on the rear deck of the Zach, as he continued, “I’m going to key in Lee as top dog.” Wisetech opened his half-metal mouth. “No arguments. That’s an order!” Bran snapped.

“All right, all right, boss man,” Wisetech muttered, while Bran punched in the codes. “Can’t blame you, commander. A baby and all. Just—just—”

Bran slapped Wisetech’s chest panel closed. “What?” Bran asked sharply.

“Ah, man, just tell me what I can do.” Wisetech grabbed Bran’s forearm. “I’ll do anything.”

Bran felt a force of emotions slam his gut as he held his facial features immobile.

“You might—” He gripped Wisetech’s forearm tightly. He knew it was impossible, but he said it anyway: “—find a way back here in nine months.”

Bran couldn’t stand it—he’d lost all his military rights by his intended actions, and he felt weak for asking. He didn’t ask for himself; he asked for Starling and for her baby. If he could keep them alive on a hostile Grub planet that long.

“You got it!” Wisetech exclaimed. “Yes, boss, you just count on it!” he shouted, as he sprinted back toward the inner hold of the Skitter.

Bran shook his anger, frustration, and powerlessness free, as he let his last sight of Wisetech disappear … and along with that, everything else he’d ever known. He growled with a sound that could have been pain or deadly intent, and then threw himself up into the Zach’s driver’s seat.

Within seconds, he had the survival vehicle rolled free from beneath the Skitter’s belly, and then through the shields that had been lowered for him for a brief second. He accelerated right out into World War VI, by the look of the flash battle that was going on. Immediately, he saw they were speeding directly into a line of Trak-Grub-Wald ground units, which his side of the war called Bug units.

In the exploding strobe lights of battle, against the eerie purple night of the Grub world, Bran swore he saw a human-type bulk, for one second, right before a Bug unit blew up in a violent ball of orange in front of their tactical vehicle.

That lucky blast, which he knew had come from the Skitter, left an opportunity for him to break through the Grubs’ offensive line. He geared the Zach and popped a wheelie with the power he used, while Starling cried out next to him and hung on tightly, as he’d ordered her.

W
hen the military
vehicle lurched like a rearing stallion, Starling felt her heart in her throat, and the next second was nothing but blackness, as she fell unconscious. Only to wake in a strange place, in a strange position, and on top of a dark, lumpy human stranger.

She would have yelped in fright, if she could have found her voice. She was glad a few seconds later that she hadn’t been able to, because when she opened her eyes and her senses began to focus in the darkness, she realized the stranger was really the tough-bodied soldier, Bran.

While her frantically beating heart stilled to her surroundings, she also slowly realized that she was safe, and for some reason sprawled on top of Bran’s hard, athletic body. All six feet of him, and he had her wrapped in a bear hug that included his impossibly wide hand covering one cheek of her naked behind, which stuck out from beneath the tee shirt he’d given her. It was her only piece of clothing. He was bare-chested, but she could feel the warm material of his skintight pants against her lower body.

She finally decided after long moments of concentration that he was sleeping, and with nothing else to do, she laid her cheek back down on his really well-built chest. He wasn’t leaving her, she thought in awe as she rubbed her cheek into his warmth and sighed.

She’d not felt so safe or been so warm in such a long time. Bran’s body was like an internal heater, and it sent waves of warmth around her. The Grub prison had been so cold. Cautiously, she probed her toes between Bran’s sinewy calves, feeling the immediate heat. She sighed again. She wouldn’t have thought a muscularly hard man like the trooper would be so comfortable to lie on.

Bran woke to the unique experience of small toes wiggling between his calves, as he lay still, but eyed the Zach’s security screens through his barely opened left eye. Satisfied that everything was secure, which meant there were not any Grubs within a hundred clicks of their position, he turned his waking mind completely to the experience of having a full-bodied and real woman sprawled on top of him. And more importantly, toward the feeling of one of his hands covering a bare and nicely plump buttock.

Hell, there was nothing like a woman’s behind, he thought grimly, as he considered all the lean, hard, and muscular butts he’d seen in the troopers for the past ten odd years. Not like the one he held, though; no, that one was as soft as satin and pillowed enough to make his throat ache.

“At least there is one benefit to destroying my entire career,” he muttered, through the ache in his throat, as he grabbed hold of the then startled woman on top of him, and he dragged her up his chest. That full-length body drag motivated him, nearly as motivating as the two handfuls of squirming bare butt that he ended up holding.

“What are you doing?” Starling squealed, as she braced her two diminutive fists on his shoulders, in what he supposed could be an attempt to push her body off his.

He stared at her stormy gaze above him, as he felt her long hair feathering across his chest, then it pooled in the hollow of his throat. He wondered, by her question, just what he was doing. He’d never considered doing anything with a real woman before.

The sex bots he’d had in the past were playthings; however, Starling was flesh and blood. But wasn’t that the point, though, somewhere in the mess he’d been flung into? The fact she was real. However, he could concede that he had no notion of propriety with a woman. None. Zilch.

But then, wasn’t he owed …
something
for his sacrifice?

“Sex, baby. That’s what I’m doing,” he muttered, as he knocked Starling’s bracing arms loose, and it made her squeal again. Then, with his arms full of a wiggling and curvaceous woman, he rolled their bodies until he held Starling beneath him.

“We can’t!” Starling exclaimed, as she shoved against Bran’s block-shaped shoulders, and nearly hurt her hands with the impossible effort of trying to move them.

“Why the hell not?” he demanded from above her, while he grasped a handful of her hair and another handful of her tee shirt, which he began to pull up her squirming thighs.

“Because! B-because,” Starling stuttered.

She felt the heat of Bran’s knuckles scorching her belly as he— Not like this. She squeezed her eyes shut and expelled a whimper. She felt his hands stop pulling her tee shirt, and they settled between her breasts.

“Look at me,” he demanded, and his hands moved to each side of her face as she peeked at him. “Tell me why not.”

Her thoughts were in panic mode as her gaze searched Bran’s hardened and attractive face.

“Because we are not married!” she finally blurted, then she gasped and began to shove on Bran’s chest as hard as she could. She was amazed when his tough, muscular body moved and he fell onto his back, causing her to look at her small hands in wonder.

“Married?” Bran groaned. “Of all the things to hear. Married!” he snapped again, throwing a forearm over his eyes. “Christ.”

Starling thought it would be a good time to escape Bran’s looming masculinity, so she pulled her tee shirt down and grabbed a strangely textured blanket, while she scooted to the very back of the small space they were in. A space that was like a box, and they were sitting on a deck of some sort.

Ahead of her, she could see two high-backed seats, and she realized they were in the vehicle Bran had strapped her into earlier.

“Let me get this straight.” Starling’s eyes widened as Bran rolled onto his stomach and propped on his elbows, making his biceps balloon before her eyes. “You say you won’t have sex with me unless we are, ah, married?”

Starling clapped her hands over her ears, as she exclaimed, “Oh, I don’t like that word! Please, don’t say it again.”

Bran raised a dark eyebrow and tilted his head.

“Marriage?” he guessed, and it was a little too innocent for such a ruggedly masculine man. Starling shook her head vigorously with her ears still clasped, which showed that she could hear everything. “Well, just what would you call it then, babe?” Bran asked in exasperation.

A moment later, he truly regretted all that he didn’t know about shy, curvy, real women … because then he could have been prepared for—

“Making love,” Starling whispered, as she lowered her hands. “Married people, having a baby … they make l-love.”

She looked so damn serious, Bran thought. Hell, she looked hopeful. Hope swimming in her deep and melting green eyes. What was he supposed to do? Force her? No way. He’d hoped she’d want to do it as a thank you for upending his entire life to save her. Just a little touch-and-stroke thank you.

She had let him touch her very fine bare butt. Of course, she might not have been exactly aware of that. But that big cuddle as she’d woken up meant something … to his aroused dick, at least.

Then he made the fatal mistake of opening his mouth again. “Starling, there are no holy men here to take vows from, so I don’t see how—”

“But you’re a lieutenant, aren’t you?” she interrupted. His jaw went slack. “An Alpha-Force one,” she added, looking as if that bolstered her point perfectly.

The problem, Bran reflected with an audible groan, was it did hit the point. It was an antiquated law, never, he was sure, enforced in decades. He swiped his square hand over his face. That might be stretching it—they’d probably used it closer to the colonies of Earth. But out there on the spacial rim … well, it was a ludicrous thought.

Nevertheless, legally valid—ancient legally, he could marry people. But surely not himself. It could not apply to him!

The point, Bran decided, as he sidestepped all of it abruptly, was that he was not going to get laid. And that was the true misery. He’d lost his career, he was stuck with a voluptuous babe for months, he was in the middle of a hostile Grub-infested planet, and now he was stuck with a hard erection from then to eternity.

“Great,” he muttered. “Just damn great.”

Starling knew she’d escaped a “big” one. And she did mean big, because Bran was tall and packed with muscles, and she’d felt his erection, hard as steel. He could have easily forced her to do anything, whether she’d liked it or not, and she did feel as if she owed him.

From what she could tell when he’d muttered different things, he’d ruined his military career to come with her. She was smart enough to know that she’d never last long on the hostile alien planet without him. So yeah, she owed him her life and tons more, and she knew the payment to men was her body … especially when she had nothing else to give him.

She couldn’t believe she’d come up with the marriage idea. Then she couldn’t believe that it had actually stalled him. But he’d taken his hard body and climbed off her. For now—she just wondered what was worse, being the Grubs’ prisoner or getting sexual with a man like Bran.

But then there was a part of her, which had been awakening to new feelings she barely understood, that reminded her while that first time she’d been forced to be with Bran, toward the end of it, she’d felt amazing pleasure. It had exploded inside her, and then just the repeated thought of that pleasure, during all the horrible things the Grubs had done to her, had kept her from falling into insanity through sheer terror.

She owed him for that too.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered, from the back of the vehicle, where she hugged her knees up under her chin.

Bran had moved to sit in the front seat, but the vehicle wasn’t moving. He turned his head to the side so she could see his strong profile and the heavy five o’clock shadow on his face.

“I know I owe you,” she whispered, forcing out the words.

He made a disturbed sound, and she saw that his hands had clenched into fists on the steering.

“Damn, beautiful, I might even take you like that. Owing me.” Then he shrugged and unclenched his fist. “But I don’t want you that way. So forget it. I got carried away. I’m a man; things happen when a half-naked woman is on top of them as they wake up.”

He seemed to growl the last part, while a blush stole over her cheeks about being barely dressed and on top of him. She couldn’t believe she had basically offered herself to him out of debt … and he was refusing. She nearly let out a large sigh of pent-up relief.

Except a small part of her was disappointed she’d not feel that pleasure again. But she wasn’t disappointed badly enough to say any more about it.

Instead, she said, “Thank you for saving me.”

It was all she had to repay him.

His hands clenched again, and she tensed. Had that been the wrong thing to say? Holy Jupiter, she wanted to be out of the small, confined space with him. She wanted to be back home, a place she knew she could never return too. Her people would never accept her back, after being tarnished by slavers and aliens. She and her baby were all alone in the universe … accept for Bran.

“Just get up here and buckle in,” Bran growled. “We need to make some miles before dark.”