Girl Gone Nova (2 page)

“This is a remarkable space,” she murmured, because small talk was an expected part of this social ritual. She used the tip of her tongue in a swipe across her upper lip and sent a few more cc’s of his blood heading south. She didn’t want him to notice her small talk was really small.

“Is it?” Naman sounded as dazed as she’d wanted him to.

Doc looked around, glad to break eye contact for a few seconds. It didn’t take this much pretty to please the Earth delegation, not after several months in space, but the Gadi wouldn’t know that. Or maybe they did and they’d still pushed out the boat. They wanted access to the Kikk Outpost pretty badly.

“I am surprised, though.” She paused with intent to distract.

He arched a perfect brow and leaned toward her, bringing his personal scent in range of her nostrils. Lucky for her it wasn’t unpleasant. Unlucky for him, it did nothing to her heart rate or cognitive processes. She’d been called a cold bitch more than a few times. It was a fair assessment. It could be the scientist at her core that focused too much on analyzing and not enough on feeling. It could be
them
snapping at her heels.

Or she was just a cold bitch.

“What surprises you, Doctor?”

“Well, I would have expected a beautiful staircase for more dramatic effect, I suppose.” And why no chandeliers? She’d been sure there’d be chandeliers. The Gadi and chandeliers seemed made for each other. She made some vague hand movements to go with her words.

It wasn’t a shock when his gaze followed her hands, since that’s why she did it.

“The arrival of your delegation was quite dramatic.”

If he hadn’t smiled after he said this, she’d have suspected he was being ironic.

“A big flash and then a bunch of olive drab. It needed work.” She shrugged, adding a hint of rueful into the calculated movement.

He laughed. No surprise it sounded pretty, too. “Whereas we arrived via the lift.”

He indicated what she’d thought were floor-to-ceiling panels at the end of the room.

“I would like to have seen that.” This comment had the benefit of being both small talk and true.

He edged closer. Doc shifted, her gaze holding Naman’s, as she maintained the distance status quo. One thing Doc had in common with the General, she didn’t like people in her personal space. She’d once done the shift/retreat all the way around the desk of a target, until she got tired of it and kicked his ass. That technique wouldn’t work here. Kicking ass at a party wasn’t diplomatic. Even she knew that. If the guy got too persistent she’d ask for directions to the ladies room. She might learn something, even if it was only that Gadi women peed, too.

She was unprepared for the chill that snaked abruptly down her back, like a finger tip tracing a path from spinal tip to base. The hairs on her body stirred, and then lifted, but still not in flight or fright. She was well acquainted with both. Her heart sped up. Her breathing tried to, too. She fought that. Panting was passé at a party. The struggle to control her breathing created a kind of roaring in her ears. Her hands tightened around her glass, as if it could provide the stability she needed.

Someone was watching her.

She’d been watched, studied, assessed many times in her thirty-plus years, but not like this. It wasn’t creepy.

It
was
new.

* * * * *

Helfron Giddioni—Leader of the Gadi people and defender and protector of most of the galaxy—knew to his bones how important this reception was. The complex relations with these people from Earth had reached a critical mass. If war were to be averted, he needed to pay attention to the newly arrived ambassador—even if Rockley was as mind-numbingly dull as his predecessor. Something nagged at him, trying to pull his attention from matters of state. He resisted the urge for several minutes, but as the impulse built, he gave in to the urge to scan for the source. If something were wrong, he needed to know this.

All seemed to be well with both party and guests—a moving figure on the perimeter grabbed his attention—even as the hairs on the back of his neck rose in warning. All women are dangerous. Hel had known this for as long as he could recall. Since avoiding them was impossible, one approached them with caution, and was never surprised by anything they did.

This one might surprise him.

Through partially lowered lashes, he studied her, wondering what it was about her that bothered him. The purity in the curve of her pale cheek, exposed by the angle of her head and fall of her deeply dark hair were perfect, too perfect, he realized, like a pose in a tableau. The hair hung straight and thick almost half-way down her back. It shifted as she did, sometimes hiding, sometimes exposing a profile that appeared to be without flaw. Her clothing was meant to disguise her female shape. It failed in this. And it fed the dangerous aura she wore like a cloak. The way she’d circled the perimeter of the room reminded him of a
panthric
on the hunt, each move an invitation, and a warning. She activated his hunter’s instincts, though he had other reasons to be curious about her.

His gaze moved to General Halliwell, standing at least a head taller than the group that surrounded him. He’d arrived in the first group from the
Doolittle
, wearing his reluctance for the meeting like a storm cloud. Hel had hoped that time out in his own galaxy and a promotion would have mellowed him. He’d hoped wrong. The General didn’t like the Gadi, and he really didn’t like their Leader. No surprise he didn’t want to be at the reception—or that he’d come anyway.

Halliwell was a strategist as well as a warrior.

The Earth delegation had probably come to the reception in camouflage at the general’s order, in hopes it would annoy Hel into misbehaving.

It wouldn’t.

Hel was also sure that the people chosen to attend were here for a purpose. That made the woman even more dangerous—and more interesting.

After two Earth years butting heads with the various leaders of the Earth delegations, Hel should have had a clearer understanding of them. In many ways, they were simple and straightforward, almost like children, but he’d learned never to assume he was seeing the whole story. No, there was a reason for the woman’s presence, a purpose to be served.

“Look at that. Morticia has stopped stalking and is talking to someone. Color me shocked,” one of the expedition members said, the voice behind Hel.

It was easy to conclude the man spoke of the woman. Other than the servers, she was the only one who had been pacing. The words had a malicious edge. Was there dissension in the ranks of the expedition? Why had the General brought her here?

There was only one way to find out.

* * * * *

Doc’s companion turned toward the watcher. She turned with him, even though one part of her overactive brain thought it was a bad idea. Then she saw
him
and her brain did something it had never, ever done.

It froze.

The sudden silence inside her head was as disconcerting as the raw power the Gadi man emitted like a blast wave. He could have powered the
Doolittle
with a look. Even
they
paused inside her head.

She should have been able to calculate his height and center of gravity to within an inch.

Instead, she couldn’t do basic math.

She wasn’t sure she knew her own name.

Her only clear thought:
what would it be like to kiss him?

It should have freaked her out to feel thrust into a romance novel moment. She’d gone through a pile of them trying to find romance in her soul. She’d concluded she had neither romance nor soul.

Now she wasn’t so sure. She
was
sure he was beautiful.

His powerful body was slim and narrow hipped. His shoulders were broad and nicely displayed by his neutral, but well-fitted garments. His slacks were cut to display long, strong legs. His coat reminded her of a Nehru jacket with its standup collar that framed the strong column of his throat and jaw line. It suited a body that moved as gracefully as a jungle cat toward her. His skin was lightly tanned, just enough to deepen the contrast with his blonde hair.

She couldn’t see a single flaw, not in the way his brows arched over his intensely blue eyes, or in the sweep of his nose, or in the full, sensual curve of his mouth.

She’d never used the word sensual, never thought it except when reading. Now it whispered through her mind, stroked her insides like a promise.

He made an elegant motion, like he was sweeping something to the side. She was somewhat aware that Naman bowed and moved away from her. He might have spoken, but Doc didn’t hear it, despite the deep silence inside her head.

A wave of heat hit her nerve endings at the same time
his
scent did. It was as mysterious and heady as the man. On some level she knew he couldn’t smell any way but this one.

There was nothing calculated, no geometry involved in the rising of her chin. No deliberation in the lift of her lashes so that she could meet his gaze. Her world rocked, and when it stopped, it was off its axis. She should have known how far off, but she didn’t. Her brows pulled together as the remaining sliver of sentience in her brain produced a hypothesis based on her body’s reactions.

Desire.

So that’s what it felt like.

* * * * *

Her eyes were a deep shade of purple, an eye color Hel had never seen before. This should have made her eyes cool, but they weren’t cool. They burned in the pale oval of her face. The frame of black lashes intensified both the color and heat of her eyes, ramped up the impact like a sun going nova. He looked for flaws in how she was made and found none. He homed in on her mouth. It was well formed and pink—the Leader’s personal color.

If she was Halliwell’s secret weapon, the man was more subtle than Hel had suspected.

Color stained the sculpted lines of her cheekbones, and the pulse at the base of her throat jumped into hyperdrive, pounding against the pale skin in a way that seemed to say, put
your lips here, now, before you die
. Hel almost answered that demand, as desire, thick and rich, stirred in his veins. He needed to do something, say something before he gave into temptation.

“Morticia.” His voice emerged as a husky rasp.

He’d been sure her eyes could get no wider, no deeper, but they did. Then the thicket of lashes swept down to rest against pale cheeks, there was a forever pause before they lifted again. Purple was gone, though the blue was still intense and unusual. Her mouth curved into a grin that was nothing like the smile she’d directed at Naman. This look was real. He didn’t know how he knew. He just did. He knew
her.

“Morticia?”
 

A soft chuckle spilled out of her parted lips. “Right.”

Her voice had a different inflection than others of her kind, giving an elegance to her brief response. Desire settled now that he had her attention, though it’s current still pulsed between them, like a circuit seeking completion. Her smile also removed that lethal, almost other world quality. She was just a woman, he told himself, a lovely woman, but still just a woman. Even as his brain called him a liar, he wondered if he’d let himself overwork the problem of Halliwell and the threat that this woman had appeared to pose.

“That’s not—”

The sound of voices rising in jarring conflict ripped across the surface tranquility of the reception. Before his gaze, Morticia shifted into lethal again, like a picture losing its focus and then finding it.

And he knew he hadn’t imagined anything. She
was
dangerous, possibly the most dangerous woman he’d ever met.

The interruption, the altercation, was ill timed. Hel turned toward the sound. A member of the earth delegation appeared to be arguing with one of the servers at the service entrance. Hel frowned, shooting a sharp look of command at his head of security.

Wilstead started toward the pair, breaking into a trot as the dispute grew louder. The server’s voice rose to a shriek as the Earth man shoved her toward the doorway.

In the space between two beats of his heart, Hel’s warrior instincts displaced diplomacy. He moved to place himself in front of Morticia, but she was already in motion—heading
toward
the disputants. Hel shouted a warning that was engulfed in a roar and in the bright, deadly light racing toward him…

Cordite burned into her nose bringing Doc awake and into a low-profile crouch. She eased a weapon free from concealment, ears straining for threats in darkness lit by a half-hearted fire. Nothing immediate presented itself, but her gut refused to stand down and her senses twitched like live wires in water. Something bad had happened. People were down. Stuff was on fire. It took a few seconds to orient her memory, to reconstruct where she was, what had happened and why she was on alert at the cellular level.

What light there was showed her the remains of the lovely Gadi reception hall. Moans filtered in between the soft crackle of fire somewhere off to her right. Her brain noted aches and pains in a variety of places, and smoke stung her eyes and lungs, but it was a low level concern, all energy channeled to her stretched out senses.

No one had told her to come to the party armed, but no one had told her she couldn’t. Truth was, even if they had, she’d still be armed. It was SOP—standard operating procedure—to expect the unexpected.

She extracted her infrared monocle. Not everyone could split their vision, but her brain liked it. It pulled more data from the combo of IR and real-time viewing. With the IR in place, she surveyed her surroundings again. Heat signatures popped out of the haze, all of them prone, bodies and rubble tumbled together.

She would have been one of those bodies, but she’d realized she couldn’t stop the attack and hit the deck before the blast. Still got her bell rung, of course.

She needed to find the General and not just because of his rank. He’d be one of the few wearing a radio. She wasn’t officially military, so she didn’t have one, though the
Doolittle
should be monitoring the contingent and seen the explosion on their sensors. There’d been at least one medical officer dirt side, but he’d been the one trying to push the bomber out of the hall. No way had he survived the blast.