Maddison, Karly - Time Slip [The Xephon Alliance 1] (Siren Publishing Classic) (4 page)

“What you here for?” Chitra asked when they were a few minutes clear of the ship.

“Botany and medicines,” Mayla replied sternly. She had a look of determination on her face…determined not to be harassed by Chitra, Kash thought.

“What are you four here for?” Kash tossed his own question back at him for no other reason than to annoy him.

“Who gonna fly you?” he snapped. “You?” Triumph gleamed in his black eyes for a moment that he had shut her up, put her in her place.

“You’d be surprised what I can do,” Kash replied, refusing to let him have the last word. She glared over at Tinny.

“Water and soil tests,” he said calmly before she could ask her question again. “Fenra and Junner are for security. Chase off predators while we work.” Tinny grinned at her as if that would be fun, his sharp fangs catching the light and glinting, reminding her how alien he really was.

“Predators!” Mayla’s complexion appeared a bit green as she wrung her hands in her lap.

“All living worlds have predators,” Junner glanced at Mayla.

“Well, let’s hope if any show up, they’re the size of mice,” Kash chipped in sarcastically.

“They are big,” Junner said, expanding his hands. “Fenra saw one last trip size of this shuttle craft.”

The men laughed long and hard at his comment. Kash’s heart went
ker-thud
in her chest despite the fact she sensed the males were merely having a joke at the two women’s expense.

“Entering atmosphere,” Chitra warned. Kash braced as the darkness around them lightened to a pewter color and the shuttle rocked and bucked.

“Don’t land us in lava again,” Tinny snapped.

Chitra laughed at him. “I was nowhere near it last time.”

Tinny rolled his eyes at Chitra’s answer as if he didn’t quite agree. The shuttle made a strange crackling noise an instant before it hit dirt with a thundering
ka-boom
. Kash thought she was going to be ejected right out of her seat for a moment despite her harness.

“Way to go, Mr. Smooth Landing,” she snapped at Chitra. “How much longer have you guys been in space?”

“A hundred years longer than you,” Chitra sneered, ignoring her comment about his rough landing.

Chapter Four

“It’s really okay to breathe here?” Mayla asked nervously as the hatch started to open.

“It is good atmosphere,” Junner answered. “Tested many times by Tinny.”

“And you are sure there are no sentient beings here? No civilization?”

“Planet is too young,” Tinny replied. “Only low-form animal life, insects, and fishes. But if I see elf or fairy, I let you know.”

The four men snickered with laughter again, taking pleasure in both making fun of Earth mythologies and the two women’s questioning. Kash’s cheeks flamed as she stepped out the hatch into the cool air.
Bunch of arses!

“You seem to know a lot about human stuff,” she remarked to Tinny.

“I born on Hurf, and later I go back and spend two year there,” he answered.

“Where the hell is Hurf?”

“Urf.”

“Earth?”

“Yes. Erf,” he looked directly at her. “Twenty of your years ago, I spent two years visiting.
 
Long time ago now.”

“Yes…I can tell.” She rolled her eyes and walked off. She’d only gone a few paces when a giant dragonfly creature buzzed so close to her head it stirred her hair.

“You said insects!” she shouted. “Insects!”

“Correct. That is insect,” Tinny remarked, watching it fly off. “Nice wings, huh?”

Kash gave him a murderous look.
Wings
! “That was a bio helicopter, not an insect…and by the size of it, I no longer want to see any of the animals around here.”

“Animals are very small,” Tinny answered. He bent and scooped up a little creature from between his boots. It looked like a wet mouse with no tail. He passed it to her to examine, and it gave a protesting squeak.

“Well, that would make a nice snack for that insect! I thought Junner said predators were as big as the shuttle,” she reminded him, stepping back warily from the bulk of his large frame.

“Junner made a joke,” he said, glancing at her with gleaming eyes before bending to release the tiny creature from his hand. It scurried away into some nearby bushes. Tinny pulled a probe out of his pocket and took a soil sample right in front of her before wandering off to the streamlet next to which Chitra had landed them.

Mayla started to put some plant samples in bags to examine later. She’d already grabbed a sizeable sample collection in just ten minutes.

“Anything you like the look of?” she asked Kash. She began to answer when Fenra backed into her unexpectedly with his weapon half-cocked. Chitra, standing close to both of them, flicked him over the head with the back of his hand.

“Watch yourself,” he snapped at the young guard. Kash whirled on Chitra, about to give him a piece of her mind for striking Fenra, but Tinny appeared from nowhere and stood between them, holding up a small pail of water.

“It’s very pure,” he announced casually. “Try some.” He handed a little beaker to both Chitra and Kash, though the warmth of his fingers barely touched Chitra’s the way they touched hers, with that tiny hesitation as if maybe he wished to prolong the flesh-to-flesh contact for a brief moment.

She wasn’t fooled by his timely interference. Reluctantly, she lifted the beaker to her lips and sampled the purest water she’d ever tasted. The tension eased a little as Chitra followed her example. Mayla returned to the small clearing with an armful of samples that she carried into the shuttle to stack in boxes, encouraging Chitra to follow her inside to help. Kash stared after them, struck by the difference in the tall, alien male with the flapping coat and the slightly built human woman beside him. Did she look like that when she stood next to Tinny? Why on Earth was she even thinking such thoughts? She distracted herself by watching the antics of the rest of the crew.

Junner had found what appeared to be a snake, but turned out to be a very large worm. He had called Fenra over to admire it. Together they laughed and jumped about as it tried to escape their examination.

Kash wandered away to the stream. She managed to put a few samples in more of her bags before the water lured her. It looked clear and the warm temperature tempted her as she stared down at the pebbles while trailing a hand through it. Would it be dangerous to bathe here? Enchanted with the idea she stripped down to her underwear before she could talk herself out of it.

Gingerly she put a toe in the water, then her whole foot. The delicious water beckoned. She moved in deeper until it came up to her thighs, swirling around her. Sighing, she ducked under for a few seconds. It seemed like a thousand years ago that she had been exposed to so much delicious running water. She bobbed up again and gasped for air, surprised to see that Tinny was standing nearby.

“Kash, what are you doing?” he admonished from the bank. “I want you out now!” His eyes looked fierce, flashing with turquoise fire, and for a second he exposed his fangs in a menacing snarl.
As if!

“Tinny! Do not order me around!”

“It is not safe. We do not know this world well yet.”

“You said it was safe.”

“I only said the water was pure! Get out, or I will pull you out!” The clipped command grated like the gravel under her feet.

Kash wanted to laugh at him. Why did he have to be such an insufferable prat?
 
A sudden desire to nettle him took hold of her. She let out an earsplitting scream and pretended she had been pulled under, her arms flailing. She had only meant to tease him, but before she could jump up again, he had flashed into the water and pulled her against him, against his hard, broad chest that she wanted to…wanted to what?

“I was kidding,” she spluttered as he wrapped serpent-like arms around her body. “You Xephons have been doing it to Mayla and me all day!” She stared up into his sopping wet face. He’d come into the water so quickly, and now his clothes were all wet as a result. He climbed out of the stream still holding her, his eyes like hot coals lit with blue fire behind them.

“I thought you were being harmed.” He looked down at her. “You are a stupid female!”

“Put me down then!” she snapped.

He dropped her like a hot rock. She crashed at his feet, shocked that he had literally done what she had asked of him. Scrambling up to her feet, she realized with mounting horror that she wore only her panties and bra. Her
wet
panties and bra.

His eyes assessed her state with a leap of hunger in their depths. Dammit, if that didn’t cause her breasts to ache and her inner thighs to tremble with desire. She had to thank all the gods in the cosmos for the stream water hiding her response. She didn’t want any Xephon male knowing he was a turn on to her… most especially this one!

“You are indecent,” he pointed out, his voice rough and low. Kash glared back at his dripping wet lashes, his soaked coat and boots, and her heart skidded around her rib cage. Dammit, the way he said the word indecent…as if it were a caress buried deep in a bed of velvet, and not the scolding that it really was.

“If you think I’m indecent, then stop staring!”

His damned clothes had steam radiating from them! She felt so flustered she wasn’t sure how she still remained upright. The fact that he had little experience with human nuances gave her some hope that she might still avoid making a complete fool of herself.
 

She bent to snatch at her clothes, thrusting her legs into her pants. The action unbalanced her, and if it weren’t for him grasping her quickly by her upper arm, she would have fallen to the ground again. She retained too much pride to say thank you and felt too unsettled by the curl of his long, warm fingers around her icy naked flesh to speak. Embarrassed now that her anger had dissipated, she felt like a naughty child with him standing there. Hands shaking slightly, she struggled with her jumper as he stood guard. Cheeks flushed, she managed to summon a haughty expression to her face and pin him with it.

“Your gratitude astounds me,” he said, mild sarcasm in his voice. If he wasn’t careful, she’d soon wipe it off with a swipe of her hand.

“I wasn’t drowning.” She stalked past him and went back to the shuttle.

“Why are you wet?” Junner asked Tinny as he followed her.

“Because I have water all over me,” he said, as he strode past. She couldn’t help a snort of derision.

Tinny peeled his coat off and glanced around. “Does anyone haf an under jumper I could borrow?”

Chitra took his coat off and lifted his shirts over his head. He had the most ripped body Kash had ever seen in her life. She looked away from the Xephons as he threw his undershirt at Tinny. One more minute, and she would have hardly been able to stop herself from reaching out and running her hand over those washboard abs. Damn if they didn’t look like they had jumped straight out of an advertising feature for a national gymnasium or Olympic sporting team. And Chitra was definitely the last male in the universe she ever wanted to be running her hand over. Shame nature had to waste such a godly body on him, she thought with a quick smirk, refusing to indulge herself with a glance at Tinny as he pulled the new shirt on.

Later she noticed Chitra’s shirt hung loose on Tinny because he was not quite as broad as the other male, though he was a few inches taller. Kash wondered if Chitra had given it to him to show his own chest off and compare his shirt size to Tinny’s. It was just the kind of thing the younger Xephon males would have done, though surprising from these older ones.
Cads!

“We leave now before sun gets too low,” Chitra said as Tinny bent to take his wet boots off.