Page 14 of The Alien's Stolen Rebel

My heart soared with it, the primal joys of speed and danger mixing. The stories hadn’t lied—the shipwas amazing. Acceleration pressed us into our seats, squeezing hard, the chairs adjusting to cushion us against the thrust. The controls responded to my smallest movement, and it took discipline to keep her on course. I thanked the burning stars I hadn’t gotten the full power of the drive when I first cranked the throttle. In the junk field, that would have been suicidal.

“Can’t breathe,” Rachel gasped. “How long?”

I glanced at the rearview screen. We’d put Caliban station far behind us, along with our pursuers. That didn’t mean we were out of danger, but we had enough distance to reassess the situation. I dialed back the thrust, letting Rachel gulp down air as I turned on the high-gain sensors.

That can’t be right,I told myself. Ten ships accelerated in our direction. Not the guard boats that had chased us before, but the full-sized warships of Frax’s fleet. Getting those moving this quickly meant either strict discipline or taking a colossal risk. From what I’d seen, I doubted Frax drilled his forces that hard, so some of those ships weren’t coming back.

Why did he think that price worth paying to recover a single yacht, no matter how unique? She was beautiful, yes, and powerful, but she wouldn’t win him any wars.

The display showed more drives powering up, some of them redlining their engines to close the distance. The fleet wasn’t moving in formation. This was every pirate crew for themselves.

“We can’t fight that,” Rachel said, voice shaking. I glanced aside at her and found it impossible to tell whether that was an aftereffect of the crushing g-forces of flight or a fear of what came next. Either was appropriate.

“You are correct.” I called up status reports, checking on the hyperdrive. Yes, it was online and spun up, but there was no course laid in. A quick calculation told me there wasn’t time to work one out. The warships would never catch up to theStarshadow,but their torpedoes would.

I sighed. A blind jump would take us to a random system in range. Not a good option but staying was suicide. So I overrode the safeties, pulled Rachel to me, kissed her hard on the lips, and hit the jump button.

9

RACHEL

Kreel’s kiss was mind blowing, amazing, unimaginable. Firm lips pressed against mine, setting off a fireworks display of lust in my soul and making my toes curl. His tongue gently parted my lips and pushed irresistibly between them.

I felt the heat in him, so much passion restrained by steel will and iron discipline. I longed for him to unleash that inferno of desire on me, to consume me with his flames. Longed all the more because I knew he would not, not until he knew I welcomed it. A gentleman pirate, which was a ridiculous idea but one I couldn’t doubt during this kiss.

Even the transition through hyperspace wasn’t enough to distract me from our shared passion. If Kreel’s metallic skin hadn’t reflected the red glow, I wouldn’t have noticed it at all.

Unfortunately, he was the pilot and had to pay attention to our course. Hyperspace travel was neverexact, and you couldn’t say what you might appear on top of. I leaned back, lightheaded, and closed my eyes as the seat took hold of me again.

He’s a pirate. He didn’t rescue me; he stole this ship and let me come along for the ride.I tried to ground myself, manage my expectations. The fireworks that kept going off as I sat back weren’t helping.Hell, he’s probably planning to sell me at the first port we reach.

I wasn’t about to let the fact that he was an amazing kisser go to my head. Or to any other part of me.

Beside me, Kreel swore. I didn’t need to know the language to recognize that much, and I sat up, opening my eyes again.

There was no obvious problem. The viewport showed only space, no alarms sounded, no warning lights flashed on the control panel. But Kreel’s grim expression as he flicked through settings told me bad news would soon follow. Data flashed across the holographic screen in front of him too fast for me to follow.

“What’s wrong?” I caught him by surprise, and his head snapped around to stare at me as though he’d forgotten I was there.

Slipping back into Galtrade, he sighed and replied. “That one jump exhausted the hyperdrive charge. I expected the battery would be good for a few jumps, enough to break our trail, but no. One shot only, and a charge cycle half a day long. That’s if we put all the power we generate into it, which isn’t safe.”

I didn’t know how long his days were, but it hardlymattered. That was far too long stuck here, waiting for our enemies to catch up.

“Some racing ship,” I grumbled. He shot me a look, half-way between amused and annoyed.

“Yacht races don’t go through hyperspace. As long as she reaches the starting line on time, there’s no problem. Obviously, the design skipped jump batteries for more thrusters.”

He worked the controls as he spoke, setting a course through normal space. I looked at the glowing displays hanging in front of us but didn’t understand any of it.

“Where are you taking me?”

He shrugged. “Anywhere. As long as it’s far from where we arrived, it’s better than standing still and waiting for the hunters to arrive. There’s an asteroid field this way. That will give us somewhere to hide.”

“You didn’t actually plan for this, did you? What, did you just see theStarshadowand figure it would make a nice joyride?”

“Ihada plan.” The silver-skinned man snarled his reply, pushing the engines harder. “It would have worked, too, ifsomeonehadn’t gotten all the guards on alert. I should have had enough time to plot the hyperspace jump, but no, thanks to you I had to jump blind. Now I’m stuck out here with you until the drive recharges, and I don’t even know where we are.”

My hands tightened on the arms of my chair, and I narrowed my eyes. “You wouldn’t have gotten out of there at all without my help.”

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