Page 2 of Rebel
Conrad leans forward in his seat and fixes those eerie eyes on me. “Bring Rogue back alive.”
2
Space stared back at me from beyond the dome of the observatory, and the miasma of colors soothed my nerves as I lay beneath them. This was my go-to place when I began to feel antsy. Being stuck on a spaceship with four impossibly sexy males was beginning to grate on my senses the last few days, which indicated that my heat cycle was almost upon me.
Three weeks we’d cohabitated. Three weeks of getting to know Lore and Tide—the Athion crew of the ship. Not that I’d made that much of an effort with Lore. He preferred his chemicals and his lab to anything else. What he did in there was a mystery, but Tide made the effort to join us for meals and downtime.
There was a tiny rec room with cards and two Athion board games, one that reminded me of hockey but was played on a wooden board with a hand-held beater and a puck, and the other involved getting your counters to the finish box before your opponents. Other than that, we talked.
A lot of talking.
For example, I knew Xavier was an only child, while Tide was the eldest of five boys, and Lore had an older brother. I knew now that the guys lived together when they were on Athion.
“It’s just easier,” Xavier had explained. “We travel so much that keeping three separate homes is expensive, so we rent a house together and have someone go in once a week to dust and check up on it.”
It made sense. It also illustrated how close they were. Tide and Lore even finished each other’s sentences on the odd occasion Lore deigned to join us.
I got the impression Lore didn’t like me, not that I cared.
And Vex …
Well, Vex was my kryptonite. My drug. I needed to know more about him. I needed to be close to him because the damned Trad was in my heart. But he kept his distance. Ever since the fever, he hadn’t shared a room with me. Hadn’t brought up the fact that he’d told me how much he wanted me. He acted as if there was nothing between us, but the odd time I caught him looking at me, there was more than a little carnal heat in his eyes. He reined it in, though, shutting down. I wasn’t one to chase a guy, though. If he wanted to pretend nothing had happened between us, then fine.
It still stung to be rejected, but I couldn’t force him to feel what I was feeling. Thank goodness Xavier hadn’t given me a moment’s peace to dwell on the Vex issue. The Athion spent every spare moment in my orbit. He’d become my anchor on the ship, and although there was no official training room, he’d made space in one of the large, empty cabins and turned it into a sparring room. We sparred once a day, and it helped blow off steam. It also gave us an excuse to touch each other—to press up close and tussle.
Yeah, there was a definite attraction to Xavier too, and I couldn’t even blame it on the heat cycle making its way back around, because the attraction had been there last week too, and possibly the week before that.
Things were getting emotionally complicated.
The door to the observatory opened.
“I thought I’d find you here,” Xavier said.
I looked up as he ambled across the room in his easy gait. He was long-limbed, lithe, and powerful. His indigo skin gleamed all colors as the miasma reflected off him, turning him into a delectable rainbow.
He lowered his body beside me. “Fancy some company?”
“Would you really just leave if I said no?”
He stretched out on his back with his arms behind his head. “Probably not.”
His body heat pressed against me, and I nestled into his chest. “What are the others up to?”
“Lore is being a nerd as usual, and Tide is on the bridge checking that we’re still on course for Athion and that there aren’t any nasty surprises on the horizon.”
“How long now?”
“Four days, and we’ll be approaching the planet.”
My chest tightened.
“Are you okay?” Xavier’s breath ruffled the hair at my crown.
“No. I’m nervous. None of you have explained exactly what will happen when we get to your planet. I don’t like not knowing the score.”
He was silent for a long beat, and then he shifted to place his arm around me. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you, I promise.”
There was no teasing in his tone, and a spike of unease lanced through me. I turned my head to look up into his chiseled, hawkish face and was trapped in his pale blue eyes.
