Page 20 of Star Claimed Omega
Frost the stars!Her plan, whatever meager fragments she still possessed, depended on maintaining anonymity.
She had no intention of revealing her past or identity to him.
Yet Santi Alvarro did not seem like a man who would permit questions to go unanswered.
She grabbed a rag from her kit and turned toward the hallway.
‘Anyway, I should move to the bathroom.’
‘Down the hall, the last door on the left,’ he rasped.
She nodded, her eyes lowered.
‘Sante.’
As she moved to pass him, she swore the air thickened between them.
An electric charge arced around them like an invisible wire pulled taut.
However, he did not touch her or impede her passage.
He stepped aside, and as she swept past, she was enveloped by the scent of his skin and his evocative cologne, still clinging to the air.
Soleil thought she caught a sound of his inhale as she entered the bathroom and closed the door.
She leaned against it for a second, catching her breath.
Then she lowered her head and began scrubbing the toilet bowl, her cheeks flushed, her mind reeling.
This assignment had just taken on a higher level offokkin’ complexity.
One, she wasn’t sure she’d survive.
4
Chapter 4
SANTIAGO
The airlock screamed in protest asthe Última Brutoclamped onto the drifting cartel freighter.
A heavy, juddering clang reverberated through the derelict rig, a sound like a gavel striking a block of cosmic justice.
AsThe Sombra’sinterim captain, Santi led the charge.
His gaze, hours earlier, had tracked theÚltima Xas it whisked away his mate and CO, Xander, and his new bride, Savvine.
The couple was headed toThe Syracusia, a luxury liner traveling alongside their flotilla, for a sybaritic, long-overdue honeymoon.
Now, as the provisional Chief of the Signet Group, he prowled down the umbilical passage.
His Signet brothers, Kaal, Boaz, Zev, and Rigo, acting as his strong guard, moved in a silent, disciplined wedge at his flanks.
They advanced like a storm held in check, cloaked in spectral power and honed military precision.
No one uttered a sound.
The airlock hissed open.
