Page 4 of Rescued By the Alien Assassin

Another guard, this one human, led me through a receiving room with scantily clad girls and eager johns to a room at the back of the brothel. An office with a heavy wooden desk, probably expensive, and behind it a Talac male with gray-blue skin. His bald head shimmered in the yellow light from old-timey lamps, and jewels hung from his muscled neck, cascading down his bare chest.

Agosta was not your average human mobster, he was an exotic who’d made his home in the crime bowels of Earth. A dangerous proposition, considering the zero-tolerance instant execution type of law system this planet had. Agosta didn’t look like he was worried about getting busted any time soon. His brothel was pumping with music, moaning, and guests from the richer walks of life. A place, I realized, that Lexi’s boss might have frequented.

I smirked at the male, dropping casually down in the chair in front of his desk and throwing my arm over the backrest. The picture of relaxation as I waved two fingers in greeting, “A personal meeting, must be my lucky day. I sent you your proof of death, where’s my money?” I met the gray eyes of the Talac male and waited, trying to figure out what the crime boss was thinking behind that cool facade.

The Talac liked it cold, they lived on an ice planet after all, but it was uncomfortably hot inside this office. Sweat trickled down my spine beneath my leather jacket and the bands of the weapon harness I wore. They hadn’t patted me down, so this boss was supremely confident I wouldn’t try anything.

“You’ll get it,” the male said, and he leaned back further in his leather office seat, propping a gray pair of bare feet onto the table, tipped with black claws. “I just need you to do another job for me. I wanted to look you straight in the eye when I offered it.” He lifted one brow in a sardonic manner and I instantly understood. I was under suspicion, he wanted to see my response when he offered the job because he thought I might be the very culprit he was after. Well, I wasn’t born yesterday, and I had a good game face.

“What is this job? And how much is it paying me?” I said, not lifting from my pose of casual relaxation. I was acutely aware of the laser pistol holstered beneath my armpit, and the knives I’d strapped to the small of my back. I could only think of one reason as to why Agosta wanted to question me. Lexi. She’d worked with the male he had wanted me to kill, was this about her? Had someone seen me escort her home?

I couldn’t see how my adorable mate with the absurdly pink purse could have anything to do with a mobster like Agosta. Her sleazy boss? Yes, I’d probably delivered payback after he’d abused the rules Agosta had laid out, or maybe he’d insulted the mobster. Lexi was innocent though, other than kissing me.

The Talac steepled his fingers across his flat stomach. “I need you to finish up some loose ends. Some files were accessed from a terminal other than Alberade’s, I need you to kill whoever has those files and destroy the data.” It was clear in an instant that he suspected I’d taken this data, I had not but I knew who had it. Now I knew what that whole scene I’d walked in on with Lexi had been about. Her boss had discovered the theft and was punishing her, probably with the intention to kill her afterward. The question was, what was in those files?

I shrugged, “Sure. I can do that. Shouldn’t be hard to track down. What’s the pay?” I grinned again. “Because I am not doing charity.” My mind was whirling behind the irreverent, cheerful facade. This was a hit on Lexi, even if the Talac didn’t know her name yet. I couldn’t let anything happen to her, to do that, I’d have to convince this guy I’d take the job, just to stall for time.

This wasn’t just a hit on Lexi he wanted me to take, all eyes were going to be on me because I was his main suspect. If I wanted to retrieve Lexi from her apartment and bring her safely to my ship, the Striker. It was going to be tough but if anyone could shake a tail, it was me, and everyone knew a Terafin would do anything for his mate. I might be an assassin with a slightly loose concept of morality, but on that, I was as unbending as the rest of my race.

Lexi was mine, and nobody got to hurt her and live to tell the tale.

Chapter 6

Lexi

I had to be crazy. That was the only answer I could come up with for what had gone down in my doorway. I’d let that assassin bring me home, so now he knew where I lived, bad idea. And on top of that, I’d let him kiss me and play my body like it was a violin until I came. What kind of person was I to let a man like that, just… do that to me?

Curled up on my couch in comfy leggings and an oversized sweatshirt, I’d showered but I still tingled. I had liked it all so much, every thrilling second of being in his arms. He was derailing every single thought in my head, which was probably a good thing, even if it confused me. If not for him, I might be dwelling on the bad parts of the day, like discovering my boss’ embezzling, and what he’d started to do to me to punish me.

There was probably something wrong with my moral compass for thinking of Rurick as my knight in shining armor. How could an assassin be the good guy? But it did kind of feel like he was, at least to me. I yanked a blanket from the back of my couch to curl around my shoulders when a deep sense of loss washed over me.

It was inexplicable, that feeling. But it felt like I’d just lost someone really important to me when I thought of how Rurick had just left. Why hadn’t he come in? Why had he pleasured me and then left without taking his own? No, he’d just put me on my feet as soon as I was steady after that mind-blowing orgasm, and then he’d told me to lock the door. That was it, no goodbye. No, ‘here’s my com, call me maybe?’

Glancing around my still very empty little apartment it felt even emptier and lonelier than normal. I’d sold everything I owned to pay the medical bills for my father when he fell ill. I had a few boxes of knickknacks from the past, a few mementos, and the barest of a wardrobe. The furniture in here came from charity, my mattress a lumpy thing that made my back ache in the morning.

What was I doing? It was like the death of my father last year had put my entire life on hold, and now I was stuck in some kind of awful limbo. Rurick’s abrupt entrance into and departure from my life seemed to have shined a light on all of it. I just felt empty now.

Sitting here, after he left, it was suddenly hard to think of anything other than how shitty life was. I wanted to laugh with irony at how much I’d loved to read banned books as a teenager. Orwell, Huxley, Vance… I’d gobbled up that dystopian stuff, but I was really living it. The UAR was a monster of a government and most lives out here were just like mine, a struggle to survive against the dire financial distress.

And now that my boss was dead, I’d probably have to go out there and find a new job. How long would it take? To what desperate measures would I be forced to sink just to eat if it took more than a few weeks? I was one of many looking for a job while only having been able to afford the minimum education.

My eyes fell on my bright pink purse and my stomach dropped when I spotted the corner of a folder sticking out of it. I’d made a hard copy, actually printed that file because it was a lot harder to destroy that kind of evidence. Someone had to come here and physically destroy it. Now that my boss was dead, that stuff was worthless. Had I really risked my own skin for it?

I toed the purse with my foot and it toppled over, the folder spilling out of it onto the couch next to me. I should just toss that into the fire or at least out with the trash. That entire file was an omen of bad luck; if you believed in that kind of thing. Then my eye fell on a name on one of the pages sticking out and my skin crawled.

Oh, shit. If that was who I thought it was, I’d really stepped in it. Why had I decided to print this out again? Why had I considered going to the freaking police with my boss’ embezzling? Nothing good was coming from this. In this particular block of the city, everyone knew that name and whispered it like it was the bogeyman.

Agosta was a big-time mobster who had been skating on the edge of the law for as long as anyone could remember. And Alberade had been his finance man? And he’d had the fucking guts to embezzle from him? Now I understood why Rurick had been there to assassinate him. He’d been sent by Agosta…

A loud banging on the door shook me from my horrified thoughts, and I leaped from the couch as if it had burned me. Tossing the papers back in my purse, I threw my blanket over the top and hoped that looked like a normal, casual pile before I rushed for the door. Then I had another shock, the three different chains and deadbolts on my door were moving on their own. Like they were being pulled from their locks by a powerful magnet.

“Lexi! Are you alright? Are you hurt, darling?” The voice shouting through the door over the banging was unmistakable. That was Rurick, but now that I knew he worked for Agosta, I wasn’t feeling quite so safe, not with the information burning a hole in my couch.

Wetting my dry lips, I backed away from the door and cast my gaze around for a weapon. I’d left my baseball bat in my bedroom next to the bed and I spun around and raced for that. My fingers had just gripped the handle when I heard the door open to my tiny apartment. When I spun around, weapon raised, I discovered Rurick in the middle of my living room, dressed in black leather and with dozens of weapons strapped to his athletic body.

“Hurry Lexi, we don’t have long. If you want to live, you must come with me,” he said, holding out his hand toward me. His golden features were surprisingly dark and serious. I’d only known him for one evening but I already knew that wasn’t his normal kind of expression. My stomach dropped all over again, like I wasn’t scared enough already.

“Stay away, I won’t let you kill me!” I warned, swinging my bat threateningly for good measure. Rurick’s eyebrows went up, but he glanced from me to my front door and then back again. He seemed to be listening for something before he returned his full attention to me. If there had been another way out of my home, like a fire escape or something, I would have tried to make a run for it then. But there wasn’t, I was stuck between him and the door.