Page 19 of Shielded in the Shadows

Either way, I needed him closer so I could take him out without risking damaging any of the station systems running through this shaft, and if this was what I needed to do to make that happen, so be it.

I backed up against the hatch, dropped my plasma gun into my right hand, and drew a dagger with my left from the sheath on my thigh. “You have thirty seconds to get down here and say whatever it is you want to say.”

“Gods above,” he muttered in what sounded like relief combined with exasperation.

His shadow flew down and hovered above the narrow landing in front of me. The shadow swirled and coalesced into the shape of an enormous male. A heartbeat later, Jarrix To’vok appeared in the flesh, completely naked.

And he was on his knees at my feet.

Moving at a speed only attainable through pure muscle memory, I pressed the tip of my dagger to his throat above an artery. My gun barrel dug into to his temple, set to kill.

“Don’t so much as breathe,” I warned, my voice low.

He stilled.

This male was enormous. More than two meters tall, probably, if he’d been standing rather than on his knees. As it was, we were eye-to-eye.

His skin was dark gray; his eyes, claws, enormous wings, and the tip of his long tail all a stunning deep black. So was most of his shoulder-length hair, though it also had streaks of purple, blue, and green.

Two horns curled back over his hair and then turned up to form points at the crown of his head. Smaller, distinctive points above his forehead, along with the wings, hair, and tail, reminded me of a Pallasian shadowbat, which hinted at the genetic source of his unusual ability to become almost invisible.

In true corsair fashion, he wore gold body jewelry everywhere: on his horns, in his pointed ears, and through his nipples. More glittered below his waistline, where a pair of swiftly hardening dark gray cocks with black markings and interesting ridges threatened to distract me from watching for any sign of movement. But he might as well have been turned to stone by my threat and the deliberate press of the gun barrel and dagger against his skin. Even his tail was still, and his chest barely moved as he breathed.

Every inch of him was solid muscle, as if he’d been carved from the finest Vorcian marble by a sculptor with a deep appreciation of a perfect masculine form honed by training, exercise, and discipline.

By the gods, he was gorgeous. Under different circumstances, I might have dragged him to a bed in one of the station’s hotels for a night of memorable fun.

“Twenty seconds.” I was proud that my voice remained cold and didn’t betray the thoughts in my head.

His black eyes reflected the colored lights in the alcove, giving them the illusion of being fathoms deep.

Very carefully, he leaned into the dagger’s tip until the point pierced his skin. A bead of crimson blood welled from the wound.

“My mate,” he said, his voice and expression reverent. “My life belongs to you.”

CHAPTER 6

JARRIX

Kneeling before my mate, weaponless but for my claws and fangs, and putting my life entirely in her lethal hands, hadn’t been nearly as difficult as I might have imagined. After all, she’d owned me from the moment I’d caught her scent. It seemed a reasonable risk given the alternative of being left behind if and when she escaped the station and its myriad dangers.

With the stakes this high and only thirty seconds of truce in which to make my case, I’d had little choice but to blurt out the truth and hope for the best.

I’d never imagined I would meet my true mate on a space station a galaxy away from my homeworld, much less pledge my life while kneeling naked in a filthy, disused maintenance shaft. But somehow the only thing that mattered in this moment was the magnificent woman before me, even as she pressed a gun to my head and a dagger to my throat with rock-steady hands.

I would have given every credit I had to my name to see Keela’s lovely human face when I voiced my devotion rather than the biomask’s depiction of a Gandarian merchant with a grave expression.

I had no idea how she would react to my words. Stabbing was possible. A point-blank shot to my head equally so. Acceptance, merely a dim possibility.

Instead, she barked a laugh—a harsh, sharp sound that echoed like a dropped piece of equipment hitting the bottom of the tube far below us.

Then she did something I didn’t expect: she deactivated her biomask.

Suddenly, her beautiful face was bare. Her eyes were still unnaturally brown and her hair dark, and the colorful tattoos remained on her skin, but it was her—the beauty who’d captivated me from the moment I’d seen her image on my monitor in the medbay aboard the Fancy. And she was staring at me in what looked like disgust combined with irritation and something else I couldn’t quite identify.

Something made a soft click, and then I heard my mate speak for the first time.

“That is the most ridiculous lie anyone has ever tried on me,” she said, “and I have heard some serious bullshit in my time.”