Shadowed Read online

  He was slumped in a sitting position in the narrow walkway behind the cockpit area. His head was sunk on his broad chest, his face hidden by his shaggy dark blue hair, and his hands dangled limply between his spread legs.

  The sight gave Nina a sudden chill—he looked like a marionette whose strings had been cut. She couldn’t be sure if he was breathing or not, and a strange squeezing feeling began in her chest. Part of her was glad he’d been injured and possibly killed in the crash—at least now he couldn’t hurt her or do whatever horrible thing he’d had planned for her.

  But if he’s dead, you’re trapped. Marooned on an alien planet in another part of the universe miles—no—light years—from Earth. How will you ever get back?

  It was a good question, and as Nina considered it, she felt panic rising in her chest, filling her throat like dry cotton until she couldn’t breathe…couldn’t think…

  I need to check on him. Need to see if he’s okay or not. She scrabbled frantically at the side of the tight harness, but the alien locking mechanism defied her suddenly clumsy fingers. Trapped—she was trapped and couldn’t get out.

  “Hey,” she shouted at him—or tried to shout, anyway. Her voice came out in a tight little whisper instead. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Hey—are you okay, Mr.…uh, Reddix? Come over here and let me out of this thing!”

  There was no response.

  “Oh God…Oh my God…” Nina heard herself mumbling.

  Suddenly, it was as though Meehoo Jimmy was whispering in her ear.

  Slowly, eecho—take a deep breath. Going crazy won’t help you now. You have to be calm.

  Yes. Calm. Nina took a deep breath, following her Meehoo’s advice. She had to stay calm if she was ever going to get out of this mess. She closed her eyes for a long minute and put her head down, concentrating on breathing. When she opened them, something between her feet caught her eyes. Something with the same dull, coppery sheen as the cuffs around her wrist.

  The key thingy! Excitement shot through her. If she could get her hands on the key to her cuffs, she was halfway to being free.

  The difficulty was getting it. The harness she was in wasn’t like an ordinary seatbelt—it had a lap belt and two thick straps crisscrossed over her shoulders and chest in an X. These straps seemed to have tightened during the impact—so much so that Nina could barely breathe. She wiggled around a little, and they loosened some—but not enough to slide out of the harness altogether. She felt for the locking mechanism on the side again with no luck, though she had the maddening feeling that if she’d just had both hands free she could have figured it out.

  Finally, she decided the best thing would be to try and get the small copper key-thing with her feet. Blessing the weekly yoga class she always made time for, Nina managed to grip the small device, which was about the size and shape of a lighter, between the rubber soles of her tennis shoes. Raising her feet carefully until she felt like her hips might pop out of their sockets, she was able to snag the copper mechanism with two fingers.

  She almost dropped it at that point, but somehow, after a moment a frantic cursing, she managed to juggle it back into her palm. She gripped it tight, being careful not to press any buttons, and sent a silent prayer of thanks. Step one completed—she was halfway to being free.

  Her first impulse was to start pushing buttons, but Nina forced herself to stop and study the device carefully instead. After all, what if she pushed the wrong button and the cuffs tightened so much they cut her hands off?

  As it turned out, the copper key looked like a very simple device. There were only two buttons on it. The top one glowed a soft blue, and the bottom one glowed red. Taking a deep breath, Nina pressed the top one.

  She was all ready to push the red one in case the cuffs started tightening, but she was pleasantly surprised. With a soft hiss, the cuffs abruptly opened, freeing her hands instantly.

  “Thank God!” Nina whispered under her breath. She rubbed her wrists for a moment even though the strange alien handcuffs had left no marks on her—no cuts or bruises. She wasn’t even chafed from wearing them. All the same, she was extremely glad to get them off.

  Once the copper cuffs were off, the locking mechanism of the harness proved to be a snap. Literally—it made a snapping sound when Nina finally released it. She drew a deep breath of relief when the X-shaped harness slid away.

  Standing up, she tried to get the pins and needles out of her fingers and toes.

  “You are now free to move about the cabin,” she muttered to herself and had to smother a giggle that rose in her throat and popped like a soap bubble. God, what was wrong with her? She felt positively giddy with relief in being free but how free was she, really? True, her captor was out of the running—injured or possibly dead—but she was still marooned on an alien planet light years from her home.

  Stop giggling like a fool, eecho, she heard Mehoo-Jimmy scold. And get busy finding out where you are and how you’re going to get home.

  Right. She needed to check on Reddix—what an odd name, but then, he wasn’t exactly a normal guy—and see if the only person who knew how to fly the ship was dead or just incapacitated. Taking a breath to calm her nerves, Nina stepped toward him.

  Even slumped down as he was, he was still huge—like a mountain of muscle at rest. She found her heart was pounding in her ears as she got closer to him. What if he was putting on an act? Waiting for her to get close enough that he could grab her and strap her down again?

  Slowly, she reached for him, meaning to check for a pulse. But her fingers lingered just above the strong column of his neck, unable to make contact. There was something about him—something that made her reluctant to touch him. It wasn’t just the electric shock she remembered from their first contact—it was the way he smelled. A warm, deep, masculine musk that seemed to invade her senses until she felt almost dizzy. That scent brought back every strange dream she’d had of him—along with the strangely entwined sensations of dread and desire that had accompanied them.

  She stood there hovering over him so long she got a sharp cramp in her back from bending over. Putting a hand to her lower back with an angry little cry, she massaged fiercely.

  This is stupid. Stop being such a coward and just do it!

  Leaning down again, she forced herself to press the pads of her first two fingers to the side of his neck, feeling for the carotid pulse. Except…did Kindred have carotid arteries? Apparently they did because after a moment, she felt his pulse, strong and steady and slow, as though he was simply asleep.

  Feeling braver, she pushed his head back carefully until it rested against the cabinet type panel behind him. He didn’t even stir—just kept breathing slowly and evenly with his eyes closed. Hmm. Bolder than ever, Nina pushed his shaggy dark blue hair out of his face and looked at him—really looked at him—for the first time since he had abducted her.

  He had a cut above his left eye that looked nasty—it was going to leave a scar, which was a shame with a face like his. The blood had trickled down the side of his cheek along his strong jawline, which was badly in need of a shave.

  But even the ugly wound couldn’t diminish the perfection of his features. Nina bit her lip as she stared at him. Her first assessment had been right—he really was almost inhumanly gorgeous. With a face like this and his huge, muscular body, he could have any woman he wanted. So then, why had he bothered to kidnap her? It couldn’t be for her looks—Nina knew she was pretty in a girl-next-door kind of way, but she was nowhere near beautiful enough to match this man. Honestly, she didn’t know if anyone was. He’d said something about her being the one he needed though, back when he was shouting at the other guy on the ship’s radio—what could a man who looked like this possibly need from her?

  Suddenly, Nina realized she was just standing there staring at his perfect face and that she had been for a long time.

  Everyone said Ted Bundy was handsome and personable too, and he was a serial killer. Gorgeous or not, this Red
dix guy is still a kidnapping bastard, she reminded herself sternly. One who might wake up at any minute and continue with his evil plan—whatever it is.

  Right. So she needed to do something about that before he woke up.

  Nina considered her options—should she run for it? But how did she know the planet outside the ship had a breathable atmosphere? Or what if it was too cold or too hot or all the local vegetation turned out to be horribly poisonous? Nina had watched enough of the old Star Trek episodes with Mehoo-Jimmy to be wary of stepping foot on an unexplored world. Also, the farther she got from the ship, the farther she got from any chance she had of ever going home. So trying to find a way off the ship and running was out of the question.

  Option two was to just stay here and wait for Reddix to wake up. But he was so much bigger and stronger than her that Nina was sure she’d be right back where she started—cuffed and tied to a chair—the minute he opened his eyes. Unless…

  Her eyes went to the spot above his head where a long silver bar ran. He had collapsed in what appeared to be the kitchen area of the ship. At least, there were a lot of cabinets, a sink, and a machine that looked something like a microwave mounted on the wall above his head. The bar, which ran the length of the countertop, appeared to be fixed very firmly in place. Maybe it was something to hang on to if you were cooking in the kitchen and the ship happened to hit a pocket of turbulence or go through a wormhole or crash land on an unknown purple planet…ha ha.

  Whatever its actual use was, Nina could immediately see an alternative application. Running back to her chair, she grabbed the abandoned copper cuffs and brought them back to where the big Kindred was still slumped like a gorgeous Raggedy Andy doll.

  Raggedy Andy is right, she thought as she raised one of his hands above his head. He really needs a shave and a haircut. Still, maybe personal grooming was last on his to-do list at the moment. Apparently, kidnapping Nina and dragged her through a wormhole took precedence over getting that clean, close shave all the ladies loved.

  Getting his arms up and cuffed to the rail above his head wasn’t easy. Reddix was big and muscular, which equaled pretty damn heavy, especially when he was knocked out, and the parts she was trying to lift were dead weight. Twice his eyelids fluttered, revealing glimpses of those disturbing pale silver eyes—and once he said something that sounded like her name. Nina nearly jumped away that time, but somehow she kept her nerve and kept working. It helped that she had pretty good upper body strength from years of doing massage.

  She was careful, throughout the procedure, not to touch the strange little snake tattoo on his inner wrist. The thing was blood red, as it had been after he touched her with it, and Nina could swear it was larger somehow. But that wasn’t possible, was it? Tattoos didn’t grow. Whatever the case, she made damn sure she didn’t so much as brush it while she was fastening the cuffs around his wrists.

  Finally, she had his hands secured above his head with the cuffs threaded through the silver bar. It didn’t look like a very comfortable position, but Nina reminded herself that being cuffed and harnessed to the chair up front hadn’t been exactly comfortable either. She pushed the red button on the locking-device with a clear conscious—well, almost—and watched with satisfaction as the cuffs snugged down around his wrists. Then she dropped the little locking device into the front pocket of her dark blue scrubs.

  “There,” she said, standing back and putting her hands on her hips. “Just try and get out of that, you kidnapping son of a bitch.”

  Reddix chose that moment to open his eyes.

  “Nina,” he said thickly. “What in the Seven Hells is going on? Where are we?”

  Chapter Eleven

  “I have no idea where we are,” she said tartly. “All I know is that it’s the same big purple planet you crashed us into as soon as we got out of the wormhole. God…” She put a hand to her head. “That sounds so crazy when I say it out loud. This can’t be real—it must be just another nightmare I’m having about you, and I’m going to wake up any time. Right?”

  “It’s real enough,” Reddix growled. He was still dizzy, but he was beginning to feel more alert now. His head was throbbing, and there was a burning pain above his right eyebrow. He started to put up a hand to touch it…and realized his hands were already up and he couldn’t get them back down. Looking up, he saw he was cuffed securely to the food prep area’s side bar with the same restraints he’d used on Nina.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” she said, following his eyes. “Shoe’s on the other foot now. How do you like it, big guy?”

  He had no idea why she was talking about shoes and feet when it was his hands she had cuffed above his head—it must be some kind of Earth idiom. Like all Kindred, he had a natural talent for languages, but though he’d picked up English easily enough in the short time he’d stayed aboard the Mother Ship, many of the strange Earth sayings still eluded him.

  “Not fucking funny,” he growled, rattling the cuffs. “Let me go.”

  “Why? So you can continue kidnapping me and doing…whatever else it was you had planned?” She shivered and shook her head. “I don’t think so, buddy. I’m in charge—from now on what I say goes.”

  Reddix raised an eyebrow at her. “So that’s it—that’s your plan? You’re just going to keep me cuffed to the food prep counter?”

  “For now.” She folded her arms over her chest, pulling the dark blue top she had on tight over her full breasts in a way Reddix found entirely too distracting.

  “I don’t think you understand, sweetheart,” he said, forcing himself to look away from her chest and glare at her face instead. “We’re trapped here—marooned on what might be a very hostile planet. I need to get out of these restraints if I’m ever going to assess the damage to the ship and make repairs. Hell—you don’t even know how to trip the emergency beacon.”

  “Like you would send a signal for help if I let you out,” she scoffed. “You were running away from my people and yours.”

  She had him there. Reddix glared at her some more. “Fine—you want me cuffed up and contained, all nice and neat. I get it. But who’s going to fix the ship? And who’s going to fly it—you?”

  She frowned. “No. But you aren’t either. Not until I’m sure you’re not flying me to some weird serial killer sex cave to assault and dismember me before going on your merry way.”

  Reddix barked a laugh. “You still think I want to ‘assault’ you? You’ve got a one track mind, you know that, sweetheart?”

  Her cheeks went red. “Well, what am I supposed to think? You never told me why you grabbed me. Why else does a man kidnap a woman and fly her through a freaking wormhole?”

  “Not for sex, I can promise you that,” he growled.

  “Oh, I get it.” She nodded, a knowing look on her face. “You’re gay, right?”

  “What?” He combed his knowledge of the English language for the correct meaning. “Are you really asking me if I’m ecstatically happy when you have me cuffed to the food prep counter? What do you think?”

  She smothered a laugh. “No—not happy gay. I mean, you like other men—that has to be it, right? I mean with a face and a body like yours—” She stopped abruptly, her cheeks going even redder. “I mean…”

  “You think I must like other men because I look like I do?” He looked at her incredulously.

  “Well…yes.” She cleared her throat. “That’s uh, not unusual back where I come from. The really pretty looking men…I mean, the handsome ones, usually turn out to be gay.”

  Reddix frowned. “So you think I’m handsome?” Usually when a woman looked at him with interest, he could feel her lust like cool slime coating his skin. It hit him all over again that he couldn’t feel her emotions. Why was that? Was he still simply numb? And how long would the numbness last? Forever, please Goddess. It was so amazing simply to have a conversation with someone without feeling every emotion they had as they had it. Reddix knew it couldn’t last, but a male could wish, couldn’t he?<
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  “You must know how you look,” Nina said tartly, interrupting his speculation. “I’m not going to feed your ego.”

  “You couldn’t be more wrong—about both things,” Reddix growled. “I like women.” He looked her over slowly. “I especially like a woman with a heart-shaped ass.”

  She frowned and took a step back. “I—”

  “And I absolutely fucking hate the way I look,” Reddix continued bitterly. “If I could make myself ugly—or even better—invisible, I would do it in a heartbeat.”

  “But…why?” She shook her head, clearly confused.

  “Never mind why. It’s none of your fucking business,” he snarled, losing patience with both her and himself. Why had he even told her that? It was a private matter—no one but his little sister Minda knew how he felt about his looks. Why had he shared his feelings with the girl he was transporting as a sacrifice to the swamp witch to cure his RTS? Don’t get involved with her, he warned himself. It’ll only make things harder.

  Nina stiffened, clearly offended by his rough words. Reddix was sure she would turn and walk away—probably refuse to talk to him for a good long while. Which was good—he needed a break from her. A break from those big blue, gold-flecked eyes and her warm, sweet scent. A break from those full breasts and the curvy, heart-shaped ass he could see under the loose dark blue clothing she wore.

  She did turn and walk away, to his mingled relief and disappointment. He turned his head and tried not to watch her receding posterior but then caught himself watching anyway from the corner of his eye. It was just too hard to keep his eyes off her lush ass. Damn it, she was really beginning to get under his skin.

  There was silence for a moment, which made Reddix hope she’d decided to lie down in the sleep chamber and take a rest—it would give them more time apart. But then he heard water running in the fresher—she must have decided to take a bath or a shower.