Never Submit! The Swarii Brides, Book One (6 page)

She blushed. “Thanks.” She hadn’t ever been hit on before… When she was working in the garage, she repelled men—probably because her hair normally was such a mess or she had big, black goops of mud or grease on her face, in her fingernails, in her hair, and on her clothes. Not much of a catch. But if she HAD ever been hit on, she was sure it wouldn’t have been by a man so attractive.

“It’s not a compliment. It’s a fact. You don’t smell very human—our species aren’t very different, mind you. We consider humans our distant cousins—biologically speaking... But I can tell the difference in the way they smell, and the way
we
do, and you don’t smell like them. It’s subtle, but…”

“Creepy. Humans have the decency not to go around smelling each other,” she nagged, raising her head aloofly. “Then what do I smell like, then, Mr. Smartypants?”

“I’m not sure. And its
Masterson
, actually,” he corrected. “Commander Graham Masterson.”

“I was insulting you,
Commander Graham Masterson
,” she mocked. When she saw a small flash of hurt appear on his face, she added, “
Lightly
insulting.” She grinned at him until he grinned back. She couldn’t believe she was trying to hedge her words so she didn’t hurt his
feelings
. “So, what do you think I am, then?”

“I don’t know. Not human,” he replied.

“I was born and raised on Earth,” she assured.

“Good for you. You’re still not human.” He looked pleasantly sure of himself as he stared at her, and the more he looked at her, the surer he seemed. 

“And you got this from my eyes and my smell?” she chuckled, shaking her head skeptically.

“Yes. And the fact that you can hear shal’ta and are keeping that from your master,” he added austerely, as a side note. “That’s also how I know you have no loyalty to him.”

Her face went white in a flash, and she dropped her pliers. She took a moment, took a breath, and then decided to try to play this cool. There was no way she could make such a crazy mistake that would let him know that. He simply had to have pulled the idea out of the air. He couldn’t have picked up on it! She picked up the pliers and tried to play it cool, as much as she could when her hands were basically shaking from excitement—not the kind of excitement that one gets at the circus, mind you, but the kind of excitement one feels when one’s cat comes home with the neighbor’s pet rabbit in his mouth.

“Humans can’t speak shal’ta,” she said monotonously, twisting a couple of wires loose and trying to ignore him.

“Which is why I don’t think you’re hu—” he went on to say, but she cut him off by punching him in the arm, as quick and as hard as she could. His bicep felt like steel, and it certainly hurt her knuckles far more than she hurt him.

She rubbed her hand through her electrical glove and hissed, “Stop saying that. I don’t know shal’ta. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Shut up. Don’t talk to me.”

“You know, half of our conversation has been with shal’ta,” he informed. “You just weren’t paying attention. You only thought I was
speaking
.”

She put her pliers down, locking her jaw angrily at this. She knew she wasn’t a MENSA candidate, but it was insulting to be fooled
this
easily over something so important. “If you tell
anybody
…” she began to threaten, brandishing her pliers at him as if they were a kitchen knife.

He looked down at the pliers and began to laugh. “I was just kidding. I was speaking the whole time. I just wanted you to admit it.”

She threw the pliers as hard as she could at his head, smacking him square in the nose. Which surprised her—not that she was pissed enough to do it, but because she was aiming for his shoulder and missed that badly at that short of distance. It still did what it was supposed to do—it made him stop laughing. The downside was that the pliers had given him a fresh scratch across the bridge of his nose, and he looked
pissed
, as if it had indeed occurred to him how close that was to taking out one of his eyes.

She scrambled to get away from him, and when she did, she fell right onto her ass and, with the resulting pain, her body froze until she sucked in air through her teeth. He was hovering over her, looking at the blood on his fingers. He wiped the blood on his pants efficiently, swearing, she was sure, in his native language as the soldiers nearby laughed.

He was practically spitting he was so angry, “You ever throw something at my head again, little girl, and you won’t sit for a month of—” he stopped when he focused on her and noticed the look of pure agony on her face. He instantly calmed down. “You okay?”

“No,” she wheezed, then winced and finally changed her mind. “Yes.”

“No, you’re not,” he argued, watching her lay flat against the floor as if she wanted a bulldozer to rip through the wall and run her cleanly over. “I’m bleeding and not in so much pain.”

“More like… Discomfort to a high degree,” she corrected. Finally, she sighed, and merely said, “Don’t press me. It’s embarrassing. I’m just going to… lay on the floor here for a moment in misery. Then I’ll get up and finish this job in misery. And then, I don’t know… I’ll go lick Jazeel’s feet or do some serious kissing up, which will be miserable, but worth it if I can get something out of it.”

He shook his head, completely lost. “I’m still confused.”

“Good. Help me up.” She stuck her gloved hand in the air.  Immediately, and with extremely little effort, he helped her into a standing position without her even having to use her muscles at all. She adjusted her twisted clothes, impressed at the level of obvious strength she felt in his arm. “Thank you,” she said, lifting up her shirt collar and groaning as she moved back down to her knees.

“Are you…”

“Stop asking,” she snapped, and then reached to grab her pliers again. “Okay, so, how’d you know I speak shal’ta, then, if you didn’t learn that through blatant
trickery
? What even gave you that stupid idea?”

“You mean, that
correct presumption
? The completely
unvacant
expression on your face. You have to get
far
better at pretending to be stupid. Your eyes reacted to everything you heard,” he lectured, his voice surprisingly stern. “I know an eavesdropper when I see one.”

“Luckily Jazeel doesn’t,” she said with a sigh, feeling foolish and ungraceful. She always thought she was so damned clever. “You’re still wrong, by the way. I’m human. I’m just a freak.”

“How many coincidences need to surround you before you stop calling yourself human?” he grinned, shaking his head at her stubbornness.

“
A lot
,” she assured definitely, dismissing the whole idea as she started popping off her gloves in order to put in a couple of new wires without the rubber fingers of the glove getting in her way.

The commander just watched her with the sort of expression people have when they watch a cat they like try to cross a busy street. “Isn’t that…
extremely
dangerous?” he drawled, looking like he was about to grab her back at any second, but was worrying that if he moved too quickly she would get zapped by some severe wattage.

“Hey, if
you
can get those assholes outside to turn off the power and make it safer, be my guest. They won’t, though. I’m an affront to their high standards of
laziness
. They wouldn’t go so far as to reach all the way into their pocket to lend me a
pen
if my life depended on it.” She efficiently twisted two hot wires together and then cut a new line of wire off her belt.

He watched her work with a subtle look of curiosity. “You do this
often
?” he asked. She had heard that same sort of incredulous tone before. It had the same tone as the question, ‘you’re a woman, shouldn’t you be off baking a pie somewhere?’

“Yeah,” she replied. “When I’m not wiggling my ass for Jazeel, I’m normally knee deep in wires. I used to sit around eating cookies all day under the air conditioning until that started to piss Peyton-the-Prime off, and then he learned what I used to do on Earth. Before you know it, the holiday’s over and I’m knee-deep in washing machine parts. What I can’t stand is
crystal
technology.
That
crap is as alien as it gets.”

“Like what they use on their ships? Neither do we,” he admitted. “Just because if something breaks, it can really create problems. You just can’t wire something together, and…”

ZZPOP! A spark flew out of the panel she was working on—something bright, something that would have laid her on her ass again if Graham hadn’t grabbed her arm and pulled her to his body and away from the panel. In the next moment, as more sparks flew out of the panel after them, he pressed himself against the nearby wall with her at his chest.

It was then that she fell in love with Graham Masterson, and vice versa.

Actually, she didn’t
fall
. It was like electricity—like something grabbed both of them and held them close to each other until they melded together, whether they liked it or not. They were very still for a long moment, nearly paralyzed by unwelcomed warmth that seemed to fill them down to their toes.

She didn’t hear anything for a second; it was like a blaring noise had deafened her. She was wondering if she actually had been electrocuted, except that she wasn’t in pain. Quite the contrary; she had never been so aroused in her life, and she was getting more so, it seemed, by the second.

Graham’s chest, she noticed instantly, was heaving, like he had been running as fast as he could for as long as he could.

The other Swarii finally approached, beginning to talk to him in their language, their faces concerned. Graham suddenly snapped at them, sounding angry, not releasing Ellie for even a moment. The Swarii silently stared on at them, anxious.

“I guess I should put the gloves back on, huh?” she finally said, breaking what she thought was awkward silence.

Graham still made no sounds and no movements.

Finally, she began to squirm. She was beginning to feel flushed, to say the least, and pushed against Graham’s arm to try to get him to release her from his vice-like hold.

“Don’t move,” he ordered in a raspy voice, his arm pressed her more firmly to his chest.

Now, she couldn’t move if she wanted to. She was beginning to feel pretty vulnerable, not to mention alienated. This was odd. She shouldn’t feel this way, especially the arousal which had hit her like a damn fire hose.  Furthermore, the fact that she was being tightly held by a seven-foot-tall gorgeous alien commander was something that Peyton would certainly frown upon, if he were to walk in.

The moment the traveling heat in her body started to fade was the exact same moment Graham let her go. She got up to her feet then and straightened herself out.  He stood up, looking like he was in sudden agony.

“Are
you
okay?” she asked him. The man definitely looked emotionally compromised.

He was quiet for such a long time, that she had to take it as a ‘no.’

“What was that? Were we shocked? I’d been shocked before,” she blabbered. “And that was weird. That was
almost pleasant
! Did you feel it, or am I nuts?”

He continued to be silent.

She turned to the other Swarii, who continued to stare. “Any commentary? Did any of you see what happened?”

One of the Swarii, who was short for their race (he was only Peyton’s size), cleared his throat awkwardly. “You should give him a minute,” he advised.  His accent was thicker, and was actually quite Irish, even more so than Graham’s.

“What’s wrong with him?” she asked, pointing to the practically catatonic man leaning up against the wall, looking deeply disturbed.

“He’s trying not to rape you,” another one offered. This Swarii was larger than Graham, and blonde. He stepped forward and pushed her behind his shoulder to protect her. “I’d step back, Sweetheart.”

She
jumped
back, but then looked at that Swarii like he must have been kidding. “What?”

“You both just… Um… If I’m not mistaken…” he began to explain, but the short Swarii cut him off.

“There’s no way he can do that with a human,” the smaller one said, swiping his hand through the air with clarity. He looked at her and hedged immediately, “No offense.”

“She’s not
human
,” Graham finally growled, looking not like himself. His expression was animalistic—primal. After he said the words, his expression looked like it was warring again, and he looked away from all of them, huddling his body closer to the wall, as if the coolness of the metal wall was somehow soothing when pressed against his face.

“Okay, I need an explanation. This is weird. I feel… Weird.” There were no other descriptors. She didn’t want to add that what she really wanted to do was take off her clothes and get on all fours, so that Graham could properly mount her. The idea didn’t seem to match up with her conservative background.

“Of course you do. You just felt the
union
,” the large, apparently more open-minded Swarii explained delicately. “I think so, anyway…”

“Riiight,” she drawled, having no idea what he was talking about. Apparently, he thought he was using a word she should know.

The large Swarii sighed and looked wearily at the ceiling as if he was trying to explain something amazingly simple to a seven-year-old. “You chose each other as mates.”

“What?” she cried incredulously, immediately embarrassed by the idea. “I most certainly did not!”

“You didn’t
consciously
choose it. That’s not how it
works
! Criminy, what do they do on your planet?”

“Um…” She had wondered about that many a time herself.  “Not that,” she said, definitely sure of that much. “What the hell
happened
?”

“It happens when two
Swarii
touch naked
skin
—Swarii that are genetically compatible, that is. It can only happen once in a lifetime,” the short Swarii replied, looking confused as he watched Graham press his body even harder against the wall. “That’s why it’s weird. How the holy hell would he even be compatible with
you
?” Again, he added after that, “No offense. You’ve got nice boobs and all, but you’re just a tiny, weak, weird-looking little…”