Cat put down the handbook she had been leafing through absentmindedly. The book really was nothing more than endless and gushing praise of the power, good looks, and virility of the man who had won her, fair and square, through the company. The more she read, the more certain she felt that she needed to nail down the details of her vague escape plan as soon as possible. Somehow, she needed to get Talon to make a stop on an inhabited planet along the way, and to let her off the ship.
This would be more difficult than she had expected. He didn’t look like a man who would be easily fooled, even if she used all of her female charms. She had seen the almost eerie intelligence that shimmered in his eyes, and knew that he would see through any clumsy attempt at seduction in a second. Maybe she could bribe one of the officers, but with what? Suddenly, she regretted her thoughtlessness in leaving the money the PGL had deposited into her bank account, behind. She had thought it would be an unnecessary burden. On the other hand, Talon seemed like a man who knew every one of his men very well, and who had all of them under control. Would any of them dare to go against him, anyway?
Unfortunately, there were no windows in the cabin. She would have liked to watch her flight from Earth. She thought about the planet she had grown up on, with a mix of relief and melancholy. She thought of her parents, whom she had never met. Her adoptive parents had died soon after she had arrived at the Mind Reader Academy. The only thing that really hurt was thinking about Coran. Her twin brother had disappeared when they had turned 15, but she had never given up hope of finding him some day. She thought of the games they used to play together. Coran was the only person who had ever showed her unconditional affection and thinking about him hurt so much that she had to bite down on her lip to make the lump in her throat go away. The further they travelled from the blue planet, the more she felt like she was betraying Coran. Wasn’t her escape from the Mind Readers just that? A betrayal of everything Cat had ever believed in. After more than ten years of searching for her twin brother in vain, there seemed to be little hope of finding him alive, and yet… She sighed. She had given up on getting lucky a long time ago, but how could she leave the only place where she had a chance of finding Coran alive?
Maybe, she thought in a deeply buried corner of her heart, she could have been somewhat happy with a man like Talon, but with a vain braggart like Ferthoris III? Definitely not. At that moment, the space glider came to a standstill. Cat stood up, uneasy, took a few steps towards the door behind which Talon had disappeared, and then came back. Was the small spaceship changing direction now? She had the feeling, even without being able to look out the window, that they were flying back towards Earth.
Her heart started to beat loudly and irregularly. A bead of sweat ran down her back, and not because of the near tropical temperature onboard. Had the commander made contact with the authorities before departing the official territory that was under Earthly control? If so, then he would know that there was a warrant out for her arrest. The game would be up before it had even started. Nobody could resist the power of the Mind Readers, even if only a fraction of the once powerful agency existed now, after the collapse. She wondered if it would help if she threw herself at his feet and begged him to save her. Maybe it would help if she appealed to his protective instinct.
At that moment, the door opened, and Talon came into the passenger cabin. Even though his face was expressionless, Cat thought she detected tension in the way he held himself. His broad chest and proud, sweeping neck gave nothing away. His clenched fists, however, were an obvious sign. They stared into each other’s eyes for seconds, until finally they started speaking at the same time.
“This isn’t what it looks like,” Cat said.
“Our mother ship has been captured…” he said.
His red-blond, straight eyebrows went up in question, and Cat bit down on her lip.
“Which is why our departure is being delayed,” he finished his sentence.
He was the one to speak again next.
“What isn’t what it looks like?” Was he biting back a smile, or did he just have a weird twitch on his lips? Cat sighed dramatically and sat down in one of the chairs at the bar. She thought feverishly about how she could get out of the bind she was in, but in the end, it was probably best to just tell him the truth.
“I am wanted by the authorities,” she admitted outright, and held his gaze. He didn’t flinch, nor did he interrupt her. All he did was motion for her to continue as he sat down across from her.
“You know about the abilities some humans acquired as a result of the experiments the government had decreed, right?” Talon nodded, and Cat groaned inside. He wasn’t going to make this easy for her. “The skills I have are really quite unique,” she said softly. “No, not quite. They are unique. The Secret Service trained me, and I spent a few years with the Mind Readers.” She made a face when she saw his eyes widen. No secret service agency in the whole universe had a worse reputation than the one on Earth, and the Mind Readers sub-unit was despised because of its brutality and ruthlessness. “Let’s just say that at some point, I didn’t agree with their methods anymore, or with the horrible pay,” she added, just in case he had started to think of her as soft and overly sensitive. “I went underground and got false papers, but they didn’t give up, of course, and when I realized that they were never going to let me be, the poker game seemed like the perfect chance for me to get out of there.” She stopped talking and looked at him expectantly.
Talon nodded, and Cat groaned again. This really wasn’t going to be easy.
“Weren’t you worried that your fake identity would be blown at one of the checkpoints?”
Cat shrugged. “It isn’t exactly legal to put oneself up for sale in a game of poker,” she replied. “I thought that you would probably fly in and out of Earth’s orbit under a protective shield, or that you would disguise yourselves as traders, and I was right, wasn’t I?” Her green eyes flashed at him defiantly. “Now, maybe you could tell me why we are flying back.” With a little luck, maybe she would be able to change the subject, and he wouldn’t ask her about her talent. Cat had no intention of telling anyone how far her abilities could really reach – that would only lead to someone trying to misuse her as a means to gain power again. It was enough that Talon and his insane king knew that she could read minds.
She saw his slender fingers wrap around the arm of the chair until his knuckles were bright white. “Pirates have captured our ship, and I gave my men orders to leave the ship in the rescue pods. They will land at the spot where I picked you up. The area is deserted enough that we can stay there for a few days without being discovered. That will give me time to find the damned pirates. This is the fourth time now that they have ambushed us, but this time,” he emphasized the word with a threatening growl, “they were successful while I was on my way to pick you up.” The last part sounded a little like an accusation, but Cat ignored the undertone.
For an alien man who was trying hard to look as cool and emotionless as possible, he sure was damned close to losing it. He pressed his lips together until they were just a thin line on his chiseled face.
A thousand thoughts raced through Cat’s head all at once, and before she could stop herself, she blurted out the first one. “You must have a traitor on board. How else would the pirates have known that you weren’t there?”
With one pounce, he had jumped up from his chair and was leaning over her. “What are you saying? Are you saying that one of my men would betray me?”
Adrenaline was racing through Cat’s body, and fear flooded her brain. He leaned in so close that their mouths were almost touching, and she could feel his hot breath on her skin.
And then he started to change. The bones under his skin shifted, forming a new and different face. Razor-sharp teeth jutted out from his jaw, and just when she thought she would faint from fear, she couldn’t help but admire the beauty with which the predator lowered his head in front of her. His eyes turned gold-yellow and fixed her coolly as if she were his prey. Before she could prevent it, her talent took charge, and she was in his head.
The things she saw took her breath away.
She didn’t find any of the things she had expected. No desire to destroy her, to extinguish her personality, or even to kill her. There was fury, but it wasn’t directed at her. It was directed at himself, because he hadn’t drawn the obvious conclusion himself. Anger about his increasingly crumbling self-control. She saw herself through his eyes and trembled under the onslaught of feelings. Talon desired her. Even now, when her talent was controlling her every thought and action, she knew that Talon would never hurt her. Neither physically, nor mentally. He wanted her with every fiber of his being, and the thing that was hidden inside him desired her. She had never experienced anything like this: a man who had a predator inside him, and whose other self was a hunter.
And… he could feel what she was doing.
With a jerk that hurt her physically, she withdrew from him.
Cat was shivering uncontrollably and pulled her knees to her chest. She hugged her knees, trying to feel a semblance of warmth and security.
Talon stared at her. “Why did you do that?” he whispered in a voice that was deeper than usual. The hunter may have disappeared from his face, but not from his thoughts and feelings. He knelt in front of her chair and put his hand on her cheek. “Who are you, really?” Ever since Cat could remember, men and women had thrown that question at her, with either a disgusted or greedy expression. Talon’s face showed neither. He looked surprised, curious, and maybe also a little thoughtful and shocked, but he was not afraid of her, and he didn’t want to use her for his own purposes. Instead, he wanted to protect her without taking away the air that she needed to breathe. You also haven’t showed him what you are really capable of yet, a voice whispered in her head, but she pushed it aside vehemently.
This was the moment when Cat knew that she wanted to stay with him.