The dark alley Lisa had been standing in was gone. Hell, she wasn’t even outside anymore. Wherever they were, it was warm, dry, and brightly lit. Stark white walls curved in a semi-circle behind them, forming a small alcove. Beyond she could see a console full of instruments and two seats. It looked a bit like an airplane cockpit.

Overwhelmed by the number of things she couldn’t explain, she focused on the one thing she could deal with: Vadir.

She jammed her feet against one curved wall of the alcove and shoved as hard as she could. It was enough to loosen his hold, and she pressed her advantage. She pushed, kicked and twisted until he finally released her, though he was careful enough that she landed on her feet instead of falling into a heap on the floor.

“What was that? What did you do to me? And where the fuck are we?” She demanded, waving her hands around her in wild gestures. She knew she was losing it, and she really didn’t care.

“That was a short-range teleportation. I brought you to my ship where we can talk without interruption.”

“As much as I wish it were otherwise, teleportation is not a real thing.” She poked her index finger into the rock-hard planes of his chest. “Try again. And this time don’t use any words you learned from watching Star Trek or Harry Potter.”

He captured her hand in his, pinning it to his chest. “This is real. We’re on my ship, the Redshift 7. We got here by teleporting. You’re my true mate, and I’m here to negotiate an agreement with you and then take you back to Pyros with me.”

She yanked her hand out of his grip and stepped away from him. “I’m not negotiating with you, and I’m not going anywhere but home. Alone. Right now. Which way is the door?” She started looking around, but the markings on the walls were all in an unfamiliar script, and there didn’t appear to be any doorways, just a stretch of corridor with occasional panels on the walls to her right, and the cockpit-like area to her left.

He followed her out of the alcove, but instead of arguing with her, he started speaking in a sharp, tongue-twisting series of syllables. She didn’t recognize a single thing he said, and she started to wonder if he wasn’t crazy, after all. The number of things she couldn’t explain were stacking up fast.

The fire of her anger met the first icy tendrils of pure panic, pushing her to her breaking point.

“Where’s the door, Vadir? Stop babbling and answer me!”

Another voice started speaking in that same strange language, and then the floor beneath her feet began to vibrate and hum as if an engine had started. An engine meant movement and movement meant—oh hell no.

Vadir stepped into the cockpit and gestured toward a seat. “You’re not leaving until I’ve had a chance to explain things. I’m truly sorry, this is not how I intended things to go. I promise we’ll talk just as soon as I find us a quiet spot where we won’t be detected.”

“Let me out of here right now.” Her voice was more of a cracked whisper than the battle cry she was hoping for.

“I can’t do that.”

The last shreds of her control snapped, and she exploded. With a frustrated snarl, she closed the short distance between them and shoved him. “I want to go home!”

He grunted, more in surprise than pain and she followed up her push with a punishing right hook.

Still off balance from her initial shove, Vadir staggered backward, missing the two chairs and landing rather heavily on top of the console. That’s when all hell broke loose. Alarms wailed, lights strobed, and the floor dropped out from under her. She screamed and tried to find something to hang onto, but there was nothing but the slick surface of the wall within her reach.

She experienced the next few seconds as if she were watching it in slow motion. Vadir pushed himself off the console and caught her as she slid down the sloped floor toward him. She expected him to at least be annoyed at her, but all he did was shove her into the nearest of the chairs and somehow get her arms into a safety harness.

His eyes were glowing gold again as he locked gazes with her, his hands gripping the arms of her chair as the scream of the alarms grew to an ear-shattering crescendo. She recognized his expression, and it made her heart twist. She had seen that look of grim determination on her mother’s face just before she closed the closet door and went to face Lisa’s father for the last time.

She reached for him, managing to cup his face in her hand for a brief second before the wild ride ended with a sickening crash.

The pain of the straps biting into her shoulders roused Lisa from her dazed stupor. The floor was angled downward on the left, the angle steep enough to pull her partially out of her chair so that her left leg and arm were dangling at an uncomfortable angle.

She cautiously checked herself for damage. Apart from feeling like she’d been tossed into a jumbo-sized tumble dryer, she didn’t appear to have any serious injuries. She ached all over, and her ears were still ringing, but that was the worst of it. She wriggled out of the harness that had saved her.

A few amber and red lights flickered on the console in front of her. She had no idea what they might mean, but they did provide a little light in the otherwise dark space.

“Vadir?”

No answer.

“Dammit. You better not be hurt. I need you alive and awake, so I can yell at you for abducting me…and then thank you for saving my life.” He’d put her in that harness knowing full well he wouldn’t have time to save himself.

She managed to get to her feet, hanging on to the chair for balance as she braced one foot against the wall and kept the other on the floor. A quick scan confirmed that Vadir wasn’t in the cockpit with her. She would have been able to see him. Damn it. Where is he?

Gingerly she dropped to her hands and knees and started crawling in the other direction. The chimes on her ankle jingled as she crept along, the whimsical sound oddly incongruent with her current surroundings.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when a voice started speaking in that strange language again. It sounded remarkably calm, and it didn’t take long for Lisa to realize that it had to be the ship’s computer. Nothing alive could possibly be that cool after what they’d all experienced.

“It would be too much to hope that you speak English, wouldn’t it?” she muttered.

“I am programmed to speak your language, yes.”

“Terrific. In that case, uh…tell me where Vadir is and if he’s even alive, call for help, and then give me a damage report or at least tell me we’re not going to blow up.”

“Vadir is alive and located three meters ahead and to your right. I am not programmed to obey operational commands from unregistered passengers.” The sexless voice paused for a moment before adding. “But I can tell you that I do not believe there is any risk of explosion. I am a top of the line luxury cruise liner designed and built by the renowned engineers of the Caspar Shipyards. I am too well constructed to blow up.”

“Good to know.” Lisa kept crawling in the direction the computerized voice had indicated.

Less than a minute later, she was kneeling at Vadir’s side. He was bleeding from a gash on his forehead, and there were several bruises blooming on his face and neck. He was unconscious, too, which wasn’t a good sign. “Hey, computer—ship thingy. Can you scan Vadir and tell me if he’s injured?”

“Of course. And you may call me Cas.”

“Okay, Cas. I’m Lisa. Now, how’s our patient?”

“His current condition is less than ideal. However, he has no broken bones or life-threatening injuries. I am equipped with a fully automated medical bay powered by a protected power supply. If you bring him there, I will be able to repair him.”

She eyed Vadir’s big body, then surveyed the sloped floor and the long stretch of corridor. “It would take an Olympic weightlifter to move this guy anywhere. I can’t do it alone.” Lisa sat down on the slanted floor and gently eased Vadir’s head into her lap. She placed a hand over his cut and applied pressure, hoping it would at least slow the bleeding.

If anyone had asked her why she was helping the man who had just kidnapped her, she wouldn’t have been able to give them a reason. She should be trying to escape, but her heart wasn’t letting her leave.

“You owe me big time, Vee. I should leave your sexy, unconscious ass here on the floor after what you did.”

He groaned and muttered something in his strange language.

“And once you’re awake, we are going to have a long talk about the shit you left out of your profile. You’re not even the same species as me! And while I’m thrilled to discover I was right and aliens do exist, you’re still not forgiven for lying to me. Or zapping me here. I hope your species knows what grovelling is, because you owe me a lot of it.”

His eyes opened, and relief coursed through her as he cracked a ghost of a smile. “It’s a good thing I’m rich, then. As I understand it, grovelling can be expensive. So, I take it we lived? Well, that’s one thing that’s gone right since I met you.”

The pain he felt was nothing compared to the immense relief he experienced when he first heard Lisa’s voice. She was alright. If his actions had led to her being hurt, he would have never forgiven himself.

“We lived. Which means you have a lot of explaining to do.” Her lovely eyes were dark with worry, and it made him feel better than it should to know that concern was all for him.

“I do. I also owe you an apology.” He reached up to touch her cheek, and a blast of desire swept through him with the force of a comet strike. He had to fight the urge to drive his fingers into her hair and pull her in for a kiss. Flames, he needed to kiss her soon.

“Your eyes kept doing this weird colour shift from brown to gold. Why is that?”

“It’s the Scorching.” He tried to raise his head and immediately wished he hadn’t. Pain stabbed into his temples and bright lights danced and spun across his vision like a tiny meteor shower.

“What the hell is the Scorching? No, wait, don’t answer that, yet. We need to get you to the medical bay. Cas said it could fix you up. Then you can explain what’s going on with you, your eyes, and all of this.” She gestured around them.

“Cas spoke to you?” His ship’s AI rarely spoke to anyone but him. For a computer program, it was decidedly picky about who it communicated with.

“It did. It wouldn’t give me a damage report, but it did tell me you weren’t dying and that the ship wasn’t about to blow up.”

“Cas, report.”

Cas answered in Pyrosian. “Your companion does not take direction well. I informed her you needed to get to the medical bay.”

“Keep your opinion to yourself and give me a damage report.” Vadir continued to speak in English so that Lisa could understand what he was saying.

“Then will you get yourself to medical?”

“Cas!” he barked and winced as the bellow triggered another wave of pain.

“I can repair everything that is damaged, including you. It will, however, take some time. My power conduits are damaged. Propulsion is inoperative. Communications and signal relay systems are down. There is structural damage to the hull. I have rerouted power to the shields, which should be sufficient to keep us from being detected, however, while we are hidden, it will be impossible for the Firebrand to locate us.”

“Wonderful,” he muttered. “Cas, continue repairs. Prioritize communications. I need to tell Commander Denza what’s happened.”

“You can tell me who is Commander Denza is on the way to medical.” Lisa eased her hand away from his brow and then sighed. “That’s not fully clotted yet. Try not to reopen it when you stand up.”

“You’re taking this all very well.” He eased himself into a sitting position and tried to ignore the grinding pain that flared every time he moved.

Lisa got to her knees and moved in closer. She wrapped a steadying arm around his shoulders and then laughed. “Which part? The fact you’re bleeding, that you’re an alien, or the bit where you kidnapped me, and I ended up sticking around to help you anyway?”

“All of it.” he gave in to the need tearing through him and turned his head, capturing her mouth with his. She tensed, and for a second he thought she might push him away again, but then she uttered a soft moan and kissed him back. The fire he’d been fighting to control became an inferno, burning away everything but the need to have her.

Their mouths crashed together in a heated claiming that branded it onto his soul. This was the female he’d been destined for, and he wanted her like he had never wanted another.

Until this moment, he hadn’t wanted this. The lifelong bond forming between them was something he’d hoped to never find. But the Gods, as usual, had ignored his plans.

He kissed her again, savoring the sweet taste of her lips. He could get lost in her body for a month at least, learning every pleasurable curve and line.

“Vee, we should stop. You need to get fixed up.”

“No.” His response was more growl than an actual word, a sure sign the Scorching was taking over. It wouldn’t be long before he would be a slave to the need to claim her, and judging by her ardent response, the Scorching was affecting her, too. That thought gave him the strength to stop. He had to tell her what was to come before it was too late.

He tore his lips from hers with a frustrated curse. “We’re running out of time.”

“You keep saying that, but you don’t explain what happens when our time’s up. What happens then? Oh, shit. Is this going to be like one of those movies where the heroine finds an alien, and she has to go on the run to keep him safe from government scientists?”

Part of his short but intense education into Earth’s cultures included viewing a number of films and television programs. They were an imaginative species. It was a shame they were as destructive as they were creative. “I’ve seen those films. They don’t make any sense. If a species has the technology to cross the galaxy, wouldn’t it make sense they can hide from your primitive detection devices? We’re safe from discovery. There’s no need to leave the ship.”

“Fair point, but now is not the time to get into a conversation about plot holes and creative licence. I’m not too sure I agree with your assessment about being safe, though. You’re the one who kidnapped me, remember?”

“I remember. Then you slugged me, and we crashed. I’d say we’re almost even.”

He got to his feet, which wasn’t easy considering the ship was listing to one side. “Cas, why are we sitting at this angle? And respond in English while Lisa is onboard.”

“You told me to prioritize repairs on communications.”

“I spent half a billion galactic cred on you, and you can’t multitask? I’ll get to medical a lot faster if you level the flaming ship.”

A shudder passed through the ship, and it began to right itself, finally stopping when the floor was level again.

“Much better.”

Lisa had flattened herself against the nearest wall when the ship started to move and didn’t move or speak until it was quiet again.

“You still haven’t told me why we’re running out of time.

“It’s the Scorching.” He started to make his way down the corridor, and Lisa appeared at his side, slipping an arm around his waist and holding him steady. He ached all over, but it was his head that was going to kill him. Stabbing pain accompanied each step, and the dizziness and nausea made it difficult to walk.

“You keep using that word. What does it mean?”

“It means that you and I were destined for each other. The first time you touched me, there was a Spark. That heralded the beginning of what my people call the Scorching. A mating fever consumes both mates. We’re in the thrall of it, now, and it’s only going to get stronger.”

Lisa froze. “What if I don’t want this? I agreed to go out to dinner, not this.”

“I never expected this, either. You’re not Pyrosian. This shouldn’t be possible.” He turned to brush a light kiss to the crown of her head. “There’s no stopping this, tani. At least, not if you feel what I am.”

“You mean the flashes of heat and the fact I don’t want to leave your side?”

“And the need. Flames and fury, I need you so badly it hurts more than my head does.”

She tensed. “Promise me you didn’t do this. Swear to me on whatever you hold dear that you didn’t give me something or pull some weird alien mind trick to make me agree to fly away with you. ”

The edge of fear in her voice cut him deeply. His mate was afraid, and it was his fault. He spoke from his heart and hoped that it would be enough. “I swear on the graves of my parents that I did not do this to you. My people believe it’s the Gods that select the perfect match for each of us and reveal them to us when the time is right.”

“And what do you believe?”

Vadir felt like he was standing at the edge of a cliff, and the ground was crumbling beneath his feet. He had stopped trusting the Gods the day his father had chosen to follow his mate into death instead of staying to raise his young son. He’d been on his own since then, making his own choices and building a life for himself with no help from anyone. At least, that’s what he’d chosen to believe until now.

Staring into Lisa’s lovely face, he couldn’t deny the truth. “I believe that we are supposed to be together. That our meeting was the will of the Gods. It has to be. How else can any of this be possible?”

“The will of the Gods, huh?” She drew in a slow breath and then kissed his cheek. “They showed me what you looked like months ago. So I guess I’m going to have to trust them—and you.”

“They showed you?”

She started forward again. The medical bay was only six meters away now, and he pointed out the location to her as she continued to explain.

“I was inspired one day and started to sketch a face. Yours.”

On his world, only a rare few were gifted with communications from the Gods. Only female Pyrosians manifested the ability, and with the slow decline of female births, many of the bloodlines that carried the gift had been lost.

“I even made your eyes gold, which I didn’t understand at the time. That’s part of this Scorching thing, too, right?”

“After we have consummated our mating, my eyes will be that colour forever. At least, I think they will. It would indicate that my full powers have been unlocked, but I have no idea if that will happen. I think its likely, though.”

He waved his hand over a door panel and a doorway opened in the wall. Inside was an advanced medical bay. Given the amount of time he travelled alone, it had been a good investment, though one he had hoped to never need to use.

“Cas, where do you want your patient?” Lisa asked in a take-charge tone that made his cock surge to attention. He’d spent his life thinking he liked quiet, docile females, so why did her confidence turn him on so much?

“What are you laughing about?” she asked as she helped him onto the bed.

“I was just thinking that it took getting punched by a female from another planet for me to understand what I really wanted. Apparently, I’m as thick-skulled as my critics have always claimed.”

“If that’s true, then we are going to have some spectacular arguments, Vee. Even my friends say I’m stubborn.” She smoothed his hair with a gentle hand and frowned. “I can’t believe I’m already talking about a future with you. This Scorching thing is powerful. It’s messing with my head. How long does this last?”

“About two of your solar-cycles.”

“Two days? What are we going to do for two days? Sit in this broken ship and wait for your buddy Kash to rescue us?”

“No, tani. Once Cas has healed my injuries, I am going to take you to my quarters and spend the next two cycles making love to you.”

Desire kindled in her eyes. “You’re making big promises for a man in a hospital bed.”

“I won’t be here for long.”

“In that case, I should leave so that Cas can get started.”

“I don’t want you to go.” He took her hand and interlocked their fingers. “Stay with me, please.”

Her answering smile was brighter than any star in the cosmos. “I’ll stay because you asked me to instead of making it a demand. Try doing that more often. You’ll be amazed how well it works.”

“I’m not used to asking for things, so.” He grinned and tugged at her hand. “I’d better start practicing. Would you please kiss me?”

She laughed and leaned over him, her hair spilling across his chest and throat as she kissed him for the first time. “See how well that works?”