AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Let me go!” The qesh twisted, the test tubes listing precariously and his body pulling into the road.
“I will, just?—”
“Get off?—”
The cruiser’s engine roared in Garin’s ears. “No, you’ll?—”
Garin yanked the qesh against him as the freighter thundered past. The qesh’s foot caught on a rock and he pitched forward, sending test tubes and liquid splattering across Garin’s chest and throat and into his face.
“Fuck!” Garin recoiled at the vicious sting in his eyes, but before he could wipe the burning liquid away, the slim body of the falling qesh slammed into him and they both crashed to the ground. Pain zipped up Garin’s tailbone and thumped into his sternum as the qesh caught himself with a bony elbow.
He was in too much pain to even appreciate the way the qesh slotted between his thighs and lay against his chest.
“What is wrong with you?” The qesh scrambled off Garin as he lay groaning in the dirt. “Look what you’ve done! Do you have any idea of the vast amount of information you’ve completely destroyed? What were you thinking? How dare you?”
“How dare I?” Garin pushed himself up, grimacing at the burning pain of the ‘information’ soaking into his shirt. “How dare I what? Save your life?”
“Save my life?” The qesh’s plush lips parted in indignant shock and purple and blue streaked across his face. “Is that what you think you did? Do you think I didn’t see the cruiser? Do you think I wouldn’t have seen the cruiser?”
Garin opened his mouth to argue, but the qesh wasn’t done.
“Do you know that every Qeshian child is taught to look both ways before passing into any sort of thoroughfare?” The scientist scrambled up to his knees. “Millenia of brilliant medical achievements, bacteria and virus-borne illnesses practically eliminated, but we still have no vaccine against blunt force trauma.”
Garin gaped up at the qesh and clenched his fists in the dirt. Was he ever going to get a word in edgewise?
“A fact I am well, well, aware of. I do not need you to accost me out of nowhere and drag me around like a child who hasn’t learned to look both ways before crossing the street!” The qesh’s narrow chest heaved as he finally finished launching his barrage of words.
“I was trying to help,” Garin bit out as he sat up.
“I didn’t ask for your help.”
“No, you were too busy looking at your pretty colors and wandering into the road.” Garin pulled his shirt off before whatever the hell had soaked him corroded a hole straight through his skin.
“I would not have wandered into the road.” The qesh’s shoulders climbed up to his ears as his entire body shook.
“No, you wouldn’t have.” Garin pointed a finger at himself. “Because I would have pulled you back before you did.”
“And those pretty colors were the culmination of weeks of study on my extremely limited field samples from my extremely limited excursions into the most fascinating area in this entire sector.” The qesh’s lips trembled and pressed together. His temples dripped with pink. His eyes shimmered. And Garin’s heart turned itself inside out with guilt.
He swiveled his legs around under himself to kneel in front of the devastated man. “Look, I didn’t mean?—”
“What the hell happened to you two?” Patrick Smith’s horribly jovial voice boomed from across the street and Garin looked up to see Smith and Dom striding toward them.
Dom raised his eyebrows. “Making friends, Garin?”
Garin’s stomach sank at the smirk spreading across Dominic’s face. He’d seen that smirk before. That was the smirk of a Turner man watching some poor bastard fall directly into his carefully laid trap. He’d seen it on Alistair, he’d seen it on Oliver, and he’d seen it on Dom before, too.
Now, Garin had a sneaking suspicion that the poor bastard was him.
“He’s perfect.” Sazahk stalked into his bedroom with a concerned Patrick on his heels.
The ‘he’ in question had left to shower off Sazahk’s precious samples as soon as he’d climbed out of the dirt. Patrick had then informed Sazahk that the man was Kevin Garin, Dominic Turner’s current bodyguard. Garin was former Human Special Forces—the infamous Vanguard unit, specifically—and would escort Sazahk out into the surrounding Dead Zone. His company freed Sazahk from the confines of the research station. He was, essentially, Sazahk’s new partner.
“You didn’t seem to think that a few minutes ago.” Patrick stopped in the doorway, his blue eyes widening at the tablets, tools, and clothes scattered over every surface in Sazahk’s room.
“That was a few minutes ago.” Sazahk found the pack he’d used for his last journey into the Dead Zone buried under two dirty sets of robes. “My heart rate and adrenaline were elevated from his attempted rescue, and I was upset and disappointed at the loss of my samples. I reacted emotionally and thoughtlessly.”
“Okay, sure, but are you going to be okay spending a month alone with a man who made you react emotionally and thoughtlessly?” Patrick picked his way across the floor, picking up discarded pieces of clothing and piling them up into the emptiest corner.
