“You want to get away from me, don’t you?” Frankie asks. “Too bad, sweetheart.”
“No. I want to know…”
“You want to know what? That Nina is all right? That she’s alive? She’s not down below, sweetheart. She’s alive, yes, but until she apologizes—”
Apologizes? For what? For wanting to go to Kuria?”
"For breaking my heart!" Frankie shouts. He marches right up to me. For a man, he's short. I'm actually an inch taller than he is, and I smirk at the realization.
“She broke your heart?” I repeat skeptically.
“Yes, she did. She was going to date me, but then she—”
“She what? Agreed to a blind date, saw you through the window, and ran away?”
Frankie strikes me hard with the butt of his gun. Blinding pain strikes me, and wetness trickles down the side of my face.
“It takes a real man to hit a woman,” I mock.
“Keep it up, and I’ll kill you.”
“You will not,” Strol says coldly.
I glance over at him and frantically shake my head because Frankie's gaze is focused on Strol now instead of me. If Strol goes after Frankie, we won't have any idea where Nina is. I would love to have these guys be brought to justice and turned in instead of killed, but if we make a play now, we'll have to kill them, and I'm not free of my binds yet. Strol would have to do everything, and chances are too good that he'll get hurt or even killed in the process.
“Ah, do you think darling here loves you? She doesn’t.” Frankie laughs and tilts his head to the side. He’s so very close to Strol that they could kiss if he wanted. “She just needs to have a real man’s cock in her.”
“I only see one real man here, and he has blue skin,” I say.
“You want me to scalp her?” someone asks as I’m yanked backward, an arm snaking around my face, a blade against my hairline.
“Don’t you dare,” Frankie snaps. “She’s… She’ll be Kyle’s if he can get the plane.”
Frankie squints and walks away a few steps, his attention on the ship. I cut and hack at the bindings and glance at Strol.
He winks at me. He’s not nervous. Good for him. I’m terrified.
Strol clears his throat. "You took it personally that Nina wants blue cock, huh?"
“You better not talk to me about her or say her name again or else—”
“Nina!” I shout.
Frankie backhands me. I just grin at him.
“She’s in the captain’s quarters, isn’t she?” Strol asks. “You want to keep her close.”
“Have you touched her?” I demand coldly. “If you touched her, I swear I will—”
“You aren’t going to do nothing to me,” Frankie says.
He marches over to the cable that extends from the boat to the plane. Frankie holds out a hand, and one of the other goons hands him a cutlass. Grinning like a madman, Frankie glances at me, grins, blows me a kiss, and then he hacks the line. Kyle's stranded on the plane, which is now tilting at a slightly less severe angle.
I glance at Strol. We're going to have to take command of the boat. Otherwise, we have no exit plan. There's no other option available to us. The plane is as good as lost, although it might be a floating dead duck and useless even if we could find a way back on board.
“That plane of yours looks like a hunk of junk,” Frankie says as he strolls back over.
The guys on the deck, maybe ten of them, all burst out laughing.
“You didn’t come all the way from Kuria on that bucket of bolts, did you?” he asks Strol, getting in the alien’s face.
“That ship is going to go all the way up your ass,” Strol says through gritted teeth.
“That so?” Frankie winds up and punches Strol hard in the gut.
I don’t expect Strol to react to that any. He’s a wall of muscle. But the pain etched in his face is more than I can bear, and when Frankie pulls back, I see a glint of silver.
He’s wearing brass knuckles. At least they don’t have blades attached. I don’t see any red, so Strol’s not bleeding, but that had to hurt like a bitch.
“Big guy, huh? Have to cheat to get in good blows,” I snap.
“You and your mouth.” Frankie eyes me. “You’re going to need to learn some manners, ya hear?”
“Well, I’m not going to learn any manners from the likes of you,” I spit out.
“Aw, darling, don’t you think you’re hilarious? Here’s a hint. You aren’t. Want another? Keep your damn trap shut. A guy wants a woman who looks good on his arm, yes, with lips like yours around his cock. But he also wants a girl who knows that she should keep her mouth shut unless he asks her a question.”
"A real guy wants to hear from his woman and also won't touch her unless she wants to be touched. Guess what? I don't want to be touched, and neither does Nina."
Frankie marches over to me and grips my chin so hard that my teeth feel squished. “You don’t know Nina, so you don’t know what she wants. Worse? She don’t know what she wants either. She’ll know soon enough that it’s me she wants.”
“That so?” I ask coolly.
The glint in Frankie's eyes shifts. We're pushing him too hard, and I nod to Strol.
He drops his ropes, and he grabs the first goon and tosses him overboard. Before Frankie can react, I bring up my knee and hit him square in the balls. With a grunt, he goes down, and I kick the side of his head.
Before I can see if he's unconscious or not, two goons are heading toward me. I hit the first in the stomach, but a third comes around and grabs my arms, pulling me backward. I still have my legs, though, and I kick out, hitting the second guy in the stomach. The first recovers and dives at me, so when I kick, it comes
