“Not that one,” I insisted. “We need something that will blend in. Something boring.” I scanned the lot. “That one.” I pointed to a small gray Mazda with a tiny dent in one fender. “It’s not flashy and I’ve seen a million of them around.”
Still standing by the red sportscar, Zont said something incomprehensible, but clearly, he was protesting my choice.
I stopped moving toward the Mazda, put my hands on my hips, and glared. “Do not try to mansplain my own culture to me. Would you please just trust that I know what I’m talking about? We’ll stick out in that one, and the owner will throw a fit when he finds out it’s gone. This one will be harder to track.”
Zont grumbled, but he followed me.
Watching Zont hotwire a car—one of the new ones, advertised as utterly theft-proof because of all the Khanavai technology imbedded in it—was somehow one of the sexiest things I’d ever seen.
That had always been a weakness of mine, seeing accomplished men doing work they excelled at. But any attraction I’d ever felt to any other guy was nothing compared to the sudden wave of heat that rushed through me as he took the drone apart, pulled out what looked to me like a tangled mess of electronic components, and fashioned them into a device that he used to send a signal that first unlocked a nearby sedan, and then started it.
Sexy muscles. A willingness to step in and save me every chance he got. Brains—he had to be smart to be able to work with machines, take them apart and put them back together the way I did with broken bodies. Competence. No, more than that. Excellence in his field.
And, oh God, he could kiss.
Everything about him seemed absolutely perfect.
Even if he was a hot-pink alien from another world.
I am in so much trouble.
Before we got in the gray SUV and left the garage, Zont checked the com watch he wore on his right wrist, an advanced version of the kinds many people on Earth had begun to use. He tapped it and frowned.
How much of our technology is really Khanavai in origin?
I hadn’t thought about it before, but our planet was more intertwined with theirs than I had realized.
How much of the surgical equipment I used regularly came from another planet?
Intertwined.
The word flashed through my mind again, this time bringing up images of Zont’s arms wrapped around me, his tongue in my mouth, his…
Stop it, Amelia.
The inner admonishment didn’t help. I needed something to distract me from my own thoughts about the man—the alien—currently trying to make his wrist com work.
“Let me see your wound.” I should have checked it earlier, but we were too busy running and hiding.
He turned to allow me to examine the cut in his side. It was an ugly gash, red and raw and far too long for me to be happy about, but it wasn’t terribly deep, and it was clotting well.
“You could use some stitches in that,” I said. “But it can wait a little longer.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Go now. Sew later.”
Sew? Where did a Khanavai warrior learn that word? I shook my head to clear the thought, and Zont misunderstood my intent.
“No?” he asked, his tone turning dark as a frown beginning to form between his brows.
“Yes,” I corrected, ready to get as far away from the site of the Alveron Horde attack as possible. “Go now, sew later.”
He grunted his approval and we got into the Mazda.
I didn’t even ask where we were going.
I probably should have.
Chapter Eight
Zont
Earther cars were not made for Khanavai warriors.
Amelia showed me how to push the seat back as far as it would go, and still, my knees bumped against the control panel.
When I sat up straight, the top of my head brushed the ceiling of the car. So I huddled into my seat, hunched over, my elbows almost on my knees, which were themselves folded up and pressed against the control panel.
It was remarkably uncomfortable.
We had a few false starts and stops as I learned how to work the controls and drove down the ramps leading us out of the parking garage. Amelia gasped and gripped a handle above the door on her side—perhaps made for that purpose?—a couple of times, but we made it out safely.
Of course, there were a few conventions about human driving that I didn’t know. Amelia pointed them out, however.
“You’re supposed to drive on the right side of the road, not the left,” she said, her voice rising a little at the end of her statement as another car came directly toward us.
“But the driver is on the left side of the conveyance,” I muttered. “This makes no sense.”
“Whatever your grumbling about, just stop. I am tense enough as it is without listening to you bitch about things I can’t understand.”
I glanced at Amelia briefly. The bandage over the insertion point behind her ear highlighted just how much we needed to find a translator for her.
When she caught me staring at it, she fluffed her Khanavai-red hair to try to cover it.
“Keep your eyes on the road,” she instructed.
The streets were mostly empty, save for a few cars moving about, like the one that tried to run into us simply because I was on the wrong side of the road.
The human walkways were similarly abandoned, doors shut, and in many cases, covered with horizontal slats.
Blinds, that’s what they called those. I remembered it because the word was connected to not being able to see, and not being able to see was called blind in this Earther dialect.
I drove in random directions for a while, my primary goal simply to get away from the last place the Alveron Horde had seen us. I didn’t know if they were after me in particular, but I had learned from hard experience that it was always best to assume the worst when it came to my people’s enemy.
I would have to determine our
