Page 8 of Entangled by the Alien Mercenary (Monster Mercenary Mates #4)

Elyssa

My body was fully convinced it had to fight when I woke up. Tension raced through my muscles, my fists were balled beneath the blankets, and my heart began pounding in my chest. Jalima’s men had taken me captive; they’d tied a noose around my neck; they would kill me when they discovered I was leading them on a fake expedition to get data I was carrying on my person. Blinking open my eyes, I was fully prepared to leap into action—then all that fighting instinct jolted to a halt and dissolved in confusion.

I wasn’t in that improvised camp. There was no noose, and there were no creepy goons standing guard. There was a roof over my head, a rocky roof, but a roof nonetheless. I was also finally warm, from the tips of my toes to my chin. There were blankets over me and soft padding beneath me. Someone had gone to great lengths to make me comfortable, and though my wrists throbbed a little, they had been bandaged too. I recalled then the green Viridara male with the impossible appearance. Was this his doing?

Raising my head, I found him sitting next to me, a tall, looming shape in the gloom of a shallow cave. His eyes were black pools of darkness, his hair raised, the thin, leaf-like strands unfurled to make him seem larger than he was, and he was already freaking huge. My breath caught in my throat at his expression, which felt possessive, as if he was laying claim to me with just that look. It would have scared me, he did scare me, but there was that pink and purple flower, and now there were many more… What warrior wore pink flowers on his armor?

His body was a sculpted work of art, but his high-tech carapace of black metal was damaged in places. Over his ribs, along his side... There was a gap on his thigh, revealing emerald skin. Then there were the weapons strapped to his body: knives, pistols, a long, sharp blade that came perilously close to a sword—or maybe a machete. Green wings, shaped like giant leaves, curled around his shoulders, and a long set of vines draped from beneath those. They moved as if they were limbs; one was holding a spoon and stirring a bowl that smelled of fragrant stew.

The flowers were located above the gap in his armor that crossed high over his chest. A pink bud sat there, and then more pink leaves draped down from his shoulder, while a whole circle of pink blooms sat on that side in his hair, like a lopsided wreath. Then I saw the eyes—a second set of them. I wasn’t talking about a Viridara’s Iredese, the eye-like spots they opened when they felt threatened. This male wasn’t feeling threatened, and his spots were not visible. No, these were big green eyes set in a tiny green face. They were peering at me from the Viridara male’s emerald hair, which had camouflaged the creature so I almost hadn’t noticed it.

“Hello,” the male said, his voice a deep, satisfying rumble. Again, I should have been scared in his presence; rationally, I knew this. This was a stranger—a powerful, dangerous one at that—but the pink and green creature on his shoulder and his sensual voice… I wanted to relax and curl up in these blankets, listen to him talk for hours. That voice, his eyes—they made me believe that my running had finally come to an end, that I was safe. Wasn’t that what he’d said to me right before I’d passed out? Oh, damn it! I’d passed out in front of this stranger. I was such an idiot.

“Who are you?” I forced myself to ask. I was still pretty tired and weak, but I also hadn’t eaten in at least twenty-four hours. That stew he was stirring with his damn plant-tentacle was looking mighty tempting right now. Sitting up was hard. My body didn’t want to move; it wanted more sleep. My strange host slipped his free vine around my back to help prop me up. I wasn’t sure if it was better or worse to be touched through the blankets by that weird appendage. It did not feel warm. It did not really feel like an arm, but it was still a part of him, and he did not withdraw it once I was sitting. He kept it curled around my back as if he did not trust me to support myself.

“I am Tasseloris of the Varakartoom,” he said, his voice lightening with what was clearly pride as he spoke. I found it disconcerting to be looking into his dark eyes and not knowing whether he was looking back at me. Pupils and irises conveyed so much, and to stare into a gaze without… No, that wasn’t true. He did have them; his iris was simply the same color as his pupil and so large it filled his entire eye. Like a beast of prey, like the bovines I’d enjoyed watching on one of my brother’s many properties back on Elrohir.

“What’s your name?” he asked in return, and he leaned toward me as if he were dying to hear my answer. A full-body flush set in that I could not explain. Why did I respond to him like this? I kept wanting to trust him, to reach out to him; my body was relaxing into his supporting vine as if that were totally normal. The desire to lean closer and lick the sharp line of his jaw was overwhelming.

“Elyssa,” I whispered, my eyes darting from his face to the tiny little green thing perched on his shoulder. Telling him my first name couldn’t hurt, could it? I needed to find out why he was here before I trusted him with anything else, and I needed to try to convince him to take me back to the shuttle crash so I could find out if Brace had survived or not. “Who’s your friend?” I nodded at the green face, which was both similar to and very different from Tasseloris. He was Viridara, but with extras somehow. But this little creature was not. For one, they didn’t come in that tiny a size. I’d seen baby Viridara before—they looked very different. It was too much like a plant in some ways and too humanoid in others.

Tasseloris tilted his head, and I wondered if he’d shifted his gaze to look at the passenger riding on his shoulder. “I don’t know her name yet. We’ve only just met, haven’t we, sweet one?” Ah, damn it. The way he cooed at the little creature made me melt—it was so cute. It finally unraveled some of the tension I’d been holding onto; surely, a guy that nice to a stray—whatever that was—couldn’t be bad. The little creature cooed back at him, and I swear she looked as besotted with him as I felt. If he cooed at me like that, I’d probably look that way, too. He hadn’t aimed it at me this time, and already, my stomach was a mess, and warmth ached between my thighs—a throbbing pulse in response to that husky voice.

When he turned his head, I was certain he was looking at me again, and I really hoped he didn’t know what I’d been thinking. By the god of cold and death, did Viridara have a good sense of smell? I could not recall, and Vamor bless me, I really wished I did. Did he know that he’d turned me on just by talking and looking so good? This was the exhaustion talking—I was delirious from hunger. “Let me get you some food, Elyssa,” Tasseloris said, and my heart leaped. Had he read my thoughts?

I watched his green hands move with confidence as he scooped fragrant stew into a bowl and placed it in my lap. They were big hands, long-fingered, and scrapes decorated several of his knuckles. He’d been in a fight, but I already knew that. He’d been in several fights, rescuing me and others from those mouth-holes in the ground last night—then me from Jalima’s men this morning. The reminder of his ability to do violence didn’t sober my libido the way it should have; it only inflamed it.

He was watching, hovering close to me, his vine still wrapped around my back in support. I picked up the spoon and took a delicate nibble, then moaned in surprise at how good that stew tasted. Before I knew it, I was digging into that bowl with fervor, devouring every bite to fill the aching emptiness of my stomach. I didn’t become aware of my surroundings until I’d finished every last bite and my spoon was loudly scraping against the edge of the bowl. I raised my head, heat stealing into my cheeks when I realized what I’d done. That was rude, and what if he’d put poison in the food? I’d been way too trusting. I knew nothing about him except his name and the fact that he was a mercenary.

“Ah, thank you for the food. I must have been hungrier than I realized,” I said. His mouth tilted into a smile, lips curling, eyes twinkling, and my abdomen clenched tightly in response. He was devastatingly handsome when he did that. It wasn’t fair for a male to smile like that. I was completely unprepared for its effects. Swallowing roughly, I tried to make myself focus on the things I wanted to know. “Why are you here? Who are you?” I wanted to know if he was after me, but it seemed dangerous to just ask that. What if he wasn’t after me now, but would be then? He was a mercenary, and if he knew people wanted me, he might sell me out. I struggled to believe he’d do that, but just because his smile looked trustworthy didn’t mean it was. My brother had been very good at making people trust him.

He sat back on his heels then, taking the empty bowl with him. “You’re welcome, Elyssa,” he said, and my veins sang in pleasure at the sound of my name on his lips. I was responding to him so strongly. I’d never experienced that before, and I didn’t want to contemplate what it could mean. Good things like that did not happen to me. “I am Tasseloris,” he said again. Then he made a coughing noise and corrected, “Tass. My friends call me Tass.” Was he telling me I could call him that? Was he implying that I was his friend?

“Tell me, Elyssa, were you in the jungle to meet someone?” How did he know that? So he was here for me. My mind raced with possibilities, all of them bad. But he derailed my spiral by adding, "Brace. You came to see Brace?" His tone was baffled and a little confused, as if he couldn't figure out why anyone would want to meet Brace. But to find that strange, he had to know the male himself, or it wouldn't matter. Silly hope leaped once again in my chest, and my whole being seemed to want to lean into that. See, we could trust him, he was a friend of Brace, maybe Brace had even sent him to help me.

I forced myself to tread more carefully than my eager heart wanted me to, but I did nod. He already knew about Brace; I might as well admit it and see where that led me. His mouth twitched, and then he was smiling again. “I can’t believe you know him! He’s such a recluse… I didn’t think Brace knew anyone except the crew, and even that’s debatable. Most of us have never even seen his face!” Never seen his face? What did he mean by that? And crew? A suspicion began to form in my head, but I did not need to express it. Tasseloris, or Tass as his friends called him, seemed happy to keep talking.

“Brace is our chef on the Varakartoom. He’s been there longer than I have, so you must have met him years ago. Is that right? He was supposed to come down with me to meet you, but he backed out at the last moment.” That answered one question. If Tass was even speaking the truth, Brace had not died in that shuttle crash—he hadn’t been in it. Unless this was an elaborate lie from my green host to get me to trust him: act like he knew my contact, like he was here to help me, and I’d hand over what I knew, no questions asked.

Staring at his handsome, animated face and the cute pixie with her pink crown perched on his shoulder, I could not believe that this male would betray me. He probably meant every word he said; as earnest as he sounded, it was hard to fake that. I relaxed a little as he talked, sharing with me an anecdote about the one time he’d almost figured out which species the elusive Brace, the chef, was. I knew, but I was not going to share that secret if it was one that Brace wanted kept. So Tass was probably the real deal, a little too sweet and innocent-sounding to be a mercenary, but I could not forget how menacing and dangerous he’d first appeared to me. Nor could I forget his fighting skills, as he’d literally backflipped and somersaulted through the battlefield.

When my companion fell silent, I filled that silence by explaining. “I knew Brace years ago, yes. When he was a gladiator owned by Jalima. I contacted him because I have data on Jalima’s operations.” When Tass gave me an eager, almost dangerous grin, I knew this information was exactly what he was after. So I raised a hand and spoke the same bluff I’d given Tahirel yesterday. “Not on me. I hid it. It’ll be sent to all major news outlets in ten days if I don’t check in.” None of that was true, and this time, the lie tasted weird on my tongue. Sending Tass on a fool’s errand did not feel nearly as satisfying as doing so to Tahirel had felt.

“Okay,” he said with a nod, “we’ll get that data and give my crewmates a chance to catch up to me.” He tapped the collar of his armor on the right side of his neck. “My comm is destroyed, but they’ll track me down and retrieve us soon enough. Don’t worry, Elyssa. You are in good hands. I will keep you safe.”

When he said it like that, it sounded like a vow. Silly me—I believed him.