Page 15 of Hijack! (Cosmic Connections Cruise #1)

Those clear Earther blue eyes rolled back in her head, leaving only a terrifying white. And she slumped to the deck.

Ellix slapped his hand over the door lock and leaped across the room, catching her before her head slammed against the flooring.

With his arm cradling her head, he watched the rapid thrum of the pulse in her neck. She wasn’t dead. The scanner options on his wrist datpad were limited, but they reported all her vitals met Earther norms. He snarled under his breath; just like the sensors found no oddities in the ship?

“Felicity may have had contact with the distortion and is unconscious,” he reported in his comm. “Initiating isolation protocol.”

This was supposed to be just a three-sunset tour. They didn’t have resources for a serious medical emergency—nor any weapons for dealing with a hostile takeover.

He glared at the energy filaments spread across the viewport. They’d been moving around and over Felicity when he’d raced in, but they were static now.

He turned his glare down to the unconscious Earther in his arms. “Why? Why would you try to touch it?”

For the same reason she’d touched him?

Carefully—his claws were out in response to the threat—he brushed strands of hair out of her face. The decorative tie did a terrible job of containing the fine, flyaway strands. But he couldn’t really blame it considering he’d had no more luck with ordering her around.

“Felicity,” he whispered. “Wake up. Please.”

Rising to his feet with her held tightly against his chest, he carried her to one of the luxurious padded benches, as far from the frozen anomaly as he could get.

When he’d first seen the ship’s remodeled decor, he’d disapproved in the privacy of his own head. So many silly little lights. Such overstuffed cushions in bright colors. But of course it made sense for a dating cruise. Now at least the bench was properly soft to hold her.

Kneeling at her side, he lowered his forehead to hers, letting his whiskers sweep forward to brush her face.

Kufzasin didn’t rely on the receptor organs in the long feelers anymore, since they’d evolved past hunting in the dark and tearing out throats with their incisors.

But the whiskers were sensitive to the vibrations of electrical fields, and the feel of Felicity’s aura was still strong and purely her.

For a heartbeat, he held the contact. He just wanted her to open those blue eyes again.

“Captain,” Griiek said. “Director Rowe was recording her interaction with the distortion. While the monitors did not detect anything on the viewport or in the room, when she touched the screen, there was a moment…”

Ellix glanced at his datpad, watching the replay. When her fingertip brushed the plasteel, a shimmer of light appeared. “Static discharge?”

“Not sure. Chief Engineer Adrakh is reviewing the data as well.” The young Monbrakkan let out a gulping noise. “Captain, the isolation. Is that really necessary?”

Ellix looked down at the sprawled female. “Get me some answers and I’ll let you know.” He punched at his datpad. “Delphine, if anything happens—anything else—you’re next in the chain of command.”

“Captain—”

“Get back to me so we can finish this cruise.” He cut his comm. There, a touch of proper worry would sharpen their edge.

Straightening to his full height, he turned his attention to the bright shadow on the wall and slowly stalked toward it. Was it his imagination or did it recoil slightly?

“You can shock an innocent Earther,” he growled. “You think you can shock me?”

Aye, definitely a twitch. And then the bright shadow faded entirely, leaving just the endless black of space, framed by the Earther fairy lights.

“Ellix?”

Felicity’s trembling voice brought him around, and he hastened back to her side. Dropping to his knees beside the bench, he touched her shoulder. “I’m here.”

She blinked at him rapidly, as if struggling to focus though the blue of her irises was clear. “What happened?”

“You disobeyed my direct order and tried to touch the anomaly.”

Her lips trembled. “Is that why you are snarling?”

“Aye. Because you frightened me.”

“I? Frightened you?”

“You fell unconscious. I thought you were dying.”

“Oh.” Then her eyes flared wide. “Oh!” She sat abruptly, slamming her head into his chin. “Ow.”

He tightened his grip on her shoulder when she wavered. “Take a breath. How do you feel?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t think I’m impregnated.”

“What!?”

“I…” She shook her head. “I think I was quantumly entangled with the anomaly.”

He rumbled under his breath. “That… Is that how impregnation works for Earthers?”

“Not exactly, but for a second, I could feel it.” Her head swiveled toward the empty viewport. “It’s gone? But I almost made a connection. Maybe if I try again—”

“Nay.” He boosted himself onto the bench beside her, taking hold of her hand in case she tried to disobey orders again. “We don’t know what happened to you.”

“We don’t know what’s happening to us,” she corrected. “Which is why I was trying to find out.”

All his muscles tightened, although he made sure not to crush her hand. “We are not an exploratory vessel.”

“Aren’t we though? We’re out here looking for love.” As if challenging his restraint, her fingers tightened on his. “The light went into me, like it wanted to touch me back.”

“We have other ways to communicate, if that is its intent.”

“But what if it can’t? If we could all just reach for the connections we wanted, there would be no Intergalactic Dating Agency.”

He scoffed out a hard breath. “You can’t make everything about love.”

Sitting side by side, she was still much shorter than him, but somehow when she looked up at him, he felt as if she was staring into his depths. “That’s literally my job.”

They both pivoted to stare at the quiescent anomaly.

He rumbled under his breath. “We’re arguing about feelings while we’re trapped with a power glitch that hijacked this ship.”

She lifted her chin another notch. “Maybe it seems silly to you, but I’ve noticed there is always an excuse—a monster right there to explain why we shouldn’t make everything about love.”

He gazed at her a long moment. “Who was your monster, Felicity?”

The way she slipped her hand out of his to clutch the place over her Earther heart—where the IDA button had been—told him he’d struck too close.

“They weren’t monsters. Just… My family didn’t believe in sharing feelings, so we stayed stuck in that darkness.

Our own little closed worlds. Now they’re farther away than ever, and that’s that. ”

A heavy silence settled around them, like a weight turning down the corners of her mouth, and he longed to reignite her smile. But considering their situation…

“So,” he said, very casual. “Impregnated?”

She made a noise somewhere between amusement and embarrassment, a soft flush rising to brighten her cheeks again. “It’s…an alien thing in Earther horror movies.”

He glanced askance at her. “And yet you chose to work for an alien dating service?”

She let out a little huffle of breath, squirming so her shoulder bumped his. “Well, not just horror. It’s also a thing in our romance novels.”

He grunted. “No wonder the debate about whether to officially contact your planet remains unresolved.”

“Which is unfair. From what I’ve seen, the rest of the universe can be just as problematic as my world. But we’ll get there, someday.”

After a moment, her hand crept across the cushion to nudge his. “Except now you’re stuck here with me. Sorry about that.”

He entwined his fingers with hers. He’d already realized that she appreciated physical contact as much as his people did. “I would not leave you alone with this.” Hearing the undertone of possessiveness, he amended, “You are part of my crew.”

“And it’s been the best two and a half sunset tour of my life so far.”

He gave her a narrow look, but as always, she seemed sincere.

“Isolation protocol says we stay in place until we clear the med scans.” He tapped the datpad that had tumbled from her pocket.

“You need to authorize the scans, and anything not relevant to this situation is coded for your privacy. When those are complete and the isolation period over, we can return to active duty.”

Even as she initiated the scan through her own device, she cast a sidelong glance at the viewport where the distortion had been.

“If none of the sensors detected it… But I guess it’s like my therapist warned me: No matter how many lists and references I have, I can’t be ready for everything.

” She shook her head. “As if finding out about the Intergalactic Dating Agency hadn’t proved that. ”

He checked his own scan. In addition to the physical review, there was a time delay. Perhaps to see if they exploded—possibly with alien offspring.

He squelched the unsettling thought. “Before I took this post, I vetted Evens’ Big Sky enterprise. Surprisingly little information. That he was able to open an IDA outpost on a closed world raises questions.”

Felicity shrugged. “I confess, I didn’t ask many questions at all.

I was just happy he told me the truth. Living in Sunset Falls, I experienced things that made me wonder sometimes if I was going crazy, so finding out it was just aliens was actually a relief.

Maybe if I’d known before, I wouldn’t have needed a therapist.” She raised her hand a little under his and then let it fall back to the cushion with a sigh.

“And since I’m being honest, I was happy to leave Earth. ”

There was no real reason for him to need to know the details of her arrival on the Love Boat I. He’d reviewed her crew records and already seen enough of her in action to know she was competent and dedicated, if headstrong. And yet he heard himself asking, “Why?”

“I guess because I couldn’t find what I wanted there.”

“What did you want?” It was everything he could do not to tighten his grip.