Page 54 of Monsters in Love: Lost in the Stars
Daisy stared at his back as they walked. The sun made her feel as if she were dying but she had almost become used to it at this point. As long as she had her TRS and Zil at hand to keep her hydrated and fed from his special alien honey, she could endure it despite its misery. Somehow it all just fit with the unending bleakness of their surroundings that was gradually withering her spirits, despite the little spark of life that had unexpectedly kindled within her. It was helping her get through the heat of the day and freezing nights, and through the strain beating down on her from just trying to survive. It kept her from feeling empty with despair as she became slowly accustomed to the nightmare in which she had found herself.
Within that nightmare was one bright spot—her alien warrior, Zil. He was a bully, barking orders at her whenever he felt it was necessary, but he also kept her going with his quiet praise and conversation well into the night as a comforting and stable presence. No one had ever been that for her before.
She still didn’t understand why Zil pushed her away. Yeah, she had teased and flirted with him, but she had felt safe with him too, and seemingly more comfortable with her very illegal attraction to him. Such things didn’t seem like too much of an obstacle when she had the money to sweep any rumors under the rug. Not that she felt particularly concerned about rumors anyway, which was a new experience for her. She had always protected her reputation, carrying out her brief affairs with the utmost discretion so that nothing would tarnish her carefully cultivated image. Here with Zil, it all felt ridiculous now.
Where had all that caution gotten her? She was going to be thirty in just a few months, and she had next to nothing to show for her life. Sure, she had her charities and galas—and one of the most important ones was supposed to happen soon on Galaxoros—but she had nothing truly for herself that brought her any real joy. She filled her life with little things that everyone told her were meaningful but never pursued anything she wanted just for the sake of wanting it. There were always some other calculations behind it. She indulged in stolen moments to briefly chase some meaningless pleasure in the shadows that always left her feeling hollow and unsatisfied afterward. Because her life wasn’t for her. She didn’t even have the luxury of close friends. She was a McGillin, and that name was weighed down with responsibilities and expectations at every turn.
All of that and for what? She would have died a sad and lonely death, murdered by the space pirates who sacked her transport ship, and she knew that her father’s grief would have been more for losing a family asset than the sorrow of a father. If he or her grandfather knew that she was alone on an alien world with an alien male, surviving off the bodily fluids from him, they would have clutched their chests with horror before summoning a whole series of emergency meetings designed to deal with the rumor mills and press before word got around.
Daisy’s lips twitched with grim amusement. It was perhaps telling that she was living a nightmare and suffering the crushing weight of it, and yet, despite everything, there was a dimension of her experience that fulfilled her in a way nothing else ever had. It was both companionship and burning desire that filled her waking moments with the only true pleasure she could call her own, and it also haunted her. It frustrated her even more since Zil’s rejection, making her feel despondent and small the more she became bonded to him. It was a terrible conflict, one that she knew she would be better off without, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to let go when she craved to get even closer to him—to savor the sound of his voice as he talked to her, the way his strange eyes caressed her, the way he touched her.
She was beginning to doubt that, if a rescue ship arrived tomorrow, she would be able to forget him and not miss him every day of her life. It could be due to bonding in a highly stressful situation, but she didn’t care. It just put her in the conflicting position of wanting to get the hell off the wasteland of a planet and hoping that no one would ever find them so she could enjoy Zil’s company longer. He not only was comforting but was also refreshingly blunt, and made her laugh, even if reluctantly, and actually focused on her, Daisy the person, not the heiress Miss McGillin. What made it all even more convoluted was the fact that he was only there with her because she was paying him. Without her money, he likely would have abandoned her by now and certainly wouldn’t be feeding her so intimately, especially when it clearly made him so aroused.
As much as she would like to claim credit for that, she was realistic enough to understand that reacting to something sexually stimulating for him didn’t mean anything. He would still likely drop her at the first opportunity presented once he was guaranteed his credits. And yet that didn’t bother her either. She just wanted to enjoy what time she had with him while she had it before she went back to her well-ordered and overly organized life of familial drudgery in her gilded cage and pretended like she never tasted real freedom. And as far as she was concerned, it was worth every credit that she would gratefully turn over to him.
She chuckled quietly to herself. Perhaps she needed her head examined. She had no doubt that her family would be in line to commit her if they had an inkling of what was going through her mind. Truth was, once she was rescued, she knew that she would be locked away for an intense psych eval by her family.
Zil stopped a short distance away and looked back at her, his ears pricking. She blushed, realizing that he heard her laughter with his freakishly good hearing, but was grateful that her sunburn at least did her the favor of disguising some part of it.
“Do you require my assistance, Daisy? You should tell me if you are flagging so I can carry you before you drop into the sand. It takes forever to get it out of my metal parts,” he added, but this time she heard the smile in his voice and that made her lips twitch in response.
She stretched and made a big deal of looking around. The mountain had gotten closer over the last few days. At their current pace, they could be camping in its lower slopes before sundown. Camping there wouldn’t be a lot of fun, but the change in scenery would be nice.
“You aren’t the only one,” she returned blithely. “Even with the TRS supposedly protecting me, I’m finding sand in the most interesting of places. But no, I can go on a bit longer so you have your hands free, just in case.” She hesitated as she peered at him. She didn’t want to ask—she didn’t even want to really know—but the threat that still followed them was not one she could easily ignore since their every precaution was aimed at avoiding detection by the aliens and mounting a quick defense should they be found. “Why do you think we haven’t seen any sign of the Valthaan? Do you think we might have escaped detection?”
He shook his head as he scanned their immediate surroundings. “Unlikely. The Valthaan do not possess primitive technology. We would not have escaped their notice. The question is whether they will decide it worth investigating. There are several planets clustered closely together that the life pod might have taken us to. They may be systematically searching for signs of the pod as we speak. The chance that they dismiss it altogether as a malfunction… I am not that fortunate,” he grumbled, and his lips thinned with distinct displeasure.
“Okay,” she said slowly. “It does sound like you’re definitely earning your credits with all of this,” she continued brightly. “Any plan on what you may do after?”
He shrugged, his gaze sliding away from hers. “Buying a new ship.”
“Sure, that doesn’t take long. What then? It’s a considerable amount of credits. Are you going to go back to being a mercenary or go home to Daranthaknar?”
“I am not from the mother world,” he grumbled. “I was born in Ezranak, a relatively unimportant colony within the empire, but there is nothing left for me there. The famine stole everything from me. There is no place that I call home except for my ship.”
Her heart clenched sympathetically. Famine was a curse that civilized planets liked to boast was eradicated from the sectors, but anyone who had been out there knew the truth of it. In her travels for her family’s company, she had seen evidence with her own eyes. It laid waste to everything. If a famine had hit his homeworld, it meant that he truly had no one. That struck an oddly familiar chord within her. She had a home and yet she never felt anything for it like how people spoke of their own homes, nor the tender comforts of family after Jaren died.
Her lips twisted in a frown. “I understand. I may have a place that technically serves as a home, but it’s merely something provided for me by my family. I often feel rootless and adrift. It is one reason that I am so agreeable to traveling on behalf of the family.”
Something shifted within the red eyes fastened upon her, and her chest tightened with emotion as she clearly read the loneliness and empty existence weighing on him. It was a feeling she recognized and felt despite their wildly differing life experiences.
“Zil, I—Oh fuck.” Her lips froze, her words falling silent as something luminous streaked through the sky just over his shoulder. He stared at her in confusion in reaction to her silence, but she lifted a hand and pointed at the gleaming metal racing closer. “Over there!” she shrieked, and the big male whipped around, his defensive implants activating as he turned toward it.
“Valthaan,” he growled. He spun toward her and grabbed her hand to pull her into his arms.
“Wait! What are you doing?” she demanded fearfully.
He met her eyes grimly. “We need to make it to the lowlands of the mountain. We will find some protection there, but we will only make it if I carry you. I will need to move quickly before they sweep back this way and find a place to land. We are thankfully walking through a very rocky passage, but it will only buy us a little time.”
Daisy nodded in acknowledgment, and she allowed herself to be hauled up into his arms. Her arms immediately circled around him so that her chest flattened against him and the top of her head fit neatly under his chin. Having her body tucked so close to his as he began to jog sent an electric tingle through her, but she reined in her reaction. Now wasn’t the time.
She hoped that Zil wasn’t being overly optimistic. It was hard to imagine this planet doing them any kind of favor, outside of being too hostile within its craggy formations to safely land on much of it. She doubted it would provide enough to even go as far as sufficiently hiding them. Still, she desperately hoped he was right all the same.