Page 4 of Two Aliens Are Better Than One (Bodyguards in Space #1)

Chapter 3

Lucky

I was too tired to concentrate on anything so I fiddled with my communicator, chewing on my bottom lip as I scrolled to my text messages with Relzo. Whatever was going on with this latest undercover assignment, I hadn’t heard from him in weeks, and that was when the worry started seeping in again.

But since the drunken New Year’s Eve fiasco, I tried to keep things bright and cheerful. And brief. I sent him a little about what I was doing in the lab. I snapped a selfie with an image from the microscope and captioned it “your brilliant best friend in her natural habitat”.

Then I flipped to the image of him I had at the top of the text message chain. So goddamn handsome, and so irritating. Everything about Relzo felt like home — staring into his blue-green eyes, imagining cuddling in his big arms. The Zangrel had four arms, so it was extra good cuddling, even if it did sometimes make you horny for your platonic best friend.

I traced a finger over the square line of his jaw. “I hope you’re safe,” I whispered, resting my forehead on my hand and staring down at him, feeling even more drowsy. And calm, in a way that acknowledged I was creepily staring at an old photo of my friend for comfort. Maybe I’d just close my eyes for a minute.

I jolted awake to find my boss, Jaia, standing over me, frowning down at me, which was an intimidating sight. She was beautiful in a stern, inhuman sort of way, like she was a doll or an android. To go along with that, she rarely showed emotion, so that frown marring her face meant she was really pissed off.

“Fuck.” The curse slipped out before I could stop it, but it probably didn’t matter. Jaia didn’t know any English, and refused to add a translator to her port. I was still a little groggy as I rubbed my eyes and looked down. “Ugh, I drooled on the keyboard.”

My boss gasped. She was a brilliant scientist, a fantastic mentor, but I couldn’t seem to force myself to like her as a person. I respected her immensely, and I knew she valued my intellect and ideas, but she had no empathy and became annoyed when I needed a break. Did the Chokreini not have bad days?

I glanced towards Jaia, whose silvery eyes widened, then darted back behind her. And behind her a tall man stood, his eyebrows up near his hairline. I’d recognize those golden eyes anywhere; the warm, subtly sexy glint, covered up by less subtle irritation. My neighbor. He looked different out of his natural habitat. His hair was perfect instead of being mussed, and his broad shoulders were clad in an expensive-looking suit instead of that luscious robe. The suit was in the high-end Chokreini style — all dark grey, with angular lines that accentuated the lines of his body.

“Are you stalking me or something?” I asked.

Jaia cleared her throat, shifting on her feet the way she did when she had to make a big presentation to the board. “This is Lallih Chehrai Vaelu Vele,” she said, widening her eyes at me. Lallih, this is Lucky Clarke, from the IUC Dengoth University Astrobiology Doctoral program. She’s the post-doc research assistant I told you about, and she’s made some incredible discoveries. Despite, um…” She trailed off and waved her hand at my general person.

Two honorifics at once with his name. Lallih basically meant “his lordship”, and the Vele was an elite class within the Chokreini culture, revered for their supposedly magical gifts, though I was pretty sure they were just wealthy assholes.

Family names were rarely used in their language, and if spoken before given names it meant that his family was impressive and well known. Jaia turned to my neighbor, bowing her head.

“Apologies, Vele,” she whispered, trembling a little. Anyone who could make my brilliant, unflappable boss tremble had to be a total dick. She widened her eyes at me. “He is an elite. You will treat him with appropriate respect,” she hissed. And that explained the size of his apartment. The Chokreini had a strict social hierarchy that bordered on a caste system, and my neighbor was at the very top of it.

Vaelu stepped forward, ignoring Jaia, and looked at my screen, his eyes darting over the images that the microscope had produced. “You sleep at work?” he snapped. “This is delicate scientific equipment, not a pillow.”

“It’s really just a keyboard. The delicate equipment is over there.” I pointed towards the massive microscope I’d been using to photograph cells when I’d dozed off. A muscle in his perfect jaw ticked. “Er, Vele,” I quickly added. Shit, Jaia was pissed. That vein in her forehead that throbbed when I did annoying human things was creepily prominent.

“Lallih Cherai Vaelu Vele is one of our project’s sponsors. He’s fascinated by the similarities and differences between the various sentient species in the galaxy and, like us, hopes that the life forms discovered on the Andois Asteroid may give us some clues about the origins of life on all of our planets.”

“It’s a fascinating project,” I said, darting a glance at him, wondering how someone like him would feel if he found out that humans and Chokreini had some ancient ancestor in common. Probably still superior, what with all his sexy attractiveness and stuff. His eyes darted to me right as I thought about his dick, and he cleared his throat.

“So fascinating that you fell asleep.” He was the goddamn reason I couldn’t get any sleep in my apartment. I’d asked the housing board for a relocation, but they’d said it would be two months. Two months of trying to shut out those loud sex sounds. I stood up and folded my arms over my chest.

“Lucky,” Jaia’s voice was a warning, but my temper was running too hot for me to care.

“I wouldn’t be asleep at work if someone wasn’t so loud that he kept me awake every goddamn night,” I hissed, poking him in the chest. He raised a haughty eyebrow.

“You live on a space station, in close quarters with almost a thousand people. If you need absolute silence to sleep, perhaps you should reconsider your life choices,” he said.

All right, I was going to kill him. “They call the evening hours quiet hours for a reason, because you’re supposed to be quiet!” I hissed. I wanted to curse at him, but my stupid translator wouldn’t tell me any Chokreini curses. Perhaps I should just sprinkle in a few human words for fun. He stepped in closer, lowering his voice to a dangerous growl.

“You will not touch me.”

“Oh yeah? Then you’d better be a little quieter at night,” I hissed, shoving him a little. And okay, I knew I was being immature, but no one in the Clarke family was known for keeping their cool in irritating situations. No Chokreini seemed to be able to understand my temper, and the flare of anger in his eyes was the first intense emotion I’d ever seen from someone of his species. He grabbed my wrist and picked my hand up off of his chest, then whirled around, stalking out of the room, wiping his hand on his thigh as if he’d touched something gross. He didn’t even say anything to my boss before he left.

“Lucky. We can’t lose this funding,” Jaia snapped. “How could you speak to an elite in such a way?”

“He has loud sex all night, every night, keeping me awake. I can’t help it if I’m a little cranky!”

She frowned. “No. He’s an elite. You should not behave like that around him. You should not make eye contact or address him. And you definitely should not poke him.” Then she turned and walked out of the room, clearly chasing after him to apologize for her defective human assistant. I flopped back into my chair with a sigh, rubbing my forehead as I started to regret my flare of temper.

That evening I rang his doorbell, holding a bag of apology pastries from my favorite Chokreini bakery in the core. He still hadn’t changed the code, but he didn’t answer the door so I left the pastries and a note.