Liv felt numb. “No, Sophie, this is reality.” But her twin’s words seemed to have had a definite effect on the Kindred warrior who was claiming she was his.
“Did you do what she said?” he growled, glaring at the draft officers that had brought her in. “You dragged her in here without letting her change or say goodbye to her family?”
The two officers looked as sheepish as six foot six males could. “Standard operating procedure,” one of them mumbled defiantly. “Allowing the subject out of your sight, even for an instant, more than doubles the flight risk.”
“She’s not a subject, you fuckin’ idiot,” growled the dark warrior, his amber eyes flashing. “She’s my bride. I don’t give a good goddamn what your SOP is, if I find you’ve hurt her in any way, you’ll both answer to me.”
“I’m so sorry,” the blond Kindred said awkwardly as the dark one raked the officers over the coals. “None of this was handled very well.” He put a hand tentatively on Sophia’s shoulder and she flinched away from him.
“Don’t touch me!” she flared, shooting him a deadly glare from narrowed green eyes.
The blond Kindred’s ice blue eyes widened, then narrowed as well. “Forgive me. I wasn’t aware you’d take a gesture of comfort as a threat.” The double set of fangs in his upper teeth seemed to sharpen alarmingly.
“Okay, everybody take it down a notch.” Kat raised her voice to be heard over the babble. She looked at Liv. “First the good news. It’s only for thirty days.”
“Only thirty days?” Sophia cried, still clinging to her. “That’s a long time to be abused and molested, Kat!”
“Nobody’s getting abused or molested,” the dark warrior growled.
“Oh really? So you have no interest in having sex with my sister?” Sophia demanded of him.
Liv felt her cheeks heat. “Sophie, please.”
The warrior’s eyes flashed. “Hell yes, I’m interested and I’m not gonna deny it. She’s mine—I need to claim her. Bond with her. Can’t do that without sex.”
Liv felt her face get even hotter. Oh my God, is he for real? The thought of being pressed up against that huge, masculine, muscular body was doing strange things to her, things she didn’t want to admit even to herself. And no one had ever said they wanted to bond with her before.
“Baird, you’re only making things worse,” the blond Kindred muttered, tugging at the other one’s muscular arm.
Baird—is that his name? Does he even know mine or am I just a “bride” to him? Vaguely she remembered him calling her something else, something that sounded like an endearment in another language, but she couldn’t quite remember what it was now.
“Could you excuse us for a moment?” Kat asked both the Kindred warriors in her best professional tone. “I need to look over this contract and confer with my client.”
“Certainly,” the blond warrior said graciously. The dark one, Baird, Liv thought to herself, looked ready to protest. But his friend said something to him in a sharp, guttural language and at last he relented and withdrew with a curt nod.
“Okay girls, let’s get it together.” Kat shepherded them both to the powder blue couch Liv had jumped off of earlier. Liv and Sophia sat on either side of her, staring anxiously at the thick sheaf of papers in her hand.
“Kat, do I have to go?” Liv asked but even as she did, she remembered their conversation from that morning. Strike that, she thought, looking at the clock hanging on the blank white wall above them, from forty minutes ago. Had it really only been forty minutes since she was sitting comfortably in her own kitchen enjoying a glass of orange juice and pretending to herself that the dark man was only a dream? And now here she was in the HKR building, in her underwear, with her heel throbbing dully from the embedded glass and her head full of confusion and dread. Worst of all, she was about to be hauled away in a space ship by a huge alien warrior who wanted to “bond” with her. It was unbelievable.
“You have to go,” Kat said, nodding firmly. “But as I said, there is some good news.” She ticked the points off on her fingers. “One, it’s only for thirty days and as long as you don’t bond with him you’re free to go after it’s over.”
“Wait a minute,” Sophia interrupted her. “He said he had to have sex to bond with her. So that means…”
“No bonding sex or you lose your get-out-of-jail-free card,” Kat finished for her.
“Bonding sex?” Liv and Sophia said at the same time.