Prime Obsession(2)

She stood quietly, balancing her weight on the balls of her feet, ready to move.

Increasing anger and hatred flowed from Parker in invisible waves so hot they swept across her skin like a volcanic windstorm.

Nothing and no one moved. It was if the area surrounding the café was encased in a bubble, isolating it from the rest of the resort.



Then Parker’s left eye twitched. His tell.

Her lips thinned into a grim smile. The three Prime males tensed as if to move.

She moved first, yelling at the Prime. “Stay out of it.” Mel dodged Parker’s lurching move to grab her. Her fist drove into his stomach like a cannonball. Roaring in rage, he grabbed the strap of her cover up and ripped the garment away as she twisted and spun out of his reach. The silken fabric slid down her body to tangle at her feet. Leaping out of the puddle of silk, she sent a hard front kick to his gut, knocking him away from her. The percussion from the solid hit traveled up her leg into the healing laser wound across her obliques.

She grunted at the sharp, stabbing pain. Sublimating the ache, she turned it into responsive anger, anger that this shithead had ruined her first leave in half a standard year.

Like the bullheaded son of a bitch he was, Parker charged her. Anticipating his move, she stepped to the side, throwing a side kick to his groin. He turned just enough that she merely caught the edge of his hip.

“How’s the side, bitch?” Parker taunted in a raspy voice as he circled her. He threw a booted kick at her healing wound as she spun away. His foot glanced off it.

Mel hissed, swearing under her breath. Moving fluidly, she delivered a reverse head kick. With the full power of her pelvic girdle, she caught him on the jaw. Hard. Really hard.

Holding his jaw, shock in his eyes, Parker staggered back. He bled from where he’d bitten his lip. He rubbed his jaw, shifting it from side-to-side.

 Damn. Too bad, she hadn’t broken it.

Spitting out blood and a tooth, he snarled as he circled, looking for an opportunity to hurt her. “They threw me out of the military because of you, bitch. You deserve whatever I dish out.”

She stared at him, not answering. Why waste her breath? She needed it for the fight.

Parker had always been an impatient fighter, always wasting energy. He’d be flagging, while she still had energy in reserve.

She’d have reserves, that is, if the pain from her reinjured side did not weaken her first. Pushing the throbbing agony to a place deep within her brain, she breathed slowly, deeply. Waiting.

“Captain?” Nowicki sounded scared. He knew her fighting ability, knew she could beat Parker. So, why all the concern?

Hell, she must look worse than she felt.

She sensed the three Prime moving closer, as if to render assistance. After all the trouble and pain she’d gone through to get Parker’s attention away from the diplomatic team, she wasn’t going to allow them to intervene, no matter how bad she looked.

“Stay out of this, Nowicki!” she snarled. “That’s an order. Just keep everyone out of the way.”

Parker was distracted by the exchange between her and Nowicki. His feral gaze looked beyond her to where Nowicki stood.

Using his momentary mental lapse, she went on the attack. Sweeping low with her dominant leg, she kicked Parker’s legs out from under him. He recovered just enough to go only to his knees. As he struggled to get up, she kicked his jaw, the loud whack from her sandals echoing off the walls of the café patio.



This time the jaw broke. Her mouth twisted into a satisfied smile as she pictured him in prison, eating all his meals through a straw.

Continuing to use his off-balanced position to her advantage, she kicked him in the ribs and got off a shot at his nose before he managed to scramble backwards like a crab and use a low wall to struggle to his feet.

He charged her, all technique gone, acting only on his rage. Since Parker had a longer reach, both in his arms and legs, the only way she could beat him was to stay out of his way, keep him off-balance, and wear him down.

For the next two minutes, she did just that, coolly dancing around the enraged man, punishing him with hard, well-placed hits and kicks.

She took a few glancing punches and her side throbbed like a son-of-a-bitch. While there was no blood, indicating that the regen seal held on the surface, she knew something inside had given away. She was fading fast. She needed to end the fight.

After another well-placed kick that spun Parker into a table, Mel danced on her toes.

She breathed deeply, blocking the pain, waiting to see what he would do next, watching for an opening to take him down once and for all.

Nowicki’s “He’s got a knife” sounded just as she caught a glint of light reflecting off something in Parker’s hand.

Then he rushed her.

Surprising him, she moved into him with a twist of her body. She grabbed his knife-hand by the wrist and broke it, using a technique she’d learned from reading ancient Prime training manuals.

Bellowing with pain, he dropped the knife.

In a continuation move, she turned even more into him, then maneuvered him over her hip, flinging him away from her. He hit a retaining wall with his head and then slumped onto the ground, unconscious.

From the rush with the knife to Parker hitting the floor was a matter of mere seconds.

As military security ran over to the downed man, Nowicki reached her side and placed a supporting arm around her naked, sweaty middle. “You okay, Captain?”

“Sure, no problem.” She lied through her teeth as she shrugged off his aid. Shoving her fingers through the hair that had escaped from her tightly woven French braid, she said in a harsh whisper, “Let go, Royce. I need to talk to the three Prime, make sure they know that Parker is not representative of the Alliance.”

“Fuck the Alliance and fuck the damn Prime,” growled Nowicki.

Mel cast a cold steely glare at her second-in-command. “Drop it, Commander. I’m fine.”

If she let him know just how tired and in pain she really was, he’d natter at her like an old woman. She couldn’t permit the high-ranking Prime to see her pain or exhaustion.

She couldn’t allow Nowicki to undermine her authority. They’d never countenance their military working in tandem with Alliance female officers if they perceived them as weak.

“No, you’re not,” Nowicki said as he pulled her into his strength, angry stubbornness etched in every angle of his body. “You’re bruised, bleeding, and pale.” The Prime observed the two of them carefully. Nowicki didn’t understand what drove her to stand on her own two feet and now was not the time to take him aside and explain. He needed a diversion, a task that would dissipate some of his need to care for her.



She removed his arm from her waist. “Get a med kit from security. You can patch me up. I have the duty to smooth this over. I represent the Alliance,” she lowered her voice even more so that only he could hear. “We can’t show weakness, Royce.

Understand?”

Nowicki nodded, then mumbled under his breath, something that sounded like

“damn fool woman.”

Mel stopped her forward motion toward the Prime and the late-arriving Captain Warten. “What did you say?” Her left eyebrow raised.

“Nothing. Just sit down for chrissakes. I’ll find something to cover you up. You’re damn near naked!”

Mel choked back a laugh and the comment that he hadn’t mentioned her near nakedness by the pool; she figured her second-in-command was riled enough. He never would’ve ordered her to do anything in front of civilians if he hadn’t been so upset. She must look really wiped out. Unfortunately, she did feel a tad bit light in the head; she had to be bleeding internally again. That one kick Parker had gotten in had done more damage than she’d thought.

Pushing aside the urge to hold her right side, she straightened to her full five-foot-eight-inch height and approached the group of men watching her. Garth Warten, Blue Squadron’s captain, had joined the Prime, and all four of them observed her approach with varying levels of concern. Garth’s gaze had guilt underlying it. As it should. Parker should never have been on Tooh 2.

“Gentlemen,” she addressed the Prime.

Her hypersensitive ability to read emotional auras registered conflicting emotions from the Prime. Concern. Anger. Admiration. And, once again, lust.

The last reading bothered her the most. Just what she needed—three Prime males ogling her. “I would like to apologize again for Ensign Parker’s rude and insubordinate behavior towards you. Please understand that his attitudes are not representative of the Alliance.”

The Prime said nothing. Damn, she hated diplomacy.

She waited, silently urging them to accept her apology soon so that she could go somewhere and collapse.

Their amber-gold gazes suddenly turned even hotter as they fixed on an area just above her right hip bone. Her birthmark, they were staring at her birthmark.

Instead of the lust she expected from them, she read surprise … amazement … joy in their reaction to her marking.

It was odd that she could read them so accurately. The extra sixth sense, or gut instinct as she liked to call it, that she used to read people was working overtime. Or, maybe the Prime males’ strong emotions stimulated her sixth sense. She’d never been able to read others this easily; in fact, during her fight with Parker, her senses had been more preternaturally sensitive than usual.