Sea of Stars(52)
Trey nods. His voice hardens as he says, “He was on the recordings of your interrogation. He was easy to find. He wept when he told me he didn’t know where Geteron had taken you after he’d interrogated you. Rutledge didn’t live long after that.”
My body turns toward Trey’s, instantly straightening from its stooped posture in total awareness of him. Without hesitation, Trey takes me in his arms; one of his hands extends to the nape of my neck while the other snakes around my waist. He weaves his fingers in my hair, pulling me to him possessively. His nose brushes the column of my throat to my ear as he breathes me in. The gentle, masculine scent of him envelops me. My own breath catches; every nerve ending within me reacts to him at once. Warmth curls through me all the way to my toes. I’m suddenly weak, and my knees bend. I lean into his rigid chest, melting against him.
Something in my own chest tightens as my respiration becomes fluttery. My fingers dig into his strong biceps, looking for support. It’s there; his arm tightens around my waist, holding me up now. “Trey,” I say breathlessly. He must notice, but he continues to nuzzle my neck as if he’s unaware of the exquisite havoc he’s creating inside of me. His mouth shifts to my temple, kissing it tenderly. “I’m sorry,” I murmur. Trey pauses. He scans my face, trying to read it. “If it weren’t for me, this would never have happened to you. It’s because of me—I was never welcome here,” I manage to say.
Trey tenses. In the same soothing tone that he used before, however, he murmurs, “We were never welcome here—”
“It’s because of what I am. There’s too much history for some of them—people like Telek. To him, I’ll only ever be Alameeda—his enemy.”
“Then I’m their enemy,” he growls. “I’ll kill anyone who tries to hurt you again.” It’s a simple statement of fact, but one that soothes some of the ache in me. With his hand on my back, Trey holds me to him. I wrap my arms around the nape of his neck. Leaning down, he kisses me. His voice is raw as he confesses against my lips, “I thought I’d never see you again.” He uses both his hands to cup my face. When he looks in my eyes again, his thumb traces my bottom lip. His other hand draws a path over my cheek, then skims down my body as he bends and kisses me again.
Color infuses my skin while his tongue strokes mine. The breathless feeling I had is gone, replaced by my increased respiration and a building sense of need within me for more. He raises his head so that his lips are just above mine. “Do you know what I thought about after they took you away?”
“No.”
“I thought about all the opportunities I allowed to pass without showing you what you mean to me. I’m not going to make that mistake anymore.”
“You’re not?” I rest my forehead to his lips.
He murmurs against my skin. “No, I’m not.” He moves; his nose skims down against mine in an intimate caress. “I can’t ever feel that way again.”
“What way?”
“The way I felt when I thought you were gone forever,” he answers harshly. “I’ll do whatever I have to do so that never happens again.” He kisses me. When he stops, I feel needy, burning for their return.
As I reach my hand to brush Trey’s hair back from his brow, an arm wraps around me from behind. It rips me away from Trey, squeezing the air from my lungs. I’m seized by another arm around my waist and pulled from the doorway of the silver transport orb. A jet-pack-clad Alameeda Striker clutches me to his chest as we rocket upward. The soldier holds me above Trey’s head for a moment, hovering in midair, before he flies with me over the catwalk and metal railing into the open-air abyss.
Dangling me in the middle of a coliseum of detention cells, my feet stop kicking him as I look down. Panic seizes me. If he drops me, I’m dead; the fall goes on for several hundred stories! I whimper.
Another Alameeda Striker joins us. I can’t see the soldier’s eyes, concealed as they are behind the mirrored navigation visor of his helmet, but his wide, pearly-white grin speaks volumes. “You found her!”
“It’ll mean a commendation for sure—for both of us!” the one holding me says near my ear.
Distracted as the soldiers are by me, neither one of them is paying any attention to Trey. As I lift my chin and look toward the catwalk, Trey lunges forward, leaping into the air. He plants one of his feet on the bottom rung of the metal railing and steps up, his other foot touching the top rail. Pushing off, he jumps toward the idling Alameeda soldier near to us. Sensing Trey’s movement, the soldier in front of me tries to raise his weapon at the last moment, but he doesn’t have time. The back of Trey’s knee wraps around the Striker’s throat, snapping his neck, while pulling him down into a horizontal position. Trey tears the navigation helmet from off the dead soldier’s head, placing it on his own. The limp Striker turns over on his back. Trey lands with both feet on the Striker’s supine chest. He widens his stance on his enemy, riding the jet-pack-clad corpse like a skateboard.