Star Bright (Big Sky Alien Mail Order Brides #22)

Chapter 2

Vash staggered out of the rental ship. That rough landing was going to cost him some credits, and he couldn’t even bring himself to care. The crash had left him bruised too, and he couldn’t care about that either. The ache in his head might’ve been when he’d jolted upright and smacked his head on the sleep pod lid, though he’d had trouble sleeping lately and couldn’t quite remember lying down, or maybe the universal translator implant was malfunctioning, or maybe he’d had too much coffee?

Coffee was terrible for draklings, or so he’d been warned, but he’d been desperate to feel some sort of connection to the Earther female he’d be meeting—and mating.

Because he was desperate to feel anything.

The only part of him that hurt more than his head was his heart. But why—

“Welcome, honored guest!”

He stumbled over the droid and almost fell. What was wrong with him? Had he hit his head or the coffee even harder than he’d realized?

The droid withdrew, the whining spin of its wheel making Vash’s stomach churn. Something wasn’t right. He struggled to track its retreat and stiffened when he saw the other two aliens. One was a large quadruped with imposing teeth. The other was an Earther female.

It was so dark, and his head and heart ached, and he needed to remember…

But the twist of his beast, dazed and confused, roused him with one thought, clear as a star.

His Earther female.

She was short and round and fuzzy all over, from her large feet to the riot of brown curls shining in the spotlights. Nothing like… He took a step toward her, then the cold, hard dirt beneath him seemed to heave, and he tipped over backward.

All the stars winked out.

+ + +

Darcy just stared as the man collapsed in a puff of pine needles.

Not a man. An alien, from a spaceship. Oh, he looked like a man (Intergalactic Dating Agency? Contracted, compatible mates?) but no man looked like him .

Did that even make sense? Sometimes the truth is hard to hear . He was at least a foot taller and probably two feet wider than her five-five frame—at least when he wasn’t sprawled in the dirt. The rich auburn-brown of his hair glinted with golden highlights despite the dirt. Filter-perfect cheekbones, a sensuous mouth that had to be a hoax, and yeah, she was definitely dreaming.

Because like Ug, the alien’s eyes had given him away. In the moment before his eyeballs had rolled back in his head and he keeled over, twin rings of restless fire had blazed at her—beautiful, impossible, alien .

“What the hell?” she whispered again.

The little robot wheeled toward her. “Patron or staff ident please.”

Darcy blinked. “Sorry?”

“If you do not present patron or staff identification, you will be tagged for memory wiping. Please hold still…”

“Tagged for—what? No way!” She scrambled back. Impossible, alien concepts were coming at her fast and furious, but “memory wiping” seemed easy enough to understand.

Ug growled, and the robot paused. “All Intergalactic Dating Agency patrons and staff must complete full disclosure, disclaimer, and discovery accounts. No closed worlders may be admitted.”

Ug growled some more, and when the robot reversed course, Darcy suddenly decided she liked the not-dog’s snaggle teeth.

“This will be reported,” the robot said.

Darcy snorted. “To who? Brin told me it’s almost impossible to get a signal out of Sunset Falls, especially in winter. She said I’d be on my own while the center is closed.” Thinking back and trying to remember what else Brin had actually said, Darcy wondered if maybe her friend hadn’t said “New Age” conference center but rather “space age”. A fairly significant difference, in retrospect, although Darcy hadn’t cared at the time, wanting only to get away from anything that would remind her of Christopher in the Caribbean.

Well, this certainly qualified.

Hesitantly, she edged toward the sprawled figure. Ug growled again, but softer, not so much a “watch it” growl like he’d given the robot, but more “watch out”. But he didn’t try to stop her. Since he’d protected her from the falling branches, she’d just hope he wouldn’t let her do anything too foolish.

Although why she hadn’t already run away screaming, she wasn’t sure.

Maybe because she had nowhere else to go. If she had, she’d not be all alone in Big Sky Country.

But she wasn’t really on her own anymore, was she? Not with the whiny robot, the universe’s ugliest dog—and of course the alien man.

She crept close enough to stand almost over him. From this close, he was…even more intriguing. The skin of his bare arms and the formidable wedge of visible chest had a faint satiny sheen that made her fingers tingle with the urge to touch. Okay, that was even more impossible than aliens. Her fingers never tingled like this unless she’d been gaming too long and her extremities had started to go numb.

Beneath the mussed strands of his gold-brown hair just off-center of his wide brow, a big swelling abrasion marred his skin. If he’d hit his head hard enough to leave such a mark, no wonder he’d gone down so hard.

Oddly mesmerized, she started to reach for him. Would his skin be hot or cool? But as her hand hovered, while she wondered, his lashes fluttered, and he opened his eyes to stare up at her.

Those twin rings of fire she noticed before blazed so bright she gasped. Then he blinked, and when his eyes opened again, they were a dark gray, like guttered embers.

He said something in a language she didn’t understand, although the cadence sounded like whatever language the little robot had used.

The whine of a servo behind her told her the little robot had returned. “He’s asking what happened.”

Darcy crossed her arms, tucking her tingling fingers into her armpits. “Tell him that’s what we want to know.”

“You attacked me,” the alien said in halting English though with a strange accent.

“Attacked you? No we didn’t,” Darcy protested. “You crashed right on top of us.”

The robot started to translate, but the alien replied, “Crash?” He struggled to wedge an elbow under him. “Where are—?” And then he swooned, crashing once again into the dirt

Darcy, the not-dog, and the little robot exchanged glances.

“Well, I guess we need to get him out of the elements at least, though I don’t know how to tell if he’s truly hurt or what.”

Apparently agreeing, Ug shoved his snout under the alien’s slack arm and gave her a little grunt. She levered the unconscious man over Ug’s back and then held the big, lax form in place while they half carried, half dragged their burden back to the lobby.

Fortunately he was lighter than he looked, as if his bones were mostly air. Certainly his musculature wasn’t missing, as she couldn’t help but notice with his bare shoulder under her bracing palm. The fabric of his sleeveless V neck tunic was tough but silky, and his skin felt the same—but also hot.

Uh-oh, the tingling in her fingers was back.

She couldn’t pull away or he’d fall again, this time on the pavement. They maneuvered him through the door and then to the pillow fort she’d made. Straightened out, he took up a lot more room in the fort than she did.

“He’s an alien, isn’t he?” Darcy angled her glare from him to her conscious companions.

The not-dog said nothing, and the robot made a whining sound. “You are a closed worlder without patron or staff identification, and as such are not privy to certain realities—”

“So yeah, an alien.” Darcy blew out her lips. “Okay, presumably Brin did not expect me to discover this, but she also put me in charge of this place while everyone else is away. So, how do we take care of this guy?”

The robot rolled slightly back and forward again, almost like it was thinking. “Most of the amenities here are currently locked for annual purging cycles, including the med bay. Since this is an emergency, you may review medical data for draklings. Disclaimer: Access to unauthorized data by closed worlders may result in additional memory wiping.”

Darcy hesitated. This was all too much. She was supposed to be pleasantly tipsy on a tropical beach, remember? “What is a drakling?” When Ug poked his snout into the alien man, she huffed. “Yeah, I got that part. But what is he?”

“A drakling,” the robot explained, somehow dredging a note of annoyed impatience out of its digital voice.

She glared at the two of them. Abbott and Costello, were they?

Except she was part of the trio, which made them the Three Stooges.

But what was happening was no joke, no hoax, no dream. The alien man—a drakling?—currently lounging in her pillow fort was real.

The robot wheeled closer, its shiny dome flickering. “Here is the available medical data for draklings. Please hold while basic scans are completed.”

Ug sat like a good—if ugly—dog, so Darcy did the same, settling at the drakling man’s shoulder. His bare shoulder. His bare shoulder that felt like hot satin.

Anyway.

The drakling let out a low sound, not quite a moan, and his head rotated on the pillow. “Don’t leave… Alone…”

Thinking to hold him in place, she rested a soothing hand on his tunic. “We won’t leave you alone.”

His chest flexed hard, muscles ridging under her palm. Brow furrowing, his lashes fluttered, but his eyes never opened. With another breath, he slumped again.

“According to available scans,” the robot informed them, “the likeliest scenario for the drakling’s condition is a mild cranial contusion, moderate chemical poisoning—and some period of cryogenic preservation.”

Darcy frowned. “Cryo… You mean he was frozen, like in suspended animation?”

“All three diagnoses may be contributing to his mental confusion, physical incoordination, and current unconsciousness.”

Those all sounded bad. Trying to emulate the robot’s measured tone, Darcy asked, “Treatment and prognosis?”

“Treatment: fluids, rest, therapeutic massage, moderate exercise. Prognosis: guardedly good.”

Ug grunted, and the robot added, “Yes. Administration of some treatments will require a being with hands.” They both twisted to stare at Darcy.

Who’d been thinking that fluids, rest, and therapeutic massage would’ve been great on that Caribbean beach. And maybe a bit of moderate exercise with Christopher, which would now never happen again…

She stiffened. “Oh. You mean I’m supposed to be his nurse?”

So she found herself in the bar that serviced the lobby, gathering likely supplies. Brin had told her that the main kitchen was closed—although she hadn’t mentioned anything about purging —but that everything Darcy might like for food and drink would be stocked in the bar. And so far that had been the case.

“Draklings cannot properly process caffeine,” the robot told her. “That is the substance lingering in his system. So no coffee or tea, although the hot cocoa mix here at the outpost has no measurable caffeination and would be fine, no Earther energy beverages, no supplemented pixberry—”

Since she had no idea what pixberry was, she found a water bottle with a lid and attached straw and mixed plain water with just a bit of soda water from the bar gun for the fizz, plus a squeeze of citrus and a sprinkling of sugar and salt for the electrolytes. “All this okay?”

“Add some chili powder. Draklings need hot.”

Shaking her head, she added a dash, glanced at the robot, then another dash and a third until the robot said, “That will suffice. Bring the bottle.”

Ug was keeping watch at the pillow fort, though the drakling man hadn’t moved.

Darcy knelt beside the alien. “How do we get him to drink?”

“Touch the chili powder to his mouth. The heat should rouse him enough to drink the rest.”

Was she supposed to pour the powder directly into his mouth? He might aspirate, and peppers directly in the lungs seemed like a terrible addition to his problems. Assuming he had lungs?

She wet her fingertip in the doctored water and dipped it into the chili powder. The citrus and heat stung in some unseen cut. Not wanting the burn to go deeper—or to think too deeply about what she was doing—she brushed her finger over the drakling man’s lower lip.

His mouth was as satiny as the rest of him, but much softer. Maybe she lingered just a moment longer than was strictly necessary, but she wanted to be sure he got the dose.

She held her breath, waiting.

She had never seen eyes with rings of fire, but now, for some reason, she needed to see that blaze again.