Total pages in book: 40
Estimated words: 36875 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 184(@200wpm)___ 148(@250wpm)___ 123(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 36875 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 184(@200wpm)___ 148(@250wpm)___ 123(@300wpm)
“I killed him fairly cleanly. He did not suffer for long. Not nearly as long as I would have suffered if he had captured me.”
* * *
Lyssa
I am loathe to realize it, but I put myself in this situation. By all rights, I should be dead. My survival here on this planet was a matter of pure chance. I look at Manik and I feel as though I have been lying to myself this entire time. Every sweet moment I’ve felt with him has been an illusion produced by lying to myself. He is everything they said he was — and maybe worse.
“If I hadn’t set myself on fire, would I be dead now?”
“Probably. I would have killed you before I realized how cute you were.”
It’s a chilling compliment.
Today has reminded me that this is no joke, and it is not a romantic interlude. Manik is vicious and deadly. He’s everything he has been accused of being, and I can’t pretend otherwise anymore. I let my arousal get in the way of my common sense. I was dick drunk, but I am sober now. Very sober.
“Stay here. I need to go out and reclaim what I can. Don’t do anything stupid.”
I can barely move, let alone gather the energy to do anything stupid. I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to look at him the same way again. Those men did not deserve to die. Or maybe they did. I don’t even know anymore. The truth of the matter is that Manik’s perspective and mine are mutually exclusive. We are two separate circles in nonexistent Venn diagram.
The second he is gone, I open a channel to my ship. If she did call for help, she needs to stop. I don’t know how I am going to get off this planet, but I know that it won’t be because I got outside help. Manik won’t let anybody in. I have to find a way to get him to let me out.
“Computer. Are you there?”
“Hello, Lyssa.”
“Computer, please stop broadcasting our position and stop asking for help. He’s going to kill everybody who lands.”
“I have incinerated the ship they landed with so he cannot use the resources to escape.”
“Can you try not to antagonize him, Computer? I am stuck down here with him.”
“I am working on an algorithm to destroy him the next time he emerges from the hideout.”
“If you kill him, I’ll be left down here to survive on my own. Just stay in orbit and stop taking shots. He’s just going to use me as a human fucking shield. I’m the human operator, you’re the computer. Just do as you’re fucking told. Understand?”
Computer lapses into sulky silence. I’ve hurt her feelings. I’d usually be diplomatic, but the events of the day have stripped away all diplomacy. She’s a fucking computer, and she can do what she’s told for goddamn once.
I turn the communicator off and return to my blanket nest bed.
“LYSSA!”
Manik uses my name at high volume as he comes through the front door, his big, scaled hands full of bounty hunter supplies. He’s been out there stripping corpses. I wonder if the satchel on his back is full of their bones. Has he already made them nothing but decor?
He looks down at me, seeming slightly pleased to see me where I should be, but unhappy at what has no doubt happened outside. I am sure he was smart enough to avoid the ship. But he still looks mad. I feel myself cringing internally, worried that I am about to bear the brunt of his alien fury.
“Your ship has attacked the…”
“Yes. The ship the bounty hunters landed in. I’ve told her not to attack you again. I don’t know if she’ll listen to me or not.” There’s a tremor in my voice. I’m scared. This bed puts me at his feet, and I am always at his mercy. Today I have finally seen what great mercy that truly is. He could kill me and add me to the wall of bones without thinking twice about it if the mood took him.
He looks at me, and his expression softens slightly. “You are afraid of me.”
“Yes,” I admit. It is not much of an admission. “You’re terrifying.”
“I do not intend to hurt you. I want to keep you safe. And I want to keep you mine. Do you still want to be mine after what you have seen today?”
“I…”
* * *
Manik
How can she answer that question? She is obviously too scared to give anything like an honest answer. This is why relationships are so hard. You rip one man’s spine out in front of a woman and it changes things.
“Don’t answer that,” I tell her. It doesn’t matter anyway. Whether she wants to be mine or not, she is mine. I saved her life, and that means that the rest of her life belongs to me. She owes me her very existence, and I will defend her against her petty bounty hunting rescuers for as long as it takes.