Romancing the Alpha: An Action-Adventure Romance Boxed Set (46 page)

The young treasure hunter winced. “The deserts here are littered with the bones of the foolish following treasure maps and cryptic clues they’d found, bought or bartered for.”

Lexa patted her backpack. “Mine’s the real deal.”

He winced again. “They all say that.”

“Well, lucky I’m the one paying you to do as I ask, huh?”

A small smile. “Yes, ma’am.”

Damon cleared his throat. “To start, we need transportation and supplies to cross the—” he looked at Lexa.

“The Sea of Dunes.”

Phoenix stilled. “The Sea of Dunes. That’s a pretty name for a deadly place. Sandstorms, devil winds, wild animals, sinkholes—whatever kind of desert horror you can think of, the Sea of Dunes has it. Sure you don’t want to head out to the Ruins of Carcalla?”

Damon watched Lexa’s eyes narrow.

“We both know those ruins have been picked over by centuries’ worth of treasure hunters and astro-archeologists.”

That unrepentant grin again. “But it’s an easy, safe trip. It was worth a try.”

She crossed her arms. “Hmm, I thought easy and safe would bore you, Mr. Phoenix. Guess you aren’t quite the adventurer I thought you were.”

The teen straightened like he’d been hit with an electric prod. “You want to cross the Sea of Dunes, we’ll cross it.” He yanked a battered Sync from the pocket of his trousers. “We’ll need decent transportation, camping gear, food, treasure-hunting supplies…”

As the young treasure hunter tapped his Sync screen, Damon leaned down, his mouth close to Lexa’s ear. “Nicely done, Princess.”

She huffed out a breath. “That’s Dr. Carter to you, Mr. Malik. And I have five brothers, remember. One teenaged boy is a breeze.”

Suddenly, a horn sounded. A long, mournful sound that echoed across the town.

A few seconds later, it was followed by the blare of a modern siren.

Phoenix cursed.

Not good.
With a frown, Damon turned, looking for danger.

“What’s going on?” Lexa demanded.

“That.” The treasure hunter pointed to the north.

For a second, Damon didn’t know what he was looking at. The northern horizon was darkening, a dark brown smudge, growing in size.

Lexa frowned. “What is it?”

“A sandstorm.”

Lexa hurried along the dusty street, following Dathan Phoenix. Damon was a solid, silent and surprisingly reassuring presence at her back.

All through the town, people rushed and ran. Some carrying goods, others tugging along reluctant animals. A large, shaggy beast reared up, bellowing out a frightened call, held in place by a struggling young girl.

Overhead, the growing brown cloud raced closer. She could see the sand twisting and boiling in a writhing mass inside it.

“I’m going to take you to the best inn in town,” Dathan called back over his shoulder. The wind was picking up and he had to yell.

“Inn?” she yelled back. “I want to get started on this hunt!”

“Not today.” He stabbed a finger at the darkening sky. “It’s too dangerous. In the heart of a Zerzuran sandstorm, the winds are strong enough that the sand can strip your skin off.”

Damn
. Disappointment left a bitter taste in her mouth.

Damon leaned closer. “We’ll get a good night’s rest and tomorrow you can have your adventure.”

“I’ll organize supplies and we’ll head off at first light,” the treasure hunter yelled back at them.

“This will be over by then?” she asked.

“Yeah. They’re violent, but they rarely last too long.” He waved a hand. “Come on, the Lost Oasis is right up ahead.”

A reptilian man was trying to calm a horse-like creature with a red-and-brown-striped hide. As the beast stamped the ground, the man called out to Dathan in a language Lexa didn’t recognize. She had a new-model lingual implant embedded under the skin of her neck, and she knew they were adding languages every day. But whatever the treasure hunter and the man were speaking, it wasn’t in the lingual database yet.

“Sounds like we’re only going to catch the edge of this,” Dathan said.

Lexa eyed the billowing sand clouds, the wind whipping the ends of her hair into her face. If this was the edge, she’d really hate to be caught in the middle of it.

“Here’s the inn.” The young man shouldered open a door into an unassuming beige-colored, two-story building.

They stepped inside and as soon as the door shut behind them, the howl of the wind cut off. Lexa shook her head and sand flew out of her hair. Damon ran a hand through his.

“This way.” Dathan led them down some steps.

A woman sat at a battered old table. Her weathered face was wreathed in wrinkles and her metal-gray hair was piled on top of her head in a shaggy mess. Lexa tried hard not to stare. In the central systems, one or two simple med treatments a year kept people looking young. Wrinkles forming? No worries, zap them away. Hair turning gray? Easy, just pick from the hundreds of permanent shades added in just a few seconds. Lexa’s mother would die before stepping foot outside with a blemish or a strand of gray. Cassandra Carter didn’t look much older than Lexa’s thirty years.

“Phoenix, what’re you doing here?” The innkeeper scowled. “Told you and those riff-raff brothers of yours to stay out of my place. Last time you were here, you smashed up my bar with your fighting.”

“Aww, Stellar, I think you’ve missed me.” Dathan shot a wide smile at the woman. “And you know my brothers are off-planet. Niklas is at university and Zayn’s at the Strike Wing Academy. That fight was a long time ago and I paid for the damages.”

Stellar made a harrumphing sound and muttered under her breath. Lexa thought the woman might have said something about young, too-handsome riff raff.

“My friends here need a room for the night and I told them your place was the best in all of Kharga.”

Lexa’s eyes widened. “Two rooms.”

The treasure hunter’s gaze swung between her and Damon. “You sure?”

“I’m
very
sure.”

Dathan winked at her. “Two rooms, Stellar.”

Not long later, Dathan left with a two-fingered salute, saying he needed to get to work on the supplies. Stellar complained all the way up the stairs as she showed Damon and Lexa to their rooms.

“My hips ache. Damn dry weather on this godforsaken planet.” She led them down the narrow hall and pushed opened the first door.

The room was…sparse and simple. Compared to what Lexa had grown up with, this was pretty far down the luxury scale. She barely resisted rubbing her hands together. This was
exactly
what she’d imagined in a room in an inn on Zerzura. A simple bed was pushed against the rough, whitewashed wall. A rickety-looking table with one chair and a low shelf were the only other bits of furniture in the room.

“Each room has its own bathroom,” Stellar said, puffing out her chest. “Only inn in the town that offers that.”

“Thank you.” Lexa dropped her bag on the table. “It’s fine.”

Damon caught her gaze. “I suggest we grab dinner in the bar.”

Stellar’s faded blue eyes sparked. “We have a special tonight.” Lexa could practically see the woman calculating the additional e-creds in her head. “Dinner and an ale, all for a bargain price.”

Lexa nodded. “Prepare a table for us, please.”

Damon hitched his bag over his shoulder. “I’ll take a shower and meet you there.” He headed farther down the hall with Stellar and Lexa closed her door.

She decided a shower sounded wonderful. She opened the door to the bathroom and rolled her eyes. Stellar had been exaggerating slightly. The room had been fitted with an all-in-one lavatory unit that was often retrofitted onto deep-space starfreighters. The round cylinder had been set into the corner of the room, its shiny, silver walls a stark contrast to the rough plaster.

Inside was a shower unit that, with a press of a button, disappeared into the wall, letting a toilet slide out.

Lexa took a quick shower…which was by necessity. It seemed Stellar was stingy with the hot water. It ran warm for two minutes before turning decidedly cool.

As she switched to the dryer, and warm air blasted from the side of the unit, her thoughts turned to Damon.

The completely irrational question of what he looked like naked in the shower sprung into her head.

Ridiculous
. She fluffed her hair out and squelched the thought. She didn’t even like the man, so she had no business imagining him naked.
Don’t need to like him to know the man is really, really good to look at.

She paused. Okay, she could admit that much. He had the whole tall, dark and handsome thing going on. She sniffed. She’d always found blonds more attractive, personally. But the image of his long, lean body leapt into her head. Water cascading over taut bronze skin and tight muscles.

Lexa sucked in a deep breath and realized her nipples had hardened to stiff points.

Stars!
She shut off the air dryer, her skin suddenly feeling far too hot. Damon Malik was a thorn in her side. He constantly second-guessed her, and poked and prodded at her at every opportunity.

She stepped out into the coolness of her room and yanked on clean clothes. She focused on the egg and the treasure hunt. That’s what she was here for…not to fantasize about a man who’d driven her crazy ever since he’d started at the museum. He was forever trying to alter her exhibits and add more technology to the displays—all in the name of security.

Besides, he’d called her a trouble magnet. She definitely did not like him.

With a nod, she headed out into the hall and slammed the door behind her.

***

Damon wasn’t quite sure how he found himself sharing a candlelit dinner with Lexa Carter in a dark corner of an inn on Zerzura. A tiny bunch of desert wildflowers sat in the center of the table, and the flickering of the simulated candle cast a pretty glow on Lexa’s face.

He was certain the grumpy old innkeeper wasn’t trying to play matchmaker, so he guessed the almost romantic atmosphere was a coincidence.

The bar was mostly empty. He’d moved his chair so his back was to the wall and he could keep an eye on the bar’s patrons over Lexa’s shoulder. A battered syndroid served drinks at the bar. Part of his face covering was missing, revealing a mass of blinking lights. The other half of his face was surprisingly realistic. Good tech was slowly finding its way out of the central systems toward the galaxy’s edge, and even here in the Exodus quadrant, you could apparently get decent syndroids. Inexpensive models tended to look reasonably human, but their facial expressions never changed. The good ones…well, the good ones made it tough to tell what was human and what was machine.

A gray-haired man who appeared lost in his sorrows sat hunched over a lone glass of ale at the bar. Across the room, two young men were laughing uproariously at their table. Adventurers, by the look of them. No doubt on the planet to make a name for themselves.

Damon took a sip of his ale. It was cheap and watered down. He’d never been an adventurer. He’d been too busy surviving. He would have done anything to escape his homeworld, and when given the chance, he’d taken it.

He never counted on the cost of that choice, though.

“This stew is surprisingly good.”

Lexa’s smooth voice sucked him out of his dark memories.

He watched her take another spoonful of the rich, dark stew. “You probably don’t want to know what’s in it.”

Her spoon hesitated, hovering above the bowl. Then with a determined move, she brought it to her mouth and swallowed.

Damon smiled. Damn, she had guts. She might eat the cheap stew with manners that no one could mistake for anything other than central systems finishing school, but she wasn’t afraid to jump in.

“Don’t tell me,” she grumbled, wiping her mouth with the threadbare napkin. “I don’t want you to ruin it. I’m hungry.”

He lifted his drink to her.

“I hate that we’re just stuck here.” She sighed, shifting in her seat. “I was really hoping we could have gotten underway today.”

“Don’t be so impatient, Princess. You’ll have your chance to get hot and dusty tomorrow.”

She rolled her eyes. “Do we need to have another talk about that stupid nickname?”

“How about you tell me more about this egg?”

Her eyes lit up and made an already attractive face damn near irresistible. “I know you’re just distracting me, but since it’s a topic I love, I’ll let you.” She leaned forward. “The egg was made by a Terran jeweler, Fabergé. His eggs were famous and highly valuable, most resting in Earth’s museums. The myth says that this egg, known here as the Goddess Egg, was for an emperor to give to his empress. It was made of gold and encrusted with rubies.”

“Terran rubies? Valuable.”

“Priceless,” she said. “The colonists brought it here and over the centuries, a religion grew up around it. A religion that worshipped the goddess of life, birth and fertility, and was led by a group of priestesses. They cherished the jeweled egg and built a fantastic temple to keep it in.”

As she spoke, she glowed, with a look in her eyes that was impossible to glance away from. She loved what she was talking about and Damon felt invigorated by her enthusiasm. When was the last time he’d been truly passionate about anything?

He leaned back in his chair. “Apart from what it’s worth, why is finding this egg so important?”

“History is important, Damon. We learn so much from the past, and one day in the future, people will read about us coming here and finding this lost Terran artifact.”

“So it’s not about money?”

She snorted. “Believe me, my salary is good, but it isn’t worth risking my life on a planet like this. And even if Marius sold the egg, I wouldn’t get anything.” She waved a dismissive hand in the air. “It’s not about money. It’s…about being a part of something special.”

That, he could understand. He’d joined the Galactic Security Services with the misguided belief he’d be a part of something special, something better than what he’d known. Instead, the GSS had trained him to kill and sent him to wade through the muck and darkest shadows of the galaxy until he was so worn down, so damn weary, he’d had to leave just to give himself a chance at surviving.