Chapter Four

Datron spent the better part of the next day trying to drive his pest’s image from his mind.

Cracking a stone melon with her thighs indeed!

He shook his head at the ridiculous imagery, picked up his electronic clipboard, and prepared to make an entry concerning the Valiant’s fuel consumption. As he worked, footsteps sounded behind him. He turned to see his engineer standing at attention. The tall Oceanun had a worried look plastered on his face.

Like all of the planet’s citizens, the Valiant’s engine control officer was extremely tall, green in color, with a blue star on his left cheek. Equally noticeable in his race was the tendency to wear his black hair long, tied at the nape of his neck. The Oceanun’s penchant for such a hairstyle allowed him, as a Valkyrian, to get away with wearing his own blond locks well past shoulder length.

“At ease, man. Is there a problem?” Datron asked.

“Yes sir,” the engineer replied. “There’s a malfunction with one or more of the control gauges, Captain. They’re running hot. I know this should not be the case since I reviewed the fuel mix myself. I’ve checked it three times, yet, the gauges still say the engine will overheat if we hit hyper drive.”

Datron checked the time on his console. “Your shift is almost over. Tell the nightshift chief to run a diagnostic. If there’s an emergency, he can notify me via communicator. I’ll be attending the Miss Milky Way coronation and might not be able to transmit back right away, unless it’s urgent. After that…” he let his voice trail away.

After that he’d damned well come back to the ship. There’d be no ridiculous meeting with a clandestine charmer who wouldn’t even give up her name. “After that I’ll be back on board, in my quarters,” Datron finished.

“Aye, sir. I’ll inform the engine room crew.”

****

Six hours later, Datron sat behind the long judges’ desk situated in the front row of the Lunar Convention Center. The audience milled around. Thousands were in attendance to see the conclusion of the first Miss Milky Way pageant ever to be held on Oceanus.

Since Oceanus was located at the outmost ring of a highly populated system, any and every bureaucrat seeking a connection to the popular pageant was in attendance. There were many heads of state in the crowds.

It occurred to him, not for the first time, that if someone wanted to take out a lot of important people, now would be a good time to do it. But Oceanus’ law enforcement agencies were second-to-none in the known galaxy. Every precaution had been taken.

Besides, security for dignitaries wasn’t his job. At least not tonight.

When the lights went down, the music came up, and introductions were made. He took his turn standing and facing the audience as the first runner-up in the Mr. Interstellar Feller pageant two years earlier. Women and a few men in the throngs cheered wildly. He simply took their tribute in stride, though it galled.

For the next two hours, he watched each contestant stroll back across stage, recite a few words concerning their home worlds, then stand and wait for the final scoring to be announced. During breaks in their introductions, a few contestants presented their talents for the entertainment of the audience once more. He and the other judges witnessed the noteworthy repeat performances as did the distinguished guests.

He viewed a Monarchian girl execute a lovely ballet with her brilliantly colored wings outspread. A Thesponian recited a soliloquy from an original play, and then a fiery-skinned Draconian beauty with day-glow, yellow hair wowed everyone with her ability to control a dragon of enormous size.

During every portion of the program, Datron scrupulously watched for the diminutive figure who might be his jokester. But she simply wasn’t there. Amid all the greens, blues, fuchsias, and grays of so many contestants, she should have been visible. She had only two eyes, not six. And they weren’t mounted on stalks or situated in the back of her head. Her skin was peachy fair and should have stood out in the bright stage lights, but his elusive Miss Anonymous just wasn’t present. This circumstance led to his becoming even more irritated, both with her time-wasting chicanery and his fawning fixation.

A break in the festivities was announced for commercial reasons. After the sponsors took their time selling products in conjunction with the pageant, the winner would finally be announced. The proceedings would soon be over, and he could go back to his ship and his life.

By that time, he’d surely succeed in driving last night’s encounter from his brain. He was well and truly over his fascination with learning her identity.

He focused his full attention on his score sheets and with finalizing every last pageant obligation. That was when he felt a light, gentle tap on his left shoulder.

Datron slowly turned to see the subject of his thoughts sitting down next to him, in a seat that had been just been vacated by a judge from Delphinius. This time, his little jokester sported long silver hair pulled up into a high ponytail. Her svelte, if miniature, form was outlined by a sparkling gown of midnight blue, and the sweetheart top perfectly outlined her pert breasts.

“Hello, wing man,” she saucily greeted. “How’s it hangin’?”

He ignored the inappropriate salutation and stared back before responding. Finally, his voice came back. “Where did you come from?”

“Oh, I’ve been around. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t going to back out of our date tonight.” She moved closer to him. “You do still want to know who I am, don’t you?”

“I hadn’t given it a second thought.”

She put one hand to her throat and pretended to look hurt. “How ungallant! And after I invited you to my room.”

He finally lost patience. “All right, you little nuisance…tell me who you are and quit screwing around. You’re obviously not a contestant and never were. So how did you get in the ballroom last night? There were supposed to be security guards at every door. If they didn’t do their jobs, I’ll have them reported to their superiors.”

“Nobody violated any rules, so keep your shirt on, big guy.” She looked down at his broad, shirtless chest and actually smirked. “Oh…that’s right. You don’t wear shirts, do you?”

His irritant boldly trailed her fingertips down the center of his chest. When she got to the top of his uniform belt, she gently looped her fingers over the top of his buckle. The warmth of her knuckles burned into his flesh like a laser torch. Then—in a show of utter audacity—she stood half-way up, put her hands on his shoulders, and kissed him soundly.

People began laughing behind him. Those in the first three rows had witnessed the little scene. Murmurs erupted in the audience. But as the kiss continued, he quit caring about what anyone thought, or who watched.

In that moment, he was sure almost every drop of his blood drained right into his penis. Then his mystery woman ended the kiss, put her lips next to his left ear, and whispered.

“You feel soooo good,” she murmured, before pointedly glancing down at his crotch.

He knew she was aware of his arousal. How could any man with blood in his veins not respond to such a greeting?

“Midnight, wing man. Don’t be late!”

She quickly retreated, using the milling crowds and the promotional break in the festivities to make her escape.

Datron took a deep breath and scooted his chair forward—under the judging table—to hide his erection. In the skin-tight uniform pants he wore, even people in the gallery would know how she’d just affected him. He quickly reached for a pitcher of cold water, poured himself several long, cool drinks, and sat through the rest of the contest in utter silence.

As with last night, his initial irritation absurdly turned to delight.

Okay, he’d been singled out for some kind of game. He could go back to his ship a coward or take up the seductive challenge and see where this escapade led. A more prudent man would ignore the strange woman’s behavior. But he wasn’t feeling particularly prudent.

In fact, maybe he needed to re-evaluate his whole attitude. Perhaps what he required was a raucous, sweet diversion in a lovely stranger’s bed. That could be the key to reviving the spirit he seemed to have lost after returning to Oceanus from Earth. And after seeing his best friend mated to a woman he’d once loved.

Rather than ignore the siren’s call as he’d previously decided, he was determined to let the winds of chance blow him where they would.

The unintentional mental pun actually made him smile.

Tonight, he’d find out who this lovely little annoyance was or have his wings torn off. He wanted to recover the carefree, adventurous nature he’d once enjoyed, if for no other reason than to wipe the look of pity off his friends’ faces.

Professional bearing told him to ignore his tauntress. On the other hand, his heart bid him to take up the adventure.

Maybe he’d be wrong about her.

Maybe she was just another publicity seeker and a shallow, vain creature seeking to bed someone she thought was a star. But if he didn’t take the chance, he’d always wonder what might have been. He’d always look back and regret.

Something deep inside told him to go for broke.

With his decision made, he put his mind back on business. All he wanted now was to bring any pageant obligations to a close and chase what might be a dream.

****

Charlie paced back and forth. Things were going too far. She hadn’t meant to kiss him.

She ran the fingertips of her left hand over her mouth in recollection of their hot contact. It was like being touched by a wonderful ray of sunlight. She couldn’t stop her body from responding in remembrance.

“I’ll tell him. I’ll just come right out and tell him my name and apologize for getting upset over an opinion he had every right to feel…even if it wasn’t the least bit chivalrous.” She kept up her meditative march, up and down the length of her suite.

“I’ll just remind him he should be a little more careful when he exhibits annoyance, and he probably hurt some of those girls’ feelings. He’ll say he’s sorry, then we’ll both shake hands…a silly incident we can part over. That’s all there is to it.”

A loud knock on the door ended her solitary diatribe. Nothing about the solid sound could be considered docile.

She quickly jogged to a nearby mirror in her small foyer, checked the garish appearance she’d implemented to impress him, then turned toward the door. She tried to bolster her confidence once more by softly saying, “He’ll see this as a silly diversion, then we’ll both laugh.”

She took one deep breath, checked the security camera inside her room to make sure a big winged man was on the other side of the door, then opened it when her peek proved conclusive.

Datron stood in the doorway waiting for her to invite him inside.

When she silently stood aside, he strolled through the entryway into a luxurious suite of marble with crystal and white furnishings.

She watched him slowly turn and tried to work up the courage to tell him the truth. The man seemed so much larger than when in a crowd. Big, bronzed, and brawny—everything any woman could possibly want. If she kept her mouth closed, she could have him in her bed, send him packing in the morning, and then leave the planet and never look back. But using him in that way would be as bad as his treating the pageant contestants as idiots. There was never any excuse for bad behavior. She’d learned that early in life from the sisters at St. Anne’s.

She opened her mouth to explain everything and offer an apology first, but his beeping arm communicator ended her good intentions.

“Please excuse the intrusion and the poor timing,” Datron blurted. “I have to take this. It’s from a member of my crew.”

“Of course,” she backed away to give him some privacy.

He turned slightly away from her, and lifted his left wrist to access his communication device. “Captain Mann here.”

“Officer Dkt’rsque here… I’m sorry to bother you while you’re off duty, sir, but we still haven’t located the overheating problem. As the engineer suggested, the fuel mix reads correct. We’ve checked the gauges and they also read accurate.”

Still within earshot, Charlie heard the badly mangled English coming over the wrist communicator and grinned. That crewman, like every other citizen these days, was being trendy without actually changing his Oceanun name to something Earth-like. Hence the moniker of Dkt’rsque. She’d learned this custom was a compromise some of the inhabitants on this world had made, though she found it unnecessary and impractical. She waited for Datron to answer back in English, probably not to offend her.

“We have a long-range patrol scheduled right after the next squadron lands,” Datron advised. “If the Valiant can’t lift off, another ship will have to take our place. I refuse to shorten another crew’s shore leave because of our problem. Find what’s wrong and get it fixed! I don’t care what you have to do…stay on it. Order another set of gauges if needed. I’ll be there early in the morning, and we’ll break down the tests you’ve run.”

“Aye, sir. We’ll contact you if we locate the anomaly. Dkt’rsque out.”

“Captain out,” Datron ended the conversation professionally.

Because of his conversation with his subordinate, Charlie saw a way to prove a point concerning women’s aptitude and segue to her real identity. As soon as Datron turned back to her, she quickly blurted out her first thoughts.

“Someone needs to go into the mix chamber in a containment suit and get an internal reading. Even though the Hellion, Carbidium, and Irundium have been precisely mixed and calibrated while going through their individual tubes, they can alter their chemical compositions slightly once they come into contact with one another. That kind of variation can take place if any or all of the elements were contaminated in shipment, or if they sat outside their standard temperature range during consignment. The distribution tubes in a Type One law enforcement fighter are meant to release the right amount of each gas, yielding an optimal ratio for your infusion engine. Your control panel could read perfect, so could your tube calibrators. But your engines will still overheat because there isn’t a proper reading from inside the chamber. If that’s what’s happening, your engines will eventually appear to be running like clockwork, but that’s a very dangerous inaccuracy. The gases will disperse and read as if they’re mixing safely. If you have to shift into hyper drive, however, the gas mix will destabilize back to its original, unstable shipping state. You’ll overheat and blow your engine’s containment unit. If that happens…well…I wouldn’t want to be on board. Your ship will look like a small sun going nova.”

Datron’s jaw sagged. The stare he presented was one of utter shock and stupefying confusion.

Charlie blithely shrugged. “Eventually, your engineer will have to call in a master mechanic with an extensive background in that kind of testing. That person will find the problem. Of course, they’ll have to vent the chamber, toss out the old fuel, clean the tubes, and bring in and test new fuel. Then they’ll have to recalibrate the mix with several sets of gauges hooked up to get a true reading. And all that will have to be done slowly so as not to destabilize any of the gas fumes that might still linger in the entire system.” She girlishly tilted her head and smiled sweetly after she finished. Then she walked toward the bar. “Drink?” she merrily finished.

He dumbly nodded.

“Shall I make it a double?”

He held up three fingers.

“Okee dokey…triple it is,” she acknowledged and poured a crystal glass full of amber liquid.

Datron downed the entire glass she offered, in one, open-mouthed gulp. “Who are you?” he rasped.

“Me? I’m just an inane pageant contestant who couldn’t pour piss out of a boot with the directions written on the heel. What’s worse, I’m a contest winner who couldn’t find her ass in the dark with both hands and a flashlight,” she softly told him. “I’m the kind of unintelligent female who gives you massive headaches while trying to keep up with her blather.”

As the astounded look on his face slowly disappeared and an infuriated one took its place, she stood her ground.

She held out her hands in a supplicating gesture. “Look. I came on to you because I saw the way you were behaving around the contestants and thought you were…well…a bit arrogant. I just wanted to show you the women in these pageants aren’t clueless. And those that seem to be…they have feelings and different motivations for having entered the Miss Milky Way contest. Hell, you entered the Mr. Interstellar Feller pageant. You’re obviously not a flaming idiot, so, I don’t know why you’d act so pompous with the women you judged!”

He glanced away, then turned to her again. The look on his face became almost penitent.

“You’re right. I was an ass,” He apologized. “The women I interviewed did nothing to deserve my scorn. Any abrupt behavior I displayed was rude and unprofessional. I was sent, in Keir Trask’s stead, to judge them fairly. I let him and myself down. I seemed to have failed in my responsibilities to the extent that you…whoever you are…noticed. Those entrants I judged must have noted my attitude as well and I’d offer them each a profound apology if I could. But the pageant is over and most of them will be on their way back to their respective planets. So…what can I do to make amends now? You name it and I’ll agree to your terms.”

Taken aback by his sudden apology, so eloquently and sincerely delivered, she stood there and gawked for a moment. When she finally found her voice, the words she uttered seemed to lend credence to his original opinion about low IQ quotients being assigned to Miss Milky Way entrants. “I-I know it’s very late, but I haven’t eaten anything for hours. Will you have dinner with me?”

He raised a brow even as one corner of his mouth lifted. “When and where,” he readily responded. “I find I’m famished.”

“W-We can order room service,” she softly offered.

“That’ll be splendid. But if you don’t mind, I’d really like to know the name of my dinner companion. I’ve asked several times.” He strolled toward her slowly. “Once more…who are you?”

She swallowed hard when he finally stood inches from her in all his towering, angelic-like, shirtless and bronzed god-like glory. She was sure he could have found some kind of vest to fit over and around his wings but he hadn’t done so. Now, his massive, bare chest made her present circumstance even more exciting.

“M-my name is Charlotte Grayson, but everybody calls me Charlie. I’m from Earth. I won the Miss Milky Way pageant only a few days after you and Keir Trask arrived on my home world to compete in the Mr. Interstellar Feller pageant. In fact, after Keir won, there was a celebratory ball held about a week later,” she slowly explained. “I was there and you danced with me. Keir, Clitus and Gilla danced with me as well…though it’s obvious you don’t remember.”

Datron looked her over more closely. “If I don’t recall you, I apologize. There were a lot of things on my mind during that pageant. Even after it was over.” Then he tilted his head as he stared down at her. “How is it I didn’t see you on the judging panel last night? You must have been part of the panel.”

“You didn’t seem interested in the judges…me among them…as they were introduced. During a break, I got up and left the auditorium then came back in a side door. Because of my ruse, you assumed I was a contestant who hadn’t made the finals. The last place you’d look for me was sitting twenty feet away.”

“Quite true,” he said with a slow nod. “But now I think this might be the time for a fresh start… Charlie. If I was foolish enough to have overlooked your vivacity back on Earth, I’m certainly not going to make that same mistake now.”

He held out his hand for her to shake. A greeting universally accepted on almost any world.

When she smilingly put her hand into his much larger grasp, he lifted it to his lips and pressed a very slow, lingering kiss on the top of her palm. Her mouth went dry and some inner desire she’d never experienced suddenly sprang to life.

No one had ever kissed her hand, even as a beauty pageant winner. All his sudden chivalry aside, some instinct still told her she should have kept her anonymity and never let this colossal, be-winged muscle man so near. There was no room in her life for romantic notions. Certainly there wasn’t time for them. She only had eighteen months left.

Because of the sultry way Datron Mann gazed down at her, it’d be all too easy to encourage a relationship where one or both of them would get hurt. But just for once, she wanted to do something wild and uninhibited.

“I-I’ll go make the call for room service,” she whispered.

“Take your time, Charlie. Choose whatever food you like.” He lifted one hand to touch her cheek. “I’m not in any hurry.”

Charlie backed away from him and turned to find the nearest wall computer. She took a great deal of time ordering their meal, as well as selecting an appropriate wine. As she did so, she sensed the big man standing behind her—too close. His breath warmed the back of her neck. And when she was through ordering, his fingers suddenly traced a pattern down her spine; her bare back due to the design of her ball gown.

She fought the instinct to tell him to go. It would be better if he did. But instinct had nothing to do with the warmth of Datron’s caress and how it made her feel.

Everything she’d ever wanted and couldn’t have flourished in that touch. She closed her eyes and mentally repeated two words.

“Just breathe.”