Salvage Rights (Distant Worlds Book 2) by Kelly Lucille

you
describe.”
    “Most beautiful women
want more.”  He shrugged those massive shoulders.  “I do not know about your
mechanic, but Kira is the exception to most rules.”
    That made Danika
smile.  “I suppose you are correct in that.  Besides the Furgarians, she is the
most unpolluted soul I have encountered since my awakening.”
    Both men stilled almost
imperceptibly.  She could feel them honing in on her as if sharpening the focus
her way.  Lucan raised a brow, but it was Tuft who spoke.  “You can read the
Furgarians?”
    She studied both men,
wishing quite suddenly that she could touch them and see what had them balanced
on such a razor’s edge.  “I can, though not like other people.  They are warm
and easy to be with.”
    “Is that why you were
on the beach?”
    “I felt confined and
cold in the blue room when it was stuffed with things.  I did not care for the
. . . I guess the closest description is vibrations.  I did not care for the
vibrations that had been left here.”  She looked around.  “But they are gone
now.”
    Lucan looked around the
room, then back at her while Tuft seemed to dissect every word.  “What did it
feel like before?”
    Danika thought for a
moment, trying to put it into words.  “It was hard, cold, greedy, and well,
manipulative.  That is as close as I can describe it.”
    Tuft raised his brow
and looked at Lucan, something passing between them.  “What does it feel like
now?”
    Danika closed her eyes
and breathed deeply, opening herself to the room around her.  “It is open,
clean; there is a touch of Kira, sweet, and funny, shy,” her brow turned down, “lonely.” 
She shook her head then reached up and brushed the crystal pearls at her
throat.  “The warmth from the pearls . . . welcome.”  She raised her hands, her
eyes still closed, moving them before her as if she could feel the men standing
with her.  “Aggression, protection, ruthless determination,” she sighed,
dropping her hands and opening her eyes, “it feels . . . safe.”
    Tuft had his blank look
back.  “Kira is lonely?”
    “You are surprised?” 
She shook her head, unaware that the sadness reaching her eyes was an almost
physical touch when she looked at him.  “How can she not be? After everything
that was done to her, she feels unworthy of affection and fearful of being
touched.  She sees herself as broken and ugly, defined by her scars, both
inside and out.  I fear the deep cold sleep will take me again, and I would
rather die than go back, but for Kira . . . ”  She was not aware until she
closed her eyes with a shudder that the tears were falling, or that both men
could feel the bone deep agony she was looking at in her mind.  “Feeling the
monster that lives inside her memories, I would say she has never truly been
released from her prison, and her reality was so much worse that my nightmares.” 
She shuddered again, and then met Tuft’s stone cold eyes.  “She is the loneliest
soul you will ever meet.”
    Tuft studied her,
looking for something he did not find, because he finally bowed his head, and
with one final incomprehensible glance to Lucan, he was gone.  They never did
find out what he had come for in the first place.
    She was still looking
at the empty door when Lucan spoke.  “You give her secrets away easily.”
    “Do I?  Somebody needs
to, otherwise he will never find his way to her.”  At the bark of non-humor
behind her, she turned her head to look at him.  “You think he does not want
her?”
    “Kira is a beautiful
woman, but you are right, she is damaged, timid.  Tuft is a man of action.  He
would run roughshod over her, and she would flinch at every hard look. 
Together they make no sense.”
    “You do not feel what I
feel when he looks at her.”
    He raised a doubting
brow before taking her arm to lead her from the room  “Lust is natural; she is
a beautiful woman and he is not a monk.  Come, we have other things to