Free Colliding Worlds Trilogy 01 - Collision by Berinn Rae Page A

was too busy saving this big lug.” Sienna reached down, grabbed Legian’s face and pulled him to meet her kiss. She could kiss him every day for the rest of her life, and it would still curl her toes. She pulled away with a smile and picked up the blanket.
    A cuss from under Jax’s breath interrupted them.
    Her first instinct was to ignore him. Her second was more fun. “Behave or else I’ll take the drades back.”
    “Drades?”
    “Draeken night shades. I call them drades for short.”
    “That’s the worst slang word I’ve ever heard,” the soldier replied.
    “You’re just jealous you didn’t think of it.”
    Jax replied with a grunt at the same time Legian rolled his eyes.
    “So what do you think of them? The drades, I mean?” she asked.
    “Impressive,” he replied, returning to his defensive one-word commentary.
    “They were designed by the Draeken. Those guys came from a planet with a sun like ours, so they had to wear these all the time on Sephia, where there’s no sun. Only moons.”
    “Sienna,” Legian scolded.
    “What? It’s not like it’s classified information. Well, okay, maybe it is right now. Not that it should be. Jax needs to learn this stuff. We help him. He helps us. Quid pro quo.”
    Legian lowered his head into his hands and muttered under his breath.
    “And you’re lucky I’m crazy for you, too.” Sienna moved closer to Legian and leaned over to kiss his cheek. She’d been trying to learn Sephian, which was a darn tricky language, especially for someone who couldn’t even order a drink in Spanish. At least she’d picked up the important stuff. Cuss words. Lovey dovey words. And one she used quite often at the base: “Help. Where’s Legian?” Right now, Legian was giving a fair display of the Sephian language of the cussing persuasion.
    Sienna sat down and buckled herself in, watching Legian in his colorful display. After he calmed down, the next few minutes carried on in uncomfortable silence. In fact, Sephian ships were so quiet she couldn’t even hear any engine noise. There was a slight vibration that always put her right to sleep. One thing was for sure. The Sephians were a few decades — or make that several centuries — ahead of human technology.
    No one must’ve spoken the rest of the flight because she’d fallen asleep within minutes after take-off. It wasn’t until Legian nudged her awake that she realized they had landed.
    Sienna unbuckled her belts, stood, folded the blanket, and stretched. “Yay. Hot bubble bath time.”
    She unlatched Jax’s belts and gave him a pat on the shoulder. “It’s going to be fine. Trust me.”
    With the look on his face, he didn’t.
    She helped him to his feet, but Legian blocked the door. “Not yet. Let me speak with Apolo first.”
    “Oh,” she said, suddenly frozen to the ground. “Good plan.”
    With a quick kiss to her cheek, he and Nalea stepped out to greet Apolo, God’s gift to women and infected thorn in Sienna’s side. It seemed like everything she did pissed the guy off. And tonight was going to be a doozy. She really did try to behave around him. Most of the time.
    Like usual, the Sephian leader wore the plain black Sephian uniform. No logos, decals, or emblems of any kind. There were no differences in uniforms. After being slaves for so long, it seemed like the Sephians wanted nothing to do with hierarchy. And so every uniform was identical. The only way to tell Apolo from any other Sephian soldier was the haughty air he carried. Being mated to the leader of Sephia tended to give a guy an ego boost. Being in a matriarchal society, he was male number one on Sephia. Except he wasn’t on Sephia right now. He was stuck leading a small rebel force on a small backward planet. At least that was how Apolo described it to Sienna once.
    The guy was bad-tempered and gorgeous and militant. Only one of those traits she admired, so they didn’t hit it off that well. They had an unspoken agreement that had been