He leaned closer to study the drawing. “Your people have something like this?”

Uneasiness flickered through Noelle. She debated whether to admit that or not—fearing it might endanger the colony if she admitted it—and finally decided on a different truth. “When I was young my grandmother had one. It’s something my people have used over many, many generations—because it’s fairly simple and it works. The critical part is having glass or something like glass that will allow the sunlight to penetrate to the plants but keep the temperature inside constant. It’s like … making spring all year.”

Prince Terl settled his elbows on the workbench, studying her drawing, clearly thinking about what she’d said. “I don’t think our workers would be skilled enough to build something like this.”

“Well—it isn’t that hard. I guess if I’m still here in the spring I could show them how to do it.”

The Prince turned to look at her. “Why wouldn’t you be? It’s not ….”

The movement brought him a lot closer than either of them had anticipated since they were both hunched over the drawing.

“I see the two of you have … become friendly.”

It was really unfortunate that Prince Drak took that moment to arrive because they both jumped guiltily when they heard him and it just made the completely innocent situation seem that much more damning.

Drak’s expression was hard and his eyes glittering with suppressed anger when Noelle leapt from the stool and turned to look at him.

He dismissed Terl coolly and caught her upper arm, marching her from the room like a child he’d caught that was up to mischief.

Chapter Eleven

Drak was stewing as he escorted Noelle back along the corridor to the stairs. He wasn’t certain who he was most pissed off with—his son or Noelle.

He supposed both.

But he was having some difficulty swallowing that his son had tried to filch his woman when Terl hadn’t shown that he was particularly aggressive and had never defied him before.

It was almost as impossible to imagine Noelle seducing his son. She’d yielded to him every time he had initiated intimacy, but she certainly hadn’t sought him out and he rather thought she would have if she was that type of woman.

She couldn’t possibly prefer a male that was barely old enough to be considered a man!

So if what he thought he’d seen wasn’t what he’d thought, what was it?

“It wasn’t what you thought,” Noelle said, almost as if she read his thoughts.

“How would you know what I think? Do you read minds?”

Noelle considered just allowing the subject to drop, but she couldn’t see doing that when it seemed to her that the incident might have caused friction between father and son. “We were studying the drawing I did and I said something and we just happened to glance at each other at the same time. I didn’t realize he was so close and obviously he didn’t either.”

“What did you say that made him glance at you?”

“I don’t remember,” Noelle lied. She glanced up at Drak to see how he took it and realized he didn’t believe her—not that part anyway. “Ok, so I said if I was still here in the spring ….”

“Why wouldn’t you be?” Drak said quickly.

“That’s what he said, but exactly how am I supposed to know how long I’ll be here when nobody told me?”

Drak stopped and looked down at her with a mixture of annoyance, amusement, and curiosity … as if he was trying to figure out how she could be so dense! After studying her for a long moment, he shook his head and resumed walking, tugging her along with him as he had before.

Noelle gaped at him as it slowly sank in that she had no idea whether or not they ever intended to return her to her people again. She didn’t know where or when or how or why she’d gotten the idea that they would eventually take her home and let her go, but it dawned on her then that she’d made a baseless assumption … because they had all assumed that the women of this species lived alone on their new colony world. And when she’d discovered there were men of the same species on the sister planet, she’d decided they must have a reason for living on separate planets and that the men must only hold the women in captivity briefly and then return them.

Otherwise wouldn’t there be women on this planet?

Faulty reasoning or not, it was that assumption that had made it possible for her to remain calm and assume a positive attitude about her situation. Not that she would’ve tried to fight anyway. That only provoked men’s aggressive tendencies and in a contest of strength between a man and a woman the woman always lost. The only option to that sort of thing in her situation was to comply and hope yielding would prevent the male from deciding to break her instead. Unfortunately, that didn’t always work, but a woman stood a better chance at soothing the savage beast than overwhelming him with superior strength.

And there was no sense in lying to herself about it. He hadn’t had to rape her.

She’d realized as soon as she’d calmed down from her original fright that he was a damned fine looking specimen and he had lulled her fears of assault both by distancing himself and by not forcing himself on her. By the time he’d gotten around to having sex with her she’d been willing. It hadn’t been an act of self-preservation. She’d been pretty damned wound up and ready to test the waters.

Her interest in him had developed into something unexpected, probably something it shouldn’t have.

Unless one considered the possibility of psychological effects from being captured.

Truthfully, as far as they’d been able to ascertain, the reaction women had of developing affection for their captors was as primitive as the male propensity toward aggression when it came to sex. Self-control was a civilized veneer that was so thin it didn’t take much to over set the balance and step over the line onto the wild side.

So she knew she couldn’t actually trust her feelings toward Drak. She did find him physically attractive and she’d seen a good bit to admire about him beyond that in the way he behaved toward others and the respect his men clearly felt for him.

But she was still a captive and her primitive instincts for survival were in play.

Maybe she truly felt an emotional bond developing and maybe it was all in her head.

In any case, all she could really do was to play and along and make the best of the situation while she waited for it to be resolved.

She couldn’t leave. She knew she wouldn’t survive five minutes on this hostile world on her own and she didn’t know that she could find the ship that had brought her or pilot it if she did. The colonists might or might not try to mount a rescue mission once they found out where she was.

Otherwise, all she could do was wait to be released and, right or wrong, she’d convinced herself that was not just a possibility but a likelihood.

She’d figured, while she waited, she might as well make the most of her situation and further her understanding of these ‘neighbors’ both from a scientific standpoint and from a political one. They needed to understand the customs and thought processes of these people in order to promote peace between them and enable the colony to thrive.

She supposed that misconception had been bolstered by Terl’s somewhat insulting statement that Drak was trying to find some use for her since he had no interest in breeding her—that and Kadin’s earlier comment that had been very insulting.

Well, Drak himself had said he was trying to think of a use for her.

So, evidently the use he’d decided to try was to see if she was technologically savvy enough to figure out how his ‘treasures’ worked and fix any that could be fixed.

She tried not to feel insulted that he considered her brain more desirable, apparently, than he did her as a woman.