Page 133 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

And when he was sweet and caring afterward, cleaning me up and offering me water from his canteen, urging me to cuddle into him as we tried to get some rest…

yeah, that made it really hard to remember why I wanted this to be a fling.

Why did I want to go home again? My family was important, but was it as important as this?

I fell asleep eventually, but it took a while to get my racing thoughts to settle.

When we woke, I had to firmly center myself and focus on the here and now—on what was going on around us, our precarious situation aboard this space station.

We needed to finish our mission and get back to the Vagabond somehow, to find out if they were all right or if the mercenaries from the Varakartoom had found them.

Our nap after that round of sex meant we were now creeping out of the maintenance tunnels at midnight, station time.

You couldn’t tell from the hive of activity still going on that it was late.

The brothels never closed, nor did the gambling dens or pubs.

The crowd coming and going everywhere seemed as thick as before, and just as unsavory.

Thorin urged me to put on my helmet so my face would attract less attention.

He was all brisk and businesslike about it, withdrawing from me.

I hated that, but I said nothing. This was just a fling, even if the moment we’d just shared had made me feel closer to him than to anyone I’d ever met.

Besides, what was I going to do? Stay in the Zeta Quadrant with him?

Thorin was the bad boy I’d always tried to avoid.

Being close now wouldn’t mean he’d stay loyal.

The marines were filled with guys like him.

When he snatched a long cloak from the back of some trader’s hover cart and draped it around my shoulders, I balked.

“Hey! That’s stealing!” I whispered harshly.

I checked furtively to see if anyone saw; if they did, not a finger was raised.

Thorin just smirked, looking like he hadn’t a care in the world.

“He won’t notice. There’s a ridiculous markup on all these wares.

Scammers, all of them.” He snorted derisively.

“I bet it’s all stolen goods in the first place. ”

That didn’t make me feel any better; it made my skin crawl, wondering where this cloak had come from. “Weren’t you a police officer once?” It was hard to imagine, to reconcile how he was now with an image of him as a law enforcer. I just couldn’t picture it.

He rolled his eyes, leading me further into a warren of accommodations and away from the main thoroughfare.

“Yeah, once. When I was a fresh-faced, bright-eyed idealist ready to right all the world’s injustices.

” He didn’t elaborate further, and everything in his expression told me to drop it. So I did, for now.

I wondered, though. Something had happened to him, something that made his own people shun him.

And it wasn’t because he’d been a slave and gladiator.

I wanted to get to the bottom of it, but why poke the bear when I was leaving?

The thought shot a sharp pang through my chest that I shoved away.

I was leaving. I had family to get back to.

“This is it,” Thorin declared a short while later.

He pointed at one of the doors a little further down the narrow corridor.

It was a red one with peeling paint and several scratches, one of many such doors along this corridor.

The place was only marginally better than the area where Jim had his room.

Fewer twists and turns meant fewer hiding places, the sole contributor to the slightly cleaner-looking appearance, I suspected.

“Stay here. I’ll take care of it,” Thorin ordered, and he was off, his long-legged stride quickly bringing him to the door he’d indicated.

Bristling at being told to stay behind, I slung the cumbersome cloak over one shoulder so my arm was free.

The weight of my rifle was comfortable in my hands as I scanned the narrow alley, trotting after Thorin while making sure we weren’t being followed.

He’d gotten the panel open and disappeared inside.

It was just a single shabby room with a bed in the center and a dry shower unit in one corner.

Frightened screams filled the space, tapering off into whimpers.

I spotted two Elrohirian females, naked except for a single bedsheet they shared.

They were huddled in a corner behind the bed, and the pain-collars around their slender throats made it abundantly clear they weren’t there by choice.

Thorin was on the bed, his back to me as he pummeled his fists into the prone male he’d pinned beneath him. A ferocious growling sound rumbled through the room, the scent of piss joining that of sweat and sex.

It didn’t sound like Thorin was telling the male to pay up, or look like he planned on stopping anytime soon.

I called out his name, nudged him with my foot, and, when that didn’t work, I jabbed him in the back with the butt of my rifle.

He spun on me with a snarl, green eyes angry and intense.

My heart leaped into my throat in a primal fear response, but I didn’t back down.

Meeting that look with a challenge of my own, I said, “Cut the crap! We need him alive, not pounded to a bloody pulp.”

The transformation was quick. His eyes widened in shock, then narrowed back into a glare. His shoulders dropped, and the snarl turned into a tight-lipped grimace. Shutters slid down over that expression, blocking me out, so I had no clue what he was thinking or feeling.

He turned back to the male he was crouched over, gripped him by the front of his shirt, and pulled him into a sitting position.

Then he growled into the guy’s swollen, bruised face.

I could tell it was in a different language than I was used to hearing from him; it was more melodic and fluid.

There was almost a song-like quality to it, which was shockingly jarring when spoken with so much aggression.

My recently upgraded translator implant, courtesy of Luka, managed to keep up, providing me with a flawless translation.

“You owe the Information Broker money. Time to pay up, fucker,” he said.

Not very imaginative, but it certainly got the message across.

I watched as the male moaned and mumbled through bloodied lips, one arm flailing in the direction of the two petrified females.

I knew they were all of the same species as Thorin, not just from their coloring and build, but also from the chain and medallions they had.

Even the two slave girls had more of the small round disks than Thorin.

“You used it to buy those two? Well, that sucks for you. You sure I won’t find any credits stashed under your mattress?

” Thorin drawled. To my horror, he’d pulled a knife from beneath his jacket and had the tip of that shiny blade pressed to the male’s throat.

The guy squeaked, eyes terrified, but he didn’t say anything, and he didn’t move.

Taking the initiative, I stuck my gloved hands beneath the mattress, searching.

When that netted nothing, I checked his shelves and the small food processor.

Then I lifted the curtain that granted a semblance of privacy for the dry shower unit.

Spotting at least four bottles of some kind of cleanser, I stepped closer and picked each up, rattling them.

No way this guy had that much soap; it stunk to high heaven in here.

My second shake of the bottle netted me a satisfying rattle, and when I unscrewed it, credit chips rolled out, several of them. I didn’t know shit about Zeta Quadrant currency, so I held it all out on my palm in Thorin’s direction. “Does this cover his debt or not?” I asked.

He eyed the chips. “Any more in the rest of those?” I checked and pulled out double what I’d already found from the others. This time, Thorin nodded. “Perfect. Take all of it.”

That had the male he was pinning to the bed squeak in indignation, “That’s all I’ve got! It’s more than double what I owe that transparent freak!”

I’d just slid the chips into a panel on my suit and now froze, eyeing Thorin.

I was sure he’d just seen the money and decided to keep the extra.

I wanted to object to it, because I seriously didn’t want to be a thief.

Then I looked at the two women huddled in the corner and sighed.

Fine, this guy could suck a dick. I was taking all his money.

Thorin was warning him, “Don’t cross the Information Broker again, my man.

” He shot the two girls a look as well, and his face turned bone-chillingly cold.

“Scratch that. Don’t cross me. And by that I mean: if you ever rape another being again, you disgusting sleazeball, I’ll make sure you can never get it up, ever again.

” Then he slammed the guy down onto the edge of the bed frame, hard enough that a crack resounded through the room, and the male went out like a light.

He got up from the bed and, with a look of disgust, eyed his black leather pants.

The Elrohirian male we’d come here for was naked—partially covered by a blanket, thankfully—and he’d pissed the bed in fear.

It was obvious Thorin had caught some of that on his legs; he was stalking into the dry shower stall with the most chagrined, disgusted look I’d ever seen on him.

I stepped around the bed and approached the two women.

“Are you okay?” I asked, hoping they had translators that could understand me.

Their bright azure eyes were very similar to Thorin’s, and they too had blonde hair done up in elegant braids.

Both of them had half a dozen medallions dangling from the chain stretching from the ring in their nostril to their earlobe.

At least half of the medallions were identical, but others were different. I wondered what the significance was.

The Elrohirian male on the bed had a chain with six medallions, too, only his were all different from those of the women.

While his hair matched that of all of them—possibly an entirely uniform trait among their race—his eyes had been gray-blue.

I was dying to find out what was up with Thorin’s medallions; it had to have significance that he only had one.

The women just huddled more tightly together and didn’t say anything; they weren’t going to shine any light on things.

The least I could do was find them some clothes and try to get those collars off them.

I took off my helmet and clipped it back onto my belt, scanning the room visually and locating a shelf with some personal effects on it.

Tossing them some shirts, I watched them from the corner of my eye, making sure they didn’t try anything, just in case.

They might think they’d landed in even worse water; after all, Thorin had been pretty scary.

When Thorin popped back out of the shower area, his pants looked clean and shiny again, but his face was anything but happy.

As he approached the women, I could totally understand why they pressed themselves back tightly against the wall behind them, their eyes wide in fear.

But he spoke gently and calmly: “I know how to take off the collar safely. You’ll be free in no time. ”

He’d pulled some small tool from a pocket somewhere, something that looked suspiciously like a lock-picking set.

As he moved closer to the box on the collar of the nearest lady, she froze completely, tilting her chin up for access, but tears started rolling down her cheeks.

He worked quickly, though, popping off the cover and making precision movements inside it with his tiny tool.

As he worked, he murmured quietly, “When my brothers and I freed ourselves from the gladiator ring, I made sure I learned how to do this. Never go without this tool on me again, just in case I need to break someone out.”

The collar popped off a moment later, and he flung it viciously away from them.

When he turned to the second woman, she wasn’t half as terrified, offering her neck more calmly and staring him in the face as he worked.

I felt a pang of jealousy—which shocked me.

That woman was one of his own species; would he find her more attractive?

Would these two fawn all over him, their rescuer?

Once both of them were free, Thorin got up and backed away.

They were getting to their feet, not so much huddling now as just looking slight and small in the male clothing.

“You got anywhere to go?” he asked them brusquely, tilting his head toward the door.

He didn’t sound very kind now, mostly just ready to get the hell out of here.

The two women shared a look, and then the braver one spoke, her voice low and husky: “Like we would go anywhere with you, pariah!”

Thorin’s features went tight and cold. He turned on his heel and headed for the door without another word.

“Come on, Camila, let’s get out of here.

We’ve got what we came for.” I glared at the two women, feeling anger at the way they had just treated Thorin, right after he’d saved them.

And also sympathy, because I knew they had just gone through something extremely traumatic.

I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt, and help them more.

It didn’t feel right to just abandon them.

As I caught up to Thorin, ready to tell him so, his eyes pierced mine—still cold, still angry—but what he said was, “Give them one of those blue chips you found. That should see them home.” Then he was out the door.