Page 42 of Stealing Mercury (Arena Dogs #1)

Chapter Twenty-Five

Samantha jolted awake as Lo launched out of her arms and Mercury pushed her behind him. Lo took the man at the door to the ground. Carn had joined them to sleep sometime in the night. He leaped over Lo to dart into the main room.

Samantha peeked around Mercury to see Lo snarling and snapping at a man in the drab gray of independent spacers and wearing freighter boots with silver toned straps—Knock.

“Wait!” Samantha tugged at Mercury’s shoulder. He snarled in response. She wrapped one of the blankets around her body and struggled to get to her feet. She tripped over a pair of trousers that had been thrown off last night. One of the guys’, not hers, unfortunately. Mercury caught her.

The volume of Lo’s snarling dimmed. Knock had finally smartened up, freezing stiff.

Samantha resisted Mercury’s efforts to again push her behind him. “I know him,” she explained. “He’s not a threat.”

Mercury released her and made a barking sound she hadn’t heard him make before. Lo responded, easing back then off his chosen prey.

“Uh, can I move now?” Knock, with his familiar spiked white hair and narrow features, spoke without moving an extra muscle.

“Sammie!” She recognized the desperate shriek as a stressed version of Mikal’s voice. He’d apparently waited in the next room.

“Oh dear.” Moira’s voice trailed in. She appeared in the doorway her eyes wide. “I’ll, ah, put out some food, but you should tell Carn to let Mikal go. I’ve never seen him so pale.”

Mercury let out another bark and an answering bay came from the other room. Her mother disappeared as quickly as she’d appeared.

Knock sat up but stayed on the floor. “I can see now why I wasn’t man enough for you, Sammie. Three men? I’m sure one of the guys would’ve been willing for a threesome but I can’t say I’d be willing to go farther than that.”

Lo launched himself at him again.

“Knock, you idiot.” Samantha scrambled over the pile of bedding to put a fist in Lo’s hair. She pulled his head back. Red fire danced in his eyes. “He’s not a threat and you’re not going to kill him for being an ass.”

Lo growled a wordless response that communicated frustration.

She grinned at him. “You know...” She spoke softly, not wanting Mikal or her mother to overhear. “Your eyes looked just like that the first time you were inside me.” Lo’s snarl died away and his features softened. She let go of his hair and stroked his head. “Let him up, please.”

Lo eased back and was on his feet in another blur of motion. He put an arm around her and pulled her to his side. Samantha glanced back at Mercury. His look was approving. He was still alert and wary of Knock as the man held his hands up and muttered an apology.

“Joking,” he said. “Just joking.”

“Mercury, Lo, meet Knock, a member of my father’s crew.

The man in the other room is Mikal, the tool slinger on the Bucket .

” She started to introduce Mercury and her throat tightened.

She knew what he wanted her to say, but she couldn’t.

She swallowed hard and took a steadying breath.

“Knock, this is Mercury and his pack brothers Lo and, in the other room, Carn.”

Mercury pressed along her back, a quiver of emotion rippling through his body.

Knock held his hands out in a show of surrender. “Sure, sure, whatever, but can you tell them to put something on, or at least cover up those monster dicks?” He made a shivering motion. “All that meat swinging around gives a man the willies.”

Samantha chuckled. “Jealous?”

“Hell yes. After this, I may develop a complex or something.”

Samantha remembered that Carn had actually been wearing something as he’d flashed by on his way out of the room. That was some consolation, since her mother was out there with him.

She sent Knock out to wait with Mikal and Carn, then pulled on her own indie-gray pants and paired them with a soft yellow top that clung to her curves.

She fingered the soft material. One of the perks of coming home was a vast improvement in her wardrobe.

She tugged on her freighter boots and smoothed the trim that matched Knock’s.

Her father had bought his whole crew new boots as a celebration a week before his death.

Knock and Mikal’s visit meant the Bucket was at the port.

She couldn’t help but wonder if Shred still wore the same boots.

Samantha helped Mercury and Lo with the unfamiliar clothes her Mother had secured for them.

They looked almost normal in the full length trousers and loose shirts.

Mercury pulled his hair back with a small tie.

The effect was startling. He looked more civilized and less human.

Without the fall of hair around his face all the angles of his face appeared sharper and more pronounced.

Civilized or savage, he became more a part of her every day. What would be left when he ripped those parts away?

***

“Why are you here?” Samantha put her hands on her hips and stared Knock down. He sat at her mother’s table, stuffing a biscuit into his mouth. He had to work it down and chase it with fruit-water before he could answer.

“Moira, I never understood how you always seem to have the best foodstuffs from Sedona.” Knock wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

His comment struck her as funny, considering it was her father’s connections that ensured her mother’s regular shipments from Haverlee’s sister city—an Eden nestled on the planet’s most verdant continent.

He shifted his focus to Samantha and stopped eating.

“Sammie, I came to say I was wrong. Wrong to let Shred leave you behind. Wrong not to tell you so sooner.” He smoothed his hands along the table until he realized what he was doing, then he stopped and held still. “Aren’t you going to say something?”

She straightened. “Sure. I’m going to say, if that’s all, you’re done and you can go.”

“You’re skeptical.” He put a hand to his heart. “I’m hurt.”

“You’re a soft spined letch with a hard head and no common sense, Knock. I doubt I could hurt you if I dropped a skipdrive on your head.”

“Now that’s mean, Sammie. I’d have thought you’d be in a better mood after...” He waved a hand at Mercury and Lo who flanked her.

“I want a serious answer, Knock.”

He leaned so far forward he almost landed in his plate. “I mean it, Samantha. I tried to talk Shred out of it before and I tried to talk him into going back after. I left the ship at the next port.”

“I didn’t,” said Mikal. He looked much the same as she remembered, tall and rangy with a face that had seen too many bar brawls.

The streaks of gray had nearly taken over his once auburn hair—that was new.

“Sorry Sammie, but work is work. But you should believe him.” He nodded to Knock.

“The idiot even spent his own credits to go after you. Leastways, he said he was going to. He did leave the ship for a few months. That much I know.”

Samantha sat in one of the chairs and reached for the sugared grain and nut mix her mother had set out. “Is that true, Knock?”

He frowned, drawing his brows together and puffing out his slender cheeks. “For all the good it did me. You’d already gotten off planet by the time I got there. We were friends, Sammie. Real friends. You know I never had anybody give a damn about me before your dad and you.”

Mikal cleared his throat but left a ring of sugar around his mouth. “Chief told us you might be looking for a ride off this ball of sand.”

“He had no business telling you anything.” She poured cream over the grain and nut mix and passed it to Mercury who’d taken a seat between her and Mikal.

“Look at you—” Mikal snickered. “Feeding your man. I didn’t know you had any of your mom’s domestic, man-pleaser genes.”

Samantha froze. His words had a chilling effect on the entire room.

She met Moira’s gaze where she hovered next to a storage chest. “Be careful how you talk about my mother. I’d be damn proud to be half as strong and wise as Moira.

” She wouldn’t admit aloud that she saw her mother’s relationship with her father as weak.

It had been her only weakness. And Samantha wouldn’t explain that she peeled the fruit or poured cream over the grain because the food at her mother’s table was unfamiliar to Mercury and his pack brothers.

“We were talking about helping Sammie.” Knock piped up. “In case anyone wanted to get back on topic.”

“Right,” said Mikal. “So, we heard you scuttled one of Roma’s ships and stole a Raptor class transport.”

“Chief didn’t tell you that.”

“No,” said Knock. “That’s in all the latest Alliance bulletins.”

This news rang in her ears like the reverberation of a hangar door slamming shut.

Mikal swallowed a mouthful of the grain and nut mixture. “We were worried about you, Sammie.”

“Right.” She laughed, a mirthless sound that came more from grief than humor. Mikal had been the first one of her father’s crew to acknowledge her. He’d taught her tool slinging and made it possible for her to join her father’s ship. “Like you were worried about me on Sydney-3?”

“I was worried. But I’m not a young man and I knew when your old man died my retirement plan died with him. I needed the job.”

“Right. Gods forbid anyone get in the way of your retirement.” Samantha pushed away the year old hurt.

The touch of Mercury’s hand steadied her.

“Okay. Let’s pretend for one minute you really came because you were worried about me, or what was the first excuse, oh yeah, to ask for my forgiveness.

Well, you can see I’m fine and forgiveness isn’t in the cards for today, so feel free to leave any time. ”

Knock fingered the edge of his plate then pushed back from the table. “Okay, Sammie. You have good reason to be furious with us all.” He got to his feet and swatted Mikal on his way past. “Come on.”

Samantha stood to watch him walk out, but he stopped at the opening to Moira’s tent. “One more thing. You should check your father’s lock box. Whatever’s in there has Shred worried. And keep it in the back of your head that, if there is ever anything you need, anything, I won’t let you down again.”

Mikal surprised her when he faced her with genuine emotion on his face.

“And don’t forget, the indies are here for you, too.

We were all sad when you joined up on one of them fancy corporate haulers.

I mean, don’t expect anything from Shred, but just about anyone else would spin a moon for you.

We all loved your old man and you’re the chip off the block. ”

Samantha closed her eyes as they left. Her mother’s scent filled the tent and her gown swished softly as she moved.

Blinking rapidly, Samantha opened her eyes to take in the subtle hues of color decorating her mother’s skin.

How many times had she wished to be more like her serene mother?

Instead, she became more and more like her father.

Even Mikal could see it. Ironically, she was no longer sure exactly who her father had been.