Page 10 of Tempting Jupiter (Arena Dogs #2)

Chapter Eight

It was a risk, but Feeona’s instincts had her calling for Bug. The small mechanical device flew a careful path from the vent where it had been hidden. She eased back from Jupiter and held her hand open between them. Bug landed on her upturned palm.

Jupiter scrunched his wide, flat nose and his nostrils flared. She didn’t tell him how adorable it made him look.

His head tilted. “It’s a machine.” His voice was a soft rumble, pitched low.

“That’s right. It’s a remote terminal access unit. It has a metal alloy body and synthetic wings.” She brushed a finger over one of the four semi-transparent structures. “They’re incredibly strong.”

Bug trembled in her hand, then launched into the air. Its flight was silent, but Feeona saw Jupiter’s ears twitch, listening to some sound that only he could hear as the small device circled overhead, then landed again on her hand.

“I call it Bug.” She let a smile curve her lips.

“It’s very good at search and surveillance.

Not so good at retrieval, but it managed to carry back the blood-doubler and the sealer from the med-bay.

” She tilted her hand slowly sideways and Bug crawled upward with the movement, seeking the topmost position on her hand, imitating the behavior of its namesake. “It took two trips, but Bug did it.”

“You used this to get medical supplies?”

She nodded and then sent Bug back to the duct. “I control it using the neural implant.” She tapped the spot on her head. “When I’m linked, I can see what it sees.”

“And that’s how you know of Seneca. You saw him in the medical center through this bug machine.”

“That’s right,” Feeona agreed. “And he’s fine.

” She slipped her hands to his waist and urged him to step back.

He felt too good, too solid, in her arms. It had been a mistake to let him get so close again.

She wanted more of him, but it was more than lust. Giving into desire would only make the situation worse.

Slipping free, she returned to the hard metal bunk.

“You distracted me earlier.” He followed and sat beside her, crowding into her space. He pulled her legs across one of his as if he wanted her as close as possible. She didn’t resist, but she lifted her eyebrows to question his actions. Would he admit that he liked having her near?

He met her gaze directly. “It will be expected.”

His answer disappointed her. It might be true—after the little gift she’d given him, anyone watching would expect them to behave like lovers—but she doubted it was the real reason he was still touching her.

“When I felt the implant, you changed the subject.” His grip tightened on her thigh. “You didn’t intend to tell me about the machine.”

“No.” She hadn’t planned to tell him anything. Or had she? Damn. She’d given him her name right from the beginning, when she hadn’t known anything about him. What had she been thinking?

“Why tell me now?” He reached up and stroked a finger along her forehead as if he wanted to soothe away the frown lines where her eyebrows drew together.

“You needed to know I was telling the truth about your friend—”

“Brother. Pack brother.” His hand settled along her neck, his thumb tracing along her jaw.

Feeona willed her body not to react, but her pulse sped at his touch.

There was something in the way he looked at her that made this touch different from the other times he’d touched her.

She was practically in his lap, but it was the gentle brush of his thumb that did it to her.

Lowered her defenses. Something she rarely allowed.

And with him, something she’d done long before she’d realized.

She nodded. “Your pack brother.” She reached up and banded his wrist, her fingertip settling over old scars. “And slavery is so wrong. Even the word gets me steamed. Injustice infuriates me.”

“And yet you’re a thief.” He made the statement with no insult in his tone.

She grinned, eager for the turn in conversation he offered. “Remembered that, huh?”

“It just came back to me.” A playfulness she hadn’t seen before glinted in his dark eyes.

She snorted her opinion of his memory. “Convenient.”

Jupiter made a sound, half-humph and half-growl, then tried to pull her closer, his gaze dropping to her mouth.

He was going to kiss her. Or he was going to try. Feeona resisted. She needed to remember that she was going to leave him behind when the time came for getting off Fitzhew’s ship. And that time was getting very close. Damn, she wished she could help him.

She tugged his hand from her neck and pulled her legs free from where they’d been stretched across his lap. She tried to scoot away, to get some distance, but Jupiter followed her across the bunk. Her back was against the wall and he was rapidly closing the distance between them.

“So. Ah, back to Bug.” She cleared her throat and tried again. “Listen. If Fitz finds out about Bug, it would screw things up for me.”

His eyebrows lifted. “You’re imprisoned on his ship. Aren’t things already going wrong for you?”

“Looks that way, doesn’t it? But no, not really. And Fitz knows me as Mattie. I’d like to keep it that way.”

With his hands braced on the bulkhead on either side of her, his big body crowding her, she could barely move.

Jupiter had her caged far more effectively than Fitz.

Her body didn’t seem to mind. Her stupid nipples were painfully tight in response to the proximity of his hard musculature.

She was breathing too fast and her whole body was starting to ache with need.

How did he have her rethinking her no-more-sex-in-the-cell decision?

Feeona had lost her mind. Forgotten all the rules. She couldn’t even claim fear as a reason for telling Jupiter about Bug. He hadn’t threatened her. Not really. She’d given him something he could use against her for no better reason than she wanted to put his mind at ease.

But it was time to get control of her runaway mouth and get some control over her oh-so inconvenient attraction to this man.

As far as Fitz knew she was Mattie Hairo, a small-time claim jumper.

All it would take was a simple DNA test for Fitz to ID her as Feeona Traveler.

If that happened, getting away from Fitz would be the least of her problems. He’d go to the Alliance Enforcers and they would hitch all of Mattie’s alleged crimes to her one clean identity. She couldn’t allow that.

Jupiter waited for her explanation.

She sighed. “We should really focus on what’s important. Finding you a way to get off this ship.”

He looked at her with suspicion. “Why would you want to help me do that?”

“It’s like I said. Injustice offends me.” She pressed her palm to his warm cheek. “You can trust me on this. No hidden agenda about this. No promises, but if I can help you find a way off this ship, I will.”

A lightning-brief narrowing of Jupiter’s eyes, there and then gone, let her know he didn’t miss the carefully worded assurances.

On this one thing, he could trust her. She’d left herself plenty of room to maneuver.

She didn’t understand why she bothered to avoid lying to him, but somehow it was important.

Jupiter eased back, giving her room to breathe as he considered her words. “I don’t know much about spaceships, but I’ve been told they’re the only way to travel through space.”

She nodded confirmation.

“Unless you have a ship alongside this one, wouldn’t it be wiser to force the crew to take us somewhere before attempting to get off?”

She swallowed a chuckle. His logic was sound, but his question made it clear he didn’t know anything about the Salley Ho or space travel in general.

Why would he? A slave wouldn’t have any need for that kind of knowledge.

The thought brought all her anger surging back, but he was waiting for her to answer.

“This is a big ship. It would be almost impossible to try to take it over or force its crew to do anything for very long. They know the ship and the technology. They’d have the advantage.

You might be half right, though. It might be better for you to try to get away from Fitz once they get you to Karona Station.

The problem there is getting off the station.

It’s a bigger place to hide, but without connections and help, it would still be unlikely you could get safe passage out or hide indefinitely. ”

Jupiter’s jaw tightened as she spoke. “Tell me about this ship and its crew.”

It was a good question to start. “ Salley Ho is a salvage ship. It’s big and designed for hauling things or dismantling them in place.

It’s equipped with cranes and cutters. Large storage bays.

There are five decks and a sixty-man crew.

” When he didn’t ask any questions, she continued.

“Fitz goes to places where things are being decommissioned—big things like ships, buildings, a port—and he helps haul away the junk. He gets paid for the hauling, but he also gets to sell anything he can salvage. Raw materials and that sort of thing. But the real money is in finding abandoned things and staking a claim. Like your damaged ship out there. If the owners of something like that abandon it, he could legally take ownership of the ship and the contents.”

Jupiter’s fist clenched. “The ship I was on wasn’t damaged until they attacked it.”

“Funny thing, that. The Salley Ho isn’t an ideal ship for attacking a passenger vessel.

There must be an enormous amount of credits at stake for Fitz to walk away from a claim.

” The salvage job where he’d found her and assumed she was trying to claim-jump.

Letting him grab her had been the only way to get onboard the ship.

“Since the Salley Ho hasn’t moved a single kilometer since they brought you onboard, I’d say he’s after more than just you and Seneca.

That ship out there is important, too, for some reason. ”