Page 17 of Tempting Jupiter (Arena Dogs #2)

Chapter Twelve

“You must wake.” A soft touch on Feeona’s good arm accompanied the words.

Seneca crouched near the edge of her bunk.

They were no longer in the med-bay and she didn’t see Jupiter.

All of her pains were still with her, but they seemed to be dulling.

They must have given her pain meds after all.

She tried to sit and got one shoulder off the mattress before the pain knocked her back down.

She couldn’t help the groan. Okay, maybe dulling wasn’t the right word to describe her level of pain.

“Easy,” Seneca urged. “You’ll re-open your wounds.” His voice was smoother than Jupiter’s, like good brandy to the punch of aged scotch.

The thin bedding beneath her was only slightly better than the bunk in Fitz’s brig.

That thought brought Jupiter’s dry teasing to mind and she realized she missed him, if that was even possible.

She didn’t know Seneca and his serious expression didn’t put her in the mood for small talk.

She tried again to sit, focusing on using her core to compensate for the injury, but the rest of her body failed to cooperate.

“Let me help you.” He wedged a large hand under her good shoulder and eased her into a sitting position.

She tucked her left arm against her chest and bent her legs to the side, turning toward him. “Thanks.”

He dipped his head slowly in acknowledgement, big lavender eyes fixed on her face.

“How long was I out?”

“Not long,” he said. “Your injury is serious. I wish I could let you rest and heal, but I fear we need your help.”

She heard the thud, thud, thud of shoes against decking as someone came toward them, moving fast. Her whole body tensed and her heart accelerated.

Seneca didn’t move. Still and calm, his hand slipped away. “It’s Jupiter.”

The bigger man appeared through a hatchway.

He loomed over them, larger than she remembered.

That wasn’t exactly true. She remembered him being large—it was just that her brain had been telling her he couldn’t be as large as she remembered.

But he was. Large and alive and looking healthy.

The mends she’d made seemed to be holding.

The injuries were already starting to heal—miraculous.

Soon they would just be two more scars on a body covered with them.

He frowned. “You must be in pain. Why are you awake?”

“I’m okay,” she fibbed. “I might even give standing up a try, if you’re willing to catch me if I start to fall on my ass.”

Jupiter stepped closer, scowling and Seneca moved out of the way.

Instead of pulling her up, Jupiter squatted down in front of her and kissed her forehead. The soft heat where he pressed his lips sent warmth through her core and then out to her extremities. When he leaned back his scowl had softened. “No sign of fever.”

“I’m okay.” She held his gaze and let the warmth he’d shared with her, beam back at him. “And I owe you my thanks. I mean, really, thank you.” She ignored the pain and smiled at him again. “Now, why don’t you tell me what’s happening?”

She thought he might not answer, but after a moment and a glance to Seneca and back to her, he relented. “The door to this craft has closed. We’re trapped in here.”

She didn’t manage to keep the shock off her face. She could feel it lifting her eyebrows and tightening her face. “They know we’re here? No,” she asked and answered her own question, thinking aloud. “If they knew, they wouldn’t just close us in.”

“We don’t know what’s happening.” Jupiter wrapped a warming-blanket around her shoulders. “The ship rocked and the lights changed, and when I went back, the hatch had been closed.”

She closed her eyes to engage Bug. Dizziness engulfed her.

She opened her eyes, desperate for some reference.

Strong hands clamped around her biceps. She leaned into him.

His body stiffened against her, but she needed his strength whether he liked it or not.

“You missed an easy opportunity to kill me.” She muttered against his chest.

His hands tightened gently. “For Arena Dogs, easy is usually a trap.”

She laughed a single release of breath. “I need to lean on you for just a minute, okay? It’s kind of embarrassing, but I’m not exactly steady here, big guy.”

“I’m here,” he reassured with a soft, low rumble.

Feeona pressed her forehead against his chest and relaxed into his hold.

She closed her eyes and checked Bug’s power reserves and sensors.

Power was low, but Bug was still functional and right where she’d left it, clinging to a tangle of wires hanging out of a control panel on the flight deck.

Through Bug’s vision, she could see the closed hatchway just as they’d said.

“What is she doing?” Sen spoke softly. “Did she lose consciousness again?”

“She is operating the remote device,” Jupiter explained. “She must concentrate to control the machine.”

There wasn’t enough power for Bug to take flight, so Feeona tried for a wireless hack into the ship’s systems. The baseline interface came up, but all she could get out of it was a systems lockout. She tried a back door into the power stats, a system that didn’t usually get a lot of protection.

“Bingo.” She spoke unintentionally, the word heartfelt but barely a whisper.

“What is bingo,” Jupiter rumbled.

Feeona welcomed the small surge of adrenaline that came with success. “Old Earth saying. Means I win or, in this case, I get into the computer system.”

“That’s good?” His question vibrated beneath her cheek.

She pressed more firmly against him, deciding she liked feeling his voice rumble up from his chest when he spoke.

The ship’s response came back with power consumption levels. She could have sworn the Salley Ho had been feeding the ship power, but there was no sign of any external power coming into the system now.

“Good? Yes,” she answered. “Just checking the logs for the past twenty-four hours.”

“What will that tell us?” He released his hold on her biceps and settled his arms around her. His warmth chased away her chill more effectively than the warming-blanket around her shoulders.

She reexamined the figures and her heart surged into her throat at the only possible explanation. She opened her eyes and looked up at him.

“I need to get up to the flight deck.” The one-million things she hadn’t checked before she’d passed out flooded her tired brain. Like what ship systems were still functional. She pushed at Jupiter’s torso, panic and hope driving her to move, but he didn’t release her. He didn’t budge a centimeter.

Jupiter’s dark eyes fixed on hers. “Tell me.”

She took a breath, in and out, struggling for a calm that wasn’t going to come.

Her brain hadn’t decided if the situation was disaster or miracle, but her body just reacted to the certainty that she needed to be ready.

“The power consumption shows a substantial loss. The link to the Salley Ho is… gone. I… I think we’re floating free. ”

Seneca spoke from outside her peripheral vision. “The captain told Owens this craft is damaged beyond repair.”

“People lie,” she warned. “It may be damaged, but there can’t be a hull breach or we’d already be dead.

The power is low, but it obviously isn’t out completely.

And since we’re all still breathing and not floating around weightless, the grav-generators and environmental controls are working well enough.

” She took a deep breath and released it.

“But Bug’s power reserve is nearly drained so I can’t know anything for sure until I can get up to the flight deck. ”

“Wrap your arm around my neck,” Jupiter encouraged.

As she did, he slid his arm under her butt and stood, lifting her with him.

Seneca appeared at their side. He tucked the dislodged warming-blanket back around her. “Why would they disconnect?”

Feeona gritted her teeth against a fresh wave of pain. “I hate to speculate, but my plan to trick them into thinking you were in the escape pods might actually have worked.”

Jupiter carried her through the hatch and down an unfamiliar corridor. “You didn’t think it would?”

She let her head rest against his shoulder as she answered.

“The Salley Ho is a salvage ship. It has all sorts of exterior equipment. Things they’ll be able to use to recapture the escape pods.

I thought they’d catch at least one, probably two, of them before they got completely away from the ship. I figured they’d shoot down the other.”

Jupiter made an odd, but not unpleasant, noise in the back of his throat. “Owens wants us alive.”

She smiled, remembering their earlier conversation. “He does. Even if Fitz didn’t blast the pods out of existence, he still had to deal with Stone and Barney.”

“Stone and Barney?”

“The, uh, Alliance patrol. They were actually a team I paid to act like a patrol and get me off the Salley Ho .”

“You knew you would be caught and need assistance,” Jupiter summed it up correctly.

“All part of the plan. The key to survival in my business isn’t never getting caught, it’s making sure the mark never knows you stole from him.”

“But you were caught before you could steal from the captain.” Jupiter reached the ramp back to the upper levels and started up.

“That’s what he thought, until my damn team decided stealing you from Fitz would earn them a better payday than I could provide.

They double-crossed me. And damn it, if they didn’t let Fitz know they were working for me.

Now he’ll question everything and probably figure out I was there to copy his navigation charts. ”

“So, you weren’t trying to steal from him, just copy these charts?” He sounded like he wanted to mitigate her actions.

She hated to disappoint him, but she had an inexplicable need to set him straight. “Fitz might see things differently. Those charts give him an advantage over his competitors. An advantage they’re eager to negate.”