Page 10 of The Captain’s Bounty (The Collectors #2)

“No one pays six thousand chits for someone who does nothing.” Lowering himself to her level, Bruwes said, “They’re willing to pay it, and I need to get paid. Go ahead, tell me again how innocent you are. I already told you, I don’t care. Only the money matters.”

Staring into the black of his gaze, she believed him. No amount of pleading was going to win her freedom or change her fate. She was going to have to do more than petty rebellions and begging.

Now you’re thinking , it purred inside her.

Lissa jerked her gaze away when Bruwes leaned past her to pick up another torn strip of shirt from the pile on the small table by the bed. He was going to blindfold her again.

“No! No !” She yanked back as far as she could, but he didn’t go for her eyes. He gagged her instead.

“For every deed, there is a consequence,” he said, tying the ends just tight enough to keep her from spitting free of it. “If you can’t be good, you’ll find I’m very well versed in all ways useful in forcing your obedience.”

Then he blindfolded her, and there she was left. Sitting in mostly darkness, unable to speak or move. Unable to do anything but listen as he picked up the empty dishes and left the room.

She kicked the floor, but even that brief bout of temper refused to stay. Her aching shoulders wilted.

How was she going to get out of this? How ?

Twisting her wrists, she felt along the tight restraints.

I could melt them , it suggested. But it will burn through your skin long before the metal liquifies.

She pulled and twisted, trying to make each hand as small as the opening around her wrists.

I could dislocate your thumbs , it offered.

It might be worth it, but getting free of the cuffs was only one small part of the problem. She still had to get free of this room, and then this ship, and then what? She wasn’t a pilot. She’d never flown so much as a skiff runner.

How many people were aboard this ship anyway? Surely there had to be more than just Bruwes, or he wouldn’t be spending time feeding and humiliating her. He’d be flying the ship instead.

So, at least one more person. Perhaps two. Maybe six or more, for all she knew. If she was going to get free, she would need to take them all out.

I can kill them for you.

Depressed that murder should even be an option, she shook her head.

It tsked. Idiot.

He shouldn’t have let her bait him.

Yes, that’s it , Bruwes told himself caustically. Put the blame on her.

She wasn’t the one forcing him to strip her half-naked and deliberately stand there, watching as her growing humiliation turned her face the most beguiling shade of pink.

She was pretty, and just like Cory, she too had a scent that grew alluringly stronger as he’d pulled her pants down.

It was all he’d been able to do to keep his hands to himself instead of what his every instinct had immediately cried for—to touch the wetness pooling in the forbidden shadow of her thighs.

To feel his way along the seam of her sex, crowned as it was by that narrow strip of brown curls, and discover for himself if she was as ready for mating as she smelled.

He knew better. She was worth money, real money.

Bounties weren’t for playing with. Sad as that was, he wasn’t usually the one who had trouble keeping his attention on the business at hand.

Unlike Vullum, he shouldn’t require constant reminding that not every female was put in his path for breeding games.

He squared his shoulders as he washed up the few dishes he’d used and put them away in the sparsely equipped kitchen. Done, he paused long enough to take a few deep breaths and when he was sure he was in full control of himself, turned and headed back down the hall to his room.

She wasn’t innocent; was anyone, really? She wasn’t even a person. She was a bounty, and delivering her to Corporate would get them enough to fix their ship with chits to spare.

That was the important thing. That was what he needed to keep his mind on, not that whiff of temptation exuding from her sex and her pores, and certainly not the blush of embarrassment that had colored her up so arousingly.

Slipping into the hall, he looked up one direction and then down the other, making sure he was alone before ducking back into the kitchen long enough to drop for a handful of pushups.

He pumped up and down as fast as he could and only for as long as he dared, then he was up again.

He shook his head, the thrill of activity helping to ground him—once more the captain of the Raider, once more in full control of himself.

Ready now to deal with anything and everything, he headed back to his quarters. He had another hour or two to watch her, and then someone else would take over. He only had to go that long, and then he would be free of her, her scent, her embarrassment, and her allure.

He could do anything for just an hour or two.

Reaching his door, he lay his hand on the control panel.

The door slid open just in time for him to watch as Lissa dislocated her own thumb.

Her hand popped free of the cuffs with little more than a grunt from her, and suddenly she was free.

She snatched the blindfold off and then looked right at him with the same chilling detachment she’d shown right before she’d blown the slavers and their ship down the dock.

Now she took aim at him and could he really blame her? After all, he was going to turn her over to Corporate as a prisoner. In a wildly inappropriate way, he admired her. He wouldn’t let himself be taken quietly; why should she?

In fact, staring down the lengths of her small arms and into her soft green eyes, for a moment, Bruwes found himself feeling more invigorated and alive than he had for as long as he could remember.

She was going to kill him.

Except, she didn’t fire.

She wanted to. He could tell by the sudden quirk in her brow and the way she dropped her gaze from him to her hands, staring at them as if they’d betrayed her somehow.

She glared back at him, furious desperation flittering through the beauty of her stare.

He saw it when she realized she couldn’t fire, and just like that he wasn’t just alive. He was back in control.

Grabbing her wrists, he yanked her closer.

“What did I tell you about deeds and consequences?” he growled, that coldness that had twisted up his guts back when she’d taken her deadly aim at him bursting into mating flames.

The heat consumed him, pulsing as hard and fast as the beating of his heart.

It was in his belly, his veins, all the way down in the root of his steadily stiffening cock until the pounding there was all he could feel.

“Said the man who wants to sell me like a slave!” she snapped back.

“Not a slave. Slavery is illegal. You’re a convict, and as such you can expect your misbehaviors to be punished.”

He jerked her around. Dropping to sit on the edge of his bed, he yanked her across his lap in one sharp tug.

She toppled with a startled yelp and immediately fought to get up again.

Locking her legs in the vise of his own thighs, he wrestled her into position well over his left thigh, pushing her head and shoulders toward the floor and bringing her vulnerable bottom well up.

What was he doing? He had no idea, but it felt both justified and right to grab the seat of her pants, tearing the thin cloth as he ripped them down again.

After a year trapped on this floating tin can with the doctor and his mouthy, often misbehaving prize, this was nowhere near as foreign to him as it perhaps ought to have been.

The only thing that would have felt more right would have been if he had a Rod of Correction in his hand.

But no, he had nothing, and so his hand was what he used, applying it in crisp cracks all over the pale bucking mounds of her bottom.

She yelled, the pure outrage in her voice dissolving into dismay within just a handful of swats.

“What are you doing?” she bellowed. “Stop!”

After only a mere handful of swats? Not a chance. The memory of her hands stretching out to take her shot at him was burned into his mind. Her only mistake… she’d hesitated.

For violence to beget violence was probably the wrong lesson to teach her, especially while bent across his knee, but he couldn’t stop. Like the scent billowing up to tease his nose with every fresh spank he gave her, the blush on her flanks and the sound of her cries were too irresistible.

“Please stop!” She threw back a wounded hand back, but he only caught her wrist and quickly pinned it out of his way. Before she could draw breath to scream, he relocated her thumb with a strong yank.

She howled, but that was erotic too. Especially in the way her body seemed to curl around him as she absorbed the pain. He was almost sorry about her hand, but her bottom was quite red now. The artist of her comeuppance, he wanted to see her redder still.

She threw her other hand back. That he had to stop to pin it out of his way was a minor irritation that went straight to his cock.

The pulse as she wriggled, trying so desperately to free herself, was beyond distracting.

Every kick and cry she made echoed inside him.

It made the burning hotter and the throbbing course deeper, giving him no choice at all but to hold her closer and pin her tighter.

Her scent was in him with every breath. She kicked as much as her pinned legs could move and he glimpsed wetness, seeping along the slit of her sex, until it sparkled under the ceiling lights like jewels in the shadows of her tensing thighs.

“Stop, please!”

He could have cared less how loudly she cried or how prettily she pleaded, he wasn’t going to stop.

He had no desire to finish this, and yet his hand came to rest on the hot surface of her ass.

He gripped while she bucked, squeezing just to hear that whimpering cry as her fingers flexed, helpless to stop him.