Page 12 of The Captain’s Bounty (The Collectors #2)

CHAPTER FOUR

Lissa rubbed her cheek raw against the mattress before the blindfold finally worked loose enough for her to confirm what she already knew: the room was empty. He was gone.

That son of a bitch.

That handsy, kind of handsome son of a tree-bitch.

She’d never been so pissed to have orgasmed in her life. How could he do that to her? Put his hands on her like that, look at her the way he had—as if he’d wanted her, as if he couldn’t bear not to have her—make her come, and then just tie her up again and walk away?

You’re the one who won’t let me kill him , it reminded.

Shut up.

Scrubbing the blindfold all the way up off her head so she could see freely, she took stock of the room.

Apart from the sparse decorations, the floor, walls and ceiling were metal.

A plumbing pipe ran up the wall from floor to ceiling and the grill of an air duct was screwed high into the wall directly above her head.

A set of drawers for clothing and personal effects were sealed into the far wall, and there were only two doors—one to the lavatory and the other leading out.

This was an awfully nice room, for a cell in a slaver’s brig. In fact, she was beginning to suspect it wasn’t a cell at all, but one of the crew quarters. Maybe even the captain’s own quarters. It sure reflected a lot of his personality—cold, hard, heartless.

Scrambling awkwardly off the bed, her hands still bound behind her back, she went to the bathroom, staring at the touch panel for a moment before pressing it with her cheek. She had a fifty-fifty chance that it was simply a pressure plate, but no. It was a palm print reader. The door did not open.

Damn it.

She looked up at the air duct again. She might fit through it if she could get the grate off, but she wasn’t going anywhere until she got out of these wrist cuffs.

The cuffs weren’t as tight as they could be, but they weren’t loose either. Not after her botched first attempt. She twisted, tucking her aching thumbs into her palms like the being had done, and tried to find the best way to pull at least one of her hands through.

It had a thumb print locking mechanism, double damn it. If she wanted free, then she needed a way to con Bruwes into unlocking the cuffs for her. Perhaps then, she could… what? Smack her forehead into his and hope she knocked him out? Bite his ear? Gnaw her way through his throat?

This was impossible.

Taking deep breaths, she twisted her wrist until she found the best angle.

She was going to dislocate her thumb again or break it, both of which were going to hurt.

There was no getting around that, but it was either do it or sit here placidly until they reached their destination and he handed her over to whoever put the price on her head.

She couldn’t pretend that was anyone but Corporate.

Damn Dex. And damn her for thinking even for a moment that he wouldn’t turn on her the moment it became profitable.

What would happen to her? Mere lifelong imprisonment was the best of her future options. Far more likely that she’d be held for study, reverse-engineered like any other piece of tech Corporate stumbled over, and made into their next war-winning advancement.

Finally! You begin to sense the seriousness of our situation! Pull when I tell you , the entity ordered. It’s going to hurt .

She was ready.

Or at least, she thought she was, right up until she felt her hands heating up. Then the wrist cuffs did, growing hotter than her skin could bear.

Shit! It was burning into her. She gritted her teeth. Any sound she made could bring Bruwes back to investigate, and she only had one chance at this. If she failed to escape a second time, she already knew he’d make it impossible for her to find a third.

Her skin sizzled. She felt it cooking, smelled the burning where she touched the cuffs.

Pull .

She yanked with all the power she had and the cuffs yielded, the metal just soft enough to let her rip her hand out. Her right wrist was badly burned, the left was still sizzling, blistering where the heated cuff wrapped her. It wasn’t cooling down anywhere near fast enough.

Wadding excess cloth from her shirt, she grabbed the hot cuffs and yanked until her other hand was out. She dropped the hot metal bonds on the floor, and for a moment, just stood there, her wrists crossed over her chest, holding them protectively close.

The very air in the room made the throbbing so much worse.

The pain was surreal. She couldn’t afford to pass out, nor could she continue to stand here, hugging her wrists and rocking, but that was exactly what she did.

It took several minutes before she could make herself overcome the hurt, and she had a feeling it was responsible for her sudden ability to swallow back the pain until it could be ignored.

Her wrists were purplish-red with burns everywhere the cuffs had touched them.

Her hands were shaking too, but she still reached up to untie her gag.

She let it fall, the corners of her mouth stinging where she’d chewed into the gag.

She licked them, trying to take comfort from easing that small pain while the greater one ate up her arms. Then she got to work.

Crawling through the room, she searched every part of it, ignoring the hurt and breaking every one of her fingernails as she pried and pulled at any and everything that might come apart.

She just needed a small piece of metal with a flat edge, something she could use to unscrew the grill plating from the duct on the wall.

She broke the chair, stomping on it repeatedly before she got what she needed—a flat piece of metal from the folding legs.

Standing on the bed, she struggled to make her fumbling fingers work.

She lost count of how many times she dropped her impromptu tool.

It fell off the bed twice and the second time, by the time she retrieved it, her ears were ringing and her knees were shaking.

You’re going into shock. If you pass out, we’ll die .

“We won’t die,” she whispered, cold sweat breaking out across her skin. Tickling drops spilled down her spine into the small of her back. “We’ll just get recaptured.”

Is that better? the entity asked acidly . To die in captivity rather than die in the bowels of this vessel?

“Drama llama.”

She got the grate off, but her fingers refused to hold it any better than they could hold her thin metal tool. Fortunately, it landed on the bed instead of clattering to the floor and alerting her handsy guard.

I think I hurt you more than I intended.

“At least… you sound … ugh… sorry about it.” She grunted as she struggled to use the plumbing pipe to climb up the wall high enough to get into the duct. It made a god-awful noise. Every movement was accompanied by the metal clunk of the duct bending under her weight.

Her wrists were hurting her worse now than before, and to make matters worse, she could barely move.

Not just because of the pain, but because the duct was so claustrophobically narrow, and the inside walls were pegged with the pointy end of countless rivets.

Her shoulders scraped both sides, her head was already on the ceiling, and she didn’t know how to make herself smaller. There simply wasn’t any room.

Move or we die.

Groaning, she made herself crawl as best she could, but it was progress gained in inches. She could see light up ahead, another room with a grate. So long as it wasn’t her prison, then it was a way out.

She crawled toward it. Every movement, every brush of pressure that touched her hands and wrists hurt like hell, but she didn’t have a choice. She could go forward or backward, and when she reached a grate, then she could go out. That was it. Her options in a nutshell.

Forward was a whole lot easier than back. But even so, everything she moved, her knee or elbow or back or butt—something hit some part of the duct, buckling the thin metal. She winced at how much noise she made. This was not a quiet escape.

And because it wasn’t,it also wasn’t exactly a surprise when, as she neared the next grate, she heard the soft whir of a screwdriver. The front of the grate came off and someone who wasn’t Bruwes stuck his head up into the vent and looked at her.

Good, the entity said softly . This was a mistake. Let him take you. You need healing and I need to think .

“Fuck you,” she said, too wounded and tired even to duck away when he reached in and grabbed her. She might need healing, but this was also one of the men who wanted to sell her into slavery, she wasn’t about to make it easy for him.

Bruwes washed his face. The cold water wasn’t helping.

The repeated washing wasn’t helping either.

He could still smell her scent and the constant ache in his blood, the pulse in his cock, it was maddening.

The smell wouldn’t leave his hands, no matter how many times he soaped them.

He couldn’t stop thinking about how she felt—soft, hot, silky with the slick of arousal that smelled so fantastic.

All he wanted to do was go back down the hall to his room and crawl up on top of her again, finishing what he’d started.

How incredibly unprofessional of him.

Shutting off the water, he dropped to the floor for another useless round of push-ups.

Fast and hard, he forced himself to count out as many as he could do.

One hundred… two hundred… it didn’t help.

If anything, his cock got harder as he imagined Lissa on the floor underneath him again.

He could almost feel her there, the softness of her limbs wrapping around him, pulling him down to rest on top of her instead of the floor.

He could feel again the lingering heat of her groin, grinding against him with all that seductive, intoxicating softness. Meeting his fingers thrust for thrust.

Why was he doing this to himself?