Page 13 of The Captain’s Bounty (The Collectors #2)

Sweat rolled off him. He hated the Reflection Chamber, with its billows of hot steam meant to increase the penitent’s discomfort.

He didn’t believe the rhetoric spouted by the Reformers, that they were diseased, deadly, beyond all salvation.

Which didn’t necessarily mean he believed Demin, either, when the doctor said Rage was a product of genetics, a long dormant but natural aspect of their DNA now inexplicably switched back on within their society.

All he did know was forced sterilization had done more harm than good, reducing their once noble society to nothing more than criminals, forcibly kidnapping mates from other races in a last-ditch effort to keep themselves from extinction.

Ragers were chosen to do the deed, those so consumed by their ‘disease’ to have committed the most unforgivable crime of all—the taking of a fellow citizen’s life.

Those, like himself, deemed so far beyond redemption as to be convenient scapegoats should they ever get caught were put on raiding ships and sent out to do the dirty work.

And Bruwes had captained them, compounding his ‘sin’ of murder with enslaving…

how many people? He couldn’t even begin to count the number of ships they’d captured at his direction.

On his order. And when the Doc unwittingly uncovered the dark, ugly truth, it was on his order that they had stopped, turned their backs on home, and became worldless wanderers.

Pirates.

But at least they no longer trafficked in people.

Or at least they didn’t, until he decided to go after this bounty.

Three hundred… the exercise wasn’t working. If ever he were tempted to beat the Rage out with Atonement Rods, this was it. He had to do something. His sight was going red around the edges.

The ship’s comm went off. “Bruwes, where are you?”

Doc Demin. Just the person he didn’t want to talk to.

His arms shook from strain, but he kept going. Pushup after pushup, he willed the redness to bleed back out of everything he saw and for the intoxicating scent of Lissa to get out of his system.

“Bruwes,” Demin said with a sigh, “you’re needed in Medibay.”

After a brief pause, the comm clicked back on.

“It’s about the bounty. She’s wounded?—”

Bruwes heaved himself up off the floor.

“—and in one of my isolation tubes.”

He hit the comm as he charged out the door. “Why wasn’t I told?”

“What am I doing right—” The Doc cut off with an annoyed growl and spat one of Cory’s favorite curses through the comm at him. “Fucking idiot.”

The comm went dead, not that Bruwes was still in the mess to hear it. A dozen long-legged strides took him down the corridor to the Medibay. Charging through the door, he stopped when he saw Lissa, floating naked in a tube of bactalplast gel.

His heart didn’t stop to see her like that.

He wasn’t about to let himself feel anything, not even that fluttering tinge of regret when he noted the rawness and burns on her wrists. The bactalplast had its work cut out for it, but this was not his responsibility and he wasn’t about to let himself think it was.

Still, as he watched her drifting in healing gel, his first thought wasn’t about the money he’d lose if Corporate didn’t like the condition she arrived in.

It was on the twinge of selfishness that pinched his chest as he realized all he could think about was whether or not he’d ever get the chance to feel her under him again.

He shook his head, but the thought would not be dislodged. “What happened?”

Coming up behind him, Demin wiped his hands on a cloth. “Aldar found her in the ventilation ducts.”

Swearing under his breath, he turned and marched out of Medibay, all the way back to his quarters, where he took one look at the debris of her escape attempt and realized this would have to be the last time he left her alone.

His jaw clenched. She’d destroyed his chair, too.

Like he had a million of those just lying around to replace it with, and sure enough, the grate to the air duct was lying discarded on the bed.

He hadn’t thought she was small enough to fit in there, but she’d found a way.

Her blindfold was on the floor. So was her gag.

Spying the linkcuffs not far from either, he bent to pick them up, turning them over in his hand.

They were distorted, bent in a way he’d never seen anyone do before and that was saying something.

In the short time he’d been collecting bounties, he and his crew had become known for bringing in some of the worst of the worst. Partly because bigger risks meant more money, but mostly because they were all of them ignorant and too stupid to learn the first time that if the money was too good, there might just be a reason for it.

Point in fact: Lissa. More powerful than he’d thought her capable of being, how the hell was he going to keep her from doing this again?

He felt the jarring rock of the ship almost before he heard the explosion and shattering glass.

The rumbling force knocked him off his feet.

He fell backwards over the broken remnants of his chair, colliding into the wall and then the floor.

Everything that wasn’t attached in the room flew straight at both him and the wall.

He barely got his arm up before his pillow and the metal grate plate hit him.

The ship’s alarms sounded, but even as he scrambled to get his feet under him, he knew that wasn’t the right feel or sound for the Raider firing on or being fired on by an enemy ship.

That explosion had come from inside.

He ran back to Medibay, almost colliding with the door because it didn’t open when he slapped the latch lock. He slapped it again, and though the door did finally open for it, it only did so partway before jamming again.

“Watch the floor!” Demin yelled when Bruwes grabbed the door. An electric shock zapped all the way up both arms, twanging in his shoulders.

Bracing his shoulder against the frame, Bruwes ignored the intermittent shocks that were starting to numb his hands. He heaved, forcing the powerless door to roll all the way open.

The isolation tube was shattered. Broken glass, breathing and waste hoses, and bits of distorted metal were scattered all over the room.

Bactalplast gel covered everything, providing more than enough lubrication for crackling electricity to jump from the broken wall wires that had powered the tube to everywhere it wasn’t supposed to be.

The floor grates sizzled and sparked with it.

“Watch the floor!” Demin shouted again, from on top of his chair.

“I see it,” Bruwes snapped, and then he saw her. Standing naked in the middle of the room, she held one lethal little hand outstretched toward the doctor, who had both of his hands up in surrender.

She was wet, dripping, slimy as only someone who’d spent healing time in bactalplast could be.

Her eyes, though, unlike when she’d been beneath him on his bed, her eyes were black, cold, and wild all at once.

Deadly intent glistened in her expanded pupils, but when he stuck his fool head into the room from behind the safety of the shielding door, she immediately snapped her gaze to him.

For just a moment, he thought he saw her intent falter.

“Yield, woman!” Bruwes commanded in his harshest tone. “You are mine until I allow otherwise!”

She turned on him, her fingers widely splayed.

He was sure she meant to fire. He was even more convinced that she actually tried to.

He saw her jaw clench, the black and coldness retreating from her eyes.

The wildness remained, though, and so did the anger.

It was almost like she had become a different person right in front of his eyes.

This was the Lissa who had writhed so passionately beneath him, he realized, extending her arm to take her aim at him.

Her fingers flexed, and Bruwes ducked behind the door. Swearing, Demin squatted in his chair, covering his head with both arms.

But nothing happened.

Bruwes peeked into the now destroyed Medibay at her.

Anger replaced by confusion, she shook her hand and then burst out in exasperation, “Are you fucking kidding me right now?!”

Demin recovered almost as fast as he did. “Get her!”

They both launched out of their hiding spots and raced to tackle her.

Lissa reacted every bit as fast. In a blink, the black and coldness filled her eyes as she snapped around with her hand out.

She shot a ball of crackling energy directly at Demin, knocking him flying back onto his desk.

Bruwes heard the crunch of breaking bones, but he didn’t stop.

He tackled Lissa, knocking them both to the bactalplast-gel-covered floor, where jolts of jumping electricity shocked them both, making her breath catch and infuriating him instantly.

In a snap, everything he saw turned bright red.

She shoved her open hand at him, but again, nothing came out. He saw the helplessness that flickered through her now bright green eyes a half second before fury took back over. She punched him instead, her knuckles cracking into his hard jaw and rocking his head back.

Slowly, his head righted and he glared at her.

Far from amused, he laughed. Testing his tender jaw, he felt again that delicious sting of pain she’d inflicted on him.

Pain wasn’t exactly something he’d ever described as delicious before, and yet with her, it felt.

.. intimate. Erotic. Perhaps even well-earned.

And for as long as she fought back, he had all the excuse he needed to do what came naturally.

Her jaw popped out, angry stubbornness making her eyes sparkle.

She tried to hit him again, but this time he caught her arm and quickly pinned them down.

She bucked and he straddled her. She snapped her knee up and only by sheer accident thumped the inside of his thigh.

Had he been a little slower or his hips a little lower. ..

Growing a warning, he flipped her onto her belly and quickly flattened himself on top of her again, stilling her eruption of scrabbling limbs before she could crawl away.

His weight bore her flat to the floor. He had to recapture her wrists, pinning them behind her back before she managed to claw the side of his face.

She fought like a dervish. It was exhilarating, right up until she snapped her hard head up into his chin.

All right. That hurt, and not in a “delicious” way.

Shifting her captured wrists into the grip of one hand, he seized a fistful of her hair, shoving her forehead all the way to the floor before sinking his teeth into the nape of her neck.

He didn’t bite hard, just hard enough for the nip to be—he hoped—more disciplinary than erotic.

Judging by her yelp, it was successful, and yet he wasn’t satisfied.

His belly burned. Once more, his cock stirred, becoming as hard as a damned post, and only getting harder still with every squirming, bucking, kicking yelp she made.

He flattened himself over her, but that put her soft, round ass right up against his bulging trousers.

She could not have made him harder had she gripped him in her hand and rubbed.

“You want to fight me?” he growled. “You’re not going to like what you win.” But he had to admit, he was enjoying himself immensely.

Heaving himself up off her, he hauled her to her feet by her wrists and her hair. She didn’t give up easily, and he liked that she refused to be easily subdued.

She yanked on her own hair when she swung around on him, once more uselessly throwing her open hand out to blast him. When nothing happened, frustrated, she slapped him instead.

He laughed, exhilarated by her aggression. Did she have any idea how close her behavior was to that of a fertile Me’kavian female in full breeding heat? How had he existed until now not knowing just how electrifying, how intoxicating this could be?

Lissa drew back her tiny, ineffectual fist.

He grinned, showing his teeth. “Hit me again, and?—”

She slugged him in the mouth, rocking his head back, and then grabbed the front of his uniform. She would have kneed him in the groin, but he was faster, twisting to block her sneaky blow.

“Enough!” He was tempted to hit her back for that, but he restrained himself. She was too small, and he was giant in comparison, and a pervert. All he could think about now was how tightly her flesh would embrace his the minute he opened his pants.

Except a captain of bounty hunters did not mount his captives. No matter how aggressively sexy they were.

“Get off me,” she snarled, panting between bursts of fighting energy.

He didn’t bother answering. Ducking, he threw her over his shoulder instead, ignoring all her yelling, kicking, and punching as he marched them both back to his quarters.

He was the captain of this vessel. He was in charge. He made the decisions and he did not yield, ever, to anyone. And that included to the bounty he was determined to bring in.

Only now, zap by shocking zap, bellow by bellow, kick by kick, that singular determination was fast replacing itself with a secondary desire.

Before he sent her on her way, he was going to make her behave the way conquered females should, especially to the male who held her pressed beneath his conquering boot.