Page 21 of The Captain’s Bounty (The Collectors #2)

She knew what he was asking. Her stomach quivered, and so did her thighs. Hot liquid trickled through her folds and along her seam. But she had already said it to him once. If she did it again, that would set a precedence that would forever put her beneath him.

The heat in her flared hotter at the instant mental image that accompanied that word, ‘beneath’.

You really do like him.

Stay out of it. This is private!

Bruwes’s eyes narrowed slightly, and then he struck, his hand slapping upward between them, striking the underside of her breast, almost catching her nipple.

If not for his grip on her hair, she’d have ducked, but he only tightened his hold and refused to let go.

He slapped her other breast, two crisp blows that made her flesh bounce and ignited a sting twice as bad as any swat her ass had yet taken.

Catching her left nipple, he hauled up on her hair until she was dancing on her tiptoes.

“Sit,” he said, in a somber tone that made her stomach both knot and flush hot.

Sit? She checked his lap. If he wanted her to sit, then he wasn’t going to spank… right?

She turned sideways, slipping one leg between his, but he stopped her.

“I didn’t say turn around. I said sit.”

The warmth spread, moving up into her already too tight chest, feeding the fiery flames licking at her face and further down. Her pussy was heating, not burning like her face, but pulsing in that same dreaded throb of interest she couldn’t make herself stop feeling. Not when he was in the room.

Hesitantly,she tried putting her back to him, all the while refusing to think about how her ass was going to look when she lowered herself to perch upon his knee, but again, he stopped her.

“No,” he said, stopping her again. “Face me.”

Facing him? So they could… talk?

Hesitantly, she asked, “Are you going to yell at me?”

“For someone protesting the need for another spanking, you’re working very hard to get one. Or is this another occasion where you need help paying attention?”

Her whole body shivered, but not in dread. She straddled his lap, and sat. “For the record, this is super awkward too. May I please have some clothes?”

“I prefer you naked and ready for chastisement if needed. If,” he snorted and picked up the plate and fork again. “There is no ‘if’ with you humans. You all live for disobedience.”

“We do not.”

“Every human I have met before has, including the one I made a crewman.” He offered her a bite, then scoffed. “That one is the queen of disobedience.”

“Well, obviously, you haven’t met a lot of humans,” she immediately challenged.

He held her stare, as if daring her to look away. She wanted to, but she didn’t have the courage. Just when she thought he wasn’t going to answer, she took the bite and that’s when he said, “Two.”

“Two?” She almost choked trying to swallow what was in her mouth. “You’re judging my entire species on two people? What, did you kidnap the other one too?”

That curl at the corner of his lips twitched, though it never did become a full-on smile. “I didn’t kidnap you. You’re a bounty, and I want my six thousand chits.”

If she hadn’t swallowed, she really would have choked. “Six thousand chits? Did you say chits?”

He nodded and dished up another bite. He offered her this one too. “I did.”

She stared straight through him. “Do you know how many excavations I could fund with that kind of money?”

Well, realistically, only one. Two, if half the workers were student volunteers and everyone brought their own tools.

“Do you know how many jump coils I could buy?” he countered.

“How many do you need?” Lissa asked, feeling her brow furrow with concern in spite of herself.

“Let’s put it this way. I don’t have any at the moment.”

Lissa took that in while the entity sharing her headspace ruffled through her thoughts and absorbed meanings even she wasn’t aware of. “But you said we were in space,” she said finally.

“We are.”

“Does that mean we’re still in the Ceron system?” Lissa asked, naked horror in her unchecked tone and all over her unguarded face.

Bruwes bared his teeth briefly and rubbed a rough hand across his scowling face. “If I could piss out the window, it’d be raining on Cutirut I.”

Lissa rocked back on his lap and stared at him, adjusting to the new reality of her circumstances.

She was apparently a wanted Corporate fugitive, adrift on a bounty-hunter’s broken ship midway between a junk planet and its junk moon, with hundreds if not thousands of sell-swords, pirates, slavers and every other flavor of scum buzzing all around them like a hive of venin-hornets.

“That’s why it doesn’t matter how hard you try to win me over,” Bruwes was saying. “I will keep myself strong against you and I will turn you over for the money.”

“I’d turn me over for that too,” she said softly and looked away.

He laughed, and forked up another piece of meat for her. “That’s what I said, but no one’s put a bounty on my head.”

He had such a pleasant laugh, when he wasn’t being sarcastic or trying to hide a riled temper.

“You’re not eating?” she asked when he nudged the fork closer.

Her stomach tightened all over again, the throbbing sensation in her pussy now more of an empty ache. It got instantly worse when she realized he was staring at her lips.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Oh.” She wasn’t sure if she was hungry anymore either. And then she noticed his eyes were growing visibly redder and darker as he gazed at her mouth. Self-consciously licking her lips (and shivering when he softly growled), she asked, “Does that hurt?”

His gaze flicked to her eyes and his sharpened. “What?”

“Your eyes. When they go red like this. Is it… blood? Does it hurt?”

He stared at her for a long time, and when he finally did speak, it wasn’t to answer her question.

“Eat,” he commanded.

He made her finish the entire plate by herself, before setting it aside and giving the side of her hip a slap. It wasn’t as hard as he did when he spanked her, but it stung just enough to remind her that she really didn’t want any more like that.

“Up.”

She stood, backing away when he stood up too.

“Thank you for not spanking me,” she hurried to say, hoping it was still off the table. That look he’d just given her and considering the question that still remained unanswered between them, it might not be.

Finally, Bruwes nodded, then thumbed at the bathroom door. “Let’s go.”

Oh. Shower time.

Why her embarrassment soared just then, she couldn’t say. She’d been naked this whole time. She’d sat in his lap, straddling his legs, with him staring right at her, for heaven’s sake.

And he’d definitely been staring… at her mouth. Not her breasts or her pussy, but her lips.

Now he was going to run her a shower.

At least he’d finally be taking the handcuffs off.

Or so she thought, right up until he was in the bathroom with her, the door hissing shut behind them, and with a tap of the button on the shower’s metal frame, that one twisted open too.

She thought the bathroom was small before, but standing as still as possible while she waited for him to squeeze past her and turn the recycled water on, was a whole new definition.

She’d never been more aware of any other person in her life.

She’d never been kidnapped, force fed, physically punished or had a guy stick his finger up her ass to “help her remember” her good manners.

It had worked though, while she couldn’t for the life of her remember what they were talking about at the time, she would never forget the shock of being penetrated like that while he scolded her.

Never mind what he actually said, that feeling, that completely unexpected, foreign and yet not entirely unpleasant sensation of having an object shoved past the first knuckle up her ass—her ass! —haunted her.

“Feel,” he said, stepping back out of her way so she could lean in and check the water temperature.

Oh, she was feeling it all right. She could feel it in the prickling of her skin all down the leg she slipped under the spray, not to mention the side of her body that brushed up against him when she did it.

It was in the way she warmed from the inside out when he didn’t move—neither to back away nor to inch closer.

She could almost swear she felt the penetrating thrust of his finger still.

He wasn’t her friend. This wasn’t a hook-up from the bar during a brief layover between dig sites or on a supply run into town.

It sure wasn’t a fun little tussle beneath the covers, or even a regrettable lapse of judgment to leave snoring behind her as she dressed in the dark and snuck away.

He’d been very blunt about his intentions.

“Good?” he asked, and she nodded. She needed to get her head on straight and stop acting like a horny teenager with her very first?—

Taking her by the elbow, Bruwes pushed her into the shower, and he didn’t take her cuffs off to do it.

She barely sucked a startled breath before he had her head in under the spray.

It doused her, running into her face, obscuring her vision…

but not before she saw him strip out of his uniform.

She snapped around, almost bumping the wall with her nose as he climbed into the tube behind her.

The door twisted shut then, trapping them in the shower together.

If the bathroom was small, the shower tube was tiny. No matter how she wiggled, every nervous movement had her bumping up against him.

“What…” She almost swallowed the water streaming over her head and down her face. “What are you doing?”

“How else are you to wash with your hands cuffed?”

He was going to wash her? That was at once the worst thing she’d ever heard… and the most arousing. Her mouth actually ran dry.

“Please let me do it myself,” she begged.

“Must I fetch your gag?” he countered, just before the hot steam flowing around them suddenly became scented steam. He was soaping his hands, and she couldn’t even turn around to see with what.