Page 23 of The Captain’s Bounty (The Collectors #2)

CHAPTER EIGHT

The room was pitch black and silent when Bruwes startled awake.

He cocked his head, listening, every nerve tensing for action.

But there was nothing. No unauthorized entry into his chambers, and Lissa was still right here, taking ownership of almost all the bed and blankets.

He was sandwiched against the metal wall, lying on one side with his arm wrapped around her so he’d feel it if she tried to escape while he was sleeping.

Was she awake?

No, her breaths were slow and deep, and her hands cuffed securely to the pipe at the head of his cot.

He reached with his feet, cautiously feeling for the metal bar he’d tied her ankles to.

Just another security to make sure she didn’t run in the night.

But no, wrists and ankles were still secured, and here she was, sleeping peacefully.

He could barely see her in the dark, but it didn’t matter. He could make out the dark lump of her silhouette and it pleased him. Whether he could see her or not, she was attractive when she was sleeping.

And not talking.

Especially when she used her talking to argue.

Like last night after the shower, when he refused to yield to her trickery and uncuff her.

He’d tied her to the bed, and then made sure she understood which of them gave the orders by mounting her soft, shapely ass again.

Her sweet, tight sex he’d taken twice in the night.

The way his cock was already stirring over the lusciousness of her scent, today might just start off with a good pounding too.

He couldn’t wait to feel the wet heat of her flesh stretching to accept him. He wanted to feel the exquisite agony of her pussy shivering and squeezing on him.

He hoped she squealed like she had the second time he’d entered her.

Without the water and soap, he’d had to get creative with lubrication and then keep lubricating her to keep him sliding in and out of her as hard or as deep as he liked.

Judging by her cries, he supposed he hadn’t been entirely successful, but she’d done that shaking, shivering, clenching thing at the end, before wilting, spent and replete beneath him.

Coming. He snorted.That was what he got for attempting human sex-talk. The word in his own tongue was better: Uunen . Completion. He’d completed her, as she had done for him.

Now the only thing left for him to do was get her to Corporate and collect his bounty.

His jaw clenched.

It didn’t matter how good she felt, she was still a dangerous being and he needed to get his ship fixed. There were too many dangers in deep space for a crippled ship to survive for long.

The lights suddenly winked on. Not the overhead light, but the running lights along the upper walls. The ship only did that when it sensed the approach of another vessel.

Or when Cory spotted something and needed to waken everyone at once.

They were about to be destroyed.

Bruwes exploded out of bed, jumping over the top of Lissa, startling her out of a dead sleep.

“Thank you for punishing my bottom,” she half-mumbled half-cried, before lifting her sleepy head to look around.

He cut her ankle bonds, freeing her from the spreader bar. “Get up. Get dressed.”

He threw one of his shirts at her, knowing he needed to get to the bridge.

If not for Lissa, he’d have been there already.

And he couldn’t leave her like this, so she’d better come with him.

Cursing himself, he reached to undo her wrist cuffs, but lost his grip when the ship bucked sharply sideways.

Lissa yelped as they were both thrown back over the bed top into the wall he’d been uncomfortably cozy with all night long.

“Oh god, my arm! My arm!”

He scrambled to grab her wrists, hitting the lock to release her just as the ship yawned sharply the other way.

Bruwes grabbed her, wrapping his body around her, throwing out one arm and leg to protect her from his crushing weight right before they slammed into the door.

“What’s happening?” she cried, clinging to him like a mimic-monkey.

“Hopefully, we’re navigating our way through the junk belt and things are just… a little choppy.”

She looked up at him, her eyes huge and round with fear. “If not?”

He shrugged with grim humor, setting her aside just long enough to get his pants on. “Well, it’s space, so most of the other options end with us floating in the void, and I don’t think it’s dignified to do that with my dick out. You want to get dressed or ask some more questions?”

She lunged for the shirt as the ship lurched again, flinging them into the opposite wall.

He tried to spare her the brunt of the impact, but she gave a pain-cry in spite of his efforts.

Before he could see where she’d been hurt, the ship righted itself and the air suddenly got heavy. Both she and Bruwes slid to the floor.

Bruwes sprang up and pulled her to her feet. “Stay behind me,” he ordered, sprinting out the door without looking to see how she obeyed, and almost immediately colliding with two other men running out of the Medibay.

“I’m going to kill your mate,” Bruwes snarked at Demin.

“I don’t know if she does it because she forgets to engage the damn gravity or to remind us she’s just that good,” the Vullum said, falling into step behind them. He gave Lissa an appreciative looking-over, then stuck out his hand.

She looked down at it.

“Vullum,” he introduced himself. “And you are...?”

“Not for you to touch,” Bruwes growled at him, clamping a hand on her shoulder and pulling her along with him to the bridge.

They all crashed into the wall when the ship rolled again, but they didn’t go flying up into the ceiling, so the gravity must be doing something for them.

He allowed himself a moment of optimism—maybe they really were just navigating the junk belt—then smacked the panel lock and let them all onto the bridge. “Status report!” he barked.

“Situation normal and you know how that goes,” Cory replied tensely, all her attention on the controls before her. “It’s funny. Usually when someone’s riding my ass this rough, they’re pulling my hair.”

“There’s a time and a place, woman,” Demin called, sliding into the co-nav chair and buckling in for a hard ride.

Something hit the ship. The metallic clang as it bounced off the hull reverberated through the ship, humming up through his bare feet to resonate in his bones. “What in the ashen hell is that?” he demanded, but he knew.

Cory shook her head in frustrated confusion. “They’re not firing, but they keep trying to harpoon us.”

“They aren’t firing because they wouldn’t dare kill our cargo,” Bruwes snapped.

A flinching movement beside him attracted his eye. Lissa, staring at him with wounded eyes.

Cargo, he’d called her.

He couldn’t think about that now. “Stay back,” he told her, jumping into the gunner’s chair and strapping in. “And stay calm. This will all be over soon.”

One way or another.

Lissa watched Bruwes settle behind his controls, his movements brisk and confident. He showed no fear, not the slightest hesitation or doubt. He was the captain of this ship.

And she was cargo.

Hearing herself referred to so callously by the man who’d just rocked her ovaries was sobering, and it helped put things back into perspective.

She was not his lover and never had been.

She meant exactly one thing to him and that was a jump coil.

And to be fair, without one, they were easy pickings for the pirates whose scorched and battle-scarred ship filled the viewscreen.

A Soldri ship, or it had been once, but it had been broken down and patched together with scrap from so many other vessels that little of its original shape remained.

Her nerves faltered. This will all be over soon, Bruwes had said, but that wasn’t much comfort. Death was as much a possibility as victory.

Bruwes slapped off the safety bar and pulled the weapon’s release lever. The hum of rerouting power lit up the bridge and she felt it when the guns came out. “Turn this bitch around, Cory. I’ve got no problem blowing them back to atoms.”

“Thought you’d never ask,” the human woman in the pilot’s chair replied.

She barely looked at Lissa, though Lissa couldn’t take her eyes off her.

Her dark hair, her obvious humanity, the uniform she wore that matched the rest of the crew?

For the first time, Lissa felt the sting of betrayal.

Bad enough to be abducted by aliens intent on selling her for money, but for another human woman to take part in that with them and against her…

It’s a decision they will regret, and I don’t need guns.

Lissa took a step back into the shadows of the bridge, slipping behind both the doctor and Vullum, and she didn’t even realize she wasn’t in control of her own body until she felt the being inside her stirring.

Its own power was just as reverberating, humming its way through her limbs, making her skin buzz as the alien took control, and no one else on the bridge knew it.

They were too busy concentrating on Cory’s evasive maneuvers and the ship in hot pursuit of them, launching another hooked harpoon in an attempt to drag them in for boarding.

She’d never heard of anyone trying to harpoon a functioning vessel before.

Usually, they were only used by salvagers, to draw in drifting space debris, or by pirates, after they’d peppered the hull and sucked the paste that used to be people out into space.

No sane pirate boarded a manned ship. They’d lose all advantage, being bottlenecked in the airlock where anyone with a concussion grenade and a pocket knife could take them all out.

“They puncture us with that thing, we’re going to hemorrhage air,” the ship’s doctor said in the kind of calm voice that meant high adrenaline. “Possibly faster than we can get into suits, and definitely faster than we can patch it.”