Page 25 of The Captain’s Bounty (The Collectors #2)

Bruwes looked at her, then jerked around in his chair to stare straight at Lissa.

Her mouth opened and the alien being within said, deadpan, “Oops.”

I think I love you.

Ugh. I mean, thank you… for your words of esteem. I, too, have come to regard you with significantly less disgust. Significantly.

Which was as close to a return of affections as she could expect from that one. What she didn’t expect was the crippling hunger that hit her as the being relinquished its control over her body, doubling her over with a pained gasp, before dropping her to her knees on the floor grates.

She didn’t particularly love the way Bruwes’s face darkened into a glare, either. But, frankly, one life-endangering emergency at a time.

“Do you want the good news or the bad?” Kelys asked, popping his head up out of the hole they’d made when they’d removed the floor grate in the bridge to figure out how bad the damage to his control console actually was.

Bruwes hated the answer already. “Good.”

“I found the problem. Should take about three hours to fix it.”

That wasn’t terrible. In the meantime, however, they were drifting, targets for anyone who might happen along.

He hated to ask, but knowledge was power, especially in vulnerable situations. “And the bad?”

“We need to stop breathing now. We only have life support for two.”

He swore.

“That’s what I said, but don’t say it again. It uses too much air.” Picking a set of tools from the selection on the floor around his access hole, the tech engineer disappeared back under the floor.

Shoving off his knees, Bruwes stalked out the door. When he got his hands on Lissa…

He almost collided with Demin, on his way back to the bridge. The doctor was rolling up his sleeves with the hand not carrying a tablet.

“Where did you put her?”

“In your room like you told me. How bad is it?”

“Kesly is going to need help,” Bruwes bit out.

“That’s why I came back. If nothing else,” the doctor held up the tablet. “I can read to him from the manual.”

“Try not to breathe, too.”

Demin stepped out of his way. “For how long?”

“Two hours.”

“Ah. Lovely.”

Bruwes kept walking, the corridor floor grates uncomfortable under his bare feet.

With every step, he just got angrier, and when he finally arrived at his quarters, he hit the panel lock on his door before its refusal to open reminded him in yet another way, how badly she’d hobbled them.

Having to muscle it open before he could get at her hiked his temper that much higher.

She was sitting on the side of the bed, her hands in her lap, looking like a child playing dress-up in his uniform shirt.

It irritated him. He hadn’t given her that permission.

It irritated him more that she looked so damned tempting in it.

A petulant siren just waiting for him to come rip it off her. His hands itched to do just that.

Right after he strangled her.

One less person to breathe their rapidly dwindling air supply.

“What were you thinking?” he demanded.

She looked up from her hands, her gaze cool though not as cold as right after she’d destroyed their ship… or the Soldri’s. “Does cargo have a right to think?”

She glared at him.

That felt like a trick question, but he wasn’t inclined to inspect it further just now.

“You should be grateful,” she said, not giving him time to answer. “I just saved all of you from becoming cargo too.”

“He was lying. We have done nothing?—”

She looked at him, a spark of anger igniting in her eyes and the corner of her mouth flattening. Both her expression and what he’d just caught himself about to say bothered him.

“Nothing wrong?” she finished for him. “Since when did that mean anything?”

He stared at her. Demin had left her unbound.

Not that bindings of any kind had proven effective thus far.

Not that she’d tried to escape after Demin left.

Not that she had anywhere to go or any feasible way to escape the ship, even if it was working.

Perhaps she knew that, perhaps not. Either way, it gave him pause.

Her stomach growled, an empty, angry sound that matched the chill in her eyes. She looked away, one hand pressed to the trimness of her waist, pretty much killing every trace of his anger.

“Come with me.” He turned away too. It was easier to hide his annoyance this way, and he didn’t want her to see it if his face betrayed the discomfort with which he’d just glimpsed her situation.

That was the first thing she had said when he’d captured her.

That she was innocent. That she hadn’t done anything wrong.

He’d said he didn’t care. Normally, he didn’t. She wasn’t his first bounty and they all protested innocence.

He’d said it himself, point in fact.

And for the most part that was true. Since his banishment for not murdering their cargo of kidnapped Product, he and his crew had done their best to survive on their own within the confines of universal law.

But prior to that, he had partaken in how many abductions, from how many alien vessels that he’d then destroyed to cover their tracks?

Why would the Soldri say he and his crew all had bounties on their heads if it wasn’t true? The universe was full of liars, and yet that train of logic wasn’t sitting right with Bruwes.

Had Me’Kava’s treachery been discovered by its interstellar neighbors, or had his homeworld instead risked their own exposure by putting out contracts on the only collectors to turn on them. He supposed he’d been stupid to think his father and the counsellors would simply let them leave.

They were all now loose ends. Risky loose ends that would have to be tied up.

If the Council thought a bunch of hormonally-challenged humans were bad to bring home to the planet, try countless numbers of space pirates who were used to defying anyone who tried to inflict their authority upon them.

Also, he’d called her cargo to the Soldri. She might have found that insulting.

Probably because it was.

He turned back to her. “I am sorry,” he haltingly said.

He couldn’t offhand remember the last time he’d apologized to someone.

Certainly, it wasn’t while aboard this ship.

Quite possibly he never had, apart from childhood pleas said at any given moment to reduce his temperamental father’s many irritations.

“What I said on the bridge was not said in any conscious intent on… diminishing you.”

“Just an unconscious one,” she said, not softening.

To be fair,he didn’t think he would soften for such a lame excuse as that.

“Come,” he said instead. “I will feed you.”

He started to walk out, but she didn’t follow.

If she thought he was going to beg…

Jaw clenching, he came back far enough to see her through the half open heavy-ass door. “Lissa….”

“I can’t, “ she said.

He tipped his head. “Can’t or won’t?”

Because if it was the latter, he didn’t feel anywhere near badly enough about his comment to see if her obedience wouldn’t be improved by a collar and leash, and making her crawl at his feet all the way to the kitchen.

He’d bet her little bare ass would peep out from under the hem of his shirt every step of the way.

She glared as if she could read his thoughts, then looked at her lap and finally huffed a frustrated breath. “I can’t. My legs are shaking. I don’t think they’ll hold me.”

His stomach dropped. That startled him almost as much as her announcement about her legs, and then, just as surprisingly, at how quickly he found himself across the threshold and at her bedside.

“Are you injured?” He was already assessing her. No blood that he could see. Her wrists were raw and discolored from injuries the bactalplast gel hadn’t fully healed, which was why it was always better to soak in the stuff instead of smearing it on.

He didn’t see her burned and blistering fingertips until she tried to wave off his concern.

“I’m fine.” Already the coldness was leeching from her voice, leaving her sounding depressed instead.

He’d think about that later. For now, her burns had his whole attention. He caught her hand, but she immediately made a fist so he couldn’t see.

He glared at her. “Show me.”

“No.” She tugged, but he wasn’t about to relinquish her hand.

“Now, woman.”

Her mouth flattened again, and she glared too, at his hand. As if she wasn’t quite brave enough to cast that look directly into his reddening eyes.

“Now!” he barked.

She huffed. She also unfurled the fingers of her other hand, all but shoving them at his face as she waved in a petulant version of the obedience he required, and which she wasn’t inclined to give. He could see how badly her hand trembled as she did it, too.

“There. Happy?”

Not by a long shot.

She needed discipline, she needed healing, and she needed feeding, but not in that order.

Releasing her wrist, he yanked her onto her feet. Her only protest was the slight catch in her breath as he lifted her off the bed, hupping her more securely into his arms before carrying her from the room.

Demin was on the bridge, possibly even under it as he worked with Kelys to get the electrical systems back online. That was too important to disturb, not even for Lissa’s blistering, swollen fingers.

He’d never had to be anyone’s nursemaid before, but then he hadn’t been a captain before either until the Reformers and his father decided he should be.

He took her to Medibay, set her on Demin’s examining table and did exactly what he’d done from the first day he’d set foot on this damn ship: he found the doctor’s manual and looked up how to treat her.

She winced when he put her hands to soak in a small bowl of bactalplast. It had to be a relief, though. The tension fled from her shoulders almost immediately. She even closed her eyes, but only for a moment.