Corsairs: Adiron: Corsair Brothers Book 1

by Dixon, Ruby

  But Lord Straik has it on his. The alcoholic properties only truly affect humans. To me, it's just juice.

  I'm hoping it gets Jade to open up a little, though. And if she talks to her shoe for a few hours, okay, that will be fun, too. She'll probably be mad at me when she sobers up, but as I watch her drain the cup of juice, I figure it's just payback for drugging me, and I scratch at my chest again.

  "That's delicious," she tells me, setting down her drained cup. "Can I have another?"

  "Hell yeah." I nudge my fruit toward her. "You can eat that, too."

  She does, tearing into my stone fruit before I even get up to snag her refill. There's truth in her actions, from what I can tell. She hasn't been around enough mesakkah to know sweetjuice will knock her on her ass. She doesn't know how to eat common fruits, which tells me that the food system on the Star is either cleaned out or supplied with cheap stuff.

  And for all her initial skepticism, Jade is trusting. She's eaten and drunk what I've placed in front of her with a trusting eagerness that makes my chest ache. For all that they tried to rob us, these humans aren't hardened criminals.

  I can't wait to get some answers. I put the refill of sweetjuice in front of Jade and wink at her. "Bottoms up."

  17

  JADE

  It takes a few minutes for me to realize that this juice has a hell of a punch.

  It takes a few more before I realize I'm completely drunk. Oh fuck.

  I stare down at the empty tumbler in my hands. It's the second one I've sucked down, and I should have realized there was a catch. It's just…Adiron was so casual about the fruit, and it's been so long since I've had anything but protein bars or those goddamned noodles that I got excited. Juice sounded like manna from the heavens. Juice is so benign, too. It's just…juice.

  Apparently not.

  I blink up at my captor, and he's grinning at me. "Did you drug me?" I ask, and my words come out wobbly. Silly words.

  "No. That particular juice just packs a real punch for humans. My sister's human, you know."

  I just blink at him. He's really pretty. Real pretty. Those eyes are playful and kind, both. And he fed me. I like a man that knows to feed a woman, even if he is the enemy.

  Oh, right. He's the enemy. I consider that for a moment and then lick the rim of my glass, because I really want more juice even though I know I shouldn't.

  "Still thirsty?"

  I push my glass toward him. It nearly skids off the table, but he catches it. "Fill ’er up, bartender."

  Adiron chuckles. He gets up and heads to the food and drink dispenser, and as he does, I look around the room. Ooh, there's a door. I should find the others. Tell them not to drink the juice, no matter what. It's delicious but it makes your head wobbly. So wobbly. I stand up and stagger toward the door. My legs don't work quite right—it's like they're made of noodles—and I run into a table. And a chair. And then another table.

  I giggle, because how do all these tables keep getting in front of the door? It's like there's an obstacle course in here and at the other end are my friends. Well, I've watched TV shows. I know how you handle an obstacle course.

  So I start climbing on the table in front of me, crawling over the top.

  "Hang on, now," Adiron says, and he sounds amused. Big arms haul me off the table and carry me back to my original seat. I try to get up again, and Adiron grabs me by the waist, this time dragging me toward him.

  Fine, if he wants me to sit, I'll sit right on him. I drop down on his leg. "Boom."

  Instead of grimacing at my weight, he just chuckles again, and his arms tighten around my waist. "If you want to sit on me, I'll allow that."

  "Hmph." I wiggle, trying to get comfortable, but his thigh has plating on it underneath his clothes. After a few moments of shifting, I find a decent spot and lean against his chest. He's big and actually pretty comfortable to lean against, and I sigh. "I'm tired."

  "I bet." He strokes my back, and gosh, that feels good. "You've had a big day."

  "I need to tell the others not to drink the juice," I mumble. "It's tricky."

  He keeps rubbing my back. "I'll tell them."

  That sounds like a good idea. I'm too out of it to walk around. I feel all light and drifty, like I'm going to lift right off of his lap. I put his hands tighter on my waist. "Hold me down. So I don't float away."

  "I will," he promises, and grips the waistband of my skirt underneath my borrowed shirt. "Better?"

  I nod, curling up against him. "Don't wanna fall."

  "I'd never let you fall, Jade," he murmurs. "You feeling all right?"

  "You got me drunk," I point out, feeling loose and kinda awesome despite the fact that I know I should be angry. How long has it been since I've been drunk? Too long. I've been stuck on a boring ship for forever. Being drunk is kinda…fun. I glance up at him and poke his nose. "You look funny."

  "You mean sexy," he corrects. "I look sexy. In fact, it blows your mind how sexy I am."

  I snort. "I'm not that drunk."

  His chest shakes and I realize he's laughing. I cling to him so I don't fall off of his lap—or the world—and wonder where my friends are. Are they being snuggled? Because being snuggled is pretty nice. I burrow in close to him again, pressing my face against his neck. His neck smells nice. His skin is soft, too. Like a kitten. "A great big kitten," I announce. "Meow for me, kitty."

  "What?" He sounds confused.

  I stroke his neck. "Maybe purr instead? Prrrrr." I roll my tongue. "Prrrrrr, kitty."

  "You're a cuddly drunk, aren't you?"

  "Mmm, I feel good." I press my nose against his neck. "And you're warm."

  "It's because you're not wearing more than a few scraps." He tugs his tunic over my breasts, making sure everything is covered. "Is that all you really have to wear or is that just part of your plan?"

  I sniff him again, trying to figure out what he smells like. Sunshine, maybe. Does sunshine have a smell? He smells happy, I decide. Kinda musky and warm and just a hint of fruit. "Can I lick you?" I ask, reaching up to touch his face.

  "No licking, Jade," Adiron tells me in a firm, parental voice. "You don't get to do anything you'll regret once this wears off."

  I whine in my throat and then go back to snuggling against his chest. "Meanie."

  He pokes my side. I push his hand away. He pokes me again.

  I slap at him. "Stop it."

  "Are you gonna answer me?"

  I try to think, but my mind is fuzzy. "Did you ask me something?"

  "Yeah. Do you really not have any other clothes?"

  Oh. I yawn and smack my lips, wondering if I can get more fruit out of him. Or another cup of juice. I'm already drunk, right? What's the harm in a little more? "Aliens like human titties. Might as well use ’em as a distraction." I grab one of my tits and jiggle it. "So we can rob ’em."

  "That's what I thought. And…you were gonna rob us?"

  "Yeah." I sigh heavily, thinking about all that new food we aren't going to get. "Running low on noodles. Fucking noodles."

  "Fucking noodles," he agrees, sounding amused.

  "And we need air filters. Can't drive the ship, so we steal from people that show up to rob us."

  "And you kill them?"

  "No. We don't kill anyone. We drug ’em and tie ’em up. Put them back on their ship and push it away from ours and we turn off the distress signal so they can't find us again. We go quiet. Real, real quiet." I put my finger to his lips. "Shhh."

  "That's good to know—"

  "Shhh," I say again, pressing harder on his lips. "I said quiet."

  Instead of being quiet, he licks my finger.

  I squeal, pulling my hand away, and he grins like the naughty boy he is.

  "So you rob everyone. Have you robbed a lot?" he asks.

  "Four," I say, wiping my finger on my borrowed shirt. "But they all were gross. They tried to touch us. No one wants to be our friends. They just want to touch our titties."

  "If the
y tried to touch your titties, they weren't your friends," he says solemnly.

  "Exactly!" I smack my lips. "Can I have more juice?"

  "Mmmm, I'm not sure that's a good idea. Maybe if you're real good and answer my questions?"

  I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to, but my mouth is so, so dry and it's hard to think straight. I cling to his new shirt—because he found a new one somewhere, it seems—and poke his puffy face. "I'll kiss you if you get me more juice. Even when you're all ugly and bloated."

  "As opposed to ugly and unbloated?"

  "You're not ugly," I reassure him. I even stroke his cheek a little, just to make him feel better. "You're just alien. I'm sure you're very handsome for a battle-smurf."

  His mouth twitches. "Why don't you tell me more about your plan? You were going to steal our food?"

  "And your filters," I point out. "And then we'd push you back into space." I make a whooshing movement with my hand. "And then you'd go away and we'd stay on our ship, forever and ever, eating noodles and waiting and guarding."

  "Guarding?" He asks. "Guarding what?"

  I lean in close. "The others," I whisper conspiratorially.

  "What others?"

  "The humans that were left behind, of course." I roll my eyes at him. "Can I have my juice now?"

  He stiffens under me. "What other humans? How many?"

  "One hundred and thirty-two," I tell him, turning in his lap. I pick up my cup and since he's not filling it, I lick the edges again. So sweet and cool. I definitely want more.

  "One hundred and thirty-two what, Jade?" Adiron steers me back onto his lap, turning me so I have to look at him.

  Is he drunk, too? How is he not understanding what I'm saying? I sigh in frustration and talk slowly so he gets it. "One hundred and thirty-two others in pods," I tell him. "I counted them all."

  He stares at me and then rubs his jaw. "Kef me."

  I push the tumbler against his mouth, squishing his lips. "Not until I get more juice."

  18

  ADIRON

  "Boys, we've got a problem," I announce as I rejoin the others in Lord Straik's private chambers.

  Kaspar is sprawled in a chair in front of Straik's desk, the lord himself is behind it, and Mathiras paces near the maps. They all look up as I enter in dramatic fashion, being me. Mathiras immediately looks behind me, a hint of a frown on his face. "Before you get started, did you take your prisoner back to the cell?"

  "Nah," I say. "She's in my bed."

  Lord Straik jumps to his feet, shocked. "WHAT?"

  "Calm yourself." I move to the chair next to Kaspar and flop down, tired. Man, it has been a DAY. "She's drunk as hell and kinda grabby, so I'm letting her sleep things off."

  "You got her drunk?" Straik looks disgruntled. "This is highly inappropriate—"

  "No, it really wasn't," I point out. It could have been. Oh man, could it have been. I gave Jade another cup of sweetjuice after she opened up and two-cup Jade is a clingy little thing. Three-cup Jade is an absolute horndog, as Zoey would say. I kept having to pull her hands off of me, because I know all about drunken regrets, and that's the last thing I want Jade to have. "I got her drunk so she'd open up, and now she's sleeping it off."

  And I scratch at my chest.

  Straik stares at me with a puzzled look. "Are you allergic to humans?"

  Kaspar snorts. "He's allergic to doing what he's told."

  "Meds reaction," Mathiras points out. He leans on the desk, arms crossed, tail swishing. "So she opened up while she was drunk?"

  "Oh yeah." I pause, scratching. "You guys didn't get yours drunk?" I look over at the three of them. "Maybe you should tell me your news before I tell you mine."

  Straik settles back in his chair, looking as sulky as ever. "I have no news. The black-haired one screamed and kicked the entire time. I did learn a few new curse words, but nothing of use. She wouldn't tell me anything."

  Kaspar leans forward. "I'm useless, too. The yellow-haired one? Alice? She talked, all right. She talked my ear off. But I'm pretty sure she lied about everything. She's a good storyteller but I absolutely can't buy a thing she said. It's clear she was saying whatever she thought I wanted to hear." He sounds utterly disgruntled.

  Mathiras runs a hand down his face. "That's better than what I got. Mine cried the entire time."

  "The qura'aki?" Straik asks.

  Mathiras nods. "I got some information out of her, but she made me feel like an absolute monster the entire time."

  "But you did get information out of her?" I prompt. "What'd she say?" I'm suddenly very curious how much it lines up with what Jade told me. Maybe two-cup Jade is a liar as well as a clinger. It's a possibility I didn't consider.

  "I got some. Helen isn't good with names, though. Everyone she talked about had names like 'the Angry Face one' or 'the Smelly Breath one.'" He grimaces. "They woke up the three humans after the first mutiny, from what I understand."

  "A mutiny?" Straik jumps to his feet again.

  "The first one," Mathiras emphasizes. "It gets messier." When Straik sits down again, he continues. "From what I can make out, Helen was told by the others that the girls were pulled out of stasis so they could amuse the crew."

  I suddenly find it hard to breathe for all the rage flaring through my system. I clench the arms of the chair, all casualness gone from my body. I know what happens to human slaves. I know what they're kidnapped for. It makes me sick—and furious—to think that Jade, MY Jade, has been abused by someone. I want to snap necks. I want to tear out throats. I want to punch faces. A lot of keffing faces.

  "Barbaric," Straik mutters. "I can't believe that happened on my ship."

  "Why did your ship have slaves in the first place?" Kaspar retorts, and Straik is silent. Something tells me he doesn't know the answer to that, either.

  "According to Helen," Mathiras continues, "Stinkfoot was in charge of the mutiny. He had her taken out of stasis because he was curious about a slave like her, but he didn't tell her she was a clone. Just mentioning that sends her off into fresh tears." His nostrils flare and his tail flicks, agitated. My big brother is very protective, and I can tell it bothers him that Helen cries…or that Helen was abused. Probably both. "But from what I can gather, they didn't touch her because she's worth more on the slave market whole."

  "You mean a virgin," Kaspar says grimly.

  "Yeah." Mathiras pauses, and I know we're all thinking of our little sister, Zoey. Zoey, who we protected like crazy, because a pretty human virgin goes for a shit ton of credits on the black market. Her new mate better be watching over her, or he's going to have us to answer to.

  "So they abused the three and left the qura'aki untouched," Straik prompts. "That doesn't tell us what happened to the crew. Did the humans kill them?"

  "From what I understand from Helen, there was a big argument and a lot of screaming. Stinkfoot was killed, and the crew was divided. One group snuck out in the middle of the night with about twenty stasis pods—"

  "Twenty more keffing pods?" Straik interrupts. "How many keffing slaves did my keffing family ship have on it?"

  Oh boy. His day is about to get SO much worse. I sit up, a little excited for my turn to share.

  "Yeah, well, the crew that was left ended up being two males. From what I understand, they were nice enough to the females but skittish that the others would return. They took a pod and left the females behind because they didn't want to be caught dealing slaves."

  I make an angry noise in my throat. "So they just left them behind?"

  "It would seem so. That was three years ago and no one's ever returned for them, mutineers or otherwise." Mathiras shakes his head. "Three years, stranded in space on a ship you don't know how to run. I can't imagine."

  "They don't know how to run the ship?" Kaspar asks, surprised. "They sure were quick to gas us."

  "They did have three years to figure this shit out," I point out. "So basically, Straik's crew was shit, they played with their toys, fought wi
th each other, and left them behind. Do I have it summed up?"

  Straik makes an angry noise in his throat.

  Mathiras raises a hand. "I don't think they were Straik's crew. The only men Helen remembers seeing were 'ugly' and 'skinned like a tarsi fruit'."

  "Szzt," I say, thinking of the bright orange, rubbery-rinded fruit. It's a pretty good comparison. I also wonder if Jade likes tarsi fruit. She must have had them at some point for the qura'aki to know what they are. I make a mental note to bring her some when she wakes up, just so I can see her reaction.

  "I would never hire szzt," Lord Straik says in his most indignant, stuffy voice. "They are absolutely not trustworthy."

  "So your ship was probably stolen long before the girls got woken up," Kaspar concludes.

  Mathiras nods. "I think so. I'm no longer angry at them for trying to kill you idiots. They're just doing what they have to do to survive. I'm actually surprised they managed to last this long."

  I'm sadder that they're not around for me to kick the shit out of. Bunch of slaving szzt…or just pirating szzt. It's entirely possible that Straik's crew hired some szzt for shady work on the down-low—like, say, helping move slaves—and the hired crew turned on them to steal the profit. It happens a lot. "Well it's obvious we can't leave them behind," I say to my brothers. "They're our responsibility now."

  Kaspar nods.

  Mathiras has a grim look of displeasure on his face, but he nods, too. "We can't leave them. No one knows how long that ship's air filters are going to keep working without proper maintenance. And Helen said they'd eaten all their food except for a little bit of noodles. If we leave them, we're condemning them to certain death. We have to take them—and the Star—back with us." Mathiras continues to flick his tail, thoughtful. "And I hate to say it, but we probably need to approach the authorities."