Annie got her boots off in record time but her dress proved to be more difficult. It had taken two of the assigned guard to get her into it and do up all the little buttons on the back and tie the various laces. She cursed as she fumbled with the fabric, trying and failing to get it even a little looser.
“Allow me,” Leo said from behind her, followed by the familiar snik of a traditional metal knife snapping open. There was a tearing sound, and suddenly the dress was a lot looser. Annie crossed her arms over her chest before the fabric fell away completely. She turned to Leo and raised an eyebrow.
“You’re clearly had practice with that,” she said.
Leo shrugged. “I’m a dashing and devastatingly handsome smuggler. A little roughness adds the edge the kind of women who come after me are looking for.”
Annie uncrossed her arms, letting the dress fall away, and reached for the shirt. She didn’t miss the way Leo’s eyes ran over her body as she tugged it over her head.
“I won’t lie, in any other situation it’d work for me,” she told him as she adjusted the soft blue fabric. The shirt was long enough on her that she really didn’t need pants, but she tugged them on anyways. The material dwarfed her, making her feel like she was playing dress-up. From the amused glint in Leo’s eyes, he agreed.
“In that case, I’ll wait for any other situation to pop up and try again,” he said and winked. The gesture came across more humorous than seductive and Annie laughed.
She was slowly, to her surprise, relaxing. Hours ago she had thought even her best case scenario to be hopeless but now she was on a ship with men who could become bears. Suddenly, the impossible seemed very possible.
“So, bear shifters?” she said with a small smile. “I gotta admit, I’ve met a lot of strange folks, but I’ve never met one of your lot before. I thought you all had fancy security gigs, shit like that.”
“First of all, we have about the same genetic frequency as redheads, so I wouldn’t say for sure you’ve never met one of us before,” Leo said. “And obviously some of us took the low road. I tried private security for a while. It got old fast.”
“I see. And the others? All shifters?”
Leo opened his mouth to respond when a beep came from the intercom.
“Captain, letting you know we’ve broken atmo. Custer and Hyde went back to the cargo hold to secure the loose crates. Will let you know if anything else develops,” Rick said.
Leo walked over and pressed a button.
“Thank you, Rick, I appreciate it.”
He released the button and walked back towards Annie and sat on the corner of the bed.
“Sorry about that. To answer your question, yes, everyone on this crew is a bear shifter,” he told her.
Annie drew her knees to her chest.
“Can you tell me about them?” she asked. “Not anything secret, obviously, but I’m curious about who does what. You have a small crew.”
Leo nodded. “Bare bones, that’s us. We need to take on some more crew, but with our… peculiarities and our work, that’s not easy. We’d have to let anyone we hired in on our secret, and there’s a lot of money to be made in selling shifters and splices. Anyone good enough at smuggling to be hired here would be the type to jump at the opportunity.”
He sighed, chewing at his lip. “Where to start… Rick is the obvious place. He’s my second in command and the other main pilot.”
“Main pilot?” Annie asked.
“Everyone in the crew can pilot this bird by necessity,” Leo told her, “but Rick and I are the ‘official’ pilots. He’s a good man. Quiet, smart. Stubborn as all hell once he takes a stand on something, but a good friend and a good pilot. His parents were in the smuggling game so he knows what he’s doing. Both his legs are prosthetics so if you hear him hissing when he moves, don’t worry, that’s perfectly normal. Out of everyone else on this crew, he’s the one you should worry about the least.”
“I’ll admit, I’m not thrilled at the implication that I need to worry about anyone here,” Annie said.
Leo chuckled. “You can relax. They won’t do anything to you as long as they know I’m against it, but they won’t be nice. Something tells me you can handle that, though. Next is Custer. Blond, prosthetic hand. Which, by the way, is the one that he masturbates with.”
Annie blinked. “I… see.”
“I could give you a detailed record of Custer’s varied failings,” Leo explained somewhat apologetically, “but honestly that’s the fastest way to give you a general picture of what he’s like. Other than his somewhat sadistic and maniacal tendencies, he’s a spectacular fighter and something of a jack-of-all-trades. He has basic knowledge of everyone’s jobs and goes where he’s needed.”
“He sounds lovely,” Annie said.
“You get used to him,” the captain said, shrugging. “He’s a basket case, but he’s loyal and a hard worker. Next are Hyde Jones and Dominic Banner. They’re closer to each other than the rest of the crew, but again, loyal and hard-working. Hyde’s the one with the eyepatch. He works our communications array and deals with whatever programming we need to keep the ship’s computer. He’s a sarcastic shit, but he’ll only get hostile if you pose a danger to the crew. Dom is our engineer. He’s blunt, and with any luck you’ll never see him shift. Actually, try not to ask him about shifting at all.”
“Why?” Annie asked, intrigued.
“Dom is a carrier for the DAI-O gene. It’s a gene specific to shifters,” Leo said as his smile dropped and a solemnness settles over his features. “It’s also called the ‘Berserker gene,’ which should give you a pretty good idea of what it does. The specific mutation of the gene that he has leads to Rogerson disorder, which, long story short, means once he shifts it’s extremely likely he won’t be able to control himself. Obviously, having an angry, feral bear on your hands is not an ideal situation, so for the most part Dom doesn’t shift.”
“Is that common? Among shifters, I mean?” Annie asked, unsure how to feel about this new disease.
“In bear shifters, there’s one in eight thousand who have it. I know that sounds like a lot, but remember, there’s not a ton of us to start out with and we’re spread out. And that’s just the stats for bears born with the mutation. Carriers generally don’t live as long as the rest of us for a variety of reasons,” Leo said soothingly.
“Okay, so, your crew is made up of one decent man who knows what he’s doing, a man who probably has kinks that most of the population would consider cruel and unusual punishment, a sarcastic coder who almost definitely hates me, and the smallest, angriest shifter of them all,” she said just to make sure she had all her information right.
“You’re forgetting Leo Ingram, the suave, sexy captain,” Leo told her, waggling his eyebrows.
“How could I possibly neglect my savior like that?” Annie responded, letting the sarcasm gained over a lifetime of pouring drinks for some of the galaxy’s worst and dullest color her tone.
“Very impolite of you,” the captain said with a wicked grin. “But you seem to have acknowledged your mistake, so I’m willing to treat you to some of our five-star space safe cuisine in the kitchen, if you’re hungry.”
“Starving,” Annie said, standing. The captain walked to the door and pressed the door to open it, then held and arm out to her. She crossed over to him, kicking her dress aside as she passed it, and put her arm in his.
He cleared his throat as he led her out into the hallway.
“You know, if you need to talk to someone about today,” he said a bit awkwardly, “Rick’s good with that sort of thing. I mean, I’ll listen if you want, but I’ve been reliably informed I’m not the best person to talk to about trauma.”
Annie shrugged. “It’d be pretty hypocritical of me to start screaming and crying because you killed those guards, seeing as I spaced seven of them on my way out.”
Leo started. “Hold up, you said you drugged the guards.”
“I drugged my personal guards,” Annie expla
ined. “I set the countdown on the bay door opening low when I stole the Needle and the guards who came to stop me from escaping left the ship the same time I did, only no ship.”
“Huh,” the captain said after a moment. “I mean, if you want to talk about that—”
“I don’t,” Annie cut him off. “I feel terrible about killing them, and I wish I hadn’t been in a position where I had to. But these were people who woke up every day and loyally served a monster, and worse, they were content to let me be a sacrifice to him. I am not a cruel person by nature, Captain Ingram, but I will not let people take advantage of me without my consent.”
“Without your consent?” Leo asked.
“My father is an alcoholic, which is how I ended up in this mess in the first place,” Annie said. “He lied to me, he took the money I gave him for food and bought more alcohol, and he stole from me. I knew about it, and I kept letting him do it because once upon a time he was the best father in the world. Unfortunately, it appears that letting his behavior continue is only ever going to hurt me.”
Her voice was cold, as was she. She felt her muscles tighten the way they did when the temperature dropped, but instead of shivering she was perfectly still. Her mind felt far away as she locked down on the white-hot blaze of betrayal and rage she’d felt for her father ever since he’d told her what he’d done. Being out of danger for five minutes didn’t mean she wanted to start having emotional breakdowns right and left.
Leo stopped walking.
“Hey, now,” he said. “It’s not a mistake to be kind, and it’s not naïve to think that parents shouldn’t hurt us and take advantage of us. That’s normal. Well, maybe not so much in this line of work, but you know what I mean.”
He dropped his arm and grabbed her hands, smiling at her. Annie was suddenly aware that the man in front of her had kind eyes, a warm smile, and broad shoulders and her heart leapt even as her mind scoffed at the irony.
“Thanks,” she said, forcing a small smile. “Now, you said something about food?”
He put an arm around her shoulder and started walking down the hallway. She leaned into him and let his warmth soak into her. Her anger at her father was a thing decades in the making and wouldn’t be undone just because someone, even someone as gorgeous as Leo, smiled at her and told her it would be okay, but knowing that someone was on her side was comforting.
The kitchen was surprisingly spacious, with counters along the walls and a large table with five chairs scattered around it in the middle. Leo walked over to one cabinet and took out two packets and two bowls. He put a glass pot under one machine and pressed a button. The machine whirred to life and soon steaming water was filling the pot.
“Noodles okay with you?” Leo asked as he ripped the packets open.
“Sounds perfect,” she answered.
She looked around as Leo prepared the food. Again, the space was clean and, other than the chairs, orderly. She would have expected something messier from five men living together and working as smugglers. With that said, smuggling required a certain level of organization, so maybe it wasn’t so surprising after all.
Leo set the steaming bowls of thick noodles in some kind of broth onto the table and motioned for her to sit. As they settled down to eat Annie realized something.
“You never answered my question,” she said, fiddling with her fork.
Leo swallowed the noodles in his mouth. “Hmm? Which question?”
“Why are you really doing this?” Annie asked. “I asked on the beach but we got somewhat distracted what with all the murdering.”
He looked at her thoughtfully. “Because you are very pretty, and very interesting. I’m a smuggler captain. I need to be able to assess wares and make hiring decisions. That’s my job, deciding who and what is and is not valuable. And you are clearly very valuable.”
“Even without diamonds covering my tits?” Annie teased, something in her belly warming in a way that had nothing to do with the hot meal.
Leo laughed, clear and loud. “Even then.”
“Captain,” Rick’s voice floated down from an intercom, slicing through the light-hearted moment, “I said I’d contact you if anything happened and, well, something happened. Strathmore’s hailing us. Get to the cockpit as soon as you can.”
Just like that, the air turned to ice. Annie struggled to breathe, cursing her own stupidity as her thoughts faded into a panicked white noise. Why had she thought she could outrun something like Strathmore? Why had she thought he wouldn’t focus on retaliation?
“Hey, hey, hey, Annie, it’s going to be fine,” Leo said as he pushed away from the table and walked around the table to kneel in front of her.
“Of course it’s not fine,” Annie spat back. “He’s going to catch us and he’s going to kill me, and then he’s going to kill all of you for helping me.”
She tried to stand and discovered that her knees had turned to paste. Leo shot up to catch her as she toppled forward, wrapping his arms around her. Clutching at his shirt, she pressed against his chest and tried in vain to take comfort in him.
“I should never have gotten on this ship,” she whispered.
Leo shushed her. “Don’t say that. You’re exactly where you’re meant to be.”
“How would you know?” she demanded.
“Because you being here feels right to me, and I’m hoping it’s the same for you,” Leo answered.
Annie looked up at him. “I’ve known you for less than a day, I can’t… I’m not…” She broke off and shook her head, frustrated.
“There are worse things to do than fall in love at first sight with the girl who jilted a warlord,” Leo teased with a gentle smile.
Annie snorted. “You didn’t fall in love with me at first sight. You’re not that kind of guy.”
“Maybe not,” Leo said. “But I did see you and realize you would be incredibly important to me if I let you. You crashed out of that damn forest in a torn up wedding dress and combat boots and I just thought ‘of course, this makes perfect sense.’”
“Is my incredible importance in your life getting you killed?” Annie asked.
“I’m willing to take that chance. I’ve always been a sucker for redheads,” Leo answered.
Annie looked at the man in front of her. It made sense that she was attracted to him; he was beautiful. But she refused to be the kind of girl to fall head over heels for someone without knowing them. Still, he was offering to risk his life for her and that was hardly nothing. She leaned up and slowly, gently, pressed her mouth to his.
“What was that for?” Leo asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I’m not sure, exactly,” Annie answered, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice. “I guess we’ll have to find out.”
“Have I mentioned I’m a huge fan of hands-on research?” Leo asked and pressed his mouth to hers. He was every bit as gentle as she had been but not as chaste. Running his thumb softly over her hip bone, he pressed his tongue to the seam of her lip. Annie let go of his shirt and wrapped her arms around his neck and opened her mouth to him.
The kiss was the kind of thing she stopped herself from imagining during quick hook-ups with men she never saw again. It was intimate and slow, the kind of kiss that promised all the time in the world. Annie thought her heart might stop. There were, she supposed, worse ways to go.
“Leo, I—oh, Christ, really?”
Leo and Annie jerked apart to see Rick scowling at them.
“I thought the intercoms were down,” the brunette said, “so I came to find you so we could deal with this situation we’re in. Of course, if you feel that going at it like teenagers is more impending than out impending doom, by all means go ahead.”
Clay (BBW Secret Baby Bear Shifter Romance) (Secret Baby Bears Book 4) Page 29
