I was wrapped in Wes’ arms, still in the control room, and the way my body ached told me I’d been there for a while.
“I think she’s okay,” he whispered to someone.
Dane’s voice answered. “Give me a second with this. She won’t feel a thing. It’ll tell me if her shoulder is injured.” A small buzz sounded. “You do realize I’ve been searching for her for hours. I even looked under things in the supply room.”
“I wasn’t exactly hiding her. I’ve been right here.” He rubbed my back, kissing my head. “You could have come looking.”
“She never wants anything to do with the control room.”
Wes shifted slightly. “Correction. She didn’t want anything to do with the control room. This is a new day for Melissa. She likes things she didn’t used to.”
There was a pause in their whispered conversation. “It’s just bruised.”
Some more time passed, and they quit talking. I drifted somewhere between awake and asleep until a cold blast hit my shoulder, and I jerked upward.
The room seemed too bright and Wes held me steady. “Hey, it’s okay.”
“It’s just ice.” Nolan’s voice came from over my head, and I twisted to look at him. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I would never, not on purpose.”
I swallowed, trying to find my voice. “I know that.”
And I actually did.
* * * *
When I’d been out cold on Wes’ way-too-comfortable lap, our three guests had left and we’d moved on, heading on a course to the ship Wes found that he wanted to pilfer for supplies and for resale. The guys were all moving fast, each one of them aware of what they were supposed to do in this situation.
I sat in what Wes called the common area—a room I’d previously been unaware of—and twiddled my thumbs. When C.J. appeared in the doorway, for no other reason, it seemed, except to wink at me, I jumped.
“What did I used to do during times like this?”
He stopped short. “M…”
I waved my hand in the air. “Protocol is over. You’ve been asleep. You missed it.”
His face fell, and I wished I’d approached it gentler with him. He rubbed at his chin while he regarded me. “What does that mean for the future?”
“I’m going to get in the machine. I’ll get my memories, if it’s at all possible. I’ll go through the pain. I’ll disappear. For now, I need something to do. What would I do in this situation? Please.”
He stepped further into the room. “Well, generally speaking, you’d go onto the ship, download the intel, look at it yourself, and then let us know if you wanted us to see something. Presumably, you’d transport the information to The Bridge.”
“I can’t do that.” I was tired of napping and sick to death of having nothing to do. “I don’t know much about myself. I get the feeling the other Melissa and I share the need for activity. I want to be busy.”
“Well, Dane says there is no medical danger on the ship. The computer is showing no air borne pathogens.” He extended his hand. “So come along. I’m going to catalog what is junk, what is scrap, what is tech, and what can be sold.”
I took his fingers in mine. “Sounds like heaven.”
“You really must be bored.” He brought my hand to his mouth. “You’ll be begging to be allowed to sit in here and do nothing in about ten minutes. Geoff’s coming. Wes would, usually, but he’s in his room convinced he can fix your heart issue. Dane is consumed with that, too. Nolan has to stay in the control room. So, you, me, and Geoff, we’ll go get into trouble.”
I stopped short. “Do you think there will actually be trouble?”
“Oh, most definitely,” he laughed. “We have a broken ship attached to our own with probably nothing more interesting on it than some rusted metal. It’ll be the perfect place for everything to fall apart.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
He kicked my shin lightly. “Guess you’ll have to figure it out. Am I kidding? Am I not?”
The ship we were checking out looked even worse than the Artemis, which said a lot. It stunk like piss. I coughed and then covered my nose with my shirt.
“Dane assures us it’s safe. Stinky but safe.”
I took the tablet out of C.J.’s hand. “Let’s get started. I’m not taking any more chances with the baby. So this is going to be dull, right? You’re kidding about risk.”
C.J.’s eyebrows sloped downward. “I would never risk you, M. This is going to be so ridiculously safe and boring, you’ll never want to do it again.”
I’d never been so excited to do anything in my life.
Chapter 12
A Short, Strange Trip
SO far I’d catalogued a lot of metal, and I wasn’t very good at determining one type versus another. C.J. had to help me out about every third time. Geoff joined us but quickly disappeared into the weapons room. Everything had to be disarmed before it was brought onto Artemis. The few times I saw my kidnapper, he muttered to himself and shook his head a lot.
The back of the ship was as much a mess as the front. Smaller than Artemis, it seemed like it carried twice the stuff and all of it was junk, or at least that’s what C.J. told me every time I asked. We’d done everything but the captain’s quarters because C.J. wanted to save the best for last.
“You ready?”
I nodded. I was certainly beyond finished with the smell of the place. How was I ever going to get it out of the one piece of clothing that fit me?
C.J. groaned. “I’m hoping we get some good intel payday in here. Otherwise Nolan is going to declare this a waste of time and energy. We’ll be hearing about it from now until New Year’s.”
I didn’t want to talk about Nolan. He’d been nice to bring me some ice for my shoulder, although his pounding on the wall had been why I grabbed him and then needed the help to begin with.
“Well, that’s a face. You and Nolan haven’t exactly been getting along.”
I pointed toward the Captain’s door. “Going in?”
“Aha, avoidance. Well done, M. Okay. We’ll talk about Nolan later. I’d rather discuss us anyway. I hear such interesting stories. Dane in your bed, Wes holding you in the control room, Geoff kissing you on the shuttle.”
Did that make him angry? I stepped away, but he blocked me until he stood between me and the wall. “Don’t be afraid. I’m just going to kiss you. I get here, inside the dirty, ugly, nothing ship. This is our spot. It belongs to us.”
His mouth pressed to mine, and I sighed against him. I hadn’t realized how much I wanted him to do it. I’d been filled by his presence for hours and C.J. was a huge bundle of energy. My knees went weak.
When he pulled away to look at me, his eyes were no longer joking but hot and probing. “I should not have done that. I’m going to have a hard-on all day now. God, you are so beautiful and those eyes…they kill me. More in the last few days than ever before.”
C.J. let me go and then stepped a distance from me. “Come on. Captain’s quarters time.”
He turned his back to me before walking to the hatch. With a wink, the humor in his eyes returned, and he extended his hand in front of him like I should proceed.
I took a deep breath. His kiss rattled me like the others’ had. I started to believe that while I had no conscious memories of any of them, my body retained recollection of our time together. I’d known Wes wanted to have sex in the control room. I’d cuddled with Dane. And now, C.J…He needed something quite different from me.
If only my knowledge could extend to things past the bedroom. But it was my body, not my mind, running the show of remembering.
In any case, I couldn’t do anything about needs and desires on this strange ship that had been floating in the blackness of space for so long.
The Captain, whoever he’d been, had lived in the small space. I wondered what he’d been thinking when they’d been forced, for whatever reason, to abandon ship.
The hatch shut behind me with a bang, followed by a
loud cracking noise. I whirled. C.J. stood on the other side of the door, looking at me through a porthole. His eyes were huge and he banged on it. A large see-through wall dropped from the ceiling, closing off the hatch, forming one more barrier between C.J and me.
What was happening? I couldn’t touch the handle anymore.
C.J. banged on the small viewing window once, twice.
He yelled something I couldn’t make out. My heart rate kicked up. Not only had the door locking been unexpected, he looked really afraid.
The room I was in jolted to the right. Oh no, that couldn’t be good.
“What’s happening?” I was really working hard on not panicking. The room was actually moving. Had something happened to the ship?
“M.” C.J. pounded on the door again. I couldn’t make out most of what he said, but I did hear one word and knowing he’d said it didn’t help at all. “Trap.”
I didn’t have a chance to wonder anything else about it. The room shifted violently, throwing me to the floor. For a second, I must have been stunned, but I regained enough sense to at least realize I was A—in a room detaching from the rest of the ship and B—I needed to hold onto something since the gravity in the room failed.
Holding onto the side of the Captain’s desk, I tried to breathe through my nose. I hated launches, shuttles, Artemis, and now this trap all played havoc on my stomach.
The room groaned as it officially detached and became a ship onto itself. The other side of the hatch separate from the glass stayed where C.J. was. Why would someone have made a room like this?
C.J. had said trap…
Well, okay, I was stuck in it. That didn’t mean I had to stay this way. The ship had been set to put whoever made the unlucky move to go in the room sent out to space. Oxygen would be limited. I was sealed in.
A motor started and I stared at my feet. Okay, apparently, the damn nightmare also had a fast moving engine. Sure. Why not?
“If it flies, it’s a machine.” Wes had spent some time showing me how to fly Artemis. There were controls. I had to point and click. Somehow this floating room had controls, too. I didn’t know how to work a ship, but I bet Melissa did.
The other Melissa who was going to take over my body and kick me out of it.
I floated across the floor holding onto the carpet with my fingers so tightly I was sure my hands would be bloody when this ended.
Pounding as best I could with my knees I finally heard what I looked for. There was a panel under the carpet. I had to get to it and then I could…
The ship jolted hard, a light on the ceiling coming down as it did. The glass from the light shattered all over, cutting my on my arms, my legs, my face. I screamed although no one heard me. I had to get out of this room.
“Melissa-mine.” A voice boomed in the room as the engine noise powered down. “You are in trouble again.”
I raised my head to look at the face of Cooper Jackson. The Noble prince’s face stared at me from a screen on the other side of the room.
“Your Highness?” What was he doing on the screen?
He rubbed at his eyes before he answered me. “So weird to hear you call me that. I must say I hate it, like a burn in my mouth. You don’t know me, then? Dane hasn’t figured out how to manage this nightmare?”
I got to my knees. The gravity seemed better every second I spoke to the prince. Did he control the ship? “We know each other? Outside of our brief interaction?”
“We do. I have to say monitoring you from a distance, which I’ve been doing since they let you get hurt on Hall, is the hardest thing ever. Your pulse is always jumping around. Your vitals are always all over the place. A lot of that, I suspect, is from more pleasurable pursuits, which makes me want to throw something. But then I see you’re in a Noble trap and I have to figure out why. It’s enough to make a man lose his mind.”
I inched closer to the screen. “Why are you doing all that? Did we know each other well?”
“Count the chairs in the rooms. Count the bedrooms. Force your brain. Do it. You have to remember before you hit The Bridge. If you get there, and get in the machine, you won’t come out of it. The longer I sit with this, the more I think you weren’t only running from Artemis. The Bridge—the people in charge of the Nomads—can’t allow it. Every time I intervene, I put you all at risk. Tell Dane he has to fix this on his own. He can do it. If I was there, I would push him. I would make him. He’d get it done.”
“I…” Unable to resist the urge, I touched the screen with the tips of my fingers. Cooper winced like I’d struck him. “You want me to tell them you said that?”
“You could try. Although that would probably make them do the opposite. I get it, believe me. If one of them were in this position I wouldn’t believe me, either.” He laughed, a cold, hard sound. “They hate me, in case you didn’t notice, because you don’t remember. You have to recall, Melissa-mine. You have to. Please. For me.”
My body vibrated. “Dane is a little busy trying to get the wireless bomb out of my heart.”
Cooper hissed in his breath. “What?”
“I have a bomb in my heart. I don’t know who holds the controls to it. I have to save my baby, and you’re making everything more confusing. Did you put me in here so you could speak to me? What is going on?” I hated everyone right then, every single person in the whole universe.
“I did not stick you in there. I simply shut it off. Any second now there is going to be a large bang. It will be Nolan, or I assume it’ll be him, anyway, finally getting the trap hooked to Artemis. It’s complicated. These things are made to resist just what he’s doing. He’ll manage. He’s good like that. I would never stick you, even for a second, in a contraption that might hurt you, because I love you. I’m husband number six. I did something to save you, something I never could have imagined doing. It’ll all be worth it. If only you can remember. Women do, sometimes. If anyone can manage it, you can. Remember and come for me.”
I gasped as his words struck me. His face vanished from the screen just as a loud vibration signaled what I hoped was Artemis pulling me in. What would have happened if Cooper hadn’t shut off the engines, wirelessly taken control of things? Where would the ship have taken me?
I braced myself against the floor, knowing I would get thrown around a bit while they tugged the trap in, although when it actually happened it wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d thought it might be. My knee struck the panel under the rug where I’d thought to get to the engine. Thank goodness for Cooper. What had made me think I could have done anything at all?
Minutes later, the door opened, this time taking me to the shuttle bay on the Artemis. As I stepped out, bleeding but grateful my heart still beat, five sets of eyes simultaneously stared at me. I leaned against the doorframe.
“That really sucked.”
Wes laughed, the only one seemingly able to find my statement at all amusing. The others remained as they were.
“I don’t want to faint. I know how that pisses you off, Nolan.”
He shifted his feet, the smallest smile playing at his mouth. “I appreciate the effort.”
“I do what I can.” I shrugged. “So which one of you was going to get around to telling me I am also married to Prince Cooper Jackson?” I raised my hand to indicate none of them should speak. “I need a shower, and to see if I can get the blood out of the one outfit that fits me. Then I’m going to sleep. He says I have to regain my memory. He also says you all hate him and that maybe you won’t when I remember whatever it is that is so important I need to do so before we get to The Bridge. If I get in the machine, I’m going to die.” My whole body hurt. “So we had a thousand problems, and now we have one thousand and one.”
They all stayed perfectly still when I walked by them toward the living quarters. I must have looked as crazy as I felt.
* * * *
I’d pulled the last bit of glass out of my skin when a knock sounded on the door. I’d dressed in an old piece of my clothing tha
t didn’t really fit, a white tank top that barely covered my stomach and blue cotton underwear. Having finally gone through my closet, I could see I had a thing for leather, lace, and corsets.
None of it looked even slightly appealing. Give me cotton and soft, stretchy outfits.
I stared at myself. My Master’s training told me I was way too underdressed to answer the door. But, what the hell? Dane and Wes had both seen me naked—or Wes had seen me mostly that way—and the other three had before I’d lost my memory.
I was too achy and annoyed to worry about modesty. I swung open the door.
C.J. stood in front of me. He had changed his clothes, and he must have had the same thoughts I did. Sweatpants and a black T-shirt were his attire. I opened the door for him to come in.
He checked out my body before meeting my gaze. In his hands he held a small box. “Can I come in?”
“If you want. I’ve been getting the glass out of my skin.”
“Do you need help? I can get Dane. He wanted to come earlier. Nolan thought you could use some alone time first.”
I shut the door behind him. “Nolan was right.”
“Here.” He held the box in front of him. “I thought, when we believed you were dead, I would eat this on your birthday. As kind of a tribute to you or whatever. I’d rather give it to you.”
I took the package from him and looked at what he’d given me. “What is it?”
“Presents work better when we open them.” He leaned against the window, looking outside. As I knew there was nothing out there to see except the vastness of space, I had to ask myself why he didn’t want to watch me discover what he’d given me.
I tore at the blue wrapping and then opened the brown box inside. My mouth fell open as I saw what he’d handed me. “Chocolate.”
C.J. turned to meet my gaze. “You still like it, right?”
“I only had it once on Master’s. I loved, loved, loved it.” I crossed to him and threw my arms around his neck. “Thank you for this.” My stomach grumbled, reminding me it had been too long since I’d eaten. “You have to share it with me.”
He shook his head. “I want you to have it.”
Kidnapped by Her Husbands (Wings of Artemis Book 1) Page 15
