“If you did manage to kill him, I’m pretty sure you’d be doing the universe a favor. And you might get the chance, sooner than you think.”
Concern edged into Qae’s dark expression. “Who are you talking about?”
She drew up her knees and looped her arms around them. “Ever since I can remember, my dad came up against him over and over. They tried to recruit the same men, tried to steal the same ships and cargos, except while my father was ruthless but fair and inspired people to follow him, this man was just ruthless and cruel. I think my dad used to be secretly amused by it all. Until the day it went much too far. My mother and I were visiting her family on this little planet called El Cielo. It’s not far out of the Barbary Belt. A peaceful farming world. All my best memories of growing up were of spending time there.
“One day, this ship landed, right in the field next to the house my mom grew up in. Before we knew what was happening, people were being killed. My mother tried to hide me, but we got caught. She died trying to protect me.”
Cami had to stop and take a breath, the words beginning to run together. Qae hadn’t moved, just sat there holding her hand and staring at her.
“But they didn’t kill me. They took me because that would hurt my father much more. I was sent to some slavers. They inspected me, designated me, and then tattooed me. The auction was hours away when my father found me and razed that slaver house to ashes. He was so angry he killed anyone who even knew what had happened to me.”
Qae let out a sudden breath, seeming to deflate a little. “So you weren’t— They didn’t—”
“No.” She sent him a sad smile. “I lost my innocence in a psychological sense, but I wasn’t hurt or raped.”
“Thank god,” Qae breathed out, closing his eyes. “I need to know. The person who did this to you…”
She gripped his hand. As soon as she said the name out loud, it was going to change everything. And she was going to have her work cut out for her convincing Qae to take her to Lander. No doubt he wouldn’t want her anywhere near that place, just like her father.
But she didn’t want to keep the truth from him. She wanted Qae to know her like no one else ever had. So she took a breath and steeled herself for whatever explosion she was about to ignite.
“Alvar Galton. It was Alvar Galton.”
Chapter Twenty
“Alvar Galton?” Qae repeated, knowing he sounded dumfounded, but unable to help it. “The same Alvar Galton who went out of his way to get Rian’s ship, because we’ve been working with your father for the past year?”
Cami nodded slowly, eyeing him carefully, as if waiting for some kind of reaction other than utter stupefaction.
Oh, he could feel the rage building. It was bad enough Galton had been shite-brained enough to make an enemy out of Rian, but now Qae had a personal reason to want to pound the guy into the next universe. It might have happened fifteen years ago, but for him it was new and fresh, a transgression that he could not let go of.
Even if it hadn’t happened to Cami personally, if Galton had done it to anyone else, it would have been almost as bad. Slaughter of innocents and sending a child to a slaver house just to get revenge on what amounted to a business rival? That was the kind of thing he’d never been able to walk past. Maybe he really did have some kind of ridiculous hero complex, but Galton had long ago proven what kind of man he was, and that was the kind of dead-shite scum who needed to be wiped from the fabric of existence.
“You’re taking this a lot more calmly than I expected.” Cami sounded confused.
“Oh, I’m not calm on the inside, believe me. But it’d be a waste of energy expending my rage now. I’m saving it up for when we go to Lander. Then, Alvar Galton is going to wish he never had the misfortune of making a single stupid-ass decision in the last two decades.”
“That doesn’t sound healthy.”
He gave a harsh laugh. “It’s definitely not. But that’s the way I roll. I never claimed to be well-adjusted. If I was, I surely wouldn’t have decided to follow Rian all over the galaxy from one disaster to another.”
Cami gave a hollow smile.
“Are you okay? I know that can’t have been easy for you.”
She nodded. “Actually, I really am okay. It kind of felt good to be able to talk about it.” She sounded surprised by the fact. She leaned forward and pressed a kiss into his cheek. “Thank you.”
He caught her before she could move back again. “Don’t thank me just yet. My motives are never entirely altruistic.”
“I’d be surprised if they were.” She shifted closer to him, and he slid his hands over her shoulders.
“Should I be insulted by that?” he murmured.
“Take it however you want.” She tilted her chin up as if tempting, or maybe daring, him to kiss her.
“How about I just take you however I want?”
She actually laughed at that. “Smooth. How many times have you used that line before?”
He used his hold on her to flip them so she ended up on her back beneath him, gripping her wrists and pressing them to the mattress at her half-hearted attempt to resist him. “Are you making fun of me?”
“It’s kind of hard not to, you make it so easy.” Her smile slipped away and she stared up at him solemnly. “Qae, will you undress me?”
He dropped a tender kiss on her nose.
This had to be a big thing for her. If no one except her father knew about the tattoos, that meant she’d never been fully naked with any of her previous lovers. The idea that he was the first and only one to see her gorgeous body splayed out for him sent a wave of heated emotion through him.
“If you change your mind—”
“I won’t.” She gave a determined shake of her head.
“But if you do,” he insisted, “you just have to say the word. I don’t want to push you out of your comfort zone.”
She twisted her hands out of his grasp and cupped his face. “I think it’s time I got out of my comfort zone. And I want you to be the one who helps me.”
His heart kicked at the responsibility she was laying at his feet. If he didn’t care for her so much, it would have sent him screaming from the room.
Instead, he reached down to the fastening on his pants. He was going to undress himself first, so that maybe she’d feel less exposed. Then, he’d leave her shirt until last, just in case her courage failed her at the last second.
She lay back, watching with a sexy, hooded gaze as he slowly took off his clothes one piece at a time. Once he was naked, she smoothed a hand over the tattoo on his chest.
“I thought the point of this was to get me naked.”
“Impatient,” he muttered, before leaning down to kiss her neck. He let his hands trail to the fastenings on her pants, pulling them off in a smooth motion, then tugging at her underwear.
When he started on her shirt, she held his gaze, but he couldn’t see anything in her eyes except anticipation. He slid the garment from her shoulders, lowering his head to kiss the top of her left arm where the tattoo began. As he drew her arm out from the sleeve, he kissed his way to her wrist, as if that would somehow negate what the tattoos stood for.
While he flicked her shirt out of the way, she removed her bra then dropped it off the side of the bed.
“God, you’re gorgeous.” He smoothed his hands down her sides, measuring her curves and reveling in the heat building within him.
“Show me,” she murmured, pulling him down on top of her.
He let himself sink into her, groaning at the simple pleasure of their bodies coming together, skin to skin.
As he took her mouth, she wrapped her legs around his waist, tilting her hips up so she was slipping against his erection. Jezus. He was so hard, he was aching. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted someone this much, with this exact kind of quiet desperation. It had to be the residual after effects of her almost dying, plus the anger at what had happened to her; the fact she’d spent her whole lif
e since then hiding her body from the universe.
Hers wasn’t a body that should be hidden away, it was a body that deserved to be worshipped. Except before he could follow through with that thought, Cami rolled them, ending with her on top of him.
Before he could settle into their new position, she adjusted herself and took him without warning, leaving him cursing. But she only laughed, low and sexy, then started rocking against him. The woman knew what she wanted and it only turned him on even more.
She built the momentum between them, the pace frustratingly measured, stringing him out on purpose. When he couldn’t take it anymore, he clamped his hands on her hips and tried to thrust up hard, but she resisted, a smug smile flitting over her face.
He surged up, gripping a hand on the back of her neck. “No more teasing.”
He put her down on the bed, wrapping one hand around the inside of her left knee and urging her leg up, giving him better leverage as he started thrusting into her, not giving any quarter. Cami moaned loudly, her hands fisting the bedsheet beneath her. She arched up and he forgot how to breathe. He’d never seen anything sexier or more beautiful than Cami giving herself over to the ecstasy building up inside her.
It was enough to tip him over the edge, and though he’d planned on a little payback for her teasing a moment ago, he couldn’t control the rush of smoldering pleasure that ripped up from deep within him and exploded outward, abruptly eclipsing every thought or intention he’d had. He pinned her with his hips, groaning her name as he came deep inside her on one long rolling shudder.
As the tempest receded, he gently dropped on top of her, heart racing. Cami wrapped her arms around him, sighing in a way that sounded deeply satisfied. Yeah, he could agree with that sentiment.
Chapter Twenty-One
Rian jogged down the steps, heading for the cargo bay, Varean trailing along behind him. When he hit the bottom of the stairs, he found Ella already standing next to the crate containing his stash of Violaine.
“Not a word,” he told her as he flipped open the lid and pulled out a shiny new bottle. He could tell she was sharing a weighty look with Varean, even though he wasn’t looking directly at either of them, because of the damned entropy thing. Instead, he narrowed his concentration to twisting the lid off the bottle and taking a long drink, hoping that if he put down enough, it would dim the strength of the connection between them. Of course, if he drank enough to pass out, that would definitely solve his problems for a few hours.
Varean clamped a hand on his arm and gently pulled the bottle down. “This isn’t the answer.”
He jerked himself out of the other man’s hold, sending him a nasty glare. “It’s always the answer.”
Turning away, he was all ready to stalk off, but came face-to-face with Ella. She advanced on him, crowding him backward until he bumped into Varean, who dropped his large hands onto Rian’s shoulders and held him in place.
He tried to shrug free, but Varean stepped into him until the commando’s chest was pressed against his back, holding him tighter in place. It didn’t stop him from pointing an accusing finger at Ella, however, since she was in front of him.
“If the two of you are planning on doing some kind of mind-meld thing to smother me with your frecking Zen again, you’ve got another thing coming.” He’d find some way to block them. He needed his anger; he deserved to feel every burning atom of it.
Qae had every right to be pissed with him, but his cousin couldn’t possibly find a way to punish him more than he was already punishing himself. He’d nearly gotten Cami Blackstone killed. Never mind the Reidar, he couldn’t imagine what kind of wrath Rene Blackstone would have brought down on his crew if Cami had died on their watch.
“It’s not always your fault, Rian,” Ella said in a soothing voice, and he could feel a hint of her mind stretching out into his, those calming waves coming at him again.
No way. Not this time.
He gathered all of his anger and frustration and the fear he refused to acknowledge into one tight ball and turned all that energy into pushing back against her presence in his head. Her eyes widened, and she cried out in pain, folding forward as her hands went to her head.
An icy-cold flash of shock and apprehension cut through him as he reached out to catch her before she went down and pulled her against his chest.
“What the hell did you do?” Varean demanded angrily as Rian lowered her to the ground, cradling her in his lap.
“I don’t know!” His reply came out hoarse and he swallowed against the way his throat had suddenly gone dry. He reached up and smoothed his hand over her clammy brow, brushing her silky hair back from her face.
“Ella?” Her name wasn’t much more than a whisper across his lips. Jezus. He’d hurt her and he didn’t even understand how. His heart thudded hard enough to make his chest ache.
Her eyes fluttered open and he exhaled an explosive breath, relief hitting him so hard it almost made him dizzy.
“Are you okay?” He cupped her cheek, searching her eyes for the answer.
“I’m fine, you just surprised me, that’s all. I wasn’t ready to get flooded by so much— I should have guessed you’d naturally be able to do things that take Arynians decades to perfect.”
Whatever that meant. He didn’t have the brain power to work it out, could only sit there and let the relief sink in that he hadn’t done any serious damage to her.
Ella reached up and set a light hand against his neck. “Don’t punish yourself, please. Not over this, or what happened to Cami.”
He wanted so badly to forgive himself just as easily as Ella could, but he couldn’t let go of the anger or guilt. It was burned into his psyche. Instead of answering, he helped her up then passed her over to Varean when it seemed she was still a little unsteady. He took back his Violaine, avoiding both of their gazes as he hurried across the cargo bay and back up the stairs.
…
Rian was going on twenty hours with no sleep when they reached the designated point where they’d split the crews to carry out the rest of the plan against Baden Niels.
After everything that’d happened with Cami and then Ella, he’d been too wired to even doze, though clearly the lack of sleep hadn’t improved matters. He’d thought about asking Varean to go another few rounds in the cargo bay to take the edge off but had decided against it. Though Varean would never refuse him, Rian hadn’t been able to bring himself to face either him or Ella after what he’d done earlier—accident or otherwise. Plus, he didn’t want anyone to know how antsy he was, and anytime Varean and he were beating the shite out each other, it gave the rest of the crew a pretty obvious clue about his mood. Not to mention Varean and Ella now had that whole entanglement thing happening and knew exactly how strung-out he was. But they hadn’t tried to intervene again and he’d kept himself dosed on Violaine.
If he was going to be truthful with himself—which was rare—the run in with the Reidar, when Cami had almost been killed, had gotten to him in a way nothing else had for a long while. It brought home the cost of his private war in a way he hadn’t faced in a year. Reminded him of when they’d lost Jensen and Callan. That, more than anything, had probably driven him to heavily self-medicate with his liquor of choice, as if the small amount of progress he’d made in the last year had simply vanished in a puff of smoke. The simmering rage and bitterness was sitting higher in his chest again, reminding him every moment of every day he’d never not be broken.
Rian grabbed up his rucksack and headed for the cargo bay where the Medulla had been airlocked to the back of the Ebony Winter since they’d stolen it from Kypros station. The crew were all assembled, but he didn’t let anyone linger over goodbyes. If everything went well, they’d see each other in a few short days, then he could get on with getting his frecking ship back from that asswipe, Alvar Galton.
Leaving them to it, but giving them a three-minute departure warning, Rian stepped through the hatchway onto the Medulla and made his way up to the c
ompact bridge. He pulled out a new bottle of Violaine and dropped his rucksack by the hatchway. He then avoided looking at the spot where Cami had almost died and put his ass in the captain’s chair to bring the engines on standby. They’d need to disengage from the Ebony Winter before he could fully spool up the drives.
Lianna and Tannin had spent the last few days fixing the hack job Cami and Qae had done to boost the ship, then overwritten the command systems so they were now fully in control of the vessel. He kept himself busy monitoring the systems and swigging down his Violaine until the three minutes were up. Patching through to the Ebony Winter’s bridge, he checked in with Lianna.
“We ready to disengage?”
“All systems go on this end,” Lianna answered as he heard footsteps approaching behind him, but he didn’t bother looking around. Ella and Varean had come up onto the bridge. Presumably Kira, too, but he didn’t know that for sure, since she wasn’t in his head like the other two were.
Varean sat in the co-pilot’s chair, intuitively taking care of a few minor things as they disengaged from the Ebony Winter, and Lianna wished them a safe journey.
Rian initiated the engines into full power, setting them onto the course he’d previously charted to get them to Khan Mau approximately a day from now.
“Why don’t you let me take the helm and go get some sleep?” Varean offered casually.
Too casually. Rian slouched back in the captain’s chair and spun it to face the commando. Ella was standing nearby, but Kira was nowhere to be seen. Probably getting acquainted with the medbay, if he knew her.
“Sleep is overrated,” he replied, taking another drink from the bottle.
Varean and Ella shared a look and he could practically feel them plotting in his head.
Entropy Page 20
