His Woodland Maiden

by Michelle M. Pillow

  He couldn’t wait to be free of the mines.

  “Sacred Cats, Rick, you need a bath.” Jarek wrinkled his nose.

  Rick glanced down at his dirty, tattered clothing, and then at the woman tied to the chair. He felt a mix of emotions when he looked at her—confusion and lust being the most prevalent.

  “Jarek?” a woman’s soft voice questioned as she joined the captain. She was a pretty, slender little thing.

  “Meimei,” Haun said.

  The woman ran toward the prince, wrapping her arms around him.

  “Who’s that?” Rick whispered, thinking his crew had kidnapped the woman to exchange for his safe return. “His woman?”

  “That is Princess Mei, his sister. We had her on our ship. She helped us find these mines.”

  “Don’t tell me you kidnapped her in exchange for me.” Rick arched a brow. If it was true, they were all idiots. Kidnapping royalty was never a well-conceived idea. He and the rest of the pirate crew had learned that lesson. Though, by the way Mei hugged her brother, all was well this time.

  Rick felt dizzy and wanted nothing more than to leave the mines. All that mattered was his freedom, the fact his crew had found him, and he was going back where he belonged—off the planet and into the high skies.

  Harper Virant peered through a seam in the spaceship’s ceiling at the two idiots below. They lounged in the ship’s commons, one draping his limbs over a chair and the other a couch. Loud sighs and long pauses in their conversation attested to the men’s boredom. A cleaning droid buzzed and clanked between them as it rolled over the floor. Its numerous repairs evident by the piecemeal way it was put together.

  The ship had not left the planet, so they were still on Lintian’s surface, but it had moved away from the purple jade mines, where they had apprehended her. Since Princess Mei was with the crew, that probably meant they had landed in Muntong territory. There had been some conversation about returning a map to Mei’s family.

  Not that it mattered to Harper. No one would be coming to her rescue regardless of what side of the planet she was on. Not this time.

  “You should have let me pull for myself,” Lucien said, referring to when they’d drawn lots to determine who would stay with her on the ship. He was a pale, thin alien with red-brown eyes. A bowl of tiny, round food pieces rested on his stomach, and he absently dropped them in front of the droid to force it to move back and forth to clean the mess. “Why did you have to bring me into your bad luck? Now I’m stuck here guarding a drug queenpin with you instead of venturing on-world.”

  They still thought she was a queenpin dealing the drug chandoo, which was being produced in the Lin Yao Mines. That was something, at least. The truth was, she hated chandoo and what it did to people. It lured the user in, made them feel alive, but eventually would rot their brain and leave them little more than a worthless mass of nothingness. Luckily, one of the local royal families was fighting hard to destroy the drug, and production would hopefully be stopped. At least at the Lintian site.

  Once she was off this ship, the odds of her crossing paths with this crew again should have been almost nil. But, for some strange reason, Rick kept popping up in her life like a bad luck charm and she had to keep taking his memories from him. This time she was dealing with his entire crew and didn’t have the means to erase herself from their minds. Hopefully, if they tried looking for a queenpin, they’d never track her. After today, she’d become someone else.

  “You’re just mad that you won’t see what Princess Mei’s sister looks like,” Viktor answered. He appeared to be of the same alien classification as Lucien, but with green-red eyes. They bickered like brothers, and by their looks she assumed they might be related. From what she’d gathered as they brought her on board, Viktor was a mechanic, and Lucien was in charge of the ship’s communications. There was also a security officer named Jackson who moved like an elite soldier. She could see the training a mile away. Thankfully, he had not been left to guard her. She highly doubted she’d be in the process of escaping so soon if that were the case.

  “Rick should be the one looking after the prisoner. She kidnapped him, not us,” Lucien continued complaining. “Why does he want to take her with us, anyway? We should leave her with the emperor. Let them deal with the lowlife. I’m surprised they agreed to let us take her.”

  Lowlife? Harper frowned. That was rich coming from space pirates.

  “I think Mei arranged it.” Viktor gave a small laugh. “What do you think the queenpin did to him? Rick looked pretty shaken. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him that upset before. There has to be a reason why he wants to keep her.”

  “She probably gave the rocket boy attention.” Lucien chuckled. “He did trail after her like a lost semikin.”

  “Rick in love,” Viktor snorted. “Can you imagine?”

  “Sure.” Lucien grinned, craning his neck to look at the other man. “He tells himself he loves himself every chance he gets.”

  “Seriously, though,” Viktor insisted, “it’s not like we’re going to ransom her back to her criminal family.”

  “Maybe she has something else of value.” Lucien threw a handful of food on the floor for the droid.

  “Maybe she was trying to kill him.” Viktor rubbed the heel of his hand against his eye. “I honestly didn’t think we’d find him alive. I didn’t want to say it, but I thought we were on some kind of revenge mission.”

  “We might still be,” Lucien answered.

  Harper had never intended to kidnap Rick, but he’d shown up at the worst possible time, and she’d had two options—take him or kill him. The fact that his crew came after him was about the best possible scenario. Otherwise, she wasn’t sure how much longer she could have kept the smartass alive. The life of a space pirate ranked low on her bosses’ list of concerns, and he was more trouble than he was worth.

  Satisfied that her guards didn’t act concerned with checking on her at the moment, Harper crawled through the ceiling of the ship. A thick layer of dust covered old engine parts and abandoned pipes. A metal box was wedged next to a grate. There wasn’t a lid, and it appeared to be a collection of holo-discs. Someone on the crew was trying to hide their stash of contraband.

  Most of the light came from the halls beneath, casting a soft glow through the seams, cracks, and removable grates. The few times she lifted the grates was to find she was over sleeping quarters. Ship designs had been uploaded into her brain, but unfortunately, this particular class of ship wasn’t one of them, so she had to guess her route. She turned around when she came to the metal construct of a VR. The wires and control panels needed to run the virtual reality room created a thick jungle that she couldn’t squeeze through.

  Her pants snagged on a piece of jagged metal, slicing through the thick material to cut her upper thigh. This was not her finest escape.

  Harper frowned and automatically felt the wound. Her fingers slid in blood. The injury wasn’t critical, but it would need attention sooner rather than later. She picked up her pace, ignoring the pain. The last thing she wanted was to spend the rest of eternity as a skeleton stuck in the ceiling panels of a pirate ship.

  2

  Virtual Reality Advanced Technology and Programming Conference, Planet of Nozando, Several Years Later…

  A technical conference focusing on virtual reality programming code sounded like the beginning of a promising nap. Rick Hayes had only agreed to land there for a few reasons. First, being the pilot of the Bound Virgin, he pretty much had to go wherever the captain told him. Second, since their ship was a flying piece of reconstructed—um—beauty, they needed to scavenge parts wherever they could find them to keep her going. This conference was a treasure trove of free (and questionably free) gifts. Third, being a space pirate sailing the high skies in hope of an adventure wasn’t as glamorous as it sounded. New VR programs would go a long way toward alleviating months of boredom floating in space—not that the married crew members would agree to the type of VR programs h
e had in mind.

  “What they don’t know, they don’t know,” Rick said to himself. Then, grinning, he thought, Maybe they’d be into it. I’ve never been married. Who am I to judge?

  Tickets to this thing were difficult to acquire and very exclusive. Lucien, who was in charge of the ship’s communications, had intercepted a transmission wave about a Trogarthian game of chance. That was how Lucien had ended up winning the VR crew pass for the conference.

  “Nice space-trash costume,” a man called to Dev, laughing.

  Rick hid his smirk. Dev was dressed in his usual garb—all black and ready for battle. The jokester was brave, if stupid. The half-Bevlon, half-human man could have thrown him across the pavilion without breaking a sweat. Dev’s father had been a demon. Well, the equivalent of a demon, anyway.

  “What are you smiling about?” Dev glanced back to Rick from where he walked with his wife, Violette Stephans. “He was talking about you, rocket boy.”

  “Don’t take it personally, big fella. I think you’re handsome.” Rick winked at him.

  Dev was their ship’s head of security. Well, he was if anyone bothered to look at their ship logs. As long as credential codes cleared upon landing and they had their passes, no one at these events wanted to upset their wealthy clientele by digging around in their records. They wanted them to be happy because happy rich people spent an insane amount of space credits upgrading VR units and buying programs.

  It was only after he’d followed Dev through the docking lot to the main pavilion that he’d figured out his fourth (and best) reason for coming.

  Ladies.

  “Come to Rick, babycakes.” Rick grinned as two women walked past in tight black skinsuits with bright blue gun belts slung around their waists. They each had patches of fake yellow fur glued down the center of their foreheads. They were into roleplaying. What a coincidence, so was he. “What planet are you from? Because you’re breaking a dozen intergalactic treaties just walking around with bodies like that. You looking for someone to play…?”

  The women ignored him, and he let his come-on line fade away. They went to a portable VR display labeled “Fur Play” and held up the back of their hands to show where metal chips had been embedded into their flesh. The hairy vendor scanned them, and seconds later the door to the VR slid open. A bright light flashed as strange animal noises sounded from within.

  Rick quickened his pace, hurrying to get a glimpse inside as the women entered. Thick foliage blocked the view, and the door closed before he could detect anything remotely fun. No matter, there were plenty of other things to look at.

  The organizers had set up portable VR booths. The small metal domes formed rows that flanked four open walkways; two walkways on each side of an enclosed hallway down the center aisle. Apparently, the adventure tunnel, as the central VR enclosure was being referred to, was the highlight of the show. It consisted of multiple, highly interactive displays. A line of people waited to go inside. According to the holographic map floating near him, the enclosure let out in the auditorium where there would be a keynote speaker later—some boring scientist type with an even more boring name. Rick would not be attending the lecture.

  “Did I honestly just hear you say to those women that they’re breaking a dozen intergalactic treaties just walking around with bodies like that?” Violette arched a brow as she and Dev caught up to him.

  “Sounds like Rick has been practicing ways to talk to women again,” Dev answered in his usually dry tone.

  “He does need all the help he can get.” Violette directed her comment to Dev but obviously said it for Rick’s benefit.

  “How else will he end the curse?” Dev agreed.

  “Maybe you should give him some pointers.” Violette smiled up at her husband.

  Rick hated hearing about the stupid curse and wished his crewmates would let it drop already. So what if he’d pissed off some spirit? Out of the five men who’d been hit with Zhang An’s wrath, he was the only one yet to break her curse. What they never considered was, he didn’t necessarily want to break it. He was fine being a bachelor.

  After being taken prisoner by a drug queenpin and dragged through the far reaches of space, something Rick still wasn’t sure how he survived, he and five others from their crew had been taken to meet Emperor Zhang. Captain Jarek had been in charge then, and during Rick’s rescue the catshifter had fallen in love with the emperor’s daughter. It was not a union that was met with celebration on the planet of Lintian. The emperor and his wife were upset. An ancestral spirit had shown up and stirred emotions even more. The situation had been tense.

  Rick’s brain had been a little jumbled from whatever had happened in the mines and so maybe his judgment had been off at the time. Regardless, being his naturally charismatic self, he’d tried to ease the tension by making a joke, and five of them ended up cursed. Jarek escaped it because he’d already fallen in love with Mei. Rick and fellow crewmen Jackson, Dev, Evan, and Lochlann had not been so lucky. Lucien and Viktor only escaped because they’d been stuck on the spaceship poorly guarding the prisoner who had escaped on their watch.

  Zhang An’s curse had to do with finding love under the guise of the Lintianese elements of water, fire, metal, wood, and earth. As far as curses went, it wasn’t all that scary.

  What had she said?

  “Together you travel and together you’ll remain. Tied and joined like the five elements of our people.”

  Something, something, roads, happiness, underwear, dying alone.

  “You will find your love hidden within the mystery of the five elements. One element for each of you. The corresponding element will hold the secret to your future happiness. But fate is not clear. If you do not recognize it, you will lose it and be forever alone.”

  The prediction itself wasn’t the curse. It was the not knowing which element for which person, and what all that gibberish about the elements even meant. The old spirit had given just enough clues to consume their thoughts without saying anything useful.

  If anything, the cursed crewmen should be thanking him. It could be argued that his curse helped the others be prepared for love once it showed up. Evan was now living off-world with his wife Josselyn, a woman they had saved from a stone prison—literally she’d been encased in stone.

  That led to Dev being taken by Josselyn’s estranged sister, Violette. They’d fallen in love and gotten married. The couple currently walked in front of him.

  Their new captain, Lochlann, had met Alexis thanks to Rick sneaking her onto their ship. Captain Lochlann was a dragonshifter from Qurilixen and Alexis’s past was, well, complicated. Yet again, another couple happily mated.

  Which left Jackson, who worked closely with Dev doing ship security. He had most recently fallen in love with Raisa. She programmed food simulators, creating recipes on a molecular level. He had never eaten so well in all his years flying the high skies. She was also part Angelion, which meant she had a way with mechanical devices and electricity. She could read the inside of a ship just by touching the wall in front of it.

  Rick grinned. Four out of five parts of the curse broken. They should be thanking him, not teasing him. He was like an intergalactic matchmaker.

  No, he was like a love god.

  Oh, yeah.

  Love god. He liked the sound of that.

  “I think we hurt his feelings,” Violette said. “Rick? You still with us, buddy?”

  Rick realized he’d gone off into his own thoughts. Everything around the time he’d been rescued from the mines bothered him. With the sole purpose of aggravating Dev, he said, “I was just wondering about something.”

  Dev had the sense of humor of a rock sometimes. Rick assumed it had something to do with the demonic upbringing of his father’s people. Bevlons had a torture-is-love parenting style. Then again, so did a lot of parents. At least the Bevlons admitted it.

  “I’m waiting,” Dev answered.

  Rick stepped closer to Violette and fell into stride n
ext to her. “Vi, do you think it’s because your father was a general that you ended up with a guy like Dev?”

  Violette arched a brow. Her green eyes studied him as if waiting for the rest.

  “I hear women often marry men who remind them of their fathers. Is that why you chose Mr. Personality over me? You were raised on a military base, and he’s all about discipline? You got daddy issues?”

  It worked. Dev scowled.

  Rick wasn’t surprised when Violette took a swing at him. Her punch wasn’t as forceful as it could have been, and he was able to duck out of the way.

  Rick winked at her as he put distance between them so she couldn’t swing again. “Easy, love, you know I’m just jealous you chose him over me.”

  “Stop flirting with my wife,” Dev stated, his tone flat.

  “Was that flirting?” Violette asked, caressing Dev’s chest. “I couldn’t tell. See, I think he does need you to teach him how to talk to women. He’ll never meet someone at the rate he’s going.”

  Rick pretended to be wounded by her comment.

  She looked pointedly at Rick. “And I have no issue with who my father was.”

  They both knew that was a lie. The general had been a complicated man.

  “You two have fun. Try not to impregnate any Murkernals.” Rick spun away before giving his friend time to respond, intent on disappearing into the crowd. Dev had innocently given fruit to an alien species, and they’d instantly procreated to the point their population doubled. It was a story they liked to remind Dev of often.

  “I just gave them fruit—” Dev started to protest, but his words were cut off by the murmur of conversations coming from the surrounding crowd.

  Rick wanted to be lost in the crowd, alone in a sea of distractions. He needed to be surrounded by something other than the happy couples on the ship. Yes, he liked being a bachelor, but as one of only three single men remaining of the crew, it was getting harder and harder to go anywhere on board where he wasn’t met with paired-off unions. He didn’t begrudge the marriages, but there were enough kissing sessions and suggestive whispers to remind him he crawled into bed alone at night.