Page 26 of Saving the Space Pirate

“I’ll do that.”

“Did you love her?”

“Yeah. Still do.”

“Well,” a voice said from across the courtyard. “That’s good to hear.”

I jumped. Or would have done, except for the whole stake thing. Yolanda came to a halt only a few feet away. Dressed in black leather pants and a black shirt, her long blond hair loose about her shoulders, she appeared cool and beautiful. Ugh! She stepped up to Rekowski and stroked a hand down his cheek. “You look a mess.” From the expression on her face, you’d think she cared. I knew better.

“What do you want?” I snapped. “Bitch,” I added for good measure. Had she come here to gloat?

She turned to me, looked me up and down, the brief softness gone from her violet eyes. “Just be quiet and do what I tell you.”

“Make me,” I muttered.

A smile twisted the corners of her mouth. “I could, you know. You’re hardly in a position to stop me.”

“Well, you’ve already tried to have me killed once.” It was on Yolanda’s orders that Killian had been employed to get me off the Bhaxian slaver and dispose of me.

She shrugged. “Actually, I told them to stop you from getting here. Not kill you.”

“You might have made that a little clearer.”

She studied me through narrowed eyes. “Get over it.”

“Why are you here, Yolanda?” Rekowski asked, breaking our happy little bonding moment.

“To rescue you, of course. I might even take your new friend as well.” She cast me a glance. “If she doesn’t piss me off any more.”

What was going on? My brain couldn’t process the information. Yolanda was here to rescue us? She was studying our stakes, a frown drawing her arched brows together. “I only just learned what was happening. I had to kill my guards to get here.”

“You should have stayed away.”

“Oh yeah, because I’m really such a bitch that I can stand by and watch the man I love being burned alive.”

He winced.

“What’s going on here?” I asked. Because I really had no clue.

She hurried around the back of Rekowski and fiddled with his cuffs. “Shit, they need a key. I’ll have to shoot them off. No time to try and pick the lock.”

“Could you pick a lock?” Rekowski asked. Clearly, he was seeing a new side to Yolanda.

“I was recruited by the Federation when I was sixteen. I’m a trained assassin. So what do you think?” Without giving either of us a chance to express our opinions, she continued, “And the pair of you just fucked up my latest mission. Sorry, this will probably hurt,” she said as she shot a laser blast at Rekowski’s cuffs. He flinched, but he was free.

Me next. Me next.

I didn’t want to beg. Which didn’t mean I wouldn’t, if I had to. I wanted off my stake so badly it hurt.

“You work for the Federation?” Rekowski asked, rubbing his wrists. I wanted to yell at him to talk later. Right now, we had to get out of there.

She rolled her eyes. “Didn’t I just say so? We knew there was a plan to sway the vote, and we knew there was someone high up in the Federation in cahoots with Princess Zurian. I sent out feelers, let it be known I wanted in. That I’d help them for a cut of the profits when Earth was opened up. And it was working. The meeting was set. I would have killed him and been on my way home. Except, because of the uproar you two caused, he got cold feet and canceled. I don’t even have a name.”

Untie me. Untie me.

“I couldn’t leave you,” Rekowski said. “Even when I thought you’d gone bad.”

Her lips curved into a smile and she reached out a hand and touched his bruised mouth. “Thanks for trying to rescue me.”

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