Page 7 of Healing Creek
For them, he would do his best.
***
Hours later, Creek used an override code to open the next in a long line of empty crew cabins. The call had gone out that Mercury’s pack had stopped the mercenaries and secured the ship’s bridge and central security. Releasing the slaves had gone relatively smoothly, and with their help they’d secured over ninety percent of the ship. Now they were just sweeping up the remnants of theAbundance’screw.
Adrenaline long gone, every step reminded Creek how years of abuse had diminished his body. Pain magnified by exhaustion weighed him down, but he refused to let it show. He would carry on as long as needed. He waved a heavy hand to the Dreat standing watch in the corridor and stepped inside the cabin. Immediately, he reassessed its purpose. A guest cabin, perhaps. Larger than most of the cabins they’d been clearing, it took him five full steps to reach the door to the cleansing room. Most of the crew cabins didn’t even have a separate room, just a partitioned area in a corner.
The back of his hand brushed against the soft covering on a generously sized bed. He clenched his fist to resist the temptation to lay down and rest. He stepped into the smaller room and carefully checked for occupants, though it seemed obvious no one had been living in these quarters or using the luxurious bathing area. Everything was precisely arranged and tidy. No personal items in sight. Humans, he’d recently learned, liked lots of mementos, reading pads, and empty drinking containers lying around their spaces.
Creek’s ears flicked at a noise from out in the corridor. He was already heading back through the door when the Dreat reached him.
The enormous green man slapped a hand on Creek’s shoulder, shooting pain across his back. “Come,” he said in his own language. “Hurry.”
Creek followed him down the corridor. The other Dreat and a freed human he’d been searching with hovered outside an open cabin door.
The human, a waif of a man with rounded shoulders and disheveled hair, turned his face in Creek’s direction without meeting his eyes. “She won’t come out.”
Creek nodded, then added a grunt of understanding, since the man was too timid to actually look at him. He prepared for a defiant crewmember, making a prideful stand against what she must surely see as an unworthy group of slaves. He growled, showing his teeth as he went through the door. What he saw stalled him half in and half out of the cabin.
She was average height for a human female, but delicately built, with blonde hair and skin pale as cream. A large metal collar ringed her neck. Her narrow shoulders were pressed back against the far wall, eyes impossibly wide, one hand wrapped tight around the tall alloy headboard of the room’s bed. He took another step, and her scent teased him from across the room. Nothing artificial, no perfume, but her scent reminded him of the almond cookies he’d had a taste for when he’d been with the resistance. She wore a simple white tunic and loose trousers in a material that looked as soft as her skin. Her feet were bare.
That collar around her neck was why the others hadn’t just dragged her out. They all knew their captor used collars to control and punish slaves. Creek had worn one himself earlier. This one was different, bulky around her slender neck. His had been a thin metal circle.
The woman looked at him with surprised sapphire eyes as she inhaled a single deep breath. Then she visibly shook off the shock. Her lips still trembled. “Morgan told me the collar would d-detonate if I left the cabin.”
Morgan St. Germaine, the vile slaver.
Creek studied the woman and the room in which she stood. Her feet were firmly planted, her body stiff. The cabin was smaller than the one he’d just left, but it had the same comforts, and everything in it looked as soft as the woman. The collar said she was a slave, but the room was more suited to a guest. Or a valued pet. He didn’t like that thought. It tightened every aching muscle in his body.
He moved fully into the room and toward the woman.
She pressed back even more, as if she could merge with the damned wall. Her knuckles whitened with the fierceness of her grip on the bedframe.
He was still wearing the ludicrous gladiator costume he’d been forced to wear for the auction that had been meant to see him and others into a new round of slavery. It left him mostly bare-chested. A strap across his chest held a single shoulder guard in place over his right shoulder. He must look the barbarian.
“Please, you should all go.” Her words were a whisper. Fear? Fear that they would ignore her plea? Or fear that they would heed it and leave her there alone?
He searched her face and found what he was looking for. Her fright was not of him. He’d seen enough of fear in others’ eyes to know that much. He didn’t stop until he was directly in front of her. Her scent filled his lungs on a breath he didn’t want to let go. She smelled somehow right in a way he couldn’t describe. She didn’t smell of St. Germaine. Or anyone. Had she been alone so long?
Since smiling never came easily for him, he did his best to keep his face neutral. “I don’t know if the collar can be set so precisely, but we won’t take any chances.”
She looked up at him with relief relaxing her features. She released her grip on the bed. “I heard an explosion earlier.”
“It wasn’t a prisoner.” He tried to sound reassuring. “It did minimal damage to the ship. You’re safe and we’ll get you free,” he promised, though he knew little about such devices.
He raised a hand to push a hank of pale hair behind her shoulder to get a better look at the collar’s mechanism, but stopped and waited for her nod of agreement. When he touched her hair, the silken strands slipped across his skin in a caress that tightened his gut. Her head dropped forward, so like a submissive bow that his loins heated involuntarily. Just instinct, he told himself.
Old bruising marred one side of her neck beneath the collar. He suppressed an instinctive growl of anger. It took all his will not to bend over her and press his lips to the yellow and green skin. No female should suffer abuse. “I’m Creek.”
She lifted her head and her lips stretched into a closemouthed smile. “Grace. I’m very glad to meet you.”
He was captivated by the curve of her lips and lost in time until her hand found his—a spark of desire flared from the simple touch. Maybe he was the one who’d been alone too long. The hand she touched was the one that had been crushed a few years back. She wrapped her much smaller fingers around his and gently squeezed. A human handshake. Her hand radiated a soothing warmth that seeped into his knuckles and supplanted the pain of pressure on damaged joints.
A cough at the door stopped him from giving in to instinct and pulling her closer. He liked the touch because it was hers…a realization that didn’t please him. He needed to focus on his task.
Creek pulled his hand free and took a step back.
With her hand gone, the aching returned as angry as before. All the pain in his body called out for her touch. It was a natural reaction, one he needed to gain control over. There were human females that were fascinated by Arena Dogs, enough to bed them. But this woman was not one of those. Her smile was reserved, her manner almost shy.
