Page 39 of The Captain's Bounty
“Every human I have met before has, including the one I made a crewman.” He offered her a bite, then scoffed. “That one is the queen of disobedience.”
“Well, obviously, you haven’t met a lot of humans,” she immediately challenged.
He held her stare, as if daring her to look away. She wanted to, but she didn’t have the courage. Just when she thought he wasn’t going to answer, she took the bite and that’s when he said, “Two.”
“Two?” She almost choked trying to swallow what was in her mouth. “You’re judging my entire species on two people? What, did you kidnap the other one too?”
That curl at the corner of his lips twitched, though it never did become a full-on smile. “I didn’t kidnap you. You’re a bounty, and I want my six thousand chits.”
If she hadn’t swallowed, she really would have choked. “Six thousand chits? Did you say chits?”
He nodded and dished up another bite. He offered her this one too. “I did.”
She stared straight through him. “Do you know how many excavations I could fund with that kind of money?”
Well, realistically, only one. Two, if half the workers were student volunteers and everyone brought their own tools.
“Do you know how many jump coils I could buy?” he countered.
“How many do you need?” Lissa asked, feeling her brow furrow with concern in spite of herself.
“Let’s put it this way. I don’t have any at the moment.”
Lissa took that in while the entity sharing her headspace ruffled through her thoughts and absorbed meanings even she wasn’t aware of. “But you said we were in space,” she said finally.
“We are.”
“Does that mean we’re still in the Ceron system?” Lissa asked, naked horror in her unchecked tone and all over her unguarded face.
Bruwes bared his teeth briefly and rubbed a rough hand across his scowling face. “If I could piss out the window, it’d be raining on Cutirut I.”
Lissa rocked back on his lap and stared at him, adjusting to the new reality of her circumstances. She was apparently a wanted Corporate fugitive, adrift on a bounty-hunter’s broken ship midway between a junk planet and its junk moon, with hundreds if not thousands of sell-swords, pirates, slavers and every other flavor of scum buzzing all around them like a hive of venin-hornets.
“That’s why it doesn’t matter how hard you try to win me over,” Bruwes was saying. “I will keep myself strong against you and I will turn you over for the money.”
“I’d turn me over for that too,” she said softly and looked away.
He laughed, and forked up another piece of meat for her. “That’s what I said, but no one’s put a bounty on my head.”
He had such a pleasant laugh, when he wasn’t being sarcastic or trying to hide a riled temper.
“You’re not eating?” she asked when he nudged the fork closer.
Her stomach tightened all over again, the throbbing sensation in her pussy now more of an empty ache. It got instantly worse when she realized he was staring at her lips.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Oh.” She wasn’t sure if she was hungry anymore either. And then she noticed his eyes were growing visibly redder and darker as he gazed at her mouth. Self-consciously licking her lips (and shivering when he softly growled), she asked, “Does that hurt?”
His gaze flicked to her eyes and his sharpened. “What?”
“Your eyes. When they go red like this. Is it… blood? Does it hurt?”
He stared at her for a long time, and when he finally did speak, it wasn’t to answer her question.
“Eat,” he commanded.
He made her finish the entire plate by herself, before setting it aside and giving the side of her hip a slap. It wasn’t as hard as he did when he spanked her, but it stung just enough to remind her that she really didn’t want any more like that.
