Page 14 of The Captain's Bounty
You mean, except find me?the voice in her head dryly answered.
She panicked.
Finally.
“You mean apart from blowing the docking port all to pieces?” her captor asked. “I don’t know what Corporate wants you for, but I assume whatever you did was just as bad.”
Her stomach rumbled, the emptiness suddenly so painfully acute that she’d have doubled over if only she weren’t already lying on her face on the bed. Hands bound behind her back, shecouldn’t even rub to help soothe the hurt. Pressing her forehead to the mattress, she stifled another groan.
“Hungry?” Bruwes asked, not taunting, but only asking.
Tell him yes. You must eat or you will die, and I will have to find someone else to inhabit.
Poor you, she thought bitterly.
Movement right close beside her caught her attention. She stiffened all over again.
“Sit up,” he told her.
With her arms behind her back, that was easier said than done, but like a caterpillar using her face for balance, she eventually managed it.
“Open your mouth.”
She instinctively flinched back, turning her face away from the cock she envisioned was right there at her lips. Open her mouth, indeed.
“Are you hungry or not?” the bounty hunter demanded.
“Take off my blindfold,” she ordered. “I can feed myself, but I’m not opening my mouth until I see what’s going in it.”
He snorted.
It was all she could do to control her shaking, and she didn’t need eyes to know she was failing at that. Breathing deeply, trying to calm herself, she softened her tone. “Please. I won’t do anything, I swear.”
I will.
No more killing, she insisted, unsure if the being could even hear her. But if her kidnapper knew what she–the being–had done on the docks, then maybe he knew what had happened at the digsite. Maybe that was why she had a bounty on her head.It’s your fault I’m in this mess.
The soft clink of a utensil being set down was followed by a heavy silence as he considered her.
“If you do not behave, there will be consequences,” he finally said.
“I’ll behave,” she reluctantly promised, the pinch in her stomach tightening. “I swear, I will.”
The being squatting inside her said nothing, but she could sense its growing irritation.
I mean it. No killing,she thought fiercely.
You command me nothing.
She frowned, and the next she knew her chin was captured in a rough, hard hand. Bruwes the bounty hunter jerked her head up, presumably to meet eyes she couldn’t yet see.
“I am serious,” he warned. “You will give me your obedience, woman, or I will take it by force. I know how human males correct their disobedient females, and in that our species are very closely aligned. You have been warned. Thank me for granting such kindness.”
Yanking her chin back out of his hand almost made her lose her balance. This was entirely the wrong situation to get mad in. Like it or not, her life was in this man’s hands. What purpose could it possibly serve to antagonize him?
And yet…
“Kindness?” she spat incredulously.
