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And this was the woman Tom was considering trusting with his
life and his freedom. Then again, maybe he could have some sympathy. There were
times he knew something and he just couldn’t rightly explain it. It was never a
good feeling and Da’shay lived with that frustration every day. Da’shay tilted
her head and looked down at him.

Reaching up, he rubbed the mark on his chest. “We’re going
to talk to Ramsay eventually, right?”

She nodded. “Driver takes us home. Promise. I promised to
come for you and I did.”

“I supposed you did,” Tom admitted. “I guess there really
ain’t much choice. But I’m telling you, you need to be real specific about what
kind of acting you expect out of me because I hate this slavery shit.”

She ran her fingers over his chest until her fingertips
brushed against his slave mark, tracing the outside edge of the lasered tattoo.
The ink had trace minerals in it that would make it easier to scan for him and
they gave the mark an odd shimmering quality so that the color shifted from
deep blues to purples and reds, all swirls and straight lines and angles
intertwined in a knot. The skin around it was still a bit pink, but it was
fading fast so the dark lines and curves stood out in contrast to his lighter
skin.

“Not hate. All cat’s cradle,” Da’shay whispered. “Tangles
can be untangled.” She gave a sad little smile before standing up, his leash in
hand. “Be a Tom-slave.”

“Yeah, you just have to tell me what that means.”

“You already know. Thoughts in white.” Turning around, she
dropped his leash and headed out of the shelter.

“Da’shay?” Tom called after her, but she kept walking. He
stood up so fast that he almost clocked himself on the transmission of the sand
car before he remembered to watch his head. “Shit.” He hurried out after her,
but she was halfway up the western dune and walking away. The sunrise made her
long shadow glide over the white sands, and for a second, it looked as if she
were dancing with her own shadow. It seemed lonely, dancing alone.

“Well crap. I guess I get to pack up camp alone.” With a
sigh, Tom turned toward their shelter and started pulling down the windbreaks.

Da’shay walked into the center of the room and stopped, her
gaze stuck on a painting over the bed.

“Seems a waste of space for the one bed. You could get five
or six decent rooms out of a space like this,” Tom pointed out as he put
several large bags by the door.

She didn’t answer him, but she did study the room. Walking
over to one wall, she laid her hand flat against the stone and then followed a
vein of something glittery that the stonecutters had revealed as they’d cut
each room out of the mountain.

“Wonder how thick the wall is,” Tom locked the hall door and
then headed to the wall, rapping a knuckle against it. It sounded solid enough.

“Mice gnawing out caverns.”

“Yep,” Tom agreed without really bothering to try to figure
out what she was saying. This morning they’d managed to communicate pretty damn
well, but now she was back to muttering random phrases.

“Smelling bad,” she said, but before Tom could ask whether
she was talking about him or herself, she turned and vanished into the
bathroom, sliding the metal door shut behind her. Right then, she was talking
about her own smell.

Tom figured they both were a little ripe. He was wearing the
same clothes he’d been arrested in. She’d given him back the shirt when they’d
reached the city and he could smell the sour clinging to it. He’d once told
Ramsay that he could smell fear, like old fish or rancid oil. The captain had
told him he was imagining things, but Tom could smell that same sour on his
shirt now.

Walking over to the bags, Tom used a foot to push them in
front of the door to slow down any intruders who might feel like barging in,
but then he wasn’t quite sure what he should do. He didn’t want to change
clothes because he figured anything he put on would smell as bad as him pretty
damn quick. While Tom never did mind a little human stink, he’d passed the
point of being decent a long time past.

With nothing else to do, Tom got down on his knees and
started running his hands over the stone walls. You could make a bug that was
so flat that it seemed to vanish into a flat surface, but they hadn’t made one
yet that didn’t either put off some heat or vibrate to shed the extra heat. A
palm was about the best way to find any listening device.

He worked the bottom third of the room, running his hands
over the walls and the dresser, between the mattresses and under the carpet. By
the time Da’shay came out, Tom had covered most of the room and was kneeling
near the bed feeling along the steel base. “Searching for—” He stopped when he
looked up to see Da’shay standing naked in the open doorway.

Despite the explosion that had left her near-bald weeks ago,
her hair was down to just past her shoulders, water dripping from black tips
over her skin. She wasn’t Tom’s normal definition of beauty, but his cock was
warming up to the idea fast. Her breasts were high with large nipples. They
were almost flesh colored as the blue faded out. The blue intensified in an
irregular stripe between her breasts and down her stomach. It narrowed until it
crossed her bellybutton and then widened out to meet the black curled hair
between her legs.

She stepped forward, and Tom could see the muscles stretch
and flex under her skin. Naked, she looked strong and sleek, almost like the
cats that would run wild on the farm when he’d been a boy. She stopped after
taking two steps, her dark eyes staring at him, and Tom swallowed.

“Should get dressed,” he said, proud that he’d kept his
voice even. It weren’t any kind of fair for her to walk around naked like that.
After all, Tom had come to understand a long time ago that he had very limited
control over his body, and if she did this too much, he was going to have a
hard time thinking straight with all his blood in his cock.

“Glittering so bright that all the corners hide in shadow.”
She looked at him as though that was supposed to mean something.

“Mind if I take a shower?” He stood up slow, his cock
aching.

She tilted her head to the side and wrinkled her nose.
“Clothing stained with memories like scabs, should discard.”

That was about the sanest thing she’d said since they’d hit
Capital City again. “Ain’t even going to argue that,” he said as he headed for
the bathroom, his gaze fixed on the track above the bathroom door that allowed
the metal to slide shut. As he passed her, she reached out and let her hand
rest against his arm, and he stopped, praying that she wasn’t about to start in
with her petting again. She’d developed an odd habit of just wanting to touch
him, but she held him for a second and then let him go.

Hurrying into the bathroom, he closed the door before
starting to strip. Shit. Shit and more shit. He shouldn’t feel so much for a
woman who he’d tried to get kicked off the ship a week ago. Tom dropped his
shirt to the ground and studied himself in the mirror. The tattoo seemed to
shimmer under the lights, the largest curve undulating in red and purple.

The design was centered over his heart and at least twice as
large as any he’d seen on any other slave, taking up about half the skin over
the pectoral. A curve like one of the music symbols he sometimes saw on
instrument shops started under his collarbone and then turned into a hook shape
that circled his nipple. A dozen little tattooed chains seemed to hang from the
bottom of the curve, each following the skin up under the pectoral and then
ending right before his abdominal muscles. Around the main curve, another line
darted off and swirled around. Despite all Tom’s protests, the woman had
followed Da’shay’s instructions to make the mark pretty.

He ran his fingers over the skin and could feel the slight
raised texture where the embedded metallic inks had settled between layers of
skin. Tom had always liked that when he took off his shirt that women had
watched him. As long as he didn’t open his mouth and say something stupid, Tom
could pretty much get any woman’s attention. He thought about Becca. Well,
almost any woman. Tom knew he was an attractive man; it was like genetics
compensating him for being an idiot when it came to understanding women.

However, he wondered how they’d see him now. Plenty of men
got tattoos or brands. First ship he’d ever been on was a freighter that stank
of musk ox. It had a communications expert—a signal booster, really—and he had
a doxy’s name carved into his hip so that it scarred up in straight lines and
fancy letters. Apparently he’d been real drunk and the doxy had breasts that
hung halfway to her waist, big ones that a man could get his hands around. He
lied and told women it was the name of his first love, a girl who’d gone and
died. They’d always get this soft look in their eyes, like a man stupid enough
to carve a woman’s name in his flesh was something special.

They wouldn’t look at Tom like that. This mark with the
shifting ink was a slave sign. They’d see him and think he was a slave or had
been a slave. They’d wonder who’d owned him and maybe they’d think he’d run
from the slave worlds. The worst ones would be those who looked at him with
pity and wondered if someone hadn’t done something to him. Tom had seen enough
slave ships to know how ugly slavery could get, and every woman who saw him
would wonder which of those horrors had been traced out on his body.

Tom unbuttoned his pants and realized that his need to come
had largely vanished. His cock hung limp as he scratched his balls. He really
did stink.

Pushing aside thoughts of things he couldn’t really control,
he grabbed a scrubber, found the least flowery soap he could and then hit the
dispenser and the water at the same time. Ignoring any guilt at the amount of
water he was wasting, Tom washed every inch clean. His face itched from the
rough beard that was growing in and his hair was actually a little too long,
but he scrubbed his face and hair clean and figured he’d worry about the rest
later.

His skin was pink and starting to pucker up before Tom
finally turned the shower off. An air cycle blasted him with enough warm air to
knock most of the water off, leaving him damp and hot. Stepping out of the
shower, he grabbed a towel and rubbed himself free of the last clinging drops.
His clothes were gone, so Da’shay had been in here. That woman could move
unnaturally quiet when she wanted, but even more irritating, Tom didn’t have
clothes. However, he sure wasn’t going to play the blushing virgin. Wrapping
the towel around his waist and tucking the ends in, he pushed open the door and
strode out into the main room.

“You got clothes for me?” he asked, his arms crossed.
Da’shay was lying on her back in the middle of the bed, her head hanging off
the side as she stared at him. At least she’d put some clothes on, a tight
uniform that reminded Tom of the one she’d been wearing in the pictures of that
massacre she’d carried out on the slaver ship.

“Yep,” she said, but she didn’t move.

Tom rolled his eyes and headed for the luggage. He figured
it’d be easy enough to spot what she meant for him. They weren’t exactly the
same size.

She flipped her legs up and over her head and sort of
somersaulted off the side of the bed. “Wait.”

“For what?”

“Put a chair in the bathroom,” she said, but then she went
over to the desk chair and picked it up herself. When it came to giving orders,
she didn’t seem to understand exactly how it was supposed to go. She put the
chair in the bathroom, blocking off the shower before she backed out of the room.

“Sit.” She pointed at the chair. The order was clear enough
and Tom had vowed to try to play at being a good slave, so he headed into the
bathroom and sat on the edge of the chair, his muscles bunched and tense.

She followed and slid the cover back on a small shelf. Tom
hadn’t realized there were shaving supplies there and he reached up to take
them from her, but she twisted away so he couldn’t reach them. Not sure what
game she was playing, he sank back down in the chair. “Could use a shave,” he
said.

Ignoring him, she laid materials out on the narrow ledge
over the sink. After she lined all the jars up on the edge, she turned to him
and reached down, pressing on the outsides of his legs so he would close his
knees.

“You mind if I get dressed for this?”

“Yes.” She straddled him and then sat on his lap so they
were facing each other. Tom sat with his hands held out to the side without any
idea of where he was supposed to put them.

Reaching out, Da’shay caught his hand and pulled it close,
putting it on her thigh. Still feeling a little like a man handling dynamite,
Tom brought his other hand in and rested it on her right hip. She might look
small, but he could feel the muscle under her uniform as she reached to the
side and grabbed one of the jars. Pulling the top open, she smoothed the cream
between her palms and then brought her hands up to his face.

His hand came up by reflex. He didn’t normally have people
touching his face, but she said in a lilting sing-song, “Hands!” He settled
himself back down.

“If you’re doing what I think—”

“Yep,” she cut him off. “Too hairy.” She stroked her hands
down his cheeks and then reversed the direction so that his stubble scratched
across her palms and sent a shiver down his back. Tilting her head to the side,
she seemed lost in herself as she worked the lotion in, her fingers stroking
over his cheeks and nose and across his chin and down his neck. Her warm
fingers tickled until her stroking turned firmer.

“Oxytocin deprivation,” she whispered, her hand wandering
down to caress his shoulders, her strong fingers massaging Tom’s tight muscles.

“I ain’t…” Tom reached up to catch her hands, but she froze
and glared at him. Swallowing his nervousness, he put his hands back on her
hips. His cock was getting all kinds of confused about having a strong woman
order him around. She shifted in his lap and reached for the next jar.

Humming under her breath, she ran a hand under the faucet to
get it wet and then started rubbing the foaming soap until it turned white. It
was weird having a woman spend all her attention on him, so weird that Tom
wasn’t really sure what he was supposed to be doing. Hell, he wasn’t even sure
if Da’shay was trying to start with sex or just being some new brand of crazy.
Hell, all he knew was that she didn’t want his hands to move and that was
actually reassuring because he could follow that rule.

She stroked the creamed soap across his face, cooling him
when he was starting to feel real hot. With a wicked smile, she ran a finger
down the center of his chest, leaving a trail of white soap. “Diamonds harder
than graphite formed in fused sheets by unprotected atmospheric reentry.”

“Huh?” His cock was pretty damn hard, but if she was
commenting on that, she wasn’t using a tone of voice he understood.

She wiped her hand off on a towel before reaching down to
trace a circle on the back of Tom’s hand where he was holding her hips. She
picked up the razor and brought it up to his face. When she drew the razor down
across his cheek, a cold shiver went through his body. Once he got out of this
mess, he was going to find himself a good doxy to do this again because his
cock was hard and aching now and he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to get sex
once Da’shay had finished. Of course, he might be wrong. Right now, he was really
hoping he was wrong, even if letting himself enjoy this was going to cause him
to get all kinds of mixed up in his head.

With a thumb, she pushed at the bottom of his jaw and he
tilted his head back to allow her to run the razor over the sensitive skin just
over his jugular. In all his life, he hadn’t ever felt this exposed and his
cock got harder. Da’shay kept humming as she shaved him, each stroke long and
steady against his skin.

She finished and set the razor aside before caressing his
face, her fingers searching out every wrinkle and freckle and corner. Her
weight pressed into his cock and Tom thought tears were going to come to his
eyes from the sheer need. He kept his hands where she’d told him, but now he
pulled her close. If she weren’t
genta
, it’d be so easy to flip her back
and thrust into that warmth. He would run fingers between her inner lips until
he found the hard little clit all swollen with need and finger it as he thrust
harder. Tom closed his eyes and tried hard to think about something
else—redesigning security protocols to account for stolen codes, the allocation
of water resources on the
Kratos
. Instead, he could only think of the
way Da’shay’s body was warm and strong under his hands.