Colby (BBW Western Bear Shifter Romance) (Rodeo Bears Book 3) (43 page)

Wrapping one arm under Rick’s shoulder and the over his neck, she let herself fall apart under him, pleasure arching her back and pressing her flush against him.

She let her head fall back as a river of white fire swept through her veins, burning through everything that wasn’t the feeling of Rick rutting into her or the heat of his skin.

She came back to herself slowly, sparks of pleasure almost too intense to handle flickering to life as Rick continued to drive himself into her oversensitive body.
 

“Shit,” Rick muttered as his hips stuttered. He tucked his face into Zosha’s neck as his rhythm broke down, fucking her hard and fast. He pulled out of her with a groan and reached down to stroke himself. Zosha felt something warm splash across her belly and Rick collapsed on the mattress beside her.

They stayed like that for a moment, breathing heavily, sweat gleaming in the artificial light.

“So,” Zosha started when she got enough breath back to speak. “Worth fighting a squad of mercenaries for?”

Rick chuckled and leaned over to press his lips to hers.
 

She curled into his side and ran her fingers over his stomach, feeling the muscles flex under her touch.

“Come with us,” Rick said. “Leo will let you. You’re a fantastic asset. Annie’s fond of you and the others will get used to it. I don’t want to say goodbye to you yet.”

Zosha considered it. She thought about the asteroid where she’d lived her entire life: all of its flaws and all of its strengths. About the neon lights she’d grown up under. She thought about never seeing the place that held all of her memories again.

She thought about her future in the stars.

“I’m in,” she said softly.

She and Rick stared at each other, grinning like idiots, until the intercom crackled to life.

“So, uh…” the captain’s voice said. “You done in there yet?”

Zosha was too blissed out to be mortified, so she just turned her face towards the pillow and giggled. Rick kissed her cheek and reached over her to press a button on the intercom.

“Just teaching her how to fire a gun, Captain,” he said in a tone that implied he was referencing something. Someone snickered on the other side of the line.

“Well, put it back in the holster, cowboy, some of us are trying to work. And not vomit everywhere. Shut it, Custer,” he added when the cackling grew louder.

“Understood,” Rick said and dropped back down on the bed.

He pulled Zosha to him and wrapped an arm around her waist. She smiled, leaning on his broad chest and tracing her fingers lightly over the seam where the metal of his prosthetic legs met flesh.

“Does it hurt?” she asked him.

“Nope. Feel free to keep groping me,” Rick answered. “So, how does it feel to be an almost-official member of the
Breakwater
?”

Zosha’s grin threatened to split her face in two. “It feels perfect.”

Breakwater: Custer

Star Bears III

by

Becca Fanning

Delphine came to slowly, blinking as the light hit her oversensitive eyes.

The edges of her vision were fuzzy and there was a bitter taste in her mouth, barely detectable under the dry, cottony feeling coating her tongue. She didn’t bother trying to move, recognizing the signs of being sedated and feeling the cool metal restraints around her wrists and ankles.

She was sitting in what was, as far as she could tell, a cargo hold. The chair she was in was apparently strapped to a wall, and there were at least three other people in the room with her. A slight, black-haired woman stood next to a tall brunette, leaning into him. The two were talking to someone out of her line of sight and Delphine didn’t want to turn her head, feeling nauseous. Thanks to the dossiers she had been provided, she identified the people in front of her as Zoshanna Kane and Richard Chapel. The third person sounded feminine, which would make her Anyanka Heathcoat.
 

Delphine’s vision cleared slowly, enough so that she could see Kane’s eyes widening as she noticed her captive was awake. She tugged at Chapel’s sleeve, pointing.

“Annie, get the captain,” he said, straightening his shoulders. “She’s awake.”

“About time,” the third voice, now confirmed as Heathcoat, huffed. “Shoot her if she tries anything.”

There was the mechanical swish of a door opening and closing. Delphine ignored it, wondering if she could break through her cuffs. Two of her three primary targets were in the room with her and the third would be on his way down shortly. Even if she didn’t get off the ship alive, she could complete her mission.

She ran over what she knew about the two. Kane was a former street rat, surviving mainly due to her abilities as a thief. No kills that anyone was aware of, favored escape over combat. An easy target. Chapel posed more of a risk; Delphine was fully aware of her own capabilities, but if she couldn’t neutralize him before he shifted she would be at a disadvantage. If she was going to kill them, she needed to do it swiftly, starting with Chapel and finishing before Captain Ingram reached the bay.

The only thing in her way were the fucking cuffs.

She tugged at them, but even with her genetically enhanced strength they held. The chair creaked under her but didn’t give.
 

Chapel smiled at her. Or, he moved his lips in a way that revealed quite a few of his teeth. The expression held precious little warmth, which confirmed the suspicions the dossier had provided Delphine with that he and Kane were romantically involved. The bruise on the thief’s cheek was ugly and mottled. Delphine wouldn’t have been surprised if her blow had broken her cheekbone.

“Good morning,” Chapel said in a pleasant tone, the kind that generally came before a significant amount of pain. “We have a few questions for you.”

Delphine remained silent, years of experience keeping her face in a neutral expression.

“I can see you don’t want to talk to us,” he continued. “That’s understandable. Unfortunately, we can’t really let you just sit there either. See, if it were up to me, you’d have a blaster bolt turning your brain into about three pounds of superheated mush. But since we don’t want a repeat performance of what just happened on the docks, we need you to tell us what we want to know.”

Mistake, mistake, mistake. If Delphine were further from the fog of the sedatives they’d used on her, or less well trained, she’d laugh in his face. Letting your prisoner know they weren’t going to be getting out alive was a misstep. People wanted to believe there was a chance they could live, and removing that made them less willing to talk. What would the point be? Obviously, they were threatening her with torture if she didn’t cooperate, which was another mistake. Even with her training, Delphine was fully aware that everyone, including her, eventually broke under torture. That didn’t mean anyone in the crew had the capability to reach her threshold. She’d read all their files. They were smuggler, thieves, and, when the situation called for it, killers. They weren’t seasoned interrogators.
 

As it were, she merely remained as she was, still and expressionless.
 

“Rick,” Kane said quietly.
 

“I know, I’m sorry,” Chapel responded, his voice suddenly soft. “But she hurt you, Zee, I’m not inclined to be nice to her.”

“That doesn’t mean you need to be cruel, either,” Kane said. “I know you’re upset, but it’s just a bruise, and I already feel horrible. I don’t want to watch you become someone you aren’t just because I messed up.”

She was surprisingly gentle for a girl from Lytos.

Whatever Chapel wanted to say in response to that was interrupted by Heathcoat reentering the bay with Captain Leo Ingram in tow.

He was, Delphine had to admit, much more impressive than the photo that had been in his file. She’d known he’d be broad-shouldered and square-jawed, with tan skin and curly black hair, but in life he seemed more vivid. She began to understand why people talked about him like they did.
 

His anger was harder to ignore than his first officer’s, but still nothing like the trainers Delphine had grown up with. She wondered if he was going to try and intimidate her, or if he knew enough about the people trying to kill him to know that was a futile endeavor. He stared at her, jaw clenched.

“First things first,” he said. “Who are you and who do you work for.”

Delphine wondered if she should simply tell them. The fact that she hadn’t checked in yet had most likely already alerted the leader of Mason Corporation that she had failed or been delayed, and once they were certain she was useless to them they’d send a team. It wouldn’t matter how much or how little information the crew of the
Breakwater
got from Delphine to prepare for the onslaught. She had seen them at work before. The knowledge she was still capable of fear had come as something of a surprise.

In the end, she opted for silence.

“I had a feeling you were going to be like this,” the captain said. “Strong, silent type. You know, ninety-nine percent of the time I can respect that. Congratulations on finding the one percent.”

The door opened again and several sets of footsteps grew louder.

“Right on time.” Captain Ingram turned towards the other three members of the crew. They kept their distance from Delphine as they walked towards the captain. The shortest of the three handed him what appeared to be a medical pouch. “See, as much as I’d have loved to strap you to the top of the
Breakwater
, you have information we need. Things like, ‘who hired you’ and ‘what should we be on the lookout for.’ And I can’t afford to wait around until you feel like telling us. So what I have here,” he said, removing a syringe from the pouch, “is a delightful little compound an acquaintance of ours sells. It should loosen your lips.”

Delphine couldn’t do anything but glare as he walked up to her and jerked her head roughly to the side. The hiss as the syringe punched through the skin of her neck seemed implausibly loud. She was sure that her genetics would counteract some of the effects of the drug, but she couldn’t be sure how much or how it would combine with the remnants of the sedative still in her system. Clenching her jaw, she looked around the room.

The newcomers were easy to identify. Dominic Banner, 35. Close-cut hair and beard. Neat, quiet, short. Suffered from Rogerson disorder; neutralize pre-shift, do not engage otherwise. Hyde Jones, 36. Skin dark, like hers. Dreadlocks swept back behind a bandanna. Missing right eye due to infection. On the run from a murder charge. Anthony Monroe, 35, currently using the name “Custer.” Hand lost to malfunctioning blaster. Manic and unpredictable.

She knew them better than they knew each other, had spent hours going over the files that contained their whole lives over and over again. It was doing precious little to help her now. Banner was scowling at her quietly, Jones looked as though he would be perfectly content to just kill her and be done with it, and Monroe had a toothy grin stretched across his face.

“We’ll just give that a moment to kick in, shall we?” the captain said.

“I still say we just…” Jones mimed pointing a blaster at his head and firing.

“Hear, hear,” murmured Chapel, wrapping a protective arm around Kane.

“Now, now,” Monroe said. “Where’s the fun in that?”

“Where’s the fun in getting rid of the person who hurt Zosha?” Chapel raised an eyebrow. “Well, honestly, I’d call it more ‘satisfactory’ than ‘fun’ but I’m sure I could dredge up some sense of enjoyment.”

“Not now, Rick,” the captain said. “Answers first, murder second. Ready to talk yet?”

Delphine remained silent. It was somewhat harder to do so than it had been five minutes ago.

“You sure we can’t expedite the process a bit, Captain?” Chapel asked.
 

“Is this going to be a problem?” Ingram furrowed his brow. “Because this sort of sounds like this is going to be a problem.”

“I’m just glad to see the mighty Richard has a temper like the rest of us,” Monroe sighed.
 

“Custer, I swear to God—”

“Aw, come one, Dick, you know I don’t mean anything by it.”

“Can you be serious for five fucking minutes?” Chapel seethed. “She hit Zosha. She could have killed her if Hyde hadn’t tranqed her fast enough.”

“But he did,” Monroe answered breezily, “and thus, your lovely girlfriend is saved from an assassin who, more likely than not, went after you and tripped over her.”

“You—”

“It’s a decent question,” Heathcoat chimed in, her auburn hair spilling over her shoulder as she tilted her head. “Was she aiming for Rick and ran into Zosha? Or was she after Zosha?”

“Both,” Delphine said.

Every head in the room turned towards her as she tensed. She hadn’t meant to speak, hadn’t even known she was going to until she already had.

Sloppy
.

“Good to know,” Heathcoat said slowly, taking a step forward. “And were you targeting anyone in our crew other than them? I assume you were. They aren’t involved in anything that the rest of us aren’t.”

Delphine kept her jaw clenched tight. As long as she focused, she could keep herself from saying anything she shouldn’t. The question was, was it worth it? What were the advantages of remaining silent versus revealing information that wouldn’t help them in the long run? She didn’t think she could lie convincingly with the drugs still in her system.