Thief (14 page)

They set to work. Kraft found herself alone with Jace.

“What of me?” She peered up at him. When he noticed her mouth was level with the worn edge of his button fly, his gaze jumped to hers. She smiled and winked, but he didn’t blush. He got hard. She could see his reaction and sure as hell he could feel it.

Jace stepped back and turned away. “Get back to
Mutiny
.”

She stood. “Captain, if I could suggest—”

“I think you’ve done enough for today. You best be on your way and have Payton look at your arm. If you’re able, then rustle up some dinner.” He couldn’t even look at her when he spoke with his imperious captain voice.

“Oooo, nice way to put me in my place, Captain.” When he turned, she snapped him a sharp salute. “But before you leave this ship, you might want to strip it of the electronics. Runners typically have some of the best tricks.”

“This is an IWOG scout, not a Runner ship.”

“Some Runner bought this IWOG scout and upgraded the hell out of it so he could use it for bounty hunting. Had you paid more attention to details, you would have known that.”

“How was I to know autofire weapons would be around every corner?”

Kraft gave a short, exasperated sigh. “Because it’s a Runner ship.”

“It looks like an IWOG scout.”

“It is. One that a Runner upgraded.”

“But it looks like an IWOG scout.”

“It only looks like that if you don’t look hard enough!” She lowered her voice. “Didn’t you notice the larger port aft?”

“So?”

Resisting the urge to shake him, she calmly said, “This ship is a flying blow torch. It’s faster than almost anything in the Void.”

Jace pondered for a moment. “You knew by looking?”

“Just at the back end.” Kraft nodded. “It’s an IWOG scout, just as you were told, but they hoped you wouldn’t notice the wider exhaust port, and you didn’t. Do you realize you could have come into this ship and found a prisoner on the loose? Who knows who this Runner transported?”

“Kobra never mentioned—”

“And you didn’t know enough to ask.”

Jace gritted his teeth.

“I’m not trying to grind it in your face. I’m just suggesting, in the future, for the time I’m on your ship, it would behoove you to accept my input.” She grinned. “Yes, I’m a girl, a lady, a chick, a she-bitch, and Heller’s personal favorite, a freak-show, but I also know a thing or two about the Void that maybe you all don’t. I won’t expect you to do what I say, but at least
give
me a say.” She shrugged and winced. She held pressure to her arm and mentally forced the wound to stop bleeding. “Even if you all point and laugh at me right after I open my mouth, at least give me the chance to speak before you relegate me to the kitchen.”

Jace cast a curious gaze around the storage room. “You knew this was a Runner ship?”

“As soon as I saw it from the bridge of
Mutiny
.”

Jace leaned close. “How do you know so much about ships just by looking?”

“I told you that I had five years of military training. I know ships and I know upgrades, or the signs of them, anyway.”

“Which military branch?”

She’d rather do anything other than answer that question.

“Captain!” Heller yelled, puffing into the room. “Garrett says you gotta see this bridge!”

Jace watched Heller lumber away. “Why is he so excited?”

“It’s loaded with tricks.” She silently thanked Heller for her reprieve.

“What tricks?”

“You want my help or not?”

“Fine. Take whatever you want. Just don’t bleed to death.”

“Yeah, wouldn’t want to deprive you of your captive cook.” Kraft turned on her heel and stalked off to the shuttle bay.

“The next time I get an itch to do a good deed,” Jace said, “I think I’ll shoot myself in the head.”

Kraft turned. She looked at him for a long time. “I didn’t ask for your help.”

“I didn’t ask for yours either.”

“Touché.”

Kraft’s injury hampered her movements in the kitchen. She made a simple dinner and ate standing, but she couldn’t manage to clean up one-handed afterwards.

Against her best efforts, she managed to maneuver the large pots and pans right to the floor. Her shoulder just wouldn’t grasp more than ten puny pounds no matter how angry she got.

She fumbled a pot. Before it could hit the floor, Jace caught it.

“Here, I got it.”

When he bent over to put the pot away, she admired his backside. Jace Lawless had a fanny that any woman would want to squeeze, or wrap her legs around.

“Feel like explaining why you’re doing this now?” Jace closed the cabinet and faced her.

“Just wanted to see you bend over before I went to bed.”

She hoped for a smile, but instead, he only looked at her with concern in the depth of his eyes.

“I seem to have a real fascination for your backside.” She smiled at him, but he wouldn’t echo it.

“How’s your arm?” He lifted his hand as if to touch her, but seemed reluctant to actually make contact. His hand fell back to his side.

“It’s fine.” She shrugged. “It’s one of the lesser wounds I’ve had.”

“You took it for me,” Jace whispered, his gaze riveted to the bloody mess on her left sleeve.

She hadn’t had time to ask him for a new shirt or clean up this one. After what happened on the Runner ship, she didn’t think asking him for any more favors would be a wise idea.

“You’re my captain,” she said simply.

“So you’d give up your life for me?”

The dance felt way too intense, and she pulled back. “All I did was give up a chunk of my arm for you. It’s not that big of a deal.”

“It is to me.” He stepped close enough for her to smell the subtle musk of his body. It wasn’t fair that he smelled even better than he looked.

She hadn’t thought before she’d leaped out in front of him. She’d automatically reacted. The more she thought about her reasons for doing so, the more she wanted to pull away from Jace. His scent and the plaintive look in his eyes made her feel uncomfortable in her own skin.

“If I hadn’t leapt forward that bullet would have hit your neck. Didn’t I once confess I’d hate to muss your hair let alone your pretty neck?” She desperately tried to keep the conversation light with her joking question and her jaunty attitude.

“You don’t owe me your life, Kraft.” He frowned with his face and his entire body. Jace slumped, looking dejected, embarrassed and apologetic.

“You think that’s why I protected you? Because I feel guilty about owing you?” She turned away. “Well, I must say, you’ve got me all sussed out, Captain Lawless.” She dodged past him, thankful that he’d given her the opening she needed to exit.

“Wait.”

“What? You wanna toss it in my face some more?” Hands on her hips, she continued, “Haven’t you ground my nose in it enough that I owe you? You keep ascribing it to me, but you’re the one who keeps bringing it up.” She lifted her arms and winced when doing so reopened her wound. She swore up a German streak.

“Here, let me—” He reached for her.

“Don’t you dare.” She pulled back. She was unbalanced enough without adding the confusion of his touch to the mix. “I swear, if I had a purse of script I’d hurl it right at your pretty face. Since I don’t, you can just keep my share of the job, okay? Consider it a downpayment on my contract.”

Turning away with a dismissive toss of her head, she took two long strides to the door.

“Stop.”

“Is that an order, Captain?” she asked mockingly.

“Turn around.”

His tone brooked no argument. With a deep breath, she faced him, her chin high.

“Go to my bunk and wait for me there.”

Startled by his command and the smoldering heat in his eyes, Kraft had to clench her jaw tight before shock allowed it to fall off her face. Would he make her his whore just to assert his authority over her?

Cautious and respectful, she asked, “Are you ordering me to your bunk to…” She let her voice trail off because she didn’t know how to finish.

Stepping close, he lowered his voice. “You said you would honor the full of the contract between us.”

Chapter Fourteen

Jace strode down the hall and found Kraft standing by the door to his bunk. Seeing her dressed in his old flax trousers straining against her hips attracted him on a deep physical level, but his too-small yellow shirt now ripped and stained from a gunshot to her upper left arm repulsed him with a hefty dose of guilt. Kraft had damn near killed herself to protect him.

She’d been forced to put herself in jeopardy to save him from his own bumbling. He should have known the information Kobra gave him on the salvage job was flawed, but he needed the money and the job looked okay. Once again, even though he’d gone by the book, everything went wrong. He felt inept, ashamed, emasculated, and he’d taken his frustration out on Kraft because she saved him without a single thought to her own safety.

His decade of surviving the Fringe was a drop in the bucket to her shark-infested depths. Just by being a woman, Kraft opened herself up to a seamy-underbelly of the Fringe that he never had to deal with. Most established worlds, be they IWOG, WAG, or Fringe, still considered women chattel. Men could be bought and sold as labor slaves, but few were bought or sold as sexual slaves. Women were far more valuable commodities. Women could be sold as cheap labor, breeders, or thralls. A thrall, a sexual slave, especially an attractive woman with cooking skills, was the most valuable of all women on the Fringe.

Cook-whore.

Freeze-dried dreck in knowing hands could be most pleasurable. And if the cook-whore couldn’t cook all that well, then at least she could still whore. Even if the woman put up a fight, a strong man could force her to provide the basics of pleasure. Or drug her so she might not care so much. Or restrain her until she had no choice.

Kraft willingly cooked, willingly fought, and claimed she would willingly whore. By her own honor, she offered the full of herself up to him, but Jace sensed that she expected him to restrain himself by his own dictates of honor. Asking her to cook and fight was one thing, but asking her to whore? Well, that was an entirely different matter.

When she saw him approach, Kraft stood at full attention with her face demurely lowered. All at once he felt a foot taller than her when he wasn’t.

He’d ordered her to his bunk as a spur-of-the-moment way to get her to stop defying his authority. He never thought Kraft would actually obey. Now that she had, he wasn’t sure what to do with her. Feeling awkward and shy, he thought the first thing he should do was explain and apologize.

Embarrassment at her having saved him and his crew fueled his need to remind her and himself that he was in charge. As he drew close to her, he longed to reach out and touch her face. On a rush of emotion, he wanted to confess that he didn’t always know what to do, or how to proceed, and sometimes acted rashly, fueled more by his heart than his head.

As a captain, Jace wanted to ask for her help and make her his partner in crime. Perversely, he felt he shouldn’t need her help and should make her his partner in bed. As a man, Jace wanted to possess the full of Kraft. He wanted to protect her even though he knew he couldn’t. Worse, he knew he didn’t have to coddle Kraft, which only increased his longing to claim her as his bedwarmer. Beyond that corral of confusion, Jace knew Kraft shouldn’t have to protect him.

Instead of saying anything, he unlocked his bunk with a slap of his hand to the wall com. The metal catch released with a soft snick that vibrated the floor below their feet.

Her braless breasts jiggled against the worn yellow fabric of his secondhand shirt. The enticing movement caught his attention, and he forgot what he intended to say. Instead, he found himself imagining what she would look like topless.

“If you’d like, I could put the harem outfit on.”

His gaze went from her chest to her mouth.

Lifting her lowered face a fraction, Kraft met his gaze, and whispered, “Someone placed the costume in my closet.” She flashed him that slow, lazy and sexy smile.

Jace had no idea who put the outfit in her closet, but he wouldn’t mind seeing her in that getup again. Fluffpink clinging and exposing the full promise of her undeniably strong and sexy body was certainly worth a second look. After seeing her in the revealing outfit, he knew her nipples were large and toffee-dark against her skin. He remembered the snug slit of her innie bellybutton drawing his gaze down to the wide pleasure of her hips. Between her lush thighs, he would find another snug—

“Should I fetch that costume, Captain?”

Her seductive, superior attitude dispelled all his thoughts of apologizing. Kraft didn’t worry one bit about him taking charge, because she assumed she had the upper hand. His blushing and backing off made her think she could say or do anything, and he’d just turn away. Normally he would have, but not this time.

Slipping a finger under her chin, he lifted her face until she met his gaze. Fathomless black eyes held a smirk that he wanted to quash in a sudden rush. For the first time, she didn’t flinch away from his touch. She melted to him as he stroked his finger across her full, sensuous lips. More than anything in the Void, he wanted to kiss her. He wanted to taste every bit of her luscious mouth. Kraft had a body built for sin, but she had a mouth destined for seduction.

Jace lowered his voice as his mouth descended on hers. “Seems like a waste of time for you to put on all those complicated clothes when I’m just going to make you take them off.”

Her eyes widened.

Placing his mouth to her ear, he whispered, “Or did you want to dress up and then strip for me?”

She tensed and swallowed with an audible click.

He pressed closer. “I’ve never had a whore in my bed. If you’re familiar with the concept, maybe you could walk me through it.”

Kraft pulled back and narrowed her gaze. “After ten years of celibacy, I think a walk is all it would take.”

“Is that so?” Refusing to back down, Jace traced his finger along her ear to her neck. “Since it’s been a decade for me, I’m thinking you won’t be able to walk by the time I’m satisfied.”