Torment Read online

  She pressed her lips together. “You shouldn’t be in here long. We aren’t far from Kurril. I can’t break you out, though. They’ll only find you again, and they’ll know you have an accomplice.”

  “I did not ask you to break me out,” he said, gesturing to the bench. “I was enjoying a nice sleep when you woke me up.”

  She strode forward, her eyes blazing. “Well, excuse me for wanting to make sure they didn’t kill you.” She slapped his midsection.

  He flinched. “I’m not sure if I’m more in danger from them, or from you.”

  “Shit.” She put a hand to the bruises that were blooming across his abdomen. “They really worked you, didn’t they?”

  Vrax rested his hand on top of hers, enjoying the feel of her smaller fingers underneath his. “I am a Dothvek warrior. I will be fine.”

  She tipped her head up, and he saw that her pupils had darkened. “You keep saving me, but you also keep forgetting that I never asked you to.”

  “I know. You keep forgetting to thank me.”

  She exhaled, shaking her head. “You’re an arrogant ass.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t know why I came here.” Her voice no longer held its usual sharp edge. “You’re determined to be some macho hero and get yourself killed.”

  He rubbed his thumb over the top of her hand, savoring the soft warmth of her skin.

  She bit her lower lip and then jerked her hand away, stepping back quickly. “I should go.”

  “The captain plans to sell me in a slave market,” he said, as she took long strides back to the console, her fingers hovering above the surface.

  She looked at him as the blue light lowered over the opening. “Shit.” She blew out a breath. “Well, I guess that means I need to force him to land even sooner, or I get to break you out of a slave market. Unless you happen to have enough credits for me to buy you.”

  He cocked his head to one side. “You would buy me?”

  “Don’t get all excited, pretty boy.” Tori said, walking to the force field. “I’d only be doing it to save your ass. I’d rather make it worth Mourad’s while to land somewhere that doesn’t have a slave market. Not that I don’t mind a good fight.”

  He thought about her in battle, her eyes wild and her hair flying as she slashed at her opponents. His cock stirred and he tried to ignore it. “How do you plan to force Mourad to land even sooner? You already depleted his water.”

  “I’m not sure,” she said, “but be ready for anything.”

  Chapter Seven

  Mourad slammed his fist into the armrest of his captain’s chair, and the entire ship seemed to tremble. “I want to know why my crew hasn’t fixed our gravitational system yet.”

  One of the crew members—a squat creature with stringy, black hair who served as the engineer—touched the bruises on his arm. “If you’ll notice, Captain, the gravity is working now.” He swept his arms wide to indicate the bridge where several bounty hunters stood at dingy, steel consoles that faced a wide view screen overlooking space.

  Mourad swiveled in his chair to reveal a swollen knot above one eye that was a sickly shade of yellow. “But you don’t know why, do you? And it’s been going in and out for hours now. Half the crew needs medical attention from being slammed to the floor after floating in midair.”

  The engineer nodded, keeping his eyes down. “We believe there’s a glitch in the system, sir. We suspect the same glitch vented our water into space.”

  Mourad crossed his arms over his chest. “You don’t think it has anything to do with our stowaway?”

  A hurried shake of the head. “The barbarian? He’s never seen a spaceship before. He wouldn’t know how to work any of our controls. Plus, he’s been in custody since the gravitational issues started. He’s got a few bruises, himself.”

  Mourad grunted. “I’ll be glad to offload him. At least I can recoup some of the credits we lost from that dead bounty.”

  “We’re still heading for Kurril?”

  “If we can make it there. It’s the closest planet with a slave market and a decent number of pleasure houses and fighting rings.” Mourad hefted himself up and began pacing across the bridge. “The crew needs to let off some steam before we go after another bounty.”

  “And the next one won’t be so easy,” the engineer said.

  Mourad stopped pacing and looked up. “What?”

  “Without those bounty hunter bitches to follow.” The greasy-headed man grinned, then his smile faded as he realized what he’d said. “Not that we couldn’t have found the bounties without them.”

  Mourad’s jaundiced face became a patchwork of pink, but before he could reach the trembling engineer, his feet left the floor and he began floating toward the view screen. “I thought you said it was working!”

  “It was,” the engineer said, as he hung upside down, flailing his arms in circles in an attempt to right himself.

  “One more incident, and I’m putting someone out the airlock,” Mourad bellowed, as he bounced off the ceiling.

  “Yes, Captain.” The engineer paddled his arms like he was swimming as he attempted to leave the bridge, but he ended up somersaulting out the sliding metal door.

  Tori slunk back away from the grate overlooking the bridge, trying not to laugh. She’d fastened weights to her arms and legs so she wouldn’t float when the gravity turned off and on, so she was the only person on board who wasn’t covered in bumps and bruises. She still felt the odd weightless sensation, though, and the bits of her hair not pinned down floated up over her head. After so many gravity flips, her stomach wasn’t feeling too hot, either.

  It hadn’t been hard to mess with the gravity—another trick she’d learned from Holly that involved switching a few wires and doing some basic reprogramming—and the results had been well worth the risk she’d taken sneaking into the control room again. This time, she’d had to crawl into a tube and remove a panel, but she’d gotten lucky and no one had spotted her coming or going. She’d even been able to get back into the ventilation ducts and move throughout the ship again, spying on Mourad and enjoying every time he crashed back to the ground.

  Even though Mourad was livid and his engineer might not survive to see another sleep cycle, it still hadn’t been enough. Not yet. They were still on course for Kurril and the slave markets.

  “I guess I’ll have to switch to plan B,” she whispered to herself.

  Not the she had a fully formed plan B, yet. She’d barely come up with plan A. Strategy wasn’t her strong suit. That was all Danica. The captain devised their plans and the other members of the team contributed ideas, but Tori’s part usually didn’t come until it was time to kick some ass.

  Luckily for her, she remembered all the plans. The gravity trick she took from a mission where she and Holly had snuck aboard a ship before it took off. She’d stood guard while Holly had refigured the gravity controls, getting what at the time was a boring play-by-play narration by the redhead. When she and Danica had boarded the ship in space wearing grav boots, it was a piece of cake to take the bounty since the crew was floating helplessly throughout the ship.

  Thanks for that, Hol, she thought. I guess all those lectures weren’t as useless as I thought they were.

  Her stomach tightened, as she thought of her friend who’d agreed to go with the Cresteks instead of Max. She’d volunteered to be a mate for some alien she’d never even met before. The thought made Tori clench her fists. The first thing she was doing when she got back to the sand planet was busting Holly out. There was no point in her sacrificing herself if Max was gone, anyway.

  She squeezed her eyes shut for a brief moment as she remembered Max, her limp body being tossed aside. She gritted her teeth. But first, she needed to get revenge on Mourad. For Max and her entire crew.

  The gravity flipped and she heard bodies hit metal, enjoying the satisfying crunch of bone on steel, the slap of flesh, and the yelps of pain. She hoped the especially loud crash below her was
Mourad hitting something hard.

  She imagined the crew disembarking on Kurril all black-and-blue with broken bones and concussions. She doubted they’d be upright enough to make it to the pleasure houses and fighting rings. That thought made her smile.

  She used the commotion below to move down the air duct, away from the bridge, and toward the back of the ship where they were holding Vrax. It was time to tell him the plan, and she had the entire trek though the ship’s labyrinth of ducts to come up with it.

  Chapter Eight

  “I forbid it,” Vrax said, his arms crossed tightly and his shoulders squared. His gold skin showed hints of bruising, the skin underneath one side of his dark, tribal, arm tattoos already blooming a soft shade of blue. He’d managed to keep from getting too damaged, probably due to the lack of things in his cell to bump into.

  Tori felt a twinge of guilt that her trick to mess with Mourad and his crew had hurt him, but she reminded herself that she was doing it to save his sorry ass. An ass that looked pretty nice, she thought, as he turned and stalked to the back of his cell, turned, and stomped back to the energy barrier. She wished his muscular legs and tight ass weren’t covered in snug leather that left little to the imagination. The last thing she needed was to be imagining him without those pants.

  She folded her own arms across her chest and stared him down, willing her eyes not to wander south. “You forbid it?” If he weren’t being so serious, she would have burst into laughter. Maybe the barbarian forgot that he was being held prisoner behind a force field, and really didn’t have any say in what she did.

  “I won’t let you risk yourself to save me.” His face was set in a scowl. “Or risk your mission.”

  A part of her respected his self-sacrifice for the greater good, but the other part wanted to kick him in the balls for being such a stubborn pain in her ass. She fought the urge to yell some sense into him, since she didn’t want to attract unwanted attention.

  The brig might be deserted, but she knew the crew wasn’t far away. Probably lying around nursing their fresh wounds, she thought with some amount of pride. The crew had clearly decided that watching Vrax wasn’t as much of a priority, which had given her the opportunity to sneak in.

  She knew she didn’t have much time before the gravity flipped again, and she wanted to be back in the air ducts when that happened. She cut her eyes to the round, metal door, hoping she wouldn’t see it spiral open.

  “I’m not risking the mission,” she said. “If I don’t get you away from these bastards before they sell you to some slaver, I’m going to be stuck stealing their ship and getting back to your planet solo. As much as I hate to admit it, this is a two-person job.”

  Vrax eyed her as if trying to decide whether to believe her reason or not.

  She ran a hand through her curls, which were wilder than usual due to floating around in zero gravity multiple times. “Trust me. I’d rather not have to deal with you again. It’s been much more comfortable in the air ducts without you taking up all the space. It’s been like a pleasure cruise.”

  One side of his mouth quirked up, and he jerked his head toward the long bench running the length of the compartment. “I will miss having this bench all to myself when I leave.”

  “Yeah? Well, you and your bench won’t have much more time together. We’ll probably reach Kurril soon. Mourad seems dead-set on getting there, no matter what I do. The asshole is even more stubborn than you.”

  “Then I’ll be taken to the slave market?” Vrax asked, his voice steady, but his eyes betraying his worry.

  Tori rocked back on the heels of her boots. “That’s my guess. Mourad wants to get rid of you as fast as he can. He’s hoping you’ll command a high price to make up for losing Max.” Her throat tightened, but she cleared it and continued. “My best play is to ambush them on the way to the market. The Den of Thieves is a pit of criminals and desperate people. Brawls are the norm, and if I can pull enough angry bystanders into the fray, there’s a decent chance we can get away.”

  Vrax straightened his arms, flexing his biceps. “I like any plan that involves a battle.”

  “I thought you might.” One thing she’d learned about the Dothveks, they were excellent warriors. Vrax might drive her to the brink of madness, but the alien could fight like a god.

  “Where will we go once we beat our enemy and escape?” His eyes flashed with excitement, and she could almost feel the energy pulsing from his body.

  Tori glanced around. “Eventually back here so we can hijack the ship, expel any remaining members of Mourad’s crew, and take the ship back to your planet. Luckily, they’ll have refueled and restocked the ship while I’ve been saving your ass. But first, we’ll have to make our way out of Kurril without getting knifed in the back.”

  Vrax lifted one eyebrow. “This Kurril sounds like an interesting place.”

  Tori shuddered, recalling the last time she’d had the misfortune of visiting the Den of Thieves. She’d barely made it out alive, although the aliens who’d attacked her had not been as lucky. “It’s not the place I would have taken you for your first visit off your planet.”

  “If it is so bad, why have you been there?”

  “Not by choice.” Her hands instinctively went to the needle-like sticks hooked on her belt that she often wore in her hair. “I didn’t always belong to a crew that gave me a say in our missions, and Kurril is the place to come if you’re a mercenary ship looking for work. There’s always someone looking for a crew that will break the rules.”

  “You belonged to one of these mercenary crews?” His expression was searching.

  Tori’s face warmed. She wasn’t used to men asking her questions about herself and caring about the answers. “Like I said, not by choice. The only way I could get off the wasteland of the Zevrian home world was by indenturing myself to a mercenary ship.”

  “Indenturing?” he pronounced the word slowly, clearly confused by the translation. No shock that Dothveks didn’t have an equivalent word in their language.

  “They owned me,” she said, looking down. “Until I worked off my debt, which was designed to never happen.”

  Tori felt a rush of anger, her heart racing. She suppressed a growl, shocked by her own reaction. It had been ages since she’d let her past enrage her. Looking at Vrax, she saw that his face was set in a fierce frown.

  He opened his mouth, she suspected to ask another question, but she cut him off with a curt shake of her head. “I got away and found Danica, and now I’m here. End of story.” She let out a breath, releasing her surprising rush of fury. “Just take my word that Kurril isn’t a place we want to stay for long.”

  “You have experienced pain here before.” It was a statement, not a question. “I will make sure no one hurts you this time.”

  She let out a strangled laugh. “Even if I did need your protection, which I don’t, no one gets out of Kurril unscathed.” She took in the big, brawny barbarian. “Not even an ass-kicking Dothvek.”

  Tori only hoped they would get out.

  Chapter Nine

  Vrax braced himself for another punch, but it didn’t come. As he stumbled back, the bindings around his wrists pulled and cut into his flesh. The pain did not bother him as much as the fact that his hands were behind him, and he could not use them to retaliate against the cowardly attacks.

  “What did I say about damaging my merchandise?” Mourad asked, his booming voice reverberating through the steel corridors of the ship as Vrax was prodded along.

  One of the crew members holding his arms jumped, clearly unaware that the captain had been coming up fast on their heels. “Just making it so he can’t attempt to run, sir.”

  “Where could he run?” Mourad gave a low, mirthless chuckle. “Escaped slaves don’t last long in the Den of Thieves.”

  They’d reached the center of the ship, and Vrax watched as the ramp lowered onto the surface of the planet. He knew he should feel fear, and after what Tori had told him about the plane
t, he did feel a flutter in his belly. But he wasn’t sure if it was fear of the unknown planet, or anticipation of the battle.

  He was a Dothvek warrior used to training and battle. Sitting in a cell surrounded by cold surfaces and machines had made him restless and eager for any release, even if it was deadly.

  As the ramp crunched against the hard ground, Vrax peered through the brown dust that had been kicked up. He’d never set foot off his home world. Even though this Den of Thieves did not sound like a place he’d want to live, a part of him was curious to see how other species lived.

  “Let’s go.” One of the bounty hunters behind him jabbed him with a blaster.

  Vrax shuffled down the ramp, taking uncertain breaths as he stepped down onto the alien world. Even the air smelled different—damp with a sickly sweet stench that made him wrinkle his nose. It felt different, too, and he felt a pang of longing for the arid heat of the sands. Looking up, he couldn’t see through the haze to know if the planet had any suns, but he suspected they were not blessed with two.

  His bare feet flinched on the cold, dusty stone as they moved across the shipyard, passing vessels that dwarfed the one he’d arrived on. He tried not to gape at the size of some of them, wondering how the massive things ever lifted off.

  A pair of stocky guards with tusks and blasters larger than their arms flanked a high, arched gate made of brown stone. They flicked their eyes to him and the four men leading him.

  “Slave market?” one asked, his voice a series of grunts and snorts.

  “That one will fetch a good price,” the other said. “The fighting rings need some who won’t die so fast. Where’s he from?”

  Mourad strode forward, flipping a metal disc at one. “Is this enough for you to keep your questions to yourself?”

  The guards both eyed the payment, their eyes flaring before they nodded and waved them through.