She averted her gaze. “How could you want me when you hate humans so much?”
He said nothing for several moments. “We do not hate humans. They hate us. They have hunted and killed us for years,” he said finally. “From the moment they realized that we were no longer theirs to control, puppets, they began to fear and, when they began to fear, they began to hate.”
She glanced up at him in disbelief. “You gave a good impression of it.”
He smiled faintly, stroking his fingers along her cheek. “Not just now.”
She shivered at the memory. Frowning, he reached to turn the water off and then drew her from the bathing cubicle and handed her a cloth to dry off with. She frowned thoughtfully as she patted the water from her skin and rubbed as much as she could from her hair.
“It was not much of a bath,” he commented wryly. “No soap.”
Bronte bit her lip, feeling another twinge of guilt. She couldn’t think of any way to ask him if he thought Gideon would be angry with him about having sex with her, though. He didn’t seem concerned at all, and he knew Gideon far better than she did. She had to wonder if she had been suffering delusions to have thought Gideon would feel the least bit possessive about her.
It occurred to her, with a touch of relief, that she probably had been. Obviously, Gideon’s only concern was being cut off from the only supply of pussy available. If there were no actual feelings involved beyond that, he wouldn’t have any reason to be angry about it.
That left her in the position of being the supplier, though, to keep the peace. She didn’t particular care for that. On the other hand, if satisfying their needs would make her own life less fraught with danger, maybe even make them more inclined to feel kindly toward her on a personal level rather than merely because they were under orders to protect her, it seemed a small price to pay for a little security, particularly when it was no great hardship. They were all very handsome, very desirable, and certainly gifted when it came to pleasuring her.
Maybe, she thought, she had looked at the picture all wrong? She was afraid because she was a captive, and her feelings had been hurt, and she hadn’t been thinking clearly. If it was possible to be on friendly terms with her captors, wasn’t that a lot wiser than being on unfriendly terms with them?
It wasn’t as if it was going to be any real trial to have sex with them … as long as she had the option of saying no … and she felt that she did. Gideon had seduced her, but he certainly hadn’t forced her. She had set out to seduce Jerico and become the seduced, but despite the way they had watched her almost from the first, none of the three had assaulted her and taken what he wanted. It distressed her that they didn’t actually like her, or rather, saw her as an enemy not to be trusted because they knew humans hated and distrusted them, but she didn’t trust them either.
She had to admit, as scary as it was to think in those terms, she was completely at their mercy. Orders or not, they were a long way from their commanding officer. They could have done whatever they pleased … even killed her if they were concerned about her complaining about her treatment and no one would’ve been the wiser.
And if they really hated humans, couldn’t she have expected them to behave that way? After all, they were soldiers. They made no bones about the fact that brutality and discipline were all they had ever known, all they really understood beyond the flip side of that that had been programmed into them … they could kill and fuck with the best—were the best, but they didn’t have social skills because they hadn’t been given them, didn’t understand them.
It made her feel a good deal better to think she understood them and the situation she’d found herself in. It made her feel far less threatened to think that she wasn’t completely powerless, that she understood how to behave to protect herself.
Since it was meal time and she was suddenly hungry, had more appetite than she’d felt since she’d been captured, when they’d dressed she led the way as they left the bathroom and crossed the cabin. As he opened the door for her, she tipped her head and smiled at Jerico tentatively. She hadn’t gotten through the doorway, however, when a hand clamped around her arm and she was snatched from the room and shoved roughly to one side.
Stunned, she gaped at Gideon’s set profile as he met Jerico at the door with a fist to the face. The thunderous, meaty thud of a very large body hitting the deck followed, and then a roar of rage and pounding footsteps as Jerico regained his feet and charged, slamming in to Gideon full tilt. Bronte screamed as both men shot through the doorway and landed in the middle of the floor in front of her, skidding several feet on the slick floor before they came to halt. Their hands locked around each other’s throats, they rolled, almost knocking her feet from under her. Uttering another shriek, Bronte leapt over their thrashing legs and looked around wildly for a place to hide. Gabriel, watching the fray from the other side of the galley, leapt over the two men on the floor, landing within a few feet of her and scaring her silly. Before she could decide what his intentions were, he hooked an arm around her waist, swung her through the cabin door, and closed it behind her.
Shaking, covering her ears with her hands to try to block out the crashing noises from the mid-section, Bronte scurried into one corner, more than half expecting the fight to join her as someone slammed against the panel on the other side of the door.
The crashing and growling and grunting of effort, meaty thuds of fists to flesh, and duller thuds when someone swung and missed, connecting with the wall or floor instead, seemed to go on forever and Bronte had begun to worry that they were actually going to kill each other. Finally, though, the fight began to die down to an occasional smack of flying fists or the crash of something being turned over or broken.
And then there was silence.
Chapter Eight
Bronte was afraid to find out what the end result of the fight had been. The longer she sat with her ears pricked trying to figure it out by the little she could hear, though, the more anxious she became to know. Finally, when she thought she heard sounds indicting clean up, she got up and went to listen with her ear against the door panel.
The door opened at the precise moment she leaned to put her ear against it and she fell through, stumbling against the man on the other side. He caught her, steadying her, and Bronte looked up uneasily to discover it was Gideon.
The expression on his face made her go weak all over. Even as she tried to push away from him, he cinched her more tightly against his chest with one arm and caught her face with his other hand, dipping his head down and capturing her lips with all the tender gentleness of a battering ram breaching a stone wall. The sheer possessive savagery of his mouth and tongue as he claimed her mouth in fierce assault took her breath. The heat of his mouth, the fire he sent coursing through her veins sapped what little strength she had left.
She’d forgotten, she thought, dizzy, intoxicated by his drugging kiss, just how devastating his kiss was to her senses, wondering how she could possibly have forgotten anything so powerful that it annihilated brain function and muscle tone all in one fell swoop. She wasn’t aware of anything beyond the fire and dizziness until she bumped against a hard surface at her back.
“Let her go, Gideon.”
He ignored the threatening growl for a handful of heartbeats but finally lifted his head. Bronte had to struggle to lift her eyelids. She discovered when she had that Gideon had waltzed her back into the cabin and up against one wall. Both Jerico and Gabriel stood just behind and to either side of him, gripping his arms and trying to pry him loose from her.
Gideon swung his head to fix Gabriel, who was the one who’d spoken, with a threatening, narrow eyed glare. “Go to hell,” he snarled.
Gabriel gave him a look. “Not with the heat of battle still upon you, Gideon,” he ground out. “Let her go.”
Bronte thought for several moments that he would either ignore the warning demand or turn on Gabriel. After what seemed an internal battle for self-control, however, his arms loos
ened and he released her. He did not move away. Instead, he stood staring down at her, breathing raggedly. “She is playing us against one another,” he said coldly.
Guilty color flooded Bronte’s cheeks. Triumph flickered in his eyes, as if he had only been fishing for that bit of information and her expression had confirmed it. Uneasiness moved through her. She couldn’t seem to tear her gaze from Gideon’s to assess the reaction of the other two, but she had a bad feeling that the ‘brilliant’ plot she had hatched had seriously backfired. “You think, just because I had sex with Jerico, that I was hoping the two of you would try to kill each other?” she asked, trying to sound both indignant and outraged, though she thought the shaky squeak of her voice probably made it sound more like the confession of guilt it was than indignation that he could believe she would even think that way.
His eyes narrowed. “I think so, yes,” he growled.
Bronte averted her gaze with an effort. “You are certainly entitled to think what you damned well please!” she said with more surety. “But it just happened, and there was no reason why I shouldn’t have … And I enjoyed it!” she added for good measure.
“Loudly,” he ground out.
Bronte sent him a startled look, casting around in her mind, and finally realized that she had been very vocal. To make things worse, they’d been in the shower, which had no doubt magnified the sounds. It had seemed to at the time, but she’d been too caught up to worry about the fact that the walls of the cubicle seemed to have a megaphone effect on every sound. She reddened with discomfort. “Whatever you think, I was not trying to be heard!” she said testily.
“You just couldn’t help yourself?” he asked coolly.
She glared at him. “NO, I couldn’t!” she snapped, too angry now herself to even want to try to explain that it was the acoustical effects of the shower and probably the water, as well.
She slipped away from him then. Retreating to a safe distance and setting her jaw, she looked at the three men studying her with bravado born of fear. “You kidnapped me,” she said tightly. “Stole me away from my home, my life, and … everything. You’ve made it abundantly clear how you feel about humans in general … and me in particular. I don’t owe you a damned thing! Any of you. I can’t be unfaithful by having sex with whoever I feel like having sex with because I have no ties to bind me to any of you—not legal, and certainly not emotional!
“I didn’t make you fight. You decided to do that on your own, and while you’re accusing me of wanting it to happen, or manipulating you to make it happen, you might want to consider how well you’re going to get along if nobody is getting pussy … or if I decide to chose just one and ignore the other two!”
The three men exchanged looks of discomfort. Gabriel frowned, seemed to hesitate and finally spoke. “Does that mean you would or would not consider a legal binding?” he asked finally.
Bronte stared at him blankly, feeling real anger. If that wasn’t just like men, damn them! They hadn’t heard one damned word she’d said beyond the part they were really interested in.
“Not now, Gabriel,” Gideon growled, a warning note in his voice.
Jerico caught his arm, jerking his head toward the other end of the room. Gideon rolled his eyes, but they moved a little way away from Bronte—for all the good that did! She could hear them perfectly well despite the lower pitch of their voices.
“We are running out of time,” Jerico pointed out.
Gideon sent him a look of disgust. “I do not think discussing a contract will constitute courtship,” he said through gritted teeth.
Jerico glared back at him. “It may have escaped your notice, but we have made no progress at all in that direction that I can see beyond the fact that she has stopped hiding whenever we come to blows and now only looks at us as if we are mindless brutes instead of monsters! At this rate, we will be home and it will be a moot question!”
“Jerico is right,” Gabriel, who’d joined them, put in. “We do not have time to figure out how to go about it, develop any skill at it, and overcome her distrust. If someone else had captured her … maybe. But I have a very bad feeling that being our prisoner is not going to make her feel at all kindly toward us … or receptive even if we were very good at courting, which you know we are not. She is very reasonable, to my thinking, for a woman. Why not just ask her to contract?” He turned to study her for a long moment. “To consider a contract,” he amended.
Gideon’s lips tightened. He sent Bronte a hard, assessing look. “She will only throw it our faces if she knows what we want, and use it against us.”
“I am a man of action. I know what to do in battle,” Gabriel pointed out. “In this situation, I do not, and I am becoming convinced that I will not figure it out, either. We do not have the intel to properly assess the situation, nor do we have the time to collect it and evaluate it. You did not consider that when you decided upon this plan!”
Gideon narrowed his eyes at him. “I did consider that,” he said coolly. “It is sometimes necessary to improvise, however, when you are in the field and can not assess needed supplies, intel, or equipment!”
“Mayhap, but you must see this campaign is not going at all well,” Jerico said irritably.
“You do not tip your hand to the … uh … opposition,” Gideon pointed out, “only because you see that you are fighting a losing battle! There is no more certain way to assure defeat!”
“Jerico and I both feel that we should discuss a contract,” Gabriel pointed out.
“This is not a democracy, soldier!” Gideon growled.
“This is also not a military engagement!” Jerico snapped heatedly.
Realizing their voices had been steadily rising, all three turned to look at Bronte.
Bronte tried to look as if she hadn’t heard a word they’d said, but she was fairly certain she wasn’t very successful.
They moved their discussion to the ship’s midsection, closing the door behind them.
Bronte chewed her lip indecisively for a moment and finally moved to the door. Easing up to it cautiously before she placed her ear against the panel, she carefully braced a hand on either side of the door to make certain she didn’t fall through the doorway if it opened unexpectedly.
“You are thinking with your cock, not your brain,” Gideon said coldly, “because she has not allowed you to touch her. If you were thinking clearly you would realize that she is not likely to consider a contract with you if she will not allow you to touch her.”
“You do not want to ask because you are afraid she will not consider contracting with you,” Gabriel said angrily. “Because you know that Jerico gave her far more pleasure than you did.”
There was no warning snarl of rage, only the meaty smack of flesh to flesh and then stumbling footsteps that told its own tale. The scrape of some object across the floor and several more stomping footsteps preceded another blow as Gabriel retaliated.
“You two are not weary yet?” Jerico demanded.
He let out a grunt as two fists hit him in rapid succession, both Gabriel and Gideon, she suspected. Either they were tired, or they had already worked off most of their repressed aggression. Contrary to what Bronte feared, it did not escalate into another full-fledged battle. After trading a few more blows, she heard nothing but heavy breathing.
“We have wrecked the ship,” Gideon finally observed, almost mildly. “If we are done here, I think we should clean up and put things back together.”
“We are not done!” Gabriel said in a muffled voice, as if he was holding a hand to his mouth. “I still say we should ask her.”
“Fine!” Gideon snapped. “Ask her. She will only look at you as if you are insane!”
An uncomfortable silence followed. “We thought you meant to ask her,” Jerico said finally. “It was your plan to start with.”
“It was my plan to court her and bring her around to the idea,” Gideon pointed out angrily. “She has done nothing but look at me like I am a beast sinc
e I seduced her. I am not going to ask her when I know she will only tell me to go to hell!”
“As you said before, though, at this rate we will have killed one another before much longer—whether she is willfully pitting us against one another or not. You have been worse since you were with her, not better—which I understand now because we were no sooner done than I wanted to begin again. I will be as insane as you are if she refuses to have anything more to do with me, and I will kill both of you with my bare hands if she decides to choose either of you and refuses me!” Jerico ground out.
“And the ship will not take many more battles,” Gabriel added. “It will fall apart on us if we are not careful or we will end up breaking something that can not be repaired.”
There was silence for several moments. “We could clear a place in the hold,” Gideon finally suggested thoughtfully. “There is nothing of any consequence that can be damaged down there. We will do that,” he added decisively. “We must all agree that, if we have issues to work out, we will go below and ‘discuss’ them. That way, she will not know we are at each other’s throats over this and we can convince her we are not the mindless brutes she thinks we are.
“Then, since it is clear we are not worth a fuck at courting, we will petition her to consider it as a sound defense move. You are right, Gabriel. She is very reasonable and intelligent. If we have done nothing else, we have certainly convinced her that we are capable warriors and willing to fight. She is bound to see it as an advantage to have the protection of three good soldiers.
“Gabriel—if you do not make your move soon, I do not mind telling you that I will not wait upon it much longer. I have endured just about all I can stand and it is not to my advantage to wait until I am mindless and do something unforgivably stupid … like I almost did a few minutes ago.”
“Can we discuss this in the hold?” Gabriel growled.
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