Not in the least.
“Come, pet. Let’s not give them a show. You may either have some alone-time, locked in my chamber, or you may come to the exercise room with me.”
“Exercise room,” she said immediately.
Her answer pleased him, though he wasn’t stupid enough to believe it was because she wanted to be near him. He needed her close, though. Liked to look on her pleasing form, to feel her closeness, smell her scent.
Yes, the little human pleased him a great deal. Far more than he’d expected, although he might have guessed based on his initial reaction to her the day she stole his ship.
~.~
Lily had never been held against a male’s side while he walked. Even more intimate than the way he’d held her hand, it once more stirred her oldest memories. She’d been held. Picked up. She almost remembered the snippet of a song a female had sung to her.
To push back her panic at the swelling emotions within her, she searched for stable footing. “So how did you become a smuggler?”
He shrugged. “Scrappy trade for a scrappy male.”
“And your crew? You seem close.” She noticed he had the same crew as when she’d stolen the ship, despite the fact that they must have been grounded while he scrapped for a new craft.
“Jaso and Janu are my foster brothers. Their parents took me in after I escaped genocide on my planet.”
She nearly stumbled, so surprised by this revelation. So his scars didn’t lie—he had lived a rough life, like her.
“How old were you?”
“About eight solar cycles in Ocretian time.”
“How did you escape?”
They entered an exercise room. It had equipment along the walls, but the center had been left as open space and contained only a floor mat.
“I got lucky. I lived in the palace because my father was a worker there. A guard scooped me up with two other children—daughters of an important advisor—and got us to an underground tunnel the moment the invasion started. He tried to go back out and fight, but the tunnel was sealed from the palace end by an explosion. We walked in the other direction for many kilometers and exited through a long-abandoned docking station. The guard loaded us on a ship and flew us out of there.
I don’t know how—it seems a miracle to me now.” Rok rubbed his face. “Then we got shot down over Stornig and I was adopted by those dogs.”
“What happened to the girls—I mean, the female young?”
His face clouded. “I never knew. I don’t even know if they survived the crash. I was thrown from the ship and knocked unconscious. My foster family found only me when they came upon the wreckage.”
Jaso and Janu filed in, along with the other three crew members. It seemed this was an appointed exercise time.
The wizened Venusian peered into her face. “Do you like to fight?”
“Wha—? Oh, no.” She shook her head. She’d had docility trained into her at a young age with shocking forks. Any slave-child who showed aggression found herself immediately immobilized, pain shutting down her central nervous system.
“Me neither. Come—we’ll exercise on the equipment.”
She didn’t know how to use the equipment, either, as exercise also had been forbidden, unless a slave required certain training by her master, but she followed the Venusian after shooting Rok an inquiring glance.
“What are you called?”
She bit her tongue to keep from muttering, “slave.” Something about this crew made her far more at ease than she would normally be. “Lily.”
“I am Mierna.”
“Why haven’t you introduced your prisoner properly, Rok?” one of his foster brothers taunted.
She enjoyed their playful banter and the way Rok ignored it. She hadn’t been around such lighthearted ribbing before. Ocretions were always formal and stiff, with the class system fully regimented. No one teased in the pods where she’d lived.