Adiron (Corsair Brothers 1)

"Isn't she precious?" Shaalyn coos, reaching out to finger a lock of my natural curls.

"Don't you keffing touch her," Adiron growls. He jumps to his feet, only to have two more blasters shoved in his face by the pirates.

"Touch her?" The female mesakkah tsks, glancing over at him. "If you mean harm her, I don't plan on it, darling. Humans are far too valuable to be bruised up. We'll take her on board and get her all straightened out, so she can be sold for top credits." Her smile is all sugary sweetness. "You know that I love a good auction." She turns her gaze on me and talks very slowly, as if I'm an idiot. "We'll take good care of you, little one."

"Go fuck yourself," I tell her.

The female corsair's eyes widen in surprise. "I see that you've taught her your manners, Adi." She flicks her fingers at the pirate holding me by the shoulders. "Go take her back to med-bay. Run a scan over her and make sure she doesn't have parasites or diseases or something." Shaalyn's mouth purses in distaste at the thought. "You never know what these creatures carry."

I look over at Adiron as I'm dragged away. I want to apologize to him for busting out, but I couldn't let him be threatened. I didn't know they didn't plan on hurting him. I don't regret my actions, because I'd do it again to save him. I'm not entirely stupid, either. When the room filled up with the horned pirates and Adiron started talking in that speedy, too-casual way of his, I knew we were fucked. I undid the front of my tunic and shoved the barrel of the blaster between my tits, laying the handle flat under one breast. I'm wearing a breast-band, and my tits are so tightly bound and heavy that they snugly hold the gun in place. I've held pencils in my enormous cleavage before as a joke. I've held a beer there at festivals.

And now, it seems, I'm hiding a space gun.

It's not the best way to hold it, of course. If Adiron knew the blaster was pointing at my face, he'd probably have a damn heart attack. It's another gamble, of course. The way Shaalyn talked to me, I'm hoping no one thinks to search me for a weapon. Like Adiron, I need to play it stupid and innocent. So as I'm hauled away, I say a silent little prayer that Adiron will be all right, and then I throw myself into acting.

"Where are you taking me?" I whine. "I'm scared."

The man sighs like it's a huge inconvenience to take care of me. All the while, he half-drags me forward, his steps much bigger than mine, his hand biting into my arm so hard I know I'm going to have a wreath of bruises there tomorrow. "Just be quiet. No one's going to hurt you."

Somehow I doubt that. They might not hurt me—much—but I know Adiron isn't safe with them. After all, his lover is their captain and she stabbed him. Repeatedly. Plus, I know from experience that no good things happen to humans in the hands of aliens. Most aliens, anyhow. Just because Adiron is the shining difference in the universe doesn't mean the rest get a pass. I think about my first captors and how they treated me. To them, I was an oddity that they could fuck, slightly unintelligent, and definitely unhygienic.

All of these are things I can use to my advantage.

The alien drags me across the ship-to-ship connection—the flimsy, ice-cold enclosed tube that connects the two ships together. It feels dangerous, that tube, so I don't try anything then. Not when a wrong move could rip the tunnel's sealed walls and send me out into the vacuum of space. The blaster nestled in my sweaty cleavage feels like it's starting to slip, though, and I need to somehow hide it.

"Where are we going?" I whine, doing my best to sound like a sulky, petulant child as he leads me onto the other ship. "I don't like it here."

Sure enough, he starts talking to me like I'm incompetent. "We're going to take good care of you," he says in that tone of voice adults reserve for children. "We'll take you to med-bay and then feed you, and then we'll put you in a nice, safe cage."

"I'm scared," I whine again. It's the truth, of course, but it also sells my idiocy. All the while, I look around, trying to make note of my surroundings. This ship doesn't look at all like The Darkened Eye or the Star. The tunnel-like halls feel tighter, more narrow, the lighting darker and ominous. We pass something that smells vaguely like noodles—probably a mess hall—and there's another door farther down with another female alien leaning against it, her arms crossed. She has a crude eye patch over one side of her face.