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She was already nodding against my chest, and she gripped me more tightly than before. Which was all the answer I needed.
CHAPTER14
Alena
"Can you do it?"
I could do it. It was devious, against ATDC regulations, a crazy, wild, life-altering plan. "So many things could go wrong," I said quietly. I was still stunned.
My chest had gone cold as ice long ago, since Black had found me and held me in his arms in the dark corridor. After the doors closed on my room, with him in it, standing in front of me, his finger to his lips and then to the ceiling. I didn't know how, but I knew that meant not to speak.
I followed him to a corner of the room, where he pushed me into the wall and his hands moved over my face, my body, gently caressing me, but with an urgency that I had never felt in him before. He whispered into my ear, telling me, in a rapid-fire of simple, blunt sentences, abouteverything.
They weren't Solymus-Hybrid Space Force.
They were rebel fighters from the Original System.
They had taken over this ship and put the crew into stasis.
They planned to exchange the crew for their own prisoners.
They had boarded our ship, which they had come across by chance, disabled and drifting and emitting a distress signal. A decision had been made to take our crew - in stasis - to the Tyrusa Authority to meet the prisoner exchange numbers.
No one had expected us to be awake.
I had thrown a wrench into the whole plan by requesting to be the crew member awake for the journey.
It had seemed like a decent plan to them: I was a perfect female, I was willing, and I was enjoying myself. They had planned to share me, use me, and send me on my merry way, probably back to ATDC.
No one had expected to become attached.
No one had expected to want to claim me.
Now Cap was in the unenviable position of fighting against his nature, faced with the choice of completing his mission and keeping his clan together as a cohesive unit, or claiming me for himself.
This would not have been a problem, if not for the prisoners, and the other men's feelings for me: if only one of these crises were to occur, then any member who had his sights set on me, like Tor did, would be forced to concede to Cap.
But with the prisoner exchange being compromised by Cap claiming me, Tor - or any others - would have a reason to challenge Cap's position. And they would be right to do so: he would have been making a bad decision, a decision against the interests of the well-being of the clan as a whole, by sacrificing a prisoner for his own gains.
That was why he wanted to put me back into stasis, and turn me over to the Tyrusa Authority.
But Black knew that Rhys wanted to claim me. HewantedRhys to claim me, because I would also be partially his.
"If I could just have more time," Black whispered against my hair, his breath tingling against my scalp. "I could turn him around.Youcould turn him around."
And then he had stepped away from me, looking seriously into my eyes. I didn't even have to ask my next question - what about more time would change his mind, supposedly?
I wasn't even thinking about the other option. Tyrusa Authority would return me and my crew to ATDC, that was almost a given. The two corporations had a strict alliance. I could endure a few months of detention and go back to my old life, and perhaps no one would be the wiser.
"With more time," Black said, without me having to ask, "We can do something that will guarantee that he will claim you. He won't have any other choice."
My heart leaped in my chest and my eyes went wide.
"But it's a permanent decision," Black said. "No turning back."
I stared back at him, hopelessly lost for a moment.
Did I know what he was going to say? Maybe. I felt myself nod, felt my lips purse in an expression of resolution, something that always got me into trouble in ATDC. They didn't like people thinking too much for themselves, or daring to do extraordinary things, having emotions that would rule their decisions in reckless, irrational ways.
