Vendetta (Project Vetus Book 2) Read online

  I gasp, shocked by the bold contact. Certain it’s a precursor to the violence an uncovered woman puts herself at risk of.

  Then his tongue moves, undulating a wet heat against my flesh, and a sudden ache yawns into awareness deep inside me. As if some part of me has just woken up for the first time.

  Lust. The first warning sign of a wanton nature. The second is vanity, and the third is exhibitionism, but I don’t think I’ll live long enough to see my moral character degrade to such a degree. Not if this man is as dangerous as his build and his bold contact would suggest.

  Coleman’s nostrils flare again and his golden eyes appear to glow. An odd sound emanates from his throat—an oscillating sort of hum that seems to echo deep inside me, like powerful notes resonating inside the huge bell at the top of the convent’s clock tower.

  My heart racing, I tug on my hand and he lets me go, but his eyes still look strange. Oddly dilated, in spite of the harsh overhead light.

  “Sorry for the bumps!” that same voice calls over the intercom. “Unexpected debris field. Should be all clear now.”

  Footsteps echo on the metal stairs overhead, and a pair of heavy black boots precede another large man into view. This man has shockingly white hair, in contrast to his golden brown skin. “Coleman? What’s going on? It sounded like you said—” His silver-eyed gaze falls on me, and his jaw snaps shut as he jogs down the last few steps. “Fucking hell,” he mumbles. “You did say ‘stowaway.’”

  Their attention crawls over me like ants marching across my skin, and I can only endure the uncomfortable sensation while I wait to hear my fate. I don’t know what would be worse: being sent back to Gebose, or being kept by these huge men for their own use.

  Finally, the white-haired man leans over and punches that panel on the wall. “Jamison, turn us around,” he barks. “Take us straight back to Gebose.”

  “No!” I cry, but my objection is overwhelmed by Coleman’s identical protest.

  “What? Why?” a voice asks from the panel, accompanied by more soft static.

  “Captain, we can’t send her back,” Coleman insists. “I think… I think they hurt her.”

  Surprise makes me catch my breath, convinced I’ve misjudged Coleman’s intentions. Until I realize, based on the lust still churning in his golden eyes, that no matter what he’s saying, fear for my safety is not why he wants to keep me onboard their ship.

  The captain’s gaze falls on me again, and his eyes narrow as he studies my face and limbs, evidently looking for injuries. “Is that true? Did someone there hurt you?”

  “No.” I was taught never to lie, yet I regret my honesty the second the word slips from my lips. Because regardless of their intentions, a lie might have saved me. From Gebose, anyway.

  “Then we have to take her back. We can’t fuck up this job.” The captain pivots and starts up the stairs, but Coleman clamps one large hand on his arm before he makes it to the third tread.

  “No.” There’s something in his voice—a resolve I don’t understand. The captain hears it too; I can tell from the wary glance he gives Coleman as he turns to look at me again. “Just hear her out, Sotelo.”

  “Fine.” Captain Sotelo jogs down the steps and halfway across the small cargo hold this time, until he can see me perfectly clearly beneath the bright lights. Coleman follows him. “What’s your name?”

  “My name is Grace, and I’m eighteen Earth-standard years old. I was born in a convent on the planet Theron and raised among women of tireless virtue.”

  Coleman frowns. “She told me the same thing. Exactly the same thing. Word for word.”

  Is that odd? I don’t know how else to answer their question.

  “Grace, what are you doing on our ship?” Captain Sotelo demands.

  “I apologize for sneaking on board, but I have some credit vouchers. I don’t know if they’re enough to pay for passage, but you can have all of them.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question. Why don’t you want to go back to Gebose?” The captain is evidently unconcerned with my ability to pay.

  I don’t know how to answer him. I can’t imagine that these two strange men would care about my plight. Unless rescuing me from it will benefit them. I haven’t escaped one man just to fall prey to two more, but if they think that helping me will mean they can have me…

  “I can’t go back because I’m to be given to Silas in two weeks, and I don’t… I won’t open myself for him.” Damaris would be horrified to hear me say that about her son, but she isn’t here.

  These men also seem horrified, but not in the way Damaris would be.

  “Given to Silas?” The captain’s frown deepens. “As in, married to him? Against your will?”

  I clutch the modesty sheath in front of my hips as I try to puzzle through his question. “No, not married. Silas is heir to all of Gebose. The entire planet. He’ll be matched with a wife fitting his station in a couple of years. A high-born woman who can bring him honor in public and bear his children at home. I was purchased for more…private pleasures.” My face burns. “Things a man would not dishonor his wife by asking of her.” Not that I have more than a vague idea what those things actually are.

  Coleman scowls. “What kind of bullshit is that? This Silas bought you as a sex slave?”

  “As a…a concubine.” The flush in my cheeks rages even hotter under his scrutiny. These are not the kinds of things a woman says to a strange man. On Gebose, a woman may not even speak to a man she isn’t related to. But I’m no longer on Gebose, and these men clearly don’t understand what I’m trying to say. “The holy text allows for such an arrangement, and I should be honored to be chosen, but…”

  “But you don’t want to,” Coleman growls, and I nod. That’s it exactly. Opening myself for that careless, eager brute would the only thing scarier than stowing away with a bunch of strangers and striking out amongst the stars. Than throwing myself at the mercy of the cosmos. At the mercy of the men standing before me. Looking directly at me.

  The captain’s scowl darkens. “You’re saying you were purchased to provide sexual services, against your will?”

  “I…” I frown at him. “Yes.” Though I’ve never heard it phrased exactly like that. On Gebose, a woman’s will isn’t considered.

  “And if we send you back, some man is going to—” Coleman’s face darkens with rage as he seems to choke on the aborted thought. “Against your will?”

  “That’s the way it’s done,” I explain, a bit puzzled by their incomprehension of the matter. “Regardless of…will. Silas didn’t choose me either. His father bought me for him.”

  “So, he’s against this?” the captain asks. “This concubine arrangement?”

  “Oh, no, he’s very eager. He would already have had me, if he were of age.” In fact, Silas is so eager to have me that twice he’s tried to peek beneath my sheath. To see what his father has bought for him. “Once he even trapped me against the wall in a deserted corridor and ran his hands all over me, to get a feel for what he could not see. But he’s not allowed to take possession of me until the evening of his eighteenth birthday. In Earth-standard years. As is the tradition.”

  “Fucking hell…” the captain mumbles again.

  “Sotelo?” that same voice calls from the panel on the wall. “Could you repeat the order? There’s a lot of static, but it sounded like you said we’re going back to—”

  The captain slams his hand against the panel, cutting the voice off. “Abort that order. Hold course. We’re coming back up. With a guest.”

  I exhale, more relieved than I even thought possible. My body aches with the release of a tension I didn’t even realize I was carrying.

  Captain Sotelo gestures for me to precede both men up the stairs, and I hold my modesty sheath up as I reach for the hand rail. “Should I put this back on?”

  “You should burn the fucking thing,” Coleman says, glancing in disgust at the translucent cloth hanging from my fist.

  “Oh, i
t wouldn’t burn even if you threw it in the fire. That was one of the selling points of the new material.” Though the transition to nano-tech happened long before my arrival on Gebose.

  “I just meant…” Coleman shrugs. “No, you shouldn’t wear it unless you want to. We don’t require women to cover themselves here, beyond basic clothing.”

  “And that’s…safe? For your women to be so exposed?”

  “Safe from what?” Sotelo demands. “From us? We are no threat to our women.”

  Of course. This ship and its crew are very small. They function like a household. Maybe like a family unit. That’s why their women are safe here, despite their lack of modesty.

  “Will this be adequate?” I gesture at my snug gray undergarments, suddenly aware that I have no idea how their women dress. Coleman’s gaze falls on me again, and something flickers behind his eyes. It’s a need that looks much like hunger—like starvation—only…not for food.

  Lust.

  When Meshach looks at his wife like that, it’s only a matter of time before he tugs her into a dark room and makes noises that sound like he’s in pain. Though I think she’s actually the one in pain, sometimes.

  I shudder and clutch my modesty sheath closer, and for a second I consider putting it on, so he’ll stop looking at me like that. But I can’t bring myself to do it.

  On Theron, the sisters wore long robes, but they didn’t have to hide their faces or hands. And the women on this ship don’t wear modesty sheaths.

  I am sick of not being seen. I think I would rather be ogled than be invisible. Especially considering that Coleman doesn’t seem inclined to act on the hunger shining in his eyes. He seems to be in control of his urges. At least for the moment.

  “Your clothing is more than adequate,” he mumbles at last as he drags his focus away from me. I’m pretty sure that when I head up the stairs, his gaze follows me.

  “Oh my god,” a woman gasps as I step onto the brightly lit upper floor. She’s much smaller than the men standing around her on the main deck of the small shuttle—three of them—and they don’t seem shocked to have heard her speak.

  I don’t know much about ships, having slept through my journey to Gebose, but you hear a lot when you’re not allowed to speak. Which is how I know that this crew came to Meshach to buy a bigger ship because theirs is too small to accommodate them. They need something with the storage and fuel capacity to allow for long-range travel. Something unregistered.

  A crew in need of an unregistered ship is a crew that won’t go to the authorities. That’s the reason I chose this ship, after weeks of watching and waiting. Of eavesdropping every time I was sent to the control room with coffee or a lunch tray.

  My gaze settles on the woman staring at me. She looks pale and kind of sweaty. A little unsteady on her feet, as if our bumpy ride through the atmosphere has upset her stomach. She has bright blue eyes, and though she’s tall for a woman, she has a slight build.

  “What the hell?” The second woman has dark hair and green eyes, and when she props her hands on her hips, I catch a glimpse of scarring on the undersides of both of her forearms. As if someone’s tried to claw something from her flesh.

  As Coleman said, neither of the women wear modesty sheaths, and while I understand that the rules on this small ship are different than they are on Gebose, I don’t know what that actually means. What is the relationship between these two uncovered women and these five huge men? Are the women available for common usage? Do demanding hands follow where permissive gazes tread? That’s what Meshach says happens in virtue-less societies.

  Yet these women don’t look scared or abused. And despite their obvious ability to take whatever they want, not one of the men has even approached me, beyond Coleman’s odd reaction to the drop of blood on my finger.

  “He did say stowaway,” the second woman mumbles, her hand on the butt of a laser pistol holstered at her waist.

  My gaze snags on her sidearm, and I can’t stop staring. The sisters at the convent had no need for weapons, and the women on Gebose aren’t allowed to touch them. I’ve never seen an armed woman, but…maybe this is the real reason the women here aren’t threatened by their men?

  “Who are you?” the sickly woman asks.

  “My name is Grace, and I’m eighteen Earth-standard years old,” I tell her. “I was born in a convent on the planet Theron and raised among women of tireless virtue.”

  The sickly woman aims a confused gaze at Captain Sotelo. “Carson?” she says. “What the hell?”

  “Holy shit,” one of the men breathes as his gaze strays down from my face. I can feel his attention like hands wandering over me, and I clutch the sheath closer to my chest, struggling with the urge to drape it over myself. To hide beneath it.

  I hate this material. But I don’t know how else to protect myself from such invasive attention.

  If I ask, will someone give me a weapon?

  “Back off, Zamora,” Coleman growls as he steps in front of me like a living modesty sheath, and now his broad shoulders take up most of my line of sight. He sounds different than before. Deeper. More dangerous. His voice is a knife’s edge, ready to bite into anyone who gets too close to… To what?

  To me.

  Somehow, I understand that, if little else.

  “Fucking hell,” Sotelo mumbles, glancing from Coleman to me, then back.

  “Did he just…?” The one named Zamora is staring at Coleman now, rather than at me. “Did Coleman just go all beastly for her?”

  Beastly?

  “Deja vu,” the sickly woman says, and I peek around Coleman to see her half-collapse into a chair bolted to the floor of the main deck.

  Captain Sotelo steps around Coleman and me, drawn to her side like a magnet, and suddenly I understand; I’ve seen it often enough, in my time on Gebose. This woman isn’t sick. She’s pregnant. With his child.

  His hands hover around her, a helpless, pointless attempt to fend off gestational nausea. “Lilli, why don’t you lie down?”

  “And miss this?” Lilli—the pregnant woman—shoves his hands away, her gaze flicking between Coleman and me. “Don’t you want to know what this hormonal clusterfuck looks like from the outside?”

  I don’t know what they’re talking about, but the way they’re all staring at me, and at Coleman, makes the hair on my arms stand on end.

  “I apologize for sneaking onboard your ship,” I say, hoping to redirect their focus to a crime they seem bizarrely disinterested in discussing. “I swear I had no other choice. Please don’t send me back to Gebose.”

  “Don’t worry, Grace.” Coleman turns to face me, and he is all I can see now. He takes up my entire field of vision, a plane of well-defined musculature on display beneath the snug material of his shirt, rivaled only by the twin glows of his golden eyes, like suns shining bright in the sky. “I won’t let Silas near you. Not ever again.” His voice, which felt like a weapon before, now feels like a shield. He almost seems to be swearing an oath, to a woman he just met, and I don’t know why he would that. I don’t understand what’s happening.

  “Okay, everybody have a seat,” Sotelo orders. “Get back to work. We have a job to do.”

  The pilot—the captain called him Jamison—swivels in his chair, reluctantly facing the viewshield again as he double checks a course he probably programmed just minutes ago. The man named Zamora runs one hand through a mop of dark, loose curls as he sinks into the co-pilot’s chair. But he continues to sneak glances at me, in spite of the soft growl of warning Coleman keeps aiming at him.

  The armed woman sits at a console built into the wall of the main deck, and the tall man with reddish hair sits in the row of chairs removed from the flight instruments.

  “Um… You two, with me,” Captain Sotelo gestures for Coleman and me to head back down into the storage hold, despite the fact that we’ve just come from there, because that’s evidently the only place on this little shuttle for a private conversation. Other than the small res
troom sandwiched between two sets of bunks built into the rear wall. “Lilli,” he warns, when his woman rises from her seat.

  “I’m coming, and you know better than to try to stop me,” she says, and I watch in astonishment as she heads down the metal staircase into the cargo hold. Despite her man’s protest.

  The women here are bold.

  The captain rolls his eyes at her back, then he gestures for Coleman and me to follow her. He brings up the rear, and on his way down the stairs, he slides a panel into place overhead, closing the cargo hold off from the main deck. Now it’s just the four of us in this harshly lit room with low ceilings.

  “So, Grace, is it?” the woman asks, and I nod. “I’m Lilliana Malone. This is Carson Sotelo.”

  “So, we’re using real names?” the captain growls.

  Lilli shrugs. “She’s already heard most of them. And anyway, she’s a stowaway for a reason. It’s not like she’s going to the authorities, right?” she asks, and I nod. “Or the press?”

  I nod again, and Lilli seems satisfied. Sotelo’s scowl says he’s rarely ever satisfied, and Coleman… Well, Coleman’s still staring at me, and I decide to be happy that his gaze is stuck on my eyes this time.

  “You’re carrying his child.” My focus shifts from Lilli’s still-flat belly to the captain, and he aims a surprised look at me.

  Lilli laughs with an adoring glance up at him. “Is it that obvious?”

  “Yes.” But I’ve never seen this kind of open affection between a couple in public. Not that this small ship is public, exactly. It really is more like their home. Which makes me feel like I’m intruding.

  “Carson used to be a captain in the Tethys infantry,” Lilli continues. “Now he’s the captain of this ship. They tell me those are two very different positions, but I can’t tell that that’s true.”

  “It’s true,” he grumbles.

  This time she rolls her eyes. “Tirzah Dreyer, the other woman you met upstairs, used to be Carson’s lieutenant. And in case he hasn’t properly introduced himself—a bad habit the entire crew seems to have, not that I can blame them, considering what they’ve been through—that man staring at you as if you’re a glass of water and he’s dying of thirst…that’s Vaughn Coleman. Formerly Sergeant Coleman.”