14. Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fourteen
“It was all part of the plan,” Tobago reassured me once Ursa and I were back onboard safely. “I thought Ursa might miraculously recover his strength if he knew you were in danger.”
I ought to have been furious with him. Ursa certainly was furious with him, and it was only with a great deal of cajoling that I managed to keep him from coming to blows with my childhood friend.
But even though I’d been badly used, and mine and Ursa’s lives had been unnecessarily endangered, it was hard to be truly angry.
Maybe it was the adrenaline from having almost been killed that translated into a kind of giddiness in me. Maybe it was the fact that for the first time, Ursa and I felt like part of the crew. Maybe I was just so very relieved I was alive, and Ursa was alive, and we were together.
Whatever the case might be, as the entire crew gathered round a little makeshift fusionfire and drank and laughed and told stories, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so at ease.
It certainly helped that I’d been able to change out of my troubadour costume and into my much more practical and comfortable jumpsuit.
Burt had used a small laser-cutting tool to remove what remained of my cuffs.
Well-fed and a little bit tipsy, I basked in the camaraderie of the group and in Ursa’s nearness.
Under normal circumstances, I might have been too self-conscious to sit so close to him—the two of us sharing a bench in the galley, me not quite in his lap but sitting as close as possible, my back to his chest. But the ship-brewed moonshine had been stronger than I’d anticipated, and I was feeling too happily fuzzy to pay my reservations any mind.
The crew had warmed to us considerably since we’d proven ourselves willing to put our lives on the line. One of the crew—possibly Indy?—had been able to tap into the security feed of the guard tower, so everyone had witnessed Ursa’s heroics in scaling the tower to rescue me.
“That was mad impressive,” Willy enthused to Ursa, looking about as giddy as a child seeing a T-Rex for the first time.1 “Your protein consumption must be off the charts! What’s your arm routine like?”
I’m certain Ursa had no idea what any of that meant. To be fair, I hardly did myself.
“I’m available to bench-press if you need,” said Zenny. “You can throw me around however you like.”
Oh, no. I didn’t like that at all. Zenny was the only one who didn’t seem to have warmed at all to me since our return.
She continued to scowl at me whenever we made eye contact.
I probably would have still felt compelled to try to win her over if it weren’t for just how differently she behaved with Ursa.
With him she was all smiles and coy looks from underneath her eyelashes.
She’d unzipped the top half of her jumpsuit and rolled it down, and she was only wearing a very thin tank underneath.
It was quite cold in the room and also quite obvious that she wasn’t wearing a bra.
Reclining on her elbows, she kept looking over my shoulder, presumably at Ursa, biting her lips as she made a show of spreading open her legs.
My back was to Ursa so I couldn’t see how he was responding to her theatrics.
Jealousy bloomed sharp and fierce in my chest. Scowling at the other woman, I pressed back against Ursa and pulled his arm around me so his forearm rested against my clavicles.
A soft rumble of his chest against my back made me think perhaps he was laughing at my behavior.
Was my possessive display childish? Most definitely. But it worked. Sniffing disdainfully, Zenny looked away.
I was certain her surrender wouldn’t last for long, but at least I’d had a minor victory. After all, I’d staked my claim on Ursa’s heart, and I wasn’t willing to cede any of my hard-earned territory.
Now that Zenny was no longer making eyes at my man, though, my mind returned to something Tobago had mentioned just a moment before. “You said it was part of your plan? For Ursa to come and rescue me?”
Tobago looked bemused by my line of questioning but nodded, taking a measured sip of his moonshine. “That’s right.”
“So that means you were sure I wouldn’t succeed with my part of the plan—distracting the guards?” I pressed.
A sheepish look flashed across Tobago’s face. “Uhhh . . .”
My jaw dropped in mock outrage that, if I’m being honest, was not entirely mock. “You let me work for ages on my character and her background and her favorite twelfth-century composers. Why bother if you knew I was just going to be taken captive?”
It wasn’t the tone I’d normally take with a ship’s captain, but again, I was rather tipsy, and Tobago was Tobago.
As such, he leveled me with the kind of cut-the-bullshit look that only very old and dear loved ones can give to each other without causing offense.
“Let’s be clear now, Mina. Absolutely no one told you to do any of that. ”
I opened my mouth to protest, but quickly realized he was right. It had seemed so important at the time to create a complex character. Now I had no idea why I’d insisted on something so utterly ridiculous.
Then somehow both Tobago and I were laughing, the kind of impossible-to-stop laughter that doesn’t arise from anything all that humorous but more from tiredness or relief or maybe just happiness.
The rest of the Achaeans joined in, more moonshine was passed around, and Croydon began telling an anecdote of a time he’d had to try to pass as a woman in a brothel on Haven 2. 2
I settled back happily against Ursa, feeling the gentle rise and fall of his chest as he breathed.
With one hand, I reached up to idly stroke the soft hairs on the arm that he still held over my collarbone.
Vaguely, I became aware that he was sniffing the top of my head, gently running his nose along my hairline.
His lips brushed against my temple, my cheek.
This was rather more PDA than I was accustomed to,3 but I was so engrossed in Croydon’s ridiculous story that I hardly paid any mind.
Ursa’s arm shifted and pulled away from my gentle grasp, and I let him go, laughing as Croydon mimicked the look on a client’s face when one of the coconuts he’d been using as a fake breast fell out of his dress. 4
Something tugged very faintly at the zipper to my jumpsuit. I barely had a moment to process it before Ursa’s warm hand slid into the gap he’d created, so he could reach inside and take hold of one of my breasts, giving it a gentle squeeze.
Everything seemed to halt all at once. Croydon stopped midway through a sentence, his mouth falling open as he stared unabashedly. The laughter around the room died. I was certain my own expression was a mask of horror as I realized precisely what had just happened and that everyone had seen it.
LeFleur pointed, a lecherous grin spreading across his face.
Mortified, I pulled Ursa’s hand out of my jumper and shot to my feet. “Well, it’s been a lovely evening, but I’m suddenly feeling a bit under the weather. Good night, all.”
With that, I rushed off to my room. In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have made such a big show about rushing off to bed right after everyone had just witnessed Ursa groping me, especially since—predictably—he rose to his feet and followed after me.
But hindsight is 20/20,5 and all that, and all I could think of at the moment was that I desperately needed to hide.
Well. So much for keeping our relationship status ambiguous.
I suppose there might be women who let their platonic friends fondle their breasts in public, but that was not my usual modus operandi.
6 The thought of the entire crew knowing that Ursa and I were physically intimate together made me feel like I’d been jettisoned out the air lock without a space suit. 7
I hurried down the corridor to our private quarters, with Ursa keeping pace behind me.
No doubt he thought I was rushing away to continue what he’d started back in the galley.
Well, wouldn’t he be surprised when instead I gave him a piece of my mind!
That would have to wait for when we were in the room, though, away from any eavesdroppers. So, mainly LeFleur.
Once inside the room, with the door firmly shut behind us, I whirled to face Ursa, glaring at him as he made himself comfortable on the bed. “Ursa. We need to talk about what just happened.”
Reclined on the mattress, Ursa patted the spot next to him. When I didn’t budge, he tried to hook my leg with his foot to pull me closer.
Normally this gesture might have made me laugh, but I was in no mood to be manhandled—certainly not any more than I already had been.
I swatted his leg away. “I’m serious, Ursa.
This is important.” Glancing toward the door, I lowered my voice self-consciously.
“You touched my . . .” I know I’m helplessly prim about this sort of thing, but I just couldn’t bring myself to say breast out loud.
“. . . bosom, in front of the entire crew.”
Some part of me hoped it might have been a mistake, that he’d been meaning to rub at my clavicle and just aimed a little too low. But the smug smile that stretched across his face completely disabused me of that notion.
That cheeky little git! Scowling at him, I ventured closer to the bed. Ursa seemed to think I was coming to—what, throw myself at him? The nerve!—and reached out for me, but I quickly disabused him of that notion by knocking him in the face with a pillow.
Finally his smirk disappeared, replaced with a look of befuddlement. “Mina like Ursa’s touching,” he reminded me.