22. Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Two
Afterward, there was a much more gentle and tender washing down, both of us naked now and sharing the warmth of the shower spray as best we could.
“I thought you might want her,” I confessed to him shyly. “I thought it would be selfish for me to stand in your way.”
Ursa seemed utterly bewildered by this train of thought. “You say nothing. I think . . . Mina does not care.”
We were working on pronouns at the moment, which is why he gave them such a heavy emphasis.
But that was beyond the point. What he was trying to tell me was more important.
When we’d been sitting at the table and Zenny had propositioned Ursa, I’d said nothing.
I hadn’t intervened. Of all the great abandonments in his life, it was comparatively small, I suppose, but it was still an abandonment.
He’d waited for me to declare that he belonged to me, and I hadn’t said a word.
“I wanted to,” I told him. It was excruciating to try to explain my reasoning at that time. It all seemed so foolish to me now. “I didn’t know if . . . You haven’t had much experience, Ursa. I didn’t want to stand in your way.”
“If man tries to take Mina. . .” Ursa paused, correcting himself. “If man tries to take you . . .” His eyes darkened ominously. “I will kill.”
Threatening to kill another man for hitting on me ought not to have been thrilling. I was a feminist, for goodness sake! But . . . if I’m being completely honest, which I’ve sworn to the Brethren I’ll be, it was thrilling.
No, more than that—that sounds too superficial, a cheap and temporary excitement. I was moved deeply by Ursa’s statement of ownership. It felt right and necessary to me as nothing ever had before.
I had been claimed.
Reaching up, I stroked the side of Ursa’s face, twining my fingers through his wet hair, before abruptly grabbing hold of it in a fist, much as he’d done to me earlier.
His eyes widened in surprise.1 I pulled just a little bit harder, until I saw his nostrils flaring at the strain.
“And if you go anywhere near that brothel tomorrow,” I told him in my sweetest, most savage voice, “I’ll kill you.”
I hadn’t spoken up for Ursa before, made clear to Zenny and to him and to everyone else where I stood, but I was letting him know now.
I didn’t care that he’d had so little experience.
I wouldn’t let myself worry that the space goggles would come off, or about any other such nonsense people might put into my head.
He belonged to me as much as I belonged to him, and I needed him to know I wouldn’t give him up without a fight.
He had been claimed, too.
Ursa’s eyes darted back and forth between mine as he read all of this in my expression.
Then he grinned.
After Ursa and I dried off and dressed, we left the washroom hand in hand. I can’t say I was entirely surprised to discover we had an audience of a few of the more pervy men—LeFleur, Croydon, and Alexei—waiting just outside, leering at us.
Leering at me, more specifically. As if they had ratted out some naughty secret about me they could hold over my head, when they were the ones who had been lecherously listening with their ears pressed to the door.2 They ought to have been ashamed, not me. But, well, men.
“There she is, boys,” Croydon drawled at me with a lascivious wink.3 “Wildcat.”
Oh, bother. That was going to be my new nickname now, I could spot it a mile off. I squeezed Ursa’s hand—not for comfort, or because I needed his strength, but because I thought he might start bashing their heads together if I didn’t hold him back.
In response to my tightened grip, Ursa growled low in his throat, a warning.
I had the pleasure of seeing LeFleur turn and bolt down the hall, that little toad.
Croydon and Alexei held their ground, but they immediately dropped their eyes to the floor, like naughty schoolboys who’d just been caught by the headmaster.
I squeezed Ursa’s hand again, gratefully this time. He squeezed back.
“Mina.”
I’d been so distracted by the Three Horny Musketeers4 that I hadn’t noticed Tobago standing just off to the side.
I had a sudden horrifying lurch of revulsion at the thought of him overhearing anything that had just taken place in the washroom—not, I was certain, because he’d been pressing his ear to the door like the others.
But if he’d been in the vicinity, sound might have carried.
He looked more irritated than anything, though. That, coupled with the sternness in his expression, made me realize he was likely here in response to that other wild and reckless thing I’d done tonight—throwing myself across the table and tackling one of his crew members.
Ah, yes, in the tight set of his jaw, I saw it all clearly now. He was in captain mode. “What the hell, Mina?”
“She started it,” I blurted out stupidly.
“She is a member of my crew,” Tobago reminded me. “You’re just a passenger. If you were anyone else, I’d drop you off at the nearest port with all your luggage and tell you to go fuck yourself.”
I doubt Ursa was familiar with the expression, but he read the tone all too easily. With another low grunt, he stepped in between Tobago and me, his chest bumping against the other man’s to force him back.
Oh, no, no, no. He hadn’t shoved or grabbed Tobago, but I knew my old friend would not take kindly to being physically manhandled in any way aboard his own ship, especially when he was acting as captain.
Sure enough, his eyes hardened as he looked up to meet Ursa’s gaze. “I’m just here to talk, ape man, but if you want a fight, we can fight.”
Of course, I could have explained to Tobago that Ursa hadn’t been raised by apes—in the Rocky Mountains? How absurd!—but I sussed it wasn’t really the right time for that.
I hastily positioned myself between the two men. “No one wants a fight, Tobago. It’s just been a long night, and he’s feeling protective of me. You saw how those other men were behaving—”
I gestured to where Croydon and Alexei were standing, only to find they’d skedaddled once Tobago made his presence known. Cowards.
“I take full responsibility for the fight with Zenny,” I continued. “It was below me to behave that way, and I’ll apologize to her in the morning. It won’t happen again.”
I was attempting to smooth things over, yes, but also to remind Tobago that I was the problem, not Ursa. Tobago didn’t owe any childhood loyalty to Ursa, but he did to me, and I hoped that would be enough. If not, I was most certainly going to tattle on him to Trini if he abandoned me on Amazonia.
There was a long beat in which Tobago and Ursa continued to glare each other down before my old friend finally moved his gaze to me. It was shuttered, cold, calculating—a version of Tobago I’d never seen before, at least not aimed at me. And it sent a frisson of fear creeping up my spine.
“That’s enough testosterone for tonight,” a curt, firm voice interrupted as Val stepped into my peripheral view. Sweeping in with easy authority, she looped her arm through mine, pulling me down the hall.
As much as I liked what I knew of Val thus far, I was loath to leave behind Tobago and Ursa with so much angry tension still pulsing in the air. I twisted back toward them uncertainly. “I—”
“Go to bed, boys,” Val called over her shoulder. “Sleep it off.” To me, more quietly, she added, “Men are always insufferable when they’re tired. Let ’em have a good night’s sleep, and they’ll be best friends again in the morning.”
I had a hard time believing that could be true, but Val’s tone left no room for argument, and besides that, she was surprisingly strong. “Where are we going?” I asked, not quite keeping up with what was happening. I wouldn’t have minded a little sleep at the moment myself.
“To talk to Zenny.”
I balked. “Now?”
“Now,” Val agreed firmly. “Women aren’t like men. We don’t sleep things off. We let things fester. Better to take this head-on and get it over with, or you two will be plotting each other’s murders all night . . .”
While I can’t say Val was entirely wrong in her assessment, I still resented having to talk to Zenny after what had proven to be a real solar coaster of a night.
Luckily, when I spotted Zenny sitting in the galley, still encrusted with remnants of the dinner that we’d wrestled in,5 she looked just about as thrilled to talk to me as I was talking to her.
If I was going to have to suffer through this, at least she was going to have to suffer through it with me.
“Sit down,” Val instructed me briskly, pulling out a chair opposite Zenny.
I took it but made sure to tilt my nose up, just a little bit, to show I wasn’t cowed. Zenny folded her arms, glaring at me.
Val seated herself in a nearby chair and looked us over in turn. Then she shook her head. “Ladies, please. Fight about anything—literally anything—other than a man. It’s so boring.”
The words uncoiled a hot flush of embarrassment. That wasn’t what I was doing! Well . . . all right, technically, I suppose it was what I was doing, but that wasn’t the full story. I wasn’t fighting over some boy I’d met at a party. This was Ursa.
Still, I couldn’t help but see the sense in what Val was saying. There were only three of us women onboard. We ought not to be so petty with one another.
“She started it,” I blurted out. So much for not being petty.
I suppose that’s never been one of my strong suits, come to think of it.
“She’s been rude to me from day one. And she’s made no secret she wants to—” I couldn’t think of a dignified way to say it that wouldn’t also set my blood boiling again, so I settled on, “Have her way with my man.”
Zenny spoke over me to Val, almost before I’d finished. “She made no secret about looking down her nose at us as soon as she stepped onboard.” She sniffed, casting a quick, dismissive look my way. “Someone had to take her down a peg or two.”