31. Chapter Thirty-One #2
Apparently, not so much. As he continued pacing ominously at the back of the room, he glared daggers at Croydon, his shoulders raised in a defensive posture, his nostrils flaring.
“Shit,” Croydon said again. “He’s gonna kill me, isn’t he?” Before I could answer, he hissed at me, “Could you stop making those noises?”
The “noises” in question were the sounds of, uh, pleasure that Tobago and Val had wanted me to practice. I thought I’d struck a good balance with the soft moans I’d been workshopping, but I could see Croydon’s point. They likely weren’t doing anything to calm Ursa’s agitation.
I stopped immediately and shone my brightest smile on Ursa. “Hello, love. It’s all just pretend. Just like we discussed.”
I had warned Ursa about the kind of roles Croydon and I would be performing, but either he hadn’t fully understood, or it had proven much, much more difficult to observe than he’d anticipated. If the roles were reversed, I imagine I might have felt something similar.
That was putting it mildly, of course. I’d be wild with jealousy.
So I tried to sound as reassuring as possible while being held aloft by another man. “Just pretend. Nothing to get upset about. And certainly no reason to take anything out on poor Mr. Croydon here.”
“I’m not even enjoying it!” Croydon insisted.
Well, that was patently false, and rude, but now was not the time or place to quibble.
“Put. Mina. Down,” Ursa ground out slowly.
Uh-oh. I could see this situation would need to be handled delicately. I was sure I could help Ursa understand, but once he got into this state—hackles raised, eyes wild—it was best to placate. We could argue the point later; now he just needed help recentering.
“All right, Ursa,” I soothed. “It’s all right—”
“It’s not all right, Ursa,” Tobago interrupted. “We’re on a tight time frame, and Mina needs to practice this now. If you don’t like it, don’t watch.”
Ursa rounded on him, this new and convenient outlet for all of his agitation and rage.
Oh dear. Tobago was no coward, and despite his lithe stature, I knew he could more than hold his own in a fight.
But he’d never fought Ursa; he didn’t know just how very strong he was. And if neither man backed down . . .
“Let me go,” I instructed Croydon briskly before half launching myself out of his arms. It was, admittedly, a rather clumsy dismount that resulted in me landing on my backside. Ignoring the sharp burst of pain, I hastily scrambled to my feet.
Luckily, Tobago and Ursa hadn’t yet come to blows. Instead, they were doing that thing men do where they glare threateningly at one another, chests thrust outward. A primitive, macho display of testosterone-y nonsense was what it was.
But now was not the time to lecture them on it. Instead, I managed to wedge myself in between them, bracing my hands on Ursa’s chest. “My love. My love.”
Reluctantly, he tore his glare away from Tobago, his expression softening only ever so slightly as he looked down at me. I placed my hands on either side of his face. “There’s no need for this. It’s all just pretend. We’re doing our part, just like everyone else.”
The subtext was, of course, that we had to remind the crew of the Trojan Horse why it was worthwhile to keep us onboard until we could find a safe destination to start our new lives. More to the point, we had to convince Tobago of this.
During the vote about whether Ursa and I should stay onboard, Tobago hadn’t spoken out in our defense. He hadn’t spoken against us, precisely, but he also hadn’t spoken for us. For me. He would have been fine with leaving us in Amazonia. He might have even been relieved.
So reminding him of our worth was paramount. Ursa could do so easily; he was as strong as five of the other men put together, an invaluable resource when it came to moving cargo.
But when it came to me? There was very little incentive to keep me onboard.
I wasn’t a good smuggler, as it turned out.
I’d been a terrible distraction back on Newearth and nearly gotten both myself and Ursa killed.
Somehow, I was an even worse cook. I didn’t have any more mushrooms to trade.
And I wouldn’t even sleep with other members of the crew to take some of the edge off the long travel time through space.
So proving myself here on SuperVegas was everything.
What good was I, if I couldn’t even do this one very small, basic thing?
But Ursa was seeing only the immediate threat, not the long-term danger. “You stay on ship,” he told me. “Safe. Not . . .” He couldn’t seem to find the word for whatever it was I’d been doing with Croydon, and so instead he waved a disgusted hand in his direction. “No. Other. Not you.”
“Everyone else is busy pulling their weight,” Tobago informed him curtly.
“Couldn’t we swap Croydon and Ursa?” Val spoke up.
She was only trying to be helpful, but I already knew Tobago’s answer would be no. Croydon was big and strong, but again, nowhere near as strong as Ursa, who could move twice as much cargo as everyone else. It wouldn’t make sense to swap them.
And unless some future heist involved identifying rare mushroom breeds (unlikely), there was simply nothing else I could do that would be even remotely useful.
Plus, Tobago was stubborn. If I’d approached him quietly on my own, asked him to reconsider my role, there was a possibility he might have changed his mind. But after being confronted by Ursa this way? There was no chance he’d back down.
“No,” he returned without even glancing at Val. His cool, determined glare was still fixed on Ursa. “It’s Mina and Croydon doing Peep Show. That’s the only way it works.” He raised an eyebrow, a challenge. “Do we have a problem here?”
Ursa tensed underneath my hands, still on his chest. “No problem!” I hastened to intervene. Before Ursa could contradict me, I pressed on his pectorals, a silent warning. “We just need five minutes.”
Tobago shook his head. “We don’t have—”
“Five minutes,” I insisted. “Please.”
At last, after a long, tense moment, Tobago relented. “Fine.”
1. Apparently there was an Old Earth custom where once a year, on a holiday called Black Friday, people could go to stores and take whatever they wanted without paying.
2. Ostensibly this was a choice the director had made to reverse the Elizabethan practice of allowing only male actors on the stage, but I think in truth there were just no teenage boys who wanted to put on tights and wrestle with iambic pentameter.
3. I suppose in this scenario, I would be Helen of Troy—a comparison that I must say, I don’t often receive.