Chapter 4 #2
“My name is Irena,” I said softly, “and you are Flack. Everyone on the ship is scared of you. You know that?” The rumble of something deep and primal filled the air between us, a growl.
His eyes glowed like blue fire, his jaw clenched tight.
I braced myself to dart out of his reach, but though his muscles tightened, he did not move.
I might have gotten slightly, dangerously distracted by how freaking impressive he looked like that.
Terrifying, but so hot too. I hadn’t had thoughts like that at all since waking from stasis six months ago, and it caught me completely off guard.
“Good,” he snarled, but it wasn’t a loud snarl.
It felt like he was trying to hold back so as not to scare me, but he was overpowered by his anger at the same time.
“They should be scared. I’m going to tear them apart, make them pay the moment I get out of these chains.
” His eyes shifted from the brig entrance behind me to me, growing soft and warm.
“But not you, Irena. Never you. I’ll make them pay for what they did to both of us. ”
Both of us… as if we were a team already, and he knew exactly how bad my situation was.
Perhaps he did, but it was still hard to believe he could be an ally, someone I was safe with, when he talked of ripping people apart like it was nothing.
“Irena,” he said, drawing my attention as if he knew just how close I was to bolting.
“What they are doing to you, have done to you—that’s unforgivable.
It’s not like that everywhere in the Zeta Quadrant.
You can be safe. I’ll make you safe. You can trust me. ”
Trust him, do the very thing Dimon, and by extension Xathena, had warned I absolutely shouldn’t do. They were pirates, though, nasty, evil pirates that had enslaved me and pretended I didn’t need food to survive. It wasn’t like I could trust them either, so who did I believe?
Testing the waters very carefully, I dropped my gaze to the blood-soaked bandage on his side.
It looked bad; the amount of blood I could see made me think he should be passed out from blood loss, not sitting upright and watching me like I held the answers to all of life’s mysteries.
“May I?” I asked, and when he nodded, I reached to peel the sticky bandage from his skin.
I only knew basic first aid, classes I’d taken so I could better perform my tasks as the RA on my dorm floor.
Most of my practical experience came from dealing with alcohol intoxication, not this.
A stab wound by the looks of it. An actual, honest-to-God stab wound that was deep, too.
It had bled profusely and hadn’t begun to scab over yet; the wound probably kept opening up as he so much as shifted. It needed stitches.
“Yeah, that was courtesy of Xathena. I was out cold though, so I can’t be sure.
Looks like her handiwork.” Flack sounded so incredibly calm talking about getting stabbed while passed out, like it was a weekly occurrence, not a traumatic, life-threatening injury.
He must have seen the shock on my face, because he added gently, “I’m a soldier first, Irena.
I can handle a little pain. I’ll be fine.
Better with a clean bandage.” I saw how his eyes drifted down to the bulging pocket on my skirt; he knew I had one. He’d seen it.
“I think this needs stitches too,” I said.
“Pretty sure it does. Or it will just keep opening and bleeding again…” That was probably why the old bandage was a soaked mess, and more blood had dried on his hip and the edge of his belt.
I had made the choice to get close, and he hadn’t harmed me, so I continued.
Surely this fell under my duties, too; Dimon wanted him alive, didn’t he?
I took a clean rag and poured some water from the bottle on his food tray onto it.
Then I began cleaning away the blood in careful strokes.
It wasn’t until I discovered his skin had broken out in fine bumps—goosebumps—that I realized what this did to him, and it wasn’t pain.
Very slowly, I raised my head to meet his gaze.
His blue eyes glowed with an inhuman light, casting shadows on his face, and his mouth had twisted into a grimace, not of pain, but of pleasure.
“Please,” he begged, “continue. Don’t mind me or my body’s reaction.
It is only because you are so very beautiful.
” His voice was beyond husky, a deep, hoarse kind of rasp that came from deep inside his wide chest. His nipples were perked, and his thighs were clenched tight, as were the fists holding onto his chains.
In another of those either stupid or brave moves, I actually looked at his groin and nearly tumbled backward onto the floor when I saw the massive bulge that had grown there.
Fuck, he was huge. His cock had to be massive, and fully erect inside the confines of his black pants.
For me, because of how I was touching him when cleaning his wound.
“Liar,” I accused from nearly across the narrow cell.
My heart pounded furiously in my throat, and the fear was back.
It was the one fate I’d avoided, Isen’s mark and the superstitious beliefs the crew held, keeping me safe from that.
Now he said I was beautiful? I didn’t believe that kind of attraction was real; this was just another way he thought he could convince me to help him.
It had to be. Well, it backfired, because now I saw right through it all.
“Liar?” Flack asked, the glow in his eyes beginning to dim and his body losing some of the tension that had made him arch his spine.
“I am no liar, little one. I never lie, and you are truly beautiful, though I am forever grateful that Dimon and his idiots don’t see that.
” Then his voice grew firmer, more commanding.
“Now come back here, Irena. Come back and finish what you started.” His words made my mind flash with all kinds of naughty options, like climbing into his lap.
He was a master at seduction—I had to give him that—but I still didn’t believe him.
My eyes dropped to his wound, and with a sigh, I forced myself forward so I could at least put a new bandage on.
I slid my hand into my pocket as I leaned in closer and encountered the other item I’d brought with me.
I couldn’t read the packaging on the small box, but it looked like a handheld scanner of some kind.
Should I show it to him? See if he knew how to use it?
That wound wasn’t going to heal properly without a lot of time—or more aid than I could offer. Did I care about his speedy recovery?
“What is it, sweetheart?” he asked. “I can see the gears spinning inside your pretty head.” There was a husky chuckle that made his abs dance, and I quickly yanked my eyes back up.
My fist tightened around the narrow box as I yanked it out of my pocket and held it up between us.
I knew this could all be trickery, but it felt good to believe in something more hopeful than dying of hunger on a pirate ship.
That future of safety—and yes, vengeance—that he offered.
“That’s a tissue regenerator, clever girl!
” he cooed. I blinked, eyed the unreadable text on the box, and then finally made the call and ripped open the packaging with shaking hands.
Maybe the shaking was because my blood sugar was dangerously low, but it was nerves too.
“Just flick the button and aim. It does all the work, the basics, at least, but that should be enough.” There was a sound to his voice that sounded like relief, and it was that edge that convinced me to do what he said.
I aimed the device at his wound, but he hissed, so I froze.
“No. The cuts on your face first, Irena. Heal yourself with that.” My mouth dropped open, surprise filling me so much that I just froze.
Heal myself? Heal… My hand drifted to the awful damage on my cheek, faltering before I could touch it because it was a nasty, constant ache.
It was infected, I knew that, and though it had been months, none of the cuts had truly closed.
Evidence, according to the pirates, that I had some kind of plague, and I had almost begun to believe it myself.
Heal me? He was the one who’d been stabbed, was he scared I’d make him sick too?
But the look in his eyes, it made my stomach curl, not with heat but with a warmth all the same.
It felt like he cared, like he was putting me first. No, I couldn’t believe that.
So I sat there, frozen, my mind spinning as I tried to understand, and coming up short every single time.